…When I’m not working on linux, I’ve been working on some websites. Mainly blogs, but also some ebay affiliate sites that are usually attached to blogs. I’m trying to get 30 up to start with, but I’m not very commited, I’ve got five going, oldest one is five months old. Once I hit 30, I’ll aim for 100 ;);

I got interested in SEO for some reason, and have been honing my skills with these sites with the intent to make a little money. If I can make $1/day per site, that’s $10,000 a year. Very acheivable.

The basic idea is to pick a phrase, maybe a three word phrase, that has 100,000 hits or less in google and 100 searches for it a day (there’s various way to determine search volume, such as google keyword tool, google trends, and a few free SEO type sites). That will give you a good chance of getting on the front page of google for that phrase in the first week and getting some traffic. If you don’t hit the front page of google straight away, you might have to wait six months or so. You need to be patient in this game.

So far, with one blog that was very targeted I got the seventh result in google almost instantly. With another site that wasn’t so targeted, I’m nowhere to be seen. So with that last site, I’ll build up ten articles, and keep an eye on it for six months. With the first site, I’ll try to post once a week and build a few links by submitting articles to howto sites, and directories. In five months, it’s paid for itself already with only a few hours work put in to it, it has seven articles, traffic is increasing every month, I’m getting natural backlinks and subscriptions to the feed, as well as a few artifitial backlinks I’ve made. I’ve started targeting keywords that have more search volume.

To target a phrase, put it in the title, h1 tag, and anchor text in each post pointing back to the main page. Each page should have a unique title, though. Also put it in the anchor text of external links.

What I really enjoy is on page SEO and ad placement and look, what I don’t enjoy is creating artificatial links with the intent of getting an artifically high google rank. Even though google says SEO isn’t spam, I can’t help but think it’s spammy.

But I’m enjoying creating content, and studying SEO and marketing. I made my first ebay affiliate sale sale after 50 hits, very exciting. I might have a crack at amazon afiliate links next and incorporating ebay into wordpress, rather than a separate page.

BTW, targeting internet savvy people isn’t the easiest way to make money, they are blind to ads. Best to go after non techy people. I’m running ads on this site, but it’s dragging my CTR down. I’ll give it a few more months and then turn them off.

Just got to get these 30 sites up…