Yep…you’re right. Cliqpreneur looks completely different.

I’ve been working diligently to update the look of Cliqpreneur and make it more professional. I also changed a few elements to get some additional space and make things clearer. There are a few more changes I would make if this were my only project. However, I need to get started on the content site.

Let me know what you think, and I’ll try to incorporate suggestions in the next major overhaul. I look forward to your feedback.

Stay tuned.

It’s time for the rubber to meet the road. I’ve researched my next site and decided to start a content site on a topic that is near and dear to my heart.

I’ll document my progress on Cliqpreneur. I’ll share my successes, insights, frustrations and failures. Hopefully, this case study will enlighten my readers as well as provide personal motivation by documenting my progress publicly.

I’ve already gotten a few things out of the way:

• Registered four versions of a domain name which I will ultimately test using the process I described in the post A Better Way to Choose a Domain Name.
• Got hosting with GoDaddy.com . Cliqpreneur is hosted with 1&1 Internet, but in the spirit of experimentation, I chose another hosting provider. There are other providers that I would like to try, and I will post a review when I have a few more companies to compare.
• Installed WordPress on one of the domains. I decided to use WordPress as a content management system for the new site due to my familiarity with the application.
• Redirected all the other domains to the domain hosting the site.

The next step in my process is to start putting together the content. Since the site will be based on my unique knowledge and experiences, I will write all the initial content. It should be interesting to see how long content development takes, since I am not a great writer or typist. I suspect some people could execute this part of the plan in 50% to 25% of the time it takes me.

For my next post in this series, I’ll outline the steps in the process as I envision them right now. Obviously, the steps may change as I proceed.

Last but not least, I am setting a target date of February 15, 2008 to go live.

If there are any specifics you would like to see as part of the case study, please comment below and I’ll try to cover any requests.

Stay tuned.

Image by emdot

I had some gift certificates from Christmas, so I picked up a copy of Yanik Silver’s Moonlighting on the Internet. I started reading about Yanik in the last month or two, and I wanted to see what I could learn from his first print book.

Things you’ll like about Moonlighting on the Internet (I liked them)

• Moonlighting covers several different internet business models: information marketing, eBay, affiliate marketing, Yahoo! Stores, and blogging. Every entrepreneur is different and having a several options to learn about is helpful.
• Yanik chose leaders in each area to write the section for that business. Rosalind Gardner developed the section on affiliate marketing, and since I follow her business model closely, that section built my confidence in the information Yanik is presenting. Also, the section on blogging was developed by Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net, and I read his blog daily. While blogging is not my primary business model, I read ProBlogger to learn how best to share my experiences and ideas here on Cliqpreneur.com.
• You don’t feel overwhelmed. I’ll be honest…a lot of internet business models leave me thinking” I’m not sure I can do this”. Yanik on the other hand makes you feel exactly the opposite. When you finish the book you think “I can do that. I need to start now!”
• There are lots of bonuses on the internet to support the book. I’ve read plenty of books on starting businesses, and most of them are lacking in the real details to get things going. Yanik fills the gap with video and audio you can access online to help complete the puzzle.

Things you might not like about Moonlighting on the Internet

• Moonlighting will leave intermediate to advanced readers disappointed. The book is really a beginners guide to earning money on the internet.
• You will probably need the bonuses and/or additional reading and learning to start your business. While I do like the content, it is not a step by step guide for the absolute newbie.
• The book does not cover the pure PPC business model. However, I do think that for the intended audience PPC is a bit more advanced and rightfully excluded. You will have to look elsewhere to learn about PPC. Jeremy Palmer and Amit Mehta are very successful with the PPC model and are a good source of information if you are interested in pure PPC.

Summary

Moonlighting on the Internet is great read for the newbie to beginner internet entrepreneur. The book presents several different business models from experts in that area, and gives the reader a lot of options as well as additional resources. I definitely found a few things I will try in my business at some point. If you are looking for a good book to get started, Moonlighting will give you ideas and inspiration and get you pointed in a profitable direction.

The post I made last Thursday, How Daytrading Concepts Can Improve your PPC Campaigns, acheived a first page SERP Ranking for Google and Yahoo. Unfortunately, it was not for a keyword phrase that helps my blog.

When I looked at Google Analytics for Cliqpreneur, I noticed that there was a site visit from an organic search result from Yahoo for the keyword phrase “names of successful daytraders”. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love for a site visit to result in a new reader of my blog. However, in this cas, I seriously doubt that would have happened. Let’s take a look at the SERPs to see what happened:

Google looked like this:

and Yahoo looked like this:

You can see that the post is in position # 4 on both search engines for that keyword phrase. By looking in more detail at the listing, we can see why the searcher clicked through. The actual text is as follows:

Google:

and Yahoo:

It’s pretty clear that the searcher was looking for successful daytraders. In both of these results, we can imagine the individual seeing “Step by Step Internet Profits” and “Successful daytraders”, but missing the part about domain names on the second line. Obviously, this looked like it might answer their question, so they clicked on the link.

Great you say? Not really. The searcher clearly did not get the answer they were seeking on Cliqpreneur. From a personal perspective, I did not get a visitor that was interested in my content. We were both losers in this information transaction.

This “bad” outcome could have been avoided with a slight modification of the headline and the first sentence of the post. The headline could have been rearranged as follows: “Improve Your PPC Campaigns with Daytrading Concepts”. The first sentence of the post could also have been rewritten to put “PPC campaign” before daytraders. By doing this, the real focus of the post, PPC campaigns, would have been more prevalent.

So, keep word order in mind in these very important areas of your posts. Your focus should always be to provide valuable content to the people that are looking for it, and this will help you do that.

Stay tuned.