Amazing course

What else can I say apart from what an amazing course I am doing.

It is everything and more than I thought it would be. Teaching me a lot more than just the basics and will develop a lot of different skills that will be really useful for web design and graphics.

Have been way too busy of late to post on here, but that is partially due to time management problems which I am rectifying at the moment. Everything should be back on track by next week.

What a weekend

Ahhhh, what a weekend, I did not get a chance to put a post up on here all weekend as I have been trying to configure a new firewall I got, and it wouldn't let me do anything I wanted to!

Anyway, think it's working ok now.

Had my first day at school today, it was really good and I even learnt a couple of things in Photoshop that I didn't know how to do. Apparently this course is very much full on and will be taking up a lot of my time. So I will still be working on the online business AND doing all the school work.

Will update more tommorrow when I find out the full workload we are getting.

New Topspot list

You will have noticed that on the right hand side of this page there is something new. It is a linking widget called scratchback.

Basically, for $1.00, you can add your site details to the top of the list. It will then work it's way down as more people add their details above you, for a maximum of 10 spots, after which, you drop off.

Now, I can almost hear you thinking "why should I pay $1.00 to get a link from this site?".

I am glad you asked.

One of the great things about getting good traffic to your site is Google's method of page rank. This ranking system gets your site higher in Google searches, and others too, using a few different methods. One of these methods, and it is the one we are most interested in, involves working out how many quality incoming links you have to your site.

So this little widget will give you an incoming link to your site from this blog. Still sounding a bit "who cares" ish to you?

Well, this blog, which is reasonably ranking in it's own right, is also on blogger, a very high PR site that just happens to be owned by Google themselves! Now can you see why this is a good thing?

One simple small payment of $1.00 gets you a link from a googled owned, high PR site and that will help your own sites PR no end.

So try it out today, for a measly buck you will get a great link back to your site that will help your rankings in the search engines.

Sort of a day off

Well, I am sort of having a day off from the online marketing side of things today. I have a list of chores to do that just don't leave me the time to do the things I need to do with the internet marketing business, as when I do them I need to be foccussed.

I have picked a couple of resell products to use for my test from yesterday, and will focus my attention on setting them up tommorrow.

I start my Advance Diploma in Multimedia next Monday so I now have 4 days to get my resell rights efforts on track so I can plan out how to keep them moving while being at school as well.

Getting together some products

I am now at the stage of getting together some resell products for the new site. Luckily, I am a member of a couple of sites that can help me out with that.

The next step is to list them on their own subdomains first as an experiment to see the best overall way to present them.

That stage of this plan will begin tommorrow.

Why I am trying so hard with the online business

This is what it is like in Australia. Though we are called the lucky country by most, and I will agree that we are perhaps better off here than some, it is still a country that is divided into the haves and the have nots.

At present, due to a few mistakes in my past and not being able to find employment, my wife and I are very definitly in the have not category. In the grand scheme of things, and trying to improve my employability skills, I am embarking on a Advanced Diploma in Multimedia to further my skills in regards to website design and implementation. My wife has already begun her certificate course in animal companionship, which will hopefully lead her into work with a vet practice where she can then go onto become a Vet Nurse.

We are only able to do this because we are living in my mothers house. Otherwise we would not be able to do anything. The Australian Government does provide financial support to people who are out of work, this is $420 a fortnight if you are single and $375 a fortnight if you are a couple. Not a real lot to live on out here in the real world!

So, because I am now doing a course that the Australian Government does not consider to be part of their unemployment approved courses, I have to apply for a different financial support payment called Austudy. This further reduces my fortnightly payment from $375 to $330! Apparently, as a student I need even less finances to live.

So, is Australia the lucky country for all? Well, not in our case, or many other people we know of. Ironically, the government has just realised that inflation is rising too fast so now everything is going to become even more expensive!

Though this may seem like a rant, probably because it is, all that my current situation does is make me more determined to succeed with my online business aspirations.

Time to get serious

It has now reached the point where I have to get really serious about my commitment to doing an online business.

I have done the background work of getting myself organised with my domains and moving everything to the one host, I have found a format that I am happy with for both the aushealthinfo.com site and the new resell site, and I have started cleaning out all the useless areas of the aushealthinfo site so I can begin it anew in a better direction than it is now going.

Next week, I start my advanced diploma in multimedia so I am going to dedicate this week to getting everything going as much as possible, and organising a schedule so I am able to maintain a focus on my online business whilst not dropping behind with my studies.

2008 is the year I make it in all areas of my life. Welcome to the journey.

The new look aushealthinfo site

Well, I have moved the http:www.aushealthinfo.com site to my hostgator account now, and all seems well with it. While I had it offline I was trying to work out what styling changes I could make to it so it looked better. So I am now using a new theme that I got from my good friend Bev Clement who runs the following successful sites:

• http://www.silkroadconsultant.co.uk/
• http://www.boysbach.com/
• http://www.robbev.com/
• http://www.silkroadconsultants.com/
• http://www.theperfectdietbook.com/
• http://www.resellersrights.com/
• http://www.ghostwritersinternational.com/

And has been a great help and inspiration for me with my online business.

So go and have a look at http://www.aushealthinfo.com/ and see what you think about the new layout.

Re-educating yourself

Now why would a 41 year old be going back to school on a full time basis?

I have just been accepted to do a 2 year, full time study course for an advanced diploma of Multimedia at our local institute/university. I am doing this because I fully believe that you never should stop learning in life. I have always had a leaning towards website creation and all the different facets of it, so I am pursuing this through the above course.

At the end of the 2 years, I will be qualified in the area of designing and implementing multimedia in web design at a commercial level, which can only be a good thing in this age of having video and animation on so many sites.

I will be continuing my online ventures at the same time as my study, and will try to incorporate what I learn in my everyday design plans.

In the process of moving the aushealthinfo

In the process of moving the aushealthinfo.com blog to my new Hostgator web hosting account, I realsied that doing this sort of thing is not an easy task. It is definitly not a straight forward process to move an entire wordpress site, but I think I have done it ok.

• First I saved the sql database that was for aushealthinfo.com on my old server
• Next, I self installed the latest WordPress on my Hostgator server
• Created the SAME sql database name and user name as the ols one
• Restored the old database information to the new database
• Copied across all the plugins and uploaded images from the old server
• Then I configured the config.php file to the copied sql settings

Now all I have to do is iron out a few things that didn't quite work out as planned. But the site is up and functional.

Moving Right Along

There gets to be a time when you have to put in some serious time, thought and effort into working out where your life is going, where you want it to be and how you are going to turn it around so you can achieve your goals.

It starts with little things like a feeling of discontent with where you are now, constant thoughts that there must be a better way to live and having dreams thay just never come true. Well, everyone has these thoughts and dreams, it just a matter of working out how important they are to you and what you are prepared to do to achieve them.

Do some soul searching and see where it leads you. The only person who can change things for you, is you, so work out now what you want to do in life and how to get there. Then do it.

The end of a blog, but the start of a new one

Well, by the end of the month aus health info will be no more . After much diliberation and discussion, I decided that the site was too generic and not working as I wanted to. Out of all the projects I have done so far this is the least successful even though it has been redesigned and updated a couple of times and was targeted to the health group. Whoops, actually, upon serious thought and the light of a new day, rather than getting rid of it I am going to move it to my hostgator account instead and work something out with it.

That being said, I am now going to try and do a more targeted blog on weight loss using blogger rather than wasting more money without working out the viability.

We will see how it goes and work on the principal that it can always be expanded on in the future if it works out.

Now to de-link the search engines from the health site and redirect everything to the new site in the next week.

Change of plans

You know what, after a long time of pottering about with a site that has cost me money, been unreliable and has not, to date, made a single cent, I am throwing in the towel on aushealthinfo.com.

I know a lot of people say that if you give up on something you may have been just around the corner from making it work, but after a lot of hassles with both my host for this account and my domain provider (not hostgator, another host), I decided to stop stressing out about it and move forward in a different direction.

Though this means dropping a PR4 site, I am of the opinion that it doesn't matter what rating a site has if it is not doing the intended job. For a site to be successful, it should be something that people use and utelise on a regular basis for the sites intended purpose.

Well, aushealthinfo.com is dead in the water as far as this is concerned. I have wasted enough time trying to get something to work that just doesn't cut it as far as what its intentions are.

So, watch this space as I will be getting ready to go in a new direction in the coming weeks. may not be immeadiately apparent what I am doing, but I have some brilliant people on my side who offer me help and support, so I will be getting to where I am destined to be within this year.

Website Traffic Generation

Website Traffic Generation

From: ianc13, 17 minutes ago

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A summary of the best way I have found to get heaps of visitors to my website and all of them targeted.


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Health and Fitness Authors.

I have a site called Aus Health Info which is getting a face lift in the near future. The site is currently ranked as a PR4 site in google, and gets approx 200 unique visitors a day. It is health related with a new focus being on weightloss and fitness information, rather than general health.

I am offering any weightloss or fitness writers the opportunity to post articles on this site free of charge. The details and guidelines for this offer can be found at http://www.aushealthinfo.com/become-an-author-on-this-site and further details can be obtained by emailing Ian at aushealthinfo (at) gmail (dot) com

There is more than enough traffic here to get your articles seen and Google, as well as other search engines, regularly spider the site and an automatic pinging service and site map updater are in use.

The site will be focussed towards good quality information on weightloss techniques, fitness and exercise programs, good diet and eating tips and other fundemental principals of getting and maintaining good health.

I will also offer authors the chance to have their own bio page with pictures of themselves and a rundown of their credentials or history in regards to weightloss and/or fitness. This bio will also include links to the authors own website (no affiliate links and top domain only) which will also help increase search engine ranking.

I am hoping that with more authors and relevent articles on this site, we will be able to build the ranking and the traffic to a level where we become an authority site and can aid the internet community in their health and fitness related questions and concerns.

Look forward to seeing you there in the near future.

Stop, look and listen

I have been so gung ho trying to set up my new site that I have been missing the fact that I already have a site that needs some work done on it. The site http://www.aushealthinfo.com is a PR4 health related site and I need to start paying some attention on it as it already has traffic, just needs some focus.

So I have put together a new business plan for this site, and I am going to narrow it's focus more to weight loss and fitness rather than generalising it as a "health" site.

So, I am putting a hold on the new site, and changing it's launch date to March 1. Hopefully this will give me the time to focus on the health site a little bit more, and take some of the pressure off in regards to getting the new site up and running.

Only time will tell I guess as to how this will go, but unless you try things and persevere with them, you will never know.

Midweek stuff

It's Wednesday here, and I have had a busy day running around trying to sort out what my next move is outside of internet marketing.

I went to a new goverment service we have here in Victoria called Skills Store. Basically, their function is to go through all the stuff you know, and then let you know what you can do within the adult education courses to achieve formal recognition and certificates to help you find employment eventually.

It's quite ironic really that I knew more about the program my "assessor" was using than he did. And when we were going through all the skill sets I have compared to what I actually want to do, it was a total waste of time. But, as he wouldn't listen to me, he put it all down on formal paperwork and sent me off to the institute to verify what "I" had put down.

Even the people I saw at the institute cannot work out exactly what he has done, but they are of the opinion that I should study a certificate 3 in multimedia course. Now the multimedia course I refer to is all about website design and the surrounding components. I am not surprised that it came up as my best option, but on the paperwork that I got this morning, the "assessor" had decided that film and television was what I was best suited to!

Go figure that!

So now I wait until the Institute review all of my submission and let me know if there is an opening in the course.

Can't wait to find out what they make of all the stuff that I got done this morning. It is so frustrating when your future can be made or broken by the incompetence of people who are supposed to be there to help you.

Will keep this blog posted on what happens.

Keep on going

All I can suggest to anyone folowing my pathway is to just keep on going. It all seems so distant, but it is really not. Do the hard work first and then when things are set up and running, it will be a lot easier.

Preparation is paramount, the more you prepare now the easier it will be in the long run, just make sure you don't get lost in the idea and forget why you are doing things.

I am a lttle behind on where I wanted to be at this point in time, but nothing a bit of hard work will not fix.

I am still on track for a mid February launch of the new site.

Another day

Another day over and what have we done? Well, actually I have done a bit of work on the site, and some work on trying to get my stuff together to work out where I am going in the long run.

Very tired tonight so am going to bed.

Sunday Evening

Well, it is Sunday evening here and I am tired and getting sleepy. It is still hot whith out a breath of wind to cool things down, so we have the fans going to circulate the air.

I decided to clean my laptop today, not the files etc, but the screen, keyboard and case. It is amazing and a little unsettling to see how much dirt comes off the keys when you give them a clean. I must try to clean it a little more often since I use it every day.

Have not done a lot to the new site today, just some general set-up stuff but nothing major. Tommorrow is the day I starting working out which products are going on it first and get them organised.

All is good, all is well.

As time goes by

Wow, it's 10pm on a Saturday night and I am hard at it on the computer working on the new site. Been at it for a couple of hours off and on, made some good progress with the download file add-in and got all the policy details sorted out and pages created for them.

Been sussing out some extra affiliate products for another idea I have that will compliment what the site is about. My not roll that part out until later, but it looks promising.

Well, back to it for a while I guess, keep striking while the iron is hot.

Still building

Well, that's January over with, only 11 months to the end of 2008 now.

Though I feel like I have not done a lot, upon reflection that's not quite true.

I have:

• Joined a site that will help me achieve my goals
• Registered a new domain in a niche I have wanted to try for a long time
• Set a wordpress blog/CMS up on the domain
• Started putting together the fundementals for the new site
• Consistantly taken action to get my dreams happening

So all in all, I have done more in one month than I have in a year previously doing internet marketing.

I still know that I have a way to go, and that I have to build my site and get it going well to start really succeeding online, but I have all the faith in the world in myself and my ability to do this.

The site will be up and running in two weeks from now, so best I get my backside into gear.