Its'a pleasure doing business with you!

YapYapOK appreciates the support from all advertisers.

It takes a certain amount amount of faith to invest your most precious resource, time, into an unknown quantity such as a new site.  The feedback we are getting is that the time you invested has paid off as  YapYapOK has proven itself to be a viable free alternative to regular pay to list sites.

Our edge comes in utilising social media to promote your ads on the YapYapOK site.  RSS feeds drive many ads to target sites by identifying specific keywords on Twitter.  A good example of this is the husky puppies advert.  This ended up on a Twitter feed to a husky dog information site at the top of their home page.  A Tracy Chapman cd fed into a Tracy Chapman website giving it full exposure to all her fans.

We are enjoying receiving the positive feedback letting us know that our site is working for you, keep it coming.  If there is something you would like to see,tell us and we will evaluate it.

At YapYapOK we welcome all business and classified listings.  all ads are submitted to our Twitter feed and we randomly select others to appear on our blogs, Facebook and many others.  If you wish to join us on Facebook and draw attention to your own ad, then feel free........ Free, thats a nice word!

YapYapOK - a new class of classified

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Update on ranks!!!!!

Doh!

Forgot this, YapYapOK alexa ranking is 895,832 UK is now upto 160,423.

YapYapOK free classified and shop hosting.

Posted via email from Yap Yap OK. Daily Blog of the UKs superior FREE classified site

Winners never quit and quitters never win

I managed a rare but glorious lie in today, still sleepy I thought I'd make the teas and bring them back to bed.  Normally I come here to do my daily blog.  My husband, on the other hand, has no problems with lie ins and managed to open one eye in recognition of the tea and then roll over on to the other side.  Fear of disturbing him has put me right back in front of the computer.

YapYapOK now advertises all classifieds for 90 days, so there is no need to republish your ads for on going stock.  Clearly this is a far better time allowance for property listings and has advantages for shop owners with stock items.  It may however be less necessary to advertise job vacancies or rare items such as Sonic mega collection plus for a gamecube new in a sealed pack. 

My son had the original xbox game but it does not play on the xbox 360, which I think is outrageous.  Originally it was made compatible but Nintendo have changed this to stop the sale of second hand games.

Henry has begged for us to put towards a new game for Easter.  Since the game is for an outdated console, it is incredibly difficult to get new.  I was concerned that a second hand one may be scratched, given the nature of the item.

There were 2 available on Ebay UK.  I bid on one of them an hour before the bid ended and left an automated bidding system in place.  Devastatingly the bids exceeded the price of any new Xbox 360 games.  Not to be put off I searched for a second hand one where maybe the seller checked his items.  I was instantly rewarded by an honest seller who pointed out that this was a little scratched but it played perfectly.  He also honestly pointed out that the game does play on an Xbox 360 but you need the old controls to play it.  We are now very grateful to have been outbid as we would have had a very disapointed 9 year old for Easter. 

I have just been looking at my stats, I love looking at the maps that come up to show where your traffic is coming from.  I have 3 stat programs installed on YapYapOK and these with the system log are invaluable.   I always look at the visitor paths as it shows me where my traffic is from, ie the IP address, any referral sites, such as HMA.com or Stumble or Twitter and even which Tweets were the referrals.  This is a great resource for ascertaining traffic source which further enables you to differentiate the superior socila sites and where effort needs concentrating.

YapYapOK is now 895,836 in Alexa with our biggest jump in traffic coming from the UK where we are now ranked at 160,423.  Next is China and then the US.

More great news is that we have been accepted by one of the better ad agencies who only apply appropriate ad material to relevant pages on the site.  This has a clear advantage for advertisers but also to users of our site, it creates an element of choice.   The admin team had a good look at YapYapOK, saw that we met the required minimum traffic and have given us the go ahead.  So soon you will see ads appearing on all our pages.  This agency also pay larger percentages than any other ad agency we have found, and believe me when I say I have looked.  It would be good to finally have the YapYapOK server paid for.

Here's looking for a profitable start to April where we can continue to pass on the benefits of free advertising to all our users!

YapYapOK free shop hosting and free classified

Posted via email from Yap Yap OK. Daily Blog of the UKs superior FREE classified site

The future you see is the future you get

We did it.  By 11.00 yesterday morning, just as we were leaving home, YapYapOK  ranked 997040 by Alexa.

That means that YapYapOK jumped over 300,000 from the Sunday previous.

Certainly now it will became steadily more difficult to progress up the rankings, but with renewed energy we shall press on.  We aim to get into the top 50,000!

To be honest, I am unsure how the Alexa algorithym works, it seems that they are in bed with Google and are owned by Amazon, higher rankings and high traffic do go hand in hand.  The higher you climb in rankings, the more traffic you get and vice versa.  Its a bit of a chicken and egg thing.  If you  get a significant amount of traffic,  you climb the ranks and therefore get more traffic.  If you are high up the ranking then you are more exposed and get more traffic.

The trick is getting the traffic early on.  With a generous marketing budget you can advertise, without it you have to show some dedication and post as many inward links and free adverts as possible.

It depends on how valuable your time is as to how much of it you want to spend driving traffic and creating links to your site.  The problem with a classified site is that there are alot of them, often already well ranked.  This is why YapYapOK offers so much more than that, ie free shop hosting for businesses.  The advantage of having a free classified site is that you do not really have any competition.  Free classified sites rarely compete with one another, on the contrary you are able to advertise free on their sites.  Craigs list actually has an RSS feed of Tweets containing the word "classified", consequently we had over 63 referrels from them in a week.  Having said that, clearly it would be nice to rank better than the others!

I made the mistake of thinking that other classifieds were my competition.  Just because a site offers a similar service to you, does not automatically make them the competition.  Generally advertisers of free sites, post on as many different ones as possible.  Similarly many online marketeers don't use one just one Social Networking site to market their business.  Facebook and Twitter are certainly not competitors, they both enable sites to market themselves freely across their networks in very different ways.

I have managed many inlinks in this blog, my work is done!

YapYapOK free shop listing and free classified

Posted via email from Yap Yap OK. Daily Blog of the UKs superior FREE classified site

Even pirates, before they attack another ship, hoist a black flag.

Just a quickie for inlinks on YapYapOK, well it is Sunday.

The clocks have gone back so really its only 7.15.  Lucky for me my husband changed all the clocks at about 6.00 last night.  Since I didn't know, I was prematurely yawning at 10.00pm.

I am just about to start this evenings supper as we will be out most of the day on one of our mammoth walks.  My husband is setting us up with a full English, so we will get away with a dressed roast fennel salad with baked camembert for later with french stick washed down with cold cider, yummy.

Followers of my blog know that I am intolerant to barley and beer is now off limits.  I have developed a taste for dry cider which is going down fairly well, although probably its not a terribly ladylike drink

The YapYapOK Twitter is working well, we have drawn more unique visitors to our site with more advertisers.  Established advertisers are continuing to use the site too!  This week I plan to do more work on the YapYapOK forum with some more recipes and informative ideas.

Have a great day!

YapYapOK free classified and shop hosting

OOh and Marc, hide my ass  even on a different IP doesnt work.  They just showed me 2 of your other IP addresses! Haha!

Posted via email from Yap Yap OK. Daily Blog of the UKs superior FREE classified site

Hide My Ass

Guys seriously, Hide My Ass...... it does not work!

I dont get the emails, they are outsourced!!!!!

It’s faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes life worth living

I am planning ahead by pre-preparing tomorrows YapYapOK blog post today.

I am super organised, out of necessity.  I have been a working mum for 10 years.  Prior to that I worked full time for many years whilst simultaneously studying.  I  am a social creature too.  When todays todo list dries up I start tomorrows todo list, why?  So that I may enjoy time off without any nagging issues.  It is not unusual for me to have the evenings dinner practically prepared at 7 oclock in the morning.  It is not because I enjoy constantly doing, it is more because I so enjoy the feeling of complete relaxation when all todo lists are ticked, dinner is done & the washing pile is empty.

There can be no better feeling of going out for the day without a single care in the world, I relish these as often as possible and I'm prepared to put in the man hours to achieve them.  

YapYapOK today has had many UK hits.  This is due to the start of our email marketing campaign.  I am hoping that the inlinks as well as the hit rate will help push those Alexa rankings below the million.  I have a couple of other little tricks up my sleeve & I will share them if they prove a success.

Normally I have a meeting with the talented Helga on friday, sometimes its work and other times its pleasure, its always fun!  Unfortunately commitment to another project left her working most of the night and she was too exhausted to entertain me today.  She is feeling a little redundant on YapYapOK, there is little to be done at present, unless we write some bulk downloads for catalogues, we are letting the site develope organically before we assess new changes or implement some other ideas. 

Tomorrow I want to do some work on my YapYapOK Twitter account.  I am so pleased to be back in the Twittering arena.  Irrelevent of its importance in social marketing, its so much fun and the results are instant.

I shall save to drafts in case there are new things to report, meanwhile positive thoughts for Alexa please!!!

NEW TO REPORT.... New personal adverts containing video...oh....oh   Click on Personal Classified for a sneaky peak!!

YapYapOK free classified and shop hosting

Posted via email from Yap Yap OK. Daily Blog of the UKs superior FREE classified site

A clever man commits no minor blunders

Happy days.

Today is friday and whilst the YapYapOK ranking is not yet under a million it has jumped up again.  We are now at 1090072.  To be fair, to even sustain our ranking with the issues that we had this week is rather good so maybe before the weekend is up we will see even more improvements.

I will keep you all informed.

A little while ago I reported that we had been the victim of hack attempts.  Fortunately it was in the early days and we were able to raise the security on our site.  I may have mentioned that I am something of a stat nerd too.

So get this, yesterday we had visits from the same server via hidemyass.com  Hidemyass.com clearly does not do as the name suggests as my analytics showed the path from the server to hidemyass and onward to the entry page on the YapYapOK website.  Google analytics did not register the site at all, maybe its still in Beta?  Anyway the long and the short of this are, why try to hide your IP?   Can it really be for reasons that can be deemed honest?

I cannot tell lies, the guilt associated with it makes me go beetroot and its too much of a giveaway.  My voice goes squeeky so I cant do telephone lies either.  I think its an endearing quality and one I am proud of.   I have found that since I am clearly not cut out for deciept it is far easier to be honest and truthful, if you fall out with people along the way at least you can hold your head high.

A wise man once said, "often the hardest thing to do and the right thing to do are the same thing".  I have certainly found this to be true. 

Have a great weekend!

YapYapOK free classified and shop hosting

Posted via email from Yap Yap OK. Daily Blog of the UKs superior FREE classified site

It’s not cheating unless you get caught.

Twitter has unsuspended my YapYapOK account!

Thank the lord, whilst my rankings had not (yet) suffered I made less of this than I felt.  Utter devastation, It did teach me a good lesson.  No one third party tool can be so valuable again.  Consequently I have tamed my "aggressive" daily follow limits and will not duplicate Tweets in the same day.    I have also looked at Twitter alternatives.  There are no other "microblogs" that can compete with users.  There are however a number of much smaller alternatives.  I already joined Plurck!

I will continue to look at other microblogs over the next few weeks and create accounts to see which works best.  To be fair Twittering or microblogging is a numbers game rather than target marketing.  But it is still free advertising so we will continue to explore as many free social sites to help promote YapYapOK as possible.

The other advantage of a suspended account meant that I took a day off yesterday with the family.  It was actually bank holiday here anyway.  We wnet to look at an old Turkish settlement in the south Troodos mountains South Cyprus.  Actually we found it because my husband took the wrong road to the medievel bridges.  The time we got there it was too late to view but we accidentally stumbled on this instead.

This must be one of the saddest sites I have seen.  The buildings are wrecks, I will post some pics at some point.  Inside there were remains of furniture, cupboards, beds even some clothing.  They had left with what they could carry from their village in the most idyllic setting.  The village probably had about 70 homes, a church stables and taverna.  There were fields of olive trees and almond trees.  Dotted around were figs too.  The surrounding mountains are very green with lots of ceder and pine forests.  Below in the valley was lies the river.

There is much hatred between the Turks and the Cypriots.  The more I learn about the Cyprus Problem the more I see that it is a complex issue which may take years to be resolved, if indeed this ever happens.  Turks have land and property they dont occupy in the South and the Cyps have the same in the North.  Both sides have seen illegal occupation of their property and both sides lost many lives.

I will keep this post brief, I have an enormous amount of work to do on my YapYapOK Twitter account and must pencil in some of the answers on the Riddle page.

YapYapOK free classified and shop hosting!

Posted via email from Yap Yap OK. Daily Blog of the UKs superior FREE classified site

A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow

Still no Twitter!

Whilst these proves how valuable Twitter is, I fully expected to drop rank since I get an amazing amount of traffic through them.  Clearly my other efforts to increase my inbound links to YapYapOK paid off as my ranks has actually climbed again.  We are now at 1,113,098 so I am hoping that we will still be under a million before soon.  My visitor numbers are down, so it may be a tall order.

I had a restless night so spent much of it sitting in front of the computer willing Twitter to unsuspend my YapYapOK account.  I am something of a recovering insomniac so it is not such a big deal for me to be up in the night.

I am lucky to be getting back to a semi normal sleep pattern.  I spent 6 years surviving on 2 hours a night.  When I say surviving I mean just that, it is not living.   I followed every sleep therapy you can think of, including hypnotism.  According to Paul McKenna athletes don't suffer with sleep deprivation, this is because they burn off the stress hormones which are guilty of keeping you up all night. 

That is very simplistic, and not actually true.  Against every instinct (no energy) I started tennis, 2 hours a day every day.  Not only did it do nothing for my sleep but my weight continued to escalate. 

We paid to see specialist after specialist, research lead me to the door of an Endocrinologist who tested my Thyroid, my parathyroid my adrenal glands as well as a host of other possible causes.  My mother is hypothyroid and I was exhibiting many symptoms including sleep disorder.

The tests once again came back normal.  I then took my self off to have my hormones tested.  For the first time I had a positive test result allthough none of the symptoms of this disorder.  My prolactin levels were sky high.   This lead to brain scans to look for prolactinomas, fortunately these were negative.

Apparently high prolactin is normally due to Thyroid so i was retested for thyroid hormone.  Again this was negative.  According to results by google, endocrinologists in America may treat a high prolactin level as hypothyroid.  In my case I have family history which backs it up.

So I started myself on levothyroxine, I started the dose small and am now on 100 mg a day.  My sleep pattern is getting much better and I can sleep 8 hours.  I still wake in the night, sometimes for as much as 2 hours.  A large brandy sometimes pushes me back, something that did not work before.

This is dramatically off topic, I hope its not a negative post.  I have started to treat my blog as something of a diary and this is a relevant part of my life.

YapYapOK has been a great focus for me, I started the project prior to any diagnosis.   The site has grown in terms of capability and we are capturing a global market.   

Today is the start of the Easter holidays, so I am taking some of it off to go for a nice long walk with my family.

I will give it one more day without Twitter when I may have to start another account from scratch,   AAAAHHHH!!!!

YapYapOK free classified and shop hosting

Posted via email from Yap Yap OK. Daily Blog of the UKs superior FREE classified site

It is easier to get forgiveness than permission

I am having to put in some extra man hours today with my blogging, why because my Twitter account has been suspended.

To be fair I have been pushing the limits for a while, however I had expected a warning rather than a suspension.  Also I had read that limits were 1000 to follow and unfollow a day.  I have kept albeit a little under these limits only to find that this is not true.

I love Twitter, as you know.  I blog about it all the time.  I genuinely think that an email letting me know that I am breaching the rules rather than a suspension would have been a more customer friendly approach.  However, I have conceded and sent them a grovelling email acknowledging my guilt and promising to be a good girl from now on.

On a positive note, YapYapOK is still progressing up the rankings.  We are now ranked at 1,156,652 globally.  My target for this week is to get under a million and  it is looking likely.  Unfortunately my obsessing culminated in dreaming about it, when I woke this morning I genuinely thought we were at 957,000.  Imagine my devastation when realisation set in.

Not to be deterred, I have created many inlinks to YapYapOK via every social site.  I also looked at Google Buzz.  genuinely i felt that if Google were going to create a social site it would be great.  If I was in at the start then that could only be an advantage, right?  Wrong.!  Its clunky and difficult to navigate.  I could not even find the privacy settings which would enable me to choose a public profile with which to launch a dedicated Buzz to YapYapOK.

If anyone reading this disagrees, let me know.  I am keen to explore any free media which further positively impacts YapYapOK s ranking.

Meanwhile I shall stick to this and Twitter, no, doh!

YapYapOK free adverts and business listings

Posted via email from Yap Yap OK. Daily Blog of the UKs superior FREE classified site

Perfection is our goal, excellence will be tolerated

He came, he won, he left them tasting dust.   Yes a clean sweep with three races and three firsts.  The only thing they didnt do was the school records this year.  Very disappointing as i think that he may have got the long jump.  I am assuming that since no one in the school achieved his long jump and this was the seniors as well.

A nice surprise for us mums, was the site of the Polish Olympic team of men training in the stadium wearing only very small tight shorts.

YapYapOK is OUT OF BETA!!!

Our personal number system has been reintegrated to cleverly only convert phone numbers of UK users.  This is now altered when the phone numbers are saved so does take a little while for UK users, (up to 50 seconds) this is I'm afraid unavoidable and due to the third party system installed. 

Now that YapYapOK is out of beta we are ready to start pushing the site to the masses.  It seems as if we are at the end of the first part of the journey.   YapYapOK is a complex site which has had more than its fair share of associated issues, particularly in the early days.  The creases have ironed out and we are fortunate to have a great team behind it.  In particular Helga, who has proved to be the developer I instinctively knew she was.

I was unable to find a program worthy of investing in re buying Twitter Traffic.  I did find a new Tweet adding system which looked to be fabulous.  It was much more expensive than the one I currently have and i would have liked a free trial to ascertain its worth.  Whilst there was a sponsored free trial, it meant buying someone elses software which I did not want, hence not free.  The one months trial would have cost me $30, I didn't check if it was mac compatible either.

Other packages for buying traffic were extraordinarily expensive.  Ideally I would have liked 10 000 more followers.  I can get them by spending about 30 minutes a day on my Adder in about 10 weeks.  So not going to spend hundreds of dollars doing it.  Bear in mind that this is only Twitter Traffic not site traffic, which is also, according to reviews of little value and takes a long time.

My advice for anyone new to internet marketing is stick to the social networking sites, At least the only visitors to look are doing so out of free will.  Its free, its easy and it works.  Wow what a tag line.

YapYapOK - its free its easy and it works! 

YapYapOK  free shop hosting and classified website.

Posted via email from Yap Yap OK. Daily Blog of the UKs superior FREE classified site

Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing

In the interest of school sports day today is "Flexiday", hence the ungodly hour that I am blogging for YapYapOK.

Its not so much if my son will win, its more if he will beat any school records.  Forgive me if that sounds arrogant, its not meant to be, I am merely highlighting a fact!

Last year Henry won all but the ball  throwing, he came second in that.  This was because he had not had any practise untill the day.  This year he has practised, come first and then was made to choose between that and long jump. He comes first in that too.

So YapYapOK will have some inward links via this post and little else today, but thats OK.  Its working, today YapYapOK is now ranked at 1,187,201 globally, 211,208 in the UK and 701 in Cyprus. 

Targets, YapYapOK free classified and shop hosting, under 1,000,000 in a week.  Henry Chater to have a clean sweep at sports day!!

Fingers crossed!

YapYapOK free UK advertising

Posted via email from Yap Yap OK. Daily Blog of the UKs superior FREE classified site

A goal without a plan is just a wish

Rankings continue to soar, social media is exceeding all expectations.

I am considering buying some more Twitter traffic, not as pointless as you may think. Twitter has single handedly been the biggest success in driving our site. I repeat that this is a numbers game but its the stats that count. Once upon a time our visitors would click in and out of the website via the bit.ly links. Now on average, visitors are viewing 9 pages. Clearly many of our bit links get a cursory view which illustrates that if 9 pages is the average, then many visitors are actually viewing far more that.

This is further clarified in our statcounter, I thoroughly recommend statcounter. This shows every page visited, entry, exit, referrel, key words or search terms, country, IP, server and so much more. It is also to the minute, unlike google analytics. There are so many different tools available that they really are too numerous to mention. Needless to say that referral pages as well as search terms are an excellent way of not only registering what is working, but also enables us to work more efficiently.

YapYapOK has integrated text link advertising. This is a great way to monitise the site. Certain text is picked out automatically and linked to adverts. This is a discreet form of advertising. Since our site has forums as well as a potential for mass keywords, then this lends itself very well to the YapYapOK site.

Utilising affiliates & employing unique revenue generating systems enable YapYapOK to provide a free classified and business advertising site for all. We hope that anyone who utilises the YapYapOK as a platform to promote products or build there own shop, will do so with competitive pricing. This will bring more visitors to the site which in turn creates a busy online marketplace.

I am off to research some good value Twitter traffic. Wish me luck!

PS I know its completely irrellevent, but I was feeling whimsical. Hence pic of me and my sister at her wedding!

YapYapOK free shop hosting and classified website

Posted via email from Yap Yap OK. Daily Blog of the UKs superior FREE classified site

A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.

Yesterdays picnic on the beach turned into a late night.

It was meant to be one of my sons birthday parties. They started out a paintball and then went down to the wooded picnic area on the beach. The boys played football climbed trees and we all ate flatbreads and salad with chicken and peppers kebabs. They baked potatoes in the coals and there were bowls of every salad imaginable with great fruit platters for after.

These had to be the most organised parents I have seen. They bought along lots of party games including hoopla, pinnata, organised bubble blowing competitions & another game involving blindfolds string and lollys. the games were staggered over the course of several hours while the hostess had us in hysterics with her quick wit and sense of humour.

It was without question the best childs party I have ever attended, helped along by the free flowing wine. It was late when we left and we would have offended had we not agreed to go back to the house for birthday cake, more food and more drink.

Consequently it has taken a little while to be able to get myself together to talk about yet more progress on YapYapOK. Over night I can see that there have been more users joining the website. Again we woke to more ads which I have been busy adding to my automatic tweeting system.

In light of even more activity, i decided to again check our Alexa ranks. YapYapOK free shop hosting and classified web site has jumped another 19000 over night. I know I should not check this often but I cannot help it.

The ads are becoming increasingly diverse. Our most popular catagory is the pet section. The last ad for a puppy up for adoption would have sent me clamoring for the phone had it not been based in Australia. It is one of the cutest I have seen. Click on this link for English Bulldog on YapYapOK and I'm sure you will agree!

Today is Sunday, I have a house to clean, (viewing later). Not too worried as I have a second viewing lined up in 2 weeks time for another possible buyer. The wife has seen it, the husband who works away is flying over to see it. He saw it first on the internet and made his wife book a viewing.

If your curious it is listed on YapYapOK property. So do you need further proof that advertising on this site works? Yes, well what better way than to try it yourself!!

Have a great Sunday.

YapYapOK free business and classified website

Posted via email from Yap Yap OK. Daily Blog of the UKs superior FREE classified site

The best policy is to declare victory and leave.

Poker vs The Stock Market

Genuinely I have been very anti gambling & very pro investment.  Whilst I am too scared to play poker for money, I do now understand that actually, for me, the reverse is true.  I have spent too long listening to experts predict share prices with little understanding of the fundamentals.  Sentiment plays too big a part in stock broking and the only real jargon I understand is the gearing and obviously the dividend.  Poker on the other hand can be understood very quickly, unlike other types of gambling, you can play games only when the odds are in your favour.

Since we are talking about playing the odds as opposed to gambling, I believe that girls make better poker players than men.  Admittedly my experience of this is limited to one afternoon at poker, although my experience of men is far more than that!  Make of that what you will!

Fundamentally men react with testosterone.  Couple that with a little poker adrenaline and its easy to see how they can bet their homes, their cars, and their wives.  Conversely woman tend to be risk averse.  Ok I am generalising.  I am the one responsible in our home for higher risk investments, but risky gamble, no way!

Perhaps I am making too much of this.  Our friendly game could easily have become anything but.  The girls played as if the play money  was real, we played the poker odds and despite some regrets at folding preflop became the ultimate champions.  The men, gambled on hands that should have been renegated to the bottom of the pile, had some amazing luck and looked like they would win through.  They were also predictably arrogant.

Long term, playing against the odds will never pay, everyone will inevitably be dealt some luck, we all have access to the same cards in the pack.   By playing only safe hands with an unpredictable betting strategy will help fill the pot.  With the odds in your favour, long term strategy and knowing when to bow out must be a winning combination for even amateur players.

Clearly this has little to do with the website YapYapOK.  But it is a little like investment.  You dont need to gamble in poker to win.  Like investment, you know what is infront of you when you choose your investment.  Certainn outside factors may effect the value of that investment after you have bought into it.  These factors may effect the value negatively, in investment you can pull out at a loss or hope or hope that better news may come soon.  Like investment, a great poker hand can look mediocre after the flop.  Time to cut your losses and fold.  Alternatively a flop can make a good hand great, up your ante and your odds on to win!

Coincidentally, I learnt to play poker this week ( yes am winning), and this morning an advert appeared labelled Make Money with Forex  on YapYapOK free classified site,  aka the foreign exchange market.  This is a bit like shares, although maybe a little clearer for Joe Punter to get their head around.  Unlike shares, this is "betting" on currency.  Many banks offer this facility and I have various members of my family who have found it to be extremely lucrative.

So this was completely off topic, but it is Saturday & I am getting ready to join my husband and son on the beach with about  a few friends and their children a very generous barbeque and lots of wine.

To make this fully worthwhile  - YapYapOK free business and classified ads

Posted via email from Yap Yap OK. Daily Blog of the UKs superior FREE classified site

The Budget Marketeer

Today is definitely mufty day.  I am sat in front of the mac, freshly showered but not yet dressed, no not naked either. 

I have not yet had breakfast but I am so keen to keep pushing the site forward in response to recent Alexa movement.  This seems to be a great way to create inward links from very well ranked sites.  Blogging on Blogger, Posturous, Linkedin, Ning, Myspace  & Facebook is obligatory if you want to travel upwards in the rankings on a budget.

In effect you are programming forward pointing links with some of the best ranked global sites.  Linking with a short key phrase attached to the web name creates instant recognition.  For example YapYapOK free classifieds or YapYapOK free shop hosting creates a name, a relationship and most of all relevance.  Click here does not!

Blogging regularly via all the mediums available enables the social marketeer to continue building more links towards the site resulting in numerous digital pathways which help search engines find your site.  This is specially valuable with new sites struggling to be noticed by bots. 

New to the site is our Kontera links.  You may notice some of the text on the site is now underlined.  These are ad links and are another way to monitise any website.  Clearly well visited websites are going to be infinitely more profitable than ones with no traffic.  YapYapOK free classifieds  lends itself perfectly to this type of revenue.  All ads have the potential for ad links.  The vastness of the categories means that  ultimately many thousands of ad links can be crated on the site. 

Whilst this morning I will enjoy a very informal dress code, I look forward to my friday "meeting" with the YapYapOK developer.  Today we will be mainly playing poker!!!!

Ok will lose, she is a genius and a maths geek.....think Rainman.

YapYapOK free shop hosting and classified website

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In the interest of Rankings

I have to neglect most of my key tasks today.  I am in a "meeting"  for most of it.

However since this blog is about marketing then it is only appropriate that I get my link in!

Fortunately my automated Tweeting will fill alot of the slack.  Which begs the question, "what do I do all day?"

YapYapOK free shop hosting and free classifieds.

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Seventy percent of success in life is showing up

YapYapOK is getting some massive hits. Having been involved in several websites before, it has come as a surprise how easily you can market one with social media.

Of course we have spent some money on marketing, but this is comparatively small. Knowing what I know now, I believe that 4 hrs a day of dedicated online marketing can bring massive growth with any seo friendly website. Clearly I have spent a great deal of time learning my way around the various social media applications. Some I have joined and not really utilised. Others have been a constant tool.

I have also spent a disproportionate amount of time, sat in front of the computer 7 days a week trying to push the YapYapOK site. In my case Twitter was by far the most rewarding. It was also the most time consuming. Twitter is just a numbers game. the law of probability definitely plays a key part in click through rate. The more followers you have the better your chances. The more proactive Tweeting is also paramount. Clearly then the aim is to create a massive following and combine it with Tweeting 24 hrs a day, remember when the UK sleeps the huge American market wakes up. They are huge Twitterers.

Managing your Twitter account is now so easy. I use Tweet adder and it has been one of my few indulgences in web marketing. There is a free version but I strongly recommend the professional. It starts at $59 for one website, or you can buy a better version for less than $100 which manages 5 sites. There is no penalty for buying the small one and upgrading later.

The free version is so limiting in that it will only Tweet a few times a day, also it automatically deletes the Tweets after posting. The pro system enables you to rotate your Tweets either in the order or randomly. It also searches for followers, deletes followers and automatically messages and replies.

I had a conversation this morning with my good friend Iain. He is fantastic at marketing and has several very successful businesses which rely on the internet. He was having problems targeting his Twitter traffic. I told him that whilst un-targeted traffic did not bring business, it did drive him up the ranks which in turn gives his site more exposure to his target market.

I too had to come to terms with this. However the ranking continues to climb and I am at last getting more of my target market which is resulting in lots of new adverts.

Since the YapYapOK site hosts classifieds and shops allowing for huge numbers of keywords. We have a huge number of keywords that are created with every advert. The more designer these words are, the more likely that the site comes up with the keywords. Alas also the more competition. However what also happens is that because of the massive range of products, our site comes up more and more with the results. The search engines recognise that the YapYapOK site comes up more than say a more specific site and pushes us up even higher.

Some ads that are coming up in the keywords are Christian Louboutin Shoes, Stone house Cyprus, Old stone house Paphos, Zoppini, John Hine, Mokabista and bizarrely my name.

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Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.

Completely off topic! 

I have had a frustrating evening and then morning.  I dropped my MAC wireless mouse on the floor and it broke into several pieces rendering it useless.  My wireless Mac keyboard has been going through batteries at an alarming rate, they seem to coincide with the mouse and so there are never enough batteries in the charger.  I dont know who thought of wireless keyboards or mice but they need braining.  If you do any amount of work on a computer they always seem to run out of batteries at the least opportune moment eg in the middle of a very important skype call when you are exchanging files.

I was anticipating a long and expensive wait for some new mac accessories, so it was a pleasant surprise to see that my mac is compatable with both my mouse and keyboard from my PC.  The good luck vibe is still holding and I am never getting wireless again.

This is actually not my first wireless disaster.  My last PC the sony VA10, which I love, came with a wireless keyboard.  At the time I was not working full time on computers so the battery problem really was not an issue.  What was an issue was that after my son split his drink on the keyboard, and despite me taking off every key and cleaning it with alcohol, it was ruined.  This was not compatible with anything other than another sony VA10 and cost £100 to replace plus the inconvenient 7 days it took to arrive!

I love griping when the moment has passed.  It reminds me that I have very little to gripe about.  I refrain from griping immediately  after any disapointing event.  It only sounds negative, and no one wants to be a part of that.  I also refrain from retaliating in an argument or complaining to anyone else.  After all that is when you are most heated and likely to say things you will regret.

I was not always been so disciplined, this has come with age and experience.  I suspect that I am now more patient and tolerant of people too.  I once worked in mental health and have a fair understanding of how  depression can affect rational and personality.  I am more likely to see an angry person as an unhappy one and can therefore make allowances.

What I don't understand is when people yield power just because they can.  I have experienced it twice recently, from the most unexpected sources.  It hurt most because they were people who we held in very high regard.  But life has a way of working things out and help came from where we least expected it.  I consider myself a very lucky person.  I have a very supportive family, I am happily married to the most tolerant man and I am also incredibly proud of my happy go lucky son.

My friends must be the best that there are, some I have not seen for years , but the internet helps me keep in touch.  The support and feedback that I have received are so motivating and productive.

So in a hail of trumpets, I am off to count my numerous blessings before emotion gets the better of me.

YapYapOK free shop hosting and free classifieds

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Pressure makes diamonds

One of the categories which seems to be filling up nicely is the animal ads, in particular the dogs.

We have breeders and a pet matching service who have recently joined up. Of particular note is the cute little capuchin monkey photographed in a dress. The monkey I love, the dress, I mean white. I struggle with white, my 9 year old is incapable of wearing white for more than am millisecond without staining it.

The ads are coming in thick & fast now. We have adverts for hotels, computers, iphones, cameras, ipods, mp3s, mens gadgets, clothing, jewellry, dvds, music, escort service, taxi, games consoles, a huge range of collectables and property in the UK, Spain, Egypt, Dubai and Cyprus. There is a huge range of business opportunities and even a charity. Please forgive me if I have left your ad out. But they are really becoming too numerous to mention.

All of these ads are added on to our Tweet Adder and Twittered in rotation 24 hrs a day. I strongly recommend this program. I no longer babysit my Twitter account. By spending 20 minutes a day I can maximise my results, but you don't even need to do that! I can now go on holiday and know that my Tweets are being Twittered, my following is growing and my new follower receive a welcome message with a link to the site.

Our Alexa rankings continue to climb. I have been looking at other sites to see how well they rank, & more importantly why. One comparable site I knew to be only a few months old ranks amazingly well in Alexa. I studied the history of the domain and found that whilst the site was new, the domain was not. The company had bought a well ranked domain and re hashed it. This is a great short cut, will save you either loads of money or loads of time. A well ranked site generally gets much more traffic. More traffic equals more sales.

There is a direct correlation of visitor numbers & hours spent in front of a computer working the site. I can measure this daily & consequently I feel that when I am not working, I am not pushing the site, or working hard enough for the partners. In a nutshell "The harder I work, the luckier I get!"

YapYapOK free Shop hosting and classifieds

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Social Responsibility

A recent advert on YapYapOK prompted me to write a book review. The advert was for the book The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. This is completely off topic, but it is Saturday!

The book is a powerful story about life in Afghanistan. The story tells much more about the Afghan people under the Taliban, their culture and their integrity in spite living in extreme poverty or escaping to the west having left everything they ever owned.

It brings me back to one of the things my mother has maintained throughout my life, "people are essentially good". Sometimes it appears as if the reverse is true, but if you take the time to evaluate any situation, as a race we shine. We rally together in the face of disaster to help save lives & bring aid to those in desperate need. I am quite a sensitive soul & I believe that if we are in a position of power, then it is our moral duty to give some of our excess resources.

I hope that I have illustrated this in the way that I conduct myself. It is of vital importance to me that YapYapOK provides socially, the curse is really knowing which direction to channel resources.

I used to be a big animal charity supporter. I no longer agree with the way the RSPCA is run. I hated the way they fought a ruling supporting a family member who contested her fathers will. It was unnecessary and inhumane. I should imagine it was also very bad for PR. The RSPCA is one of the richest charities in the world, clearly the British love their animals, but recent events draw me to conclude that the RSPCA conforms much more to goverment standards then it does in representing animal welfare.

I still love animals and with a never ending pot of money I would still support them. Since I became a mother, my priorities have changed. I am now much more likely to support child welfare charities than any other. The problem is knowing which ones.

So, please support us, just join up and list your ads. Its free!

Our website generates revenue from personal numbers, (limited to UK sellers), By implementing this on your advert, we can support others!

We will be generating a similar number system in the US in the future. It is not mandatory, we hope that business who host shops will utilise it. Perhaps they can offer competitive pricing to compensate the higher call costs.

YapYapOK free shop hosting & Classified listing

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Blowing The Advertising Budget

Inevitably the time has come to spend some of our  budgets on advertising.

Social media has played a great part in developing the site while we have been in beta.  It has enabled a slow organic growth where we have identified key improvements.  Feedback has been positive and helped us keep focus. 

We will now put our fingers in several advertising pies & see what happens.  Twitter amongst others has given us a high hit rate and we are delighted with that.  It is however un-targeted.  We welcome anyone to place an ad on the site irrelevant of where you are.  We have a massive US following so there are clear advantages for anyone there expanding their web presence and advertising on our site.  An enormous amount of Twitter traffic comes from the US, since I Tweet every advert then this has huge benefits to our US visitors.

Our advertising will limited for the time being to the UK.  Once we have a significant amount of adverts placed daily then we will launch our .com version for the US on a US server with ads dedicated to the US.

Fingers in the pies and ready, lets see if we can pull out The Plum!

YapYapOK free shop hosting and classifieds

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A Little Light Relief

My last post "Stats, Tracks & Hacks" was a serious blog about tracking your visitors & site security.

I am feeling much more light hearted today.  It was our good friend, Investor Morse's birthday bash, come serious seminar yesterday.  He had a some guest speakers including us.  A huge thanks goes to Helga for a light, concise & professional representation of YapYapOK.

After a very brief but informative seminar we were treated to fantastic food a free bar and some great entertainment.  Fortunately we  had arranged child care so were able to enjoy the event to the full.  It reminded me of previous conferences I  attended when I worked in the pharma industry.  The implication is work, but the reality is far different.  It also amazes me how many people we knew when we arrived, also the mindset of the ones we didn't know.  I suppose when you are in a room full of very successful business men & woman, the room is full of positive energy.  Everyone was there to share ideas, investment etc.  No one had anything to prove, they had done that already!

So I have taken some of this energy with me.  I am still working, but I am feeling much less pressure.  This is also a combination of the website really starting to go.  Site visits are up over 500% on a month ago.  We are amazed how quickly the public are buying into the concept of our shop hosting and classified platform.  But then why wouldn't they.  If we compare it to even paid listing sites then we have superior functions.  If we compare it to free sites, well what can I say??!!

The only way they currently win is traffic, but this is changing.  We are delighted to have so much support.  We will continual to promote individual ads on the huge range of tools at our fingertips.  If you haven't joined yet, then go on, its free, its fun, its interactive.  Be part of a winning team!

YapYapOK free classified and shop hosting

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Stats, Tracks & Hacks

Stats, Tracks & Hacks

Some who know me well we know that I love anything with numbers. I loved maths & achieved the highest results in my class at A level. I am not intimidated by formula. In fact unlike any other subject, you can get the answers wrong and still get great scores. To me that is a win win situation & I think maths get bad press.

So I suppose it is only natural that I enjoy the statistics behind web views. I have a number of tracking codes installed on the site, I am great with viewing the system log. I take great confort in seeing where all our visits are from, where they were referred etc. The system log literally shows every visit & action on the site. I often randomly select IP addresses to see how they correlate with the various trackers that I have. Whilst this is superfluous ,reading the stats, the entry pages and in particular the referral sites is very useful. Yesterday for example someone I am familiar with was reading blogger and clicked on the link for the lotto which was advertised by one of my US users. This is particularly interesting & flattering as these visitors are web designers themselves. Another old friend visited the site and her brother who is a web designer has shown great interest in it, I am being sent many well wishes and compliments on a great web site.

I know which social sites refer not just the most traffic but also the most relevant. Twitter is great as a numbers game, clearly excellent for rankings, but very little of it is relevant. Other sites require a tiny amount of work and drive high volume target traffic to the site. These are particularly rewarding but the small amount of work is limited because of imposed restrictions.

So whilst numbers, stats etc can be dull for many, they are vital in measuring and driving traffic to any website. If it fills you with dread, then start by looking at the maps, then the IP adresses. One of the programs I use actually gives me the name, address, telephone number and email address of the user. We have in the early stages been a victim of hack attemps. This is an invaluable tool if site security is an issue. Every action is recorded by the system log within the individual website. Our hack attempt was recorded on our website log with the actual IP alongside. It is important that if this is evident that pictures, or screen shots are taken as evidence. You can then match this IP using various free tools on the web. Hackers will often "throw" their IP to another country, as they did with us. However in our case their server provider was not disguised. Foolishly they had a dedicated server and we had undeniable proof with a screen shot of the attempts, the site, the system log and the various tracking programs we used.

Hack attempts are rare but a real threat to this industry. The law is harsh, & rightly so on offenders. If like us you are fortunate that this happens early then you can use it to your advantage. We were able to tighten up security on the site, we were also able to trace the offenders easily. Our developer was employed as a site hacker for some of the largest global banks & this has been an invaluable advantage. Hacking attempts are intended to be destructive, if, like us, this is more of a nuisance than a catastrophy, then learn from it, work with it. Who knows, you may even get to love the stats!

YapYapOK - Free UK classified & shop hosting

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Up Up & Away!

Sometimes good news seems to bounce around as if its total internally reflecting toward you.  If anything far from suffering any "seepage" we seem to be magnifiying more and more.  Help often comes from behind when you least expect it and from whom.  That seems to be my recent experience at least.

Friends from my past are promoting my website having seen it on various media sites.  I am hearing stories of old friends publishing this on the Facebook news feeds as well as promoting by word & mouth. 

There is no alterior motive, in fact I am hearing this from others after the fact!  So this is a monumental thank you for all your support.

I feel like a good luck magnet!  That perhaps is a little arrogant but seemingly true.  Adverts are pouring in, rankings are going up.  In the US we are ranked 774 000.  The USA must have the most sites of any nation in the world and ours is ranking at under 1000 000.  Ironic that we are a UK based site attracting such a huge amount of American traffic.  We are also attracting adverts fromm the US, well why let our UK domain address put you off when so many of our site visitors are across the pond. 

All our ads, irrelevent of origin receive the same social exposure.  For a start how about these Boston Terrier Puppies in Mallory or maybe this unique lotto system based in Minneapolis.  Wherever you are, be assured that your ad is Twittered, randomly Stumbled, Blogged, Bleeted or Dugg from our administration center. 

So in the spirit of goodwill, why not join up and maybe some of our new positive energy will stick to you too! 

YapYapOK - FREE classified and Shop Hosting

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The Only Way Is UP!

Today is a good day!

YapYapOK is getting amazing hits and there is a lot of positivity both personally and professionally.

The sun is out and we are hoping to finish some crucial developmental work before we start some real marketing.  Social networking has proved immensely successful in establishing the YapYapOK brand.  Our hit rate continues to grow and adverts are appearing regularly.  This gentle progression has enabled us both to identify where we need to position ourselves & to see where we need to concentrate our development efforts.  Our revenue stream is established and we need to do a little more work in incorporating it before we go for the big push.

Having a restricted budget has at times been frustrating.  It is only with the benefit of hindsite that I can see that it was absolutely critical.  We have been able to see the glitches in the system which have required a little polishing, we have been able to strengthen and secure the site against hackers and we have been able to implement minor changes to the upload process to make this system easier to use.

So a big thankyou to everyone who has helped and supported us so far.  

My brother -  for coming up trumps and supporting us when we need it most, thankyou Shane, my mum for all her help and input, my friend and co worker Helga seriously the most talented developer and psycholgist, genius!   I'd like to thank Tracy for her believing in us  & Iain my oldest friend for his advice and encouragment. 

Ok Oscars over, now is the time for some serious work! 

YapYapOK free shop hosting and classified website

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To Share Or Not To Share? That Is The Question

Its been a few days since I last reported on my blog.

I become a little complacent after my massive rise in hits.  My Tweet Adder was working brilliantly until a storm wiped out my internet connection and I inadvertently loaded the wrong version.  This deleted all my Tweets after posting which meant that they stopped posting and my click rate bottomed.

I thought it was because I had nothing new to say and my followers were not clicking.  They are not that fickle.  I now have nearly 1800 followers and a click through rate of over 1000 every day on twitter alone.  This is having a positive effect on the site which is now getting more and more exposure globally. 

For our advertisers we feed every advert with a direct link into our rotating Twitter feed.  Soon we will program every advert to post directly onto Twitter automatically.  We also have the ability to feed online catalogues via an RSS feed straight on to the system free of charge.

We are now weighing up our options.  Do we allow the site to continue to grow organically or do we seek investment to market the site in the UK which will guarantee its place in the world wide web!

Once again, answers on a postcard!

YapYapOK

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