Well another day and another dollar right? Well, as you all have read, I decided about two weeks ago to track my focus, build my business plan, and start making everything that I do profitable. Part of the process included cleaning out my project closet by selling a few websites that I’ve acquired or had for quite some time. The obvious choices was SitePoint and this articles talks a little bit about what I learned.

The Decision to Sell

The decision to sell something that you’ve invested your time, heart and money – is is a hard one. I’m not aware of one web entrepreneur that at once point or another either regrets selling, or regrets selling for what it went for. None the less, it’s pretty darn important that we as business people, accept that decision and understand the deeper reasons for needing to let go. This proved to be the hardest part for me but now that it’s done… I couldn’t be happier.

To some, like the Website Flipping master, building websites to sell is a mere routine. To others like myself, it’s a hard decision made for the greater good of our over all goals. Now I’ve bought a number of things from SitePoint before, but listing a site for sale was very new to me and I knew I had lots to learn and I’m happy I did it.

The Style of Your Sales “Pitch”

At first, I was a bit lost here. I had no clue how I should or could sell something while conveying what I think it’s true value really was. I’m a passionate kinda guy, and I really really wanted to let my bidders know it.So how the hell can you show your passion and love for something in a string of text? Good question, but I think I figured it out.

I knew what I wanted. I wanted all my bidders to know that what I was selling was no joke. It wasn’t some half baked idea that I built simply to make a quick buck. It was a business. Something that was developed as a long term income stream that took my time money and dedication. And though the site was a great income generator (making it worth something), more important for me was to pass the torch to someone who would give it all the attention it deserved and respect it as much as we did. How the hell do you convey that in a sales letter of all things?

Researching the Market for Unique Auction Page Ideas

Like any good business does, especially start-ups, you research your customer base… or at least you should! SitePoint buyers are not excluded here and I mean it. I wanted my auction to stand out, be different. Be memorable and of course successful. So how would I do that? Simple. I’d do what few others ever do… and that’s be as detailed and fair as I could possibly be. Honest is likely the best word for it. So I’d say… the key to a refreshing auction page could simply be widdled down to, keeping it honest.

Anyone perusing SitPoint for more than five minutes can see that nearly every listing has a major coating of crap that has been sprayed with perfume to mask the oder. Stand out from the crowd by scraping off the poop and being real with yourself, and your bidders.

Honesty is the Best Policy

Being honest not only makes you feel good, but helps you build good relationships. Anyone who reads my articles knows that I’m all about 100% organic blogging. Hell I’m 100% organic in business too, and it pays off! Not just financially either. Being a good business person isn’t just a right… it’s our duty! As entrepreneurs, we should do everything that we can, to help maintain the sanctity and possibility that the internet currently offers the virtual entrepreneur. So when it came to my auction, I wanted my mantra to stand out and attract the right type of business people… not just the typical SitePoint junky looking for the next get rich quick scheme. In short, my sales page found him and I’m thrilled.

Be prepared for the haters!

Haters… now that’s a bit sharp, and maybe not 100% accurate. But one very important lesson I learned is that you’ll have some people post comments that are a bit… ugly. I’m not implying they were rude per-say, but lacking tact is a little more like it. Here is exchange between one commentator and myself, just to give you an example of how harmless comments can make or break the success of your auction should you not be prepared for it.

Commentator: You say you moved hosts in May to justify lack of stats.
But the stats shown DO have numbers for March and April.
Can you explain that?

Also, you are caught in the usual problem sellers face here:
You cannot disclose your advertisement methods but you need to somehow PROVE that the net is what you claim. I can create a site that makes 10K a month but if I pay 11K for advertisement it’s a loosing business – so you need to somehow prove to us your NET profit.

Like I mentioned above, this isn’t really rude… it’s just something that could be damaging had I not responded. So with five minutes of deep woo-saaa breathing, I thought about my reply  and hit submit.

So what do you think? Pretty good considering I didn’t get a bid from this commentator and he never returned to refute my reply. Knowing that, you can see where a comment like this can get under your skin. Did he/she just write this to stir the proverbial pot? Or were they genuinely interested in making a bid? I’m voting for a snipe job here, but I could be wrong. Fact is though, that his comment, and my response, may have actually contributed to the sale… who knows and maybe – I’ll never know. Regardless, You should be prepared for those pesky SitePoint comment snipers with a smart well prepared response, or if that’s not handy… a Whiskey & Coke should calm your nerves.

Don’t Under Estimate Your PM bidders!

To be honest here, I was always a bit weary of folks that refused to place a bid and went straight to the PM to open a dialogue. Boy oh boy was I ever wrong! After the last few auctions, I’ve sort of determined that bidders go from auction to auction and place minimum bids just to see if they can catch a deal. To the newbie like me, it’s what I naturally expected to see for a successful auction… BIDS… Wow what a novel idea!

Ha ha… that was a quick lesson learned! All of my serious inquiries came from private messaging… so make sure that you take notice of those who ask questions in private. It could mean the make it or break it for your auction.

Don’t be afraid of the Phone.

In business, communication is key. More important though is proper communication. I had a numer of serious bidders and I was fortunate enough to sift through and find the one person that sounded real. I know you don’t always get such a blessing, but in this case I did. After I decided who I wanted to get the win, I offered up my cell phone number for a firendly conversation. I’ve not asked him if this helped the sale, but maybe I will. It would be neat to know. I think it did. So I’ll just say that I think making yourself, and your phone available to a serious someone… is pretty darn important.

The Smell of Success

In the end boys and girls, I found a great new owner for the site I was selling, and hopefully even a friend. I love building healthy relationships and I’m sure with a little sunlight and water, it could grow into a great one. I’m proud of the results, I’m proud of the new owner, and I’m proud to have been the owner of such a profitable little site for so long. But as you all know, it’s time for me to move on to some of my other projects, and selling off that business, was just one more step to becoming closer to my business plan goals.

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think, or tell me about your SitePoint experiences. If you liked the article… a Stumble would be a nice way to show it!

As bloggers we’ve got to have a bottom line right? Wrong… I think that not having a blogging bottom line is one of the major problems bloggers of today experience and something well worth a discussion. So here it is, PB’s take on developing your bottom line.

Setting Goals at the Onset

Rumors have it that 80,000 new blogs are built every day and that my friends is a pretty big number. Between the blogger that creates an account and never posts… to the blogger who puts their heart and soul into their new found dream… everyone has a different blogging bottom line. Or do they? As I’ve learned over the past week or so, everyone has a totally different idea of what it is to run an online business. Personally I’ve found it more enjoyable to build something strong and solid. Build it well. Build it with longevity in mind and reap the benefits for years to come. As a fan of genuine, white hat, organic blogging… I hardly see other options as plausible… but I’m wrong, and I know it.

The importance of setting goals at the onset of your new blogging adventure is rivaled by none. Just like a business plan is required by banks, Angel Funds, and Grant Programs, the SBA, and sometimes even friends and family… you should develop one for your online business too. Now unless you’re going after some VC (Venture Capital) or start up seed funding, it’s not necessary to have a 600 page digitized and bound business plan. I’m simply saying that you need a plan and understand what its purpose is.

Your Blogging Business Plan

Documenting your goals from the start allows you to look back and see where you were, look down and see where you are, and look up – to get where you’d like to be. What is a business plan? Sure, it can be a list of your goals. Yep, it can even be a list of things you’re going to do… but more importantly… you business plan is an ever evolving road-map to your success. In business college, you’re taught that business plans are the lifeblood of any start-up. It’s the walking, talking, living , breathing sales pitch that you’ll use to “sell” your ideas to people who have the ways and means to pay for it… I’d say if multi-million and billion dollar corporations use this model for success, we should too, just on a smaller more manageable scale.

Being flexible… is a requirement

The reality is that I don’t know any Angel Fund, or VC investor that wants to read or even approve an inflexible business plan. They all want a business plan that can move with the change in the market. These guys want a dynamic agenda. An ever changing plan that gives those who fund your venture confidence that you can handle the blows you’re going to be dealt. Now that I’m thinking of it, sounds right up the alley of almost every online entrepreneur doesn’t it?

Now what does that mean for a blogger? Glad you asked… What it means for people like us is that we are not only allowed, but encouraged to create flexible, malleable, wavy, business plans that jump around and account for not only market changes, but changes in your businesses primary asset… Yourself! Seriously people, the more and more I look at the idea of a real business plan, the more it makes sense. Seriously, how could it possibly hurt?

Do you have a business plan for your ventures? Why not?

Figuring out your Bottom line

Now that you’ve decided to take up the walking stick, and get on the road to organizing your plan… you’ve got another major hurdle to over come as a blogger. Determining your blogging bottom line. Simply put, this bottom line, should be one of only a few business plan items that shouldn’t ever change. Now this is much harder than you may think, and if you’ve been blogging for any amount of time you know that deep down in your chest somehwere, there is that little bug telling you to do something different. Hell it happens to me all the time, but I’ve GOT to stick to my guns… after all, it’s my bottom line.

As an example… and the sacrificial lamb, I’ll use this blog as an example. The bottom line here isn’t a simple one. It complex. It’s loaded with “what if’s” and “if so’s”. To keep it simple for this articles sake, I’ll say that this blog bottom line is ultimately to make me money. But only indirectly through learning through such a unique experience. I’ve been in business online for quite a few years, and I learn something new every day.

Piss Biscuit is my first blog… does that make me a newbie? Maybe… to things like Social Bookmarking, but hell I’ve bee making money online for a long time now, and I’ve always got a plan. Blogging newbie? Sure. Internet entrepreneur… No way.

I want to take the open communication and the freedom I gain from running PB and apply it to my business plans in other ventures. As many of you already know, and still others like myself learn everyday, keeping your “profitable” businesses close to your chest is an evil necessity that bloggers are forced into. Jealous rivals, spammers, competition, pusillanimous big mouths… you name it, they are after you. This blog allows me the freedom to not worry about my other ventures… what more could I ask for.

Have you thought about your bottom line?

All across the sphere debates are being started about the validity of another blogger business plan (I know I started a big one) and in truth, it’s really not fair. I’ll be the first to admit that when it comes to a comparison, it’s got to be apples to apples. Period. It’s a lesson learned for me, but how about you? Do you really comprehend the differences the business plans for other bloggers? Or are you just as wuick to jump down someone’s throat as I was to try and make a point? I think I’ve read on just about everyone’s some sort of dispute in the way things are manged over the past few weeks. We’ve all got our own opinions, but does that mean someone else is totally wrong. Not at all.

The point in this article isn’t admit guilt, or failure, but to simply explain that there is more to bloggin than writing posts and calling someone stupid. It’s all about building a business using the freedom of the interenet in ways that were once never possible. With freedom, comes a mass variety of views and methods and each of us should develop our own before critisizing another. In closing, the interenet is an amazing place. I can fall flat on my face, and tomorrow be up and running again with a whole new mojo. That’s pretty cool if you ask me. So have you made your actual plan? Do you know where your blog is going? Do you know what your end all purpose is? PB’s purpose is that of communication. Nothing more, and I’m proud of where it is today.

After a long weekend of reading post after post about Page Rank Improvements and of course lack there of, I decided that it was time for post about how to create a successful blog PB style keeping in mind the top 5 ways bloggers screw up their page rank. So why all of a sudden am I oh so willing to write all of this out? Well… to be honest… some of you guys have been pissing me off with some of these and rather than just put up an “Ugly Stick Beat Down” I decided offering a friendly, informative, “Authority Article” would be more beneficial.

You’re not using a “.htaccess redirect”.

Nothing is more aggravating to people like me who take time to write a thoughtful anchor… then it’s discovered the your domain name is spattered across the web in both “www” and “http://” formats! See, not only does that piss us off… but it weakens the “G-Juice Trickle”. To Google, not using a redirect can appear as if you are referring to two different websites. That said, you not only weaken your own rank, but you weaken the value of the outbound link of the author who wrote a little something about you.

You’ve not Updated Your Ping List Dummy

Yeh, I know someone is going to tell me that they’ve got “ping-o-mattic” and that covers it… ha! Okay… you put all your eggs in one basket why don’t ya! Look people, if you don’t have the notifier list updated in your admin panel, then it could take DAYS for your latest post to be listed in the serps. There is nothing worse than finding links through your referral stats rather than you’re serps feed readers! If the serps aren’t showing the backlink, you’re not getting credit Einstein! Oh, did I forget to mention that I’ve already written a post about the importance of the ping list? Yeh, it includes the latest and greatest services to! NOTE: Being listed in the serps is not the same as being indexed… there is a major difference!

Your 404’s are not Re-Directing Either

Nothing pisses off an author more than discovering that their well thought out anchor text to YOUR blog leads to a big fat 404 error. Do you want to lose some Page Rank? How about some love juice from the big “G”? Or how about that oh so valuable anchor text that you worked so hard to earn? I mean c’mon people, I don’t think that there is an easier way to screw yourself and the people who write about you! LOL… What’s ironic is that people often go back and rename their posts for better SEO… the result is a fatty-fo-fatty 404!

Wanna see it work? http://thepissbiscuit.com/best-blogger-on-planet/ (That page does not exist, but you don’t see no stinking 404 now do ya!) As for the Plugin that can help make it happen? Try the 404 redirect for better SEO!

Comment Chatting Needs to STOP!

Okay number three was the fastest way you can lose rank… but this my friends is the fastest way to lose readers and more importantly… commentators so listen up. If you’ve got the “Subscribe to Comments” plugin installed… I AM TALKING TO YOU! Over the past three days alone, I’ve been notified of about three hundred comments being added to the blogs I post on and subscribe to. Of those three hundred or so comments, 25 or 30 of them were actually something I wanted to be notified about. What I don’t want to read… is comment chatting… useless banter sent within minutes and sometimes seconds of each other.

Tonight on one of the newer blogs that I read, notified me of 19 comments in under 10 minutes which consisted of nothing more that silly fruitless banter like:

“great post”…”Thanks”…”No problem, glad you liked it”…”yeh man your post was great”… “Thanks man, I appreciate it”….”No seriously, it was really great”…” No dude, if only you were a girl”…

I hope that you get my point. Sure, I could go and cancel my subscription… but that requires work, and I’m to busy for that right? What’s easier for me is to either stop subscribing… or stop commenting. Neither option is good for the blog’s author. So what’s the solution? Try holding back your responses a while. When you as the owner, can respond to five or six comments at once… you can reduce the number of “flaky” comments sent out via e-mail by 60% or 70% and give the spiders time to find your fricken post! After your post is crawled… get stupid with comment chatter on occasion. Just remember that your readers should be respected.

You’re not listed in DMOZ

Okay this one is harder than it sounds. DMOZ is the open source directory… the biggie in fact. More so than Google in fact… and while we’re talking about facts… if you’re listed in DMOZ, you’ll likely be auto indexed by Google within days… not listed… indexed! Ya see the DMOZ directory is run by real people. You submit, they review, and if you’re cool enough, you’ll get listed. It’s a cake walk! (Fat joke at myself).

So when should you apply for a DMOZ listing? When you’re blog starts seeing some traffic, comments, and decent posts… it’s probably a good time to submit. Remember that REAL live people edit each submission… you’ve got to impress someone, not just meet some mathematical criterion. Now keep in mind, that this can take a week or it can take 6 months… but because people are involved, you never can tell.

• Don’t want to get “Sandboxed”? DMOZ it.
• Don’t want to lose your PR? DMOZ it.
• Don’t want to be de-indexed? DMOZ it.

Wrapping up my Page Rank Hints

As I mentioned earlier on… I wrote this to not only help you guys and gals… but to point out that good blogging can lead to more than just high PR and Traffic counts. It can lead to a great community, awesome friends, respectful relationships, a useful resource, and a profitable online business. So if all that isn’t reason enough to become a better blogger… go eat a cupcake!Don’t forget to go read my post on “The Best SEO Trick for Bloggers“.

If you like this post, and think it would be a good AUTHORITY article… scratch it… sniff it… lick it… but whatever you do, please Stumble it!

Well congratulations to everyone who got a little love from the big “G” last night! I was awakened to my cell phone e-mail beeping going off the hook with everyone letting me know that the PR has finally updated and that the famous Piss Biscuit has earned a big fat PR3!

Doing it in under 7 weeks…

This blog will have been live seven weeks on Sunday and what a ride it’s been! That means we’ve brought this baby a long way from it’s ZERO and I’m eating it up like a fat kid on a cupcake. (That was for AP). Though it’s late, and I really would rather be taking a much deserved nap, I know how important this event is for millions of bloggers around the sphere as well as it is for me… so as I sit here ready to collapse, I’ve got to throw out a few congratulatory hip hip hoorays! (errr… how about props?)

The mystery that is Page Rank

Yeh, PR from the big “G” is a mystery and that means that for many just starting out, it’s a mystery of no immediate concern. However, to those of us who are avid bloggers, this little update that Google performs every three months or so can be life or death. Page Rank influences your ability to advertise, monetize, and of course in some cases even gloat a little bit. So for all of you who recived some G-Love, congratulations! To those of you who may have been slapped in the face with baby powder, keep trucking through it, you can always make a change and get right back on the bandwagon.

So what are your stats PB?

Good question… I know it’s been a long while since posting a little something about stats, so I figured I would do it now. For a seven week young blog… I figure I could share exactly what I’m doing and maybe you’ll be able to compare some notes… Good, bad or indifferent! Any way you look at it… maybe you should reconsider advertising on this bad boy!

• Average Daily Visitors: 189
• Average Page Views: 1,790
• Average Site Wide Hits: 4,762
• Backlinks: 1,129
• Alexa Rank: 332,293
• Technorati Rank: 347,083
• Stumble Traffic: 661
• Google: 238
• Yahoo: 129

Talking about what we’ve done… or not done.

To my surprise, I’ve been told to piss off on more than one occasion when talking to other bloggers about their site stats. They ask for advice… I ask for some facts… i get told to suck an egg. I’m not sure why the secrecy as I feel everyone could offer a little comparative input without divulging some super secret.

Me, I’m pretty open book and I know how much it means to fellow bloggers to have something to compare themselves to. For newbies, its a motivational tool. For old schoolers, it’s a resource for making improvements.

You’ve got homework!

That said, I’m asking each of you to write a post on your blogs about your PR update for better or worse, and talk a little bit about site statistics you’re currently experiencing.This  should incite some great discussions and share in the buzz over yesterday’s PR update. Once you’ve written your post, come back and drop the link to it in the comment for all to see.

Thanks again for helping PB become the blog that it is today. I appreciate the community here maybe moreso than you know.

Well people… I’m about to let a dirty little secret out of the bag and it’s got to do with optimizing your blog’s “Header Tags” to improve search engine rankings within a week. Whoa, say what? Yep, you read it right. Unlike the hundreds of articles out there that explain the value of properly labeling your “<Header>” tags… I’m going to show you something that has literally made my company thousands of dollars in SEO optimization services.

The Value of your <H1> – <H6> tags

As most of you savvy bloggers already know heading tags (H1 through to H6) are given more weight by search engines than regular body copy. You also already should know that they should be used wisely to reinforce the page’s overall targeted keywords. That said there are a few basics that you should be aware of before starting to go bonkers with modifying your blog’s CSS Style Sheets.

Learn the “Header” tag’s true value

Today it’s pretty common practice to have theme designers incorporate the header tags within their style sheets. In fact, more often than not, their ideas are on the mark, but with a few simple tweaks, you can out rank and out index your competition. But first, you’ve got to know the value that search engines assign these little bad boys.

• <H1> = Most valuable Tag in the toolbox. Usually used for the title of a blog.
• <H2> = Second most valuable tag. This is usually found in the “Title” of each post.
• <H3> = My H3 tags can be found in the sidebar. They are bold with a little star next to it.
• <H4> = Generally unused but quite valuable and should be used.
• <H5> = Generally unused but still valuable to most search engines
• <H6> = Generally unused and least valuable, but not to be wasted.

Using the tags within your posts.

I run across COUNTLESS blogs everyday where authors don’t ever utilize the Header tag in their posts and it’s mind boggling to me. With the release of WordPress 2.5, the simple drop down menu at the top left o your editing screen makes this once aggravating task, beyond simple. Use them.

Helpful in more than one way

Look at my bright pink title above. That my friends is all it take to ass a little style and SEO love juice to your posts! It really couldn’t be more simple. I’m going to try and keep it simple so combining good design, great copyrighting practices and a little SEO fuel, here i my list of why you should use tags within a post.

Heading Tags can be aesthetically pleasing to read.

Header tags break up the monotony of a long winded posts.

“H” TagsHelp direct your readers to focus on your content.

Subliminally gives anxious readers small achievable goals.

Allows you to re-enforce staple points of your post

Add content space to what my be a short post.

Allows you to insert relevant keywords & phrases

Cuts out the trashy “self spamming” routine

… and those are just to name a few. I kept the list short, because that’s not really what this post is all about. So without further ado, here’s my little secret that can change the way spiders look at your site forever!

Re-Styling your <H> tags!

The look and style of your “Header” tags are controlled within you blog’s main style sheet. Usually, named style.css. Now I’ won’t go into lessons of coding CSS because every design is different, but I will tell you that with a few simple tweaks, you can add even more punching power to your posts. How? Ha ha…. just restyle them to match your body text.

Choosing the right tags to alter

Since the <H4>, <H5> and <H6> tags are almost ALWAYS under utilized, we are going to start with those. The idea is a simple one. Edit your last three available head tags to mimic the style of your body text. Huh? It’s easy I promise! Here is an example of body text I’ve got:

body{
color:#333;
font-family: Georgia, “Times New Roman”, Times, serif;
font-size: 11px;

As you can see the color of the font is not quite black, the font is Georgia, and the size is 11pts. Now we want to locate the <H> tags within our style sheet and modify them to match. For this example… here is an existing <H6> tag that we are going to re-style:

h6{
margin:5px 0;
padding:0;
font-size:12px;
color:#333

As you can see there are quite a few differences. But your job is to make the <H6> identical to the <body> tags and don’t worry It’s as easy as a little cut and paste… here is the final code!

h6{
color:#333
font-family: Georgia, “Times New Roman”, Times, serif;
font-size: 11px;

Now you’re locked an loaded! Save the file, upload it back to your server and start blogging using this little trick in every one of you posts. Choose your three main keywords and key phrases and order them according to what you find their value to be. The most important words and phrases for you blog should be assigned <H4> and the least important should use <H6> tags. But be consistent! Use the same tags, for the same words and phrases!!!

Some good advice to follow

Now that you’re done writing your awesome post, go back through it, highlight your target copy and simply choose the appropriate tag from the drop down that WordPress oh so graciously provides us (2.5 and higher)…. that’s it! Oh and one thing to remember… using tags is like steroids… DON’T over due it. A handful of tags is worth more than a post loaded with keyword spam (A good example of self spamming) Keyword spam might make you feel good now, but within weeks, you can quietly disappear off the grid and never be found again. So get out there and tweak that CSS!

If you thought this was informative… Stumble it for me, it only takes a sec… and if you’re really feeling randy… comment on it for me!

Click here to make your Google rankings last a LIFETIME…