I hate dumb websites

John Chow gets SEO advice from The 30 Day Man

sirsgg@aol.com (sergemann) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 08:21:33 GMT

I was just reading Adam's blog, The 30 Day Man, and he was talking about how if you type in John Chow, you will actually get John Cow's blog in the number one spot on google. So, why is it that a site as popular as John Chow, who is linked to, blogged about, and just all over the place, not in the number one spot on google for his own name. Interesting, but, thats life I guess.

Tyler Cruz... Making Money Or Making Friends

sirsgg@aol.com (sergemann) — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:49:18 GMT

Okay, so it is time for my first review. What the heck, here goes.
TylerCruz.com is a great site to go to to kill some time and get some knowelege along the way. He puts a lot of thought into his content, and it reflects it in his comments and RSS count. His posts usually have some kind of personal twist on it. I do like the design, although it would be nice to see it have some other color scheme. Blue is nice, baby blue, not so nice. It makes me think of babies, babies don't blog. And Tyler doesn't blog about babies!
Other than that, his site is pretty run of the mill. It has all of the stuff you should expect from a making money online site. He blogs about the typical things, such as.

Make Money Online
Entrecard (everyone's talking about this)
Income from his site
Splogers (copping content from someone else and reposting it)
Working Efficiently

Basically, this guy is the same as the bigger guys, just not a popular (yet)
Mark my words, he will be one of the next big bloggers, he has already broken many records. So, all in all, I have to give his site a A-, and just for those who think my site sucks... I give my own site a C-.

As I am new to blogging, writing, not reading, I am just going to put some anchor text here:
“internet entrepreneur” “webmaster blog” "top blogger"“make money blogging”
(sorry, I don't know how else to do it.)

Bloggers Needed For My Dumb Blog.

sirsgg@aol.com (sergemann) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 15:10:19 GMT

I have decided which direction this blog, IhateDumbWebsites.com, is going to go. I have been surfing the web for business idea, I read blogs, I Google info I find on sites, follow links from comments made on my favorite blogs. And I have came to this conclusion. I AM GOING TO KEEP THIS BLOG. I am going to use the name for its intended purpose. Here is my plan.

New design with WordPress. Nothing fancy, but not lame (like now)
Delete all old content, start fresh.
Blog about why I hate (or dislike) certain websites or blogs. I won't be mean... Just tactful and hopefully my critics will understand I am only trying to help.
I will have guest bloggers who will blog about the same thing. The guest bloggers will not be paid blogs, just a link or some other kind of amicable jester
I will monetize it right off the bat, no waiting to see how many visitors or page ranking I get.
I will eventually have a forum site attached for people to post requests for reviews for their site to be reviewed for free by other forum members.
and much more...

I need a partner for this site. 50/50... Can you design? Do you know your way around the web?
If you think you might be interested send me an email (sirsgg@aol.com) or leave a comment.
Thanks

Penny saved is a penny earned.

sirsgg@aol.com (sergemann) — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 10:48:19 GMT

Here it is eleven months since I started this blog. I have made ten entries, not including this one. During this same time there have been many blogs start that are now making loads of money, well in to the five figure, most making less than that. But, my point is, I should have stayed the course. I should have blogged about hatting dumb websites like I said I was going to. I ramble on about this and that, never focused.

Now, I do have a great job, I own a couple companies. So its not like I really need to make money blogging or even online. However my goals are to start an internet empire. I would like to start by building a better website for my offline businesses. People don't use phone books as much as they used to. They 'Google it'. Ten years ago someone would look at you cross eyed if you said you found it by 'Googling it', now, everyone uses that term. ...okay, I am getting side tracked here.

What I have noticed about my self is I keep trying to make money out of nothing, more importantly off of something I know very little about or have no experience in. example, this dumb website, which by the way costs me money to have and has not made one penny.

It has been said that a penny saved is a penny earned. I for one don't respect penny's, as they aren't worth much. But, I need to start looking at the big picture. While I dream about making it big online I should be thinking about ways I can save money and make more money from what assets I already have. Here are a few examples:

Cable: do I really need the movie channels? I could save $20 per mo if I get rid of them.

NASE: Do I really need to spend $40 per month to be a member of this group, do they really save me any money.

Health insurance: Okay, I have to pay for my own health insurance because I am self employed. If I raise my deductable I could save as much as $150 per month.

Dental membership savings plan: Okay, its not insurance and it cost $65 per month, and we don't even use it or plan on using it.

Business insurance: I could also save by upping my deductable on this one too, if only by $100 per month.

Merchant account: I used to take credit cards but my business has gone in another direction and I don't take them any longer, I could save $39 per month by cancelling.

If I add all of those things together I could save as much as $414 per month, not a lot, but enough to pay the light bill.

Okay, so now there are the areas I could be making more money.

I have a room full of stuff I want to sell on ebay. Some of it is worth only a couple bucks some a few hundred. But I figure I have enough stuff to do at least four auctions a week for a year and net at least $100 per week. That total per month is $400

I have inventory left over from a business I started in 93 that I closed down in 06. I figure I have about $3500 worth of stuff. If sold for 75% of value over the course of a year I could earn an extra $218 dollars per month.

I have a land that I rent out, its an auto body shop. currently I have half of it rented out, the other half is full of my stuff that I need to get rid of. If I clean that up I could rent the other half out for another $800 per month (maybe more)

These ides are just the ones I can think of, I am sure that there are more. If you add all the things I could do to make more money up it comes out to $1418 per month

So between what I could save and what I could make extra it comes out to $1832 extra per month or $21,984 per year... I got some calls to make and things to do.

late night thoughts...zzzzzzzz

sirsgg@aol.com (sergemann) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 07:32:20 GMT

Today I got an email from American Express. I opened the email and it was an advertisement for a web based email marketing and surveys. The email was one of those HTML kinds. I have always been wondering how to make those HTML emails, so I followed the link to the website and was really impressed with everything. I am going to sign up and also sign up to be a business partner/affiliate. So I will mention later who the company is.

Many of my readers, if there are any, may wonder what I do for my day job. I have a few businesses, none web based, but I do have websites. One business I have is an auto body shop. I started that biz in 2002 and now I am out of it, but I lease out the shop to my former employees. Another thing I do is buy cars that have been in a accident and repair them for resale. But my main business is selling used semi trucks and trailers. I have a website that I use FrontPage 2003. I am thinking of switching to Wordpress, but I am not to sure if will work for my site or not.

What I was thinking about doing was using the email software to start a newsletter. I am not to sure if I will do it monthly or bi monthly. I don't know if I will be able to write enough content to do much more than once a month. I am not a big person when it comes to writing. I always feel like I miss the point or can't even find point to write about. So I may have to find articles to publish that have already been written, or read a few articles and write brief summary of them.

I will keep you guys updated on how things go. Maybe even publish stat and stuff.

quick question: I have been thinking of switching my blog URL and going with wordpress instead of using Godaddy's 'quick blogcast', so what is the better domain to use (I own these)

Paymebig dot com
clickorburn dot com
sergegordon dot com

which one of these should I start using or should I just keep blogging with this site?

Have something to say...?

sirsgg@aol.com (sergemann) — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 15:44:41 GMT

my site has been having a lot of traffic. but, i am afraid it will be one of those one trip visits. i don't really have much to offer, and here is why. (in no piticular order what so ever)

1. This site was intially set up to talk about dumb websites. After creating the site, I realized I am no hater.

2. I don't really know much about blogging.

3. I don't have anything important or worthwhile to share.

4. The design of this site isn't that great. Okay, it sucks.

5. I don't have the time to blog about a topic that I don't even know about, much less one I do know about.

6. I am better at other things, not blogging.

7. I am too consumed by my other businesses

I could actually go on... and on.. but the bottom line is, I just don't like blogging all that much. It takes time to think about what to write about, then you have to write about it, then I have to make sure others can understand what I have written. My fortay is going to be in another venue, but of course online. I have previously posted what kind of site I want to start. But so far I have not been able to line up all of the pieces to make it happen.

If you read between the lines on this post you will see what not to do when making a blog.

What do you think, should I keep blogging?

Alexa.com, the rank, the comments...

sirsgg@aol.com (sergemann) — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 09:06:17 GMT

I am no statistician, I sell cars. However, I like facts. Some facts are hard to understand(at least for me). Like Alexa.com page ranking system. You can go to their site and type in any website to find out what the ranking is of that paticular site is. The higher the page rank, the more popular the website, right? So, presumably, this means that if you have a low number that traffic to that site is high? What are the other factors? So, I decided to do an experiment. I did this the other day, so these figures are based on the day I did it (10/24/07, united nations day). I looked up some of the blogs that I visit from time to time, checked their Alexa rank and then counted how many comments were made on their blogs for a five day period, October 19 thru October 23. These are the results.

Website                      alexa rank           5 day
shoemoney.com              2,525             404
johnchow.com                 2,460             819
johncow.com                 13,061             239
fatmanunleashed.com   159,577              75

Now, keep in mind, a site with a larger number presumably mean less hits. By his own admsision Shoe has over ten thousand unique hits per day. How many hits do the others get? I don't know. But lets assume that Shoe and Chow get around the same hits, that would mean that more visitors to Chow left more comments than at Shoe. There too many factors to figure out why, so I won't and can't second guess those results. The next assumption I will make is this. If Shoe or Chow both had 10k visits per day over my study period that would be 50,000 hits. I don't know the percentage of repeating visitors, as I know I visit Shoe's site at least 5 times per day. But, just using simple math you could say that .0404 of the visits resulted in a comment. (btw, I know my figures are based on skewed numbers)
So, without knowing actual hits during period of test, there is really know way to get accurate results. However we do have some real numbers by way of Alexa.
As stated above, the lower the Alexa number, the better. So, just strictly going off those numbers is is the results: Fatmanunleashed.com actually gets more comments per visitor then anyone else on the list. However, because of his hits/visits are not even close to the other three, it obvious he makes no where near what they make, at least not with that site. But, then again, is his goal to make money with his site? Does his site appeal to less of the internet population? I think we can all agree that there are lots of fat (over weight) people out there. But, of those fat people out there, I would guess that most would rather learn how to make money than lose weight.

I have to be honest here. I couldn't figure out how many actual hits a site has by using Alexa.com. Does someone out there know how to interpret Alexa's rank? Is there other ways to actually know how many hits a site as, unique or otherwise?

wordpress

sirsgg@aol.com (sergemann) — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 10:26:51 GMT

So, I have been using this $2.99 per month 'Quick Blogcast' from GoDaddy for a few months. I am not happy with it. For my other site I use MS Front Page 2003, and it seems to be okay. But, I have been doing some research and have had email conversations with a few people and they tell me WordPress is the way to go. I think I am very interested in doing it. I just don't know if I am technically capable. I know that I am, I just don't understand WordPress's website and what I need to do to down load it, design it, and then upload it to GoDaddy. If it works out I plan on using it for my current business website.

I am willing to pay someone, anyone, to call me and walk me through the set up and initial designing and uploading process. If you are interested email me: sirsgg@aol.com
I can pay you via PayPal.
Thanks,
Serge Gordon.

website designs

sirsgg@aol.com (sergemann) — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 09:59:00 GMT

I have been wondering how to create a certain website. The idea is simple. It will function the same way I would as if I were doing the search myself. This is what I want my site to do and its purpose (fictional product/service to protect my ideas)
Lets say I want to be the middle man for used pc's but not just used pc's, parts off these used pc's. We will call this site PCpartExchange dot com (or whatever) I want to create a site that would allow users to upload information about the pc parts they have. There would need to be pictures as well. There would also be a section for someone to list complete pc's that they could part out. In other words, if some just needs a video card, they don't have to buy the whole pc. I would also like it to have a search engine that would search the site for the specific part they need, and if the part isn't available there, maybe search different auctions around the web, kind of like how Shoemoney's site Belowabuck does. I want this site to have a blog and possibly a forum for users to share knowledge/experience and insight in the used pc parts market. I monetize this site by making money on ads, both placed by user and by adsense or something similar, ebay ad commissions, traffic, affiliate advertising.

What would a site like this cost to design? Are there sites like that out there that I could just substitute (plug) my product/service in and use it as my own with my domain.

I have had the idea for this business for some time, but I just can't seem to get it off the ground. Does anyone out there want to help me?

(My idea has nothing to do with pc parts)

blogs

sirsgg@aol.com (sergemann) — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 07:31:15 GMT

Today I finally made it to the top of the bottom of the "top commentators" list on Shoemoneys blog. Albeit for just a few moments I'm sure.
I just read jon cows blog and I relize, as if I needed to, that this blog design really bites. Then there's the name---I hate dumb websites. Well, pretty soon here I am going to change the blog to either my name, Serge Gordon, or do on under one of the many (only 17) domains that I have.
Here is a current list of a few. None of which are being used for anything.
all dot com's
paymebig (pay me big)
clickorburn (click or burn)
pay-chat
forsalebyserg (for sale by Me)
ezbuildable
aztruckjobs (az truck jobs)
builderspartexhange (builders part exchange)
sergegordon (serge gordon) not bought yet, but I am going to see if I can still get it.
park-my-site
ihatedumbwebsites (i hate dumb web sites)

I used to have a lot more name, but I let them laps. One the ones I had, and this was like seven years ago, was dormmate dot com. Now its just one of those sites that some domainer has in his portfolio, its just parked. I also had one that Playboy told me to get rid of, vrplaymates dot com. I never used it and it was actually funny to have them send me the email telling me what to do. I wish I would have kept the email. I am glad I didn't keep the domain.

I am going to continue buying domain names. But owning them doesn't make me money, good thing I haven't quit my day job. Still trying to figure out this making money online thing. I have several ideas, none of which is blogging. I can't write and I don't like to either. I want start websites based on my skills and interests. That way I am not being someone I am not.