zerotomed.com

This blog post is proudly sponsored by: Hale Makai Kauai Recreation Guide.

When ever I sit down and try to decide what kind of website I want to make, I always think to myself: Do I want it to be a broad topic or do I want it to be a narrow topic? Do I want the site to have loads of content and different topics, but then have a bunch of competitors or do I want the site to have little available content in one topic and have no competition? This is one of the hardest things to figure out when trying to decide what type of a site to make, but I’ve made my decision on which is better for me.

For me, a narrow topic has always been rather difficult. Take for example my old site, Genetics Source. I love Genetics, but the topic was so small. I didn’t know of all that many websites that had informaton about genetics, but the fact was that it was just a very narrow topic. It didn’t make any money for me until I sold it. It was good for selling and it was worth it in that breath, but I don’t think that it was the type of site that was good for someone who was majoring in biology as a whole. I needed something greater, bigger and more vast. That’s why SciFreak.com is doing so well for me. Because the topic is so broad, I have much to write about.

Now, I know people are always saying that there is a ton of competition out there when your topic is very broad and it is difficult to get involved. But, I don’t really agree. My blog grows because the people that read it are interested in what I am writing about. Sure, it is a very broad topic and there are blogs that are much larger than it, but that doesn’t really matter to me. The fact is that it grows. I can target people’s interests and they continue to come back.

Now, why do I think that a broad topic is so great? For one very specific reason. There is more content to interest people. Now, I only update my blog once a day. If I were to update it three times a day, more people would come because more interests would be caught. When you can capture the attention of someone, then you’ve got them hooked. I write most of my articles about the biology and medicine, so I know that I have targeted a certain type of person there. The fact that I have other topics too, though, allows for more interest and more people.

Having a broad topic allows you to write about more things and cause interest in more people. If ten people are interested in biology, ten in chemistry, five in physics and ten in medicine and you only have a site about biology, then you’ve limited your readers to only ten. But if you have a blog about all four, your readers have grown to thirty five. Which is better? Sure, it’s more tough to get the people to your site since there is competition, but as time goes on, if you update regularly and if you work diligantly, it’ll happen.

This blog post is proudly sponsored by: Camp Latieze Mt. Lassen.

The point of a blog or any type of site is to get traffic to it. Traffic means that more people are reading what you have written. If you run an affiliates site, then that means that there are more people to potentially buy something and if you run adsense/YPN ads on your site, then there might be more people there that might click the links. Now, I am no expert and I am not making millions of dollars a year from my websites; however, I can say that I have learned quite a few little tricks that I know help when building a website to get content to your site.

1. Think not about making money from your blog, but loving to just post what you’re posting. You’ll be surprised the difference it can play. If you love what you write, people will see it in your writing and continue coming because they like what you write. That’s why I always throw personality into my posts here. I have a feeling people tend to like it.
2. Put a link to your blog into the signature of ANY forum that relates to your site. Now, I run a science blog and I should be doing this more, but I grow lazy at this. However, it really could help, especially when you’re starting out and in need of some quick traffic to your site. If I were to go to some large science forums and do some educational posts, people would begin getting interested in what I was writing.
3. Buy a review. Now, the only reason why I don’t buy a review on John Chow’s blog is because I don’t have the $125.00 necessary for one of those discounted reviews.  I’d rather use the money that I made from the sale of Genetics Source to go towards SciFreak rather than this site.  Maybe in the future, I’ll make the purchase, but for right now, it’s a better move for me to focus my money on my science blog.  No offense, John! 
4. Be a guest blogger.  I have always wondered what it’d be like to be a guest blogger for someone.  (That means, if you’re interested, get in contact with me).  Simply put, this allows you to get your word out to a bunch of other people that might not know your site.  This is good because you should be entitled to throw a link or two into the post.  I know if someone did that on my site, I’d have no problem what so ever with it.  They’d be more than welcome to blog on my site.
5. The final thing I can think of is link exchanges.  These can be difficult because of where EXACTLY the link is placed on each site, but they are good for back links and they could get some traffic.  Even a few people for a free link is nice because if those few people were to tell some people, well, Viral Marketing would take over, that much is for sure.
6. Oh!  I thought of one more!  Myspace and Facebook.  These two sites are great because there are different groups you can join.  I’ve always thought about making an account ALL about science and join a bunch of groups.  I’d have people become my friends and then I’d post a bulletin once I got to around 1000 friends.  I figure that if I were to get 1000 science loving people, it’d skyrocket my traffic.  Then, things would just grow.
7. Oh shnap!  I remembered one more!  Buy blog post sponsorships on this blog!  You’ll be posted right at the top of the post and you’ll have people seeing your link.  And it’s an inexpensive permanent back link.  It’s SO worth it!  ;-)  Anyways…

These are just a few ideas that I have when trying to build up traffic to your site.  If you can start getting some nice traffic, you’ll see your site begin increasing tremendously.  I didn’t mention digg because that is an obvious.  Everyone should use digg, but I wanted to give you some ideas that not everyone immediately thinks of.  And, these are pretty good for the beginner blogger and advanced blogger.  Anyways…Hope you enjoyed the tips I set forth.  Enjoy!

This blog post is proudly sponsored by: Choosing Landscape Soil.

So, the good news is that I was able to sell Genetics Source for a profit.  It was a decent profit, about sixty dollars increase from what I paid.  For most, they would say that this a stupid amount of money and that I should have kept it.  But, I wanted to get rid of it because I didn’t like it.  The site was great, the content was great, but it was not for me.  The site didn’t offer me the things that I wanted.  The way the articles were broken up on the left sort of irked me and were not quite as organized as the blogs tend to be for me.  So, while I might have been able to make more if I had waited and maybe gotten some money from adsense, it was a good move for me to sell it.

Because of the sale, I have some capital in my paypal account to now begin thinking about how I want to invest the money back into my blog.  I was thinking about ways to increase its worth and I thought that a few good links to it would really help that out.  If I could get some good back links, I could maybe get the page rank up and then maybe start selling links on TLA or something.  I don’t know how many people would want to buy links on my site, but that’d be some initial profit.  But, I need to think of what to invest my money in for this blog.  Does anyone have any ideas?  Should I pay for directories?  Should I get it reviewed by a blog?  Should I get a new design?  I’d really love the ideas!  Thanks.

This blog post is proudly sponsored by: Financial Directory.

As I have said many times before, I intend on creating a blog network.  The network will be a blog that is all about sciences.  Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Earth Science, and all sorts of other topics.  Now I post these ideas here because I am egotistical enough to know that unless you are in the field of science, it is very difficult to put together a good site about it.  But, that’s besides the point. I’ve been trying to think about some things when it comes to the sites.  Do I want to do it myself or do I want to do it with other writers?

Part of me feels that it is better to do it by yourself because your style of writing is unique and people like that.  However, at the same time, I have a feeling that it will become more and more difficult creating articles about different topics.  With Biology, sitting down and writing a one thousand word article about all the different organelles of a cell, while very interesting for me, is something I don’t have the time to do when I am learning about the human body.  While it was very interesting and I know a lot about the organelles, it’s just not something I can say I have time to do.

So, I’ve been thinking about finding a few writers to get together that have information about science.  I know a guy who goes by the nickname of YJ on the internet that loves science.  He and I got into a little competition once where we were asking each other all these questions about biology.  Even without any college biology like I have, he was stumping me.  He would be one person that I’d want to include as a writer.  Another person would be this friend of mine, Kelsie, who is only fifteen years old, but yet she is STILL brilliant when it comes to science.  She’d really be good at writing about the topics as well.

So, the thing I need to figure out is whether I should try and create all these blogs by myself, or if I should look into getting a few people together that I have a feeling would be reliable and make them together.  Part of me would love to do it by myself because I am so small time that it’d be difficult paying for all of this stuff, but at the same time, I know that if I have help, I can get more content pumped onto the blog faster, get more indexed and potentially make more from adsense and the such.  So, I need to figure out if I want to keep it to one writer or bring in some help.  For SciFreak.com, I might need to bring in a little help for the days that I just CAN’T get on to post on the site because of my studies.  But, for the other blogs I intend on making, it would be a more permanent job.  So, for all those other blog network runners, do you think it is good to bring in other writers?  Thanks for the feedback!

This blog post is sponsored by: Bad Credit Auto Loans.

I decided that I was going to get rid of my genetics site.  It is a good site and informative, but I think that it needs to go.  Even though it has to do with my major, genetics being a big part of biology, I don’t want to stick to something as limited as that.  Sure, there is a load to write about with genetics, but I’d prefer making a blog about biology as a whole so that there is much more to talk about rather than making a site about one small part of biology.  That’s why I decided that I was going to sell it.  Furthermore, another reason I wanted to sell it was because I did want to run a network of science blogs.  The key word there is blogs.  I just think they are easier to sell.

So, I started the sale at $50.00 yesterday.  Even though the site has no revenue, it already has a PR2 and its number of uniques has increased since last month by over a hundred.  I think the fact that will make it sell for so much more is the reason that there are so many bids.  Currently, there is a $120.00 bid, which is double of what I invested into the site.  Well, nearly double.  I am hoping for a $200.00 BIN, but if I can only get to $120.00, I will be very excited.  I know that the money will become extremely useful in doing other things.  I will be able to invest that money into getting the vBulletin license for Sci Freak.  And I might be able to purchase a few pre-made blog posts for Sci Freak for those days that I cannot get time to post.  Like this past week, I had so many exams, I had no time.  But throughout the day, I’ll fix that with three new blog posts.  So, I am selling the site on: Digital Point and I really think it might get me some more money.  I do hope it sells.  Take care!

This blog post is proudly sponsored by: Credit Cards.

One of the hard parts about making a website is where to get the content. I know that I have a hard time putting a website together because I write down all my ideas for articles and then I just stop because I am unsure of what exactly I want to add. A site gets boring when there is not fresh content to continue adding to it. So, where can you possibly get ideas to continue adding content to your site. More content means more indexed pages, means more potentially searched keywords, which means more traffic, which could potentially mean more money to be made. But how can you get ideas for content? I’m going to use the methods at which I get the ideas for my sites.

1. Find other websites about your topic. Especially if your site is a really small one, going to a big one to find ideas for things to write are good. You can read the article and then think about what you wanted when you were creating the site. I made Sci Freak because I wanted a place to write about what I found interesting. You can find things that are good and then add your twist to it.
2. Get a subscription to a magazine that has to do with your niche. I know that I purchase Scientific American when ever there is a new issue simply to keep myself up to date on different scientific things and to maybe find an article that is interesting. It costs be $4.99 and I expect that in the long run, that investment will be returned a lot from what I write about. It does help.
3. Books and Movies. You’d be surprised what you can find in a book or movie. Maybe some tiny little scene, but if it catches your eye, it helps. I was watching a Law and Order TV episode and it had embryology in it and I have been thinking about writing an article for Sci Freak for it. It really can help.
4. Finally, for me, paying attention in class. There have been times that I have written down some information to come back to for a potential article. Not so much for Sci Freak, but when I make my biology blog, I will definitely take topics that I learn in my sciences and I will put it to the blog. Hopefully, it’ll be interesting enough, but still detailed and correct.

These are just four ideas for finding ideas for content. It’s hard, but it is important. If you write a site about scientific news like I do, Scientific American is a good magazine, but so are some websites. It all depends on what you are interested in doing. Building content takes time, but do your best to find different venues to get ideas. The more ideas for content you have, the bigger and better your site will become. But make sure of one thing, please! Make the content unique!

This blog post is sponsored by: A Great Site For Pens - I was looking at this site and they really do have nice, inexpensive pens. I might get some for my blog and pass them out to some people. Might get some more people. But I recommend checking the site out, that’s for sure.

I don’t care what anyone says, traffic will only come if you’ve got something that people want to see. You could spend hours and hours and hours getting links and all of that, but if your site sucks, you’re not going to get traffic. No, I take that back. You’ll get traffic. But, you won’t get repeated traffic. People come back here. I think that I write decent content, but it’s good enough to get people to come back. People enjoy what I write and it shows in my slight increase in comments (which, just so you all know, getting a comment to me is like opening a gift on my birthday. I get so excited). But, what makes up good content and how do you write it?

1. For God’s sake, please write your content for the reader. I have gone to sites where all I see are a bunch of keywords thrown into an article, I look at the ads and then I just leave. I don’t read the site, I don’t click, I just leave. Write for the reader. Write like you normally would. I could include terms such as ‘Search Engine Optomization in terms of good content’ but it’s so much better to just write something simple like ‘writing good content.’ I like simple.
2. Be consistent with your writing. I am all about grammar, so I do what ever I can to ensure my grammar is wonderful and my writing is good. You don’t have to do this, but I know that I get turned off from a blog when I see someone write like this: So i didn’t really care what every1 was talking about. someone said, ‘u were just being mean and stuff.’ That’s a bad example, but please, treat your content like you would a school paper. Correct grammar shows you take the time to edit your stuff and that shows respect.
3. Research. Most of these articles I write here just come from the mind. However, if I was to sit down and start writing about whether sodium chloride would dissolve in water, I might want to do some research. (Yes, it does dissolve…) Going to even Wikipedia and getting some information is fine. Just get some information. Never write from only the mind. You need information.
4. Do not ramble on. Get to the point. Chances are, someone will stop reading if you are repeating the same thing. “Water is attracted to hydrocarbons because hydrocarbons are attracted to water.” Really?! No way! That’s a pointless statement. If you don’t have a because, don’t put one. Better yet, if you don’t have a because, look back to three!
5. Treat each article like its own earner. Because I don’t really monetize this blog, I don’t really treat my stuff as an earner. But for SciFreak, I do. I make sure that when I write it, it gives information, but it doesn’t bore them. I want them to be informed, but not dried out. I love Science to sit down and read a book on genetics. Some people just want to know what is going on with genome research.
6. Finally, you need to ensure that the content is unique. There is nothing worse than copied content. You can always tell when something is copied. You always know when someone has stolen content. You can look at the styles of writing. And worst of all, Google hates it. And since so many of us depend on Google, getting penalized by them is not good. Write the content, hence the title of the article.

Content is BLOODY KING! You need it. I make the mistake of lacking to update Sci Freak. School gets in the way. But because of my lack of updating, it won’t grow as fast as I’d like. Content is king. It gets more to appear in Google and it means more traffic to your site. You want Google to love you and having good, quality, grammatically correct grammar will allow that to occur. Enjoy this article!

This post is proudly sponsored by Top Hosting - An informative site about web hosting.

When you’re a small time web earner like myself, finding some money to invest in a project can become difficult from time to time.  You aren’t getting those adsense checks to use to reinvest yet, so you’re stuck trying to figure out what you can do to get money to afford things.  Take me, for instance.  I’d love to be able to afford a vBulletin license for SciFreak.com, but I can’t.  I have not accumulated enough in my paypal to do it.  I am getting closer and I am excited about that, but I don’t have the money for it just yet.  So, I’ve decided to compile a list of things that can be done (that I should do) to make some quick money.

1. Write content.  There is such a huge market for content on places like digital point and the such.  People are willing to pay for it.  If you’re like me and can cram out probably two thousand words in an hour, then you could really see yourself making a bit of money.  But I have to advise you not to sell yourself cheap.  I have a friend who sold himself cheap.  Sure, he makes money, but so little.  I could write two articles and make the same he was making writing five.
2. Sell bulletins on a myspace account.  It is not that hard to make a myspace account and get a couple thousand friends on it in a week or two.  Once you have this account, you can easily start selling bulletins, but the best part is that it’ll continue to grow, so the prices at which you can sell each bulletin will always go up.  Now, I don’t advise using the account often because then it’ll lose its value.  But, every once in a while to make like $30 or $40 is cool.
3. Compile a list of directories or article directories and do submissions.  While this is laborious work, if it gives you the money that you need to continue the growth of your network, I say for it.  Just get a nice list of directories and just start offering submissions.  Don’t undersell yourself, though.  Don’t charge like $1.00 to submit to 200 directories.  Charge what the service is worth.  People will pay if the quality is there, I guarantee it.
4. Do what I do.  Sell blog post sponsorships.  This is how I intend on paying for the vbulletin license.  I get $5.00 per sponsorship.  Sure, it’s not that much.  But you know what?  If I were to sell one every single day for one month, I’d get $155 if it was a 31 day month.  That’d nearly pay for my vbulletin license.  And, sometimes, I write two posts a day.  So the amount I can potentially make per month grows.  And once this site gets to PR5, the amount per link will double most definitely.

These are four things that I recommend you do if you need some quick money for your network.  I know that I am looking to get another sixty or seventy dollars together so that once I hit that 1000 uniques a month, I can get the license.  Now, I want to try and get my paypal up to close to $500.00 so that I can afford quite a few things.  I want a theme for this blog, a new one for Sci Freak.  I want the vBulletin license and I want to try and get a skin custom made for Sci Freak as well.  All in all, I should probably take my own advice and start getting to work on all of those.  Maybe I’ll be able to afford what I need after all.  Hope this article was informative and helped.  Leave comments if you have any other ways to make quick money to help your network grow if need be.

This post is proudly sponsored by SEO blog.

We all know the age old story that content is king.  The truth is, content is king, queen, jack and ace.   It is imperative that your site has content.  And not just old content that is never updated, new content.  I write two blogs.  If I don’t update them, my readers will leave.  And I find that from time to time on my science blog.  I forget to post for a day or two and I find that traffic slows a little bit.  But what should someone do when they are sitting there staring at their blog or website and need to figure out something to write?  What can they possibly do?  I put together a few ideas that work for me that motivate me to write more.

1. Go to your stats and look at how many unique visitors you have.  Then write an article and post it on your site.  The next day, go see if there was a jump in traffic.  Nine times out of ten, when ever I post an article on my blogs, I get a nice little boost in traffic.  Now I don’t recommend checking your stats twenty times a day because that twenty minutes spent in the day checking the stats could be spent writing content.  But doing this step can show you that writing content is good and it shows you that people do read your stuff.
2. Find a small way to make money.  I feel incredibly motivated to update this blog because I love it, but also because I have started selling blog post sponsorships.  I never used to write informational articles for this blog, yet when I started selling blog post sponsorships, I started to write more information.  Maybe now people can walk away really knowing a thing or two about what ever.  That is always a nice thing, that much is for sure.
3. Set up a little chart and put an item you want on it at the top.  I did this so my loving girlfriend would let me do my work.  I told her I’d give her 10% of my earnings each week to go towards an item.  But, if you were to set this chart up and tell yourself over and over that if you keep writing more content, you’ll get that prize, you might get it.

These are three things that I have done to motivate myself to write.  Seeing that someone reads my blog motivates me to write even more for it.  The fact that I get paid $5.00 per blog post that I would have already written motivates me to write double the number of posts.  And finally, I have my own little mental chart about what I want.  All I know is that content is important.  And if you can’t find the motivation, try one of these three steps.  They have helped me and they might help you.

This blog post is proudly sponsored by Understanding Brachytherapy.

I was lucky enough to find my network. However, for a lot of people, it takes them a long time to really find a network that does it for them. Some people have the ideal that if they just buy and build a bunch of random websites, they’ll get lucky and go somewhere. Well, this post here is to try and offer some advice on how to maybe find what network you want to work in. It might not be helpful, but it might also be helpful. If you like it, comment on it and tell your friends. If not, that’s fine too! So, here we go.

1. Try and find something that you really love. For me, it was science. But I love science, hence my going into science. You need to pick something that suits you and work with it. For some, it is entertainment sites. They’re great, especially if you can get a good a good domain name. For others, it’s sport sites. You can make very specific sites such as a sports player or you can make broader sites such as a rookie site. But find something you love!
2. Find a network that isn’t being spammed. I personally would not recommend making a network of myspace sites. That’s the kind of site that you want one of. Sure, it might be a cool idea, but I think it’d be better to have one big site with a series of domain names pointing to it rather than a few small ones. It’s the same intention with my arcade site. I’ll have a few high traffic arcade domain names pointing to my main one.
3. Pick a topic that you can write about. I love science, but if I were to pick something very specific such as the molecular makeup of ATP, I wouldn’t get that much written about it. Picking something broad is good because there is more to write about, but at the same time, try and become specific enough that you can always write about it and that you’re the only or one of the few people that are actually doing that topic. And just to educate you, for those that don’t know, ATP is Adenosine Triphosphate. Interesting for me.
4. Find a topic that you can always expand on. My friend has a sports network and he was able to expand on it by building a forum. Forums are good because they allow for a lot of easy content. People say forums are tough, but they really aren’t once you find a topic you love. Once the forum starts to grow, people will post themselves and things will grow. But find a topic that you can always expand on.
5. Finally, don’t stretch yourself thin. Like in the military, the farther stretched an army is, the worst it’ll do because it doesn’t have that many soldiers to fight. The same goes for this. Don’t do too many things at once. If you do, you’re just going to beat yourself up and get run down. I sometimes find it difficult updating two blogs, but I find ways to motivate myself. Don’t make too many sites too fast. Start with one or two and then expand when the initial ones are good.

Finding a network is good because you become an expert of it. I don’t know much about arcades other than traffic is key. So, I just try and build its traffic. But I am beginning to learn about the science network. I am beginning to learn about where might be good places to advertise. As time goes on, my knowledge will grow. All I can say is that building a network makes things much easier and I recommend it for any small entrepreneur. Thanks!