I’ve been messing about with web design for about a year now, using Dreamweaver as my weapon of choice. To be honest a lot of the websites I have developed have been based on the Dreamweaver Templates and CSS. And all of them have been html based. Any wizzy bits have been javascript and the only php mysql has been limited to pommo.org autoresponder.
About two months ago I was stuck with one of my sites, I wanted to add an element which was based on the current date, ie display several dates that were 3-35 days prior to the current date. I asked the question over at nichechoppers forum and some very helpful guys gave me the full code but in php. I explained I had no idea about php. “Just add the code to the webpage and rename the file .php” Surely it can’t be that easy! It is.
I fully intend to learn about php code (a book is on the Xmas List!), but have done OK with just copying and pasting code and playing with it for now. It has been trial and error, but I have just added a fairly complex bit of code to a finance domain I have www.creditfor.co.uk It was a free script that I simply cut and paste which is a Mortgage Calculator. I then modified it for £ instead of $ which was fairly simple, but then got a bit carried away and added some simple expressions to show the monthly interest only as well as the capital repayment. Playing about with this really has given me a better appreciation about how php works on a basic level.
I am told there is a good website out there for php tutorials and help called tizag.com but I am old school and prefer to read a book, so roll on Christmas.
Get stuck in guys and try it out.
Popularity: 56% [?]
Buying and selling domains and websites for that matter can be very profitable, but I never bought any of my domains with the intention of selling them on again. I always bought domains with the intention of developing a site and monetizing it.
I have bought my fair share of rubbish, mostly when I’ve had a few drinks and it seemed like a good idea at the time! For example I was up late watching a series on TV called SKINS, which promised to be the next big thing for the British Youth. It was on C4 in the UK and I got very excited when I saw that c4skins.net and c4skins.co.uk were available. I did NO research and got carried away. Once I owned them, I started to check out what already existed on the internet in terms of fan sites, forums etc. I found that C4 was way ahead of the game with a fantastic site set up complete with great graphics, forums and information. There was no way I could compete with this so I shelved the idea, I actually turned one into my first affiliate page advertising the richjerk etc.
The lesson I learned from this was to do my research before jumping in with both feet.
The next lesson, and the real point of this post, is that I have found having keywords in the domain does so much more for SEO than any number of links or even content (this is my experience). This week I sold two of my sites, both with good keyword domains, as I have never had the time or inclination to promote and build links for them. I made approx $500 from the two sites which I think is great considering they cost me about $20 to buy!
site one – www.postalfrankingmachine.com was specifically bought to promote an offer which paid $100 per sign up. I had one of these during the year I owned the site.
site two – www.debtandloans.co.uk was bought originally to promote loan and mortgage offers, but never made any money so I added Adsense and made about $150 in a year.
So in total an investment of $20 plus approximately 5 hours of my time in total plus hosting for a year $30 (I can host a unlimited number of sites so this is an approximate share of one years hosting).
Profit = $750 – $50 = $700 or 1400%
SO even if your sites are not that successful, consider selling them on to someone with more traffic or just ability to promote and you can still make a good return.
Popularity: 1% [?]
I mentioned before that I have been trying to make a second income now for over 2 years. Saturday 12th August 2006 was the day I took the plunge and bought a new “ebook” on eBay about how to sell ebooks on eBay! Sounds like a pyramid doesn’t it, but not at all. The book I bought was entitled “Powerseller eBay eBook Biz”.
This was the start of a new ebook sales business for me which has saw me becoming an eBay Powerseller in just 48 days and selling over 2000 ebooks via eBay and my website www.infoebookstore.co.uk.
It was a high volume, low margin business which for me gave me a profit within a month and a nice bonus cash injection just before Christmas.
I also began to investigate other online money making opportunities, from Google Adsense to Tradedoubler to Affiliate Marketing (Clickbank, Commission Junction etc) to Article Marketing Strategies.
I had caught the bug! And while I did make a modest profit, enough to pay for a nice weekend away with my girlfriend at the time, I soon realised that there were much easier ways to make money without selling anything myself and not having to deal with idiots, non payers and spammers on eBay.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Recent Comments