Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Michael Robson Web Designer and Kevin Leland of Bangari: Gallery Site Design Dialog

Hi Kevin,
So what you're looking at is setting up a forum for your blog?
I like the modern Web 2.0 interface look of the forum example. It looks, feels and is structured well.

From a designers point of view, this is my frank opinion of your blog:

Your website could do with a facelift and restructuring of links. The link navigation looks rather cluttered and there is no distinction between the main and sub links.
Author names are mixed up with the site navigation links. You may want to start by drawing a flow chart and then work on building up.

SEO wise, looks like the blog is tops (indexing and ranking)
There may be a small tweak needed: I noticed the Meta Descriptions missing from your pages.
Hope you read that post I left on your website re the indexing of Bing/Yahoo. LOL just realised on your post above that from the link you provied, you are already using the webmaster service.

Regards,
Michael.

Thanks Michael!

A flowchart would be a great idea. This is a co-authored blog, with a co-op philosophy and revenue distribution. I want the first and last name of all our editors and authors front and center. Putting them on the front page and then at the top of each piece of content they produce, linked back to an index of their works on Bangari along with links to work they have posted outside of Bangari is first priority.

I'm working hard on all the on-page linking, before I go off-page, and officially start the link-building campaign. I've done my homework, and know how to get some awesome, top quality back links --including Wikipedia! muhuhuhahaha...But you are correct sir, we need a makeover. I really like your designs. I noticed that you could use a lot more contextual back links on your site. We could help you with that, and you could help us with our design. I wish we had cash to offer, but we are all poor folk! Trying to get this thing airborn on brains, talent and elbow grease!

The forum:

We have a place where we "talk shop" about launching Bangari, and other projects that we have collaborated on, on a google blogger blog:

Bangari Content Studios

The thing is, this site isn't connected to my wordpress domain, and either way, I want to start transplanting some of the content that's on this site to a better forum format, on my Wordpress account, either on the free blog they gave me a sign up or as a page on the paid for .com Bangari domain on WordPress, or both...

I like to keep all these discussions online instead of in email, because in email it is a big waste of keyword-rich word count. There are other advantages too. So, what can we do to set up something like this Web 2.0 Interface looking forum you have in mind?

I would be glad to help you with anything 'design' related. This is because I am strictly a front end designer. My strengths lie in Photoshop, Flash etc. If there is anything you require, with regards to these elements, let me know and I would be glad to help. I'm not interested in cash, all I want, like any other business owner, is to come up tops on Google results. If you can help me with this or point me in the right path, I would be glad to experiment myself.

For the kind of website you wish to produce, you may need the services of a scripting professional. I do know of a well reputed company in India, which I outsource all my scripting work to. They charge around US$10 an hour and I have got several sites done through them. Let me know if you are interested and I can put you on to them. The example forum you showed me would be a piece of cake to them. I would be glad to refer that website and get a quote for you if you like.

It would be awesome if you can get onto Wikipedia. Being an SEO expert you would know how you will surge up the Google results if you get on there. However, I understand how hard it is to get on there.
I get what you mean about having a blog as a subdomain and how this holds more weight with SEO versus having a separate blog hosted with Blogger. Again, I have no technical know-how as to how to do the content transfer. I can however get advice on this and get back to you.

Excellent news Michael! I think Natasha made a great match here! To make this relationship "pay-off" (other than cash) we have a ton of work to do.

I'll get you signed up at Bangari. We need "artists" like yourself, as much as we need writers and SEOers. Working together, we can build something worthwhile, co-op style, labor for labor. When and if the economy turns around, then I can see it being a great source of income.

For my part: get me a Google doc, with your "bio" and pic. Include lots of links to sample sites. They will get some free promotion... I'll also need some content from you. This can be what's called "resource content." That means, it isn't directly promotional, and it isn't about the services you provide. We need content on anything "technical." It could even be about WiFi in cars and televisions. How do you feel about writing?

For your part: Let's hold off on the scripting work for now. However, I'll put it on the "wish list" How many hours/$$$ should I budget for that project? What I would really like, and have no clue how to do, would be a few "slide shows" of our content, like Factoidz does. That would be right in your field of expertise, right? I want one on the main page, and later, it would be great to have one on each member's page, showcasing their individual work.

Bangari's SEO philosophy is "Your name is our keyword!" -Individual talent first, collaborative talent second, quality content third.

Pages vs. Posts

I found the problem at last Petal! You need to post your new content as "posts" not "pages." We have enough pages for now, and those are more for indexing along with the bios, and giving instructions about the site. When we post new articles as "posts" (on the dashboard, click the icon that looks like a thumbtack.) we get a "related articles" section, and a place to put tags. On my editor, I even see a place to select "public domain" photos to place in my articles.

So, from now on, we just use "posts" unless the content is specifically for a new "page" for our site, like the up-coming "How to Speak Bangari: Glossary of Terms" Try it, it's a breeze...The WordPress robot even picks the tags from out of your article, automatically.

When you select "related articles" that's great for business. Those bloggers get a "pingback" and then usually come see who pasted their article into their post. We get commenters, followers, team members, clients, i.e; traffic and back-links from it. Be courteous and respond to comments, and go to their site and offer up some contextual word count.

Not to change the subject, but, do any of you look at the stats at Bangari? Can you access that feature? Are traffic numbers are climbing, and a min of 60 per day seems to be the new average.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Michael Robson Web Designer and Kevin Leland of Bangari: Gallery Site Design Dialog

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Posting and Linking

Hi all, here is another email with food for thought!

What you did with that last post, is exactly what I envisioned...Get out of my head! Haha...Seriously, awesome job!

I added that blurb to draw a directory of Ketubah Artists, and other Judaica art. This is a great niche that I think we will dominate, thanks to you!!! Listen, just please be patient. The more I research, the more I see that it could take a few months, even after we start drawing 10,000 page views per day, to start taking in some real money in passive revenue. I have no idea what the stats will be as far as how much content we will sell per visitor...we need bigger traffic numbers before we'll figure out that ratio.

Over the last few days we are racking up over 100 page views per day...18/hour...we need to shoot for 10x more. That will happen as we post all this content we have created. You seem to be the resident "Master Poster!" -You got me beat! Now we need to figure out a fair stipend in Bangari Bucks for posting. Just the way we did on your Hand Painted Ketubah Post.< (link to your post)

Let's have a discussion here, and get it nailed down!
Kevin
Now that our traffic stats are climbing, we need to post regularly. With Amazon product placement, you got us covered with potential passive revenue. I think the traffic is going to start getting us contract work soon.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Pandas Don't Like Duplicate Content

I keep coming back to the thing about people just taking content from our site and using it, we can't spent our time checking up to see if it's stolen. Maybe the articles could be just examples of subjects we can write about, or include a list of possible articles on BCG.

It doesn't do anyone any good to copy our stuff from Bangari, and post it elsewhere as their own. It's a waste of their time, and it doesn't hurt us if they do it. It actually helps us, because it will push their site lower in ranking on the same topic they steal content from us. First of all, even the content farms won't allow it. They check content for originality before they post it. If they find that it was posted at Bangari first, they won't allow it to be posted on their site. That is another reason why I like the idea of posting SPVs on Factoidz. It's a free "test" of our content spinning robot. If they accept it, it means our spun out versions are unique enough to pass robot inspection, so they are good enough for SEO purposes.

If "scraper" sites post copies of our content, it's because they don't know enough about the Internet and SEO and intellectual property. As part of my "list building" that is: finding sites to get backlinks from, and clients to sell content to, I will find time to check the Web for plagiarized content. When I find them, I can "educate them" as to why they can't gain rank or make money as a scraper site. Then I can offer to sell them unique content once I've made them understand that duplicate content is useless. If we can't sell them content, at least we can sell them a robot so they can make their collection of stolen content unique on their own!

I'll forward you a copy of an email I sent to C. L. Summers. This is a good example of the kind of "education" I would give to the plagiarists, to get them to be with us instead of against us.

I'm glad you liked the review. I'll post reviews in other places, including the ones you suggested. I want to give you some important advice before you make a mistake in your promotion efforts: DO NOT post duplicate content!

The last thing that you want to do is post the review I wrote for Amazon, word for word, on other sites. The search bots recognize duplicate content. They penalize the sites that post it, and devalue the links from those sites to the site/product you are trying to promote. So, where you have the right idea about the importance of link building, our efforts will be in vain unless the content we post is at least 70% unique.
What we need to do is take the review I wrote, and flat spin it. We need to build a "Kama Sutra Celibacy Review" RSA file in Google Docs that we can draw spun articles from, and use those articles for the linking campaign. Are you familiar with how to format content for the robot spinner? We can teach you, it's easy. It helps hone your writing skills too. Some folks enjoy the process, others hate it! It's essential in order to get the 0-8 backlinks per day that you need in order to get your site growing steady in rank. Check out Alexa.com. This is a free analytics site that does a great job at showing how your site is doing relative to others on the Web, and shows you where your backlinks are coming from.

The other great thing about Alexa.com, is that if you research other sites that are similar to yours, you can see where they are getting their quality backlinks from, and this will show you what sites to target for your own backlink campaign. They list the backlinks in order of quality, the highest quality in first position. Your promotional content needs to appeal to the robots as well as humans. The Best Spinner robot is a great tool to use to create that content in a way that it will still relay the same information to the humans but in the eyes of the robots, the content will be unique. It's worth it just to use it to measure the percentage of uniqueness of the content we're spinning. If you decide to buy one, use the affiliate link on Bangari (or just click the hyperlink in the previous sentence). We get an affiliate commission on each subscription, and that money is paid out to the content producers who help spin and post the content that will help you sell a lot of books!

Two other important things to understand about linkbuilding:

1) After you get one link backlink from a site, additional ones do not count towards your "webutation" (Web reputation). These additional backlinks from the same site still help generate traffic, but they don't carry any weight for ranking.

2) You can only get 0-8 original links per day. This way it looks "natural." More than 100 in a month will look phony and cause Google to put the site in the "Sandbox" -meaning it won't count those links at all toward your rank for up to a year.

It's a team effort. Our group at Bangari should try to buy each others books, and write reviews for each other, and use the Bangari platform to spin and post these reviews and related content and collectively promote each others intellectual property and domains. The articles we produce for this purpose will be posted all over the Internet, including on our own private sites and our "co-op" site, Bangari. Here it can collect passive revenue from AdSense and Affiliate revenue which will help fund our collective efforts through the Bangari Bucks payment system, and buy us some neat bells and whistles for the site.
I'll get started building the RSA file out of the review I wrote. I'll share the doc with you, and you can help me build it as I show you how to format text for the robot spinner. See you there!

Writing and Making Money on Bangari

If you are still unsure about how Bangari works, then these email excerts could help you:

Writing
I wanted to write a post requesting that people write and spin articles here on Bangari, and then post them here first, and then post the SPVs on the content farms. I don't understand why they wouldn't do that unless it's that they don't understand the concept of "Project Exodus"

Lacking the advantages of capital and cash flow advantage we have the advantage of 'collective effort.' We have all pitched in a good amount of content 'for stock.' I think we have a good reservoir as of now. So I would say the most important part of 'what's next' is "posting!" We have to keep adding to the RSA files including all the ones we did for Billy for those fifty different companies, and from them squeeze out SPVs, clean those articles up, and post them on Bangari and all over the Internet. Some can go on the content farms, some on our own sites, and some on different sites linked back to Bangari.

There are other advantages to contributing to the start up efforts, and the body of content that we need 'in stock' and as samples to draw paying clients. We will be 'managers' of those clients' projects, and those managers will receive 10% commission on all the content we sell from that inventory.

Thanks a lot to everyone who has been contributing, and to those who want to but can't right now, we can't wait to see you back in the loop!

Conclusion: Bangari Writers Start Writing!
That means follow the set up article instructions for Project Exodus - Copy your articles from Content farms, spin them, post them on BCG (if you need help doing this contact Petal).

Making Money!

P:Stop paying people! Seriously how can anyone expect money when they know it's a co-op and we haven't sold anything!

K: I feel uncomfortable asking people to do things in hopes of it making money down the road. I wish I could at least offer a little money "upfront", like what Factoidz pays... But I'll heed your advice. If investing work now for a good payment later scares away some potential contributors, so be it

If they want to hold out until there is paying work, then when we get a paying contract, the people who invested their time "speculatively" will get first dibs on it. those folks will also manage that production like Sally did on Billy's project, and will make extra money, 10% I think, on what they write, and also 10% on the word count produced by the other contributors. That amounted to $500 for Sally just on the Work we did for Increase Visibility.

The "advance system" is just an add-on to the Bangari Bucks system. Some of the founders haven't been involved as much as others. I'm sure that month to month it will be like this. Some have told me that they are still interested, and wish they could contribute more, but have had certain problems that are preventing them...Namely, poverty. We are all in the same boat pretty much. So the advances are similar to an "activity bonus" at Factoidz. It gives the folks who are able to devote their time to the "start up" efforts required to get this site built up to the point that it generates decent revenue regularly a little money for their current efforts.

We need to "talk up" article spinning. Maybe mine some content from discussions on Bangari Blog and make articles out of them to post on BCG. I'm starting to carefully recruit...and hopefully, some will be able to afford a robot. Even if we slowly grow our team by five people a month, and four buy a robot, that's $200 in revenue to pass out in advances to those who have been contributing to the site. And of course there is nothing wrong with selling robots to people who just want to produce for their own sites.

Simultaneously, we have to monetize...So far that is a huge aggravation! I'm at the point where I have to call a "happiness engineer" at WordPress to find out why I can't get any HTML code to appear like it is supposed to on the site, when it comes to banners and such. I never had this trouble with Blogger. But like I said before, you don't want to post advertising like Adsense until you have a good flow of natural traffic. But it's past time to get other affiliates on there besides Jon Ledger. We also have to work on list his other products besides "The Best Spinner."

So that leaves us to try to do something that I know from experience is pretty tough (but not impossible) to do, especially in a down economy. That is, start a business on 100% elbow grease and 0% capital! I'm doing some things in the 'real world' that hopefully can get me some real money. I'd like to have at least $500 to pay out in 'advances' by January, and another $500 to spend on a professional Web designer to overhaul our properties -and I'd like to spend a little on the Alexa site optimization package, and other analytics. I could work wonders with a $500 / month budget for subscriptions and other bells and whistles for Bangari.

So far everything is on track. Of course I wish it was steaming down that track a little faster, but without capital, slow progress is to be expected.

Conclusion: Kevin does, has and will continue to pay for your hard work - Start Writing!

Thursday, November 24, 2011

eBooks on Bangari

OK the final part of our email exchange on all topics, this time it's ebooks, do you have one?

Never apologize for brainstorming this endeavor, I can use all the help I can get! Sorry it takes me so long to get back with responses sometimes. I’ve had some important things going on in the “real world” the last few weeks. I’m working on another murder investigation. This one involves embezzlement too, and could be a paying gig for a change. The last one cost me $1,000 that I didn’t have, and I didn’t make a dime. There still has not been a decision as to whether she is taking it to trial or is going to plea bargain. It’s been almost six months. I can’t do much in the way of writing the story until it’s conclusion in real life. But, two National news programs have interviewed me, and if they pick up the story then there is a good chance that I could make good money on a book about it -especially if I do a good job writing it. See....I lose direction easy too! haha. But I tell you all this because early next year I’m going to be real busy with that, and I’m going to need help with it. I’m hoping Bangari will be stable, and earning money, without so much start up efforts required. Then we could pool some resources into this.

We all have books to promote here at Bangari. If you don’t, get working on one! ebooks are all the rage now, and self publishing is proven to be a successful route to a New York Times Best Seller...Just learn the story behind the publishing of a very popular recent book, “The Shack” - by William Young. Even if you collect a series of articles you have written in a certain category or on a certain topic, and assemble them into an ebook, each article a chapter, as we say in RI, “Bada-bing-bada-boom, you got a book!”

We can collaborate on producing these, and share the revenue they generate. If you create an ebook from articles you have written, it would be best to spin them. You need different versions to get the most SEO impact when promoting the book online. We will have a great platform for collaboratively producing and promoting content this at Bangari, when all the systems are complete.

We already have several books and eBooks which can be promoted on Bangari:
C.L.Summers has The Kama Sutra of Celibacy
Martha Jette has 7 books available online
Natasha Polak has Love, God
Angelique and Lionel will soon have their novel ready
and I am sure there are other works in the making....Kevin you'll have to tell us more about your intriguing investigative work....I didn't know we had the next Steig Larsson!

Posting and Promoting Q&A

Hi, here is the continuation of my email chat with Kevin, it touches on subjects relating to posting and setting up the site to run smoothly and simply.

#I have some pics but where to post?

*If you could upload them to Bangari, then we can place them in the articles...artistically! We will improve on this as we go. We have to keep it looking good. That is one thing about Factoidz, that was always a very neat, organized site, and that helped get it to the top fast. We need to do the same.

For those who are unsure about what this is it is an album of pics we keep "behind the scenes" at BCG and when we want to we can add the pics to articles for public view. Which means you can all upload pics - even now - even if you haven't written articles yet.

#I think you have to imagine many writers and many clients and see if we could still run the system the same way. e.g. If we had 100 writers could/should we still have all the names at the top of the front page? If we had loads of writers all posting on BCG at the same time how do we monitor quality, maybe there should be a select few (founders) posting so they can also proof and monitor at the same time, this would also avoid sabotage by not opening posting rights to 100s of writers.

*I’ll reformat the front page as we grow. If we get to 100’s of writers, we’ll keep “editors/founders” at the top, and maybe put writers on the side. Sabotage is always a concern. I’m always looking for the best ways to prevent that and protect against it. I’m open for suggestions.

#I've found with EX_Factoidz articles I've spun to 90% or even more uniqueness when I run them through copyscape there are still bits that come up the same, is this acceptable? What percentage of similarity is acceptable to the robots?

*60% acceptable for social bookmarking.
70% good
80% excellent
90% passes CopyScape and you can’t get more original than that.

#My second biggest worry is people just taking our material off the site, we hopefully will be too busy to be copyscaping everything. We could use the system Constant Content uses of placing the articles on the site as images.

*Jing is a great tool for capturing and posting text “screen shots.” I know we want to busy writing...But don’t forget, it’s just as important to link, promote, post, monetize, do SEO and research potential clients, make sales, recruit new members, develop new ideas, learn new technology, etc. I “cheat” copyscape by using Google (saves ten cents, haha) but searching for plagiarists is a perfect first step to finding links, new clients and new recruits. That, and Alexa are the best two tools for that. There is nothing we can do if they “spin” our content, and we can do the same with stuff we find when we do our research. If they post it verbatim, we don’t have to worry because it was posted by us first. The bots now have a sort of “built in “CopyScape” and when they see duplicate content, they take points away from the reposter and give points to the original poster’s site.

Will clients buy the content already on our site, won't they want unpublished content?

#Simple, simple simple, ABC... do this then this then this...that's what will make it workable on a large scale.

*I couldn't agree more. We will be writing a lot of these step by step instructions. As editors and founders, we need to know the hows and whys of what we are doing overall. But on a larger scale, I’m sure it will begin to “compartmentalize.” some folks will be great at writing and spinning, yet suck at posting and not have a clue about SEO...Others will do everything else but write. Some will just deal with sales. Each of these departments will have step by step instructions.

So if we limit posting rights to a few who know how we also solve the sabotage threat.

#Its all still not simple enough - that's my biggest thought.

I know. I’m well aware that it is complicated. I’m hoping for two things: One, to get some decent revenue flowing so even if contributors don’t understand how the payments are being calculated, they “bottom line” it, and realize that it is better than Factoidz and AC...Two, I’m think that eventually, someone who understands accounting and algorithms will come along and say “Hey Kevin, that is a real good thing you figured out, you found a way to get content producers a fair wage for their work. Your team is going to be a huge success and we want to support you...how can we invest?”

Absolutely right, I probably made more on the Billy project than a year on Factoidz.

Look forward to hearing what everyone thinks, please leave comments and questions.

How're We Going to Make Money?

Here are some more musings and Q&A taken from a recent email conversation with Kevin, please get involved in the exchange of ideas by adding your thoughts in the comments.

#Kevin we don't want to make money off of you - don't pay anything from your own pocket.

*It’s okay. The money that is coming out of my pocket is being matched by a client that I’m partners with. I may do this in the future with other clients. It’s a good way to let a client know you are “in it to win it, along with them!” Plus, I want to keep everyone encouraged until we can land the next big project.

I wanted to start monetizing the site, beginning with Amazon, but I’m having major difficulty doing this on WordPress. It was never a problem in Blogger. I have to keep at it. I plan to do Adsense as well, but we need to have a good amount of traffic before Adsense, otherwise click fraud can be a problem. I have a great reputation with Google, and I want to keep it. I've been making my days all about monetizing the site, and getting sales. It has taken a lot just to prepare to do this. I’ve only made a few contacts, but I've got a good list going, and will be reaching out a lot more in the weeks ahead.

#Can you get us the code for TBS banners so we can start promoting and posting those to make more money. I can make a Squidoo about TBS and even Bangari.

*I made those Banners myself, there is no HTML for it. Just link to the TBS “landing page” on Bangari. That will be great to get back links to our site. We can sell these robots even to those who don’t want to be part of Bangari. It could be good revenue, and the affiliate system worked without a hitch. so, let’s go for it!

#Have you thought through what happens when someone contacts us to buy, what the procedure will be?

*That’s about all I’ve been thinking about. Realistically, we will be contacting them at first. It might be a while before we get customers for content straight through SEO. Bangari needs to rank much higher first. We need more links, and more traffic, and lots more SEO work.

#The BCG has not got prominent "Contact us here to buy content" blurb on it and this is the most important thing. We need them to know exactly how to contact us, it should be in their faces when they look at the site.

*Exactly! This is part of posting. When sample content is posted, it needs to have the “this content is for sale” picture attached, preferably, top and bottom. That has to link back to the page where they can input their contact information.

We need to work on a “posting” system, including the time required along with step by step instructions. Then we have to value it like we did with word count.

#We've all been less in contact lately. How come I never hear from some of the other names on the BCG posting on this blog?

*I’m trying not to pester anyone to contribute, but it would be better if there was more chatter. I like that it’s a small group as we work out details, so I thought I would hold off on contacting the others with a pep talk until we get the posting system up and running. I’m going to be offering SEO services along with the content we produce, and posting is the biggest part of that work. So I thought a good occasion to get everyone psyched about getting involved would be when we get our first big project...soon I hope!

#I read the history of Google you once posted and it seems backlinks are really at the bottom of it all.

*Yes! Linkbuilding (and repairing, as you eloquently posted on Factoidz) is essential to building the popularity of Bangari. We have the advantage of being a multi-authored site. That’s huge! I know you worry about spreading a little work too thin. But until Bangari hits the radar, we won’t get a lot of work, and no passive revenue. The more people we bring in, the more robots we sell, the more “samples” we post, the more RSA files we have in stock in so many more categories...You see? But you are right to be concerned because it is a delicate balance. I’m still a little shy about actively recruiting and think I will be until we have our posting system down pat. Linkbuilding goes hand in hand with posting, SEO, and content production. We can’t sell our services promoting other sites until we have done a thorough job of promoting our own.

Many potential clients, if they are smart, will check our Alexa ranking before they deal with us. It should be in a respectable position, even if we are admittedly “new.” If we can get into the 100,000s in the US...great!

OK so I really want to see the others on the letterhead getting involved, showing interest, in the future these first few writers will hopefully profit the most so there should be some input from them at this point. Please everyone let your voices be heard!!

Monday, November 21, 2011

Organizing Bangari DOCs

I know Kevin has rightly said that the organizing of the DOCs is less important than the writing and other functions within Bangari but it's either the housewife or the artist in me that has lead me to organizing my articles in DOCs and I think when we have 100's of writers organization will become essential. So if you have the time and patience to play around with this aspect of Bangari try this.

If every writer has a primary collection under their name: (for example) Petal Mashraki
then within that collection, sub-collections for each project: (for example) Ketubah Project
Site Reviews
Exodus Article
Tattoos Hebrew
and within these collection files all of the relevant article DOCs.

This way it will be easier to find you and your work when needed.

Apart from this there are two other things that could make Bangari DOCs easier to navigate:

**Mark all of your collections and article with a tick - EXCEPT your primary name collection.
then go to "Action" or on the new DOCs "More" and select "Don't show in Home".
This way when we have hundreds of writers with thousands of articles, the home page of Bangari DOCs will just have a list of writer's names.

**Another way of making it all a little easier to read is if you select a color to mark all your content on DOCs. You can look at mine and see that I've made my icon orange. You do this by ticking the box next to your DOCs and then going to "Action" or "More" and selection "change color", then choose your color.

Of course this is only a suggestion and only if you have enough time, but in the future when Bangari is banging we'll need everything organized, easy to navigate and colorful!

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Linking to Bangari Content Gallery

This post is an attempt to get Bangari Content Studios properly linked to Bangari Content Gallery.

Right now, our studio site is ranking twice as high as our gallery site. This is because we are making so many more regular posts and comments in BCS rather than BCG... It is also due to the fact that BCG doesn't seem to be registering a link from BCS...I'm working on that!

Natasha has a penchant for rank and stats and all that...I'm glad! It isn't just about producing content. It's about 1/3 producing, 1/3 posting, and 1/3 promoting...that will make us successful in this biz! So, for Natasha and everyone else, here is a link to the Private Studio Site.

https://sites.google.com/site/bangaricontentstudios/bangari-stats

This post will show you some of the stats that we are concerned with. Look it over.

I'd like to request that when you take in any information posted on BCG, BCS or BCS (private) you post a short comment. Try to use keywords found in the post, in a natural way. (for the robots) (For me) the comments help me monitor who is reading what. I'm having a lot of trouble tracking "who knows what" and right now, we don't have many people involved. When that number gets in the 100s, I'm screwed! LOL...

So, even though I hate MLM and pyramid schemes, when it comes to "teaching" new recruits our ways, we may have to create a pyramid type structure that will disseminate the info on a person to person basis in addition to directly from the posts. Any Ideas?

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

International Living: A great potential client!

I've been following this site for a while, and it is one of the first ones I am going to approach for an SEO contract. In this article below, they are asking for some help in that area. We have to have the right balance of niche topics (like ketubot) and popular topics (like travel)

Read this:

Join International Living’s Syndication Program Today

International Living has been called the ultimate travel newsletter… It’s that—and more. It’s a newsletter for anyone who is interested in broadening his horizons, by considering opportunities to improve his quality of life…and lowering his cost of living…by looking beyond U.S. shores… read more

The first article should be about how "Online writing" is a portable job. This makes it conducive to International living. Compare how a one person writing operation could allow a person to walk in the Cloud Forest, just as the bagle maker in this story does, and maybe even be able to expand, and hire locals, maybe to do translation work?

How would you like to be one of those on the ground editors?

Please come back to comment here on what you think about this prospect. We could use a Project Manager for this one.

Bangari Payout System: Vineyard Analogy

If Bangari was a vineyard, a {co-op|Kibbutz|Community Shared Agriculture (CSA)} vineyard, and every word we type was a grape worth a credit, and we sold these grapes fresh at a farm stand, and also made our own jelly and wine...

We are all working together to grow, harvest, process and sell these grapes. How do we share the revenue?

If we were just harvesting grapes, and selling them fresh, it’s easy. Each person gets $100 per bushel that they pick, and that is paid as soon as the grapes are sold to the winemakers and jelly makers, and those that will sell our grapes at retail in their grocery stores.

But, at our Kibbutz, we are cutting out all those middle men. We will make our own wine and jelly with our own grapes, and sell our stuff retail. What happens then is:

We get more money for those same efforts.

We get “retail” instead of “wholesale” on a larger selection of goods. (jelly, wine, etc.) Thus appealing to a larger customer base. I.e.; Those not just looking for flat spun content but those looking for SEO services, and complete Web sites, stuffed with content produced by us.

Drawback - on the fresh grapes it’s a quick turn around, but it takes longer for the jelly, and over a year to get revenue from the same grapes that were grown and harvested to make wine, longer if it’s allowed to “age” increasing the value even more before it’s sold.

As our vineyard gets more seasoned, the time delay won’t have such an effect. However, the $5,000 job we did for IV was like our first harvest. Even though we sold 125,000 grapes for .03 each, so IV could make wine with it, we didn’t sell the entire harvest. I think we sold a third of it. The other two thirds are being processed into wine, and when that sells a year or two from now, we could get another $10,000 from that July 2011 harvest.

Hence the credit system. Bangari Bucks are like a cross between an I.O.U. and stock. This is why it’s important that I’m not seen as the “owner” of this vineyard. I’m the director of the co-op. We all own this vineyard, just like share holders own a piece of a company equal to the amount of money they invested. We are not investing cash, but our efforts instead. Those efforts can be assessed by word count. (we still need to assess other things like editing and posting, that’s why time keeping is so important, and we can’t do “freebies”)

By pooling our resources, we also pool risk. Windfalls and losses are shared equally by the entire Kibbutz. For instance:

After the harvest, Petal had picked 100 Bushels, Natasha 20, before they came to harvest, I spent time and effort equal to picking 1000 bushels. If we get $10 (fake money) for each bushel, or bushel equivalent, Then:

Petal = 100 x 10 =1000
Natasha = 20 x 10 =200
Kevin = 1000 x 10 =10,000

We are holding these I.O.U.’s until our co-op takes in real money. Then we can cash them in. However, they are not “real I.O.U.’s, they are just “markers” because we don’t know what our product is worth until it sells, and finishes selling.

Here is where I want to make it clear why we can’t “earmark” this stuff. It’s enough effort to track how many “bushels” each of us harvested. It has to stop there. This is a co-op. Some of those bushels will go to the wine press, and some to be sold fresh, and I don’t want to track each grape, note what it sold for, and trace back to the person who picked it, and pay them according to what it sold for. Wine from the same grapes; some could be worth $50 per bottle, five years later, some could have turned to vinegar.

If we sold a third of these fresh grapes to a wine maker for $5000 (real dollars) and the other two thirds went to make our own jelly and wine, then:

5000 / 11,200 = .44 (44%)

So, each of us will be allowed to “cash in” 44% of our shares. We can choose not to cash them. Or cash in only 50%. Why would anyone want to do that? I’ve been doing it all along, because I’m trying to get this thing rolling. I’m reinvesting a big portion of what I’m making from this. If any of you feel inclined to “donate” word count to this project, that’s nice, but I would prefer that you accept your “credit” but if you want to not cash them in 100% every time, that will allow newbies to get a little more money as we go. I am also working on an “activity bonus” type system like at Factoidz, but I can’t develop that without the team’s input. And until the system is understood, as is, by the entire team, we have to wait to discuss the “activity bonus”

Petal cashes in 44% of 1000 Bangari Bucks for real money = $440
Natasha cashes in 44% of 200 = $88
Kevin cashes in 44% of 10,000 = $4,400

Then, before the next payout, we will all have less credits going in, but will probably have earned more...

Petal = 560 (1000 - 440)
Natasha = 112 (200 - 88)
Kevin = 5600 (10,000 - 4,400)

Now we work at making jelly. Petal takes a break. Natasha does a bunch of work. Kevin cultivates some new vines indoors.

We earn/ produce:

Petal = 0
Natasha = 1000
Kevin = 1000

Then, we sell $1,000 worth of jelly. At this time this is what we have for total credits:

Petal = 560
Natasha = 1112
Kevin = 6600

1,000 / 8272 = 12%

We each get to cash in 12% of our shares:

Petal = 560 x 12% = $67
Natasha = 1112 x 12% = $133
Kevin = 6600 x 12% = $792

Or, if I felt like I wanted to refrain from cashing in so others on the team could get a bigger pay out, and be that much more encouraged:

1000 / (560+1112) = 59%

Petal= 560 x 59% = $330
Natahsa= 1112 x 59% = $656

I have been paying myself in Bangari Bucks, but haven’t been cashing them in, 100%. I’m looking a little further down the road. Remember, like other contributors to Bangari, we have our own domains, and books to promote and we want Bangari to be the perfect place to do that.

We have to be careful to not look like a “content farm.” This is a reason I’m holding off on posting AdSense. We know that there is much better money in sales. Passive revenue should just be a portion of our income.. We need to establish ourselves as freelance writers, content producers, SEOs, and even robot salesman. We have to get the most out of those things, and that’s going to take study and practice.

There are other tech products besides the spinning robot that we can use for our craft. We can try them, review them, sell them, teach them...all by writing about them, or making video tutorials and other multi-media stuff. Let’s try to upload original photos too. We need “Factoidz-like” photos to head our articles. original pet pictures, photos of ketubot, etc. Is anyone good at close ups... like of computer keyboards, and other things that go well with articles on certain topics? Anyone know an aspiring model who would let you take their picture, acting out for example: “Frustrated at tax time?” Can some one draw a cartoon image of that subject?