Terry Didcott - Freedom Writers

Site Building

Ok, that last Happy Easter post wasn’t one of my best literary masterpieces, but it shows that life for freedom writers can be fun too!

Now back to the serious stuff.

I don’t get much of a chance to write in any of my blogs as regularly as I’d like, simply due to the fact that I now have so many of the bloody things and they are all screaming for attention all the time! Freedom writers have to strike a balance between the more important ones, like this one and the less important ones. All the while, I’m busy creating new websites to expand my online presence and occupy more and more niches in order to make money - which of course is the prime directive when you spend as much time online as I do!

This blog isn’t exactly one of my big money makers, by the way - its more a place to hold all the parts of my growing online empire together and to limber up my literary voice from time to time just to make sure all the joints are supple and the mechanics are well oiled!

So what’s with all the site building, you might ask?

Well, sitting still with a few sites might be fine for some people, but for me - I just can’t stand still or I’ll stagnate. Building ever more websites is something I enjoy doing as part of the creation process. It also ensures that I keep up to date with what’s making money online and what’s not; what I should be working on and what can be left to stew in its own juices for a while with minimal maintenance.

This isn’t going to be one of my freedom writers “How to make money online” primer posts, as I think most of that has already been said by other infinitely more qualified people than me - I just follow the advice and teachings of the “real” online money makers and pass on what I learn as well as anything that I figure out for myself that is valid. You’ve probably already met some of these quiet (except maybe Vic) unassuming yet potent money making forces for good, like Griz, Court and Vic - between them you’ll gain just about all the information you’ll ever need to know in order to make money online successfully.

I would throw in a timely warning to avoid the self styled A-listers, who will spin you a good yarn about how they make money online and then thrust their hand out in readiness to take your money for the privilege of learning how they do it - by taking money off people like you. If you believe what they tell you that blogging will make you money, you are already lost!

However, I’m not even going to try to convince anyone that they ought to fall in behind this person or that blogger, or that guru or not. I’m not a guru nor am I a particularly selfless mentor, so it’s not for me to tell you who you should follow - but I will tell you this:

There are many sheep but few shepherds.

Aim to be a shepherd, the pay and conditions are better!

I’ll leave you with that though until next time…

Terry Didcott

 

Happy Easter

Happy Easter…

…to everyone who thinks this might be a serious website!

???

Terry Didcott

 

Freedom Writers Block

My last post Freedom Writers SubDomain Sites, got thoroughly into the topic of using subdomains for keyword targeting sites where top level domains simply aren’t available in the niche you want to target. Well, leading on from that post and on the subject of keywords, I think I’ve just made a large freedom writers blooper!

I’ve been relying on a certain keyword tool which shall remain nameless to get me the stats on keywords for my sites to target in order to drive some decent organic search traffic to them, but I have to say that sometimes that information can be unreliable.

Yep, I’m not too sure what to think at the moment, because there is a very good one a Wordtracker that contradicts the “other” keyword tool on monthly (or daily) searches on certain long tail keywords. One is the very keyword I’ve been using for this site - Freedom Writer.

It seems that the conflict has arisen between the plural (freedom writers) form of that keyword and the singular. That, in (English) English is the difference between bollock and bollocks!

I’ve been targeting the singular which I was led to believe had a good monthly search statistic, whereas in actual fact, its the plural (freedom writers) that gets all the bloody traffic - something like over 300 a day compared with only a paltry 9 a day for the singular, which is quite frankly utter bollocks!

So now I’ve got to go back and do some changing - adding the all-important “s” to my keywords and also to go begging my linking partners to alter the anchor text (no small task).

Freedom writers it is from now on.

Bollocks!

Terry Didcott
Freedom Writers

 

Freedom Writers SubDomain Sites

In my last post Freedom Writers PR Chaos Again!, I looked at the new changes that seemed to come very early from Google with regards to Page Rank and how they affected this freedom writer and his sites. This time, I’m not going to go back into that rat’s nest of controversy, so instead I’ll get on to something that has got this freedom writers interested in subdomains again.

A while ago, I posted about the possible advantages of using a short, generic domain name to act as a base for keyword-specific subdomain names and then to set up subdomain niche sites that were tightly focused to exploit certain aspects of those niches.

Well, back then I didn’t get very far - only setting up a pretty good PayDay Loans site and creating several other niche sites but not populating them with much of anything. Time, or the lack of it was my freedom writers undoing!

Since then (and a few months have passed) I’ve had a little time to turn my attention to these neglected niche sites once again. Since I’ve been buying up expired domains, it has been painfully obvious to this freedom writers that in order to dominate any niches, I need several sites focused on each niche and there simply is not the quality of expired domain name available to do that effectively. Sure, one or two domains have come along and I’ve grabbed them, but in the main, most are rubbish and not worth the effort.

But from a freedom writers perspective, its back to the subdomain thing. Yes, they are free and the keyword is easy to place in the fully qualified subdomain.domain name. The downside is that they are not individual sites that can be sold at a later date for big profit. But if that’s not a concern and they’re really only for adding presence to any one niche where I have got a dedicated domain (or domains) with good sites set up, then its a very good idea to use them.

I’ve since updated two of my neglected subdomain niche sites with a nice template that I jigged together myself from a certain Wordpress theme and modified it to work as static web pages. Well, they not only look pretty good, but they are SEO’d to the hilt and have a great additional money making feature. I’ll explain…

A while ago, I heard about BANS sites, so I decided to find out more about what they are, from a freedom writers curiosity. Essentially, BANS is a package you buy that gives you the ability to create sites that promote niche oriented products on eBay. You get a Commission Junction account, set up an affiliate account with eBay and then promote their stuff. Anything that your site promotes that directs a buyer to the auction and they buy, you get a commission on the sale.

Its a trick I was using almost a year ago but slightly differently - this freedom writers method back then was I scanned craigslist and found the want ads and simply contacted the owners of the ads and directed them to my affiliate link to eBay where there were a selection of the item they wanted. Same result, different method.

So BANs intrigued my freedom writers curiosity. Once I figured out that BANs was simply doing what I already knew how to do, except this time you use a website to do the promoting rather than actively researching craigslist, I set about finding how I could use eBay’s affiliate program to set this up. Its was easy!

There are editor tools that you can generate a search on a particular item, say, iPods. You put in your CJ id, create links and the the editor creates a search results panel you can display on your website. It looks pretty good and all I have to do is build some content around this tool on each of my subdomain sites and I have myself some free BANs style sites!

Ha! I’m a perennial tinkerer as well as a freedom writers and when I get an idea and have the time to follow it through, it amazes me what I can sometimes achieve! Why pay for some software to do what I can already do for myself?

So the Freedom Writer’s experiment is now on. It’ll take a while for the new sites to get recognised in the SERPs, but once they get up there, it’ll be interesting to see how much traffic they get, how high Google will place them and how much commission they can make for me by just sitting there as static niche sites.

We’ll see!

Terry Didcott