What's Happening Out There?

[Ernie]

What are people doing to build their portable empire? I'm curious to hear of ways that people plan to make a living through their computer or the web or whatever. Besides, we need to wake up this forum and get some dialog going.

I have been studying web marketing for a while now. I have run a couple Google Adwords campaigns with no success yet. My website - http://www.pool-and-pocket-billiards-resource.com/ has been running for about a year and a half now. I started Google Adsense ads on my site about six months or so ago. I am just coming up to the $100 dollar limit to get paid a check. I need to get way more traffic on my site so I can make a respectable income from Google ads. I have recently begun a renewed effort to add some more content to my site and bring my traffic rankings up much higher. Karen Kay has given me some excellent suggestions. Any one else care to chip in?

[Siouxz]

HI...i' a newbie at Pat's P E University and am gleening tons of great information there.
I joined here to partake in more community support. I have a blog that I will soon
move to Word Press--I learned at PEU that Word Press does great in search engines
so that is why I'm going to move it from Blooger to Word Press, but for now the link is:

http://susandraves.blogspot.com/

I'm evolving my niche--at this point my focus is on health and
wellness stuff cuz I've been in the business 25 years...I am writing
an ebook on bringing your body back into balance and
another one that has recipes for the solo person (requested).

I have lots of ideas..still in research, development and
receivng inspiration phase (just finished two of Joe Vitale's books
Zero Limits and The KEY...ate them up like a hot fudge sundae
and a fabulous glass of wine...dang, rich, rich stuff!

Thinking about branding myself...like WholeFoodsSuzie or something
along those lines...just don't want my ego to
take over....this is a journey..to bring my
inner game into balance and make my passions
happen in the internet marketing world.

I am extremely motivated by Pat's book and the concept of
creating my own products. Multiple streams of income
are part of the plan,too...my goal is to play more!

So, I am needing a continual kick in the ASS to do
a lil' something every day in creating my empire.
I own a health food store in a small tourist town
on the MIssissippi in southeastern MN....
between that am bein' a single mom of four..
.time is of the total ESSENCE of my existence.

Sooo, I take a big breath....tell you I'm glad to be here
and request support and a daily ass kick.
Anybody up for the job?

(Seriously, I know I'm 100% responsible for my life so I gotta kick my own ass on a daily basis!)

Siouxz

[Ryan Brown]

Those are all great ideas Siouxz. When's the cookbook coming out? Do one for DINKs as well. Market yourself and your business every day.

Cya back here tomorrow.

[Simply D]

Hi Ernie,

I had a chance to visit your site and here are my thoughts from my particular perspective--I am a female, I'm 41 but look a lot younger which can pose interesting situations at times. My sister and I grew up in separate homes.. She grew up playing pool while I did not. I was a late blossomer in many areas of my life.

I would love to learn to play pool but as much as I hate to admit it, I am intimidated to try to learn at the billiards places nearby and in bars that have tables. I grew up surrounded by males and can hang with the best of them when it comes to cars, anything electronic, motorcycles, etc. but when it comes to playing most sports and things like pool I still haven't blossomed yet.

I am very visual, and to build on Pat's 2.0 question, I would love to see a video. "Show me" how to shoot pool. I am a female, 5'4". small build. Oddly enough, I like shooting hoops with my boys, but because of my height, I have to make adjustments to make certain shots. Talk about all aspects of pool to a total newbie and perhaps also offer some suggestions for women breaking into pool for the first time. I know that there are many women that are awesome pool players. Are there any organizations or groups for beginners? Can you write an e-book on this with a u-tube link to "show me" .

Are there books on pool on Amazon that you've read? Maybe write a great review with a link to your site. RSS feeds or podcasts pointing back to your site? Keep taking action, I am finishing Pat's book and am finally going to make the leap to get myself in the game. I need a good kick in the butt to keep me going and for taking so long!

[Mike Howell]

Nice site with interesting stuff on it. The problem as I see it is that I don't know why people would keep going back to the site on a regular basis, and you need that repeat business to get the visitor numbers up. That might be difficult to create a huge number of constant people to click your Adsense.

I started using Adsense in August and for September earned just over $1,400 but it dropped down in October - I think the fires in California may have had something to do with that! I have a lot of articles, over 2,000 and it has been built up over a 13 year period. I am now in the process of having some SEO done to increase the number of visitors.

There are a lot of people out there offering instant success. I think that most of them are crap! It's like the guy who advertised the magic formula for getting rich. Send me $100 and I'll give you the secret. He sent back the secret with a 4 word answer. "Do as I do."

Good luck though. I used to sell pool tables in Vancouver in the mid 1960s. It was great!

[Ernie]

Siouxz- Thanks for the rundown on your plans and aspirations. That's a nice blog you have. I hope mine will be half as nice. Joe Vitale's books are great aren't they? I haven't read the latest one yet but plan to soon. Consider this a verbal kick in the ass - GET GOING! 8^)

Simply D- Your reply really inspired me to get something going for the beginning pool player as did Janelle's earlier. I just came from Godaddy.com where I registered the domain name PoolForBeginners.com. This will be a site geared more towards the person who knows very little about pool and wants to learn. I think I will ask for a video camera for Christmas and record some basic tutorials. Don't feel so small D. My wife is 4'11'' and 100 pounds and she shoots a decent game of pool. I have a couple pool books that I have read on this page and links to others on Amazon - http://www.pool-and-pocket-billiards-resource.com/billiards_books.html

Mike- Thanks for reviewing the site and the critique and for giving me someting else to consider. I definitely need to create some sort of user interaction on the site. Very nice magazine site you have with fantastic traffic numbers! You give me something to aspire to.

This is great! I really appreciate all you folks taking the time to offer your advice and suggestions. I'll get the hang of this web stuff yet so I can stop being a job slave. Good luck to you all.

[Simply D]

Hi Ernie, I saw this today and thought it might be another free way to get traffic to your site:

http://www.joelcomm.com/entrecard.html

Take Care,
D

[Ernie]

I tried something interesting the other day. I signed up at http://www.stumbleupon.com/. You install their toolbar, and when you see a site you like ,you click on an icon on the toolbar that says"I like it!" It asks you to give a short review of the site. Well, I went to one of my pages - http://www.pool-and-pocket-billiards-resource.com/pool_cue.html and clicked on the "I like it!" icon and wrote a very short review.

I checked my traffic numbers for the next day and I went from 51 visitors to 1151 visitors! I thought it was a misprint. My numbers have gone down over the last 4 days, but at least that gave me a temporary jump. I should get some sort of permanent increase from those few days of increased traffic. If nothing else it gave me a little incentive to keep working so I can see those numbers on a regular basis.

[Siouxz]

That's awesome, Ernie...way to go on increasing traffic. Thanks for the tip! I'm going to hook up with stumbleupon.com/ ASAP.

Today, I moved my blog from Blogger to Word Press. Everyone at the Portable Empire University has their blogs at Word Press and they claim the SEO's love Word Press. So, I felt the inspired urge to move.
And I have links on both blogs to eachother since archives won't transfer over.

My new blog is http://feelgoodnow.wordpress.com/

Now, onto finishing my first ebook on bringing your body back into balance as well as the cookbook for the single person. So much to do...just keep pluggin' away, that's my motto!

Siouxz

[Joan]

I moved to word press today too. and have been using stumble for a few weeks now. I try to stumble about 10 sites a day. and hope that everybody else does the same. that way it will be more effective. had forgotten to stumble my own new site, tho, and will do that tonight! thanks for the reminder

[Carol Wingert]

Hey Ernie!
I've been experimenting too with Stumbleupon!

Everyone on my sites had between 100-200 extra hits!

As a matter of fact, today I sold a product of mine that hasn't sold in a month, and I had it "stumble"d the other day......

Traffic is really driven this way!

Thanks for the reminder!!

Carol

[Steve Little]

Hi Ernie,

I have found it very useful to create a give-away of some sort....maybe a report answering the top 20 questions people have about pocket-billiards or maybe a directory of all the best billiards establishments in an area.

Then start finding people who will share your passion to cross promote with. Or perhaps find people who plan parties and activities for groups and cross promote with them.

Create the promotional messages you want them to send to their list that links the people in their list to your report, capture the visitor contact info when the download and then offer to cross promote the jv's product to the new aggregate list.

Here is one I just found with a quick search on google: http://bestpartyever.com/

Get 10 to 20 of these, build your list, cross promote for your jvs, and then start marketing to your products to the new list.

For what its worth.

Steve

[Ernie]

Thanks for the ideas Steve. I am working on writing some small reports or ebooks that I can use on my site to build up a list. I don't quite get your meaning about cross promoting with a party website however. Maybe you could explain that one a little more?