Where do I go from here?
Hello everyone,
I found the Warrior Forum quite by accident. I was doing some completely unrelated Internet Research about 3 months ago and I arrived here. I am glad that I did. I have several of the posts here and I feel that this is a great place to learn things. It's quite overwhelming at the sheer volume of information. The Internet has changed so much since its inception in 1991. I often miss those days when there were only a few hundred web pages in existence.
When I was young I believed that I could learn anything by myself and to some degree that worked, but as time went on, I realized that I wasted time with that approach. If I had studied with some gifted masters, I would not have had to unlearn a lot of bad habits with regard to technique 20 years after I started playing drums.
Now, I seek out people that are more informed and hopefully much smarter than I am so I can separate the wheat from the chaff. It makes much more sense to me to allow people with expertise to give me suggestions than it is for me to muddle around in the mud.
I have some things I need to illuminate and then I have many questions that I would like to ask all within the framework of my title "Where do I go from here?"
Because it is as easy for me to write 7,000 - 10,000 words as it is write these initial paragraphs, I will try to keep this post a brief as possible; leaving out many of the superfluous adjectives and articles of speech.
Brief history:
I'm 60. Had exposure to computers since early 60's; got very involved circa 1978.
Some experiences:
Mgr. System Administration MCI Worldcom's ATG (formerly WilTel's ATG), Very large and small scale programming, DB Design, machine installation, support, build machines, web design, sound studio recording (performance) / engineer, video production, editing (linear and non linear), flash, simple 2D / 3D graphics and simple animations, etc. I'm fairly well rounded with computer skills and other things.
Long story short, I've spent most of my time in the trenches;
Diagnosed with serious health problems: congestive heart failure and Pulmonary Fibrosis(terminal) and suffered some serious financial set backs: massive flood 1994, corporations crashing/burning MCI-Worldcom, other factors. Took a few years away from the business for awhile but now I'm back because of survival.
Currently living south of the border. I'm having a rough time: Passport stolen, wallet stolen with all my ID, US bank account dried up and gone, No papers to create new account, Pay Pal over drawn and can't pay that by sending money from a friends PayPal account because mine is frozen. Catch 22. The only way I can get money here is if someone sends money to my friend who then goes to the bank to pick it up.
Spend more time trying to earn enough to eat than anything else.
I like to sell things but I never liked going through all of the motions of sales; always more fun to program than to sell stuff.
While I know how to use the graphics tools to some degree I am not a visual artist.
3 months ago my friend Curtis asked me to change his home page on his site and also help him sell a few rare cars and signs that he has. He's been financially hurting also.
Curtis owns and operates the Muscle Car Ranch in Chickasha, OK.
I changed the home page with the new content but had to wade through endless gobbledygook to do it.
Old site: very outdated. No CSS, not SEO friendly (at least what I know about SEO), broken links, obtuse file and picture naming etc. The old index page is located here:
MUSCLE CAR RANCH******* The Woodstock of all Swap Meets
Most of the menu links on the old site files do not work; I moved the files to a new location;
another page:
MUSCLE CAR RANCH******* Classic-Antique Cars
Old site peaked at > 2,000,000 visitors about 6 years ago; steady decline and neglected since then. (old web master not doing anything)
Worked for 2 months and created this new version:
Muscle Car Ranch - Like No Other Place On Earth! - Open Air Museum - RV Park - A Place To Host Your Events - Trail Boss Amphitheater - Recreational Facility with Camping and Fishing - Annual Swap meet - Muscle Cars - Classic Cars - Mack Trucks - Hot
New site: CSS 2.1, I think it's more SEO friendly. But one thing for certain it's easier for me to add to it and modify.
It will pass the W3C HTML test if I take out the third party weather insert. Passes the W3C CSS when I copied and pasted.
So here are my questions:
1) Assuming that there might be at least 1 person here that thinks I did a decent job on the new site; how much would the going rate be, considering the changes I made, to convert (the old site) to what it is now in $$? Ball Park figure is good enough.
2) Is it bad to leave the old files up on the hosting computer (Google bots going through it? finding dead links?)
For the majority of the site I think I made it more SEO friendly with: naming for the folders, pictures, PHP code and CSS code. Don't have a clue as to what I should put in the meta tags; jut put what I thought would work; but I don't have any working knowledge on that. This is what I put in in:
(<meta name="Description" content=")
The Muscle Car Ranch is a 62 acre ranch with barns and ponds and wide open spaces. It's one mans obsession with building a tribute to things American. It's that is an Open Air Museum with thousands of rare, antique things to look at. Antique and Classic Cars, Trucks, Busses, Motorcycles, Signs, Coca-Cola Machines; scores of auto parts, motors and accessories and much more. It is a place where you can host small events ranging from a small picnic and BBQ or you can invite 10,000 of your closest friends to a full Musical Concert Event utilizing our fantastic Trail Boss Amphitheater that is large enough to accommodate any size musical group. It's a place where we have hosted benefit Concerts and Events to raise money for Disaster Relief Victims. And when people get hungry, we'll open up our two Antique Diners on the premises and serve up some really tasty and delicious food. It is a place to kick back and stay awhile in the new RV-Park with Full Hookups with 50, 30, and 20 Amp services or you can pitch a tent and sit around a camp fire. There is even a cozy cabin that is available on request. We have shower facilities. And, if you like to fish, our ponds are fully stocked with Cat Fish, Croppy, and Bass. Eat All You Want! There's always something to see and do at the Ranch. Don't forget about our Annual Swap meet with Musical Entertainment and Giant Bonfire. Pets are welcome.
3) How can improve the SEO friendliness? Title, Description, key words, and anything else I might be missing.
Curtis has an event coming up in October; plus he's has a 1969 Hurst Olds 455, a 1970 Ford Mustang Mach 1 and a Chevy Sign that he wants to sell; plus the RV-Park and Fishing.
4) How do I get the word out? In this world of 6 Billion people, I'm sure that there are at least a few people that would buy what Curtis is wanting to sell but I can't for the life of me figure out how to connect those people to Curtis.
Curtis had a really raw deal at a big auction in Las Vegas a few years back so he's convinced that places like Ebay are rip of artists and because he's having some financial problems as well (it costs a lot to keep up the ranch) he's reluctant to pony up any cash to list the vehicles so I'm looking for the free ways to do it.
Like I said I'm here to learn about Marketing because I need to learn how to work smarter.
I'm a fast learner, at least I used to be; things start to fade a little at 60.
We can't afford the fancy packages I've seen on this forum with these back links and automatic submissions.
I have to do this by myself, but I don't know what to do; I did submit a change to dmoz.org (talk about a faceless, mysterious, dark entity) it could take months and that's if they accept it.
5) For people on the edge, financially, where can I go? What can I do that I will get the most bang for my free buck? It's obvious that putting little blurbs on classic car forums has not paid off, nor has my shameless submissions that are part of my responses on Yahoo's site when the headline story is open for comments has not paid off as well.
Questions regarding links.
6) If I put 600 links to other sites is that helping our site? Does doing that in any way help the page ranking or anything else?
7) What is the normal rate that is charged when someone writes in an email "was wondering if it was possible I could buy some text link advertising from your website; " We have no idea what to charge.
8) Muscle Car Ranch is currently page ranked at 5/10. Does it hurt page ranking when you link to a site that is lower?
9) Can making modifications to the site cause the Page Rank to go down?
10) How important is Content? I've written a few things on the site;
I've always been a fan of easy to navigate long pages rather than a site with a new page for each different paragraph; simply because I hate waiting for each page to load.
11) Is it detrimental to put many things on one page?
This is a partial rephrase of the previous question.
12) Which is more beneficial to our site? 1) placing a link to another site. 2) another site linking to us 3) we cross link to each other the site I link to links back to us.
This is a cool place a lot going for it; its an American Treasure and something akin to what I have termed America's Best Kept Secret. When I have the time in between trying to survive I want to make a short video with that theme.
I think if more people knew about it more people would come.
Also, how would I approach trying to get Curtis on as a guest on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. I believe that Curtis would make a very interesting guest; he's a man just like Jay that shares a passion for Classic Autos and Trucks. It would be as interesting as some of the guests Jay's had on the show.
Thank you very much for your time and consideration.
I found the Warrior Forum quite by accident. I was doing some completely unrelated Internet Research about 3 months ago and I arrived here. I am glad that I did. I have several of the posts here and I feel that this is a great place to learn things. It's quite overwhelming at the sheer volume of information. The Internet has changed so much since its inception in 1991. I often miss those days when there were only a few hundred web pages in existence.
When I was young I believed that I could learn anything by myself and to some degree that worked, but as time went on, I realized that I wasted time with that approach. If I had studied with some gifted masters, I would not have had to unlearn a lot of bad habits with regard to technique 20 years after I started playing drums.
Now, I seek out people that are more informed and hopefully much smarter than I am so I can separate the wheat from the chaff. It makes much more sense to me to allow people with expertise to give me suggestions than it is for me to muddle around in the mud.
I have some things I need to illuminate and then I have many questions that I would like to ask all within the framework of my title "Where do I go from here?"
Because it is as easy for me to write 7,000 - 10,000 words as it is write these initial paragraphs, I will try to keep this post a brief as possible; leaving out many of the superfluous adjectives and articles of speech.
Brief history:
I'm 60. Had exposure to computers since early 60's; got very involved circa 1978.
Some experiences:
Mgr. System Administration MCI Worldcom's ATG (formerly WilTel's ATG), Very large and small scale programming, DB Design, machine installation, support, build machines, web design, sound studio recording (performance) / engineer, video production, editing (linear and non linear), flash, simple 2D / 3D graphics and simple animations, etc. I'm fairly well rounded with computer skills and other things.
Long story short, I've spent most of my time in the trenches;
Diagnosed with serious health problems: congestive heart failure and Pulmonary Fibrosis(terminal) and suffered some serious financial set backs: massive flood 1994, corporations crashing/burning MCI-Worldcom, other factors. Took a few years away from the business for awhile but now I'm back because of survival.
Currently living south of the border. I'm having a rough time: Passport stolen, wallet stolen with all my ID, US bank account dried up and gone, No papers to create new account, Pay Pal over drawn and can't pay that by sending money from a friends PayPal account because mine is frozen. Catch 22. The only way I can get money here is if someone sends money to my friend who then goes to the bank to pick it up.
Spend more time trying to earn enough to eat than anything else.
I like to sell things but I never liked going through all of the motions of sales; always more fun to program than to sell stuff.
While I know how to use the graphics tools to some degree I am not a visual artist.
3 months ago my friend Curtis asked me to change his home page on his site and also help him sell a few rare cars and signs that he has. He's been financially hurting also.
Curtis owns and operates the Muscle Car Ranch in Chickasha, OK.
I changed the home page with the new content but had to wade through endless gobbledygook to do it.
Old site: very outdated. No CSS, not SEO friendly (at least what I know about SEO), broken links, obtuse file and picture naming etc. The old index page is located here:
MUSCLE CAR RANCH******* The Woodstock of all Swap Meets
Most of the menu links on the old site files do not work; I moved the files to a new location;
another page:
MUSCLE CAR RANCH******* Classic-Antique Cars
Old site peaked at > 2,000,000 visitors about 6 years ago; steady decline and neglected since then. (old web master not doing anything)
Worked for 2 months and created this new version:
Muscle Car Ranch - Like No Other Place On Earth! - Open Air Museum - RV Park - A Place To Host Your Events - Trail Boss Amphitheater - Recreational Facility with Camping and Fishing - Annual Swap meet - Muscle Cars - Classic Cars - Mack Trucks - Hot
New site: CSS 2.1, I think it's more SEO friendly. But one thing for certain it's easier for me to add to it and modify.
It will pass the W3C HTML test if I take out the third party weather insert. Passes the W3C CSS when I copied and pasted.
So here are my questions:
1) Assuming that there might be at least 1 person here that thinks I did a decent job on the new site; how much would the going rate be, considering the changes I made, to convert (the old site) to what it is now in $$? Ball Park figure is good enough.
2) Is it bad to leave the old files up on the hosting computer (Google bots going through it? finding dead links?)
For the majority of the site I think I made it more SEO friendly with: naming for the folders, pictures, PHP code and CSS code. Don't have a clue as to what I should put in the meta tags; jut put what I thought would work; but I don't have any working knowledge on that. This is what I put in in:
(<meta name="Description" content=")
The Muscle Car Ranch is a 62 acre ranch with barns and ponds and wide open spaces. It's one mans obsession with building a tribute to things American. It's that is an Open Air Museum with thousands of rare, antique things to look at. Antique and Classic Cars, Trucks, Busses, Motorcycles, Signs, Coca-Cola Machines; scores of auto parts, motors and accessories and much more. It is a place where you can host small events ranging from a small picnic and BBQ or you can invite 10,000 of your closest friends to a full Musical Concert Event utilizing our fantastic Trail Boss Amphitheater that is large enough to accommodate any size musical group. It's a place where we have hosted benefit Concerts and Events to raise money for Disaster Relief Victims. And when people get hungry, we'll open up our two Antique Diners on the premises and serve up some really tasty and delicious food. It is a place to kick back and stay awhile in the new RV-Park with Full Hookups with 50, 30, and 20 Amp services or you can pitch a tent and sit around a camp fire. There is even a cozy cabin that is available on request. We have shower facilities. And, if you like to fish, our ponds are fully stocked with Cat Fish, Croppy, and Bass. Eat All You Want! There's always something to see and do at the Ranch. Don't forget about our Annual Swap meet with Musical Entertainment and Giant Bonfire. Pets are welcome.
3) How can improve the SEO friendliness? Title, Description, key words, and anything else I might be missing.
Curtis has an event coming up in October; plus he's has a 1969 Hurst Olds 455, a 1970 Ford Mustang Mach 1 and a Chevy Sign that he wants to sell; plus the RV-Park and Fishing.
4) How do I get the word out? In this world of 6 Billion people, I'm sure that there are at least a few people that would buy what Curtis is wanting to sell but I can't for the life of me figure out how to connect those people to Curtis.
Curtis had a really raw deal at a big auction in Las Vegas a few years back so he's convinced that places like Ebay are rip of artists and because he's having some financial problems as well (it costs a lot to keep up the ranch) he's reluctant to pony up any cash to list the vehicles so I'm looking for the free ways to do it.
Like I said I'm here to learn about Marketing because I need to learn how to work smarter.
I'm a fast learner, at least I used to be; things start to fade a little at 60.
We can't afford the fancy packages I've seen on this forum with these back links and automatic submissions.
I have to do this by myself, but I don't know what to do; I did submit a change to dmoz.org (talk about a faceless, mysterious, dark entity) it could take months and that's if they accept it.
5) For people on the edge, financially, where can I go? What can I do that I will get the most bang for my free buck? It's obvious that putting little blurbs on classic car forums has not paid off, nor has my shameless submissions that are part of my responses on Yahoo's site when the headline story is open for comments has not paid off as well.
Questions regarding links.
6) If I put 600 links to other sites is that helping our site? Does doing that in any way help the page ranking or anything else?
7) What is the normal rate that is charged when someone writes in an email "was wondering if it was possible I could buy some text link advertising from your website; " We have no idea what to charge.
8) Muscle Car Ranch is currently page ranked at 5/10. Does it hurt page ranking when you link to a site that is lower?
9) Can making modifications to the site cause the Page Rank to go down?
10) How important is Content? I've written a few things on the site;
I've always been a fan of easy to navigate long pages rather than a site with a new page for each different paragraph; simply because I hate waiting for each page to load.
11) Is it detrimental to put many things on one page?
This is a partial rephrase of the previous question.
12) Which is more beneficial to our site? 1) placing a link to another site. 2) another site linking to us 3) we cross link to each other the site I link to links back to us.
This is a cool place a lot going for it; its an American Treasure and something akin to what I have termed America's Best Kept Secret. When I have the time in between trying to survive I want to make a short video with that theme.
I think if more people knew about it more people would come.
Also, how would I approach trying to get Curtis on as a guest on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. I believe that Curtis would make a very interesting guest; he's a man just like Jay that shares a passion for Classic Autos and Trucks. It would be as interesting as some of the guests Jay's had on the show.
Thank you very much for your time and consideration.
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DaveMobile -
Thanks
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