I'm still in the process of making my website "Wanna buy French". As a website admin I'd like to know who my visitors are and where they coming from. Maybe I can also add other ads in order to target my market better.
An Amazon store (astore) is very easy to setup but it has some limitations as far as adding non-amazon things to it. The Amazon reports only show the number of unique visitors, not their origin and their location, what keyword they typed on Google to come to my site etc...
The only way to really work around this issue is to create iframes (inline frames). An iframe is simply a window in your page in which you can display another page. So the idea is to have my own webpage in which I can store whatever I want (like ads and google javascript code to track visitors). Iframes are better than regular frames for us because you can make them "float" anywhere you want in your page.
I don't see any terms that would prevent the use of iframes with an Amazon store too so I went ahead. I recommend the following link for more details on iframes:
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/iframe.html
So that's what I did. I created three iframes in my website. One for the top ads, another for the right ads and another for... the actual site wannabuyfrench.com! I also made sure to put some text in the main html page so search engines can't index it too.
You can see the result: http://www.wannabuyfrench.com"
Next time I'll tell you how I work out the ads...
Monday, January 29, 2007
Friday, January 26, 2007
How to track visitors to my website "Wanna buy French"
In my quest to make my website popular I wonder how I would know whether it is popular, not only at the eyes of search engines but also at the eyes of people. What the point of having the best rank in Google if anybody clicks on the link! (not sure if it really happens...)
My website is built on a Amazon store. Amazon provides a way tools to track of how many clicks my site get, how many products are added to the basket, how many and what products are sold, how many unique visitors it had etc...
However I feel like I'm missing some crucial information. I know my site got some visitors. I want to know where they're coming from! There are quite a few sites that offer such services:
http://google.com/analytics/
http://sitemeter.com/
http://bravenet.com/
http://freestats.com/
http://easy-hit-counters.com/
http://www.statcounter.com/
I'm trying Google Analytics on my blog. I choose it because it's Google and they do things pretty well (Disclaimer: I'm a part time Google employee but it's not the reason I choose it :)), but they may also link to other services such as what key words were typed for queries going to your website. Very crucial information while designing the content of your website.
To monitor the visitors on your site (or blog in this matter) is to install a small javscript piece of code that's given to you and register at Google Analytics using your gmail account. Very straight forward. Pretty amazing too because it gives the percentage of new visitors, the exact location of your visitors (Washington DC for example), the site where the visitors are coming from (e.g. this blog, google, direct URL entry), keywords used for Google sources...
I'm planning to use it on my website soon. However the astore has some limitations and I can't insert javascript code in it. I will have to work around this limitation. More in my next blog on how I will do it. More also on advertizing (note the small "find french friend" ad on the side of my blog).
My website is built on a Amazon store. Amazon provides a way tools to track of how many clicks my site get, how many products are added to the basket, how many and what products are sold, how many unique visitors it had etc...
However I feel like I'm missing some crucial information. I know my site got some visitors. I want to know where they're coming from! There are quite a few sites that offer such services:
http://google.com/analytics/
http://sitemeter.com/
http://bravenet.com/
http://freestats.com/
http://easy-hit-counters.com/
http://www.statcounter.com/
I'm trying Google Analytics on my blog. I choose it because it's Google and they do things pretty well (Disclaimer: I'm a part time Google employee but it's not the reason I choose it :)), but they may also link to other services such as what key words were typed for queries going to your website. Very crucial information while designing the content of your website.
To monitor the visitors on your site (or blog in this matter) is to install a small javscript piece of code that's given to you and register at Google Analytics using your gmail account. Very straight forward. Pretty amazing too because it gives the percentage of new visitors, the exact location of your visitors (Washington DC for example), the site where the visitors are coming from (e.g. this blog, google, direct URL entry), keywords used for Google sources...
I'm planning to use it on my website soon. However the astore has some limitations and I can't insert javascript code in it. I will have to work around this limitation. More in my next blog on how I will do it. More also on advertizing (note the small "find french friend" ad on the side of my blog).
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Google loves me, loves me not...
I'm still in my quest to make my website http://wannabuyfrench.com known to popular search emgines.
I tried to help them to find me faster. There are sites that allow to exchange links and that's their only function. It's a way to try to cheat on Google algorithms. You link your site to their site and they link to yours. A fair exchange. Such sites are:
http://1000000links.com/
http://misterlinker.com/
My concern is that Google and other search engines already know about these sites and may penalize sites linking to them. I figured I could give it a try on my blog before doing it my site. If you look at the bottom right you will see these links.
The interesting part is that I checked my blog popularity yesterday using the "site" command (cf my previous blog for more info on that: href="http://wannabuyfrench.blogspot.com/2007/01/how-to-make-wanna-buy-french-store.html">yesterday's blog) in google and saw it there. The "link:" didn't return anything. Today the "site:" command doesn't return anything... maybe my links did indeed hurt me.
Even more interesting is that http://www.submitexpress.com was showing many links to my blog. Today: none!
It looks like search engines are very temperamental...
I tried to help them to find me faster. There are sites that allow to exchange links and that's their only function. It's a way to try to cheat on Google algorithms. You link your site to their site and they link to yours. A fair exchange. Such sites are:
http://1000000links.com/
http://misterlinker.com/
My concern is that Google and other search engines already know about these sites and may penalize sites linking to them. I figured I could give it a try on my blog before doing it my site. If you look at the bottom right you will see these links.
The interesting part is that I checked my blog popularity yesterday using the "site" command (cf my previous blog for more info on that: href="http://wannabuyfrench.blogspot.com/2007/01/how-to-make-wanna-buy-french-store.html">yesterday's blog) in google and saw it there. The "link:" didn't return anything. Today the "site:" command doesn't return anything... maybe my links did indeed hurt me.
Even more interesting is that http://www.submitexpress.com was showing many links to my blog. Today: none!
It looks like search engines are very temperamental...
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
How to make "Wanna buy French" store known to search engines?
I'm not totally finished with my website. I will probably polish it later.
I think what's most important now is to start making the website known to the world. I think that it may take time before search engine spiders get into my site.
I registered the URL on google and yahoo websites and a couple more hoping that they may hit my store earlier than sooner. Search engines use a combination of methods to rank a site, including keywords and number of incoming links (links on other sites that redirect users to my site). I'm not sure if outgoing links (hyperlinks directing users away from my website) will lower my rankings though. I will have to work into getting more external links to it to increase its popularity in the eyes of search engines.
If you want to know if google knows about you and your external links, you can type the following in google and yahoo search box:
site:wannabuyfrench.com --> tells you whether Google has put you in their database
link:wannabuyfrench.com --> tells you what other sites reference your site and make your site more popular...
In the example I used my URL, you can use your own URL.
Even simpler, you can also go to this site and enter your URL (no need to enter your email address): http://www.submitexpress.com/linkpop/ - it will return the number of incoming links known by Google, Yahoo!, AltaVista, MSN and Hotbot.
We'll see if Google and Yahoo will pay for my efforts. I will regularly check on my site popularity and work towards making my site "Wanna buy French" more popular...
I think what's most important now is to start making the website known to the world. I think that it may take time before search engine spiders get into my site.
I registered the URL on google and yahoo websites and a couple more hoping that they may hit my store earlier than sooner. Search engines use a combination of methods to rank a site, including keywords and number of incoming links (links on other sites that redirect users to my site). I'm not sure if outgoing links (hyperlinks directing users away from my website) will lower my rankings though. I will have to work into getting more external links to it to increase its popularity in the eyes of search engines.
If you want to know if google knows about you and your external links, you can type the following in google and yahoo search box:
site:wannabuyfrench.com --> tells you whether Google has put you in their database
link:wannabuyfrench.com --> tells you what other sites reference your site and make your site more popular...
In the example I used my URL, you can use your own URL.
Even simpler, you can also go to this site and enter your URL (no need to enter your email address): http://www.submitexpress.com/linkpop/ - it will return the number of incoming links known by Google, Yahoo!, AltaVista, MSN and Hotbot.
We'll see if Google and Yahoo will pay for my efforts. I will regularly check on my site popularity and work towards making my site "Wanna buy French" more popular...
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
How to create my online store "Wanna buy French" easily...
Starting my dream to create an online store...
I figured that the first thing I should do before marketing my online store would be to actually create it.
I bought the domain name wannabuyfrench.com on godaddy for $8. That's what I will limit my investment to.
I believe it's important to do business on something that I think will be useful and beneficial to a shopper. There are zillions of referral programs but I based my choice on my personnal experience as a shopper. I shop a lot on amazon and think it's a great online store. Amazon offers products at a discount of retail prices so shoppers clearly find their advantage in it. Free shipping makes it even more appealing.
I ran into the concept of astore. It's an easy way to start a website with no need to know about web development, html code and all. The referral fee is simple and based on the number of products being shipped every months. The more you sell the more you will make:
Referral fee Number of items shipped in a month
4% 1-6
6% 7-30
6.5% 31-110
7% 111-320
7.5% 321-630
etc..
I will stop here because I will be happy if I can sell over 100 products!
I applied on amazon website and my application was approved in a matter of minutes. A few click later, my site was alive. I just had to choose the template and the products to sell. So easy anybody can do it... That's probably why half a million of astores are already open but it doesn't discourage me!
You can check it out: www.wannabuyfrench.com - what do you think?
I figured that the first thing I should do before marketing my online store would be to actually create it.
I bought the domain name wannabuyfrench.com on godaddy for $8. That's what I will limit my investment to.
I believe it's important to do business on something that I think will be useful and beneficial to a shopper. There are zillions of referral programs but I based my choice on my personnal experience as a shopper. I shop a lot on amazon and think it's a great online store. Amazon offers products at a discount of retail prices so shoppers clearly find their advantage in it. Free shipping makes it even more appealing.
I ran into the concept of astore. It's an easy way to start a website with no need to know about web development, html code and all. The referral fee is simple and based on the number of products being shipped every months. The more you sell the more you will make:
Referral fee Number of items shipped in a month
4% 1-6
6% 7-30
6.5% 31-110
7% 111-320
7.5% 321-630
etc..
I will stop here because I will be happy if I can sell over 100 products!
I applied on amazon website and my application was approved in a matter of minutes. A few click later, my site was alive. I just had to choose the template and the products to sell. So easy anybody can do it... That's probably why half a million of astores are already open but it doesn't discourage me!
You can check it out: www.wannabuyfrench.com - what do you think?
Sunday, January 21, 2007
The American dream on the internet
It would be so nice to make some money from the comfort of your house. I read so many stories and saw so many websites about people making $50,000 a week doing nothing at home to the end of selling you receipes on how to do the same.
I'm not naive enough to believe in these amazing receipes or everybody would be rich. I guess the question I'm raising is not whether these stories are true but whether it can be possible to make money online easily. And maybe I can find some kind of guidelines on how to improve chances of success.
That's how I'm starting this story. I'm calling it the "Wanna buy French" store story. I'm French and I would not mind realizing the American dream online. My modest goal: buy a 50 inch plasma TV from the earnings of this experience. Possible or not possible?
I read a few articles and blogs on this topic. I will try to apply them to my personal story.
The first step is to find a topic that you know well. I'm French. I know French stuff... right?
Second step is to find a niche market. I don't want to drown people in too much stuff. I want people to come to my site because they will exactly know what they will find there. What about French stuff? People will come to my site only if they want to buy French stuff. This way, I don't limit my range of products too much. Maybe not enough. We'll see.
We'll call this site:
www.wannabuyfrench.com
PS: the tv link is an affiliate link. One way to make some extra money (maybe).
I'm not naive enough to believe in these amazing receipes or everybody would be rich. I guess the question I'm raising is not whether these stories are true but whether it can be possible to make money online easily. And maybe I can find some kind of guidelines on how to improve chances of success.
That's how I'm starting this story. I'm calling it the "Wanna buy French" store story. I'm French and I would not mind realizing the American dream online. My modest goal: buy a 50 inch plasma TV from the earnings of this experience. Possible or not possible?
I read a few articles and blogs on this topic. I will try to apply them to my personal story.
The first step is to find a topic that you know well. I'm French. I know French stuff... right?
Second step is to find a niche market. I don't want to drown people in too much stuff. I want people to come to my site because they will exactly know what they will find there. What about French stuff? People will come to my site only if they want to buy French stuff. This way, I don't limit my range of products too much. Maybe not enough. We'll see.
We'll call this site:
www.wannabuyfrench.com
PS: the tv link is an affiliate link. One way to make some extra money (maybe).
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