Brian Vaughan

Writing for Your Audience

Posted by Brian

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Now we all know that your visitors to your site are the most important part of your site, and if you didn’t know that I am telling you now, they are. Some of you may be scratching your head right now and saying “But isn’t content the most important part of our sites?”. In a way you are right, content is very important. However if the content isn’t written for your users, it doesn’t matter how good it is if your visitors don’t understand what you are trying to say.

The way you talk to the users sets the whole tone for your site, if the things you are saying are over their heads, they will leave and probably never come back, but if they get and understand what you are saying you might have just got yourself a dedicated reader on your site. These are the people you want to write for and the people you want coming back to your site day after day. Every site is different and every site will have a different target audience so you will have to tailor how you talk on your site to them. If your site is geared toward web experts you will probably use more advanced talk than you would to a website called “How to Learn to Sew”.

I have came across a lot of good sites out there, that have vast amounts of knowledge, but deliver it’s content in such a way that it makes it hard for the average user to get anything out of. With just a few simple changes though those sites could appeal to a wider spectrum of people. When I write for my sites, I try to keep it simple and easy so that even novice users to the site can get something out of what I have written. That is who my target audience is, now expert users may get something out of it as well but they are not my main target audience. Your real goal is to have it where everyone can get something out of your articles, once you master that you are well on your way to became a great writer, and on the way of running a successful website.

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Google Adsense for Beginners Part One

Posted by Brian

Lots of people ask me, how do I make money with Adsense. Mind you most of the people that are asking me this are people just getting into building their own websites, and are trying to get on the internet money train to try and earn a few extra dollars.

When people ask me this, it kind of shocks me a bit, because I am no expert when it comes to making money with Adsense, I only make roughly $600 a year with it, I do however know how it works, and ways to make it work better for you, my problem has just been getting traffic to the sites so I can even have the chance to be making any of the revenue I know how to make.

Adsense is a great source of income for a lot of people, and there is still room for more people to join in and start making some extra spending money, and maybe even making enough to quit their regular job. You just have to know some basic information about the program, general marketing strategies, and be willing to put a lot of long, hard work into your projects. The last step is where most people fall short on, even I fall short on that one. You have to have the dedication to make sure your sites/blogs are updated often with new fresh content so you can continue driving traffic to your site. Because with out traffic it doesn’t matter how well you blend your ads, where you place them or anything else you do with the ads, if you don’t have traffic you can’t make money.

Steps needed to get up and running with Adsense:

First, you need to sign up with Adsense.

Once Adsense reviews your site, they will get back to you and tell you whether or not you were accepted into the program. If at first you weren’t successful in getting in, don’t fret. Make the adjustments to your site that was noted in your rejection email and then reapply. If you still don’t get it, another option is applying from a Blogger account, they almost always (always) approve those accounts.

Second Once your approved for an account, log in and grab the code given to you from Adsense and copy and paste that into your source code on your site. Depending on how you develop your site this process might change. On this blog, and others of mine I use the plug in Adsense Deluxe. It is very simple to use, a must have for any WordPress blog you are wanting to use Adsense with.

For right now, this is all I have for you, I will be making Part Two of this post shortly with more steps, tricks, and tips for you to use on your sites. Please feel free to ask me any questions.

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Another Update about PurePimps.com

Posted by Brian

Doesn’t it feel like I just wrote a post about this not long ago? While oh my look at that I did. Oh well here is another one anyways. So as I was saying earlier about me having a backup, I got it work, completely. So now it is back up and “running”.

The first test round will be starting in a little while to make sure that part of the script is working as it should be. I tested it out briefly before making the test “live” so hopefully there shouldn’t be a problem and within the next week or two we can really go live. Once going live, I plan on starting to advertise the site heavily to get more players on the site, and bring it back to the glory it once had.

So feel free to come on over to PurePimps.com and give it a try while in the testing phase, stick around and you could even win some prizes once we get totally up and running on all cylinders.

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PurePimps Progress

Posted by Brian

Update on the progress of getting PurePimps.com back up and into running order. Well simply put, its going slow than what I would like, I have been unable to get a backup of the site. So I searched my computer thinking I may have an update I did, I found a few files, seem to be VERY old. They seem like they would work, except for the signup.php script, it just keeps reloading step1 when clicking “I agree” instead of going on to step2 like it should. I have posted the page asking for help so hopefully somebody will be able to help me out with it.

The code for the script is very sloppy and very confusing, it would probably be worth my while buying a new script for the site, or finding someone to custom code me a site with the features that I want. Sounds great doesn’t it? Only problem with that is I simply don’t have the money to guy out and buy a new copy of the script or have one custom coded for my needs. PurePimps was on of the original pimping sites on the net, so I am unable to go to were the script was originally gotten from because you can’t get them from him anymore. I am still holding out hope that Scott comes through and can get be a backup. Even If I do get a backup I am going to wipe the database and start fresh, new era and new beginnings for all of us at PurePimps.

I’ve been brainstorming on ways of raising the money to get someone to custom code me a script, and so far I have to say not much success. A few of the hardcore members of the site would probably be willing to donate to the purchase of a script or getting a new one coded from the ground up. That might be worth exploring but I don’t want to ask for money and still not be able to deliver the goods. That has happened a few times in the past with PurePimps, promised updates, restarts, new features and they simply never came. I don’t want to start off on that foot again.

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Help With Writing Daily

Posted by Brian

Have trouble writing posts on your blogs? Well me too, when I first started this blog I was hoping on writing at least one post every other day. With a goal of eventually writing one every day. I have always found writing blog posts to be a hard thing to do, my personal blog went over a year without a single post, that just gives you an example of how bad I am.

While searching on the internet today I cam across BlogClout that had a link to Writer, which I find simple yet amazing, and may actually help me with my goal of writing more regular blog postings. It is a simple site with a black background and green text, you type it saves your content, you can have multiple documents, has an auto save feature etc etc. Hit f11 and take it full screen and it cuts down on all the distractions on your start bar, everywhere its great! I plan on setting it as my start page for a while and see if that prompts me into writing more often, it may work it may not work but regardless it is an amazing site. Check it out

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