Here we are in mid February and many people have already given up on their New Year Resolutions. Some people didn’t even make it to the end of January.

I’m struggling with my New Year resolutions as well, but I haven’t given up. My New Year starts again today. I’ve had unexpected problems sticking to my plan.

I have just come out of a 3 week hospital stay where I didn’t have access to a computer. Bang goes the majority of my resolutions.

In November 2010 I started a traffic drive on this blog using just two methods:

1) Regular posting (at least 4 times a week), and
2) Regular commenting (50  to 75 comments per week)

In November my Alexa ranking was 307,525, one month later it had reduced to 200,267 and now in February my ranking is 118,878. My goal is to get the Alexa ranking below 80,000 which will put this blog in the top 1% for worldwide traffic.

Getting onto the first page of Google searches is the holy grail of Internet Marketing.

Thousands of  posts have been written on Search Engine Optimisation, yet I can tell you how to do this in six words:

Put Keywords in Your Domain Name

That’s it. Simple isn’t it?
It just costs the price of a domain name, and web hosting.

Knowing how powerful keywords are in domain names, means that you should carefully consider what keywords you want, before registering the domain.

John McNally
Painting in Leamington Spa, England

Internet Marketing is a funny old game.  When people ask me what I do for a living, “Internet Marketing” isn’t enough of an answer.  People want to know what “Internet Marketing” is. I get stuck here, I don’t want to give a 3,000 word answer and I can’t think of a shorter reply.

I thought I found a solution by calling myself a “Blogger” but that doesn’t work either.  People want more information on how I get paid.  This gets a bit awkward because I don’t get paid,  so I can’t properly explain why I do it.

Spammers are clever. Sometimes they are so clever I almost admire them. But I have to keep reminding myself that no matter how clever they are they’re still bastards. They’re wasting my time, and I don’t like that.

I like to think I’m clever, but they’ve still caught me out. In the early days my blog was full of spam, and I was even replying to them! I like to be polite.

Then after a while I got to recognise the spam comments and deleted the dodgy ones, but a lot of the clever, nice ones I let pass. I wasn’t sure you see, and I didn’t want to upset anyone by trashing their comment.

Everyone knows that “content is king”, but I’m a Republican at heart, and I bow to no Monarch who didn’t even apply for the job!  

And yet, and yet ….content IS King, so how do you get better at it? SIMPLE.  Just keep writing.

That’s no help to you is it? You’re reading this post because you find writing difficult, and all I say to help is “keep writing”.

Look, let me explain. I’m an artist. I paint. I like to do everything visually. When I first started blogging in March 2009 I was told “content is king” just, like you have been……GULP! Oh well I thought, perhaps I can fill all my posts with pictures and that would count.

I’ve never understood why people use Word? Why? That’s how I know I’m getting old, because I can’t understand.
I used to use Word in the olden days, last century. But Word? That’s soooooooooo Last Century.

I don’t use Word. I use this Blog. My online diary.

It’s strange really, I’m using my blog now. Not Word. I’ve asked younger people why they use Word, and they’ve explained it to me. But I still don’t understand? That’s how I know I’m getting old. I used to understand last century, when I was young.

Blogger. I like the sound of that. I’ve been called worse.

When I retired, I had a problem.  People who didn’t know me used to ask “What do you do”, and I always said “bugger all I’m retired.” The trouble is people wouldn’t accept that, they didn’t believe me.

You see, I didn’t retire, I just had an expensive divorce and couldn’t afford to continue running my business, so I closed it down.

I was too young you see, only 53, so nobody believed the retired moniker, they kept asking more questions, and I got fed up with it. So I started to say “I’m an artist”. Now those of you who know me are laughing now, because I’m also a drunk.

Once you have got to the stage of starting a blog, you can then move on to a comprehensive Internet Marketing course, with interactive feedback and up to date information.

This Marketing course is completely flexible, allowing you to choose modules and create your own curriculum. A course tailor made  to pursue your own interests, finding ways to make money from things that give you pleasure.

Although this is the best Internet Marketing course you could possibly have, it comes to you at the rock-bottom price of  nothing, now’t, zilch, it’s completely FREE with no upgrades or one-time offers. You have already subscribed, though you may not realise it.

Phew! The relief……..I’m NOT hacked. I haven’t got a Virus. My Blog is working properly again.

If your blog is slowing up, won’t download some plugins, is sending you ’500 Internal Server Error’ messages, won’t upgrade the latest WordPress codes or even won’t display some of your blog plugins, RSS feeds or blogroll. Don’t worry, hopefully it’s simply a memory issue.

I have been experiencing all of the above problems for the past six months. I haven’t been able to upgrade my WordPress codes since August 2010, and everything has become more and more difficult to operate until in the last few days half my blog disappeared.