Erik’s Blog: Board Shorts and Business Suits

Learning a proper forehand and backhand in tennis is more complicated than I thought. Just swinging at the ball causes it to fly in all directions. In order to get the proper height, spin, and distance your feet must position your body in such a way that your arm can smoothly swing through the ball and at the last second brush up and create spin on the ball.

This may seem easy enough but you must remember the ball is moving towards you and can spin in all directions after the bounce. This is why it is critical to move your feet. Being able to shuffle and explode from side to side will allow your body to setup earlier giving your swing more time to go through the proper motion of hitting a tennis ball.

Athletic Stance

First you must get in a proper athletic stance. Begin by placing your hands on your hips. Next stand with your feet about an inch or two wider than shoulder width apart keeping your back perfectly straight vertically. Bend at your knees just until you feel a strain on your thighs all the while keeping you back and upper body straight. The angle that your legs make should be between 120 and 140 degrees. Now taking your hands off your hips move them straight out to your sides with a slight bend at the elbow. Finally bend your torso forward at the waist about 15 degrees off vertical. Make sure to keep your head up. This will keep the upper portion of your body vertical.

You should now be in the proper athletic stance. Your legs and lower back should feel strained after a few seconds if you don’t regularly get into an athletic stance. Keep practicing and try holding it longer and longer. You can do this while watching television at night.

Shuffle Your Feet

If you’ve played basketball with a team there’s a good chance your coach has had you shuffle your feet from side to side. It helps build endurance and strength so you can play defense late in the game. If you haven’t, don’t worry, it’s easy and quick to learn.

First assume the athletic stance we just got done working on. For starters lets just keep our hands out to the side, later on we’ll pick up the racket. Next take your right foot and place it about 2 inches away from your left, directly next to it. Then take your left foot and move it left so your feet are just outside shoulder width apart again. Repeat these steps moving farther and farther left. Speed up. Don’t cross over. Now switch directions and shuffle to your right.

There you have it. Just make sure to keep in an athletic position while you shuffle and don’t cross your feet. After going from side to side for a little while your thighs should start to burn.

Drills on the Court

You don’t really need a tennis court to do these drills but being there might help you get a feel for the court size.

First start out at letter A, the center of the service line. Assume the athletic stance that we worked on above. Now make your body angle towards B by pointing your left shoulder in that direction. You should be facing the direction of C. Next shuffle your feet to point B. You don’t have to shuffle your feet quickly at first but I find the faster I go the less stress I feel on my joints. I suggest a medium pace for beginners.

Once you reach B stop, then shuffle back to A along the same line with your body facing the same direction and your right shoulder pointing towards A. Upon reaching A rotate your body so your right shoulder is now pointing towards C. Holding your athletic stance begin to shuffle your feet towards C. Once you reach point C stop, then shuffle back to A on that same line with your left shoulder still pointing towards A.

When you have reached A you have completed one full repetition. You can start out by doing 2 sets of 10 full repetitions and then gradually build up your endurance from their. This is also where you want to hold your racket since you probably won’t be shuffling during a match without it.

Sometimes I like to turn my body once I reach one of the three stopping points to simulate getting my body in the correct position to hit the tennis ball. Both forehand and backhand.

The following are also some combinations that I like to try. Feel free to mix them up and to shuffle to other points on the court. This should just give you a start on how to build endurance on the tennis court.

A-B-C-A
A-B-C-B-C-A
A-B-A repeats
B-C-B repeats

From those of us who were two days late hearing about the release of Google Analytics I say, “When will Google Analytics be available again!?!” If you haven’t heard than let me be the first to tell you. Google recently purchased a web stats company called Urchin. Urchin used to be a payed for service and Google made it free. They released it November 15,2005 and closed it to new sign ups November 17, 2005. Their site claims that you are able to track all incoming links, where people get stuck on your pages, AdSense keyword-click through and conversion words, countries, outgoing links, time spent, etc, etc, etc. More information than you get in some payed services supposedly.

Now it is closed to those of us who are not regularly reading the press releases and nobody is talking over at Googleplex about when it will be available again. Although they claim they are beefing up servers and bandwidth I have been unable to find out any information as to when they will open up to new members again. Let me be the first to tell them this might be bad for business. They do realize that Microsoft has now entered the realm of the online advertising and marketing world with both guns blazing, right? If Google is going to stay in the game, buying out a smaller company and then closing what I hear was a great service isn’t the best way to garner support; even if it is free. (See my article on why Microsoft is a strong buy.)

From what I have managed to pick up Google Analytics will not be available for a while. Maybe Costco ran out of servers or Google’s web hosting company isn’t having a sale on bandwidth this month. Either way, I have scoured the forums, searched the press releases, Googled the crap out of “When will Google Analytics be available again,” only to find nothing.

So with that I have begun to search for alternative web stat counters for my web pages. If you haven’t been following me I recently (November 11, 2005) jumped into the online world with both feet. Don’t get me wrong, I have started websites before for school, and some for pleasure, but never really kept anything going. Well, I was inspired by a great blog and am now focused on becoming independently wealthy. I am also in the process accomplishing many other goals that I set for myself but never strove to meet.

All of these are free web stat counters which I have tinkered with at some point or another. I like some of them and others I don’t, below I review each and tell you what I think.

ALTERNATIVES TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

1. StatCounter.com - Free for up to 250,000 page views per month. After that they have payed upgrades. For those of you just starting out this is a great service. Very extensive web stats and can be used on multiple sites (just free to a total of 250K page views.) They offer a summary with page loads (impressions), unique, and returning visitors. They also have countless stats to help optimize your page; entry pages, exit pages, popular pages, referrals, keyword analysis, search engine referrals, country/state/city/ISP, browser, visit length, and a few more random stats. Visit length and exit pages are great stats that can help you optimize your page to keep visitors hanging around.

The layout is easy to navigate although I would like more information on the summary page, possibly a customize option. Currently each option above has its own page, (by the way this is a great way to increase page impressions on your site, thus increasing Google AdSense revenue.)

Overall I recommend this stat counter to anyone who is just starting out their website or if you are looking for an in depth analysis of your visitors, for free. The “freeness” is due to the discrete Google Ads at the top of the page.

2. AddFreeStats.com- Don’t be fooled. AddFreeStats.com is not free of ads. You can just add it to your site for free. (I looked quickly and missed the second “d” in ad.)The site is supported by Google AdSense placed on every stat page right in the middle of your viewing window, super. The service does have one nice feature that StatCounter.com does not have, Google AdSense Click through (or link out.) It will tell you which ads were clicked on. This is a great way to optimize your AdSense Keywords and AdSense placement.

Like StatCounter.com they have a plethora of stats such as visit length, referral, search engines keywords, entry pages, exit pages, etc, etc. If you are monetizing your web site or blog then this is a great free counter for you with the added AdSense tracking. Other than that the ads they use are kind of annoying. But I am assuming they are paying for the fact that it seems to get you unlimited page loads (Also a great thing!)

For an ad supported free unlimited counter use this one, it has the most. You’ll get used to the ads, don’t worry.

3. ActiveMeter.com - This is another free hit counter offering a detailed analysis of visitors to your web pages. Their look is very clean, and their graphs are similar to that of what I have seen with Google Analytics. Their stats aren’t quite as extensive as the first two hit counters but they do offer unlimited page views which the first one does not. Also they do not have blaring ads on their site which is another plus.

Like StatCounter.com they don’t offer AdSense analysis. Another big thing ActiveMeter doesn’t offer that I find useful is length of visit. To me this is very interesting.

Overall ActiveMeter is a middle of the road free stat counter and analyzer. I suggest it for those of you looking for more extensive stats than the small time hit counters and not all the bells and whistles of the first two mentioned.

4. RiteCounter.com - RiteCounter.com is another middle of the road free analyzer that offers a wide variety of stats analyses. This is a newer counter to the mix and is in its beta version. It is free of course and ad supported by none other than Google AdSense ads. The nice thing about this stats counter is that it looks heavily into the links that your site receives. This can be very helpful when trying to figure out where the heck people are coming from. Knowing that information you can then try and get links from similar content or it can even drive the focus of your content.

Being a newer counter it doesn’t offer all the bells and whistles of others out there but it does have a clean interface and the ads are off to the side.

Less Involved Hit Counters and Stat Analysis Sites

Those already mentioned give a great analysis of a lot of different visitors stats. The following are some that are basically just hit counters and are of course free. Some have a minor stat analysis but nothing like the previous four.

1. Blogclicker Hit Counter - quite a few stats, easy to view all
2. Amazing Counters - few web stats
3. TDStats.com - very generic looking
4. WebCounter.com - lots of stats but low budget looking, has an affiliate program?
5. MyWebStats - fun looking page with a few stats, nothing cluttered
6. RoboCounter - simple hit counter
7. Free-Easy-Counters.com - another simple hit counter

There are lots more out there than I mentioned here. Hopefully Google Analytics will open up its services again sometime soon. If anyone hears anything feel free to leave me a comment. I would really like to know what’s going on over there and I’m sure others would too.

Happy Statistics Browsing.

Week 2 is over and my numbers are keeping steady. I received a few less unique visitors due I imagine to my decreased participation in blogclicker and blogxchange. 517 unique visitors came to my page last week with 17 from Google and 2 from MSN. I had 1643 page impressions from those visitors up from 1543 the previous week. I also continued with getting at least 1 outside link back to my page a day. I have also been able to pay off the web hosting fee for the month with the money generated by just this site.

Although it has only been two weeks I am very motivated from these results to keep up my goal of getting 500,000 people a month to visit my site. I have read and tried quite a few ways to increase traffic to this site. Here are some of the methods that have been working for me.

5 METHODS I’VE USED TO SUCCESSFULLY INCREASE TRAFFIC TO MY BLOG

1. Content, Content, Content.

I have noticed that more content I have the more people arrive at my site through search engines. During the second week of having my blog search engine referrals more than doubled from 8 to 19. I have heard numbers such as 75%, 85%, and 95% of your traffic come from search engines. Even if the number is 50% it is in your best interest to keep on writing. Search engines love content, and you need more content to reach more searches.

Writing continuously takes discipline and time, don’t give up. You should begin by writing about something that interests you. Write about what you know. Doing this will make writing easier and more enjoyable. Don’t just create a blog to make money. Offer help, information, or something useful to others and people will want to read it.

From this will come traffic.

2. Read others blogs and swap links

I am guessing you are starting a blog because you have read others. Those blogs more than likely have link exchanges or might want to write about your blog and include a link in the text. Find blogs you enjoy reading with similar content to yours and just email them if they don’t have a link exchange. Don’t be shy, most bloggers realize the need to get more people to read your blog. They’ve probably been there or are there.

Some pages that I have been hooked on with similar content to mine are Steve Pavlina’s, Yaro Starak’s, and my buddy Cesar’s.

Remember that Google is said to not count towards or count against your rank when links are generated from fraudulent pages. Just make sure the content is similar and you should be safe.

3. Comment in forums

Don’t spam, comment. Finding forums that are similar to the content on your page, or are helping you develop your page can be great places to start. I have commented in running forums, wordpress forums, and golfing forums. If you leave genuine comments that help people out there’s a good chance these people will want more information from you. They might also seek you out learn more about you.

When posting you can leave a link to your page within the comment or in your signature. Just be real with your comments and these can help you increase your traffic. In the last two and a half weeks I received 122 people from adding comments in forums. Those were my first two and a half weeks of this blog!!!

4. Search Engine Submission

Submit your URL to search engines early. I would start with the big three and then work from there. If you want to know where and how to submit your URL here are links to several search engines and their submission pages.

Google
MSN
Yahoo

I would also suggest submitting your site to DMOZ. It’s and open directory project where each URL that is submitted is checked for content by an editor.

Go from there. Look around for blog directories and other less traveled search engines.

5. Clicking for Traffic

Although I don’t think this is the greatest way to increase return traffic to your blog it does get your page out there. I am currently only using two of these as mentioned in the first paragraph. I also describe them in more detail in my first week stats post. You can have both of these pages running in the background while you work at creating content for your site. I have had only one comment come from these but over 700 unique visitors from them in the last 2 weeks. I am going to continue with this method until more people reach my site through search engines.

Use these tips and you can start right out getting traffic to come to your site. It has been less than three weeks and I am approaching 1500 unique visitors for the past month. Keep going and check back for more ways I find to increase traffic to my blog.