About Me

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Thought I would add a little more to this About page to show my background in the subjects I cover.

Knowledge

Languages

• PHP
• MySql
• HTML
• XHTML
• CSS
• Javascript
• Visual Basic
• XML

Software

• Excel
• Filemaker Pro
• Photoshop CS
• Dreamweaver
• Eclipse
• TopStyle
• Apache web server

Site Software and CMS’s

• Wordpress
• OS Commerce
• Scuttle
• PHP Nuke
• Movable Type
• Webalizer
• AW Stats
• PHPbb
• Phorum
• PHP MyAdmin
• b2evolution
• Nucleus CMS
• Zen Cart

Other

• Adsense
• Adwords
• Clickbank
• Commission Junction
• ShareASale
• Wordtracker
• Miva
• Yahoo Search Marketing
• Froogle
• Google Webmaster Tools
• Yahoo Site Explorer
• eBay

Experience

• 2002-2003 - My extra income came mainly through eBay and products about eBay. I sold information products, compiled CD’s and my software. I dabbled a little in auctioning other people’s products for them on commission.
• Dec 2002:
  • Started a small eBay business buying closeout products online and reselling them on eBay. Focused mainly on products that were small and light but provided a big profit to minimize shipping hassles, mainly Palm Pilot accessories and collectible phones.
  • Began to realize that if I could detect bidding patterns on eBay, I could have a distinct advantage over other sellers. I taught myself Visual Basic and wrote Hotbid 3.0 to find these patterns. I am sure I am the first to release such software. I sold a few copies but was out-marketed by companies who came out with more advanced products shortly thereafter, like Hammertap. The software made it to version 4.0 and then I got tired of always updating it for Ebay changes and stopped development about 2 years later.
• Mar 2002:
  • Discovered the information product market on eBay and began to focus on this. Products consisted of such things as CD’s of collected freeware, public domain pdf’s and direct downloads of collected links. This was still a time when searching online sucked, but when hasn’t it. I had compiled vast lists of bookmarks by using a desktop metasearch program and going through them one by one for the gold. I received great feedback from my lists of links.
  • Decided I was doing way too many things that there should be software to do, like emailing eBay customers their download links. So I used Outlook Express to automatically reply to Paypal payments, sending customers their download links. I wrote about this in an ebook called Automated Ebay Sales. I gave away resale rights and auction ads with the book to virally spread the affiliate links in the book.
• Nov 2002
  • Purchased my first domain profit-ware.com, finally tired of free hosting. Mainly used it as a base of operations for my products and my auctions. Dabbled in email marketing with a newsletter without much success. This would have to be one of my weak points. I learned a few things about SEO during this time an applied them to the site including: article marketing, linking, keyword optimization, and, though it had not yet acquired the name, linkbaiting. During this period, I religiously wrote 30 articles in 30 days and submitted them to article announcement groups. But I was sending traffic to a site yet to be truly monetized and I hadn’t yet starting paying attention to statistics, so I had no idea of the successful campaign I had begun.
• Dec 2003
  • Purchased the domain clickbankebook.com and compiled an ebook that used Searchfeast to search the Clickbank Marketplace. Spread this book around the net and began to make my first few dollars from affiliate marketing. I was basically done with using eBay to create income by now. Affiliate marketing was my main focus.
  • Signed up for Adsense and began making money instantly. Not much but worth keeping on my site.
  • Wrote MaxAdwords and gave it away for free right when everyone was coming out with a pay software to scrape Adwords results. Linkbaiting again. Attained a traffic rank in the top 10,000 at Alexa.
• 2004-2007 - My extra income comes mainly from affiliate programs and Google Adsense. I am trying to learn new technologies while keeping this income going.
• Jan 2004
  • Starting working with open source content management system like phpnuke and created Eristoddle which is one of my sites listed in DMOZ, as if that counts any more.
• Sept 2004
  • Taught myself PHP and turned profit-ware.com into a cbmall clone for an exercise. Walked away and left it. Little did I know that all the work I had put into linking in the past had panned out. I checked my account one day and realized I had made more in a month online than I ever had before. My study of SEO became my major focus from then on. Profit-ware finally provided income that equalled my day job before getting banned by Google in January of 2005 for being a thin affiliate site.
  • I am now a family man and doing this part-time now really became part time instead of every minute I wasn’t at work or sleeping. More structure had to be added and priorities had to be assigned. This I am still working on.
• Dec 2004
  • Finished a second edition of Automated Ebay Sales for a joint venture with Joe Vitale and Bill Hibbler.
  • Rewrote the contruction estimating spreadsheet for my day time employer. Bought a book on Excel the day the week before.
• Jan 2005
  • Profit-ware banned from Google. But I had been working on a whole new concept for the whole CBmall thing.
• Mar 2005
  • Had my sales levels back up to where they were before with a new site.
• May 2005
  • Began experimenting with using Adwords and to a lesser extent Miva to promote Clickbank products. I experienced enough success to continue.
• Winter 2005-2006
  • My online income had surpassed anything I had ever made at a day job: 40% through SEO, 40% through PPC, and 20% through Adsense.
• Spring 2006
  • Moved cross country with my family to our new house. Decided to make a break from the whole day job thing. Unfortunately, it takes a little more money that I thought to provide for a family of four.
  • Created Ware23 from scratch. I had written code for complete sites before, but then had used templates for the presentation. I had studied design principles and css for a while now, so I scrapped the open source software I was using and wrote the whole thing. It is still in development. I plan on perfecting an algorithm to sort all the products perfectly based on sales, hits, search engine ranking, competition, commission, and average price as well as promoting it more effectively.
  • Created 23 PadBlaster to promote Ware23. And it is in need of an update.
  • Installed Scuttle on Bloglot.com. Promoted this by developing TinyPinger and creating a list of social bookmarking sites and promoting it around the internet. I planned to get a little Adsense income from the site. The site taught me a lot about xml-rpc. The front page listed entries from the top 100 blogs updated hourly. I tried to stem the tide of spam by seeding the scuttle installation with the entries from my top 100 blogs and top tags at delicious. In December, the spam overtook the site and the mysql server couldn’t handle it. It was either kill the site or lose a hosting provider.
• May 2006
  • Got a job at a local window and door company as an installer, bringing experience in the industry. Applied because they were the only one that listed a website in their yellowpage ad. Mentioned my online experience when I was hired.
• Nov 2006
  • I no longer install windows at my day job. I work in the office: updating the product database, photographing new products, updating the company’s website and marketing through SEO. Online sales is the most profitable part of the company. Here I have learned more about online commerce, datafeeds, Amazon, Froogle, Google Sitemaps, Yahoo Site Explorer, Filemaker, Photoshop, OS Commerce, and Apple. After using PCs for years, I now use a Mac at work and am considering a Mac when I purchase my next computer.
  • My online business, while not at the highest levels they have been, still provides a good, steady income.
• Jan 2007
  • Total re-design of ClickbankEbook . I updated the look to my own template, removed all tables, used css for all presentation, and integrated the sections of the site into a more complete whole.
• Future Goals and Projects
  • Integration of website statistics and Adwords campaigns into a seamless system.
  • Continued development of Ware23.
  • Expansion into more affiliate programs, especially those with datafeeds.
  • Research contextual content matching.
  • Find a replacement for Visual Basic 6 to create desktop applications. I don’t want to put the effort into learning the bloated Visual Studio .NET. I am really interested in the new IDE’s to create executables using PHP like Roadsend, but will go to JAVA if necessary.
  • Become more familiar with AJAX and Ruby on Rails.
  • Certified in PHP.
  • Certified in MySql.
  • Adwords Professional.
  • And on and on.

This blog was started long, long ago with a hosting provider far, far away, before I knew the important of backing up entries offline. So, unfortunately, 2 years worth of posts are missing. This is mainly a log of things I find of interest while building a series of internet sites. Issues that affect my business on the web. New ways of getting traffic. New ways of building interest. New techniques of marketing to the people of the net. Sometimes I bookmark sites here that I don’t want to lose on a social network or my bookmark file. The lists of links are pages I use daily. The links are my favorites.