Daniel Felice

It’s been a while…

// April 20th, 2008 // No Comments » // Project Blogger

It has been a few weeks since my last post. I have been flat out with my “real” job and also building a few websites of a night when I get home, so not much time for blogging!

I am actually amazed that my blog is still getting a steady number of daily hits, even though there hasn’t been a post for a few weeks and not much content to read in the first place! Thanks anyway!

I have just kicked off a new project that I will be lauching in the next few months. I won’t go into too much detail yet, though it does involve Domain Names and Australia. I think it is a good idea, but don’t we all think our idea’s are going to make up millions? This one won’t make me millions, but once it is up it will be bring in a bit of income once it gets some good marketing and a few advertising deals.

There will be a market for his “niche” and at the moment no one else is doing it, so it will be interesting to see how it goes.

Once the project is on the air, i’ll let you all know what is it. But I am excited about it and I really do think it is a winner.

I am also still looking at buying a few domain name’s and established websites. There are a few I am looking into at the moment, though it is just a matter of making sure it is worth the money being asked and whether I have the time to do it.

I will make another post this week with some details of the new project I am working on, and hopefully you think it is a good idea too!

Phishing Scams Exposed

// April 8th, 2008 // No Comments » // The Internet

I just read an interesting report issued by Symantec Australia about the current rate of internet fraud carried out via social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo.

The report stated that for the last six months of 2007, there were nearly 90,000 cases of “phishing” found, which increased by more than 150% on the first half of the year.

What is a “phishing host”?

A phishing host is a fake website that is setup in order to fool people into thinking that they are entering their login or personal details into their e-mail account, bank account, etc. You all have probably come across a phishing scam telling you to confirm your bank account details or something similar.

Why are social networking sites dangerous?

These kind of website are dangerous because of what people enter into them. If you look on some people’s profile, they have their name, location, age, date of birth, school, workplace, relationship status and their list of friends. I have even seen some Facebook profiles with mobile phone numbers.

Organisations are collecting your private information and selling it on the internet black market for about US$1.

Most of the money made from stolen information is then put back into the organisation to develop new ways of creating attacks on users. Professional programmers are being employed to develop these new threats.

The new threats come in the form of viruses and worms, mostly being developed in the United States, Russia and China. The next generation of malicious code will be aimed at attacking portable media such as USB keys, MP3 players and even mobile phones.

So if you have a profile on a social networking website, don’t give out too much information as it may be stolen and the proceeds used to develop new ways of attacking us users.

Some Stats

// April 7th, 2008 // No Comments » // Project Blogger

I have been up and running for nearly a week now and actually have some traffic coming to this site! Over the past week I have submitted the site to Google and tried to advertise where ever I can get a free plug.

The stats for the first week are as follows:

• 707 Pages Requests
• 123 Hosts

Most of the traffic entering the site is coming from Entrecard, with a few hits from Google but the only search words that got hits were “Daniel Felice” and “Daniel Felice Blog”, which indicates that people were who knew me were the ones searching.

It is not a bad result considering a week ago the blog was unknown and didn’t even exist, but it still is not enough to relax just yet.

This week my aim is to try to increase the number of hits to the blog, as well as try to keep the same people coming back.

What is Google PR?

// April 6th, 2008 // No Comments » // The Internet

Since I started this blog last week I have been doing alot reading about Search Engine Optimization and trying to get my blog listed in Google’s search results. A word that keeps on popping onto my screen is Page Rank, or PR.

Being new to blogging and website marketing, I had no idea what it meant, and even less of an idea of how to improve my Page Rank.

If you’re like me and want to trying improve your Page Rank to try to drive hits to your site, then here is a quick explanation for us dummies.

So what is Page Rank?

Page Rank is a numeric value that Google places on your site. The value represents how important your site is, and how it will appear in search results. When one page links to another, Google considers it as a “vote”. The more votes a page has, the more important it must be. Aside from looking at votes, Google analyses the page that casts the vote, and the more important the casting vote is, will be taking into account when determining that pages Page Rank.

How do I improve my PR?

• Links to and from other sites: Try and get your site linked other as many other sites as possible. The Googlebot moves from page to page by following links, so if your page is linked from other sites it will be found easier.
• Internal Links: The easier your site is to navigate, the easier GoogleBot will be able to move around your site. Make sure you have no dead links, and your pages aren’t hidden away in deep directories.
• Update Content: Try to update your content as often as possible. The creation of new pages will keep sending the GoogleBot back to your site for indexing.
• Keywords: Include search keywords within the content of your pages and in your tags. This will help your pages be indexed quicker.
• Images: Google also looks at the ALT tags that are attached to your images. I for one don’t normally use ALT pages, I will be now!

So over the next week or so I am going to be working on trying to build some contacts with other bloggers to hopefully try to get a page linked. Hopefully this will impove my current PR of -1.

If you want to check your current Google Page Rank, visit http://www.whatsmypagerank.com

The Need for a Name

// April 5th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // The Internet

Last weekend I saw an news story on the buying the selling of domain names. The article basically was explaining that in the mid 90’s domains such as sky.com and bbc.com were sold for mutli millions of dollars to the respective news agencies.

Immediately after watching the story, I picked up the laptop and typed “buying domain names” into Google. The search returned 3,340,000 pages on the subject and I clicked the fourth result on the list – Go Daddy. It had been a while since I brought a domain, so it was my first visit to the Go Daddy website in a long while. I would normally register domains via Melbourne IT - and pay about 5 times more for it!

I found myself at the Domain Auction’s page and had a look at the list. There are about 2000 listings, ranging from 3-letter domains to domains with all sorts of numbers, letters and other combinations. I also found myself looking at the prices some people were asking for a domain that I would not think would have much of a demand.

But it wasn’t the fact that someone was asking $50,000 for a domain that was not great, it was the fact that people were actually bidding on a domain that was not that great! Most of the domains that were for sale, that had some decent bids, were not domains that I would have thought would have attracted a buyer.

Why? Why would someone be willing to pay up to $50,000 for a domain that is 10 characters, not very generic and not even a dot com?

Why? Because to someone, whether it be a huge multinational company, a small business or even a private buyer, that name defines their business need. That name either represents their product or niche and defines their very need to exist on the internet.

So after browsing domains for a few hours, I got all inspried and decided to have a crack at it. By the end of the weekend I had registered so many names I got a call from my bank’s fraud department to ensure I had authorised all of the transactions on my credit card!

I think I ended up with about 10 domain names by the end of the weekend, including this one. Whether or not they make me a fortune or not is another thing. But I can always hold my breath hoping that one day, someone might just think that one of the names I now own defines their product or need, and that they have to buy it!

The Journey So Far

// April 4th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Project Blogger

Over the past two days I have continued to research the best way of going about trying to make this blog successful. There are alot of other blogs all over the internet that try to explain the best way of getting hits and making money – and most of them contradict each other.

I guess it depends on your own personal experience that determines whether you make it or don’t.

The past two days I have signed up to the following advertising and affiliate services

• Entrecard: At Entrecard you create your “business card for the internet”. It uses its own currency so you can “buy” advertising space on other blogs. You earn the currency by “dropping” your card on other blogs that use Entrecard. This is a good way of promoting your blog and earning some currency so you can advertise your blog on other popular blogs. The most popular blogs cost more to advertising on, so you have to “drop” you card at as many blogs as you can to earn enough currency to purchase advertising space.
• Bidvertiser: Similar to Google Adsense, Bidvertiser is a affiliate program that pays you for every click. The goal is to let advertisers bid on how much they are willing to pay to advertise on your site and you get paid per click on each ad. It is very easy to setup and they pay you via paypal or check with only a minimum of $10 in your account. The downside is that it does look alot like Google and you cannot run both on the same site. Monetize your Website or Blog with BidVertiser
• DealDotCom: This is a two-tier affiliate program that earns you cash whenever someone clicks on your advert, signs up to DealDotCom and purchases a product. Whenever you refer someone to DealDotCom via your affiliate link, you get paid 35% of DealDotCom’s profit for every item that they buy. If someone you referred to DealDotCom refers someone else, you get paid 15% of DealDotCom’s profit every time they buy something forever.
• Kontera ContentLink: ContentLink is contextually relevant keyword that is discovered on a web page from within Kontera´s network of publishers, and is automatically turned into a link to the most relevant ad from among Kontera´s advertisers.  With ContentLink publishers generate incremental revenue while advertisers reach their most targeted audience on a Cost-Per-Click basis. It is fairly easy to sign  up and once your site is approved, it takes a few seconds to add the HTML to your page. Once you have the tags, wait 24 hours and you’ll see the link within your own pages.

I have signed up to Google Adsense, but am still waiting for approval. I will post more on Google Adsense when I hear back from them, which is hopefully soon.

The above services are currently installed on my blog. I am yet to see any results, but that is due to the fact I have low hits. Now I have the advertising and affiliates in place, the next step is to try to drive some traffic to the site, but that won’t come until I have some content that is worth reading about. I am relying on people visiting this blog to see how my journey of creating something from nothing is working out.
 

So Why Can’t I?

// April 2nd, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Project Blogger

I have been off work the last few days, watching crappy day time TV and surfing the net. Lately I have been reading a bit about making money on the internet using blogs and buying/selling domain names.

I have been using the internet since I was about 14. I created my first website by 15. It was called “F1: Fast and Furious”, inspired by the Australian Formula 1 race I attended in March 1997. The website was fairly basic and contained F1 news, results and photos.

After running that site for about a year or so, I designed a few web sites for various companies and a few other personal sites. In 2001 I created another F1 site with a friend who owned a motorsport retail shop (www.gpshop.net). The site was very time consuming, providing news (sourced and written by myself), reviews, results, photos and even live timing. Since I ended working on that site at the end of the 2003 F1 season, I have not done much in terms of running web sites. I still design a few sites a year and try to keep up to date.

After reading about the people who created blog sites and now are making enough money to support themselves, I thought I might try it out, afterall, how hard can it be? If a 16 year old English kid can make “hundreds of thousands of pounds”, why can’t I?

So here goes. In the next few weeks I’ll be designing a new blog site (to replace this one), finding some advertising, networking with other “bloggers” and trying to build my online empire.

The long term plan? By the end of year I want to generate this blog into a revenue earning site. I don’t expect to earn enough money to support myself on this alone, though some extra cash wouldn’t hurt anyone, right?

So stay tuned as I blog the experience of trying to create something out of nothing, trying to turn a blog, which currently has 1 hit and earns $0, into something that will add a few more $$ to my bank account….