Starting over (but not from scratch).

11 replies
After starting out well, I screwed the pooch on my free domain creation (which I discussed in too much detail already and which got the thread deleted, so I'm not looking to go there again) which led to being de-indexed by big G.

I'd be very surprised if I were the only Warrior to have fallen on his (or her) face after their first launch. Its not game over though. I plan to move to a new niche, salvage my content by finding other uses for it (PLR is one possibility, there are others), and begin again with a paid host & domain, free word press theme, and freshly written content as I launch.

One of the benefits in starting again that I've thought of is that I not only don't have to re-invent the wheel (the knowledge I gained from my first launch hasn't gone anywhere), or research and consider the 101 things I didn't know when I first launched. Instead I can drill it down to focusing my efforts on only a few narrow topics, and these are things I'm hoping for any suggestions/feedback on:

1. Domain & Hosting combo. I know its preferable to separate these, but to keep it economical I prefer to combine them from one service. I'm interested in the best bargains and those hosting services who accept PayPal and provide good bang for minimal bucks. Host Gator has been recommended.

2. Keyword research for niche selection. I know the basics, but any tips are still welcome.

3. Free Wordpress themes. Any recommendations here are welcome too.

Those are my big 3. I can work through anything else that comes up after I launch. So long as I've nailed those three categories down first, the rest I can sort out and perfect as I go.

That's the spiel. Tips, suggestions, advice on these areas would be very much appreciated.
#scratch #starting
  • Profile picture of the author Spyder77
    Thanks Brad, seeing some encouragement is very uplifting right now as its been a bit of a day. I've since made some headway in that I've confirmed it was the free domain that got it de-indexed, and not anything to do with the site itself. In fact a search in G for site:treatingmigraines.blogspot.com brings it up fine. If I could URL forward from the domain properly, all issues there would be resolved.

    As I can't do that, I've come up with another solution to transition it from the offending domain name to its default Blogger domain - and with minimal impact on traffic and a means toward building its rank on its native Blogspot URL.

    The experience has taught me not to put all of my eggs in one basket, though. And even though I agree with those who stress focusing on one project, I've also decided that I'm still going to go ahead with the new launch as planned. As I'm mostly into the writing aspect, and have varied interests, there's no reason I can't keep this site going (as I fish it out of the sea) while still launching a 2nd.

    I'll take a look at those resources you've linked to, and thanks again!
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    • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
      Keyword research/Niche Selection: While I use Market Samurai, don't be hesitant to use websites, themselves, as research tools. A big one I use, that offers questions and answers to similar to Yahoo! Answers, is webanswers....interestingly enough, if you dig deep into their database, you can find questions that have received tens of thousands of views. On many occasions, they are very simple questions, with one or two answers. This can give tremendous insight into what will do well in the search engines. Yahoo! Answers, I don't believe, shares how many "views" a question actually receives. Then, take the subject matter/topic of those questions and research further with Market Samurai, etc...

      Just a little tip. Best of luck to you in your future endeavors. It's almost 1:00 AM here EST in PA. Off to bed.
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      • Profile picture of the author Spyder77
        Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

        Keyword research/Niche Selection: While I use Market Samurai, don't be hesitant to use websites, themselves, as research tools. A big one I use, that offers questions and answers to similar to Yahoo! Answers, is webanswers....interestingly enough, if you dig deep into their database, you can find questions that have received tens of thousands of views. On many occasions, they are very simple questions, with one or two answers. This can give tremendous insight into what will do well in the search engines. Yahoo! Answers, I don't believe, shares how many "views" a question actually receives. Then, take the subject matter/topic of those questions and research further with Market Samurai, etc...

        Just a little tip. Best of luck to you in your future endeavors. It's almost 1:00 AM here EST in PA. Off to bed.
        Thanks for the tips! I've heard a bit about Market Samurai but have no familiarity with it: pretty much all of my work to date has been "by hand" (with the aid of some free online tools, Google, and the Warrior community). Webanswers may be a good fit for me. I enjoyed Yahoo Answers but the benefits, for my purposes, were minuscule for the time involved: a trickle of traffic, lots of back links that are all No Follow, and I suspect very few page t views there due to the amount of churn.
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  • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
    Dude,

    No offense, but THREE affiliate links in one post?

    Many of us have contributed thousands of posts here without ever injecting a single affiliate link.

    Glad to see you helping him, but that's a little over the top.

    Of course, I reserve last word from the admins....might not be against the TOS, in which case, I would apologize....however, can you imagine if everyone injected tons of affiliate links in every post they posted?

    :rolleyes:

    Originally Posted by Brad789 View Post

    Spyder

    Brad here. Fantastic attitude! Exactly what the famous are made of - stick with it! Edison said that he discovered nearly 10,000 ways NOT to make a light bulb before he found the right combination.

    The internet speeds that process a little. Hope you find your legs quickly - your intensity has impressed me. By the way you may find following XXXXXXXX useful. The two key people Sterling and Jay are real regular guys.

    They have a great series of fantastic pod casts on ITunes you may want to look over. You can also go to their website and check out their free blog.

    Might be some pieces you can pick up for free or join and get the whole approach.

    Another program you could consider is XXXXXX. Great program and is supported by a lot of free stuff. If you got to the site you get a free report that lays out his approach to blogging and monitizing the entire process. You do have to know about XXXXX and hosting - but I suspect you already know that stuff.

    Hope you make a big splash soon - best of luck.

    Cheers!
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    • Profile picture of the author chumpschimps
      Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

      Dude,

      No offense, but THREE affiliate links in one post?

      Many of us have contributed thousands of posts here without ever injecting a single affiliate link.

      Glad to see you helping him, but that's a little over the top.

      Of course, I reserve last word from the admins....might not be against the TOS, in which case, I would apologize....however, can you imagine if everyone injected tons of affiliate links in every post they posted?

      :rolleyes:
      Are affiliate links allowed in posts? This isn't the first I've seen of Brad's with affiliate links.

      I don't know the rules on this but I can imagine some of the posts that could start appearing if this catches on.
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      • Profile picture of the author Gail_Curran
        Sorry for the tangent, Spyder77, but just to clarify for the benefit of others, YES, posts containing affiliate links can and should be reported. And don't quote the whole post, aff links and all, in your own post, 'k? (no I'm not a mod, but this point I'm quite sure about)

        Spyder77, good job on picking up and starting over. Do reconsider getting domain and hosting at the same place, though. I don't think it's more economical unless the host buys the domain in their own name (and that's disastrous).
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        • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
          Originally Posted by Gail_Curran View Post

          Sorry for the tangent, Spyder77, but just to clarify for the benefit of others, YES, posts containing affiliate links can and should be reported. And don't quote the whole post, aff links and all, in your own post, 'k? (no I'm not a mod, but this point I'm quite sure about)

          Spyder77, good job on picking up and starting over. Do reconsider getting domain and hosting at the same place, though. I don't think it's more economical unless the host buys the domain in their own name (and that's disastrous).
          Even though it should have been evident, I quoted it so that the mods knew who I was referencing. I have edited the affiliate links out.

          It looks like his post was deleted.
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        • Profile picture of the author Spyder77
          Originally Posted by Gail_Curran View Post

          Spyder77, good job on picking up and starting over. Do reconsider getting domain and hosting at the same place, though. I don't think it's more economical unless the host buys the domain in their own name (and that's disastrous).
          I did the niche, URL and keyword research last night/this morning (haven't slept nor done anything that wasn't related to repairing some of the damage done by the de-indexing while working on the new launch) and registered the .info domain I found that best fit my criteria, level of competition, and potential profitability on it (the .info fits well with the niche and URL). Its now registered at Name Cheap. The hosting I did, ultimately, decide to go with separately. No host decided on yet, just a bunch ruled out.

          I'm moving the ball along though, and feel like I've achieved something just with the domain name registered. With ideas already on how to funnel traffic from the old site, while digging it out of the grave, I'm going to focus on the old site again for a few days and see what I come across here on host recommendations before I sign on and launch.
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          • Profile picture of the author adamj2
            I use hostgator for hosting and have been very impressed with them and paid for it all with paypal. Is really easy to have multiple domains on the same account by using add-on domains. I buy my domains them from namecheap and host them with hostgator.

            For simple sites I like the use of the default twenty-ten theme of wordpress (if the appearance is changed a bit to make it look nicer). It is really good for SEO, and has your website title and blog post titles automatically set as H1/H2 tags. I also use the all in one SEO pack plugin.

            Good luck!
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            • Profile picture of the author Spyder77
              Originally Posted by adamj2 View Post

              I use hostgator for hosting and have been very impressed with them and paid for it all with paypal. Is really easy to have multiple domains on the same account by using add-on domains. I buy my domains them from namecheap and host them with hostgator.

              For simple sites I like the use of the default twenty-ten theme of wordpress (if the appearance is changed a bit to make it look nicer). It is really good for SEO, and has your website title and blog post titles automatically set as H1/H2 tags. I also use the all in one SEO pack plugin.

              Good luck!
              Thanks for the feedback, particularly on Wordpress as it'll be what I'm running on the new site. And that's another vote for Host Gator, which I'll admit I was pretty all around impressed by just from visiting their site. Its pretty surprising how little effort some hosting companies seem put into their landing and squeeze pages. The ones I ruled had one thing common to all of them: poor site design and were either difficult to navigate, had too little info on what they provided and what stood them apart from the herd, and - worst of all for some of them - looked like a Google rendered translation from another language.

              Those things put me off because if they can't that right, on something so important as hosting, what else have they screwed up, how reliable are they going to be, and useful and responsive in the event I need to use their help desk? Based on my impression of those I ruled out, probably not very, and its too important to risk taking chances on.

              RevSeo: while G owns Blogger, and could shut my site down at anytime, after cooling off a bit when I found myself de-indexed for no reason I could come up with in the moment, I was actually reassured that they wouldn't. My site had been manually reviewed for the Adsense campaign, and even though they de-indexed the domain as part of their sweep, they didn't de-index its Blogspot URL nor suspend my Blogger account.

              That came to be reassuring once it was clear that it was just the .cc.co domain that got de-indexed, and only because they were cleaning house of all of those domains because of the impact they're having on G's main business (while more recently also infringing on Google's copyright with their guide for Blogger).

              I still don't like having all my eggs in one basket, not when this is a serious (budding) long-term pursuit for me and something put a lot of time and work into just in the short period I've been doing for to date - and expect that to continue to be the case indefinite (it helps that I enjoy the whole process).

              As with most stuff written for Unix, to my knowledge Wordpress is open source software, and therefore as safe as it comes when it comes to not having to worry about a 3rd party exerting any detrimental influence or control over it. For those reasons, its what my 2nd niche site will be powered by, and likely many more as I further diversify into other niches that look profitable and would enjoy developing a marketing strategy and content around.

              Your point about diversifying traffic sources is well taken and something I try and do now. I've only been doing this a short time, so haven't yet explored every possibility, but I'm active on a forum where I engage the members on a variety of topics, and do the softest of sells with the blog link that will build up increasing traffic from there as I become more familiar on the site. For that matter, I do the same thing here even though its unintentional (other than that I decided a little while after joining, and after raising the issue for discussion, to link to my site here as well) and isn't what brought me here and has no influence on my postings.

              I'm also doing the back links on blogs to build PR and draw traffic from them by posting relevant comments on blogs with Do Follow, did a deal with another warrior where I exchanged time and writing in returh for several blog postings done by him using content I provided to him to spin and post on his blogs with back links mine, have done blog directory submissions to blog catalogs, and am planning on to submit articles to article directories for exposure, traffic and back links.

              Later I'll also look into guest blogging which is another source of exposure, traffic, and a front page blogroll link back. Guest bloggers who can write are always in demand (in time I'll be looking for them too): they get a break from blogging, content, and another point of view in exchange for what I listed above. A pretty good trade and why its become so common. That's what I've come up with to date. In time other ideas will come along and I'll implement those as well.

              Diversification has already become a part of my strategy in all realms of IM, and sooner than I expected and to a greater degree. I hadn't, for example, thought - nor realized I ever would - outsource myself by doing paid work for others, yet I wound up doing just that on my very first day here, and will continue doing it. Where my own IM strategy is a long-term one where I expect revenue to be a slow trickle for awhile, outsourcing provides immediate payback that I'm channelling back into IM now (I used the first paid job, with money left over, to buy my first paid domain) and saving as seed money for other IM related things.
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  • Profile picture of the author RevSEO
    Several recommendations. Get your own domain and don't use free blogging platforms like Wordpress or Blogger. If they don't like your content or what you are doing you are at risk of getting your site shutdown at any minute. Pay the money and begin developing your site on your own host and domain.

    My next advice is to diversify your traffic sources immediately from the start of your new website. There is really no sense in relying so heavily on Google, you know their wrath and it isn't fun.

    Diversifying early allows you to build a following up from users that are really benefiting from your website and content. That goes far beyond Google in terms of loyalty and word of mouth advertising.
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