Personal Development for Smart People Forums - Business & Financial

Feedback on my WordPress site - The Financial Panner

jigragu — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:17:28 GMT

All,

I am new to this forum, but have been reading Steve's post for some time in addition to poking around these forums as well

Earlier this year I started sending an email newsletter out to family and friends in order to better inform them on what is really happening, from my point of view, in the financial arena. About a month ago, I transitioned these emails to on online site as I felt it could help others.

Currently the content is packaged for this type of audience and provides weekly commentary, key articles, key videos, and highlights from an awesome financial newsletter that I read weekly. The site is updated every week between Wednesday and Friday.

The website is: The Financial Panner
The latest newsletter post is: Fundamentals Don�t Change Overnight � The Financial Panner

I would greatly appreciate feedback from this forum as there are many experts here.

Jig
____________________________________________
Prospecting for opportunity in a river of information....
*** The Financial Panner ***
The Financial Panner

How do I start a successful retail business?

johnpaul — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:17:24 GMT

I need assistance to get my questions answered regarding starting a retail business:

1. Which retail business would be best to start and why: a) Specialty retail business or b) Mail order business?

2. Which type of business is more predictable and does not change often: Specialty retail or mail order?

3. How can I choose products and services to sell that fit my personality and are part of my values?

Selling Cartoon Sports T-Shirts

brendannz — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:57:42 GMT

Hi there Everyone,

I started another thread "what to sell on eBay?" and after some more thought, I'm thinking expanding my prints business to T-Shirts, and also wrapping paper.

As well, I'm really a big sports fan, and football's really taking off in NZ, getting really popular. i also love the NBA..

I've thought that I might expand my business to designing cartoony urban landscapes of my home city Wellington, and maybe put some of my paintings on t-shirts. I've also got a friend who is in a band, and I'm thinking of selling T-Shirts of his band, and designing them myself. Basically he's in a no-name band, and has had some media coverage but not much, but I'd sell them and so then they'd buy the cool design, and hopefully he'd get some attention too.

Another thing I was thinking of is selling cartoons on t-shirts of sports figures. Maybe make a fun cartoon image of Kobe Bryant or LeBron James, but just sell it as fan-art on a t-shirt, and mention it's unofficially licensed.

As well, because football's becoming popular here, I'm thinking of making some fan art of this on T-Shirts, maybe just a cartoon kiwi dribbling a soccer ball or something; (this is a kiwi) http://www.worldcountries.info/NewZe...wi-NA12_A3.jpg

I'd probably start off printing off about 5 designs and seeing how they go.

Does anybody know anything about copyrighting with sports figures? I figure that if I don't include "NBA" "LA Lakers" "Kobe Bryant" I should be fine. Or otherwise importing sports gear for sale, would be fun.

I'm a painter, and I sell prints of my artwork, but I like drawing cartoons as well, so would like to venture in this direction.

If anybody's interested, here's my under construction art website; Brendan Grant Artwork . Com (made a lot of progress since I first introduced you guys to this site)

Because I'm new at web design, I'd also welcome feedback for my site.

On being conned

Plays With Life — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:54:15 GMT

Have you ever been conned?

I'd be interested to hear the story of your experience.

Case Study for Successful Adsense based Website

Vanessa — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:06:55 GMT

Here's a case study on how to effectively build and market using AdSense. Since I never use personal examples for what to do, I rarely spoke about how to monetize effectively with adsense. Until I found someone selling their Adsense monetized site with full details disclosed. This case study will walk through all the steps that I do for building an adsense specific website using the sold website as a model. Note that this is not my site and I don't know anyone involved with the site. I'm using it as an example of best practices for building adsense based websites with free traffic. Adsense is not the only way to monetize nor is it always the best way for your niche or keyword. Also, all links are broken to not call extra attention to the model.

First, an introduction to the end result. A website that sold for about 10 times earnings.
This new website (9/7/09) was built and earned a little under 300 dollars in 10 weeks and was sold within 24 hours(11/18) of listing for $1,100.00. Here is the listing: http://flippa. com/auctions/79088/High-Paying-Adsense-Finance-Site-Making-4day-Adsense-Revenue
It is monetized exclusively through Adsense. The average CPC is around 7.00 for this keyword. The original owner used free traffic methods through article marketing for two months, intensively. The site is in the top 50 for its targeted keyword and gets about 475 visits per month. This means that it had about 16 clicks per month and a 3% clickthrough rate with 1 in 29 visitors clicking on an ad.

This website demonstrates the following:

Good Keyword Selection: Some demand, low competing pages, high payout per click
1k searches a month from http://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Broad Match 9m http://www.google. com/search?q=Declaring+Personal+Bankruptcy
Phrase Matches 16k http://www.google. com/search?hl=en&q="declaring+personal+bankruptcy"
All in Title <2k http://www.google. com/search?q=allintitle%3Adeclaring+personal+bankruptc y
In URL <3k http://www.google. com/search?hl=en&q=inurl%3Adeclaring+personal+bankrupt cy
Gauging CPC for target keyword with SpyFu: http://spyfu. com/Term.aspx?t=417519

Optimized for conversion and on-page SEO
No distracting header graphics or excessive links to browse through the website.
The goal is to make the advertising a more enticing click than anything else on the website.
Right side bar with limited menu is out of the way
Site only has 7 pages of content + required priv policy
KW in title, url, header tag, in body content, bolded, and anchor text
Adsense colors make the ads stand out with matching header color, light grey copy and black urls.
Main Adsense box draws most of the attention for strong clickthrough rates.
This is built in wordpress and uses a private adsense niche theme. You can look at the source and google the theme name to see where he got it. Comments, author, date and other blog like settings have been removed

Free Traffic and Backlinks for visitors and rankings:
Building backlinks through article marketing. How we can learn what the original site owner did is by looking at their Yahoo indexed backlinks from this search:
http://search.yahoo. com/search?p=linkdomain%3Adeclaringpersonalbankruptcy. net+-site%3Adeclaringpersonalbankruptcy.net&xargs=0&pst art=1&b=11&xa=Pry3.hFSXcGre4ZDP3AZpw--,1258765812

Article format:
Short articles under 350 words
KW in title
KW in first paragraph
Strong call to action resource box only has a question (hook) and answer with the KW as anchor text for backlink and a second call to action saying click here with the target url for better conversion from article to website.
On eZa alone has about *50* articles published over 2 months.
Also published on goarticles, article alley, articledashboard, amazines and others.
All articles follow the same formatting above. Sometimes the articles outrank the website, which is why it is important to have a strong call to action in the resource box. This is a strong competitive niche and any way to get additional traffic to the website is smart.

Here is an example article:
http://ezinearticles. com/?Effects-of-Declaring-Personal-Bankruptcy-That-Requires-Careful-Consideration&id=3033259
This author has about 50 articles promoting this website. Study what is done over at: http://ezinearticles. com/?expert=Jeremy_Edwards
How it got indexed right away:
The day after it was created (9/8) the site was submitted to Digg.
http://digg. com/users/jedwards233/history/submissions

That looks like a lot of information to digest, but for everyone on this forum, who's ever wondred how to best monetize with adsense without paying for traffic this is how to do it. And once you know what to look for, it becomes much easier and faster to do.

Enjoy learning from the model!

Seven Deadly Sins / Lightworking

zackster — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:20:35 GMT

As per this post on TechCrunch :

Quote:

Sequoia�s Roelof Botha said he only invests in companies that let consumers indulge in one of the seven deadly sins. He rattled them off with alarming familiarity. �You don�t want to be the site that people should use,� Roelof said. �You want to be the site they can�t stop using.�

What do you guys think about that? I think there's a LOT of validity to this. If you can make something that will mess with people's sense of pride, fuel their lust, etc. then that generally leads to success. It raises the question, though: are you being unethical by encouraging destructive behavior? I don't subscribe to Christian doctrine, so sinful/saintly may be a false dichotomy.

I'm also posting this in the Character & Contribution forum. It'll be interesting to see how the two different conversations play out. :)

Setting up new website: would appreciate critisism.

RagsToRiches — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:53:55 GMT

The website is about using practices such as meditation and affirmations to improve your life.

If you have 10 minutes to look my site over and give me your critisism (perhaps the 3 weak areas which catch your attention) and you are interested in this area then please PM me so I can send you the address.

The content thus far is incomplete, the design is in the works, and basically everything is open to change so I do not want it posting publically yet because it is still someway from being complete.

Cheers,
Rich

better investing

stevejax — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:15:56 GMT

How do you know what the best way to invest money is? Whether its a couple hundred dollars or a couple hundred thousand( which i don't have to invest), how do you know that what your investing in is the right thing to do. Find out the best way to invest money.

What kind of traffic is 'normal'? (I know, it all depends...)

Explinfin — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:34:06 GMT

Hey everyone. I have had several websites in my life, I currently have four.

I was happy with my traffic on my "main" website but want to up it, I get about 100 visits per day. This is what I thought was normal.... But last week I started another website, a blog. It's been about 1 week since I started it and I have had two posts which netted me around 3000, and another one that in the last 22 hours has hit 5270 visits! Is this normal, or am I really manifesting some amazing traffic for my blog!? :) I'm extremely happy with the results of my blog compared to my other news website... Is it normal for a blog that is a week old with 4 posts to get that many views?:confused: I've never had a blog before!

what are some of the best things to sell on ebay?

johnpaul — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:32:13 GMT

I'm looking to make some extra cash but only want to try selling things on ebay if it would be worth it. I just need some ideas of what is guaranteed to sell on ebay?

Benefits package for employees in small business?

johnpaul — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:21:23 GMT

We need to offer our employees benefits - insurance and retirement. We have a small privately owned restaurant business and need some information - thanks!

What is a primary sector of business?

johnpaul — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:07:33 GMT

i need a good defenition and not just a copy and paste from the internet.Thanku.

Brainstorm

RunSlevinRun — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 03:54:01 GMT

Hello, I have been lurking on the forums for some time but this is my first post.
Here's the situation:

I'm actually 18 years old, living in Quebec city, Canada with mother and one of my sisters in a rent house that is for many reasons becoming out of price for us.
One year ago,after high school I went on professional cooking courses which I quit after 2 months. 1 week after, my girlfriend at the time broke up with me, the next few months were horrible, as I was standing still alone day and night in my basement, until I started committing many crimes with a group a friend in the same situation as I was. One of us messed up and we got caught, that first night in cell was marvelous however. I've learned much from this experience.

One of my friend proposed me a small dayjob in a restaurant which I finally accepted. Kinda ironic to leave cooking classes to end up as a dishwasher in a restaurant. Unfortunately it wasn't enough for me at the time, with 9$ /hour. I started taking a lot of drugs, I found in this, something very interesting, it was much more of a ritual than anything else, however it started to kill me from the inside(See Gollum).

Then I sold drugs for a few months, and If I had managed my time and money correctly I would be VERY very rich right now.
Then, this summer I decided to stop it completely , stop consuming and seeling them, at the same time I quit my dayjob because I had to get forward, and I had seen enough dishwashing or even cooking for an entire life. I still enjoy cooking, which is a passion for me, but not as a job. I lived the last few months with the money I had left from my job and the debts people owed me from the drug time.

I have many projects and all of them include financial freedom, and even if it wasn't of that, I couldn't just leave my mother in the Terribad situation she's in.

So here I am, november and the harsh canadian winter ahead, without a revenue, with 10$ left, a lot of incertitude about our housing(actually if I don't get a revenue fast we'll have to move) no debts however, and I need a source of revenue.

Canadian job market is not that bad actually, and for small 9$ hour job it's pretty easy to get one. But I can't stand these little jobs anymore, actually like many of you I plan on being self-employed as soon as I can. I'm looking for alternate source of revenue which are worthwhile(at least monetary speaking) and don't require a monetary investment. (since I have only 10$ left) I'm not in a situation where I can be backed up in case of trouble.
So here are the pros and cons of my situation to get a revenue:

Pros:
I have a lot of time to give , If I could sell time, Bill Gates would be waxing my shoes right now.

I'm free of mind is not afraid of changes, so let's say you give me a ticket for Somalia to work in a mine, I'm down buddy !

I'm strong as an ox and pretty athletic

I can easily find people weaknesses and help them overcome these if they trust me.

Cons:
I have no specific skills.

I'm pretty clumsy and nervous at time.

I have no diploma or valuable work experience.(Since I don't want to work in restauration anymore)

I have no car.

I agree this is a pretty long text and I excuse for it, but I think those details can give you a little insight about the current situation and what kind of person I am to face it. I'd like to apologize for my probable english mistakes since my main language is french.

So to brief this up: What could be immediate or short term(1 month max) revenue source for someone in this situation who does not want to work at minimum salary ?

Thanks in advance, dearly

Gabriel

Job Hopping...

Rae of Light — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:12:23 GMT

Hi everyone, My name is Rae and I'm usually a lurker however I had a question. I graduated from college May 2008. I temped the entire year until I was hired into the permanent position I am currently in. I have been here since May 2009. 6 months. This morning I was just perusing through craigslist. And I noticed a job that piqued my interest. It is a position in a non profit for a cause that I am passionate about. Prior to my current job I was temping and only interviewing at non profits. I truly wanted to be in one. But I was hired at a medium sized corp. The job is interesting but, its not one I would like to advance in.

I am going to apply to the job I saw on craigslist. However, I am concerned that they will think I am just a job hopper. I just honestly feel their mission is more aligned with my goals than my current job. Please give any helpful advice. I appreciate it! Thank you!

Primary purpose of business

PerDev — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:26:26 GMT

I like this defination from Lance Secretan

"The primary purpose of an organization is not to make a profit. It is to help human beings grow, express their creativity, contribute their life-force and make the world a better place. The purpose of an organization is to inspire the soul."