Rudiawan-Lukman.com » My Journal

The Unpredictable Google

Rudi — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 15:01:40 +0000

It is interesting to see what Google can do to your blog. One of my blogs had quite a stable visitors previously, around 150 number of visits per day until suddenly it was sinking down to 30 – 40 visits only. This is a PR1 blog, around 6 months old packed with 40 posts keywords stuffed. I didn’t write new posts there – basically this blog got a little bit neglected after I join Alex Jeffreys coaching program. Nothing changed and for two weeks I was really disappointed seeing the traffic never picked up again to its previous state.

And then something weird happened. The traffic started picking up again and it hit 1806 visits (!) on Sept 28. Google Analytics showed 50% of the visitors were sent by google.com referral and only 3.7% sent by Google organic search. Now the traffic is stable again at 1,000 to 1,200 visits per day and I’m just happy with it.

Here is the screen capture of my blog’s stats. Note that I switched hosting to Hostgator on the Sept 5, 2009 so before that date the number is zero.

This blog had no subscription forms before the rush so I was busy preparing 3 different forms last week. Now I managed to catch 10 people to join my list, all by means of free gifts.

My Adsense income also grows much faster now

I’m still investigating why Google is sending me the good numbers of visitors. Once I find it I can optimize my blog to keep the visitors number grows bigger, or at least stable at current position. I’ve never expected nor imagined I would have a thousand visitors a day so I’m really excited to see what will happen next.

Write Soon,

-Rudi

Video Promotion – Converting Your Article into Video

Rudi — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:47:18 +0000

I still have some pending tasks this month. The first one is tweeting. I almost gave it up because I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with it. That’s until Gil sent me an invitation e-mail to try his twitter app. I tested it two days ago and now my twitter followers number has been increasing from 16 (yeah, you read it right) to 263 people, only by following one guy I didn’t even know. I just made sure that I followed people interested in the same internet marketing niche. Thanks Gil, you rock dude!

The second task is video promotion. We can either make video tutorials using a camcorder or by means of a screen recording software. Because I don’t have a camcorder yet I decided to go with the desktop recorder option. Again one fellow from Alex Jeffreys students helped me. Alvin gave me his supports and I have no more excuses not to do this work. What a fantastic community we have here!

For people who can’t afford to buy Camtasia there are some free recording software available, but if you are so lazy to do the video promotion works and yet you want to create some cool videos there is another option: Try the Article Video Robot!

What AVR does is it converts your articles (can be your blog articles or something you wrote for ezinearticles.com) into video presentation. Just copy-paste your articles and let the robot do the job. If you have no guts to speak at your own presentation don’t worry because the software will do it for you. You can insert some pics or animation and background music as well. I gave AVR a try to see how it works. You can join AVR for a free trial but you can’t download or distribute the results. Since I want to test it I joined the AVR membership and sent it to some sites. Around 3 of them rejected the video and the rest accepted it.
I joined the cheapest package and payed a half price only because I got 50% discount coupon form a lazy marketer who sent me the information.

The package I joined includes 50 video downloads / month plus a submission to 17 video sites. Note that this video submission is a bonus. You are given 125 points to spend, for every one video submitted to a site they will deduct one point from you, in other words sending one video to 10 sites will take 10 points off. You can top up your points if you need more video submission.

I don’t expect much from this video submission but my Google Analytics showed something interesting:

I can’t explain which sites sent me the traffic because Google didn’t show me the data but as you can see from the chart it’s very hard for me to hit 20 visitors / day except on Sept 20. I guess I have to test with some other video promotion before I can say they are responsible for the traffic spike.

Anyway if you are lazy to make your own video promotion and want to try this service I have secured a 50% discount coupon for you valid until Oct 23, 2009. Just click on the COUPONS button and fill out the form.

Talk soon,

Rudi

Easy Article Marketing with Video

How to Find Backlinks to Your Blog

Rudi — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:13:51 +0000

Most of us Alex Jeffreys students have installed the widlink plugin to help getting traffic to the blogs. It’s been around 2 weeks after I installed it and this morning I check how many blogs linked to my blog – the one you are reading now. You can use the search engines to find backlinks to your blog but the results vary greatly.

Have a look at what Google told me about my backlinks:

Searching backlinks on Google

If you want to see your backlinks on Google just type in link:http://yourdomain.com in your Google search box. As you can see from my result above Mr. G doesn’t really want to tell me how many blogs or sites are linking to my blog. It only shows me a link from Technorati.

Yahoo! is better. Here is the screenshot of what it gives me:

Backlinks result on Yahoo!

If you want to use Yahoo! to find backlinks to your blog just go to siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com and type in http://yourdomain.com in the Explore URL box. Yahoo! told me there are at least 72 sites or blogs linking to my blog, most of them come from Alex Jeffreys students’ blogs. Note that Yahoo! may ask for your Yahoo! ID to enter this site. If you have a Yahoo! e-mail you then you just input the ID and the password of your e-mail account.

The best result I got is from the Backlink Checker. Here is the screenshot of my backlinks:

Backlink Checker result

I like Backlink Checker because it gives me the Google Page Rank of the sites linking to my blog. Backlink Checker told me that I currently have 69 sites or blog linking to my blog. The number is roughly the same as the number Yahoo! told me so at least I have an idea about the number of sites linking to this blog. I currently have links from 2 blogs with PR4, one blog with PR2 and one blog with PR1. The PR1 blog belongs to Garry Parkes while the other 3 blogs are not Alex Jeffreys related blogs.

- Rudi

How Can I Win the Alex Jeffreys Traffic Competition?

Rudi — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 03:55:19 +0000

This morning I spent some time browsing other blogs of Alex Jeffreys students to see how they plan to win the traffic contest. I couldn’t find what I was looking for but instead I found some interesting facts during my short visit to these blogs. Some blogs, i.e. bradburnie.com has already been established since July 2005 (that’s the oldest archive I could find) and has a PR6. Brad has done great with his blog and I believe applying Alex’s method to drive traffic will only make the number of his visitors better.

On the other hand other blogs are relatively new – including mine – and most of them are actually built because Alex wanted his students to have blogs using their names as domain names if possible for this List Building Coaching Program. There is a wide gap between the experienced people and the newbies so I think we should put this traffic contest in a better perspective. It is NOT the prize that is important because obviously only one student will become the winner. The most important thing is the process and hard work all of us have to do before Aug 14th to drive more traffic to our blogs and I will be interested to see my Google Analytics shows an increase number of visitors by that date.

How can I win the traffic competition? To tell you the truth I don’t know. Being a newbie I am also left behind other students. I just set up a new twitter account and I have no experience in tweeting. My bad …. Video blogging? Yes, I’m also new to that one so I now exactly where my position is. To speed up my learning process I already downloaded the tweetingwithyou videos provided by Alex and spent some hours to see how it works.

Some other students are still struggling with their first posts. if you are one of Alex Jeffreys students and have time please visit Gerry Trudell or Kadri Egbeyemi and see what you can offer to help them. When I dropped by their sites this morning I found no posts so I asked them whether they found some difficulties and need helps.

Thank you for reading my post,

- Rudi

Aaargh! I am Drifting From My Goals Plan!

Rudi — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 23:58:30 +0000

I just reviewed my Google Analytics statistic and my blog target and realized that I have drifted from my goal plans. Previously I have planned to write at least one post per day for this blog but I got too much distracted last week. I haven’t done anything yet with the video and twitting as well so there are lot of stuff I have to work out now. I am sure other Alex Jeffreys students are now working on their best plans to win the one grand competition. It will be interesting to see the winner reveals his strategy to drive the most traffics to his/her blog.

OK, enough excuses. It’s time for me to restructure my goals plan. Starting from now on I have to write one post per day plus extra 3 posts next week because I’ll be out of town for three days from 6 to 8 Aug 2009. I will also visit other students’ blogs and other related blogs to write comments and hopefully got some nice traffics as Alex has suggested in his module 4 coaching program.

One of my previous goals plan was actually to achieve Google PR1 in one month. It’s a tough job but last time I could do it in two months so I guess I have just to do better to make it happen.

Alex said that an idiot with a plan will always beat a genius without plan. Which one are you? I prefer playing the idiot role although a genius with a plan sounds more convincing ……

- Rudi -
renewing my goals plan

What Is Google Analytics?

Rudi — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 15:56:01 +0000

Module 3 – Alex Jeffreys MWA 2.0

One of the tasks Alex gave me in module 3 was to get Google Analytics installed on my brand new blog. I actually have it installed before Alex launched the module 3 so what left for me now is to set a plan of attack for this blog. The plan is half ready now because I am still thinking hard in case I missed something, but for sure one of the initial plan was to feed this blog with original contents at least one submission per day.

OK, enough said about my plan. Let’s go back to the topic. What is Google Analytics? Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website or blog. It can track visitors from all referrers, including search engines, display advertising, pay-per-click networks, email marketing and digital collateral such as links within PDF documents. It is a cool service because you can see how your blogs progress, what the most keywords are used and many more features.

Before joining AJ’s program I have already installed Google Analytics in my previous 2 blogs. Below is the Google Analytics result from one of my blog. I installed the code on 10th April 2009 so before that date you won’t see any visitors data.

Google Analytics

From the image above I can tell that started from 10 April 2009 to this date, 26 July 2009 my blog has collected 2,948 visits. I am confident that by the end of this month this number will be increased by another 150 visits – I take a pessimistic number 30 visits/day X 5 days – making the total number of 3,100 visits.

This first blog I made got its traffic from search engines (30.16%), referring sites (59.06%) and direct traffic (10.79%). Direct traffic means somebody visits your site by typing your url i.e. rudiawan-lukman.com or www.rudiawan-lukman.com directly to your browser’s address bar instead of using keywords to find your site.

From Which Countries Are My Visitors Coming From?

Take a look at this map:

Google Analytics Map

The cursor is pointing to my country, Indonesia. I never intended to target Indonesian as my blog’s visitors because English is not the main language used here, in fact for myself English is the third language after the local and Indonesian languages. On the map, the more one country or territory sends you visitors the greener its color will be. As you can see most of my visitors came from the United States. The countries or territories on the map are clickable. By clicking all the green territory I found out that around 50% of my blog’s visitors came from USA followed by Indonesia, Canada and Australia.

If only I had joined Alex Jeffreys during this period I would probably have my own list now. Anyway it’s never too late to start. I am happy I made a right decision to follow him.

Talk to you again tomorrow.

What is Google Analytics? article is
written by Rudiawan Lukman

AJ's Brand Marketing Strategy – How Far Have I Gone Through?

Rudi — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 17:58:20 +0000

Alex called himself a product of his productivity. My old mindset told me that I was just like anybody else doing internet marketing: get some affiliate links, drive traffics to the blogs or the landing pages and wait for some clicks to make money. While it is true that we can earn some money this way actually we are just selling products. From Alex Jeffreys’ perspective I understand that the best product I can sell is actually me. I should brand myself in a way that people will buy happily through my links because they trust me.

I’ve gone through the module 3 of Alex Jeffreys coaching program but so far I haven’t set my brand marketing strategy because I am still doing the basics for this newborn blog. Today for example I did some housekeeping on this blog. First I made a new e-book cover which took me hours to finish because I have very little photoshop experience. The result is still far from perfect but I like the process. I also set up a new Twitter account and install it on my blog. Although Amy from the Niche Blogger already told me two months ago about the importance of twitting I still had no experience with Twitter because I was very reluctant to do it. After seeing Alex Jeffreys program about Twitter I know that it must be good otherwise Alex would not have promoted it.

I also downloaded Alex Jeffreys’ Twitter videos from his site. Man I hate the internet connection here, it took almost three hours to download one video tutorial.

The other thing I installed on my blog was the widlink plugin. It’s a bit late compared to other AJ’s students but I guess I have my own speed and so far I’m happy with my own progress. I know I spent time too much on the Flexibility theme that I use for this blog.

This blog is less than two weeks old and being a brand new blog It hasn’t attracted organic visitors. I installed the Google Analytics code two days after my first post and on the same day I claimed the blog on Technorati. While the Google Page Rank bar is still gray my current Alexa ranking as of today is 6,883,260.

I can’t wait to see how Alex will tell us about driving traffic to the students’ blogs but I think it’s gonna be one of the coolest things we can expect from this coaching program.

Back to the brand marketing strategy one of my future plan is to stick with Alex and when the time comes I would like to see many Indonesian join this excellent program under me. We have quite a large group of internet marketers here and I believe that the internet marketing success rate is also applied here so I can expect the 99% of people who think that internet marketing sucks will change their mind after joining this program.

- Rudi -
aim high, get a big picture

Are You in the "Make Money Business?"

Rudi — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 18:59:25 +0000

I have been interested in Internet marketing business since 3 years ago. After searching for products to sell I joined a program that looked lucrative but being a beginner I didn’t realize it was actually an MLM scheme and I just spent 6 month of paying the membership fee without being able to recruit any downline. If you’re like me then you’ve probably been doing the same thing to find a good way to create money online.

I left that crappy product and tried PPC campaign but again I picked up the wrong product. I also bought some e-books such as the Google Cash 3 and even tried the Google Cash Detective 2 but nothing happened. It didn’t mean that GC3 or the GCD2 was bad but it was more on my side, I had no guts to launch the campaign. Theoretically I should be able to make money because the GCD2 told me all the profitable keywords and their costs but I just didn’t dare to start.

Not all of my internet marketing experiences were bad. In March 2009 I started building a niche blog followed with another one in April. I already made money from these blogs powered by Amy Bass’ Niche Blogger program and I am very excited to see how this third blog will progress. I know that the competition in this niche is tough but if I don’t do it I will never know how far I can go with this blog. After building 2 niche blogs I have more confidence in blogging. I will record the progress of this blog daily although it won’t be posted everyday. As of today this blog is still unranked by Google (well, what can you expect from one-week old blog anyway?) and 8,229,715 Alexa ranked.

This month I joined Alex Jeffreys program and I already set up my target for the year 2009. This is gonna be fun and I like to aim my target high. There is a big difference between just playing at making money online and actually running an online business. You have to decide for yourself that you are going to treat Internet marketing like a business. When you do this, you’ll start to notice that the money comes in far more easily and quickly. Instead of spinning your wheels, you’ll actually be getting somewhere.

Make Money Business is real. You just need to find a good model to follow, once you found it then stick to it. Don’t get yourself distracted. Never!

To Your Online Success,

- Rudi -