Tom Swanson’s Online Business Blog|

Recently, I got some suggestions via email that my site was being geared towards the experts in the industry and not towards the newbies who are looking for some tips and tricks on how to get there feet wet in the industry. I have decided that after I get back from Romania, i will be posting one lesson a day on how to get your feet wet in the industry and how to start your own site.

The guide is going to be a simple step by step way to make a website, get traffic, and bring in some revenue. After doing all this, I will show you how you can flip the sites for major profits, just like I do.

Before I make a commitment to doing this, I want to make sure it would actually be profitable for you guys. So what I am asking is that you comment on this post saying that you would be interested in me doing this. This way I can get a feel of how many people are interested in this. All of this will be given free of charge.

I’m heading off to Romania in just a few hours and I ask that you guys would keep me in your prayers. Noah Glazer, and a few other webmasters will be posting on my blog while I am gone.

Looking forward to seeing a bunch of comments when I get back.

Adios!
Tom

Good Afternoon Everyone!

A press release was made about me yesterday. It is going to be featured in some newspapers all around the world. Including here in the USA and over in the UK. So check your local newspapers for the article called “16 Year Old is Online Real Estate Guru”

Here is the article. Also, if you know of any newspaper editors, please let me know so that I can contact them and get featured in the paper.

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16-YEAR-OLD IS ONLINE REAL ESTATE GURU

SUNDAY JUNE 29, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Tom Swanson is regularly involved in thousand-dollar business deals – at the age of 16.

The young entrepreneur was just 12-years-old when he decided it was time to move on from mowing lawns and into the world of online business. Now, four years on, he has made quite a step forward from the few hundred dollars he would make each summer cutting grass in his old neighborhood of Charlotte, North Carolina.

After turning 12, the youthful businessman decided to start selling products including eBooks and guides on eBay, earning himself around $50 a month. However, eBay soon stung Tom, after he purchased a web hosting company for $100.

“This was a huge purchase for me. The saying that you learn from your mistakes is a great saying and certainly applied in this case, because I failed miserably in the business and lost 2 months of income, which was a very big deal at the time,” said Tom.

The eBay listing for the website was convincing and well designed - a type of promotional website that sells products to millions of internet users worldwide. The young man thought he was going to make millions with the site he purchased, but the business collapsed.

Tom, now 16 and living in Frisco, Texas, said: “I learned a big lesson which was the first impression your customer gets when they see your product is the one thing that drives your profits.

“eBay did, however, provide me with the start in my web development career. After my web hosting company failed miserably I started to read up on the industry. I thought it was a great industry that could put some money in my pocket, while giving me something to do as a hobby.”

For the next two years the young entrepreneur built and sold websites making a few hundred dollars

“At the age of 15, I really got a hold of the industry and started to really feel that I was part of it. This is when I started flipping websites online. People all over the country are flipping real estate and I do the same exact thing, just with websites. I call it online real estate,” he said.

“What I do is buy small websites, develop them to be something big, and then sell them for very high prices. Real estate professionals today have a 30% increase in the house value, but my websites have a 300% increase in value. It’s like real estate on steroids.”

After years of success in the industry, Tom has now created a blog to educate people and pass on some tips and tricks learnt along the way, and to keep those interested updated on his projects and life. The blog can be found at www.startanonlinebusiness.net.

The number one thing that you should focus on maintaining as an online business owner is the customers trust. Trust does not just gain you new customers, but will bring current customers back. There are many ways that you can do this, and I am going to outline them today.

As many website owners do today, posting testimonials on your website can be a very effective way to establish trust in your customers. This provides a sense of security to customers. They know know that past clients that are happy with the service they paid for. Having that sense of security can make your website and company trustworthy.

I think one thing that is very underestimated in the online industry is the power of the contact us form. Honestly, when I visit a website and click the contact us form and it pops up my outlook to send them an email, I immediately lose trust with the company. I feel that they actually care about my comment and concerns. This is because they took the time and effort of implementing a contact us form. This also shows me they are there for the customer. They are willing to put forth the effort to implement a feature that makes is easier for the customer.

Currently, at Forumpost.org, one of my current projects, we are considering implementing the 1800 number because we would be the first in the industry to implement a toll free number. In the customers eyes, we would seem much more reliable and trustworthy then other forum posting companies who simply give you an email address to contact them. I think customer support numbers is a major factor that can give your business an edge on others. Right now, you can pay companies such as tollfreeforwarding.com a measly $10.00 for a toll free number, and over 2 hours of call time. What they do is simply register a 1800 number for you, and then when someone calls that 1800 number, it forwards it to your cell phone number. This makes it convenient for the customer and for you.

I think that being reliable and being trustworthy is the best way to get customers and retain your current customers.

Good Luck Everyone.
Tom

As some of you might now, I am openly Christian. Not just a Christian by name, I am a man walking with Jesus Christ. I am also not ashamed of what I believe and that is why I share this with all of you readers today. I slip and do bad stuff all the time and I know it. But that is what Christianity is all about. Learning from those mistakes and becoming a better man. Before I moved to Texas, I signed up for a mission trip to Romania. I am returning in just a week from now to Charlotte to go on the trip for 2 weeks.

I will be away for 2 weeks in Romania which means that the blog might not be posted on as much. I will have some guest posters who are very qualified come and post some of their tips and tricks while I am gone on the mission trip.

I ask that you guys would keep me in your prayers as I travel over to Romania. In Romania, we are going to be running a sports camp. Specific things that you could pray for is for safe travel, the hearts of the Romanian kids, our teams unity, and physical and mental strength.

Thanks Everyone.
Tom

One of the most overpaid services in the online industry right now is probably directory submissions. Although getting into directories can be a great way to increase pr, and ranking on google, it can hurt you very bad if you are not submitting to quality directories.

First and foremost, Never buy directory submissions. Why? Because you are paying for crap. Many directories are made by people who have a high PR domain. They just shove a directory script up on it and get thousands of people to submit to it because it is a PR6 or PR5 directory. The problem is that the directory is actually worthless because the inner pages of the site are not PR.

You don’t submit your site to a directory and expect it to be on the first page. You expect to be in a sub category of the site. To determine whether the directory is good or not, go to the inner catagory pages and check the pr of those pages. If the inner pages of the site have a high PR, then its worth it. But, most of the time you will find that the inner pages have no PR at all.

Lets have a little poll.

Post a comment and tell me about if your site has ever got a better PR after paying for thousands of submissions? I sure haven’t. But lets see what you guys have experienced.

Hey Everyone. Hope you all are doing well.

Today, I have a tip from you that I can take no credit for. I just recently learned this from Jack at FusedHosting.net. He is a great guy that is always there to help. Btw, he owns a great hosting service as well.

For the last few years, I found myself going crazy. Why? Every time I wanted to change a link in my header or footer, I would have to change every file on my server. This especially happened to me if I used a template. If I would get it custom designed, the coders would some how make this file called header.php where I could edit that and bam I was done for all of the pages.

Recently, I learned just how easy this is to do. Let me explain. Please follow the instructions. It will make everything much easier.

1. Make a file in notepad with the following code below. Call it index.html. Then upload it to a server.

<html>
<body>
<h2>Today is Friday, June 20th 2008</h2>
<br>
<p>Above is todays date</p>
</body>
</html>

I know this is a very silly document but you will understand in a minute. Lets say that I didn’t have a script that updated the date and I had to do it manually. (I know this wouldn’t happen, but just stick with me). If I owned this site, I would have to go to every single page every day and edit it. It would be a pain in the butt.

2. Using notepad, make a file called date.php. In this file we are going to put the following code.

<h2>Today is Friday, June 20th 2008</h2>

Nothing else, just the code above.

3. Save the file as date.php and place it on your server.

4. Now go into the index.html file and replace the h2 tag with the following code below.

<?php include(”date.php”) ; ?>

5. Then, rename the index.html to index.php.

Now you have made one file where you can edit the navbar or header on every page. Think about if you had a 600 page website where you had to edit this all the time. It would take hours but with our new document, date.php, you can do it with a 1 time edit. All you have to do now is go into date.php and change the date and it will be changed on all the pages.

Hope you learned something new today!
Tom Swanson

When I was first in the industry, you couldn’t imagine how many times I bought sites that were based of an rss feed. What that means is that I was taking content from other peoples blogs and putting it on my site. By no way is this illegal or anything but it will do some damage in many reasons.

One of the main reasons people read your content is because it is unique and they have never heard it before. I couldn’t tell you how many times I have subscribed to a blog, later finding out that I had read that same article somewhere else before. I clicked that unsubscribe button so fast. Why? Because it wasn’t unique at all and the owner of the website was stealing content from someone else.

The next bad thing about using others RSS feed is that you will never do good on Google. Google always rewards websites for having unique content. And stealing someone elses is not going to get you very far because it is far from unique.

Google, in my opinion, is probably the most important part in becoming successful online. It is in your best interest to do everything possible to do what the search engines enjoy. Which is quality keyword optimization, good on page optimization in general, backlinking, and unique content.

Hope I helped today!
Tom

I think one of the most powerful things in the online industry right now is having a network of people that you can trust. I honestly think I might have 1000+ contacts on msn. Why? Because knowing more people in the online industry will eventually be worth while.

One thing that I have found helpful is to talk to pro’s in the industry. Becoming good friends with people who are much more successful than you is probably one of the best tips I can give. I have people on my friends list that literally make tens and some hundreds of thousands of dollars a month online. And I talk to most of them EVERYDAY.

Why do I do this? Because although I have been in the online industry for a long time, those guys obviously have some knowledge that they can pass on to me. Most people like to talk about themselves so if you can get them on chat, and ask them questions about themselves, you won’t have a better friend online. Just learning about these people can be such a huge help for you. If you know their good and bad experiences, you can bypass the bad ones and approach the good ones in your career online.

So, how do you get these friends? Sometimes its as easy as sending them an email and telling them that you are astonished by their success. Furthermore, tell them you want to talk to them and see if you can pick up a few tips. Some aren’t that easy to get. And this is where pubcon comes in.

This year I am finally going to Pubcon. Pubcon is a webmaster conference that takes place in Vegas every year where literally thousands of webmasters come and share tips and tricks. Sure, it costs $800 but you learn so much. Not only do you learn a lot, this is a PRIME place to meet webmasters that are much smarter than you can give you some tips and tricks.

So, if I could suggest one event for you guys to attend this year, attend pubcon. Save up a little bit each month and in a few months, purchase your tickets and you will see your success fly through the roof. Your career will not only fly because you learn so much at the conference, but you will have access to people who can teach you so much. And if you’re smart, you can get their phone numbers or email addresses and now you have a continues stream of knowledge and you’ll be off to success.

Good Luck!
Tom

I think that the most underestimated tools in SEO right now is the use of title tags. By having the right title tag, you can rank so much better for the keyword you want to accomplish. Here is how I make up my title tag.

First, many people think that having only your desired keyword in your title tag will make your rankings much better in the search engines, and you are right. There is one problem though. I have found that people click less on sites that have just the keyword in the title. They want to know a little bit about what site they are going to.

I think that if you outline your business name, or outline what your business is in the title tag, you will have much more clicks. Atleast this is what I have experienced.

So lets make a site. The site is called defeatdepression.com. You want to go for the highly competitive term of “depression”. Many webmasters would immediatly have there title tag as “depression”. If we look for the term depression on google here, you will find that the 6th site on the list is www.kidshealth.org/ at the time of this post. The title tag they are using is “Depression”. If we continue down the page, you will see WebMD. You can see that there title tag is “WedMD Depression Health Center - Find depression information..”

I could bet a lot of money that WebMD gets more clicks than kidshealth.org. I would honestly click on WebMD because now I know that they are reputable. They are a health center and they are a well known business. For all I know, kidshealth.org might be some site that a random person put up on the web.

I hope I got through to you all today that title tags are a very important part of SEO and I think that the actual tag is more important that just putting the keyword in the title.

Good Luck.
Tom

TOP 10 WAYS PEOPLE THINK THEY CAN MAKE MONEY ONLINE - BUT CAN’T

1. Proxies
About 2-3 years ago, being in the proxy business was a great thing. There wasn’t a TON of competition, click percentages were high, and the demand for them were the same as today. Too bad EVERY person in the online industry tried it out and then the competition gained incredibly, clicks went down, and it was harder to advertise. Proxies don’t make crap anymore unless you have been in the industry for a long time.

2. Web Hosting Companies
The first business I ever started online was a web hosting company and luckily I was smart enough to figure out after a few months that it was the worst business to get into. Web hosting companies don’t just take a vast knowledge in servers, it requires a vast knowledge in marketing because you have a crap load of companies to compete with.

3. DIRECTORIES
Most people think that if they have a decent pr domain, the best thing to do w/ it is to make a directory because a bunch of people would want to submit to it. Finally, people in the industry have figured out that most directories are crap unless they have high PR standings in the sub pages. So that means, unless you have an established directory already with high pr’s in your sub pages, most likely, you will make nothing.

4. Pay to Click Sites
I still can’t figure out why so many people think they can make money by clicking ads every 30 seconds. Honestly, there is no way to make a decent living off of this. You earn like .02 every time you click an ad and you can only do it once every couple seconds. Silly. Don’t try it.

5. Image Hosting Sites
Yes. I won’t lie, there are people out there who are making a decent income off of image hosting sites. Why? Because they got into the industry in the begginning. I am not saying it is impossible, but it is much harder to do image hosting sites now because of the vast competition. One great way a year ago to get traffic was to go onto forums and post celebrity pictures. You still can get some traffic from it but there are so many people doing it, its hard.

6. Blogs using RSS Feeds for Content
Many people think that google appreciates new and updating content on your site, and you’re right. Problem is that they want new and updating and UNIQUE content on your site. Google rewards people for having unique content. If you are stealing the content from someone else, its probably not going to help your search engine ranking which will make your traffic virtually nothing.

7. Forums with a General Topic
I was one of the dummies that fell for this one, and I paid for it. I own a webmaster forum called http://www.webmastersheart.com . I thought because I had a vast knowledge in the industry, I could start one up and people would be all over it. I was very wrong. You can see that if you look on the forum. Virtually no posts because I have so much competition.

8. Selling Ebooks

Again, I was one of the dummies who fell for this one. You can sell ebooks on DP all day long, but if you want continues money that keeps rolling in, ebooks are not the way to go. Many people go and write an ebook on a topic they have no clue about just to earn a quick buck. This puts a bad word on your name and can hurt your whole entire career in the online industry in my opinion.

9. Pay to Post Sites
Just like the pay to click sites, these are a waste of your time. You will spend much more time than you should on these sites and get paid practically nothing if anything at all. You will most likely get paid nothing because you will spend hours and hours, maybe even days, and earn $5. Then you find out that the minimum payout is $25. And then most likely you will give up.

10. The Million Dollar Pixel Sites
This idea was probably the most genius idea ever when it first came out. I don’t know the mans name who thought of that but he is truly creative. The reason he made it so far and so big was because he was UNIQUE. The idea isn’t unique anymore so don’t try it.