Now how did I do that?

The new section of my jewelry website has been hit massively by the AskJeeves bot. 212 M, 13082 pages, versus Googlebot’s 5M and 241 pages. What did I do that they like so well? I’d love to know, since the site hasn’t been up that long. The original part of the site hasn’t been spidered that well by AskJeeves, so I have no idea what happened to cause it. I’ve had a visitor from ask.com already, so I know I must be showing up. Yes, just one, but then they only just spidered me. It’s a subdomain, and not many links directly to it (certainly fewer than to the site).

In any case, I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth. It may be a minor engine relative to Google, Yahoo and MSN, but I’ll take what I can get.

Anti-spam screensaver?

That’s more or less what it amounts to, but I don’t know that I like it. I came across this article on it when reading in WebProWorld, and I just don’t know about it. I’m not a fan of DOS attacks, which is basically what this screensaver does to known spammers… although I will admit the possibility of making life more difficult for spammers does have its appeal.

Interesting discussion on my discussion boards.

It’s down in the Parents of School Age Kids section, and it’s on homeschooling. It was started by a visitor, who by the points made I would assume is a fundamentalist Christian, and feels that public schooling goes too much against Biblical values. I can’t say I agree, but it certainly makes for a fun debate, and so far things are remaining quite polite, which is nice to see in what is in many ways a religious debate.

Now, my daughter is too young to go to school, but unless the local public schools are simply too dreadful when she reaches that age, I am not going to homeschool her. I’ll supplement her school work if I feel she is lacking in any areas, but I think she’ll do very well with other children around her.

Now, today and tomorrow I really, really need to get transcription done before the pay period ends. I let myself get very distracted, naturally, with my grandpa in the hospital, and now I really need to play catchup. Not like next pay period will be any easier since we have to move sometime after December 7.

And, of course, I’d really so much rather spend the time on my websites…

Finally got some new AdWords running for the jewelry store.

Yes, I missed the biggest shopping day, but that’s life. I put in a ton of keywords, so now we’ll see what I get for my efforts. I’m just targeting a couple of sections of the website for now, and we’ll see from there what I do. It’s tricky figuring out what will work best, and I need to write some more ads for everything, of course.

Transcription has been slow but steady this weekend. I’ve had at least a few reports available those times I’ve been able to spare for typing.

We finally found an apartment, now we just need to find out what day we can move in. Naturally, it comes available the first day of Brent’s new job, so we can’t move in on that day. We need his work schedule to see when we can get in there. Still, I’m delighted. The complex has a playground, which happens to be just outside our patio, so Ariel should have an easy time finding friends. I just hope it isn’t too noisy when I need to work.

Are you making sense to your customers?

My husband and I have had to do a lot of apartment shopping, as we are moving – very soon. It’s not my favorite chore, nor is it Ariel’s, but it has to be done.

Some complexes have very good salespeople. Others definitely need more practice. We went to one complex the other day where we had mentioned that I am expecting #2. While we were out looking at the model apartment, the girl commented on how small I was. THEN she asked how far along I was. Now if you think about that, the compliment only works the other way around. Ask how far along I am, then comment on my size for that stage of pregnancy!

She was pretty clearly not that experienced. A cricket walking on the patio was quite an embarrassment to her – she can’t stand bugs of any sort. Now, I don’t like bugs either, but I know they are outside, especially with the beautiful natural landscaping the complex had. Nothing to be embarrassed about. She didn’t know how to present that in a more positive light.

Of course, in internet marketing, you have to catch the bugs before your visitors even come to your site, because they’re much harder to explain away. And you don’t dare make assumptions that will make you look bad – visitors and buyers will just leave.

Quick affiliate marketing tip report.

Just got this in email from Jason Potash. He recently held a seminar with some of the big names of affiliate marketing. Now he’s released a very short report on some of the basic affiliate marketing tactics they use. It’s quick and easy and worth the read. Oh, and it’s free.

Is he trying to sell something? Of course! If you want more, you have to buy the transcripts, audio recordings and PowerPoint slides from the webinar. Read the comments about the webinar and decide for yourself if it’s worth your money. There’s no risk, as Jason offers a 100% refund if you aren’t satisfied and don’t make money.

Am I going to try it? Well, in all honesty, it’s in the bookmarks. I’m still in the process of getting ready to move, which will include a change in computers, so I’m reluctant to start a new project just now. But it has made the to do list for after the move. I hate being too busy to try this kind of thing, but when I go for something like this, I need to be serious about it!

Well, I’m trying!

Trying to get some medical transcription done, that is. Ariel’s with her grandparents today, so I have peace and quiet. So naturally the transcription ran out after about a half hour. It should have something of a buildup by now, so I’ll be starting up again here in a few minutes.

During the forced break, I’ve taken my lunch break and done some work to prepare my jewelry site for some major changes. It’s taken lots of research to get ready for this, as I’m trying to give a good Amazon store on the site.

This means some serious changes in navigation, as previous there was only the Mondera store to worry about. Now I have to combine the navigation for the two. I’m enjoying it, although getting the Amazon store to work correctly is NOT easy. The program I’m using for it has some serious flaws, such as the search not working correctly. Some things I can figure out what the problem is, but since I don’t know PHP, finding the problem isn’t easy. Good thing I do have a light background in programming, so I can at least understand something of what is being done. I feel quite confident I will find the problems and fix them, as I’ve fixed several others already.

Part of this is also just to distract myself. My grandfather is in the hospital with very serious pneumonia and may very well not make it. He has improved very, very slightly over the past couple days, so I’ll just have to wait and see.

I’m starting to like this one.

AllSat seems to have some very good potential for me. I’m getting one new subaffiliate almost daily, and I have some pending sales. Now, considering I’ve spent all of maybe $2 promoting it, I’d call that pretty good return… assuming at least one or two of the subaffiliates does anything and that my pending installs do indeed go through. I know from experience that it is possible neither will happen.

I’ve spent a lot of time working hard on my jewelry site today. It suddenly hit me that Amazon.com has jewelry too. Now, it hasn’t been a smooth ride, and the site is decidedly not working yet, but it is a start. I have a lot of the display working how I want it to, can link to subcategories, but search malfunctions and links to individual items are being generated incorrectly, so it can’t sell anything yet.

If I can get all these things working, I will be very, very happy. The selection of jewelry at Amazon is simply amazing. But it’s tricky trying to customize how I present it to people. Then again, that’s half the fun!

So nice to see scammers lose.

Take a look at http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2004/11/financialresources.htm. These guys were big promoters of the envelope stuffing scheme. Now they can’t ever promote another work at home opportunity again in their lives and have to pay redresses. Very nice, although I’d prefer some solid jail time too for them. Of course, there are still more cases in different courts pending on them, so I trust it will come.

As for me, I’ve been keeping busy. Talked with my brother-in-law and my sister the other day about home business websites, and he’s going to do one for stay at home dads pretty soon here, which I think is great. They’re also going to try promoting satellite television in their area, as not everyone in their area can get cable, so there should be a good market for it. He currently mostly stays home with their kids, and they could use to replace the income from his current job, which he does on weekends, so I have high hopes for their success. At the very least, his website and this one should be quite complimentary, so we should be able to cross promote each other. He doesn’t know anything about website design, so I’m going to help him get set up and get moving on things. It should be a lot of fun and very interesting.

OK, so I’m a little late.

I just finished putting up my Christmas gift ideas on my fine jewelry website. One of those ideas that came around and I had to wonder why I hadn’t thought of and done it sooner. Now I’m thinking Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day lists… all to be worked on more in advance. The Valentine’s one I’ll have to start soon, in fact.

The list is by price ranges, and of course by no means displays every item in the store. However, I did add in items from another jewelry store to give a broader listing. I’m hoping to add in that store to my site after I get settled in after moving.

The hard part has been choosing keywords. No Christmas AND jewelry related phrases apparent at Wordtracker yet, so I had to go with the basics.