Volume 1 Issue 42 1-26-07

For those who would like to read this in HTML format, this issue of Boomer eZine is posted on the Boomer eZine website at http://www.boomer-ezine.com/V1I42_012607.htm and on the Boomer eZine Blog at http://boomer-ezine.blogspot.com.

Please pass Boomer eZine on to a friend. They will thank you for it.

Table of Contents for this issue.....

1. Authors Comments
2. Q & A, Suggestions and Comments
3. Change in Yahoo Search Marketing
4. Backlinks to Your Site
5. Interesting Statistics

Author's Comments

This weekend is the South Texas Celebrity Quail Hunt in Kingsville.

The weekend is a fund raiser for our local hospital, the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Foundation, and the King Ranch Institute of Ranch Management. Last year we raised over $800,000 during the weekend.

Hunters pay $3,000 to come quail hunting and participate in the social activities. On Saturday night, there is a banquet and auction that raises some major bucks.

I donate my services and guide a group of hunters on my hunting lease. It is fun, and I meet some really great people.

Linda and I attend the social functions and it is a great weekend.

The eZine may not be published until Saturday afternoon this week since there is a pre-hunt cocktail party on the King Ranch on Friday night. I am up very early on Saturday to get the dogs and the hunting car ready for the hunters.

We hope you have a great weekend.

Q & A, Suggestions and Comments

Here is a great email from Suzi in Australia.

Greetings from Melbourne, Australia, John & Linda

I went to the Profit Puzzle link and read about you. I am aged 59 and single. I have been self employed for over 20 years and really do not have enough for retirement. Deep down, I always had a strong feeling that I would not be on the government aged pension but I never knew or thought about how.

As I tell my adult children, never before in the history of mankind has there been the opportunity to create income for any stage of our life.
What a blessing it is to live in the internet age! I could never see me working in KMart or at Bunnings (Home Depot equivalent) in my 70s!

In addition to my website about China (I've been there 10 times), I am building two ebay niche businesses and have plans for more internet businesses. I am a believer in multiple streams of income. It's hard work, working full time and then coming home to look after my other businesses but I am more than prepared to give that commitment. THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS TO ANYTHING WORTHWILE and I know that, in a few years, I will be totally working from home and will be able to maintain my standard of living. There is no such thing as an "overnight success" and I am laying the groundwork now.

Can I beg you not to go down the road of many emails I receive from "Internet Marketing Gurus" that I have subscribed to? Their claims are unbelievable! We have a saying in Australia: "Fair suck of the sauce bottle, mate!" Translated, that means: "Crikey mate! You've gone too far this time!" Those incredible subject lines and too good to be true offers really cheese me right off. Then there's the photos of the big houses and cars and boats - and all within just months of starting their internet business! Oh yeah?

When it all boils down, they are making mega bucks off each other's lists with no concern for their subscribers. I have written to more than one, telling them that emails like that are an insult to my intelligence and telling them to clean up their act. Do they think I'm going to fall for the "Hurry, this offer closes in 18 hours" pressure? I don't think so!

I have now unsubbed from many Internet Marketing newsletters and am keeping jut a few - yours included. Integrity is a quality that I look for and I see that in your newsletters. I know I can trust you. Thank you!

I look forward to your weekly emails and wish you both steady and sure success.

God Bless
Suzi
www.glimpsesofchina.com
suzi@glimpsesofchina.com

Our Reply,

Suzi,

Thanks for the great email. You summed up our feelings about Internet marketers, and your outlook on life is right on target with the way that Linda and I feel. Nothing is free and one must work hard and smart for success.

We promise that we will not let greed overcome integrity. We will continue our weekly eZine and try our best to bring you the truth.

Thanks for your confidence.

If you have anything for this section or you have a suggestion for a topic for an article, please go to http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Suggestion_Form1.htm and give us your input. With your input, we can improve the Boomer Video eZine.

Change in Yahoo Search Marketing

It looks like Yahoo finally woke up and paid attention to what Google is doing.

Yahoo issued an announcement on January 24 that it was changing its method of establishing ad rank on a Yahoo search page. It appears that it is following the Google formula.

Until now, the ad rank on a Yahoo search page was determined strictly by the bid price. Google has a formula (that only Google knows) that evaluates the bid price and the ad quality. Ad quality is determined by how good the ad is and how many clicks it gets.

When you think about it, this is a good business move by Yahoo. Ads that are weak, but have the highest bid will not get clicked as often as better quality ads that have a lower bid price. The slightly lower priced ad will bring in more income to Yahoo than the weak ad with the higher bid.

With this change, the stronger ad will get better page rank which will get it even more clicks. And put more money in Yahoo’s pocket.

We have some pay per click campaigns running on Yahoo Search Marketing so we will have to see what the impact is on our ads. If anyone else has ads on Yahoo Search Marketing, watch them and send us an email about your experience so we can share the information with all readers.

Backlinks to Your Site

One of the measurements of your website’s popularity is the number of backlinks that point to it. A backlink is a link on another website that links to a page on your site.

To measure this, you need a tool to tell you what the numbers are. Well, the tools are free if you know where to look for them.

If you want to use Yahoo for your count, enter a search in Yahoo in this format (I am using Retirement Jobs Online for my example. Replace it with your website name).

linkdomain:www.retirement-jobs-online.com -site:www.retirement-jobs-online.com

There is a space between the first “.com” and the “-site”. Your search will not work without it.

Look at the top of the search page where Yahoo will conveniently tell you how many links it has for your site.

To find what Windows Live Search knows about your site, go to

http://search.live.com

enter the same search string that you used in Yahoo above. The results do not tell you the number of links, but it will tell you the number of pages it returned. Multiply the number of links per page by the number of pages and you get a rough estimate of the number of links.

Remember that these links enhance your website’s rating with the search engines.

Another quick tip on backlinks … The higher the page rank of the page where the backlink to your site is located, the more credible that link is considered by the search engines.

Some sites that have high page rank are selling the right to publish backlinks on the site. Google says that it will not allow this, but it has to prove that this is happening so the practice continues. If you want first hand proof, go to http://www.buy-selltextlinks.com.

Another site that has an interesting tool is

http://www.build-reciprocal-links.com/backlink_checker_tool.html

This tool will tell you the links, the page rank, and Alexa rank of each page with your backlinks.

I have not found a way to use Google to find all the links to websites. You can find the links to a particular page by going to Google and entering the following search term:

link:www.the-name-of-your-webpage.com

Use these tools to measure how you are doing in marketing your site on the Internet.

Interesting Statistics

Some statistics that are captured by Statcounter.com are interesting and tell you how you should plan your website.

The one that impacts how the viewer views your website is the resolution ot the viewers monitor. The breakdown for the viewers of Retirement Jobs Online.com is:

46.94% -- 1024x768
22.45% – 800x600
22.45% -- 1280x1024
7.14% -- 1152x864
1.02 – Unknown

Why is this information important? It effects the way that your web pages are displayed to your viewer. You need to optimize your pages for the most common resolution that is viewing the page. From the data, it appears that you can safely set your pages for 1024x768 and higher. The trend is toward the higher resolution and away from the older 800x600.

We will not address all the considerations concerning building a page and the resolution, but use the higher resolutions in mind when you are building your pages.

Another statistic that is interesting is the operating system being used by you viewer. This is more of interest to see the significant market that Microsoft owns (is this a surprise to anyone?):

91.00% - MS Windows XP
3.00% - Mac OS X
2.00% - Unknown
1.00% - Windows NT6.0


That wraps up our issue for this week. Until next week, stay tuned.

John and Linda Howe
www.boomer-ezine.com
www.boomer-guru.com
www.boomer-entrepreneur.com
www.boomer-marketplace.com
eBay Boomer Retirement Store
(http:/stores.ebay.com/BOOMER-RETIREMENT-STORE)
Boomer’s Amazon Store
(http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Amazon_Page.htm)

Administrative Details …………….

If you are changing email addresses in the future, put a note on your calendar to send us a blank email after you have changed your address. Send the blank email to: boomerezine001@aweber.com. We want to remain in contact with you!

It is OK to go ahead and join our subscriber list with more than one email address. You never know when an email will be blocked by those tough SPAM filters. They are getting tighter and tighter and are blocking many legitimate emails.

If a friend sent you this newsletter and you would like to receive your own issue next time, send a blank email to boomerezine001@aweber.com and we will send you your own copy on the next issue.

Copyright 2007 John Howe, Inc.

Volume 1 Issue 41 1-19-07

For those who would like to read this in HTML format, this issue of Boomer eZine is posted on the Boomer eZine website at http://www.boomer-ezine.com/V1I41_011907.htm and on the Boomer eZine Blog at http://boomer-ezine.blogspot.com.

Please pass Boomer eZine on to a friend. They will thank you for it.

Table of Contents for this issue.....

1. Authors Comments
2. Q & A, Suggestions and Comments
3. Site Build It – How to build a Webpage (Video)
4. Establishing Your Identity on the Internet
5. Plan for Starting a Business on the Internet

Author's Comments

I have been working with Don Osborne of Profit Puzzle (www.profitpuzzle.com) this week. Back last year, Don asked Linda and me to complete a form he has posted on his site to create a “Real People” story. I am always hesitant to do something like this without checking out the background of the person.

I looked at Don’s site and it looked good. - Check. I googled him and he was listed on the first search page – Check. Google said that he was an expert author on Ezine Articles. I checked and he published 28 articles - Check. I felt that I had done the proper “due diligence” so I told him I would complete the questions. Then procrastination set it and it was Thanksgiving and then Christmas.

Anyway, after the first of the year, I called Don and we played phone tag. (I think we finally talked on his nickel). We had a great conversation and we found that we think very much alike. Linda and I composed the input for his “Real People” story, and we sent it to him

He has posted the story and other information about us on his site and we thank him for the honor.

Check out Don’s site at www.profitpuzzle.com.

Q & A, Suggestions and Comments

I received this question via email:

I am a 55 year old unemployed vet who wants to start a home business. I like the idea of affiliate marketing products in demand to baby boomers, but am a newbie to this stuff. My vet rep said he could help me get assistance, but I need to do the leg work and find out what I need to accomplish this employment goal.

Any ideas how I can make this happen?? Thanks for your help,

I decided that to properly answer this question, I needed to write a full article about it so look for the answers in an article below.

If you have anything for this section or you have a suggestion for a topic for an article, please go to http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Suggestion_Form1.htm and give us your input. With your input, we can improve the Boomer Video eZine.

Site Build It – How to build a Webpage (Video)

I have talked about Site Build It (SBI) in many issues. Thanks to SBI, our Retirement Job Online web site has jumped from nowhere to 8th place on the Google results page in approximately six months against some strong competition. (It is interesting to note that the site just above the RJO listing on the results page is also an SBI site). The fact that two SBI sites are in the top 10 for the keyword “retirement jobs” speaks well for the results that can be achieved with SBI.

I realized that I had been talking about SBI for a long time, but I had not used Camtasia to make a video about SBI.

Well, I kick myself in the rear for overlooking the obvious.

I made a video while I was building a webpage for the RJO site. It is 30 minutes long so settle back and see how it is done. This video is now live at:

http://www.boomer-ezine.com/SBI_Videos/SBI_Page/Click-to-Play.html

Send me questions about the video by posting on the http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Suggestion_Form1.htm


Establishing Your Identity on the Internet

If your business plan involves establishing a personal identity on the Internet, this requires some advanced planning. You say, “I am who I am so why do I have to plan who I will be?” Good question. But let me give you an example – myself, John Howe.

As part of my business plan, I decided that I would become established as an expert on the Internet dealing with the Boomer generation. I launched off on that quest. All was going well for a while until I googled “John Howe”. I found that the first several Google pages were full of information on John Howe, but alas, it was not yours truly.

The John Howe who has the first several pages of Google occupied is an illustrator from Vancouver, BC, Canada. He is best known for his illustrations based on J. R. R. Tolkien's worlds (Middle-Earth). His website is http://www.john-howe.com. He was the lead illustrator for the very popular “Lord of the Rings” Trilogy.

You know the old saying about, “If you are going to have to fight a battle, choose your own battlefield”. Well, my parents took care of that for me by giving me two middle initials. V and W. When people ask me what it stands for, I keep a straight face and tell them, “Volkswagen”. Actually it is Vernon Wallace. My parents were Canadian and having two middle names is more common in Canada than in the US.

Anyway, I chose to adopt the full name, John V. W. Howe as my Internet Name, since that sets me apart. I even had to go through special procedures with some sites (Ezine Articles, etc.) to ask them to go back and change my registered name from John Howe to John V.W. Howe.

It was worth the effort since if you google “John V W Howe” you will find that I have no competition on the search engines for that form of my name.

I pass this along to you if you are trying to brand yourself as part of your marketing plan. Do your planning and research first (which I did not) so you do not have to go back and correct prior actions like I did. Check out Google to see who has claim to your name’s space and use your initial or some variation to make yourself unique.

Plan for Starting a Business on the Internet

As I said in the Q & A, Suggestions and Comments section, I received this in an email:

I am a 55 year old unemployed vet who wants to start a home business. I like the idea of affiliate marketing products in demand to baby boomers, but am a newbie to this stuff. My vet rep said he could help me get assistance, but I need to do the leg work and find out what I need to accomplish this employment goal.

Any ideas how I can make this happen?? Thanks for your help,

This question leaves a wide open arena in which to work. I will do my best. What I propose in this plan is based on what I would do to start from scratch.

I would break the plan into short and long range phases.

Phase 1 – Short Term Plan

I am going to assume that you need to produce some quick income short term and then formulate a long term plan.

The quickest way to generate immediate income is what my friend, Tim Knox, calls the “laundry basket method”. Take the family laundry basket and go around your house and fill it with the items that you plan to put in your next garage sale. Join eBay and sell this on eBay. You will probably make more from the items on eBay than in the garage sale. You will also learn about eBay and how it works.

Set up a good “About Me” page on your eBay account to help sell you and your product.

Click here to go to eBay and to join “The Worlds Online Marketplace”.

You have noticed that I do not recommend many “must purchase” items in this newsletter, but when I do, I am 100% convinced that you should buy it. Buy “The Silent Sales Machine Hiding on eBay” by Jim Cockrum. I have this book and continue to refer to it. You can purchase it at

http://jvwh1.silentsale.hop.clickbank.net.

Register as a PayPal seller so you can easily handle the money from your eBay auctions. Go to http://www.paypal.com. At the top of the page click the “Sign Up” link.

I have published several articles and web pages about selling on eBay. Here are the links for that information:

http://www.retirement-jobs-online.com/introduction_to_ebay.html

http://www.boomer-ezine.com/V1I10_061606.htm

http://www.boomer-ezine.com/V1I6_052006.htm

http://www.boomer-ezine.com/V1I27_101306.htm

Set up an autoresponder to capture the names of your customers so you can make repeat sales to them. Always remember to grow your list in anything that you do on the Net. For information about autoresponders and list building go to

http://www.boomer-ezine.com/V1I20_082506.htm.

Another means of quick income generation can be achieved by becoming an affiliate. This will not be as quick as eBay, but you do not have to build a list or a reputation. You just have to work hard and smart. You can set up an affiliate account quickly on Commission Junction or Clickbank. You then learn about Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing. Using pay per click advertising, you move traffic to the affiliate site. It is easier said than done or everyone would be doing it, but it is quick to set up and get started.

Do some serious studying about Google Adwords and try a small campaign to test yourself. Set your budget for the campaign so you are not broke overnight if you get lots of clicks and no conversions.

I consider the “bible” of Adwords to be the book by Chris Chandler, “Google Cash”. Again, this book is a must read if you are going to work in the pay per click arena. You can buy it at

http://jvwh1.googlecash.hop.clickbank.net.

For information about affiliate programs including Commission Junction, Clickbank, and the eBay affiliate program go to:

http://www.retirement-jobs-online.com/affiliate-programs.html

http://www.boomer-ezine.com/V1I11_062306.htm

http://www.boomer-ezine.com/V1I10_061606.htm

Phase 2 - Long Range Plan

Find a target market niche about which you can become and expert. I went back into some of my books about Boomers and marketing. This is the best summary of projected “hot” items for Boomers that I found. This is taken from Brent Green’s book, "Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers".

Start of quotation from the book ……………..

The smart money in the near future will be on businesses promoting products and services designed to address the changing agendas of aging Boomers. They will seek products and services that promote better health, address the complexities of aging, encourage productive leisure, maintain community engagement, and augment their active lifestyles.

The following list suggests some of the next decade's hotter categories:

Nutraceuticals: Designer foods and supplements infused with nutritional supplements known to mitigate the effects of aging, such as Vitamins A, C, E, and beta carotene

Fitness centers: Fitness facilities specializing in exercise and relaxation programs for older people; expect these facilities to include joint-friendly aerobic equipment, yoga classes, and relaxation programs

Bionic aids: Eyeglasses that hide bifocals, hearing aids that are virtually invisible, and other forms of bionic aids that control and hide, rather than exacerbate, the appearance of disabilities

Sports medicine products: Home remedies to help Boomers better man­age minor muscle and skeletal injuries from sports participation

Home health care: Businesses and organizations focused on helping Baby Boomers remain at home by providing assistance services such as prepared meals, food delivery, homemaking, support with activities of daily living, and social connections

Cosmeceuticals: Cosmetics formulated with anti-aging ingredients, such as antioxidants and intense moisturizers

Women's apparel: New fashions that enhance and embellish mature fig­ures; new styles that reveal mature beauty, reflect midlife confidence and adapt to sophisticated, casual lifestyles

Men's casual fashions: Blue jeans, leather apparel, soft cotton sweat suits, and any garment design to project a more youthful, carefree attitude

Psychological services: More optimistic mental health services to help Boomers through the aging process

Retirement communities: Smaller, well-designed homes with conven­iences such as media rooms, home offices, and single-story living. Thinking ahead, many Boomers will also relocate to homes that have been designed to accommodate wheel chairs and other physically disabling conditions

Continuing care retirement communities: Within ten years, a segment of the generation will anticipate the final stages of life by moving into communities that offer independent living options but also provide assist­ed living and skilled nursing care

Investments and financial planning: Lacking traditional company retire­ment benefits, many Boomers are fully responsible for managing and protecting their retirement assets, so they will seek counsel about how to address this complex and dynamic aspect of their lives

Insurance: The insurance industry will continually find new ways to build products for aging Boomers with long-term health care insurance for extended nursing care, taking a leading role

Adventure and educational travel: As has been noted. Boomers are seekers and explorers; those with the means will roam widely, coupling travel with exciting adventures off-the-beaten track and learning opportunities

Grandparenting: Today more than 70 million Americans are grandparents and this will grow by 10 another 10 million by 2010; grandparents spend an average of $500 a year on their grandchildren

Nutritionally focused restaurants: Salad bars, health restaurants, pur­veyors of organic foods, grocery stores dedicated to natural products and healthy food service at home

Generation-specific publications: Those who are searching for a foun­tain of youth need resources capable of providing details about the newest breakthroughs

Integrated medicine specialists: Baby Boomers will increasingly seek medical doctors and practices specializing in holistic approaches that integrate Eastern and Western medical traditions

End of quotation from book.

This information should give you plenty of food for thought. How can you capitalize on this information? Consider becoming an expert in one or two of these areas.

Plan to set up a blog to start establishing yourself. Blogs are easy to set up and you can get started quickly. Plan to follow up with a website once you get rolling.

Use your blog to discuss, review, and focus on what your topic is. Work to be listed on or near the top of the search engine results page for your topic so you will get the traffic to your blog. Without traffic, you will not succeed on the Net. Use the traffic to continue to generate affiliate income by making recommendations and referrals.

Once the blog is established, start working on your website. With no hesitation, I recommend Site Build It (SBI) for the web host for your website. Most people’s reaction is that SBI is too expensive. My observation is if you want the best chance of success with your website, SBI is the place to build it. You can get more general information about Site Build It at

http://buildit.sitesell.com/boomer.html.

For information about people using SBI for retirement jobs, go to

http://retire.sitesell.com/boomer.html.

Email me at john@boomer-ezine.com if you have any questions about SBI.

Once you have some traffic coming to your site, put some Adsense ads on the pages of your blog or website.

Continue to grow your list of customers to which you can make repeat sales.

Publish a newsletter to keep your customers informed.

By this point you will have learned what you need to know to develop your own plans for your future.

Remember, success comes to those who work hard and work smart.

Ken Evoy, the founder of SBI, says that to succeed on the Internet (or in any business) you need BAM. (Brains and Motivation).

Good luck on building your online business. Please keep me informed on your progress

That wraps up our issue for this week. Until next week, stay tuned.

John and Linda Howe
www.boomer-ezine.com
www.boomer-guru.com
www.boomer-entrepreneur.com
www.boomer-marketplace.com
eBay Boomer Retirement Store
(http:/stores.ebay.com/BOOMER-RETIREMENT-STORE)
Boomer’s Amazon Store
(http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Amazon_Page.htm)

Administrative Details …………….

If you are changing email addresses in the future, put a note on your calendar to send us a blank email after you have changed your address. Send the blank email to: boomerezine001@aweber.com. We want to remain in contact with you!

It is OK to go ahead and join our subscriber list with more than one email address. You never know when an email will be blocked by those tough SPAM filters. They are getting tighter and tighter and are blocking many legitimate emails.

If a friend sent you this newsletter and you would like to receive your own issue next time, send a blank email to boomerezine001@aweber.com and we will send you your own copy on the next issue.

Copyright 2007 John Howe, Inc.

Volume 1 Issue 40 1-12-07

For those who would like to read this in HTML format, this issue of Boomer eZine is posted on the Boomer eZine website at http://www.boomer-ezine.com/V1I40_011207.htm and on the Boomer eZine Blog at http://boomer-ezine.blogspot.com/.

Please pass Boomer eZine on to a friend. They will thank you for it.
Table of Contents for this issue.....

1. Authors Comments


2. Q & A, Suggestions and Comments


3. Results of Survey


4. Forum S P A M


5. TLD- What is it?


6. Another Internet Tools (Video)

Author's Comments

A great week with lots of questions coming from readers.

(This part of the comments was written on Monday) Not so great a week concerning the Google search engine wars. For some reason, retirement-jobs-online.com (RJO) dropped off the radar for the main search term “retirement jobs”. Many of the other lesser key words still have first page rank.

No one really knows (except Google) why Google does what it does. I can only suspect that I may have raised red flags with the addition of too many links in too short a time.

I sent nine new articles to the posting service in Pakistan to post on over 100 article sites so that is 900 plus new links. I posted the 46 pages of the RJO site on the social bookmarking services using Onlywire.com. That is potentially 598 links.

I do not know the answer, but I want to tell you this since this is the only reason that I can see for the action. I will keep working on the RJO site and hopefully Google will see that these links are legitimate and RJO will get back on the first page of the results for the “retirement jobs” keyword.

Even with the main key word not on the first page of the search results, the traffic stats on RJO (I check them each morning) is still growing. The average visitor count has broken 100 per day and seems to be steadily climbing.

(Updated on Thursday) RJO showed up again on the Google first page and traffic jumped again. I guess Google was just checking out the sudden increase in links?????? As we say in South Texas, “Quien sabe? -- Spanish for “who knows?”

Q & A, Suggestions and Comments

Let me tell tell you about Pat Angel, a new subscriber from Singapore. He emailed me on Monday and introduced himself. He asked about getting online. I told him the quickest way was by creating a blog. He asked how to do that and I lead him through the steps for starting a blog on Blogger.com. By Wednesday morning Texas time, he had a blog and I was reading his first post. Pat is a man of action. Go to http://singaman.blogspot.com/ to see Pat’s blog. Leave him a comment of encouragement to help him on his way. The thing I admire about Pat is he took the leap of faith.

Ana asked about pixles. Let’s go to Wikipedia for a definition:

A pixel (short for picture element, using the common abbreviation "pix" for "picture") is a single point in a graphic image. Each such information element is not really a dot, nor a square, but an abstract sample. With care, pixels in an image can be reproduced at any size without the appearance of visible dots or squares; but in many contexts, they are reproduced as dots or squares and can be visibly distinct when not fine enough. The intensity of each pixel is variable; in color systems, each pixel has typically three or four dimensions of variability such as red, green and blue, or cyan, magenta, yellow and black.

The setting on your computer that controls the pixel size of your computer display is the display resolution. On MS Windows, this is set in the control panel (Control Panel > Display > Settings). The options on my computer are 800X600 for the lowest and it goes up from there. I have mine set at 1024X768 which is the most common for most users on the Net.

I think of pixels when creating web pages. Objects on the page can be specified as so many pixels wide and so many pixels high.

To give you a reference, the width of the text on the boomer-ezine.com web page is 700 pixels wide.

As a final note on pixels, the term is used in many other applications (dots on a printed page, etc.). Go to Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixels for the full discussion on the subject.

If you have anything for this section or you have a suggestion for a topic for an article, please go to http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Suggestion_Form1.htm and give us your input.

Results of the Survey

Here are the results from last week’s survey:

Question: Do you have a website?

50% - Yes, I currently have a website
41% - No, but I plan to have one within a year
9% - No, but I plan to have one within two years
0% - I do not plan to put up a website

Question: Do you have a blog?

17% - Yes, I have a blog
58% - No, but I will have one in less than a year
8% - No, but I will have one in less than two years
17% - No, I do not plan to build a blog

Question: Have you published articles on the Internet?

75% - No, I have not published articles
17% - Yes, I have published 1 – 5 articles.
0% - Yes, I have published 5 – 10 articles
8% - Yes, I have published more than 10 articles.

I will let you read and draw your own conclusions. Thanks for your input on this survey.

Forum S P A M

It is a shame that we waste so much of our time on the Net dealing with spammers. The Boomer Entrepreneur forum became the target of spam robots (bots) that find a forum to attack and then start registering users with the intent of posting spam to the user’s account. They spam to post links that point to their website so it will have a high link count and cause it to rate high with the search engines.

I tried several things to stop this. The sign on sequence for the forum has an image with letters and numbers that must be entered to register so I activated that feature. It did not stop the problem so I figured that it was human spammers. I could just see someone hunched over a keyboard in a third world country pounding out spam to the forum.

After exhausting my knowledge on the problem, I posted a project on rentacoder.com for help. I received 10 bids that ranged from $15 – $100USD. I settled on a coder from England who had a great rating and lots of completed projects – Total cost $25.

He helped upgrade the version of phpBB (the forum software that drives the Boomer Entrepreneur forum) and made several security modifications (also called mods or hacks) to the forum. He also added a toolkit which makes it easy to mass delete unwanted users. His work was great and he was very helpful.

Sidebar: For more information about phpBB, read “BUILDING A FORUM ON YOUR WEBSITE” at http://www.boomer-ezine.com/V1I4_043006.htm.

Now when a user attempts to register, a question is posed to the user that only a human can read and understand. Also, it sends a confirmation email to the users email address that must be answered for the registration to be complete. Most spammers will not give a valid email address so the registration will fail.

I am still seeing the bots attempt to register, but I get an email from the forum each time a registration fails. And I am getting a lot of them. Since the mods were installed, there has not been a spammer registration accepted. Hooray! I expect that this will be a temporary victory since the spammers are always trying to stay ahead.

Bottom line. Don’t get bogged down with a problem on the Net. Hire an expert using rentacoder.com or elance.com and get on with the project. There is some great talent out there that will work very reasonably.

To post a project and sign up on Rentacoder.com, link to:
http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/SmallBiz.asp?txtFromURL=AId_6288648

For Elance.com link to:

http://www.elance.com/home?rid=116HU

TLD – What is it?

This is almost trivia. I always thought that the letters to the right of the dot in the domain name (.com, .org, .edu) were called “extensions” like the letters to the right of the period in file names (.doc, .exe, .txt). WRONG. These are called top level domains.

From Wikipedia:

“A top-level domain (TLD) is the last part of an Internet domain name; that is, the letters which follow the final dot of any domain name. For example, in the domain name www.website.com, the top-level domain is com (or COM, as domain names are not case-sensitive)”.

Now you know.

Another Internet Tool (Video)

A great website is http://www.statcounter.com/. I discovered it a couple of weeks ago and have used it everyday since. The best news is that it is free.

I created a video on how to use it. In the video I call it “Stats Counter” which is wrong so forgive me. It is singular and not plural. (Stat not Stats).

Stat Counter (SC) is a site that will track the activity on your site and give you extensive reports on how your site is being viewed. I have posted a short video showing how it looks and some of the information that you can get from it.

To use Stat Counter, you establish an account on the site with a user name and password. Once you are signed on, you set up a project to monitor a particular website. You can set up multiple projects to monitor multiple sites.

SC generates a few lines of java script for you. You then copy and paste into each webpage on your site that you want to monitor. In this case, I had to post the script on over 40 web pages on the Retirement Jobs Online (RJO) site, but it was worth it. There is nothing on your page to indicate that the script is there.

Each time the page loads, the script sends info to SC that goes into a database. When you want to see the info, you log on SC and check out how people are reading your site.

Site Build It has lots to solid traffic statistics that give you the page count of pages read, entry page and exit page for a reader, most popular pages, etc. but it does not tell you how long a reader stayed on your site and the path they followed through your site. SC does this.

The RJO site navigation is controlled by a study guide page that is designed to lead the reader through the various topics in the site. Until I started using SC, I had no way of knowing if the reader had accepted that structure. To my delight, most viewers who spend time on the site do follow the study guide. You can see the results in the video.

This is a great tool. If you are building a website, I highly recommend that you install the small script on every page that you want to track.

To view the video, click the following link:

http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Videos/V1I40Video/Click-to-Play.html

That wraps up our issue for this week. Until next week, stay tuned.

John and Linda Howe
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/
http://www.boomer-guru.com/
http://www.boomer-entrepreneur.com/
http://www.boomer-marketplace.com/
eBay Boomer Retirement Store
(http:/stores.ebay.com/BOOMER-RETIREMENT-STORE)
Boomer’s Amazon Store
(http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Amazon_Page.htm)

Administrative Details …………….

If you are changing email addresses in the future, put a note on your calendar to send us a blank email after you have changed your address. Send the blank email to: boomerezine001@aweber.com. We want to remain in contact with you!

It is OK to go ahead and join our subscriber list with more than one email address. You never know when an email will be blocked by those tough SPAM filters. They are getting tighter and tighter and are blocking many legitimate emails.

If a friend sent you this newsletter and you would like to receive your own issue next time, send a blank email to boomerezine001@aweber.com and we will send you your own copy on the next issue.

Copyright 2006 John Howe, Inc.

Volume 1 Issue 39 1-5-07

For those who would like to read this in HTML format, this issue of Boomer eZine is posted on the Boomer eZine website at http://www.boomer-ezine.com/V1I39_010507.htm and on the Boomer eZine Blog at http://boomer-ezine.blogspot.com/.

Please pass Boomer eZine on to a friend. They will thank you for it.
Table of Contents for this issue.....

1. Authors Comments


2. Q & A, Suggestions and Comments


3. Reader Survey


4. Social Bookmarking (Continued) (Video)


5. Page Rank


6. Handy Internet Tools

Author's Comments

Well, here we are starting a new year. Work at the office is hectic trying to overcome the inertia of the holidays and get things started in the right direction.

Linda is off in Austin visiting Susanna and I am on my own. This means that she will not be editing this issue so I accept full responsibility for any typos, bad grammar, or other mistakes.

This last week has been very productive in increasing traffic to retirement-jobs-online.com. I will share some of my secrets with you. The secrets are in the article about social bookmarking. Read on.

Q & A, Suggestions and Comments

We received a couple of “thank you” emails from readers thanking us for publishing the eZine. We enjoy receiving these from our readers since it is sometimes difficult to gage the acceptance of our publication.

If you have anything for this section or you have a suggestion for a topic for an article, please go to http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Suggestion_Form1.htm and give us your input. With your input, we can improve the Boomer Video eZine.

Reader Survey

Linda and I work hard to publish the Boomer eZine each week. We put out a lot of good information for you. Now we are asking for your input in return.

Please click this link to answer a quick multiple choice, three question survey so we can better understand what we should write in future issues.

Click here to give us your valuable input.

If you completed the survey, thanks!

If you did not, please circle back and do so. It will not take more than a minute of your valuable time. Thanks for doing this for us.

Social Bookmarking (Continued)

When we left the discussion of social bookmarking in last week’s issue, I suggested that you go to http://del.icio.us/ and open an account in order to play with it and learn how it works.

A quick review about social bookmarking from last week. It is a website where you can post your favorites and access them from any computer with an Internet connection. It is also a way to drive traffic to your website or blog. We are using it mainly to drive traffic to our sites.

Another use of social bookmarking is for research. You can go to del.icio.us and enter a search tag and find the sites that other people have tagged for that term. This way you are tapping into the research that many others have done before you.

We have used the term “tag”. Just what is that? A tag is the word or term that you would use to search for the topic on a search engine. On most of the bookmarking sites, it is a single word separated by spaces. This makes it difficult for the search terms that are multiple words.

I experimented with this and it seems that there are several ways that people are creating multiple word tags. Some are just running the words together “retirementjobs”. Some are using hyphens “retirement-jobs. And some are using periods “retirement.jobs”.

You can experiment with this and see what works best for you. Just remember to try these different combinations when you are searching tags. I have decided to use the hyphen between words for our tags.

There are many social bookmarking sites (I have heard the number of approximately 75 during my research) with del.icio.us being the “gold standard”. If you want to create traffic to your site, you should post your web pages on each one of them……. I thought that might slow you down. You say to yourself – Self, I don’t have time to post to all of those sites.

Well, enter technology to save the day. A site has been created named http://www.onlywire.com/ that helps automate this task. It will distribute your post to 13 bookmarking sites. It actually lists 16 sites, but Maple is being closed down, I could not get Jots to let me register, and Linkroll kept bombing each time I tried to register.

In order to use Onlywire, you must go to each bookmarking site and register with a user name and password. Once your have registered in all the sites on which you want to post, go to Onlywire and enter the user name and password in the input box for the particular bookmarking site.

Next, to make it easy to tag a page, Onlywire has a link tool that you can drag to your link tool bar on your browser. When you are on a page and want to send it to all your bookmarking sites, click on the icon for the Onlywire link. You will be asked for your Onlywire user name and password. The Onlywire page will open with your desired page URL in the input box. You add the tags that you want for the page, enter a comment if desired, and click the enter button. At the speed of the Internet, your page has been bookmarked on as many sites as you have listed in Onlywire. Right now, we have 13 sites on Onlywire.

Just consider the implications of this. Each time we add a page to our sites, we send it out using Onlywire. Onlywire sends it to the thirteen bookmarking sites and thirteen more links to the page (and to the website) appear on the Internet. We have discussed that the search engines use links to a website as a factor in ranking it. This is a great multiplier to do this.

The other implication is that people actively use the bookmarking sites to find information. This will create traffic to your site.

When I discovered Onlywire, I set up an account and listed the bookmarking sites on it. I then entered every web page in retirement-jobs-online.com (RJO) as a favorite. Within a day, I started to see hits on RJO website from some of the social bookmarking sites so it works quickly for driving traffic. The increase in the search engine ranking will take time.

Some might say that this borders on S P A M, but consider that some people have a favorite bookmarking site and only use that site. You want to make certain that your information is available to them and posting to multiple bookmarking sites is the way to do this.

Onlywire is not the most intuitive site on the planet so I made a short video about it and how it works. I hope you enjoy it.

http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Videos/V1I39Video/Click-to-Play.html


Page Rank

A quick definition of Page Rank – a numerical value to measure the relative importance of the web page within the Internet. For a more detailed explanation, go to Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_rank.

Page Rank was developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin as part of a research for a new search engine. Guess what the name of that search engine is? Yep, Google.

The rank of pages in a website is a major factor that Google uses to rank a website. I commented in early December 2006 that the traffic to the RJO site had suddenly increased. This was due to RJO making it to the first page of the search engines. This was the same time that Google raised the page rank for the RJO home page to a page rank 3.

How do you find the page rank for a page? If you install the Google toolbar on your browser, the page rank will be displayed on the tool bar. Each time you look at a web page, the display will show you the page rank. It is handy to know if you are looking at a page that Google has ranked as valuable or if it is not rated.

I have used the Google toolbar for sometime, and I find it very handy for page rank and for quick Google searches.

Bottom line. If you are building a website, you need traffic to your site. The page rank of the pages in the site will determine where they rank on the search engines. Be on the first page of Google and you will get your traffic. Anywhere else, you are almost invisible.

Remember this when you are building your web site.

Handy Internet Tools

Here are some sites that have great free tools for your use.

http://www.seomoz.org/ – this site had two tools to use. One is the Page Strength SEO tool. This will evaluate a page and tell you how it ranks in several different categories. Enter a web page URL and study the results to learn what makes a page rank well.

The other tool is the Keyword Difficulty Tool. This tool takes a long time to run (50 plus minutes on the key word “retirement jobs”). However, it produces a VERY detailed analysis of how difficult it will be to get the keyword to rank high on the search engines.

http://www.onlywire.com/ – we have previously discussed this site in the above article on Social Bookmarking.

http://www.digitalpoint.com/ – this site has a great keyword suggestion tool at http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/. It will lookup the times the keyword was searched using both Overture (Yahoo) and Wordtracker. Since Wordtracker normally costs for use, this tool will get you the results free. You should always check the Yahoo search number against the Wordtracker number since Yahoo can sometimes be skewed by search robots that are hitting it.

That is all the tools we have time for today. There are many more out there so scout around for them.

That wraps up our issue for this week. Until next week, stay tuned.

John and Linda Howe
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/
http://www.boomer-guru.com/
http://www.boomer-entrepreneur.com/
http://www.boomer-marketplace.com/
eBay Boomer Retirement Store
(http:/stores.ebay.com/BOOMER-RETIREMENT-STORE)
Boomer’s Amazon Store
(http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Amazon_Page.htm)

Administrative Details …………….

If you are changing email addresses in the future, put a note on your calendar to send us a blank email after you have changed your address. Send the blank email to: boomerezine001@aweber.com. We want to remain in contact with you!

It is OK to go ahead and join our subscriber list with more than one email address. You never know when an email will be blocked by those tough SPAM filters. They are getting tighter and tighter and are blocking many legitimate emails.

If a friend sent you this newsletter and you would like to receive your own issue next time, send a blank email to boomerezine001@aweber.com and we will send you your own copy on the next issue.

Copyright 2006 John Howe, Inc.