No matter how good your service or products are, if your appearance is not pleasant, you may lose that person or business, as a customer and the same goes for your internet appearance. Your website is your online business card and it’s usually the first thing a potential customer sees. So if it’s not clean, easy to navigate or takes too long to load all the pictures, links and advertisers, they will typically take their business to another site.

That is why I’ve been working on getting this website looking professional, clean, as well as easy to navigate. This site is my online presence to my business, JAG Wholesale. A venture that I know will be taking off faster and faster as I get the name out. The good thing about my changing the look of this site is that I just recently started using this site for JAG Wholesale. Many of the people who know this site, know it more on a personal level. Either way, you don’t want to be where I’m at now changing the look of my site. Especially if you’ve built up a following on your site and have a good client base. Customers like stability in a company and that includes the company’s website.

When you work on your website/blog, remember to take your time and do it right. You only get one time to make a good first impression. Rushing through to get the site up is something you don’t want to do. Once you have people coming to you site, you want them to return. You don’t want to have one look and then later on when they return to do business again, have another. They may think that they’re on the wrong site or that the ownership has changed hands and may go somewhere else.

It’s hard enough to operate a business without giving yourself more work to do.

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If you’re going to try to make a living building blogs and websites on the internet you have to stay active. Creating a good website isn’t easy, but to do it multiple times is even more difficult. Bringing traffic to your site is the most time consuming part of running a site, especially in the beginning. Setting up the site to be recognized and picked up in the search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing is only one part of the puzzle. You can go ahead and pay for advertisement on other related sites or with the search engines with a program known as “pay-per-click”, but unless you have a ton of money that isn’t going to happen.

So how are you to get the traffic to turn those page loads into revenue? Social networking is probably the best way of doing it without spending your money. Social networking is exactly what is sounds like. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and now Empire Avenue are just a few of the ones out there.

Over the last 3 years since this site was created, I’ve been trying to use this site to grow my presence on the internet. I’ve actually had better success with the social sites than using this site itself. Using the social sites is a great idea to promote your blog or website. I’ve been able to increase traffic to my other sites because of social networking.

Everyone on the internet knows about Twitter and Facebook Most bloggers heard of LinkedIn, but not many use it. As for the latest one Empire Avenue, even less know about it or use it. If you’re one of the many bloggers that don’t know about Empire, it’s time for you to check it out. The free site is designed for bloggers who want to increase their exposure on the internet. At the same time it’s more like trading stocks on Wall Street. Members buy and sell “shares” of each other based on their involvement in the social circles.

Promote your blogs and websites to others. Learn ways to improve your site to get the desired traffic you’re looking for. Share information that you’ve learned over the years to help others. All at the same time while meeting others like you doing the same thing. I joined a week ago and have already seen an improvement of traffic to my site. The more traffic you can bring to your site, it can translate into increased revenue.

I’ve found the site to be exciting and educational at the same time. Because of the fun I’m having on Empire, I’ve made it a point of being more engaged on Twitter and LinkedIn. Since being on the different social websites increases the value of your shares as well as the dividends that are paid out to your “investors”. Have a high enough dividend and you will see others wanting to invest in you and get your name out there.

If your not a member of Empire Avenue, I suggest you give it a try and if your not a blogger, so what try it out. It free.
Click here to try it out.

In January of 2008, my wife and I invested time and money into a niche website coaching program with Court Tuttle. My wife had been reading his internet marketing blog for a while and when he created a coaching service, she didn’t hesitate in signing up. He worked one on one with her through a series of telephone conversations and emails over the course of a few months. Our investment was not cheap, but we made it back before the year was out.

Since then, Court and his partner Mark Butler have streamlined their coaching program into a series of videos called The Keyword Crash Course Video Series, a ten lesson, six hour course on how to start a group of profitable niche websites from scratch – everything from choosing the topics to setting up the sites to getting people to actually visit what you’ve created. They also hold webinars to share new information and answer questions.

If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, click the link below for further information.

Over the last few months Joanne and I have also started Squidoo pages to relate to each of our sites. At the time of this post I don’t have all of them to list. If you look under Joanne Greco’s list of sites to see them all.
Here are the ones that I have on record.

Finding Laptops For Sale
Oregon Real Estate
Guide To Unschooling
Making Gift Baskets
Guide To Penny Stocks
Guide To Adopting
Stock Market Guide
Tips On Saving Money
Best Laptops For College
Passive Income
Winter Fun For Families
Your Health Guide
Recipes For Kids
How To Make Money
Cell Phone Guide

We also run two groups. If you have a related lens, feel free to submit them to the either group.
All About Making Money
Technology Lens

Happy New Year to everyone. It’s now 2009 and I’m looking forward to great and profitable year. Joanne and I are working on over 20 new sites to be added this month with many more to follow.

As you can see by the links that are in the sidebar, we have many sites that we’re operating and maintaining. We have come a long way since July when we started this journey with only four sites. Two of them are blogs while the other two are, what we refer as sniper sites. Sniper sites are geared towards targeting a keyword or phase and then adding Google Adsense to generate revenue.

This year we’re going to expand our parameters by going into marketing as well as affiliate type sites. This we give a multiple stream of income. The outlook on these look very promising going into the new year.

I would like to say to everyone that even though we don’t get to talk to each other often, I think of you daily. My fiends have been a great support for me over the last year and I look forward to your continuing support during 2009.

Thank you everyone, I love you.