This is why people don’t like Myspace.

I’d also like to reiterate that Host Gator is the worst hosting company in the history of the internet. They decided to reset my password for their own amusement again, without prior notification of course, and then made me change it to something new, saying I couldn’t use any of the passwords I had used in the past. This happened a little while ago and today I tried logging into my FTP account but of course I couldn’t remember the new password they had given me. So now I can’t login to my FTP which also means I can’t login to my cpanel. If you try to visit this site and it doesn’t show up one day, you now know the reason: Host Gator = FAIL.

So I know I haven’t posted in a few days, summer is a very busy time for me and I don’t spend nearly as much time at the computer as I usually do. Don’t think I’m abandoning ya’ll though (lol!), I’m still here. Anyway, I wanted to talk about a few things that a lot of online businesses do wrong that really bug me, so hopefully none of this describes you:

• Being boring: There are so many blogs that rehash the same information that no one cares about. Why would you start a make money online blog and then cover the exact same topics that have already been covered on bigger blogs? Why would you start a celebrity gossip blog and then only update it once a day? It doesn’t make sense. You COULD do these things, but you need to be creative and find a way to separate yourself from the crowd and tell readers why they should visit your site instead of others. In the case of the MMO blog reusing topics, you could outline the topics but have a focus on examples and links to sites that have implemented those specific ideas. In the case of the celebrity gossip blog, you could focus it on celebrity sex scandals. Just be creative and don’t try to fit in, because fitting in is for deuschebags.
• Looking boring: If you have some amazing content but you do nothing to capture people’s attention, they won’t know you have this amazing content and it will be totally wasted. Whatever your site is about, you need to figure out some way to make it “pop” and get people interested in it BEFORE they even read anything. Stak Loaded was recently reviewed by Our Blog Review, who said “Stak Loaded has the subtitle ‘How to make money doing nothing.’ This was very appealing to me and I quickly read on.” So even before the reviewer looked at any of the articles, they were already interested. Not EVERY post on here is about making money doing nothing, but that’s the underlying theme and I used a very catchy slogan to capture readers’ interest immediately.
• Shitty appearance: This is a huge problem that I know for a fact prevents a lot of businesses from generating business that they otherwise would have had. If your website looks like it was designed by a first grader, no one will take you seriously, no matter how good your content is, because as soon as they see the terrible design they’ll assume you’re a noob and won’t even look further. You really expect me to believe you made $100,000 last year, yet you can’t dish out a few dollars for a professional to design your site? If your site looks like shit, that shittiness overrides your product or content quality and makes your business as a whole look unprofessional. Yeah, you’ll still get some business, but not nearly as much as you would have.
• Telling ridiculous lies: There is a saying “fake it til you make it.” Some people think Shoemoney faked his $100,000 Adsense check so he would get more traffic, which he obviously would because his site is about making money online, and if he’s making 100 grand a month it’s safe to assume that most people would be very eager to visit his site and listen to his advice. Let’s assume the check was fake - it generated enough interest in his site to boost up his traffic to a point where he actually would make that much money, so he basically “faked it til he made it.” I don’t know if he did or not, and I don’t really care. What I want to point out is that some people try to lie about things like this and it’s so obvious they’re lying that it’s totally ridiculous. Do you really expect people to believe you get hundreds of thousands of visitors a month, yet all your posts have 0 comments? Do you really expect people to believe you make six figures affiliate marketing, yet a reverse Adwords search shows you bidding on the stupidest keywords ever and you know nothing about PPC? Do you really expect people to believe your blog has made you a millionaire, yet you have no traffic? Let’s be serious.
• Just being stupid: People do stupid things all the time. I recently saw someone asking for opinions as to whether he should do paid reviews on his blog. I looked at his blog and it looks like it gets about ten visitors a day. How much do you really think you’ll get paid for a review? $1? Are you joking?

After reading this, I bet Continue Reading »

Thanks to the worst hosting company in the world, this site had it’s lowest traffic day ever yesterday, pulling in a record low 198 page views from 85 visitors. It was down due to a password reset and database error from yesterday evening until just after noon today, so I’m not expecting today’s stats to be too great either. On average, Stak Loaded receives about 500-600 page views from 150-250 visitors, so this is a drastic decrease. I also made less than $1 from Adsense which is totally ridiculous.

I recently advised my readers to switch to 1&1 due to their superior hosting solutions and free Adwords vouchers, and now I’d like to emphasize that even more. 1&1 is the best shared host I’ve worked with, and Host Gator (the company that’s hosting this blog) doesn’t even compare. I’ve had problems with them before (check out this post for info) and this is definitely the last straw. For some reason my password was automatically reset yet again Continue Reading »

Have you ever seen a list of “the most expensive keywords,” things that you’d have to pay $50+ for if you wanted to advertise on Adwords? A lot of new MFA (sites built for the sole reason of generating Adsense revenue) site builders look for lists like this because their philosophy is, “I’ll pick the most expensive keywords, make a site based around those keywords, put Adsense on that site, and then when someone clicks my ads, I’ll get a huge payout because the advertiser is paying so much for those ads.” In reality, this is stupid and it doesn’t work.

One of the highest paying keywords is “austin tx dui lawyer,” and these lawyers are paying $80 and up per click, so you know if someone clicked their ad from your site you’d get a nice chunk of change. The problem with this is that Adwords tracks average daily clicks for all their keywords, and the average number of daily clicks for “austin tx dui lawyer” is 0.1. So if you were the only site built around “austin tx dui lawyer,” you’d get 1 click every 10 days. But there are hundreds of sites built around this keyword, so in reality you’d be very lucky to get 1 or 2 clicks a month. This is all independent of the fact that high paying keywords often have lots of competition from noob webmasters so you’d have to do some good SEO or ad network linking to get any traffic.

“But can’t I just tell my friends to click the ads? If I’m making $50 a click, I’ll tell a hundred of my friends to click on my ads and I’ll make $5000 with barely any work.” Yeah, this doesn’t work. Like I said, Google tracks the average daily clicks for all their keywords, and if the average is something like 0.1 and you’re getting 50 clicks a day, it’ll be so ridiculously obvious that they’ll ban you and you won’t make any money.

If you really want to do this, your best bet is Continue Reading »

professionalism - the standing, practice, or methods of a professional, as distinguished from an amateur

I hate going to the doctor, and I hate it with a passion. It’s not because I don’t like my doctor, in fact he’s a really cool guy, we went to the same college and we get along great. It’s because I have to wait for ten motherfucking hours to go in because they’re always behind schedule. If you find me a doctor who never has a wait, I’ll switch immediately. People hate waiting, especially when you’ve already set a meeting for a specific time and then show up an hour late. This is by far one of the most unprofessional things you can ever do. I tolerate it from my doctor because I don’t want to get sick so I don’t really have a choice, but if a business associate did this on a regular basis he’d get the boot without thinking twice.

Before I started this blog, I contacted Unique Blog Designs, a popular blog design company for a quote. A few days after submitting my request they emailed me back asking for a phone number so we could discuss the details of the project, and I promptly replied. A few days later, no phone call, so I replied again. A week later, no phone call, and to this day I still haven’t heard back from them (luckily I found a better designer, and you’re looking at the finished product right now!). Taking a ridiculously long time to answer emails is essentially the same as being late for an important meeting and it is the easiest way to lose business. I’ll never work with Unique Blog Designs again and if my friends ask me about them I’ll tell them to stay away, not out of spite, but because it’s just not worth the trouble. Even if they receive a hundred requests a day, they still need to make the effort to reply to all these people in a timely manner.

You should check your email at least once a day, and reply to any businesses related questions immediately. If someone knows they’ll receive a reply the same day, there’s a LOT better chance they’ll want to work with you, which means more money for you. When I was just getting into blogging, I emailed John Chow to ask him for advice and to see if he could recommend any good forums for learning about blogging, and he replied the same day Continue Reading »