Posted by Andy Crofford
Shawn from Elite Blogger is in the process of setting up what he hopes to be the largest WordPress theme site on the internet. The URL for his WordPress Theme site is Word.PressThe.me. Pretty sweet domain name if you ask me. Shawn also has a pretty cool design on the site.
 The Word.Press.The.me logo I encourage everyone to help Shawn out and add a theme if you have one. This is a good opportunity to be part of something great. Shawn is a very nice guy and runs a great blog. I think it would be awesome if he achieved his goal.
Posted by Andy Crofford
 Quick Updates As I mentioned in a previous post I have been experimenting with some search engine marketing. The first page I created with on the second page of Google (~650,000 other sites) and the term with quotes was on the first page (~80,000 other sites).
Now, I realize this probably isn’t anything to get excited about but I consider a victory. Hopefully I continue to have this kind of result with the other products I plan to create pages for.
Besides SEM I am also working on some Build A Niche Store sites. I think I am going to use the same SEO techniques I used on the site I mentioned above to drive traffic to my BANS sites. The only thing I really hate is writing all the articles necessary to be successful. One day I should be making enough money to pay others to write them for me. Until that day comes I will be writing them myself.
The Pay Per Click Formula course has been put on hold. I need to analyze the change with Adwords a bit before I start up a bunch of campaigns again. As someone else mentioned the chagnes seem to be mostly superficial but I would like to be sure before I try it again.
Last but not least I have been trying to come up with an idea for two domains I own. BloggerFusion.com and BestOfLife.net. The second is a PR1 that hasn’t been dropped in over seven years. If any of you have an idea for what I would do please leave a comment. If I use your idea I may be able to find it in me to send you a little something.
The problem with working on all of the above is time. At work I am part of a business unit getting ready to launch a new product in mid-September. That is really keeping me busy. It is a short day when I work 12 hours. I won’t even have a long weekend. I hope to get some things done on my sites while I am off for a couple of days but the fact that college football has started and my wife wanting to spend some time together I don’t know if I can squeeze it in. If I can I certainly will.
So, send me your ideas for BloggerFusion.com and BestOfLife.net and I will chat with you all later.
Posted by Andy Crofford
 The Cuil logo Cuil is a new search engine that was launched on July 28th. I have been checking it out and decided I would write a little review.
Site Look and Feel
I can’t quite pinpoint the reason but I don’t like how the search results are displayed. Maybe I am used to the look of Google or have been spoiled by shiney Web 2.0 sites. Cuil just isn’t sparkly enough for me. To me it seems like I am searching the archives of some legal site or something. The bottom line is the way Cuil displays their search results is flat out bad and does not hold my interest.
Search Results
Cuil claims to have three times the number of indexed pages than Google. I did a search for my name and the only results I get on the first page are comments I have made on other blogs. You would think that all I did was sit around and comment on DCR’s blog all day long. In another month or so I will try the search again and see what I come up with. If the results are littered with comments on DCR’s blog I will never visit his site again (just kidding Dan).
Site Name
Cuil, is pronounced “cool”, or so the founders of the search engine claim. For some reason I just can’t pronounce it like that. To me it should be pronounced “Q-L”, but English was never my best subject (as you can probably tell from my entries). Any way, imagine if Cuil was way better than Google and you decided to spread the word around school or work. It would be annoying as hell to have to spell it each time. Inevitably the person you are telling would misspell it once or twice and then you would just forget it because it is too much of a pain to tell people about it. Yes, I am reaching here but you must admit you most likely never had that Problem with Google or Yahoo!.
The fact of the matter is, I will not be switching to Cuil anytime soon for my search engine needs. I also believe there will be another search engine that will come along and make a name for itself. Afterall, ten years ago we had never heard of Google and search engines Alta Vista and Lycos were widely used.
Posted by Andy Crofford
 Will it pay off? Hot on the tale of my entry last week called “Article Marketing - What is it?” I am currently in the process of writing a ton of articles. In the past week I have been doing a lot of research on various prodcuts offered by affiliate networks and have decided to try my hand at promoting some of these things through search engine marketing.
There are approximately 10 products I have picked out to experiment with SEM on. With each I item I am writing several articles in addition to optimizing my main sites for the product keyword. It is a great deal more work then I thought it would be and I thought it would be a ton.
The good news is I am almost finished up with the first site. All I have to do is get the articles I have written onto some more blog directories. The only thing really holding me back is the fact that I HATE having to sign up for different article directories. It should take me long to get past this little wall and I should hopefully be ranked on the first page of Google in a couple of short weeks. I will keep you posted.
I am also working on some BANS stores as well as PPC marketing. Yes, it appears I am spreading myself pretty thin with all of this and my full time job but it is how I work best. So stay tuned. It is my goal to have an income report by October.
Posted by Andy Crofford
 Changes are coming. There are going to be some pretty big updates to Google Adwords. Here is the meat of the update:
- Quality Score will now be more accurate because it will be calculated at the time of each search query
- Keywords will no longer be marked ‘inactive for search’
- ‘First page bid’ will replace ‘minimum bid’ in your account
You can read more about this on the AdWords Blog. It will be interesting to see how people adapt to these changes. That is one thing you can always count on with Google, things will change.
From an end user prospective I think the changes are good. Google is always looking to improve the end user experience and I think this is another move in their effort to do just that.
What does everyone else think?
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