Sohaib Thiab – The Story of an Internet Entrepreneur

Well, its been a very busy week end, mostly non-work related, my uncle passed away on Thursday morning, it was a bit of a surprise actually although he’s not young, we just didn’t expect it, I guess you don’t usually expect such things, god have mercy on his soul.

I haven’t had much time to do anything, I barely was able to check my emails and reply to anything urgent, I had lots of work to be done in this weekend, I should always make backup plans, you never know what could happen.

As I have mentioned earlier, myspacerush is up and running, its performing quite well actually considering that no advertising has been done yet, we still have plans me and Imad to advertise it, but we didn’t get around to do that yet. The website suffered some downtime due to an error in coding as it seems, this has damaged the search engine rankings that I’ve been able to achieve during the past weeks, it seems that the Google bot visited the site while it was down, incase you don’t know, downtime can really really damage your search engine rankings, thus the reason why you should always look for reliable web hosts and reliable coders, in our case, the website was up, but it was displaying an error the whole time, sadly I didn’t have the time to fix it myself due to the unfortunate circumstances in the family, and so I had to fwd. an email to Imad and the coder to get it fixed.

Imad is currently working on some designs for a number of new sites that we are planning to develop and sell, he showed and extra cool layout for a text messaging website, were planning to sell those sites on SP, which btw increased their prices to list websites for sale, it now costs you $19.95 to open a topic! is SP the only website with serious buyers?? ANYWAYS, SP will be one of the forums we will be selling the sites on. Have I mentioned this in my last blog post?

I’ve spent some good time thinking about the future of P4H, should I sell it? or should I grow it, selling it right now is probably the worst thing I could ever do, the website hasn’t sold advertising space for quite some time now, part of it because I haven’t been promoting the advertising space as I used to do, prices to advertise on the forums are quite low for a forum with 2300+ members and 32000+ posts, $10 header banners are a bargain I would say, and for so far I haven’t sold one spot in the past 2 months.

VPS costs tend to go higher as we get more and more applications each day, memory is running short and it seems I have to upgrade it once again, well, if I have to do that I would probably go ahead and get a full dedicated server just for P4H, which leads us to the 2nd option of growing the service, offering more free plans and offer bigger sponsored web hosting plans, I had an interesting chat with Nick the other day, he’s an admin on the forums and he helps allot in running the VPS and the forum, we discussed some cool ideas of how to grow the service, what should we offer, and what should remove, basically, you get a generous web hosting account, loaded with all the features you get from a paid host 100% free (I am already doing that) but were going to increase the disk space and bandwidth, this plan will still be free without sponsored ADs, however, you wont be able to upgrade your plan with point gathered from forum posts, you would have to either pay/donate money, or place our ADs on your site, however those ADs will not be annoying, large or take up space, its going to be 468*60 Google Ads that can very well be your own ads, you will even be able to change the color of the ADs to match your site!

Lots of work need to be done if I decide to make this change, especially the trouble of moving 200+ accounts from the VPS to the new server.

As my baby, Talkhomebusiness.com, I am planning to put in some $$ and massively advertise it, its about time I did something with this website and get something in return for the $$ and time I spent in developing it.

1st of all, let me express how happy I am with the launch of our new myspace games website, myspacerush.com is now up and running with its new coded design, your feedback is deeply appreciated

Well lets come down to my new idea, I am going to follow Tyler’s and Bryan’s lead in giving my project code name, well here it is, project Chayron is my new big project under development, this will probably be my biggest project that I have ever planned for, lots of development and planning has to go into it, I wont disclose any information about it just yet, I am going to start laying out the steps the project would go through, estimated costs for each step and the amount of work/time needed for each one.

btw, I use Chayron as my username on some forums, so don’t get confused.

In my previous post I counted the number of website I currently own, I cant believe I missed too! lol, so the counter is up to 22 now…

I will be posting a quick update soon as soon as me and Imad finish up some websites that were planning on putting for sale.

That’s it for now I guess!

lol, this is probably the 1st time that I update my blog twice in the same day, I’ve spent some time hunting for some new domain names, I was basically looking for dictionary words, don’t expect to find many, I had a hard time finding some good .name domain names, I am not sure how much .name domains are worth, but I am guessing it should be at least low $xxx for each. Especially that its a dictionary name.

Do you know the exact number of website that you own? well, it suddenly struck me today that I don’t know the exact number of websites that are currently up and running, apparently, I currently have 20 established websites up and running, by established I mean that you’ll find a running website there, not an under construction page, but that doesn’t mean that they get traffic and make any revenue.

I am not sure if starting that many websites is a good idea, but don’t forget that those website were gathered during the course of the past 2 years, come to think about it, that’s not a big number, I certainly know some webmasters that have 3 times my number of sites, at the end of the day, its not about the quantity, its about the quality!

Nothing much has progressed lately, myspacerush is about to be done, I don’t blame the coder, he had to modify lots of the GS coding for it to work with our skin, I cant say how much I am excited about this site, the last preview I saw of the running website was AWSOME! cant wait to share it with you guys.

Next update shouldn’t be too far away, btw, I am thinking of auctioning Archive.name on eBay, do you think that’s a good idea?

Coder Search! 

Believe it or not, me and my partner have been looking for a reliable coder to code the new myspacerush design into a working gamescript.net  website, so far we have tried two coders and both proved to be incompetent, wasted our time and delayed our plans.

I didn’t realize it was this hard to find a good coder! I’ve posted a topic on talkfreelance requesting one, got some replies but it doesn’t seem they know what they are talking about, only one of them sounds promising, hopefully he’ll be the one! if your a coder or know a reliable coder please share his info with us.

Searchenginemap.com

I’ve been thinking about launching something on this website instead of it sitting there collecting dust, I think I am going to place some SEO related tools for now, PR check, keywords research etc. until I get a chance to develop it further.

Freewebproxy.info

The other day I thought I should check the site’s cpanel, and to my surprise, I found out that the website was getting traffic! despite the fact that I never did any promotion, linked from one of my sites or anything, seems that it got around 250 unqiues and 400,000 hit (yes 400K hits!) from type in traffic, so I decided to work on it a bit, currently the website is getting around 50K hits a day, I think I’ll start offering banner ads on it soon.

Cheats website 

I’ve been thinking of starting a game cheats website, those website can get very popular if advertised properly, I have a domain name in mind but I am not sharing it now because I haven’t registered it yet I’ll post about this website once its up.

Textit.org

I’ve started optimizing this free text messaging website for my good friend Imad in return for 50% of the website’s revenue, things are looking good so far, did some onsite optimization for it and will continue working on it this week. I think I am going to start offering my SEO services in return for shares in websites that I see good potential in, or for other services that I might need, design etc. I got an offer from a guy on WHT to optimize a myspace related website (layouts) in return for shares from the website’s revenue, I basically said no because there were lots of similar websites, however I am currently thinking of pm’ing him for more info and see if its worth the effort.

I cant find time to do anything, things have been going quickly these days, I even didn’t find the time to go the gym the last week, I managed to go last Sat. which was great, hopefully I’ll be able to go again during this week.
I’ve got lots of under construction websites that need to be developed, I am still trying to finish premiushosting’s new website, the design and coding are all done, but optimizing it is taking way more time than I expected, especially re-writing all of the content and even writing new optimized content from scratch. Finding the balance between writing good quality content for the website readers, and yet having it attractive for search engines is a hard and time consuming effort.

 Myspacerush.com

I found a new coder for myspacerush.com, Dave, the original guy who was coding it never got back to us, last time he logged in was a week ago, and we cant afford to delay this project any further, hope this new coder is good!
 

New Domain

I registered searchenginemap.com through namecheap the other day, initially I was thinking of selling it, however I didn’t get a good price for it so I guess I am keeping it in the queue for future development! I got some ideas for such a website, one being an interactive flash intro where it demonstrates the relationships between the different search engines and how some search engines use other’s results, not sure if its a good project ROI wise. but I think it has a good potential of creating some “buzz”, who knows where that would lead right

Pagerankincrease.com

I’ve been contacting high PR website for possible partnerships, getting a PR7 and PR8 isn’t an easy thing, I’ve re-thought the pricing structure, now PR6,7 and PR8 links are based on monthly fees, I am planning to develop this website further with a new custom design and some advertising, not sure where I plan to promote it yet, but I’ve got some plans.

I’ve updated the blogroll list btw, make sure to check some other cool blogs

Its been some time since I updated the blog, 5 days if I am not mistaken, I had a couple of days off last week which gave me some time to work on some of my sites, pagerankincrease is now fully operational, I’ve used a template that I had for now, I’ve been more concerned about the websites content and optimization, I also did some link building for it, hopefully I’ll get it to a PR5 with the next update.

Mypsacelobby.com is now sold, me and my partner in that website agreed to let it go and start off another one, last time I checked the website had 74 online guests, I am sure the new owner will enjoy the traffic and the steady (small) income this website provided, which will eventually increase with the correct advertising.

The new gaming website is still under construction, this will be a huge improvement in the gaming website that me and Imad start, I’ve already moved around 600 games to it, planning to get it to more than 1K games soon. below is a preview of the website

I am going to start optimizing the website soon, hopefully I’ll get it results similar to the ones I got my last SEO client on Google (ranked him on the 1st page for myspace games and myspace game)

Talkhomebusiness

Participation on the forums increased with the announcement of the new contest, still below the level that I hoped for, I am considering buying a package from Bryan (forumshock) to get those lurking members to post. I’ve submitted the contest’s press release on prweb.com (paid distribution) the press release got a 4 point editorial review so I am guessing they were pleased with the quality of the press release (they actually said that in the email) not sure if this is a msg they send to everyone to encourage them to upgrade or was it really worth it. I would post it here but its a bit long, you can read it on preweb.com here.

Thats about it for now I guess, I’ll try to post an update soon on the status of current/future projects.

You need to spend money to earn money, that’s the bottom line, I registered two new domain name today, one for another myspace project, and the other will be used for a content and a project that I have in mind, i still have to look for a domain name for the Humor website, which I bought the script for a couple of days ago.

I really need to start working on my current projects and stop starting new ones, I need to start optimizing my sites, and doing some link building for them, I already did some new link building for THB, hopefully I’ll get to at least a PR5 by then next update, I know PR doesn’t matter allot, but I like that little green bar

I am also planning to write up some SEO related articles and submit them to a few newsletters, press releases are another thing I am planning to do, I must start the contest on THB and announce it, I’ll probably write my own press release for that contest, maybe modify the one used to announce the launch of THB and modify it.

THB is about to reach 3000 posts, it should have been double that number, but I am happy with the quality of the topics we have there.

On a more personal level, I am planning to go to the movies this weekend to watch Ice Age: The Meltdown, I’v seen the 1st part and loved it. The 2nd part is definitely funnier from what I can tell from the trailer.

I’ve set my mind on a great script for a video website, you know the type of sites with funny videos in different categories, anyways the script that I found was way cheaper from the one I saw at the beginning (which was $150) this one has almost all of the features, and way cheaper, I’ve sent a pm to the script owner today and I expect to get the script in a day or two.

Domain Hunting

Now I need to start looking for a suitable domain name for this site, something creative and yet has some SEO potential in it. Any ideas?

MyspaceLobby

This site has been doing great recently, it got around 3000 uniques last month and now has a PR4, sadly after adding the Google sitemap to it (I didn’t have a good feeling about it, but my partner wanted to add it) the website lost the rankings I achieved for it on Google, it dropped from the 2nd page to the 9th page I’ve read about some sites adding the sitemaps and then losing their rankings, that’s a lesson for the future I guess, the website is moving backup, but slowly, it initially dropped to page 11 after adding the site map, now its on the 9th page with results varying from one DC to the other, that’s of course after deleting that damn sitemap.

I am not 100% positive that the sitemap did that, maybe it went back in the sandbox, but that didn’t happen for a new site that I optimized for a client and it still have a page 1 rankings for almost the same key term.

Besides Google, the site has an excellent ranking on MSN, rankings on Yahoo and yet to happen “hopefully” I guess it needs some more work, and I’ll have to make some time for it.

I’ve been discussing in the past few days with a couple of potential partners, will be officially partners once we sign an official agreement but I consider them partners, well anyways, we’ve discussing the potential of building a new network together that is mainly centered around online advertising and SEO, were still working out the details, everything sounds good so far, were also working out the new network name, we should finish this detail today.

I guess that’s about it for now, I will probably update this post today once I talk with them again.