It seems no matter where you look on the internet today you will see ads everywhere telling you how you can make money from the internet. Now I do not deny that you can make money on the internet. I mean I do it every day, I have adsense ads on some of my sites as well as paid advertisers. But make a nickel per click or less is hardly what I would call making money on the internet.

True I have built and managed many online stores and they have all made money as well. But they have had to sell products. It takes money to buy the products to sell, money to store the products etc. I have also been paid for teaching people how to do things. But this was always a one shot deal. That is until I decided to make some informational products and sell them on the internet.

This is not a new idea of mine, and in a sense I have already been doing this. I mean I have many photoshop tutorials on this site that have adsense ads plastered all over them. But I have always want to make and sell training videos. So I decided to get more involved in this. Along the way I came across Kevin Rileys Program How To Make A Bundle Of Extra Spending Cash For Christmas – In Just 3 Days From Now. The price was right and I thought hey this would be a good way to cut my teeth on marketing an information product. Besides, having a product in three days. How could that not appeal to you?

I got the paid my money and promptly got distracted onto something else. Almost forgetting about it, and then I thought you know it is time to get off my butt and give this a try. That is exactly what I did. Kevin Rileys instructions were clear and very logically laid out. He takes from finding the idea of what to write about, actually writing the guide, to putting it online and making sales as well as promoting it. In less then three days I had my guide “Pictures Sell!” written and on the internet.

The one thing I didn’t really do from Mr. Rileys guide was promote my new product. In fact all I did was add the link to my signature on a few of the forums I visit regularly. Well the morning after I had my guide posted I was checking my e-mail as I always do and I was surprised to see not one, but a couple of sales for “Pictures Sell!”. I always love the excitement of selling something or getting money from an ad click. But this time instead of a puny few cents I had made close to $10.00. I know, big wow right? But it didn’t stop there through out the day I kept getting e-mails that another copy of my guide had sold. I mean come on, I haven’t even started promoting it yet. Now I really look forward to checking my e-mail because just about every time I do I find I have made another sale.

Kevin Riley is a stand up sort of guy. In fact he has even given me a little additional help over Skype. Not only is he very helpful he is a lot of fun to talk to. Although I always feel I am infringing on his valuable time, he never makes me feel that way. When Kevin asked me to write a testimonial for How To Make A Bundle Of Extra Spending Cash For Christmas – In Just 3 Days From Now I jumped at the chance. It was then I realized that I was not really sure how to write a testimonial. But it was easy because “How To Make A Bundle Of Extra Spending Cash For Christmas – In Just 3 Days From Now” is truly a great product.

The only possible flaw it could have is telling you how to take and edit the pictures. But don’t worry about that “Pictures Sell!” will teach you how to do that with FREE image editing software.

a

If you have been surfing the web for a while, or have a site on the web you have no doubt heard the term PageRank. If you own a web site and have not heard about PageRank now is a good time to learn.

What is PageRank?

Essentially PageRank is a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page and used by Google. PageRank was designed to make search results more relevant to the person using the search engine. It works by assigning a value to a web page based on what sites link to it. However it goes much deeper than that. PageRank also looks at the weight it has assigned to the linking pages. From the number of links to web page and the value of the pages linking to that site, PageRank determines the value it assigns for that page.

Sound complicated? That is because it is complicated. In fact my brief description does not really do it justice. Plus add in the fact that the engineers at Google are always updating the algorithm to prevent it from being abused. Not long ago Google rolled out a few changes that had dramatic effects across the web. Sites that had a PageRank of 7 (PageRank is out of 10) went to a PageRank of 3 overnight. needless to say it was a shock to a lot of people.

How does PageRank Affect a Website?

Well firstly PageRank will affect where the web site shows up in Google search results. As you probably already know the higher up a site appears in search results the more traffic it will get. But if you have or want to have advertising on your site it is also important. A lot of advertisers look at a websites PageRank when determining if they will advertise there or not. I also believe Google AdSense takes into account a sites Pagerank when determining which adds to place on the site.

At one time TenaciousCreations.com had a PageRank of 4. At the time I was upset that it was only 4, but now not having any PageRank I would gladly go back to having a PageRank of 4. However when this site had some PageRanking I consistently had Google placing higher paying ads on my site. As my PageRank decreased so did the price per click of the ads Google Adsense placed on my site.

How Do I Improve My Websites PageRank?

Okay so now we know what PageRank is and why it is important us. But how do we improve our sites PageRank? Well if you have followed my site at all you will know I always stress good content. If you have good content, that people can benefit from and want. You will have other websites deep linking to your site. More relevant links == more PageRank. Link exchanges can also work. However I feel Google has got smart on this and now puts less weight to a link exchange than they do a deep link with in another site. When ever i created a new Photo Shop tutorial I always submitted them to a bunch of tutorial sites. Most of these tutorial sites are nothing more than a collection of links. For a while I enjoyed a very good PageRank, however at the time of writing this article I have a pretty dismal PageRank.

You have to remember search engines are always trying to improve the way they work in order to provide better search results for their users (ie customers). A search engine wants to make sure when a user enters his or her search terms, the search engine will turn up the results they want. If you keep this in mind and provide quality content I am very confident that will also improve your PageRank.

a

Well a lot has happen since my last post in April. I have moved to a different city, and taken on a different (but coolest in the world) job. However as I said in the last post I want to once again get tenacious Creations rolling.

Maybe even get some page ranking back. Although I am pretty impressed that even with an almost total lack of new content this site still attracts 200 or more visitors a day. Most of my visits are for my photoshop tutorials. With the one about making a better virtual tattoo receiving the most traffic right now.

I guess that goes to show that if you have content the traffic will come. I only wish I knew then what I know now about Search Engine Optimization. I am sure I could of made all those photoshop tutorials rank a fair bit higher in the search engines.

So what am I going to do to get traffic back?

If all goes well I hope that with in two months I can increase the traffic to this blog to 400 hits a day. Not to big of a goal, and one that should be easily accomplished. As always if you have ay suggestions on how I can increase the traffic to this blog please feel free to let me know.

a

 One of the good things about being part of the blogging community is that other bloggers tend to post things about new trends as they appear. Then they sort of propagate virally. Now one thing I have found that seems to pop up on every blog is new and better ways of getting traffic. This is almost as common as the get rich quick schemes that pop up.

 Well RSSHugger is another one of those sites promising to increase traffic. This is their spiel as to what they are about.

The Idea

rssHugger is a unique website that aims to bring bloggers and readers together. rssHugger aims to provide blog owners with a unique easy-to-use way to promote their blogs by sending them traffic, building backlinks for search engine optimization, as well as attracting new rss subscribers if the content is interesting to the reader. rssHugger aims to help visitors be able to easily find blogs that write about subjects they are interested in. These subjects include: internet marketing, making money online, charity, sports, gambling, and many more. If the visitors find a blog that they had not previously heard about, they can easily add it to their RSS readers or bookmark it.

 So it seems to be kind of like Stumble Upon but for RSS feeds. Now in order to get your blog listed you can pay a small fee or write a blog about them. Being cheap as I am I have opted for writing a blog about them. However it is kind of hard to review something that you have not yet tried. So I cannot make any reconmendations at this time. But I will keep you update.

 On another note EntreCard is still performing very well for me. Right now as I write this is will cost you 124 EC to advertise on this site, and there are currently spots open. Others who have had their card displayed on my site have reported to me that it has worked very well. So if you have an extra 124 EC buy some ad space here.

a

 Every now and again while viewing my site I get distracted by a head line in the BlogRush Ad. The head line catches my eye and I am off I go to read the post on that site. But today it seemed every post I went to had another headline that caught my eye. I do enjoy reading blogs but this wasn’t the most productive part of my day.

 But I did notice something common to virtually every blog I visited with in that hour. They were all running this thing called Entrecard. Now there is a real good chance that I have seen these on other sites and never really noticed them. But today I did notice them and decided I would check into it..

Well Entrecard is yet another one of those web 2.0 social whatchama call its. It is based on the premise of business cards, your create one (mine is the image at the top of the page) or use one of their (boring and lame) designs. Then you install their widget on your site (I installed mine beneath the fold in the left column). When another Entrecard user comes to your site they simple click on the widget to drop their business card. This action earns them and you an Entrecard credit.

 Now you’ll also notice that in the Entrecard widget another Entrecard users business card is displayed. They paid X number of Entrecard credits (at the time of this writing it costs 7 credits for an ad on my site) to have their card displayed in that widget for 24 hours.

 So does it work? Well when you first sign up you are barraged with people trying to buy ad space on your site. Mainly because when you first sign up it only costs 2 Entrecard credits to buy 24 hours worth of ad time. You have the option to choose which ads you wish to accept and you do get half the credits the advertiser paid to advertise on your site. But be warned there are lots of vultures out there waiting to prey on new sign ups. The price it costs to advertise on your site depends on how many people click the business card and how many people drop their cards on your site. The good news is in the span of a few short hours your price per ad will go up.

 So right in the beginning you do experience a bit of a traffic surge as people are checking out your site to see if they want to put an ad there. You will also get a deluge of e-mails from Entrecard telling you someone wants to advertise on your site. I figured this would die down after I filled the 10 ad spots (you presell your ads for nine days in advance).

 Well I am happy to report that the traffic did not really slow down. I think one of the main reasons for this is because I went to other sites running Entrecard to drop my “card”. When you drop your card Entrecard displays your card in the dashboard of the users who site you dropped it at. Now lets face it we are all curious as to who reads our blogs so naturally you go and check theirs. So far my Entrecard experience has been positive. From this I recommend giving them a try.

 However be warned I do not think you can be passive with Entrecard and still keep good traffic coming from it. Plus I have not yet bought any ads and cannot comment on there performance. But I will keep you updated. I still feel that best way to get traffic for the lazy blogger is to use Blog Rush.

 If you do decided to give Entrecard a try let me know and I will stop by and drop my card.

a