I established Cabin Managers in April 2004 as a message board for my previously owned Corporate Flight Attendant Community. In October 2007, I modified the site’s purpose, rebuilt the pages on WordPress, and added fresh content. What you see today is a site that receives a good amount of traffic, is well indexed, and has tons of backlinks.

The Buy It Now price for Cabin Managers is $3500, reflecting its ad revenue ($359 for June 2008), age, content, and links.  The site is hosted on GoDaddy; free push of domain included.

If you have any questions, please visit Sitepoint where the auction is being conducted.

Most of the work that I do is freelance writing with SEO and other marketing stuff secondary projects. Yes, I get the usual requests: please optimize my pages with select keywords, link these pages to other pages on our site and include outbound links, etc. That is a given when I write web content — my clients want an added benefit to go with the words that I write and I happily comply.

Not every job inquiry is something that interests me as the proposal has enough holes in it to walk through. Pay is too low, the research required necessitates using suspect sources, or the topic is simply not something I’m all that keen about covering — ladies hair products, for one!

Last week, I received one of those inquiries that wasn’t worth a response. Almost always I reply to messages sent via my contact forms or directly to my email inbox, but in this case I decided not to answer. The problem with the inquiry was this:

• We would like you to review a variety of car models and write these reviews along the lines of this site (withheld by me).

• Because it isn’t possible to actually drive each car, you can obtain reviews elsewhere on the internet and use those to write your article.

Well, in my book, what this person wanted was for me to plagiarize my work. Sure, I can certainly write about a car based upon the work available online, but I can’t “fake” driving one and basing my article on how a car sounds, feels, turns, starts, stops, etc. Moreover, the inquirer was from Europe and a number of the vehicles to be featured are not on American highways (Skoda, Fiat, Renault, and Peugeot to name a few). My ability to even write a halfway sensible article would  have to be based upon personal experience, not the review of another writer.

As I said, I didn’t respond to this person, choosing to laugh off his proposal with derision. I’ve had similar request to cheat in the past and I treat each one the same way — good-bye, so long, farewell….

Maximizing CTR

One area where I seem to get more calls for help than others involves the placement of Google ads or similar type advertisements. On static HTML pages you go with Google’s recommendations and hope for the best, but when it comes to blogging, trying a number of different approaches seems the best way to go.

Admittedly, this blog is my worst example of ad placement, simply because I haven’t approached the blog all that seriously as far as its set up goes. MK|SEO exists primarily to provide SEO for other sites and to showcase some of my work. I realize that this is a poor excuse, but AdSense just isn’t a biggie here for me here.

Google Lends A Hand

Getting back to ad placement, if you are using AdSense you’ll want to familiarize yourself with the Adsense Help Center where Google has set up optimization essentials and strategies to help you succeed. After all, if they click through while on your site and at greater numbers, then Google can prove to customers that AdSense works (and they make more money, ‘natch!) Whether sales are converted or not is a different discussion.

A Nifty Plugin For AdSense and YPN!

My most recent strategy is to test a WordPress plug-in which allows ads to appear within the body of the article. I’ve tried this in the past, but was always dissatisfied with the results until I came across the All In One AdSense and YPN plugin, which makes configuring ads a snap. What I like best about this particular plugin is that it serves ads where you want them — left, right, center, upper, lower, random, etc. — lots of choices and places for them to appear. YPN, btw is Yahoo! Publishers Network. The plug-in can be used for other CTR programs, not just these two.

I’ve only used the plugin for two days on three different sites, but I am already seeing an increase in CTR which spells more money for me. This is especially good news as AdSense lost its sheen for me me three years ago when my income suddenly dropped. Though I don’t expect to make a bundle off of AdSense again, there is room for growth and I plan on optimizing my blogs to take advantage of my discovery.

In conclusion, I can tell you that massaging your ad placement from time to time makes good business sense. I’ll know better in a week or two whether the AdSense/YPN plugin consistently brings improved results, but for now it is off to a good start.

Making money through your site is more difficult than a few years back, but if you update your mindset you can succeed and make money online.

Ticked Off At SEO Pros?

I’m not about to get involved in this argument which seems to be cropping up on the internet more and more. Someone posts an article to their blog,  a commentary appears in a newspaper, or an advertisement is featured through Google AdSense or some other type of ad aggregator. I haven’t checked every single one of these sources out as the ones I have looked at typically carry the same theme — if you pay someone to help your site with search engine optimization, then you probably got ripped off.

Granted, there are some companies whose fees seem excessive — I seem to recall reading where a company dished out some $20,000 to get bumped up in the SERPs for three or four keywords. Well, they got what they wanted, but the spike in business they were seeking didn’t pan out. Like I tell my clients, I may be able to do “X” or “Y” for you, but I can’t guarantee how your customers will respond. My thinking is that the site was at fault because if you get more traffic and your conversions don’t increase, then your sales pitch needs  to be tuned.

I’m not a marketing expert, but I do know that people make quick decisions when they visit a site — you have to give them a reason to stay and to take some sort of action.

Never Overpromise

One thing that I see some SEO experts do is to over promise. Specifically, they say that a certain result will be achieved, e.g. a jump in SERPs from eighth place to third (or anywhere else above the fold) or that a site will increase in PageRank or Alexa rankings, etc. While you can “game” Alexa rankings, saying that you can move a site up in PageRank seems like promising something you cannot absolutely deliver. I wouldn’t blame anyone for being mad — exaggerating results serves to create doubt, mistrust, and could even bring forth a lawsuit.

In some ways SEO is an inexact science.  There are some tried and true practices which almost always work, other methods which usually can work, while there is this grey area where results may only work if certain “grey” or “black” hat practices are employed.

Pity the customer who falls for a trap and what a shame it is when an online professional misrepresents what he does.

Yes, Mozilla’s server crashed, probably several times during the day, as the company could not keep up with download requests. Blame Mozilla for this event anyway — they were trying to set a Guinness record for the most downloads in one day with hundreds of thousands perhaps millions of people doing it on June 17th. Hence the broken server issue.

Anyway, if you haven’t downloaded your copy yet, then head over to Mozilla right now and get one immediately.

As far as the latest version goes, Mozilla says they made over 15,000 improvements over the previous version. Version 3.0 is faster, safer, and smarter (so they say) and my quick take on it is that it is easier to use.

I’m one of the early users of Firefox, having gotten fed up with Internet Explorer and making the switch over soon after its November 2004 release. I hardly ever use Internet Explorer, but I still have to in order to see how IE scrambles my blogs. It is so easy to be comfortable with Firefox and forget any other browsers exist, though I do use Opera on my laptop as Firefox got fried and I still can’t use it!

Some of the other big changes with version 3 include:

• An improved address bar that will try to guess where you’re going. So far, this has worked out okay, but it hasn’t always guessed what site I want. Just pay attention to what the toolbar is doing and then choose the right URL to go to.

• Bookmarks, history, and start page all carry over from version 2.0 which is great; previous updates meant doing this all over again — what a pain that could be when you had scads of bookmarks to handle.

• Malware protection is new — if you attempt to download something harmful to your computer, Firefox will warn you before you can.

• New web forgery feature could be useful. Yes, stolen content won’t see the light of day with Firefox.

There are countless other updates that I am just now finding and you’ll want to explore on your own once you download your copy.

Got to love Firefox. Together with Word Press, working online has gotten a whole lot easier!

I’m just now digesting the Associated Press (AP) decision to issue take down notices to bloggers and website owners who quote excerpts from AP articles on their own sites. According to various reports including here and here, the news service recently started issuing DMCA (Digital Media Copyright Act) notices to offending publishers.

Boy, is someone at the AP instituting a really dumb policy.

All right, I won’t defend everyone’s right to republish excerpts of news on their sites, but the AP seems to be making a huge mistake with this blanket policy. Specifically, when someone includes a blurb from an AP article, they also provide a link back to the AP. And, I must tell you, that some of the links going back to the AP carry a lot of weight with them.

Stick Out Foot And Shoot It

At the very least, the AP is shooting themselves in the foot by cutting off their supply chain of readers. If people cannot easily find an AP article, even if only a blurb is provided, AP traffic is likely to decrease. I wonder if the folks at Reuters, Bloomberg, BBC, and other news services are clapping their hands with glee?

I am not 100% familiar with all of the particulars of the DMCA — if you read the Wikipedia entry you’ll understand why — it is quite long and somewhat hard to decipher. Regardless, the AP does have the authority to enforce the DMCA (based on Title II, infringing material), but the wisdom of doing so is likely to backfire.

The Letter Killeth

C’mon AP, lighten up. There is the spirit of the law and there is the letter of the law. By upholding the letter of the law you risk losing the goodwill of bloggers who are (for the most part) your allies in the dissemination of news, not your competitors. Unless, of course, you want to create a new breed of internet competitors who will work against, not for you.

All right, let me rephrase my statement: blogging’s initial sheen should have worn away, at least within six months of when you started blogging.

So, how come I see people micro-managing their blogs as if they just started blogging? You know what I mean — people who spend too much time on the things that don’t matter and neglect the things that really do. Like providing interesting and useful content for everyone else to read.

To help set these egregious offenders straight I am offering my unsolicited advice to remedy the situation. Of course, there is a certain amount of humor included, but I’m sure someone will be offended!

Instructive Lists — You have to love them, numbered lists whereby the blogger instructs readers how to accomplish a certain task. “5 Reasons Why No One Reads Your Blog,” “8 Steps to Better Blogging,” “14 Ways to Link to Everyone and Anyone,” you get the picture. Sometimes the advice is good, other times, well….

AdSense Nonsense — Yes, you can still make money from AdSense. No, I don’t want you to slap them on your blog and block off content until I click through to read the ad. Of course, some of the content I’ve found is so shallow that the Hairclub for Men ad looks rather appealing! Uh, oh, I get it….

125×125 Ad Mazes — I don’t mind block ads, but I do mind seeing more than two rows of them. I go to your sidebar looking for blog categories and other relevant links, not to find myself scrolling up and down trying to move past your advertisements. Please, some of the ads on your site are just plain stupid.

Plug-in Party — How’s the new plug-in working for ya? Must be doing quite okay because I see them all over the place. Sure, some plug-ins work quietly behind the scenes (my favorite) while others get in your face. For instance, I hate it when bloggers trick me to subscribe to a thread and I am notified three months later that someone else finally replied to my comment.

Theme-A-Day — Okay, I’m exaggerating here. I haven’t found a blog yet where the theme is changed on a daily basis. What I have found are blogs which are updated but something is left out in the update. Yep, the login for people who want to leave a comment. Better yet — don’t require your readers to register in order to leave a comment. Please!

Too Lazy To Post, Eh? — This one could also be filed under “Lack of Originality” or some sort of term. “Monday Matters,” “Wordless Wednesdays,” and “Freaky Fridays” may sound like appealing categories to you, but I seem to remember that those same cutesy sayings were used when I was in junior high school.

Photo Fantasia – Those are nice photos on your site, but couldn’t they have been cropped? Oh, by the way, your photo gallery isn’t working either. At least not in Firefox. You see, I really don’t like Internet Explorer and I’m not about to test your blog to see how it looks with other search engines. That’s right, it’s your job.

That’s it for now — an unnumbered list of seven, count ‘em seven points for the person who looks a bit too closely at their blog but misses some key aspects not lost on their readership. Wake up!

I am by no means a gambler — I don’t even buy lottery tickets — but I am familiar with the Kenny Rogers song that implores, “know when to hold em, know when to fold em.” The Gambler is one song that many people take to heart when they hit the slot machines or play Saturday Night poker with the guys (or gals!).

Knowing when to fold em is also something I take quite seriously when it comes to managing my many online enterprises. Since I began my personal online enterprise in 2002, I have built scads of sites including forums,web pages, and blogs. I’ve also closed several down of the same or sold a number of them off.

Saying Good-Bye To My Writing Blog

Last month, I took a hard look at my flagship site, The Article Writer, and decided I needed to make an important move. For more than two years I ran a pair of blogs on this same url — one covering freelance writing and the second one cars. Sure, it is unusual to have two blogs on one URL, but it worked for me. Then again, if I were to do it all over again, the automotive blog would have been given its own site.

The writing blog I launched in December 2005 followed two months later by the car blog. I’ve always blogged more often with the car blog, but it wasn’t until the beginning of this year that I stepped up my automotive writing and finally cut back my other blogging to three days per week.

Additional Business Opportunities Have Come My Way

The result? More business for me, particularly from automotive industry clients which now make up half of my current clientele. I knew that when I took a hard look at my writing blog that shutting it down would be the best decision for me to make, but it wasn’t a money maker either.

Some of my readers know how passionate I am about my writing and were stunned to see that the blog was closed. I believe I have even said that I had no plans to shut it down, but it became obvious to me that shutting down that blog while retaining the related web pages and the other blog was the best way to go. Besides, it wasn’t as if I was deleting what I had written — The Article Writer is well indexed and the pages will live on.

Leaving On A High Note

The best part of shutting down my blog when I did is that I ended it on a high note — traffic was up, I achieved a PR5 ranking, and it helped to bring in additional business. I hate to shut anything down with a whimper, but going out in a flame of glory is the best way to end any endeavor we have in our hands.

And now I’m moving on….

Photo Credit: Special Thanks to Hashir Milan of Sri Lanka

About half of our conversation was spent discussing the differences between an HTML and XML sitemap, with the remaining time being my emphatic pitch for them to start using the latter ASAP. After all, this client has been upset that some of their most important pages were not being indexed by Google, a reason I determined by their use (or misuse) of Flash and lack of sitemap. When the conversation ended I convinced them to have their web guy call me to go over the steps he needed to take to fix a few of the Flash pages and to upload an XML sitemap.

For those of you not knowing the difference between an HTML and XML sitemap, I’ll offer to you a brief explanation: An HTML sitemap is what your customers use to navigate your site, while an XML sitemap helps the search engines find all of your pages. With the former, your map is visible to your site visitors. With the latter, only the search engines see what you’re up to.

During Google’s normal crawling of your site, they can uncover most of your pages, but sometimes pages with dynamic content are omitted while Flash and Ajax pages can also be missed. Also, if your site is new and/or isn’t particularly linked well with the other pages on your site, an XML Sitemap can find those pages too.

With a sitemap, Google can do a better job of indexing the pages on your site, although they do not guarantee that every URL will be picked up; you can tell Google how often a page is updated including the date it was last modified.

This particular client is afraid of Google, having been penalized in the past for employing certain Blackhat SEO methods at the behest of a now long-gone and discredited “SEO” professional. I ensured their team that Google doesn’t ever penalize sites for uploading an XML Sitemap and that it was to everyone’s benefit to have one in place.

If you are a WordPress user, a sitemap plugin such as the one from Dagon Design is an easy tool to use, while GSiteCrawler can handle most smaller HTML sites (usually 500 pages or fewer) without a problem. There are certain “industrial strength” XML Sitemap generators out there too, but I’m not familiar with them as my client sites are usually between 20-300 pages.

Once my client has his XML Sitemap in place, then we’ll take a look to see just how well everything is going. With Google Webmaster Tools we can examine the evidence to see what pages are being picked up, who is linking to whom, and what errors need to be fixed.

Finally, as far as being afraid of Google, just keep your nose clean and follow their rules and you should be okay. That means avoiding all of the goofy SEO experts who will lead you astray by promising to give you results beyond generally accepted means — just don’t give Google a reason to slap you silly.

This morning I was catching up on my email messages and found a note from the Entrecard Team. ET’s announcement stated that Entrecard had made several important updates to the site including the following:

Linked Blogs — If you have multiple blogs with Entrecard, you can now link them to one account. Previously, you had to use multiple email addresses as well as sign in and out to access your other blogs. Now, you can log in to one account and link all of your blogs to that account.

Ebook – Many Entrecard users struggle to figure out how everything works out, so ET took the time to develop a comprehensive e-book for guidance. Offered for free, you can find a copy of it linked here.

Campaign Page Tabs — Advertising on various blogs has gotten easier thanks to the new campaign page jump tabs designed to help you find the newest and cheapest campaigns with just one click.

Get Rewarded For Dropping - The people who visit your blog more frequently than any other members are known as your top droppers. ET created an RSS feed, found on your “Statistics” page, that will allow you to subscribe.

Entrecard has also updated their home page and is featuring member blogs with links back to the articles they have written. This could be a good way to get additional traffic to your site and raise your visibility across the internet.

Finally, as part of rolling out several new features, Entrecard is giving away thousands of points to contestants. These points can be used for advertising on blogs, so check out and enter in order to have a chance to win.