Tons of questions 4 noobs! Review my site and show ur wisdom ;)

**Albert Z** · May 14, 2005, 08:37

Ok everyday i realize there is far too much to be known about internet sites than i can handle alone with 1 month of experience..so I'll let the experts (you) give me advice (be frank, if something sucks just tell me!) for an overall improvement of my first site

This is the site: [edit - click my sig to see it :P ]

It is e-commerce based (OScommerce), php&mysql, for selling ebooks.
It's been online exactly for 30 days, but it still seems to be generating next to no traffic (apart from my own pageviews :P)

Here are some basic questions:
my root index.html (which is actually welcome.html, default from godaddy) redirects to the /catalog folder with this script I found on a website
here's the code for my page:

"<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<script language="javascript">
</script>
<title>Culture-Books</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<meta name="netinsert" content="0.0.1.12.17.1">
<style type="text/css">
</table>
</div>
</body>
</html>
<meta name="keywords" content="culture-books,resale rights,resell rights,ebooks,e-books,resellable e-books">
<meta name="description" content="Culture-Books sells many affordable high-quality e-books and software with resell rights. Download free e-books and rare books too!!">"

Question 1: Does this ruin in any way my SERPS?? Is it optimized enough?
-------------------

Traffic
I'm receiving next to none. What I did was:
- submitted to about 20 free directories using www.submityourshop.com, btw many of them stated that the time for a free inclusion was about 6 weeks..
- i wrote a fast article about e-books with my site included The truth about selling e-books on the internet just to see if it would affect my traffic
- didn't submit to dmoz because I've read it's difficult to get listed, my site has NO pagerank as of now (it shows N/A with google toolbar) so I guess they wouldn't list me
- I post on 2-3 forums, my sig contains the url to my site
- I sent 5 emails to potential link partners 4 days ago, linked to them on my site,but they didn't write back (maybe they will in the next days)

Question 2: What else can I do?? No PPC as i have no budget...
-----------------------------

Revenue and Adsense
I've installed adsense on a side column of my site, however I have some problems:

1- It doesn't seem to always provide relevant ads!!
2- It shows up Public Services about 50% of the time -__-
3- on some product descriptions (like THIS ONE I have placed no adsense (oh btw, every description has its keywords tag to help, the newest ones also have a custom title tag), and everything works fine (apart from irrelevant ads and Public services, duh -__-)
4- However, when I include google adsense INSIDE the description, in addition to the side column, this is what happens: the side column adsense magically disappears!! and if that wasn't enough, the url doesn't show (its color is set to black, but if you notice it just doesn't show, and I fear google will ban me because of that)

Question 3: in a few words: adsense seems completely screwed up and I can't tell why...any advice?? is this a good revenue stream or should I choose other advertisers? I've heard you talk about fastclick?

I spent a big amount of time on this site (in 1 month I drew 90% of the graphics, completely changed the default oscommerce design, uploaded the about 70 products, wrote about 80% of the salescopies, set up adsense, submitted to search engines, wrote articles etc!!) and i'm starting to wonder if it's worth it :P

Thanks for your help guys, I hope you will help me become part of you successful internet marketers =)

**iMatt** · May 14, 2005, 08:37

I don't think you're allowed to advertise your site. I may be wrong though.

**Albert Z** · May 14, 2005, 08:41

Originally Posted by iMatt

I don't think you're allowed to advertise your site. I may be wrong though.

I'm sorry!! i have no intentions of breaking any rules, if a mod finds this post offensive I'll be glad if he could show me the correct place for these questions

**iMatt** · May 14, 2005, 08:53

I'm pretty sure this is the right place but you're really only allowed to post your site in your signature and in your introduction.

**Albert Z** · May 14, 2005, 18:44

Bump :P Come on doesn't anyone want to insult my webmastering skills?

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