I have monitored all of the reports from my affiliates for months and I just have not made money on this blog.  Problogger Darren Rowse said to aim your blog at a niche and I have, but it occurred to me the other day that anyone that comes to this blog already knows about SEO and doesn’t need to buy SEO Book or anything else I have advertised on here.

I saw this link in my RSS Feed - Make Money Online Blogs - Should You Start One and How to Choose a Profitable Topic. Just the title made me think. So, I thought I would do an experiment and create a blog on a bigger niche that many people were interested and measure the results. It launched on Friday- Sarasota Home Free. Google picked it by Saturday, which was cool.

Sarasota Home Free allows people in Sarasota to list their homes for sale for free. It is for “for sale by owner” sellers, not realtors. However, realtors can provide informational articles, buy advertising space and list some of the homes they are selling on designated pages.

I used the same theme as SEO Aware, just to make sure the theme wasn’t an issue. This new blog has a lot of pages. I tried to think of everything a realtor would want to see and I wanted to create an educational resource for visitors, because the information will continually bring in traffic. SEO was kept in mind with every page, post and widget I created. I also used AdSense everywhere.

The Results

Let me give you a little background on this blog. Since I started it in late April (I moved it in June) I have had 3 people click on AdSense links. I launched Sarasota Home Free on Friday.

Yesterday I had 344 impressions and 11 clicks. I have had about 800 impressions since Friday. I am already making money. With all of my affiliates I have made 3 times the amount of money I have made on this blog with in the last 4 months at Sarasota Home Free.

Additionally, the blog is grabbing placements on Google for Sarasota real estate related phrases. This amazes me, because Sarasota is all about real estate. All the realtors have web sites…it is an SEO’s worst nightmare.

People are sending me their properties and realtors are sending me articles. I even wrote one myself!

Darren Rowse is the Godfather of Blogging

Am I wrong? I don’t think so. Read his articles and follow his advice. You will create a great blog and make some money. SarasotaHomeFree.com may not be successful in the future, but it looks like it could do well. Advertising is a must.

Melissa- SEOAware.com

I tried to change some things on my widgets today and kept getting this code. I was on hold with my hosting company forever!!! and they said that they have had thousands of calls.

As you probably know Wordpress upgraded to version 2.3 today and the error codes you are getting are probably a result of that. Lets hope and pray they fix whatever is wrong because I know that many of us have themes that are not yet completely compatible with 2.3.

 Good luck! I hope we can change our widgets again one day…

Melissa- SEOAware.com

GoDaddyPromoCode.net

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A man in my town put up a web site trying to create a neighborhood group that would work to improve his neighborhood.  His web site is HamptonsNBC.com. He has been threatened by his Home Owners Association (HOA) and they now say that if he does not take down the site by Monday they will find him $100 a day. I have encouraged him to leave it up because he has done nothing wrong. The story is here

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20070921/NEWS/709210366

If you are a lawyer that would like to help out please contact me. If you have an opinion please comment and I will send them to him. It is kind of scary to think that any of us can be threatened for having a web site.

Melissa Fach- SEOAware.com

“Lots of new changes coming to Digg! We’re excited to introduce you to the new Digg Profiles. With over fifty new features, we’ve completely revamped our profiles from the ground up - making it easy for you to share your favorite Digg stories with friends. If you’d like to see them in action, visit Digg or get a walk through of some of the new features in this video.

Because Digg enables people to share information with one another, the policies for how you use Digg and how we treat your privacy on Digg are very important to us. As part of this release, we have updated our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, which we encourage you to check out. Some highlights to note:

• Digg will notify you via email when certain activities happen, such as when someone adds you as a friend or a story you submit becomes popular. You can control what emails you want to receive in the Email Settings section of your Digg User Profile.
• You can easily find your friends’ Profiles on Digg by searching for them by their email address. If you don’t want to enable others to search for your Digg Profile by your email address, or if you want to manage what personal information to display in your Digg Profile, you can reflect this in your Privacy Settings.

The best way to learn more about these changes is to try out Digg Profiles for yourself. Visit Digg.com, login, and click the Profile button at the top of any page on the site.

Cheers,
The Digg Crew ”

SEOAware.com

I won R2-D2 1 Gig Mimobot from Kristofers Blog. I am so excited! It is so cute and it is perfect for me. I took some pictures to give you an idea of how small it is. I have a 14 inch screen and the laptop overall is small…

The R2 lights up when you plug him in. It came with photos, icons, wallpaper and more. There are some movies, but I believe they are for MACs.

I am very thankful I won. This is a great prize for the first prize I ever one. Thanks to Kristofers Blog.

Melissa- SEOAware.com

In part 1 I talked about 4 things you need to have on a web site. Now I will discuss video…

The Power of a Video

We all know there are tons of videos out there. A lot of them are pure junk, but there are some great ones. My son got some drum lessons from YouTube and I learned some information from Michael Gray. You can learn a lot of things from videos and the best part about it is that good videos spread quickly via email and social media.

How Video Can Improve Your Web Site

We are all in different industries so our subjects would be very different. I could give a ton of ideas, but I save those for my clients

So, here is what suggest- think about what you would want to see. If you were a person that didn’t know about your industry and needed information what would they need? Provide it through video, but make it a quality, to the point, informational video. Then take advantage of social media and video search engines to publicize your video. You will increase your visibility on the web and this results in more sales.

Some people like to read and some like to watch videos. Appeal to both and enhance the effectiveness of your web site.

Melissa- SEOAware.com

I just had a conversation with my dad regarding his business and local search. My dad has been in the car business for over 30 years and he still personally reviews all the data to determine what works and what hurts the dealerships.

He said that local search has not been beneficial at all. In fact, it has caused some problems. He owns several car dealerships and he says that they are receiving a lot of credit applications from people that do not qualify and people are sending in ridiculous “quotes” or “bids” on cars. These two issues have resulted in wasted time. He also said he has had less car sales, through the web sites, than he had before local search went into place.

This was very interesting to me. It clearly shows that before we optimize for local  search we need to evaluate the demographics and optimize accordingly. It also shows that you cannot only consider local search in your optimization. Additionally, sometimes the old and/or reliable ways of doing things are more effective.

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Update: I might not have been clear in this post. I commented at Sphinn and I will paste it here, “He doesn’t live in Florida. My point is that some are putting all their eggs in one basket. Many also ignore demographics and do not do their research. If the company my father used did some research they could have appealed to the right markets.”

Melissa - SEOAware.com