My Online Business...???

[cjhallock]

Ok for those of you who don't know me, my name is C.J. Hallock.

A little history...

About 3 1/2 - 4years ago I had a friend approach me with this Idea of making money online and since I've always been the type to hustle in everything just to try and make it so that I can work for MYSELF and no one else I had to jump in!!

The problem was I didn't know how and I was spending $47 here and there buying ebooks and nothing worked!!!!

Then last spring I met a man who some of you know as GanderCo (Gary Anderson) and he introduced me to Lynn Terry, Frank Kern, Tiffany Dow and many others.

Since then I've put together a site called Stay Boosted and a few others read more ebooks bought a few hardcopy books audio books and honestly...

I'M LOST!!!

I've tried squidoo, blogging, social networking, youtube, I tried doing my own product and to be completely honest I believe I've had so many people tell me to do this and do that, that I have almost hit the point of not knowing what to do...

SO, I come to you, @ SSWT asking for help, and/or guidance...

What am I doing wrong???

[Engage]

Hmm...

Without claiming to know you or your situation well enough to offer a definitive answer, here are a few thoughts. They may or may not be helpful.

The internet marketing education industry is highly complicated, by design.

That is, if the topic of making a living online wasn't presented as something very involved with a million different angles, then you wouldn't need experts and their latest products, would you?

It sounds to me as though you may have been sucked in to this machine, and are being overwhelmed by it. Nothing could be more normal.

You know what I mean, trying this, trying that, reading this book, that book, jumping from here to there, endlessly looking for the right magic combination of complications.

It's not your fault. You didn't create the make money online marketing machine.

If what you're doing isn't working, I suggest you wipe the slate clean, and start over from the beginning, with something very simple.

Three words, all you really need.

Content, links and Adsense.

Here's the good and the bad thing about simple.

There's nothing to do but the work.

You write lots of good articles and get lots of good links. Or you don't. End of story.

It's guaranteed to work if you work, and guaranteed to fail if you don't.

The very understandable frustration expressed in your post points to something very important.

The game is won or lost in our heads, in our ability to manage our psychology, our motivation.

The good thing about simple is, it's easy to see a direct relationship between doing work, and moving forward. This helps grease the wheels of our motivation.

What most of the internet marketing educators don't realize, because they've never studied education, and have no credentials in the field for which they are charging you, is keeping the perceived relationship between action and reward strong at all times is very important (read B.F. Skinner) and simple is the easiest way to accomplish that.

From here out, I suggest you don't hire a teacher, unless they can document that they've actually studied teaching, not just internet marketing.

Adsense is not the insanely clever path to instant riches and so on etc, so you may not move forward at a dazzling speed. But move forward you will. And that's faster than going nowhere for 3 years.

Stop messing around with all the fancy stuff, and just do the work. Create something of true value to readers, and get lots of links to it.

Wishing you the best!

[StephenT]

I agree with everything that Engage said, but I would add one thing. Focus. If you are not finding a niche to focus in on, then it is hard to narrow down so that a visitor to your site knows what it is all about. Focus as clearly as you can and keep asking yourself, "if I were a visitor to my site, what would I get out of it?"

It's about them, not you. If you can't offer them something, they will be gone.

[Satu]

And I would add yet one thing: remember to do your market and keyword research. If you target highly competitive keywords in a competitive niche, you are not going to see much money.

I agree that internet marketing is a "mind game", and the secret is that there is no secret!

(This of course does not mean that you don't need to know a lot about seo, keyword and market research and different ways of monetizing your sites)

[cindybidar]

Hey CJ. I don't know about your other sites, but on StayBoosted.com I see some areas where you could make improvements.

First, as someone else mentioned, keyword research. You've got some good posts, like "From Impossible to I'm Possible" but it's doubtful anyone will ever find them because they're not going to show up in a relevant search. For the record, I think self help is one of the tougher niches to do keyword research in - StephenT can speak to that, I'm sure! But you do need to discover your keywords and then use them - in the title, in your heading tags, in the posts themselves, and in the description. That's the first thing.

Second thing is a call to action. What do you want the reader to do after he or she has read your post? This is where the money is. Offer a suggestion for further reading (Amazon link) or a motivational program you found particularly helpful.

Third, do you have a newsletter or something else you're using to build a mailing list? I see a link in the nav bar that says "sign up" but no one is going to go there. Make it prominent. If the box in the upper right is your newsletter, you need a more compelling headline. If it's for an RSS feed to email, get rid of it and replace it with a mailing list sign-up.

Last, and Engage will disagree with me here, you need to brighten up your theme. You're content is all about living a more fulfilling and happy life, but your site is all grays and blacks. It's just not a very happy looking place. More "corporate drudgery" than "think positive," if you know what I mean.

Cindy

[Engage]

YahooSiteExplorer reports there are 84 links to http://www.stayboosted.com.

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com...&bwmo=d&bwmf=s

Just not enough. Not even close.

I say this as perhaps the world's leading expert on building nice sites, and then not bothering to get links to them. I've done extensive research on this technique over a period of years, by making the mistake repeatedly myself, and can confirm it just doesn't work.

Lots and lots of people have made this mistake. It's perhaps the most common and most important mistake?

291 pages though, that's great. Well done on that.

I agree heartily on the list building suggestion.

Hmm... This thread is a good example of how the best of intentions can go awry.

Somebody asks for advice. We sincerely want to help. So we start piling on the suggestions.

Before long, we've rebuilt the pile of complications, and the advice requester is once again spinning around in dizzy circles, wondering which of the many suggestions to focus on.

One important education principle, key to managing motivation, is a divide and conquer strategy.

Divide the teaching up in to bite size chunks, and then deliver the chunks one at a time, in a logical order.

The student tackles one doable challenge at a time, and success with each step prepares the student for the next success.

Once a pattern of success is established, the student's confidence in the process begins to grow, and their own inner energies are liberated.

So, in addition to creating a list of suggestions, it seems we should try to order our suggestions.

How about this?

Fellow teachers, could we possibly agree on the one next specific step that should be taken for this site?

Ideally, we should speak with one voice, and say, "Go do X, and when you are done with that, return for the next instruction."

For my vote, I nominate boosting the links from 100 to 500 as the next step. But I'd like to hear what the rest of you say too. Perhaps there's a better plan.

What say you?

[cindybidar]

Divide the teaching up in to bite size chunks, and then deliver the chunks one at a time, in a logical order.

Excellent point.

For my vote, I nominate boosting the links from 100 to 500 as the next step. But I'd like to hear what the rest of you say too. Perhaps there's a better plan.

What say you?

I disagree with this. Before you can build links into your site, you need to decide HOW to do the linking. What keywords will you use? Gotta do the keyword research first.

[Engage]

Gotta do the keyword research first.

Excellent idea, thanks for adding that. I do see your point. Keyword research is another area where I've done extensive research on the wrong way of going about it.

Hmm...

I agree, and don't. Pondering...

To build links correctly, yes, you are right. No question.

Another way to look at it might be....

This student has not yet established a pattern of building links.

If we want to divide and conquer, we might establish the pattern first. Tell the student, go build links, any way you can, any way you want.

Get in the habit. A bite size chunk. A doable first step.

One this first step is complete, the pattern of link building established, then continue to build on this success, as you suggest, with keyword research.

I don't offer this as a great plan, or a great success, but I've got 500-1000 unique visitors a day to nature-talk.com by piling up simple links (no researched link text) from random off topic sites to my home page.

Far from ideal, but not worthless either.

Dunno. Not sure. Depends on the student?

If the student is enthusiastic about keyword research, definitely go for it. If keyword research is seen as an obstacle, jump over it for now. My best guess. What say you?

What concerns me is that this student seems to already know most of what we are suggesting. But yet they aren't acting on building links.

Interesting thread, thanks to C.J. and everyone who has contributed.

[Satu]

I checked StayBoosted very fast and also went to the accompanying blog (cjhallock). I agree that StayBoosted does look a bit drab and I am not sure about the grungy look (who is the intended target audience?).

Actually, I liked your personal blog more than the stayboosted site, perhaps because it is more personal! I liked the video posts, I think they work very well.

When you have done keyword research & gotten backlinks, maybe you could start posting videos on the stayboosted site too?

Just adding to the confusion!

[MikeF421]

I agree with Engage. If you are looking for organic traffic, backlinks are the way to get them. But the anchor text for those backlinks is important too. If you are going to do the work getting the backlinks, you might as well get the right backlinks.

So keyword research followed by massive backlinking.