Free vs Paid Website Hosting
Many newbies to the world of blogging and website building think they can save themselves some money by using a free web host. And while they do save themselves a few bucks a month, they cost themselves a lot more in the end. In this showdown of free vs paid website hosting the winner is clear…and its a knockout.
Here are 7 reasons why free website hosting sucks…
1. Your domain name looks like crap. If you use a free service to host your site or blog you’ll have a domain that looks similar to these:
http://www.geocities.com/mikecollins/
http://mikecollins.blogspot.com/
You don’t really have your own domain, you’re just piggybacking on someone elses. It looks amateurish and if you’re trying to build an online business no one will take you seriously. They’ll just think, “What kind of business can’t afford the $9 a year for their own domain?”
2. Most free hosts severely limit the amount of disk [...] Continue Reading…
Using Htaccess To Mask Affiliate Links
by Mike on October 6, 2008
in Affiliate Marketing
One of my readers recently asked me how I mask my affiliate links on my new web hosting review site and I promised I would write up a post about it…so here it is.
There are several different ways to mask affiliate links but personally I use htaccess redirects. i think its the easiest and most efficient way and I’m going to explain exactly how to do it so you can try it out for yourself.
But first let’s think of a few reasons why you’d want to mask your affiliate links. Here’s what a typical affiliate link might look like:
http://www.costumecraze.com/WZRD22.html?c=cj,WZRD22
And here’s what it looks like using an htaccess redirect:
/dorothy
Notice they both go to a Dorothy Halloween costume with a merchant I work with through Commission Junction. The second link has several advantages over the first:
It looks nicer.
It describes the link destination.
Its easier for a visitor to remember or write down.
Its [...] Continue Reading…
What’s Going On With Google PageRank?
by Mike on October 4, 2008
in Search Engines
A lot of strange goings on with Google PageRank since yesterday. Just last week the PR of this blog was updated from a N/A to a PR4. Now its back to an N/A.
I checked my other sites and they all appear to be back to what they were before last week’s update. My best guess is Google had to roll back the update for some reason and its only temporary. So settle down and don’t worry about it.
I don’t care much about PR anyway. Its nice to see it go up but it doesn’t really correlate to how much revenue a site produces…unless you sell links which I don’t do anyway.
We;ll see what happens over the next couple of days. hopefully it will all get straightened out and I’ll get the PR4 back again.
What kind of impact have you seen on your sites?
Edit on 10/6 – Looks like the [...] Continue Reading…
Case Study – A Review Style Site In Action
by Mike on October 2, 2008
in Case Studies
In this post you’re going to learn about two very powerful products. Individually they each have the ability to make you a lot of money. But when used together they can move mountains and form an unstoppable combination that almost guarantees profits.
photo credit: podoboq
This is also the first in what will be a series of posts tracking my progress as I use these two tools to start a new site from scratch. Think of it as a case study where I’ll periodically discuss my progress as I go.
You’re going to want to read this post carefully because it can make you a lot of money if you follow along with me.
Step 1 – Understanding The Conduit Method
The Conduit Method is a short report written by Chris Rempel (The Lazy Super-Affiliate). I obviously can’t go into too much detail about it without giving away all of Chris’s secrets…but I’ll give [...] Continue Reading…
Comment Policy
by Mike on September 30, 2008
in Uncategorized
I feel its important for a blog to have a comment policy. An effective blog should be like a little community in which everyone is encouraged to add their own opinions. Unfortunately there are some bad apples that like to stir up trouble or spam blogs for their own selfish purposes. That’s why I created this simple comment policy that sets the ground rules for imiseasy.com
1. No porn, gambling, hate, or otherwise questionable links allowed.
2. You’re welcome to link to your blog or website, but no affiliate links please.
3. Don’t be greedy. You’re getting a free link in return for your comment so please don’t add even more links inside the comment itself. It just looks spammy.
4. Please use a real name. I’d like to actually get to know and interact with my regular readers and a name helps build relationships among readers more than keyword stuffing will. The [...] Continue Reading…
77 Creative Ways To Make Money Online
by Mike on September 21, 2008
in Making Money Online
Everybody loves having money…but not everybody realizes how many options they have for earning extra cash. In this post I’m going to give you the ultimate list of ways to make money online.
I’m not going to go in depth for each money making idea. Instead I’ll just post a short blurb here and then follow each of them up with a full post in the future…
Creative Ways To Make Money Online
1. Start your own affiliate marketing blog or website. You can make money promoting other people’s products.
2. Build a readership and sell ad space on your blog.
3. Join a paid blogging network and get paid for blogging about certain topics.
4. Sell text links in your blog’s content.
5. Put Google AdSense or other contextual advertising on your website or blog.
6. Write and sell an ebook.
7. Give away free reports with affiliate links in them.
8. Buy Resellers rights for digital products [...] Continue Reading…
Blogs I Like
by Mike on September 21, 2008
in Networking
After reading Josh Spaulding’s recent article about maximizing PageRank/Authority through smart internal linking, I realized that a traditional Blogroll just doesn’t make much sense from an optimization point of view.
Of course I’d still like to have a place to recognize my fellow bloggers who pump out quality content. Below is a list of blogs I read regularly…many thanks to my friends and mentors who write them.
Caroline Middlebrook
ProBlogger
CopyBlogger
Yaro Starak
Josh Spaulding
Steve Pavlina
Dosh Dosh
Michel Fortin
Franklin Bishop
Jonathan Leger
ThouShallBlog