Discover Doug

Building an allergy information site is a great learning experience as far as SEO and expanding reach and influence goes.

I have started to see people actually refer to the allergy site. Here are some examples:

• Breakfast Options for Gluten-Intolerant Vegan
• All Things Allergy
• [Technorati] Tag results for wheat gluten
• Airborne Allergy … on Technorati

Links are also showing up in a few other places, for example:

• Allergy and Health Information Links
• Stumble - MrsNicklebee
• Eat Wheat-Free, Dairy-Free, & Low Sugar
• GuideMeGreen.com

Just to name a few. There are others I seem to have lost track of …

Advanced Wellness Solutions liked one of the Allergy Details articles so much (about allergies and fatigue), Kathy quoted most of one of my articles, which is very nice to see, as they had the courtesy to link to Allergy Details not once, but three times. I’m all for being quoted in context, with attribution - that’s what makes the web go ’round!

The point is, the site is growing in the world out there, which is great to see. Further evidence: the daily traffic to the site is growing too!

Mold can cause major health problems for everyone, and especially allergy sufferers. Worse if you are an allergy sufferer who is allergic to mold! That is why Allergy Details is starting a whole new section on mold.

Mold is a problem for both food allergies and for indoor air quality. This is a huge subject and I am only just getting started on it.

Mean while, the section on yeast allergies is getting quite a bit of traffic. It probably needs more information, but at least it is a start.

Check out this very cool image of the Messier 82 Galaxy! What amazes me about this image is that even to the lay-person (I know nothing about astronomy), some sort of structure is apparent. Wouldn’t you just love a telescope that could show you images like that!

The traditional measure of a website’s success, page rank and page views, is starting to give way to measuring how long visitors spend on a site. I was put on to this by the Learning Centre forum, and found the complete article on the CBC website.

There are two many reasons for the shift. One is increasingly rich media, the other is Ajax.

As visitors spend more time on a single page watching a video, they spend less time (presumably) exploring other pages. Certainly the time spend watching a video is a significant measure of the success of the video, and therefore the success of the website.

Ajax allows a webpage to be updated without navigating to another page. It is a kind of virtual page view, but this is not measured by traditional tracking software. However, a lot of time spent on a page interacting with the site via Ajax is certainly significant!

The problem of course, is that websites can be left open but may not be viewed. I have closed down my computer at the end of the day, only to find a browser opened to some page I was checking out that morning and forgot to close!

No system is perfect of course. Measuring time spend on a sight is certainly important, and I know that I look at the average time spent on my site as a measure of success.

I recently attended a Peak Potentials course about passive income. This is a brief overview.

Although billed as a course, it is half useful material, and half you paying to attend an event at which many people try to sell you things such as courses and systems that supposedly make money.

There were some very interesting ideas, although not all of them convinced me 100%, and one was laughable as a passive income opportunity, since that particular business is anything but passive!

The first day left me very disappointed. There was really not content, just a long line-up of people selling your their course or product.

The second day was better. The third day was really quite good.

Is it worth it? Is it really worth going? This is hard for me to answer. I can neither give a definitive “yes”, nor can I say that it was a waste of time.

I learned a lot. I am already developing some passive income systems, all internet-based. That’s my thing, and I didn’t see any reason to change that. In fact, there were three or four people there talking about on-line businesses. There is not doubt that if done properly, an internet-based business has the best chance of being truly passive. Most of the other opportunities really classify as low-labor, unless you are particularly gifted at systematizing them and setting them up so you don’t have to be there.

I guess I am glad I went, and I feel ultimately that it did help me a bit. It did open my eyes to new ideas even in my chosen field. It also gave me ideas I may pursue in the future, although certainly not now since focus if vital.

If you know nothing about passive income, or don’t know how to get started, it is probably pretty useful. I’ll see if I can get further comments from some of the other people who I met at the course.

I just wrote a description of passive income. I wrote it as a page rather than a post, because it is part of my new vocabulary initiative. I plan to refer to that page from my other posts. You might find it interesting, so here is a post to show you the way. Check out passive income. It may give you some ideas, as will some future posts on this website.