Yellow Dog Ventures

Pretty low-key day today. I’ve spent sometime posting to blogs and adding articles to some webpages.

The blogs are ones I created to compliment the Niches-in-a-Box websites. I moved them to totally separate domains a short time ago, but used the same niches. Amidst the blog posts I’m featuring eBay auctions, using the BayRSS plugin. I have to say they look pretty cool. They’re all indexed. Now I have to promote. It would be a good idea to set aside a day this week to work on that.

I finally figured out how to put an optin box on a website and have the form fit in a sidebar! I know, I know, most people figured this out a long time ago. But I’m fairly new to Aweber and auto responders, and feel pretty good about my accomplishment. Now I can do it anywhere. Maybe I’ll add an optin to my NIAB blogs.

My latest read is “Strategic Social Marketing” by Laura Childs. I’ve sort of followed her work for a couple years now, maybe not closely enough though. She has been doing research on Web 2.0 and traffic for many months now. A definite trend she and others have documented is a decrease in traffic through search engines. Apparently SEs are not the portal of choice of a growing number of Internet users (like millions!). Web 2.0 properties are their choice instead. But there are SO many of them, I feel overwhelmed in an instant!

I’m only half way through her report so far, so still have no clue where to start generating traffic through some of the social bookmarking or social networking sites using Laura’s methods. She promises to teach how to set up a game plan. I’ve been bookmarking for a long time now and seeing minimal results. Laura also promises that this can improve, given some research and knowing how to approach each niche.

I’m interested in reading more. You can find Laura at The Stampede Secret if you’re interested. She’s sharp. She’s been on line for a long time, and knows how to weather the evolution. I’m glad I found her.

That’s all for now. Thanks for visiting and have a good one!

P.S. Remember, if you’re an eBay affiliate, there’s a free copy of the BayRSS plugin available to you. Check out the link I created for the sidebar, just under the Blog Rush box.

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Wow, PHP is something else! Wrapping my brain around it is a challenge.

I’m still working on transitioning a Niches-in-a-Box website from one template to another. The HTML part is pretty easy. I feel comfortable working with that. The CSS is another step up in challenge. Some of it is making sense to me and is fairly easy to manipulate, and some makes no sense at all.

To help my cause, I read a report on CSS and it did help alot. But, some of it is still over my head. I think it would help a ton if I reread the report a couple times. The info might sink in better each time.

The report is: “Taming The Beast: Cascading Style Sheets.” The author describes the 3 levels of CSS - Inline, Internal Style Sheet, and External Style Sheet. I got lost somewhere in the middle of the Internal Style Sheets. You can download the report here (free) if you’re interested in an overview of CSS. It is well written and entertaining, if you can believe that.

With my website transition, the index/landing page is finished and looks great. I like it and I had a lot of fun creating it. The silo sites are turning out to be much more of a challenge. These have a good amount of PHP built into the structure, and that makes sense since each silo is based around a different keyword. But I clearly have a whole lot to learn and I’ll do some research now on PHP and see if that helps make the project a little easier.

That’s all for now. Have a good one!

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Boy, am I having fun!

I mentioned that I would be transitioning some websites that I got through Niches-in-a-Box to new templates, which will make my sites much more unique from the other members’. I’m following along with a series of videos and really enjoying the process.

The ultimate benefit will be a great looking new website. In the meantime I am learning so much. I’m working extensively with html and php. I’m learning how to take a free template off the Internet (from oswd.org) and turn it into my own. I’m learning how these complex websites are structured. What an education!

NIAB truly does offer a lot more than websites. The training is exceptional.

It’s also really clear to me that I like building websites. That’s important information as I go forward with Internet marketing.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

P.S. Are you visiting DealDotCom.com everyday? I remember most days. I’ve already purchased two products that I have been wanting for awhile.

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A few months ago I was a member of Niches-in-a-Box. The product consists of premade niche websites, including a landing page and about 12 silo sites based on related keywords. The sites look great, are full of info, and are well designed to be unique to each webmaster.

Problem is, it appears no matter how unique the technology allowed the sites to be, the basic template has proved to be too big of a foot print to avoid the notice of Google. At least that’s my take. As I put up my sites and built up backlinks, the sites were indexed fairly quickly. None of them are currently anywhere to be found in Google’s index. So, they were de-indexed. Does that mean blacklisted? I hope not! But what a waste. They’re still bringing in some traffic, but no where near where I’d like to see it.

I happened into the NIAB training center yesterday and learned they have made a series of videos that demonstrate how to move these sites to a new template. Again, with the landing page and 12 silo sites on subdomains, with php and html and 3 columns, this is a complex task. I had thought of doing it myself and had already moved the blogs to separate domains, but hadn’t moved the sites yet. Now I have videos to walk me through the process. I’m pleased and have started the process right away.

Since the sites have been de-indexed, I wonder if I should also use fresh URLs when I move them? I really like the domain names I picked originally, but it won’t help if I get attached to them. What I want is to set up solid sites and use SEO and article marketing to get them established.

I’ll keep you posted.

Thanks for visiting. Have a good one!

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