JJAbrams.co.uk Update

Okay so how well has my small, quickly put together website for the new monster movie 1-18-08 doing?

Within two days all the pages we’re indexed in Google and the site is being spidered daily. There are currently no back links recorded (no surprise there) and no page rank has been assigned yet. Despite that the site appears very well in the Big G’s search results as below. However the keyword ‘jjabrams’ needs to be included to get it anywhere near the first page of results.

‘jjabrams’ – 5th from 233,000 results
‘jjabrams 1-18-08’ – 8th from 52,500 results
‘jjabrams cast’ – 2nd
‘jjabrams new film’ – 1st
‘jjabrams monster’ – 1st
‘jjabrams posters’ - 1st
‘jjabrams photos’ – 6th
‘jjabrams overnight’ – 1st

At the moment just from organic results from the search engines I’m getting 24 unique visitors a day. Mostly from google and some from technorati.com

I would put this success (if you can call it that) to the Wordpress platform and the plugins that I added:
Activate Akismet which comes with the install as it does a great job at stopping spam posting.
Bunny’s Technorati Tags is excellent at creating links to their directory
Google Sitemaps is a must have as all site should have an xml sitemap and submit it to googles webmaster section
Search Meter is good to log any searches on the site so you know what areas your visitors want to look at
And my favourite has to be SlimStat which is excellent at logging activity on the site including bots and searched keywords that found your site.

So my plan will be to add more info on the new film, also a lot more stuff on his other films and tv series and then integrate something link Amazon into it however the revenue is very slim from them.

The site hasn’t generated any revenue at the moment but then I only have the odd adsense banner which would rarely create a click and some small change.

A little experiment

I’ve heard the Wordpress is very good at making a site and I know as I’ve said before it’s very simple. So I thought I would create a fresh new website, using WP, and see how long it takes for Google to log it in it’s engine and how much traffic I can get. Also I’ll be putting Adsense on to see if it can generate any revenue.

Now if you’ve seen the new movie Transformers or you’re up on your films you may have come across a trailer by creator JJ Abrams, the writer of Lost among other things.

As this seems to be a bit of a craze at the moment as the trailer is just a teaser and doesn’t even tell you the name of the movie the web is going wild for information. The film is being nicknames after it US release date of 1-18-08, 18th January 2008.

So today in a matter of hours I’ve created a brand new site with Wordpress, under the domain www.JJAbrams.co.uk and have posted to quick entries about the man himself and the new film. Changed the theme, added Adsense and a few plugins and that’s it. Because of the plugins and submitting the sitemap to google it has already be ‘viewed’ by 22 of the top websites for including it on their databases.

It will, in it’s nature, be high on keywords such as Abrams, Cloverfield and 1-18-08 so we’ll see how it rates. Main problem is the lack of high PageRank links, in fact apart from this page no links at all.

I do plan on adding more entries and pages over the next day or so to keep it fresh and increase it’s content. I’ll also be added reviews on J.J.Abrams films and TV series.

I’ve also bought other domains for it such as www.2008-01-18.co.uk and www.CloverfieldtheMovie.co.uk but I doubt they will be of any benefit.

I’ll keep you posted.

Share in a $2.5 trillion DAILY turnover?

Yes you read that right. That does say trillion and daily!!

I stumbled across an affiliate site for Forex. They are the biggest market on the earth trading money and metals. The way it works is that you buy Euros, paying with US dollars, or say, you sell Japanese Yen for Canadian dollars. When the exchange rates change you profit (or loss) from the new exchange rate. But the great thing about Forex is that they offer trading ratios from around 1:50 to 1:200 or it increases the percentage.

Of course there’s a risk to you cash but you cannot lose more than your margin which is your initial investment. Two example of a win or loss situation:

Example: a FOREX DAY-TRADING deal has been made, for buying EUR100,000 against USD, on an exchange rate of 1.3500. The MARGIN required for this deal (offered by the FOREX Trading Platform) is of a ratio of around 1:100. Accordingly, the trader invests only USD100. After a few hours, the exchange rate went up to 1.3620. This is an increase of 0.89%, quite normal for the global Forex market. However, thanks to the MARGIN ratio, the trader's investment went up by 89% (since a leverage of 1:100 has been used)!! Remember: that happened in less than a day! Same could happen in the opposite direction, however - the traders cannot lose more than their original MARGIN deposited. When the rate goes against the trader's favour, the deal closes automatically ("Stop-Loss") when the margin does not cover anymore the contract's decrease in value. Note that the Forex trader may choose any direction for his deal (for example: either to BUY-EUR or to SELL-EUR in a EUR-USD deal), and still do that with his account base currency (the currency with which he operates his trading account). Hence, he may still profit (in case he was right...) even when the EUR goes down.

Therefore you can have an unlimited amount of profit but a limited amount of loss!!

Download this Free eBook to learn more about currency trading

Forex eBook - Read and Learn

Take a look at their site: Easy-forex.com
And their affiliate program: Forex-Affiliate.com

Flash Book

I needed to present a scanned book on my website but didn’t want to just give it as a pdf download, instead I wanted the visitor to be able to flick through the pages on my site just like a book. I’ve seen this presented via Flash but I know very little about Macromedia Flash, or what is now Adobe Flash CS3, but really like the way flash programs can still add some wow factor to a website.

With a lot or searching and many dead ends that were expensive services I found http://www.page-flip.com/. This excellent flash component will load your pages into a book look-alike that you can actually grab and turn the pages. Haven’t got Flash? No problem, they give you the swf book with an xml configuration file that lets you change the size and look and add pages. And it’s only $25, bargain!

Website Collaboration

I’ve been trying to find a way of providing my guider’s forums which more stickiness. This is were your site holds onto the visitor and provides a reason for them to come back or recommend it. Now on the whole discussion forums have this built in anyway as users can become almost addicted to discussion something which they are passionate about with like minded people. But there no harm in making the site more than just a forum, which is why I’ve incorporated other features such as document library.

Now one thing that does help in the developing of a forum site is that all you need to do is read the posts and you’ll soon see areas that people would like to see and use. One of these on my site is a neckerchief design tool. There are a couple of big sites providing custom neckers but the ability for the buyer to see their custom product before purchase is limited. This probably being down to the fact they haven’t had the budget to pay a designer for this as in particular professional flash programmers are expensive.

Therefore, having a Qualified Macromedia Programmer at my disposal we’ve put together some designs to creating a useful tool on the site. While wanting this tool to be as useful as possible I emailed the retailers to see if they have any objection it being included, which as it’s free and they don’t want to be left out when their competitors are included they obviously love to be.

This then brings about the possibility to agree a relationship between your site and a retailer where there are plenty of possibilities. For example you can agree that one retailer gets sole exclusivity and from there you could get revenue for each sale, or one off payment for that right, or a free relationship where both sites have the tool which links to the other. Thus providing good traffic for both.

I’m currently in talks with a couple of retailers and I’ll update you all with the outcome.

Surprise Revenue

One this that always make me smile about affiliate marketing is those cheques that arrive from sources you long forgot about and no longer promote.

One such cheque today was from 888.com. I signed up to their affiliate program a few years ago when at an expo in London and as I was promoting bingo at the time I soon stopped promoting them as being American based they hadn’t, and still, don’t see the potential in bingo. Especially in the UK.

As an affiliate program I would say 888.com are one of the best. You can deal with them direct so you cut out the commission from the networks and they provide tons of banners, reviews, tutorials, standalone flash games, the lot basically. They also show you up-to-date commission revenue which is more than say JackpotJoy let you know.

My surprise commission has come from one visitor that is the one visitor that’s signed up through whatever old link I have somewhere. Thankfully they don’t have the same rule as bet365 where you must have at least 5 signed up members before they give you your money. This is ridiculous and I have lots of money, gaining no interest, trapped there until the time I can get more signups. Which isn’t going to happy. 888.com however pay on the nose monthly, nice.

One of the other, and more important, points of 888 is their commission rates. If you choose revenue share, which I strongly recommend, you get 45% of all revenue share from your signups from the casino and 25-45% revenue share from pacific poker. Now surprisingly my unknown friend has lost $8000 in the last 2 months at poker. He either has a gambling problem or is one rich dude enjoying a game during his lunch hour, but suffice it to say I don’t care as the £1000 in my bank account will do nicely.

You may notice my site www.internet–bingo.co.uk has suddenly changed its poker and blackjack banners to 888.com as an few more signups will be very welcome. It’s a shame Google only lets certain friends advertise their gambling sites but there’s always other ways to generate leads.

Speaking of which, if you too would like to sign up to 888.com affiliate program click here. ;-)

Starting a new Forum

Started a new forum site this week. ArchiTechnical.co.uk

Been meaning to get this off the ground for years. Designed for Architectural Technical designers using CAD software and was originally meant to be a place for all my blocks, details and useful tools that I use everyday. However what has stopped me was the fact a lot of it was produced in work for work and therefore is the electronic property of that company. Therefore the idea was shelved.

I’ve now gone ahead with a forum as there are very little sites out there for the technical site of architecture. It’s especially more important to share the knowledge as regulations are becoming ever more complicated.

But how do you start a forum?? It certainly can’t be a success over night. The problem being is content. The good and bad thing about forums are that they are and need to be full of useful posts to attract new user and to grow. But how do you get started. Well leading from the success of other forums, and failure, the only way is to post as much information as I can and then launch is to a few dozen people that are in the field and will add to that knowledge base. Only then after a few hundreds posts is it then worth realising it to the general public.

I’ll let you know how it gets on.