Wordpress

I think I've mentioned before, my challenge of having so many ideas arriving in my head.  If only I could get them up and running as fast as they arrive!

Wordpress could be something that could help though.  You really can install it quite quickly.  The thing that I'm finding takes some time is choosing a suitable template and making the necessary changes to make it mine.   Well, today I installed Wordpress and completed a beta version of the template - all in the hour that my son was napping.  He doesn't nap for long you see and now I need to either get creative with finding time to some of these ideas to life or wait until he goes back to his day mum before I can get some work done again.

Well, I've decided to take the creative route - letting go of the form.  Whatever will be will be.... and hopefully Wordpress will be the answer.

I first came across it as a component of Joomla and I found it clumsy and so I thought that it extended to the standalone version.  Wrong!  It's brilliant, smooth is a word that comes to mind (amongst all the ideas :-).  And SO easy to use.

If I was to come up with an idea and try and roll out a website with my all time favorite CMS, Joomla, then it would take about 3 days of dedicated work.  With Wordpress I can see it taking about 1 day :-)  

Hooray!  3 cheers for Wordpress!  and I'm not the only one who thinks so.

Why I'm a millionaire....

I can tell you now, it's not my bank balance, that's for sure. One day it will be that too BUT what it is that makes me a millionaire is a smile...

a smile from my son, first thing in the morning,
at night, in our special time before going to sleep...
when he looks up at me and smiles...
when I'm in the middle of doing something and turn around, catching him watching me with a great big smile on his face
after I've finished bathing him, he gives me a cheeky little smile and runs to my bedroom so that I can chase him... then he chuckles....
with a million smiles
a million smile each day ... make me a millionaire mum!

thank you Jamie

STOP the train

I'm beginning to realise that there is no quick solution to making money online and am beginning to realise that what I've been suspecting about internet marketing is true.

Basically Web 2.0 with it' social networking is changing the way we operate on the internet. We are beginning to filter out the adverts that we constantly see on the websites. In fact, I've started noticing that I click away from websites that have been created solely for the purpose of displaying google ads. How on earth can they be getting return visitors?

...and those domain names that are JUST serving google ads? How on earth are they even existing? (marketplace.com is one of them - there are many that fit this style of website) They must be making money because the word 'google' is not displayed with the 'sponsored links' label' - this means that they're doing so well with the click through rates (CTR) that google have 'promoted' them to a new level.

One really excellent site that does actually provide good content is gumtree (in SA it's gumtree.co.za but they also have the other domain extensions for different countries). Gumtree displays google ads and they must be doing very well because they too have the 'sponsored link' label not displaying the word 'google'. BUT I don't mind the ads on their site. They're in strategic places AND gumtree is providing an excellent service to the world with the free classifieds.

So yes, it can be done - people are making money from it. BUT don't believe everyone who says that they're doing it too. I've been following some of Joel Comm's advice and seeing what he does. The man has created quite a presence for himself on the internet and he says that he's making loads from displaying google adsense on his sites - so how come then, when you visit worldvillage.com - one of Joel's sites - do the words 'google ads' still display? He either uses separate accounts for the adsense, or, google requires ALOT more revenue to be generated for the words 'google ads' to disappear, or, he's not making as much money from it as he says.

Also, I've noticed that all these e-books and one time solutions that you can buy are going for a once of special offer of $47, but just for today because they normally go for $97. Odd? Copy cat solutions? They must've worked but my suspicion is that they're losing their power. All the websites look the same. With their highlighting text and testimonials.

Ok, I'm good at picking up patterns, and this pattern is telling me something. STOP the train, do something different. The internet is changing, traditional marketing methods are not going to work anymore - we are becoming immune to all the flashing banners and adsense stuff.

So what does work? What should we be looking out for? In a world that is FULL of advertising, what is it that we can do? What can we trust? Who can we trust?

Each other.

A result from Google :-)

Yay! and Hooray! Google got back to me with regards to my adsense account - it's finally been approved.

Now I still have to figure out what's wrong with my adwords account. Google still remains silent on that one but I have noticed that the 'reason' for the ads not running has changed.

For now I'm just taking it as a sign that I shouldn't spend any money just yet on advertising and find some other ways to direct traffic to the money making things. My yahoo adwords equiv.account is also on hold but that's because my credit card is empty (full?). So, another sign....

Beautiful weekend here in Cape Town today :-) The wind has finally died down a bit.