Building an Empire

Garden Gnome Wars

2006-08-05T12:17:00.000-04:00

The miniature wargaming blog once again listed my site because of games I have written. This time it was Garden Gnome Wars. I got a nice rise in traffic. It just goes to show that if you want to increase traffic to your site just keep adding unique content.

Increasing popularity

2006-07-17T12:12:00.000-04:00

My hobby website once again was listed on the miniature wargaming blog and I got lots of traffic. I have been submitting my site and the free games I have on it to various online directories. Hopefully this will lead to steady traffic flow over time. Right now every time I'm listed it results in a short term spike in traffic for about three days.

Miniature wargaming

2006-07-11T11:46:00.000-04:00

My hobby website got listed on www.miniaturewargaming.com and almost instantly I got a bunch of visitors. Interestingly google only lists 2 pages of my hobby website in its index, my home page and the page that was listed on the miniature wargaming site.

Another traffic spike

2006-07-05T10:45:00.000-04:00

I got another traffic surge yesterday on my hobby website. It was for the same reason as last time. Every time www.freewargamesrules.co.uk posts another of my free games I get a surge of website visitors. I guess that's incentive to keep posting my game designs.

Google Update

2006-06-27T14:33:00.000-04:00

Google now lists most of my website's pages in its index. None of my links show up however. I'm still in the dreaded google sandbox. Not much else is going on. I'm waiting to get out of the google sandbox before I do much else, otherwise I won't know what effect changes will make.

No Results, No Money

2006-06-19T12:09:00.000-04:00

I gave isubmit the boot a couple of days ago. Their online marketing had no effect on the bottom line so they are history. The same goes for ExactSeek and Yahoo marketing. They won't be renewed once they run out. If they don't produce results, they don't get any more of my money. My most effective marketing so far seems to be word of mouth and linksmaster.

I'm not sure what to do now

2006-06-14T13:35:00.000-04:00

I'm about ready to fire all the advertising and SEO companies I'm currently doing business with. Nothing they are doing is having an impact on the bottom line. I'm paying much more than I'm getting in return. Being that my website is new and is probably in the google sandbox, nothing seems to work. I really don't know what to do next.

AdSense Earnings

2006-06-13T11:12:00.000-04:00

Ok, I have had google adsense on my various websites and blogs for a little over a month now. I have had over 1000 page impressions, 2 click throughs and earned $0.46 total so far. That is not so good. On the other hand the number of page views has really gone up in the past 7 days. The click throughs have all been in the past 3 days. All of the increased traffic and clicks have been on my hobby website. I really hope this continues.

Traffic surge

2006-06-10T08:53:00.000-04:00

I found out what was behind the surge of traffic yesterday. My hobby site got listed on www.freewargamesrules.co.uk and everyone decided to check out my site for free games.

Google AdSense

2006-06-09T12:38:00.000-04:00

I have had a record number of google adsense impressions today. I'm not sure exactly why. Once I get the day end reports I might be able to determine where they are coming from. The daily impressions have been slowly rising but it really spiked today. I hope this is a trend.

google updates

2006-06-08T20:27:00.000-04:00

I'm still trying to increase traffic. My hobby website is still getting more traffic than my shopping site. Which is ok I guess since I have google ads on those pages. This blog is now in the google index, which is nice. I am now signed up for google sitemaps. Well that's it for now...

SEO tools

2006-06-05T13:53:00.000-04:00

I found this great site containing free SEO tools. I have been trying a number of them. They have search engine ranking tools, exchange link tools, keyword selection tools, and more. If you don't want to spend a fortune optimizing your site, why not start with some of these free tools.

End of month

2006-05-31T15:29:00.000-04:00

Ok, so here it is the end of my first full month of business. What have I accomplished so far? Lets see... I'm listed on the major search engines. I have a lot of links pointing to my website. My advertising is generating a small amount of traffic. I have passed out business cards to friends and family. That's a good start. Now for what needs work: sales. I'm still in the red. So next month I need to continue increasing traffic and start turning hits into sales.

Yahoo!

2006-05-29T21:44:00.000-04:00

My website is finally listed on Yahoo. Now that I'm on the major search engines (google, yahoo, msn) I am going to start focusing on increasing my rankings on them. As best as I can tell from the reports I'm getting most of my website traffic is coming from my ppc advertising. That needs to change.

Still growing

2006-05-28T11:28:00.000-04:00

Not much is going on today. I did check in with wholinkstome.com and I now have over 3000 websites linking to me. Thats petty cool. My number of visitors per day is slowly increasing. Sales are still disapointing, but this is still my first month in business.

The sum is greater than its parts

2006-05-26T13:12:00.000-04:00

I have been working to tie together all my gaming and business websites together. Hopefully when someone visits one of my sites they will be enticed to check out my other sites. In this way my collection of sites will draw strength from one another and be more profitable in the long run. I have also joined a webring in order to join together with other similar sites and draw from their strength.

SEO

2006-05-25T10:04:00.000-04:00

My search engine optimization efforts are continuing. Yesterday I signed up with iSubmit for online advertising and search engine submissions. The first month is free and I can cancel anytime. So I decided what the hell and signed up. After a day the reports they gave me show I had 706 page impressions for their advertising and they successfully submitted my site to 352 search engines. That's all good, but as a wargamer I have problems saying "iSubmit".

Updates

2006-05-24T09:46:00.000-04:00

I have discontinued advertising through ExactSeek as it wasn't doing much for me. It was cheap but I guess you get what you pay for. My pay per click advertising through yahoo is getting some clicks but is not translating into sales. I'm going to try shifting around my keywords to see if I get better results with yahoo. If not I will have to try something else.

Search Engine Optimization

2006-05-20T10:31:00.000-04:00

I'm still trying different search engine optimization methods. Yet the traffic only trickles in. In the beginning it seems that everything is stacked against you. A new website has little chance of breaking out without doing something "big". I'm sure things will get easier as my website ages and gets picked up by the various search engines.

Yahoo search marketing

2006-05-18T12:10:00.000-04:00

Im now set up with Yahoo Search Marketing. I decided to start real small on my advertising. I want to focus on keywords with low bids and a low overall dally budget. This is so I can get a handle on what works and what doesn't without spending a fortune. After I find out what's most effective, I will then increase my advertising budget.

Listed on Google

2006-05-16T10:45:00.000-04:00

My website is now listed on Google. The page rank is really low, probably because its a new site. Now its time to work it up the rankings one step at a time. Why must everything be a struggle?

Old school advertising

2006-05-15T20:45:00.000-04:00

I have started to pass out business cards to my family and friends. I have got quite a positive response from everyone. Perhaps this classic style of advertising still works in the modern world.

My first sale

2006-05-13T10:55:00.000-04:00

Yesterday my website had its first sale that wasn't from family or friends. The commission wasn't much, just over a dollar. It feels good to actually start bringing in money instead of just spending it.

Crawl before you walk

2006-05-11T14:15:00.000-04:00

The number of hits to my website are slowly increasing. According to the traffic report more of them seem to be real people as opposed to web robots and spiders. I guess you have to learn to crawl before you can walk. Man I wish things would pick up. I just hate waiting. I wish there was a good way of speeding things up without spending a ton of money. I guess I have no choice but to wait.

Links and more links

2006-05-09T12:21:00.000-04:00

My link trading scheme is really taking off. I already have more than a thousand sites linking to me according to MSN search. I highly recommend linksmaster to anyone with a website.

Search Engines

2006-05-08T12:04:00.000-04:00

I noticed that my website was listed on MSN Search today. Still nothing on Google or Yahoo yet. I purchased G-Boost from ineedhits in order to increase my chances of getting listed with google. It has a money back guarantee if Im not listed within 7 days. It also claims to increase my page rank. I really need an increase in my site traffic so hopefully this will do the trick.

New links, new opportunities

2006-05-05T12:48:00.000-04:00

Today I went to wholinkstome.com to see if my link exchange program is having any effect. After only one day a number of sites have started to show up. That is a good start and should improve with time. Another interesting development is Im starting to get traffic from unusual places. I actually got a visitor from Japan today.

Getting links

2006-05-04T10:25:00.000-04:00

I decided to enroll in a link exchange program in order to improve my search engine placement and drive some traffic to my site. I signed up with Linksmaster as it was recomended to me. To see what the link exchange page looks like, click here.

Openning moves

2006-05-03T13:06:00.000-04:00

I set up my website, Great gadgets and gifts, at ebiz-u. Now that I have a presence on the web I need to start drawing visitors to my site. So I signed up at Google adsense and ExactSeek for advertising. Lets see if that gets the ball rolling.

Who am I?

2006-05-03T10:44:00.000-04:00

My name is Matthew Byers and the purpose of this blog is to document my attempt to create a profitable online shopping website. At the time of this writting I am a unemployed electronics technician. Every job I apply for in my hometown I get one of two responces: I'm overqualified, or we don't have a posision available in your field. So I have decided to take maters into my own hands and build my own buisness empire of sorts. Afterall I should know something about creating empires from my hobby as a strategy wargame enthusiest, Right?