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I think it's more an issue of upfront cost for a new business rather than early starts and cow poo, but fascinating use of technology in the farming sector.

Top man, you are a non smoker Just keep telling yourself that, gets easier and easier from now on, you've done the hard bit, which was reprogramming your brain.

So has Mrs Sharpink spent all your spare cash?

Yep, there are plenty of ways. Adsense is just quick, easy and anyone can do it. Likewise affiliate links, sign up with someone like Affiliate Window, and you can display products or services of just about anyone and get a small percentage kick back. In reality though, as people have pointed out, it can put people off, and with out any decent volume of traffic, you will generate very little.

Partnering with other businesses works well, if your core audience is appealing to someone else, then another biz will be happy to pay for banner ads, promotion etc.

We also monetize via 0843 numbers, 5p per minute local call rate, but that works out very well. Other sites go for premium numbers, including 09 numbers, but I think thats a step too far. But its a form of monetization.

All down to the kind of site you have. If its low traffic, niche but you are selling products or services, then any traffic should be targeted for your own sales. If you have an information site, blog, portal etc, then your mission is to grow as much traffic as possible and monetize it.

You will find once your traffic gets to a certain level, partners and opportunities will come and find you.

I'm afraid that question is too generic as it's different for every business. I'd say something like Facebook would be a good avenue for a tanning business. Have you tried that?

erm no.


For $3000 just go to the bank. If it's as good as you say it is, then just put it into a business plan and talk to your local bank. Don't waste all those profits by splitting it 50/50. A loan repayment for $30k over 3 years is going to be minimal. As the profits pour in, pay the loan off early and keep 100% of the profits

credit to smbc comics

Blimey he's good! Just a few moments when it's not quite there, but very good

Have been looking at Raven, is there anything in particular you prefer over SEOmoz? I think the social media side of SEOmoz could do with improving imho. Price wise they are the same.

May have to give the 30 day trial ago and have a play.

Ahh well this is easy. Mr Google accidently released his quarterly figures a few hours early, and stock market traders, who as we all know, work in a high powered environment, are all prone to high blood pressure and stress.

So when Mr Googles numbers came early, the traders had a collective panic attack, as Mr Google had forgotten to give them a crib sheet first explaining that the numbers weren't as bad as they appeared to be.

As a result 500 trillion dollars were wiped off the share price. So to stop America going bust yesterday, Googles boss suspended the share price, opened Google docs, and typed out a quick note to the traders saying "everything will be ok, we're going to put another adwords slot on the search pages", and then share trading resumed.

When you have a world wide monopoly, it's all pretty straight forward

2012 has been an interesting year in the land of SEO.

With lots of buzzwords like Google Panda updates (aimed at low quality content) and Google Penguin updates (aimed at aggressive link building or low quality poor linkscapes, same anchor text etc).

The latest wave of hysteria culminated in negative SEO, ie wiping out your competition with a barrage of low quality spammy links and gettting them a google penalty.

People are now paranoid about their link building past, and that really cheap SEO person you found on fiverr.com has now done far more harm than good!

So Google has released a "Disavow Tool". ie if you know you have a dodgy link from an unscrupulous site and the site owner refuses to take it down, you can now us a Google tool to break the link.

Good news? I think it's a recipe for disaster!!!

I think the average site owner doesn't really understand the repercussions, and may launch into a panic fuelled scatter gun approach doing far more harm than good, and undoing genuinely good SEO work.

We have seen it already on our business directory. We give outbound clean links, have a long standing reputation with the Google god and weathered the ongoing Panda/Penguin etc updates by steering a centre path when it comes to SEO.

But we have had a few panicky emails from business owners claiming that their site had been penalised and they needed to remove all of their backlinks??

Here's one that came through this morning:

Dear webmaster

We are contacting you to request the removal of backlinks to our website, in compliance with Google's search engine policies.

Our domain is <removed>

We understand this is a time consuming process - you should give this your immediate attention for the following reason:

Our domain is currently penalised by Google. If you link to our domain, your are penalising your own website as well.

My website is featured on the following page: <removed>

Please confirm removal.

A standard email from a terrified business owner. Now in reality, this is a standard email that is blasted out. In this case, the business had a free listing, so there was no back link. But this business has now lost out on potential exposure. Maybe not much of an SEO impact, but certainly a marketing one. No doubt every directory they have a free listing with (and no web link!) will also have removed them. Then it will be forums, blogs etc.

This business in a fit of panic is now self destructing any of their online marketing.

A bit of research would probably lead them to the cause of the issue and in that case, the disavow tool could prove useful if the rogue links can't be removed.

First place to regularly check is your webmaster tools. If you get a message from the Google God that you have had a slap on the head or have some bad links, draw breath and don't panic.

If you don't understand, then get advice. Don't ignore it, as Google doesn't issue messages lightly, so if there is an issue it needs resolving. Just don't go too far and undo years of good work, just to remove a short period of bad work

If you want to learn more about the disavow tool and hear from a genuine expert, then there is a great blog post on SEOmoz:
Google's Disavow Tool - Take a Deep Breath | SEOmoz