New Orleans Internet Marketing

A common question I get is, “Chris, we got a quote from this company for our new website and they want to charge us $XXXXX - is that too much?” “Well, what are they going to do?” I counter. “I don’t know, design our website!”

Simple “Brochure” Type Websites
The fact is, $2,000 can be too much or too little, and so can $20,000. It depends on what the purpose of the website is and what type of functionality you want it to have. The simplest websites to build are like “brochures” or “business cards” on the web. These have static content, meaning that if you want to change anything you need to have web design experience or have your designer make the changes. These types of sites generally go for $1k - $5k, depending on the experience and quality of the designer, and depending on if it will have flash, and how many pages it will have.

Content Management Systems (CMS)
The next upgrade is a site with some form of “content management.” CMS allows the site administrator or anyone else with permission, to login to the site and make changes to content and pages using a simple text editor. Website owners like CMS because it makes them less dependent on their web design company for changes. Changes to content can be made quickly and easily by the site owner or admin. Read the rest of this entry »

Many people are aware that I work for an internet marketing firm called Foreman & Pike Consulting (used to be www.ForemanPike.com). We have now changed our name to Reciprocal Consulting (www.ReciprocalConsulting.com). I am happy to say that we will continue to be able to provide the same top-notch service that we are well known for in the industry. Here is the letter from John Pike on the change:

As the internet advertising market changes each day, so must we.

Foreman & Pike Consulting has always been on the cutting edge of growth, development and performance; and this will not change. We will continue to offer Internet advertising solutions, successful conversions, increased sales and most importantly, a return on your investment — all on a pay for performance basis. However, we benefit from your success as much as you do because after all, without you we would be without purpose.

It is for this reason that Foreman & Pike has changed their name to Reciprocal Consulting.

We believe that Reciprocal better describes who we are, what we do and what we offer, as our relationship with our clients is mutually beneficial. We want to stress, as we always have, that we are Partners with our clients. We take on your vision, make your goals our goals and our success is measured only by your success. This is the difference between an Internet Marketing firm and Reciprocal Consulting.

Nothing has changed and nothing will except for our name, which we feel better represents us and our relationship with you, our clients.

Sincerely,

John E. Pike, Owner & President

Reciprocal Consulting

If you’re involved in the internet marketing profession, there is eventually going to come a time when you will need a picture of yourself for a bio or “about us” page. Especially if you’re a blogger - a good picture helps readers to connect and get a feel for who you are; Problogger has a good post on the benefits of using your picture on your blog.

My time had come. I needed a picture for our firm’s website. I’ve been getting along with some crappy old pictures that I cropped from random photos for too long. So being the internet marketing hacker I am, I hit Google up for some “New Orleans Photographers,” and that’s how I was lucky enough to find George Long.

Read the rest of this entry »

Being the webmaster of a site with over 400 direct advertisers (who are therapists), I often get asked about stats, and currently I don’t have anything set up to deliver stats to my directory’s advertisers. The population I advertise for are therapists who, for the most part, are relatively new to internet marketing. Since I also manage a few individual marketing campaigns for therapists, I have a good idea about the kind of traffic that converts into referrals for them, and the kind of traffic that doesn’t. I even get to see how good my site’s competitors do at sending conversions to therapists. It’s a really unique vantage point, and here’s what I’ve come to learn from it.

The truth about what people are selling you in terms of advertising, is that the bottom line is the price you pay for each conversion. In the case of the therapists who advertise on my website, a “conversion” is a referral for counseling services. With that being said, statistics on visitors and pageviews that people send their advertisers can potentially be meaningless due to the fact that conversions are highly dependent on how targeted the traffic is. Read the rest of this entry »

I met a guy named Chris on Digital Point the other day, and he did some work for me. He did a really good job, so I asked him if he did anything else. He then tells me about these Ebay affiliate sites that he’s selling to people for dirt cheap. He sends me a bunch of examples, and I was blown away.

The sites are setup using Wordpress with an ebay affiliate feed for whatever type of item category you choose. He sets a cron job to update the feed, and walla! You’ve got an ebay affiliate site, SEO friendly and ready to go in a few hours.

So I had to try this out myself. I bought RolexWatchAuctions.com, and I bought AppleComputerAuctions.com for a friend of mine as a Christmas present. Here are some other sites he’s done:
http://1dollardvd.net
http://rockbandsource.com
http://guccigallery.com
http://mycoachstore.com


I got a few links for RolexWatchAuctions.com, and it’s already on the first page of Google for “rolex watch auctions,” I haven’t even had the site 2 weeks yet.

Here’s what you will need:

1. Choose a topic that you think will be profitable for an ebay affiliate website.
   
2. Create an affiliate account at Commission Junction so you can join the ebay affiliate program.
   
3. Buy the domain name.
   
4. Choose a Wordpress Theme (I customized the graphics at the top for mine, Chris didn’t do that).
   
5. Setup hosting somewhere or add the domain on to an account you have that allows multiple websites.
   
6. Send me $50 through Paypal (Click Here), and I will get you in touch with Chris so he can start your site. Make sure you put your email address in the Paypal message if it’s different from your Paypal email.
   

This offer expires on Jan. 10th, 2008.

Today I did a little work on a privacy policy I have been writing for a website. Privacy policies are something I have ignored in the past, but they are becoming increasingly important as more people on the web these days actually read them, and they can give more “trust” to your site from certain parties.

I started it off with the information gathered from Google Analytics that I use for various purposes. Google Analytics is a really great analytical tool, and it is an effective way to run pretty reports that clearly show visitor trends, effectiveness of marketing, search queries, etc. I’ve had a few clients ask some pretty tough questions in the past, and on occassion, I’ve had to dig deep into Analytics to find the answer. Did you know that Analytics tracks visitor stats down to browser type, OS, geographical location, Java version, network location, screen resolution, and more? Read the rest of this entry »

I currently have many of my websites hosted on Media Temple’s Gridserver. If you click on the link, don’t get sucked into their slick marketing and hyped up “Grid Hosting” talk. Today my sites on those servers have been dead slow to respond all day long. About 15 websites. Since moving them to the gridservers they have also been plagued with database errors, even after upgrading to “dedicated” memory for my db’s (Grid Containers). I’m now spending a around $80 / month for two accounts, and I don’t feel safe keeping my sites there much longer. I lose money every time something like this happens, and it never fails, that it happens at the worst possible time (like the day you spent a bunch of time and money doing extra marketing to get people to your website).

Read the rest of this entry »

I have a website with excellent organic search engine rankings for moderately competitive keywords that are well-targeted for a lot of advertisers. I run Adsense on this site, and it has always done well for me. But in the past 6 months or so, Adsense revenues have been declining somewhat, so I decided to take action.

The best performing Adsense ads are usually showing up at the top, so I did some research and found which two had the best paying affiliate programs. One paid around 30% per sale, and the other had a very good per sale payout that wasn’t dependant on the percentage. Read the rest of this entry »

I get this a lot. I talk to so many people all over the country in the line of work I do. An advertiser wrote me tonight and at the end of her email it said,

PS.  If you have time, I’d be interested in hearing a post Katrina report.

From the Second Most Likely Area To Flood Out Sacramento, CA.

So tonight I took some time, and since so many people want to know, here was my response:

As far as New Orleans goes, overall I’d say the city is doing well considering what happened during Katrina. The good part is that most parts of town are “back to normal” I guess one could say. The bad part is that the poorer parts of the city are still deserted and not making much progress. The people with the least resources are the ones that were hit the hardest. There’s this “Road Home” program that the State created to give out the federal funds that were allocated to help rebuild, and over the past few months people have just STARTED to get that money – 2 yrs. later. So you can imagine, what low income person, who has already settled down in another state, is going to get that money and want to come back to rebuild? New Orleans didn’t treat them that great. Only the ones who really loved it here will come back, and even for some of those, the thought of returning and not having their community here will be too discouraging.

We have a lot of migrant workers here helping rebuild now, so there’s been a big shift in the racial / ethnic makeup of the city. After a while, abandoned houses will be torn down and new ones built. Some areas of the city have already gotten “facelifts.” So there has been some good and there will be more to come of it. For tourists, everything good about New Orleans is still here, and one probably wouldn’t notice much difference. I love the city and I guess you have to take the good with the bad anywhere you live, but for me the good here, really outweighs the bad.

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past year. Although I’m sure there were hundreds of other signs that Google’s image was changing, for me it started when Google “local results” started showing up in search above the natural search results.

Here we had our beloved “Google,” created by two Stanford students infatuated with search, beginning to venture into the realm of the “content providers” by adding local yellow-page-type listings in with their search results. Let’s see, how do we edit our listing? Has anyone ever tried it? If you have, you know that it’s next to impossible. Who knows where Google gets this data, or how they decide which businesses get the privilege of showing up on the front page.

Now we have “news” results showing up in regular search results. Was I looking for news? If I was, wouldn’t I just add “news” to the search or search “Google News?”

The problem as I see it, is that my favorite search provider is turning into “content provider.” This is further evidenced by acquisitions such as YouTube. The search engine we grew to know and love is now directly competing with more and more webmasters around the globe. This hasn’t happened without a backlash though. “Search” used to be the primary means I would use to find the content I’m interested in, but now I have many new alternatives.

Looking back at the evolution and rapid growth of social networks and media, I see a relationship between Google’s “sandboxing” of new content and the growth of popular sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon (SU). For those unfamiliar with the term, Google’s “sandbox” refers to the inability of new websites to rank well for competitive keyword phrases in Google. If I can’t find the newest, best content on Google, I’m going to go elsewhere; and Digg and SU provided a great means of delivering the newest and best content to users.

The recent tryst with eBay is a symbolic event that reminds me that Google is a competitor, more so now than ever. Google wants to be “everything to everyone.” By providing content that it’s too big to manage (local listings), and e-commerce solutions (Google Checkout), it’s no longer just our friendly search provider.

I haven’t talked much about MyBlogLog in the past, but I really like it. The site widget is neat because you get to see who’s been visiting your blog, and you can explore their blogs and get to know them better. So if you’re not in “the wagon” you’re missing the train.

This little experiment, I found on Chris Sandberg’s blog when I was looking at my backlinks. So I thought I’d give it a try:

***Start Copying Here:***
Here are the rules:

1) Write a short introduction about how you found this list and include a link back to that blog.

2) COPY the rules and ENTIRE list below and post it on your blog.

3) Take “My New Community Members� and move them into the “The Original Community Members� list.

4) Find 3 new blogs, join their MyBlogLog Community and add them to the “My New Community Membersâ€? section. Remember to also add the “Join the Community” link next to each blog. (Example: http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/community/ReformatThis/ )

Read the rest of this entry »

I “should have” started this blog 9 years ago. That’s when I got interested in designing websites. I can’t imagine how many transformations it would have gone through by now. I wonder how many links it would have going to it, or what I would have talked about back then. It sure wouldn’t be “sandboxed” by Google, like this one is.

I tell everybody I know, if you’re interested in anything, start a website on it. Let me help you with it. Just put something out there, and sooner or later, if you work on it a little bit, it will make some money for you.

It’s also neat having a blog and being able to sit down and write something that I know a ton of people will see tomorrow. But it’s also like owning property. The fact is, advertisers need relevant space to advertise. They need to reach their audience, and with all of the blogs out there, it’s hard to believe that sometimes I can’t find one on the topic I’m looking for. It does happen though.

Look at the new text ad products popping up: ReviewMe.com, V7N Contextual Links. They need bloggers.

So if you have something you like to talk about, what are you waiting around for? Put yourself out there…

http://www.stumbleupon.com

If anyone hasn’t tried StumbleUpon yet, I strongly suggest it, not only for bringing additional traffic to a site, but also because it’s really good entertainment and a great way to find the kind of stuff you’re into on the web.

SU is kind of a mixture between MySpace, Digg. and Del.icio.us. Sign up for a free account, download the toolbar (usually, I’m very against adding toolbars, but this one’s worth it), and choose your topics that interest you.

Read the rest of this entry »

My first check I got from Google Adsense in 2003! $260.40, not bad for a first time Adsense user!



That was when the light bulb went off. I had done something I enjoyed doing (building a website), and I had earned money from it that would contine to grow. Keep reading this blog, and you’ll eventually find out exactly how I did it every time. Here are some tips to make money from Adsense: Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a new service available to mental health professionals called @ Counseling.

http://atcounseling.com

@ Counseling is a place where counseling professionals can sign up and create their own web site, choosing from a variety of different templates. It all takes place through your browser window, and is a very simple and straightforward process. Best of all, it is completely free for any licensed member of the helping professions.

The service is provided by The Family & Marriage Counseling Directory, but therapists do not need to advertise in the directory to be eligible. I hope people will take advantage of it.

I’ve been designing web sites since 1998, but that’s really not important. Anyone can design a web site. But how many people really understand how traffic flows on the internet? I spend  e v e r y   w a k i n g  moment trying to figure it out.

I’ve helped bring traffic to websites in many different ways. It started with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). When I started doing SEO in 2002, the results were amazing. I read a few good resources, like The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, the doctoral thesis by Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. I spent countless hours on WebmasterWorld and SearchEngineWatch and reading newsletters by people like Jill Whalen. In no time at all I was hitting the top of the search engine results with every keyword phrase I targeted. I was also learning Social Work at the time, and I wrote my master’s thesis on Search Engine Accessibility and Community Resources; it was a project designed to help community resource agencies design web sites with search engine optimization in mind. The research I did at this time gave me an in-depth understanding of how search engines work.

I was still designing web sites at the time, and with incredible results. My client’s sites did great in the search engines. That’s when I realized that I needed to start designing web sites of my own. I realized that no matter how much I charged for the web sites I designed for small businesses, my time and effort was just as valuable, when put towards developing sites of my own.

Needless to say, the success I had was great. The Family & Marriage Counseling Directory was my first real project I did on my own, and it’s still one of the top sites in its niche today, well enough respected that therapists fequently submit articles for publication on the site.

I’ve since moved on to Search Engine Marketing (SEM), running ad campaigns in Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and their collective search partners. I’ve done a lot of experimentation with those campaigns on my own sites, which has helped me learn what works and what doesn’t.

Then came social networks. Forums had always been around, but social networks? To be honest, I had my head in the sand, hoping that they would go away at first. I was “too busy” to go on myspace.com, and wayyyy too much of a rebel to be a part of the “mainstream” by doing something like “having a myspace page.” Boy was that dumb. People are navigating the web in a completely different way now, and it’s going to continue to change. Hopefully I never put my head in the sand again. Now I actually like myspace, and I “get it.” Even though I’m 31 years old and definitely not “with it.”

Did I mention that World Spearfishing Guide (case study coming soon) is #1 on myspace.com right now when you search for “Spearfishing?” I’ve found a whole new area of internet marketing - social media search engine optimization - let’s call it “smseo” for short. :)

So this is what I do now. It started off as Independent Layout & Website Design, and it’s now New Orleans Internet Marketing (dba inlayout, LLC). The focus of my work is designing proprietary, niche, web sites that provide information and services to the public.

 Thanks for stopping by,

 Chris Hartwell