KHALID

The following is a paid review that is completely my own opinion…

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This post is sponsored by thriftyscot.co.uk – for all your car insurance needs!

Just some quick updates on what has been happening in the world of budding internet entrepreneurs. It is a shame not to pass on quality content, so here goes..

> Tyler Cruz higlighted his own popularity with this thread on Digital Point Forums – Link

> TechCrunch released a very funny video that has been circling the web – Link

> John Chow is being featured in Entrepreneur magazine – Link

> Aussie entrepreneur copies MillionDollarHomePage.com idea…kind of – Link

Enjoy! Oh, and I forgot to mention – You can sponsor my blog posts now for $5 a post. Contact me if you are interested!

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

This article highlights five simple yet effective ways to generate real traffic that should convert well on any website.

1. Socialise

Social Media is the new MySpace marketing. Sites like StumbleUpon, Digg and You Tube and more generate thousands of unique visitors for webmasters every day. Your job is to ensure maximum exposure on these sites and maintain a good position in ranks too.

> StumbleUpon – Check out the freebies section of Digital Point Forums. There are hundreds of threads dedicated to Stumble exchanges. Search the forum for Stumbling services, such as 50 stumbles for $xx.

> Digg – Again, check out the freebies section of Digital Point Forums, there are threads dedicated to Digg exchanges too. Ensure your site has a BIG FAT Digg button on it too, the best wordpress plugin I can recommend was created by Paul Cheek and is called DiggIt.

> You Tube – A tip by Jon Warass – You Tube can send you 500 unique visitors overnight by simply uploading a video relating to your site’s niche with added credits at the end that display your site’s url. I have started doing this with the videos posted at OffBeatInk.com.

To edit You Tube videos you firstly need to download them and them and then convert them from FLV to AVI. After completing this, you’ll need to edit them. I download them using this site, convert them using Freez (freeware) and edit them in Windows Movie Maker.

Whilst I don’t encourage illegitimate Diggs or Stumbles, sometimes it is necessary to exchange these services with other webmasters to get yourself on the traffic ladder. I would strongly recommend you don’t overdo it because it may get you permanently banned.

2. Spread the word

> Social Bookmarking – Social bookmarking is a web based service allowing users to share internet bookmarks, usually their favourite sites. If a person, whom has 100 friends, bookmarks your site, then that link is automatically exposed to those 100 people. If 10% add that bookmark to their profile, and they each have 100 friends, your link is then exposed to a further 1,000 people! A very lucrative marketing method indeed.

> Tell a Friend – If you want to share a good site with a friend, writing a short e-mail, copying the url and then sending it off is usually more time consuming than it’s worth. By having a tell-a-friend script on your site, users can quickly enter their friends e-mail address and it’ll automatically send them a short message stating e.g. “Adam thought you would like this http://…”. Quick and easy for the user…more visitors for the webmasters.

> Link Exchange - Link exchanges are common for site’s of similar relevance and are an easy way for webmasters to share traffic. A program I’d definately recommend is BlogRush. By adding the BlogRush Widget to a blog, a blogger can get instant distribution for their latest blog post titles across a network of related blogs. In simple terms, a link to your latest blog post is shown on other sites in return for your displaying the widget on your site.

3. Stop spamming

Spamming people and/or other websites may help you generate traffic in short run, but will be sure to fail you long term. Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither was any popular site’s user base. If you want to generate real traffic, that will remain constant – providing you update your site with fresh content daily – then spread the word professionally. Don’t send junk e-mails, don’t spam other sites, don’t leave stupid forum posts…take your time.

4. Sponsor it

Sponsoring a popular site is a great way to get exposure to their 100% of their user database. If a user thinks they are going to win something, they will be more inclined to participate, perhaps checking out your site too. Further to this, it portrays your site in a positive manner and the user will probably remember it in the future.

Sponsorship needn’t be extravagant either. A simple free t-shirt, perhaps a dvd or even something cooler – but relating to your audience and niche – is probably money well spent in comparison to banner advertising.

5. Spend time keeping your visitors coming back

One of the best ways to generate traffic is through word-of-mouth. People who like your site are likely to talk about it amongst their friends, so spend time ensuring they are kept occupied. That means fresh content every 24 hours, the latest news and information, the coolest videos and images, etc etc. Read – Five Tips To Keep Your Visitors Coming Back.

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

Of late I’ve been testing different ad networks to see which converts best for me. This has mainly been on OffBeatInk.com (OBI) as the site is receiving nearly 2,000 uniques per day and is less than two months old. Further to this, OBI is the only site in my network that is accepted by ad programs due to its popularity and content. Kortaz.com can only really work with Widget Bucks and Adversal due to the fact it relates to proxies.

Since opening OBI, Value Click Media has been a general winner, earning me aroun d $1 per day for both a 468 x 60 banner and a 120 x 600 skyscraper. Whilst this isn’t fantastic, I can’t grumble as I’ll happily accept anything given to me right now! At times I wish I still had Adsense but even if I did get it back I’d always be worried of becoming banned again.

I’ve  applied to Tribal Fusion as well as other CPM and CPC networks as I think its only fair us webmasters are paid for impressions too! Afterall, I bet the companies who pay these agencies are paying for it!

Playing around I’ve managed to rule out a few due to either lack of earnings or showing compeltely unrelevant ads (hence the lack of earnings lol!). One company was showing Van Insurance ads on OBI….why?????

Although it can be fun to test different network and play about with them, it can become frustrating as I’m not earning anymore. I think my next step will be build a strong PR rating and sell text links on my sites.

Ahh, the life and times of a struggling webmaster.

I worked for about two hours tonight finishing my mini entrepreneur video now in the about section of the site. Windows Movie Maker kept crashing! It is soooo unstable!

I also wrote a page recommending publisher programs I have had success with. If you want to earn money online and don’t have Adsense (everyones 1st choice lol), check my recommendations out!

More posts coming soon, it is 11pm and I’ve been working hard everynight…I’m nakard!

I was a customer of HostNine.com for around a year, and during that time I experienced a massive decline in the quality of customer service. My story is far too long to explain in detail and quite frankly I am tired of talking about how crap the company is, so please excuse me whilst I make my points short and sweet.

KhalidsLife.com

The old, established version of KhalidsLife.com was completely lost after Host Nine experienced a hard drive failure. Both their daily and weekly backups were seemingly corrupt and the company did not have any record of my account when I telephoned them.

Kortaz.com

Their downtime and the fact they suddenly decided to suspend my account as it broke their TOS meant the site was pushed off Page 1 on Google, losing me 2,000 unique visitors per day! This was despite me asking them if it was ok to have the site hosted with them and it running on their server for several months.

Downtime

The server my accounts were on had received numerous attacks. The support for this was shocking, I was simply pointed to a forum post rather than given an answer to my specific questions. My thread reply, which was removed, stated…

“If the Host Nine website can stay online during these attacks, why can’t their customers? Surely you should put your customers first and ensure they are satisfied?”

Hosting Payments

I signed up three people via my affiliate link, earning me $75. When I checked my invoices they were $0 but I was still paying via Paypal Subscription. The balance in my affiliate account was diminishing, thus I assumed they were taking this as hosting payments, however they were also receiving money via my subscriptions and never informed me or pre-warned me of this.

I requested a refund two months ago for the $75, which would be easier than me cancelling my subscriptions then re-subscribing when my affiliate balance was $0. I am still waiting on that refund despite chasing it up…

Date: 25th Sept

Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: FYF-937634
Department: Billing
Priority: Urgent
Status: Open

Hi,

Putting this in Paypal refunds, now you will need to allow up to 1 business week for this to complete, as the owner has to do this. No reply is necessary here.

Regards,
Joshua
HostNine Technical Support

Testimonials

After having the phone put down on me by technical support, no replies to numerous tickets, no refund, no specific answers to my questions, I decided to post a testimonial on their forums. It was deleted and I got the following PM…

Hi,

1) The post will be deleted – No questions asked
2) Phone courtesy is two way. I explained multiple times what was going on, and you refused to take it, I can’t help you didn’;t like the explanation
3) Regardless, you WILL get your backups.
__________________
Regards,
Joshua Brown
HostNine Support

Backups

I had to fight to get my backup for Kortaz.com after they suspended the account without notice. I never received a backup of KhalidsLife.com

Summary

You may think I am being biased and my case is a one-off but I’d advise you to even read their testimonials on their support forums (ones that aren’t deleted). I e-mailed the owner twice with no reply. In the end I gave up, have cancelled most of my subscriptions and moved my major sites to Liquid Web.

Host Nine destroyed what I had built, why shouldn’t I tarnish their reputation with a factual, accurate, fully explained testimonial?

I guess you are all wondering what happened to my entire blog, all the posts and content? If you are new to KhalidsLife.com you may not be aware that my blog had diminshed to nothing. Well, in a nutshell, a hard drive failure and no backups despite being told by my previous hosting company that they take daily and weekly backups.

As a result of the failure, disgusting customer service and a lack of faith in any future support I may receive from the hosting company, Host Nine, I decided to move hosts and start again. So here I am, back at square one. Understandably, I was angry and upset I lost everything, but there’s no point crying over spilt milk and some onus was on me as a webmaster to take my own backups. My full review here explains it all.

Today

I am not with a more reputable hosting company who have given me fantastic support so far and are always willing to go above and beyond their regular duties to help. I’d recommend Liquid Web to anyone who is in need of a reliable host with excellent support.

The Future

I am constantly working day and night, before and after work, even during my lunch break, to build my websites and help them grow. These investments are long term and I have no plans to sell them in the immediate future. My aim is to build three revenue streams each generating £50 per month profit. Everyday that target nears closer to reality. Upon achieving it, my plans are to double it and continue with my entrepreneurial persuits until I reach my ultimate goal…to live off my website earnings.

Stay tuned for more updates shortly. Subscribe to the RSS feed by hitting the big button at the top right hand side of the blog below the menu links.

Khalid.