David Pitlyuk

Using .htaccess to redirect your visitors from one page to another is the cleanest fastest way of making a redirect. This is the same method I use to redirect readers of this blog from DavePit.com to DavidPitlyuk.com. I do this because DavidPitlyuk.com may be too hard to spell, so I added DavePit.com which is easy, and added a simple re-direct to move the readers over to the correct domain.

You can use .htaccess to redirect entire domains, folders, specific files, and more. John Chow uses an .htaccess redirect to set his preferred domain, something that can better your site from an SEO standpoint. I’ll go over how to do this as well.

Things To Note

Keep in mind that .htaccess is only supported on non-Windows servers, so any of you guys using Windows need to utilize another method to redirect your users. Also, if you are creating the .htaccess file in Windows, you’ll find that it doesn’t like filenames with no name on it. The workaround for this is to make the file something like htaccess.txt, and after uploading the file, rename on the server. Make sure to change http://www.example.com to your own domain name in any of the examples.

So let’s go over a few common methods of using the redirect:

Redirect An Entire Domain

This is what I use to redirect everybody who accesses this site at DavePit.com and transfer them to DavidPitlyuk.com.

Redirect 301 / http://www.example.com/

Redirect non-WWW to WWW (example.com > www.example.com)

This is the setting the preferred domain that I was talking about earlier. It will redirect all of your traffic at the example.com level and transfer it to www.example.com

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Redirect A Single File Or Folder

This will be used if you want to redirect something like http://www.example.com/blog2 to http://www.example.com/blog or http://www.example.com/blog.php to http://www.example.com/blog.

Redirect 301 /OldPageOrDirectory.html http://www.example.com/NewPageOrDirectory.html

There are many other methods of using .htaccess to redirect, but in the most cases this will cover what you need.

Google Analytics is the tool I personally use on all of my sites to gather user data like pageviews, uniques, popular content, etc. Google has just released a new version of their free web software. Previous users can still use the old version for 30 days, and new users will automatically be given the new version. There are a lot of changes, mostly in the UI (user interface). Here’s a few links if you want further information on what is changed, otherwise I highly recommend playing around with it yourself.

What is new?
In the new version, your reports have been redesigned for clarity, greater visibility of important metrics, and ease of use. Here are just a few of the features you’ll notice:

• Email and export reports: Schedule or send ad-hoc personalized report emails and export reports in PDF format.
• Custom Dashboard: No more digging through reports. Put all the information you need on a custom dashboard that you can email to others.
• Trend and Over-time Graph: Compare time periods and select date ranges without losing sight of long term trends.
• Contextual help tips: Context sensitive Help and Conversion University tips are available from every report.

Relevant Links

• First Look - Google Analytics Launches New Interface and Reporting
• Google Analytics Help Center
• New Version of Google Analytics!
• Video Web Tour

I read a lot about how to have a good blog, how to get more readers, how to retain readers, etc. Almost all of the articles I read say to pick a niche, and stick with it. They all say don’t be too broad, if you’re going to write about optimizing for search engines, keep it on topic. I tend to write a little bit on the broader side of things, but I do have a niche.

What Is My Niche?

My niche is topics of interest for entrepreneurs, and I think I would be safe to say that young entrepreneurs in particular would have an even greater interest in my blog. You have to keep in mind that my blog is not meant to be just guides and tips for entrepreneurs, but things that an entrepreneur may have an interest in. For example, your average entrepreneur likes money, business, and nice things. I think the categories of topics I have generally fit the interest of most entrepreneurs:

• Cars: Whether it’s a slightly easier easier goal like the new BMW m3, or you’re shooting to get a Dodge Viper with a matching helicopter, cars are many times a source of inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs.
• Business/Blogging/Web Sites: This category is about blogging tips, learning to use the web better, other websites out there, and web business.
• Design: We like nice looking things, whether it be a good looking website, or a piece of artwork.
• Friends & Family: This is more of the personable part of the my blog. My domain name is my name, you should be able to know more about me as a person than just some anonymous articles.
• Investing: We’ve all heard the phrase “It takes money to make money”. That’s what investing is all about. I’m definitely more in the beginning stages of learning about investing (like stocks, etc), so join me in my journey.
• Making Money: This is about ideas for making money, how much money I’ve made doing something, etc.
• My Business: I own a plethora of businesses (ActiveTuning, Tri Megatech, this blog, Video Experiment), and have had my share of projects in the past. I am constantly looking for new opportunity, and I love to share what I can.
• Off Topic: General off topic articles that I like. This can range from a really funny video to an article that really doesn’t match the content from other categories.
• Real Estate: Lets be honest, the last 10 years of real estate has been crazy. I’ve been trying to follow the market as much as possible, and I’m also looking for my first place to buy. This also includes more general real estate content like mansion hunting in Northern Viriginia.
• Reviews: This could be a review of anything from a new product I purchased to a website of interest (or paid) that I wanted to take a further look into.
• Technology: This new era of business revolves around technology. People have the opportunity to start a business in just a few clicks of a mouse. I talk about technology like eCommerce platforms, but even things like the latest plasma TV.
• Ramblings: This is similar to “Off Topic” but more related to my personal information.

I’d be interested to get a better idea of what my readers background and interests are. Are you an entrepreneur? If so, do these topics interest you? Are there other topics that you think I should be covering? If you’re not an entrepreneur, what interests you about this blog?

I removed most of the AdSense ads as well as all Kontera ads for now. I’m going to experiment with AuctionAds, a network that utilizes targeted search terms with auction sites like eBay. I’ve heard about AuctionAds before, but I didn’t really think about it too much until I read more about it at ProBlogger. Mainly reading the comments and seeing how some people have been really successful with it.

From the sounds of it, it works best on very niche sites. Take a mobile phone review site, where a post can be targeted directly to a product. For example if this was a review for the Palm Treo 700WX, I can have an ad that looks like this:

This can be very effective for a site, which generates good revenue. The site would make money from anybody signing up for eBay as well as if anybody buys anything on eBay as a result of clicking on the ad.

I’ll be keyword targeting a few posts that I feel may be a good fit for a higher CTR. This is more of an experiment for now just to see how it does. I will report further as time goes by.

If you use AuctionAds now, let us know how it has worked out for you (feel free to post anonymously).

Traffic

This was the first full month that my blog has been active. Last month I generated over 10,000 pageviews and over 6,000 unique visitors. This month I had 20,000 unique visitors and almost 24,000 pageviews.

The total number is somewhat deceiving though, as you’ll find out later on how much of that traffic was generated from one site.

My new vs. return visitor rate was only 4.8%, but also because I had a huge spike in traffic from one site. Looking at the last 10 days of the month, I was at about 13.8%, which is much better (but not as high as I’d like). This number will continue to be lower than I want due to the fact that I’m just growing my traffic and readers.

Monetization

As I mentioned in last months review, this blog is not meant to subsidize income just yet. In fact, I removed most of the AdSense ads from the page other than one on each page. I did add Kontera in-text links though.

AdSense brought in a whopping $8.12 on 23,000 impressions with just 16 clicks. That gives me a $0.35 eCPM That also means that each click averaged about $0.50, which isn’t too shabby. As traffic starts to grow and I really try and optimize for ads, I hope to see the total number get much larger.

Kontera brought in $3.51 on 19,186 impressions with 57 clicks giving a $0.18 eCPM. I’m told that Kontera gets better over time, and I have seen the eCPMs go up higher towards the end of the month when there are clicks.

Another thing to note for the lower CTR is the fact that the posts that generated the majority of the traffic were picture-based. This means there is not much Kontera advertising going on, and people will be more likely to skip over text links from Google.

RSS Subscribers

Last month I said that I wanted to have 100 RSS subscribers, well I peaked this month at 257 in one day. It was the day after a huge traffic spike though, but I’d say average numbers are now in the 60-70 range, about 10-30 higher than last month. I’m really hoping these numbers continue to grow.

Search Engine Goodness

There was a massive improvement in search engine results this month. I finally have a Google PageRank, it came up as a 3/10…not bad. In March I had 176 unique visitors as a result of search engine traffic. In April this number increased by 260% with 678 unique visitors. Here were the top 10 keywords:

• invest in powercast
• powercast ipo
• powercast invest stock
• powercast invest
• e92 m3
• stumbleupon
• david pitlyuk
• fast times indoor carting
• virginia mansions
• www.nevblog.com

As you can see, my post on Powercast being the next multi-billion dollar idea got a good amount of search engine love….apparently I’m not the only one that thinks it’s a great idea.

Popular Pages/Content

This was the top 10 most popular content on this blog for the month:

1. A Raunchy Dora The Explorer
2. The 45 Best Tech Sector Corporate Web Designs: H-O
3. The 45 Best Technology Sector Corporate Web Designs: A-G
4. David Pitlyuk (Homepage)
5. Hot Import Nights 2007, Washington DC Pictures
6. The Next Multi-BILLION Dollar Idea
7. 2008 BMW M3 (E92) Production Pictures
8. 2008 Infiniti G37 Coupe
9. Who is David Pitlyuk?
10. Dodge Viper Coupe With Matching Helicopter

We’ll find out why #1 was #1, but note that it had over 15,000 unique visitors to that page. From the pages that didn’t get promotion anywhere, the majority of their traffic came from search engines. The ones with bigger search engine traffic was Hot Import nights 2007, 08′ BMW M3, the next multi-billion dollar idea, and 08′ Infiniti G37 coupe. It looks the car posts have brought a good amount of traffic, I just hope some of that is targeted enough to retain those random visitors.

Top Referrals

Here are the top referrals for websites (not search engines) that referred traffic to my blog:

1. CollegeHumor
2. StumbleUpon
3. Smashing Magazine
4. CSS Globe
5. TN Media
6. Digg
7. ActiveTuning
8. TheWolfWeb
9. TotalFark
10. John Chow dot Com

College Humor brought the majority of my traffic this month. When I found a took a picture of a funny Dora The Explorer toy, I made a post and submitted it to a few sites hoping to get it picked up. CollegeHumor was the only one that picked it up, but that ended up generating over 15,000 unique visitors (although not much of it retained I’m sure). StumbleUpon has brought a good amount of traffic to the Dora pages as well as some of web design stuff. From what I see, a lot of the SU visitors have similar interests as Digg visitors (obviously depending on the categories they choose). CSS Globe, TN Media, Digg, and the TheWolfWeb all linked to a post I made. John Chow visitors are still coming from various links that John had posted to my blog.

All said and done, it wasn’t a bad month! I’m having a good time blogging, and I’m meeting a lot of new people. I’m looking forward to seeing this continue to grow, and only time will tell where things lead.

Here’s a compilation of some interesting reads from both readers of this blog as well as some select sites from my RSS feeds that I subscribe to.

• Building your blog and generating your traffic is not about just writing good content frequently. Networking is a big part of growing faster. 50% of Blogging Success is Building Connections with Others.
• If you own a business, writing proposals may be a big part of getting new business. If you proposal acceptance rates are really high, maybe you’re not sending enough out. Writing A Project Proposal.
• Foreclosure filings have climbed up 27% in just one quarter! With this news, it just reaffirms that prices are going to keep coming down…which means I will continue to wait before buying.
• Martin talks about the importance of first impressions from a web perspective. Find out what you need to do to make sure new visitors stay on your site for more than 1 second.
• Got a Wii? Learn to turn Wii games into drinking games.
• Learn how to turn your GMail account into a free 3GB virtual hard drive.

Would you be interested in getting your site linked in a post like this? Make sure to remain active and post comments on my site, and I’ll keep you in my radar. If something piques my interest, I’ll give it a link in my next compilation.

High interest credit cards can cause a lot of headaches and put your more in debt. Instead, be on the look out for low interest credit cards that make repayment easier. The best credit cards will offer you low interest for as long as you have the card. Visa credit cards have are often recommended for their low credit card interest rate.

Google has a simple tool called Google Alerts that allows you to track various queries in its search engine. You simply enter the term you want to search, specify what kind of search you want to do, and how often you want a report.

I currently use Google Alerts to track two queries:

1. pitlyuk
2. activetuning

This way if those terms are used on any sites that Google indexes, I will know about it. I know how quickly Google indexes this blog, because I see how long it takes for them to send me a report on “pitlyuk” after I make a post.

The tool is also useful if you are looking to track some sort of news event or topic that you want to see the latest and greatest information on.

Do you use Google Alerts for something in particular? Let me know, I’d be interested in seeing some of the other uses of the tool.

Two of my businesses are setup as an LLC partnership, ActiveTuning and Tri Megatech. When I was in the process of setting up these businesses, it was important to look at the exit strategy and terms if things were to go awry. Nobody wants to think in negative way, but it is something that needs to be done as a precautionary step if anything. At the least it will force you and your partner to think about certain scenarios that you would have never thought of, and make pre-determined decisions as to what needs to be done.

I just went through this process with Tri Megatech back in late 2006, and some of the main bullets that we thought about were:

• Money/Stock: How do the funds get split up? How does the percentage of ownership get sold back to the business or shareholder(s)?
• Flow: What happens to working relationships with vendors, clients, customers, etc?
• Responsibilities: Where does the responsibility for certain tasks fall?
• Time Frame: What sort of time frame would the above have to be completed by

Money/Stock

We had to think about what happens to the money that was initially invested into the business, the money that the business had, and how much the business was worth. I would obviously need to be paid back my investment, as it was considered a loan to the business. Technically I own 50% of the business, so I should be getting 50% of the cash that the business has at the time of leaving. The company should have its overall value assessed, including the cash that is on-hand. 50% of the assessed value should be mine, and should be paid back in the terms that are set.

Flow

There needs to be terms about what the process of working relationships with clients, customers, and vendors will be. If I am the partner leaving, I may represent or be the point-of-contact for many people. It should be my responsibility to provide the information to my partner so that he can rightfully take these contacts over. There should also be non-compete terms in the initial agreement to specify whether or not the leaving partner can start a competing business or not. If I could technically start a competing business, it should be specified how those relationships can be used. If these terms are not specified, I could move over all of the clients to my new business, essentially screwing over my business partner.

Responsibilities

If I am the leaving partner, what responsibilities do I have to keep doing, and for how long?  Who will take over my old responsibilities?  One of the main ideas of creating an exit strategy is not screw over the partner that is remaining involved with the business.  Your plan should involve the most fair methods for dissolving your portion of the business.

Time Frame

Time frame is one of the most important parts of the exit strategy.  In relation to finances, it needs to be pre-determined what amount of time is needed to pay the leaving partner off.  More than likely a business will not be in a position to just pay somebody a large percentage of their value right away.  The business is used to running things a certain way with certain expenses, and it may be detrimental to give up much of its funds at one time.  A plan to pay back over time is more than likely a must.  In our situation, we decided to pay the leaving partner over the course of six months.

The same goes for responsibilities.  The business may have to hire additional employees in order to pick up the responsibilities that the leaving partner held.  This takes time, and it may be necessary that the leaving partner continues to complete some of his roles.

This is a high-level look at some of the things you need to think about when entering a partnership agreement.  I would highly recommend doing further research in order to write-up a complete contract before you go into business with a partner.  Here are a few resources to help you along your path:

• Forming an Alliance?  Plan for Breakup
• Top 10 Mistakes Businesspeople Form When Forming Partnerships
• The Four D’s Of A Business Exit Strategy
• Succession Strategy: Plan in the Beginning or Risk Losing in the end

I made two changes to my blog, and I was surprised to notice that my CPC rates are now 5-10x what they were. What did I do? First I added AdSense section targeting, and second, I removed advertising from the page.

AdSense section targeting allows you to specifically exactly where Google should be scanning your page to deliver targeted ads. The entire reason AdSense is so effective is because the advertisements are meant to be targeted to the reader and the context that they have an interest about in the first place. The more targeted, the higher the click-through-rates, and more than likely more money to be made. Rather than just putting the standard AdSense code on your page, you can wrap you the content you want to either target or filter out using section targeting. If you want Google to target a specific area (for example the main content of your post), simply wrap it around this code:

<!– google_ad_section_start –>

Write your content here

<!– google_ad_section_end –>

If you want to filter out specific sections of your page, you can wrap those in this code:

<!– google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) –>

Write your content here

<!– google_ad_section_end(weight=ignore) –>

The second thing I did was simply remove two of the three AdSense spots that I had on the site. I had a 468×60 on the top of the posts, a 160×600 on the sidebar, and a 468×60 on the bottom of the posts. I only kept the 468×60 on the top for now, and I noticed that the ads are much better, and my CPC rates have been averaging over $1 a click. Previously, I’d be lucky to get 25 cents. Taking other AdSense ads off of the page can make a huge difference in CPC rates because Google can only fulfill so many spots, and each one is worth less. This reason is why some people will limit Google advertising to limited spots and use other types of ads in other spots in order to maximize revenue. Of course, you should be doing some testing to see what works best for you.

I have always been a big proponent of having a sitemap for your site. I feel that it was a major part of why Google starting indexing my blog so quickly. Now Google, MSN, Yahoo, and Ask have announced a partnership, a uniform support for sitemap files. If you already have a sitemap file, getting it crawled by these guys is easy, simply add this line to your robots.txt file:

Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

Your sitemap will now be supported by all the major search engines, and automatically crawled. This is the most effective way to make sure they all see your new content, as it’s specifically telling them the pages that are on your site.

For those of you with Wordpress, check out my list of top 10 Wordpress plugins. One of them is a sitemap generator. Simply turn it on, change some options, and all the work is done for you.

For those of you interested in more information, check out the announcements made by each search engine:

• Microsoft
• Google
• Yahoo
• Ask
  

Gotta love standards on the web! Especially when all of the major companies comply.