I had a beer and burger with a friend last evening, and we were talking about his new found interest in day trading.

His primary goal was to master the art of reading stock market trends, and earning a modest profit buying and selling stocks. He says if he could make a living doing that, then he wouldn't have any clients to deal with.

Right now, he's a freelance programmer doing a lot of Drupal and LAMP stuff for various dotcom companies. He works out of his house, but he's far from free. He has to be there in his home office, with his computer, and all his paperwork, so that he can conference with his clients, on a daily basis.

Client relations management can make or break businesses.

And that's why he wants to shift careers and become a day trader, he can invest his own money, and not have to deal with anyone else.

Where Internet Marketing Comes In

So I told him that's why I love my job. As an Internet marketer I don't necessarily have to be stuck at home. Technically, I do have clients, in that the affiliate merchants and advertisers are sending me checks. But, I don't have to conference with them daily. It isn't that often that we communicate, and when we do it's through e-mail. And now it seems I communicate with them through Facebook and Twitter.

That frees up my day time to where I can enjoy the day, doing the things I really love to do, and then spend the evenings working my websites.

I tell my friends that I retired at the age of 38. That's when I quit my "real job", and started doing this home-based Internet marketing stuff full time. I used to manage the research & development departments for some software companies. I had a boss, and I had to commute along congested freeways. I had deadlines, and I had employees to manage. It seemed no matter how much I poured myself into that job, my only return on investment was a paycheck.

So my advice to you?

Shift your career, or your work processes to where you manage less. The less you have to deal with, the more freedom you have, and fewer headaches to suffer from.

As an Internet marketer, I still have to do client relations management, it's just that the business model I'm working in requires very little CRM time.

If you publish several blogs, you could hire bloggers to write them for you. But then, now you're managing bloggers, and dealing with their personal issues, having to fire the bad ones, and all the headaches that go along with it. Maybe it's better to focus on the few blogs that monetize well for you, and you write them all yourself.

You may never develop the big influential blog network that other folks have developed, but then again, you're still earning enough to keep you alive, and you have more freedom.

The promise of a home-based Internet marketer is not making the big huge bucks, it's all the freedom and stress-free working that you get.  ✓

The past couple of months, I've monetized my beef jerky review blog by selling banner ads directly to advertisers.

Previously, I was running Google AdSense and displaying banner ads from the Gourmet Ads network.

While I've sold banner ads directly before, I've never put this much effort into making it a viable revenue stream. So far, of all the websites I currently run, I'm doing direct ad sales only this one website.

Here's some bullet points on what I've done...

• In the first year of publishing my beef jerky review blog, I managed to maintain some communication with a handful of beef jerky manufacturers and retailers. I think this was critical in establishing trust and credibility with them.



• Last January, I made website design changes to accomodate two standard banner sizes, a 160x600 and a 300x250.



• At the same time, I began testing out various ad managers. I looked at the cheaper ad managers, that allowed me to manage ads remotely, and not on my own server.



• I e-mailed those manufacturers and retailers whom I had maintained communication with, and notified them that I'm currently testing out banner ads, and planned to sell banner ads in the future. I offered them to run their banners for free during the testing phase, and they sent me some banners.



• I eventually settled on Google AdManager, it's free, it's feature-rich, and it interfaces with AdSense to monetize unsold inventory.



• I waited until my website averaged 1,000 page views per day, just to make it practical to sell banner ads on a CPM.



• On June 1, 2009, I began selling banner ads. I set a CPM rate of $5.00 for the 160x600 and the 300x250. I also redesigned the site to accomodate a 468x60 space, and set a rate of $2.50 CPM.



• I published an "Advertise Here" page, which spells out all the details on buying ad banners on my site.



• Right off the bat, three of the manufacturers whom I was running test banners for free opted to buy ads from me right away. I'm not sure if any of them had ever purchased ad banner inventory on a CPM before. So to make things easy, I offered a buy at $50.00, which got them 10,000 impressions. I explained to them that their banner would run in a rotation with other advertisers' banners.



• As it turns out, the $50.00 buy so far seems to be successful. All advertisers wanted the 300x250 space, because it displays on every page, including the home page, and displays above the fold. At 10,000 impressions per $50.00, a buy seems to last about a month, with three advertisers in that space, at the current traffic levels.



• Two of those three manufacturers renewed their purchase of the 300x250 at $50.00 each. The other manufacturer initially bought 30,000 impressions at $150.00.



• I've also sold a $50.00 buy for the 160x600 space to a manufacturer, who renewed that buy again a month later. And today, I brought on a fourth manufacturer who bought into the 300x250 space for $50.00, and another $50.00 for the 160x600.



• I have two other manufacturers who expressed interest in buying impressions in the 300x250 space, but are developing their creatives.

In the world of optimizing your page URLs for SEO, there comes the discussion of using dashes (or hyphens) versus underscores.

For example...

1. search-engine-optimization.htm

2. search_engine_optimization.htm

After spending the past couple of month tweeting and twittering as often as I can (or at least as often as I can say something worthwhile), I'm coming to the conclusion that your target market is not on Twitter.

Twitter is a great communication tool, and addicting, considering the people you follow tend to be those you find interest in. But if you're an affiliate marketer, blogger, or publisher, do you really think your target audience is on Twitter?

I believe your target audience is still on Google.

That is, consumers find you through Google searches, not Twitter searches.

Twitter is where the techie people are. It's where the marketers are, the profiteers, the business people.

Twitter is a great way to keep your existing customers loyal. If they love your product, they'll follow you on Twitter, and you can feed them updates and keep your brand fresh in their minds. But you're not going to find new customers on Twitter.

On the other hand, everyone on Twitter is also a consumer. But the difference is that folks on Twitter are there to market, communicate and follow, they're not in shopping mode or research mode. Consumers still do that through Google searches.  ✓

One of the biggest challenges as a publisher of websites is that I'm barraged with e-mail spam.

It's hard to avoid because I need to publish my e-mail address on my blogs and websites if I want people to contact me.

So, I resorted to publishing my contact information in an image file.

Visit my Contact Page for example (opens a new browser window)....
http://www.inyourweb.com/2004/12/contact-me.htm

Notice the contact info is actually an image, it's not text. This prevents spam bots from harvesting my e-mail address.

It also prevents Google and other search engines from making my address and phone number searchable.

If you were to Google my name, address, and phone number, you'll still find me because I have so many other websites, and I haven't been able to convert all that contact info into image files.

Here are some tips to creating a contact image file...

• Create the image using the same font and font size as your site's text


• Save the image in .GIF format, and use a transparent background


• If you have several websites, store the image in a central location, and have all websites link to the image.


• Use a robots.txt file to prevent search engines from adding the image to their image archives.

I just had an SEO company cold call me on the phone this afternoon, trying to sell me their SEO service. Are times so bad for the SEOs that they have to resort to cold calling for prospects?

I thought Congress passed a law that made it illegal to conduct commercial phone solicitation? The "Do Not Call Registry"? I added my phone number to that.

If you've followed this blog, you'll know that my view of SEO companies is rather low. I know there are some ethical ones out there, but from what I can see, the bulk of them, maybe 99%, are snake oil salesmen, promising to cure your Google ailments, but only taking your money and not improving your traffic flow.

All of them publish blogs that disseminate unsubstantiated SEO tips for the purpose of making themselves sound authoritative, hoping to lure in potential customers. That information goes around the Internet and creates a lot of confusion, making SEO sound far more complicated than it really is.

Now that at least one SEO company is cold calling publishers on the phone, it lowers my respect for SEOs even more.

Here's how the conversation went with this SEO company...

SEO: Hello Mr. Johnson, I'm looking for the owner of Biker News Online.

Me: That's us.

SEO: We identified several keywords and phrases that your website should be optimized for, and your website is not ranking high for these words at all. Are you aware of that?

Me: I think you identified the wrong keywords. We identified specific keywords that will bring in specific audiences, and you'll find that we actually do rank very high for those.

SEO: Ok, I see. But the keywords we've identified are a part of your target audience...

Me: (breaking in), But I don't think you understand the target audience we're going after.

SEO: Well, that's what I want to talk to you about. We can run an analysis on your website to show you what keywords target which audiences, and how your website ranks with those keywords. Then we submit your site to various directories that match that audience...

Me: (breaking in) Well that doesn't sound like anything I need to be involved in, so I welcome you to analyze my website, and submit it to anyplace you'd like. You don't need me to do that.

SEO: Well actually, there is a fee of $9.95...

Me: (breaking in) Well I'm not interested in paying any money.

SEO: Ok, that's what I thought.