by Mark Mason | Mar 3, 2008 | Web Monitization
I did it. After declaring my intent to test long tail keyword theory with my Elvis niche site, I managed to rank on the first page of Google for the phrase ‘Elvis Aaron Presley Collectible Necktie.’ Was I now an unstoppable SEO powerhouse? Not exactly. But...
by Mark Mason | Feb 29, 2008 | Web Monitization
Picture this. A sunny day in San Jose, California. A convertible Ford Mustang with the top down. And instead of music, I am blasting an internet marketing podcast through the speakers. That was me — completely hooked on the Internet Business Mastery podcast,...
by Mark Mason | Feb 25, 2008 | Web Monitization
When you are building a niche site, content is the engine that drives everything. Without quality content, you have no reason for visitors to come, no material for search engines to index, and no foundation for monetization. The challenge for most part-time...
by Mark Mason | Feb 22, 2008 | Miscellaneous
When I first wrote about SEO back in 2008, it was simple. Put your keyword in the right places, build some backlinks, and wait for Google to send you traffic. That was basically it. A lot has changed since then, but here is the good news: the fundamentals of SEO are...
by Mark Mason | Feb 21, 2008 | Web Monitization
Here is something funny that happened during my long tail keyword test. I had been experimenting with ranking for ultra-specific search phrases using my Elvis niche site. The target phrase was ‘Elvis Aaron Presley Collectible Necktie’ — a...
by Mark Mason | Feb 21, 2008 | Web Monitization
With the Niche Super-Site mostly built and monetized, I wanted to run an experiment with long tail keywords before turning my full attention to traffic strategy. Long tail keywords — highly specific, low-competition search phrases — are a cornerstone of...
by Mark Mason | Feb 20, 2008 | Web Monitization
After returning from eye surgery, the next small but meaningful improvement to HistoryOfElvis.com was adding a favicon — that tiny icon that appears next to your URL in the browser tab. In 2008, this required editing your WordPress theme's header.php file and...
by Mark Mason | Feb 19, 2008 | Web Monitization
In February 2008, I had to take a short break from the Niche Super-Site series because I had laser eye surgery — PRK, specifically, not LASIK. I had underestimated how much having my eyes “blasted with high-energy photons” (as I put it at the time)...
by Mark Mason | Feb 16, 2008 | Web Monitization
The final piece of the monetization strategy for HistoryOfElvis.com was Amazon. After setting up eBay affiliates through phpBay, PopShops for Commission Junction products, and AdSense for display ads, I added the Amazon Omakase widget as a fourth revenue stream. Even...
by Mark Mason | Feb 15, 2008 | Web Monitization
AdSense was the third piece of the monetization puzzle for HistoryOfElvis.com, alongside eBay affiliate marketing through phpBay and product affiliate sales through PopShops. In 2008, AdSense was the backbone of nearly every niche site strategy, and for good reason...
