Using HubPages

HubPages are a great way to use so-called Web2.0 properties to rank high in Search Engine Results for your chosen niche - Howie Schwartz has a series of terrific free tutorials on niche marketing, and so-called Web2.0 properties that you can use to point to your main marketing website, and these will rank quickly in Google, enabling you to dominate page 1 SERPS from several different properties.

"What's the catch??!!!"  you might be asking yourself - well, none really - except that it does take time if you're doing it all on your own - the sooner you can outsource, the better, as you can then focus on business decisions rather than the technicalities that can so often bog down many an internet marketer.

As a poor teacher, but very technically-minded, I'm able to do some of the more technical aspects of the plethora of tasks that are needed to support my business models - I'll be detailing some of them here as soon as I get the chance.

In the meantime, head over to hubpages.com & Howie's website to try it out for yourself.

Here's my contribution so far:
Solar Heating

With this economic storm in full-blow, you've got nothing to lose except some leisure time :)

Using OpenX to rotate & track my banner ads

I've decided to go for it & try & use OpenX (visit http://www.openx.org for more information) to monitor the effectiveness or otherwise of my banner ads I'll be placing on my main site I'm using for my solar heating niche; as soon as I'm done setting up, I'll take you through a screen-capture video setup of how I did it.

Why use OpenX?

1. It allows you to minotor who's clicking on your banner ads, when, where they're from
2. You can rotate ads over a period of time (useful on very busy websites for split-testing)
3. You can very easily change the ads from your co-hosted or self-hosted openX server - which is far quicker than changing the ads on your websites, espeially if you're running several niche sites/blogs.

There are many more benefits too - best check the openX website for more information.

Immediate Challanges to Solve

• I need to configure my OpenX server (I've got a self-hosted openX server I installed a few months back) - this could be a bit tricky.
  
• It's been so long since I logged into the server that I've forgotten both the username, email address AND password - the only way through is to use phpMyAdmin on my Cpanel administration page to try & identify some of these parameters - moral: have a copy of your details somewhere secure for all your servers :)
  

I'll report back with a video as soon as I get the chance.

Solar Heating - Old Idea, New Technology

Solar Heating has been around a long time as a way of extracting energy from the Sun.  Although perhaps less 'sexy' compared to the promise of 40% efficient photovoltaics for electrical energy generation, solar heating has a massive part to play in meeting energy demands in the Twenty First Century.

Whilst the average householder might not be able to rig up a solar tower, as depicted above by the commercial setup in Southern Spain, there are some easy steps that the average householder can take which will provide free hot water throughout the year, without having to purchase an expensive solar heating unit. 

What I'll be doing with this blog is monitoring my progress at marketing products around the topic of solar heating - I'll try & be as honest & transparent as time allows (I'm a very busy guy) - and I hope that you'll get some useful tips on nich marketing as a consequence.