It's interesting looking at Google Analytics to see which are the top articles on this blog. They tend to change with time and give you a real idea of what readers are looking for.Here's the top five articles this year:How to survice without any moneyYour rights when you lose your job and are made redundantWhat to do if you can't repay your credit card debtHow to survive and prosper in a recessionWays to raise moneySadly they are all articles to do with weathering the recession. Read Full Story

I've been following the fascinating 30 day challenge held every August by Ed Dale (and Australian Internet Marketer) who helps people (especially small businesses) to set up and optimize websites. His credo is that no matter what your business, whether you are in the industrial safety supplies business or perhaps a pop band looking to break out, you will benefit from optimizing your site for keywords related to your business. Even the smallest business would benefit from understanding how th... Read Full Story

For those of us who have been making money online for a few years now, it's tempting to capitalize on our hard-won knowledge of how search engines work to set up a business offering seo optimization services. But it's pretty clear that everyone and their dog has had the same idea judging from the results when you plug that keyword into Google, and it's not clear that all of them know what they are doing. If you are going into this business the best way to do it is through the off-line world ... Read Full Story

It turns out the online world is just like the off-line one, with stores such as Circuit City (which sold electronic goods) closing their doors. I think part of the problem was that they specialised in a product group that was vulnerable to the recession. After all nobody needs to buy TV's or plasma screens - these are purchases that can easily be postponed. By contrast the online stores that are thriving, such as Amazon or Buy.com, offer a wide range of goods, some of which could be classed... Read Full Story

It looks like the fight between Microsoft and Google is hotting up, with Google moving into the operating system business and Microsoft challenging in the search business with Bing.Microsoft plans to go further - they currently offer advertising on Bing, displayed alongside the search results, but have never allowed small publishers to put advertising on their websites they way Google does. However, it turns out that they are thinking about it, with a test system in beta with a few selected ... Read Full Story

Since the recession started up last year, a whole host of job board sites has sprung up, mostly specialised ones catering for particular industries such as software or accounting. However people looking for simple administrative careers haven't really had their own board till now - a new American job board called AdministrativeJobs.com has sprung up listing all sorts of admin and clerical jobs. It's worth registering with as many of these sites as possible - you never who which one will prov... Read Full Story

Our family is having a rubbish weekend - my other half's motorbike has broken down, so of course he cancelled everything to try to fix it himself. Only he doesn't have a decent motorcycle jack, so of course he struggled to get anything meaningful done. I'm working on persuading him to let the experts take over Monday morning - but it all adds up to another expense. Sigh. Read Full Story

There are faint signs that the housing market is stabalising in the UK and that in a few months time it might start to gently rise again. Of course this could be a false dawn - in the early 90's housing crash, there were several false dawns only for houses to go back down again.If you are desperate to move house, you need to take advantage of any rise in the market however short-term. Spruce up your house: you don't need to go for full-scale renovation, a lick of paint will do, plus updating... Read Full Story

There are essentially two ways to set up an ecommerce business - the first is to go into affiliate marketing, where you don't actually hold any goods but merely redirect customers to the retailer's webpage, and the second is to set up an internet store, where you own the goods and sell them on your store, including accepting payment.The second is an option for those who own brick and mortar stores but wish to increase their custom by setting up an online store as well. However, the great dif... Read Full Story

Part of the art of making money online from Adsense is choosing high-value keywords where the cost per click is decent. But is it sensible to choose the very highest value keywords such as Mesothelioma lawyers? If you check the search results, there are so many websites competing to rank for that word that chances are that anything you write containing that keyword will get buried deep in the SERPs with no-one finding it - that is if your page manages to get indexed at all.It's actually much... Read Full Story