Boomer eZine - The Boomer Entrepreneur Magazine

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Table of Contents for this issue.....

1. Authors Comments

2. Q & A, Suggestions and Comments

3. Change in Yahoo Search Mark eting

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The eZine may not be published until Saturday afternoon this week since there is a pre-hunt cocktail party on the King Ranch on Friday night.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 Mark eting 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 Mark eting 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 Mark eting

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 Mark eting so we will have to see what the impact is on our ads. If anyone else has ads on Yahoo Search Mark eting, 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

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