I mentioned in an earlier article that I have taken the plunge into trying to market one of my self employment ideas. I chose to purchase a series of tutorials to teach me the basics needed to set-up and optimize a website for this purpose. I have intentionally omitted the self employment idea that I have chosen, as well as the name of the how-to-tutorial that I paid-for. This is because I want to measure my success or failure in this endeavor and then write a review about it. That being said, I feel that it may be helpful to share some of the highs and lows that I have encountered thus far.

One thing to beware of is obsessing over a websites search engine ranking instead of doing the things that improve ranking and actually bring traffic to the site. There are many different ideas out there on how to best achieve SEO (search engine optimization), but the one that is sure to fail is complete inaction. The time spent checking ranking and counting back links can be better spent writing articles about the products or services that a particular website promotes. When the articles are submitted to and then accepted by the right article directories, blogs, and online newspapers, not only do the articles result in valuable back links to the site, but the site almost always jumps in the search engine rankings. At least, that has been my experience. And I think everybody agrees that Google loves fresh content.

So, the primary thing that I am trying to focus on is constantly updating my website with new articles and reviews that I have submitted to blogs, article directories, and online newspapers throughout the internet. As I write this review my site is ranked on page six on Google. The goal, of course, is to get into the top ten on the first page of my particular keyword search. It is very important to remain pertinent to the website’s content. This means that my articles and reviews should contain my keywords, but I do not want to over-do it. Some online-article directories will reject articles that are overly keyword rich. I try to hold it to a couple of keyword phrases per paragraph or less. As I mentioned, there are a lot of differing opinions related to the best methods to optimize a website, so as always, do the research.

The hardest thing, for me, has been to remain positive during the start-up. After meeting all of the initial challenges related to web design and getting indexed, it is easy to become complacent and expect the website to just generate traffic by itself. This is obviously not going to happen. The real work has only just begun. After all, the goal is to generate income, and the website is only one tool in our kit. Once we make that first dollar, we can replicate what we are doing right to develop multiple streams of income. My goal is to become the definitive expert on self employment ideas on the internet.