Ron Paul Annihilating Hillary Clinton on Google Trends

With the USA Presidential Election coming up, even through I’m from the UK I find the whole online buzz on Ron Paul pretty incredible and thought it would be interesting to stick a few of the runners in to Google trends against Ron to gauge online popularity.

Here’s the results including the mainstream media-popular Hillary Clinton, Rudolph Giuliani, Barak Obama and then the lesser known Ron Paul, who which I’m sure more Americans will hear of over the coming weeks and months.

I’m sure with his upcoming appearance on Jay Leno (over 5 million viewers) and plenty of money being put in his kitty for radio and TV advertisements the trend graph below will become even more surprising in the near future.

Clearly Hillary is ahead purely on news media coverage popularity but as we can see from the search trends chart above Ron Paul is leading the pack in search popularity by a substantial margin. That’s a lot of interest in a lesser-known candidate.

Pretty interesting I thought.. now off to the bookies I go before Ron Paul gains more traction in the media and his odds are slashed even more than they are being already week upon week!

Returned Back to Full Time Employment after 5 Years

That’s right! I’ve just completed my first week of employment - I’m working for a company again. It was quite a shell-shocking head-fuzzing experience after working for myself since 2002 and trying to hit gold online.

I even did optional overtime this evening until 7.30pm and walked away quite pleased with myself having learnt most of the ropes of what I’m doing and managed an almost error-free day.

I thought working was going to be another soul-crushing and depressing affair and approached with caution not knowing if I could stick it, but they’re all a good bunch and my supervisor isn’t a c*nt like my last boss, far from it in fact. I’m quite possibly the most miserable bastard there, but I’m already feeling myself being assimilated - it won’t be long before I’m as just as happy as everyone else!

After the hell of debt, bankruptcy and an uncertain future.. I’m now officially debt-free, earning a regular wage at a secure job and finally I’m able to realistically plan to move in to my own gaff early next year and I will officially have a life to call my own!

Fair enough I’m on minimum wage but the idea is to start a digital sideline on the Internet to subsidize my income and continue to do bits and bobs for my good friend Pilkster when I can spare a few hours here and there - and never will I consider replacing my full-time job for Internet gold again. This job’s too damn good to let go.

Who’d of thunk it!

Catching Terrorists with Google Adwords

What do bad breath sufferers like myself and terrorists have in common? We’re both interested in Hydrogen Peroxide. For the bad breath sufferer, a mouthful is sufficient to kill the bacteria producing the odors, and for the terrorist, large amounts are useful in blowing up cars and murdering civilians.

I found it interesting that when I searched Google for hydrogen peroxide the Police here in the UK were advertising on Adwords basically asking for extremist Muslims who may be searching for hydrogen peroxide to snitch on their fellow plotters, or anyone in the hydrogen peroxide ‘industry’, I assume:

Now that’s a novel idea, eh. Given that I can’t stand the Police I’d say click the advert a few times for shits and giggles, but it’d only come out of our pockets as UK tax payers.

Making Internet Marketing a Sideline & Getting a Job

After much booze and contemplation I’ve reached the conclusion that there’s a point when you must jack it in (albeit not completely), if only to progress and get on with some sort of life!

After 5 years of some success (but not enough to live off) it’s time to get a ‘real’ job.

I’m demoting Internet Marketing to a sideline and I’ll be working less and less on it as I work a normal day job to support myself.

(This replaces a blog I wrote saying I’m jacking it in completely which I decided wasn’t true after sobering up a little)

Revisiting a Venture with Experience after Bankruptcy

When I was 18 years old (I’m now 24) in 2002 I ran an e-commerce store importing specific collectible items from the USA and selling them to customers in the United Kingdom.

I made many mistakes during this first online venture, which were:

Buying as many varied items as I could without thinking whether or not customers would actually want them - I was under the illusion of the more variations I bought, however silly, that I would be able to sell more. This led to thousands of pounds worth of stock sitting in a storage unit that I couldn’t get rid of and had to sell in bulk for way under the price I actually paid for them.

…There was my first lesson in to market research.

There were only a few items that sold well but I ran out of these after a few weeks and business grinded to a halt - the first few weeks things flew - I had $200-700 per day in pure profit, but it didn’t last when I run out of the good stock.

Another problem was I was using Worldpay to take payments and they didn’t send me the funds from payments for 6 weeks so I hit a massive cash-flow problem that I hadn’t planned or made provisions for, as I wasn’t able to re-stock with the items that customers actually wanted.

…There was my lesson in planning finances and the importance of cash-flow.

Due to this error of buying items that simply wouldn’t sell and not being able to afford to re-stock with the hot sellers, it meant I ended up going in to a lot of debt as I was also having to pay $900/month in rent for the office and storage (12 month contract) for all the many swords - also because I carried on living as normal and neglected the problem, which ultimately led to my bankruptcy, which I was dis-charged from last year in 2006.

…There were too many lessons to mention! *groan*

Now that I’m debt free, I’m going to start-up a similar business selling the same items but approaching the whole venture from an angle of experience.

This time around:

• Since I’m debt-free now, I will not borrow or lend any money for the venture from any source whatsoever.
• I will not purchase expensive $1,000 e-commerce software or sign-up to an expensive $900 payment processor that only pays 6 weeks after the transaction, instead I will use PayPal. Money saved and great for cash-flow.
• Instead of buying hundreds of items worth $16,000 in wholesale price including ridiculous items I now know will not sell, I will buy a handful of the items for $100 that I know sell well (because I sold them well in the first few weeks before) through PPC marketing with a high conversion.
• There is also the fact I am now far more experienced in online marketing. Back then, I had no idea about sales copy, building trust, creating value, call to actions and utilizing the back-end and previous customers to generate more business.

You may think I’m insane re-starting up a business that led me to bankruptcy, but the difference is, it’s only costing me $150 at most to test the waters 4 years later in the same industry.. and I won’t be making any of the same mistakes again.

I don’t believe failed business ventures are like ex-girlfriends, and I believe by going about it the right way, by re-visiting this particular one there’s a chance for success that I can’t let slip simply because of some very silly mistakes I made previously.

Here’s a quote I plucked off Google on mistakes which made me laugh…

“Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it’s a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from” - Al Franken

The Pedophiles are coming

In my entry “Search Terms Pedophiles Use To Get Themselves Off” I listed popular search terms pedophiles and perverts use to find photos of naked children.

I should of expected this really but now they’re coming to my blog using those terms.

Here’s the analytics from the traffic coming from Google:

That’s one group of people I won’t be creating content for.

I also did a little more research and used Google Trends on the term “nude preteen girls” and found that New Zealand, Pakistan and South Africa are by far the leaders when it comes to people searching online for this crap:

Search Terms Pedophiles Use To Get Themselves Off

As an ‘online marketer’ I use keyword tools like Wordtracker to research subjects and potential markets. Unfortunately when using these tools there’s massively common and disturbing occurrences which any sane person cannot fail to notice.

My personal opinion regarding pedophiles or perverts of a similar persuasion is that as long as they aren’t actively harming children, trying to groom or abuse them in any way, it’s cool - whatever. I’m sure they cannot help feeling sexually attracted to children, but it’s in their actions which ultimately decide whether I believe we should cut their bollocks off or shoot them in the face for the safety of other children.

The following is just a tiny selection of keywords Wordtracker is showing which are disturbing to say the least. I will include comparisons with other search terms so there’s an idea of the level of ‘popularity’ these search terms have:

Search Term	Searches		Search Term	Searches
preteen girls	10,279	>>	music videos	10,181
preteen boys	2,639	>>	beyonce naked	2,306
underage girls	5,276	>>	web design	5,430
nude preteen girls	1,818	>>	irs tax forms	1,902
young girls in underwear	1,272	>>	download free ringtones	1,280
naked 13 year old girls	1,156	>>	eminem lyrics	1,105
preteen girls nude	1,116	>>	comcast cable	1,188
13 year old girls	1,078	>>	free internet radio	1,090
illegal girls	1,047	>>	free virus scan	1,032
naked preteen girls	987	>>	ipod movies	981
photos of nude preteen girls	938	>>	internet radio stations	927
illegal young girls	920	>>	internet security	945
12 year old girls	862	>>	ipod video	892
14 year old girls	867	>>	car loans	844
preteen girls nude pictures	712	>>	small business loans	725
naked little boys	656	>>	us patent office	645
preteen girls masterbating	647	>>	msn messenger download	635
nude preteen boys	605	>>	download free clipart	604

preteen models gets 40,500 searches, and you know exactly the demographic that makes up the bulk of that search.

All of those search terms are very highly searched for. I don’t even go after keywords unless they’re below 400 searches. There are more people searching for photos of nude children then car loans, IRS tax forms and even music videos.

I dread to think of the long tail of these types of keywords - you’re obviously talking in the millions and it’s clear this ‘problem’ in society obviously goes very, very deep indeed.

Digg this entry if you believe it’s of interest to others

Discuss.

What Are You Waiting For?

I don’t like wait. It’s 2007. We’re supposed to be living in a fast-paced and modern world, yet the big wait seems to plague every facet of I.M. life.

I even begrudge taking a trip to town just to place funds in to my bank account - why isn’t there a better way by now. Why must I get dressed, do my hair, spend a few pounds getting in to town and take 2 hours out of my day just to deposit funds in to my account?

Anyway, here’s a couple of things I’m currently waiting for:

- A large USD cheque to clear in a UK bank (They take 30 days. Oh, that’s a wait alright).

- Clickbank Support to get back to me

Due to waiting for the above, my to-do list is on-hold until I receive funds from USD cheque and clickbank resolve my situation so that an escrow transaction (were I’m the seller) can be completed and the money sent (more waiting). The list is:

- Purchase the cheapest workstation from dell.co.uk $700

- Purchase an $800 domain name

- Contract a writer to write an e-book for above domain $987

- Set-up e-book on Clickbank $50

So here I sit twiddling my thumbs after more than 30 hours waiting for Clickbank to resolve my situation and for that USD cheque to clear so that I can progress with future projects.

What a pain in the arse.

..So what are you waiting for?

A Shot in the Dark - No.1 on Google Video

I thought you guys would be interested in my recent experiment with marketing on Google Video - the video is currently in the top slot in the top 100 and receiving some nice traffic.

You can read more about it with statistics over at Shoemoney.com

White Hat is Pointless When..

A third party can influence your sites rank in a negative way.

After spending some time snooping around in a black hat forum, coupled with Google’s recent fuck-ups I’m beginning to wonder if continuing to build white hat content sites is an utterly pointless endeavour that can, and will, lead to disappointment and misery.

Asides from waiting out the sandbox release (which may never happen despite links, updates, quality factors etc..), there is the fact anyone with a little know-how of the dark side can literally fuck your website out of Google using simple techniques that apparently work like a charm.

Picture the scenario: You build a great content website, updated it daily with good content that costs you hundreds of dollars/month, garner plenty of healthy links and over the period of a year you managed to built a large resourceful site that Google accepted as a quality site, releasing you from the sandbox and you begin to enjoy a nice income from the site.

Now that you’re riding high in the search results for all of your targeted keywords, your competition takes note of your presence, some of which also dabble in black hat practices, or know of people who do, and are able to knock your website out of Google.. and there’s literally nothing you can do to stop them.

A few weeks or months after enjoying the lucrative earnings your sites traffic plummets and your earnings bomb to a few dollars/day, receiving only traffic from MSN and a handful from Yahoo.

It’s enough to make you think “fuck it, if you can’t beat them join them”, not to knock your competitors out of search results but simply so you have a back-up and another revenue stream that isn’t so reliant upon steady long-term rankings in Google which is any content sites bread and butter of traffic and earnings.

Remember: Google doesn’t give a fuck about you or your livelihood and third parties shall always be able to fuck with your website while Google state “there’s almost nothing anyone can do to affect your rankings”.

I’m feeling very pissed off with Google right now. If it isn’t for the de-indexing or the not re-indexing plenty of quality pages, fuckin’ up my page titles or handing the Chief Engineer a 5-week ‘vacation’ in a critical time.. and now I’m sat here wondering if the Google Toolbar that I have installed is capable of sending all of this right back to Google where they could easily spot who I am, what websites I own, which AdSense account to pull.. simply put, I don’t fucking trust Google anymore and I resent them.