Laurie of Laurie and Leroy fame, asked a question about why I mentioned clean red widgets in my last post. While I’m waiting for my turn to register early for more classes in January I thought I might let you in on the secret.
When I started working on Life on the Road, I learned everything I could about WordPress, hosting, domains and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I’ve had Adventures in Trucking and Truckingblog.net since 2004 and they rank pretty well because they’ve been around for a long time and they have a ton of content. Since I wanted Life on the Road to be successful enough so at least they would keep paying me, I started to learn about how drive traffic to Lotr.
The rest of this may or may not make sense to some, just go with the flow. After hitting all the A-list bloggers I ran across a small group of people that were actually honest and weren’t trying to sell me a bunch of ebooks that didn’t really say anything. Now there’s a private forum with classes about internet marketing, building websites and search engine stuff. Right now there’s a contest going on to see who can rank the highest in Google for the term Clean Red Widgets and another group is going for Dirty Blue Widgets.
There’s real money involved and some strict rules. Everyone is on a level playing field. We all know what to do, it’s just a matter of finding the time to do the work for it.
As of this writing I dropped down to the number two slot, but it’s really early and anything can happen. The current number one position isn’t part of the group, but someone’s page is showing up in a different service at number one. Don’t think that counts. It’s mainly for fun and a learning experience to see what others are doing, plus there’s the money.
Want to help out? Give me a link with an Anchor of “Clean Red Widgets” (an anchor is the text you click for that link) Instead of “click here” use “Clean Red Widgets” to ObscureMania.com.
So it looks like this: Clean Red Widgets
In the sidebar is good, in a post is better and if you see it in a comment, don’t delete it. Unless it’s someone else. 
A lot of these people have Internet Marketing blogs and there are a few that do this full time (they’re in the advanced contest). For not doing this for very long and only part time, I’m not doing too bad. If you actually go to ObscureMania.com it’s an ugly theme, but it’s optimized for search engines, not people.
So, I know a few of my fellow truckers are into this, if you think you can do this or if you want to learn how to do this, let me know and I’ll give you the link with all the details.
Wayne,
I’ve been following your “Adventures in Trucking” over the last year or more and enjoy your writing and your political leanings too. I too wondered what the reference to “clean red widgets’ was about. Anyway, I used to write blog entries, articles. press releases and such to earn a few bucks – actually it was to pay for my motorcycle – a small Honda 250. Anyway, it’s paid for now and I write articles just for fun – mostly for AssociatedContent.com, although I posted a couple at Gather.com.
Looks like you’re involved in a interesting project and if I can help let me know. Certainly, I can write about the clean red widgets and post with a link at Associated Content and Gather. I’m intrigued about how all this stuff works as when I google my name, I note the Gather articles show up first despite the fact that I’ve only posted a couple there whereas the Associated Content where I have over a 100 articles and almost 80,000 views shows up in 4th position.
Anyway – wish you the best in the trucking business as well as in your academic progress. let me know if I can join your team.
Clark
If you want to write for money, check out Life on the Road. Shoot me an email and I’ll give you the details.