This is a chronological story of the stuffnthingz website. Enjoy! Try out the Wayback machine and see the history of www.stuffnthingz.com design.

Since I work as a Web Analyst I had a notion to get a web site running. I decided on a name that was neutral. My husband and I often use the term Stuff N Things to explain what we are doing. I thought that was a nice generic term for my web site since I wanted a storage area for all my web stuff. I tried a few versions of it and liked stuffnthingz best.

My co-worker found a hosting company for his website that was inexpensive and provided ASP with a database backend. It looked good to me so thought I would give them a try.

I wanted a home made look to my site. It was going to be very simple with family photos and a blog about my horse and I. I also wanted to add reference links to places I visit. I surfed around looking for a good paradigm and storage boxes seemed a good fit.

I created the home page but didn't link anything to it. I had inner pages that I could get to that stored all my own stuff, but never linked to the home page. I guess I just wasn't ready to go public.

So for two years I added content to the hidden pages, had some galleries and my growing horse blog. But I was never quite motivated enough to take it to a public facing quality of site.

At work we had a Search engine person who was laid off, oh say about 3 years ago now. Since then it was up to marcom to handle search engine placement and such. After a redesign to CMS our sites rankings started dropping. My boss started a search project and being somewhat interested in that topic I got involved. I knew nothing about search and thought it would be a fun challenge to take the stuffnthingz site from being a nothing site to something.

I created a database in MySQL. Its nothing fancy at all, just a few basic tables. Links, content, metadata, the guest table and one for my blogging efforts. I also changed my home page from html to ASP and created a style sheet. Grabbed a free javascript navigation bar and I was off.

I needed more fun content and my co worker (same one who uses the same hosting ISP) had revised his site to use Google ad sense. So I searched around for some good affiliate partners to join. Ad sense, Amazon and a company called CJ.com looked like they had relevent advertising. I really loved the ability to review a book and link directly to it!

I went to my first search conference and learned about a whole new world. I implemented all of the search do's and don't into this site. The only rule that I have violated that I cannot fix at this point is my domain name. It is too vague and I cover too many topics in it. So, getting the site indexed and relavent in the rankings will be a challend. I set up my title, and meta information to be driven from the database so I can change them easily. All of the content is in the database, again easily altered. I spent every night until after 1am working on the structure and content to make the site search friendly.

I sent out emails to my friends for their input on this new site. I also asked for input on the affiliate forums. I pretty much got a resounding "its ok" but looks out of date. No one liked my great parchment background! What is wrong with people these days?

I monitor the site every day. Finally the Google and Yahoo spiders hit the site. I only got the home page indexed on Google, and 3 pages in Yahoo. The site is about 18 pages and growing.

I caved. The old parchment look just had to go. I had been getting reciprocal links from various sites and I didnt like how my site looked when linking from the fancy crisp looking sites out there. So this week was redesign week.

I spent 3 frantic evenings redesigning the site. Modernizing the look but still keeping the storage box theme.

It goes like this, on 8/11 I had put in the base content and the initial search friendly design, complete with Titles, Description and relevant copy on each page. At that time, I had only 1 indexed page, period. It was an under construction page on Google.

Shortly after 8/11 Yahoo indexed 3 of my pages. Today when I run reports, it fluctuates between 3 and 5 indexed pages, very weird if you ask me.

On 9/2 MSN indexed 13 pages and I rank 28th for the keyword "reining horse" with my "horselinks" page. I am giddy!

During the week of 8/30 Google dropped my one indexed Under Construction page, but tonight on 9/4 I see they have popped my new home page back into their index.

Sheesh, this is like a shell game.

I downloaded a free Web Browsing tool to get some numbers for a baseline. I also wanted to do a full link verification check of the site as it is now getting to be of a size that I cannot manage just by eye. I feel that I now have basic content in every section as well as a balanced number of external links for each category so it was time to get some starting statistics for measuring stuffnthingz content growth.

My goal is 1,000. How did I pick this number? I just thought 1000 references sounds cool, thats about 200 per topic.

The current combined resources total around 200, which means I am 20% complete! You can expect far more content through the new year. This first month was spent creating content and the site structure. Future efforts can now focus on content.

Content pages, not including images or PDFs, JUST pages with copy content = 60.

External links total 127 right now of which only one of the external link resources showed 404, and that is to a PDF of the MSDS sheet for Simple Green. Not bad! I try to choose relevant active sites to link to and so far so good.

I do not include ads nor links to affiliate sites nor affiliate products in the resource count above. (I kind of think that would be cheating.) The purpose for affiliate links is to pay for my obsession of having a cool resource website. I hope that they also provide useful shopping opportunities to fellow web surfers as well.

I will admit some of those darn google ads are cool. I find I will click on an ad because of the lure of how unusual it sounds. In fact, Oddrob.com found one of my ads so intriguing that he used it as one of his links for the day. I believe it was a "cardboard box" ad. My storage box theme has resulted in some great unique ads.

Ok, two milestones actually.

I have finally been Googled! Google/AOL now has indexed 12 of my pages, Woot! I had a fear of being in the sandbox for 6 months. I have had my home page indexed for some time, then today I had 12.

Another milestone. I got my first valid Guest book entry. Ed says "Nice website ! Keep up the good work". I feel like my baby took its first step.

I still have much more work to do but seeing some fruits of my labor is sure nice. I will add a screen shot of my search saturation chart tomorrow.

This shows how many pages are indexed by the main search engines.

SNT did pretty well, my unique visitors held steady. I shifted around in rankings a bit on my key words. A notable milestone is...I got my first page rank in Google for the keyword: RV Stuff. I went from no ranking to 43 :D On MSN I moved up one to rank 10 for RV Stuff.

I am happy to see my indexed pages counts going up for the three major search engines.

The current combined resources total around 325, remember my content goal is 1000. My Vacation slowed down content publishing a bit. I still have some content pages I started that I need to get back to. I like to move on to new stuff...

Content pages, not including images or PDFs, JUST pages with copy content is 118.

I separated out my External links. Links to other web sites of interest total 113.

Because my site includes reference and reviews of products that I link to directly as an option for people to purchase online, I will add that count as a new stat. I have 98 links of this variety.

Future updates will have an unordered list summary as follows:

• SNT content pages = 118
• External Web Links = 113
• Product Links = 98
Total = 326

I finally worked up to the 1st page in 4 search engines...

It has been over a month since I have logged any site statistics for Stuffnthingz. Natural Search is going well. Stuffnthingz is ranking very well for RV and Reining keywords. I think that the other keyword areas of Art, Technology and Fun will be more difficult to get top rankings in.

Reciprocal links continue to grow. And the site stats daily report is showing alot of referrals from reciprocal linked sites. No service has been used to generate reciprocal links. Every one has been done by hand after careful evaluation of that site's content.Content count is climbing.

The last web crawl I did which was on 12/12 counted 497 links on the Stuffnthingz site.

the site goal of 1000 links by the end of 2005 was a bit of a reach. With the holidays approaching, there will be a push for new content additions, but realistically Stuffnthingz will probably be around 600 links by the new year.

Right before I went on vacation, I noticed that the pages with RSS feeds loaded very, very slowly. So, I removed them. I plan to load some open source software that will allow me to manage the feeds here, but I don't see that happening till after the New Year

Stuffnthingz has finally been more fully indexed by Google. For a very long time(6+ months) there were 12 to 14 pages only. now we've jumped up to 50 pages.

Also of interest is Rankings by keyword. Stuffnthingz now ranks well with "art stuff" and "Tech stuff" on MSN, and "tech stuff" on Google. 9 keywords rank in the top 200 for Google and 10 keywords rank in the top 100 on MSN. Stuffnthingz ranks number 1 for the following:

MSN and Google - "Washington State Reining" and "reining horse stuff."

It is interesting to note how varied results are for different tools. Note above on 1/1 the WebPosition report says that Google has indexed 50 SnT pages, but this report from another free web tools reports only 34.

I have been letting the site run for the last couple of months without my watchful eye hovering over it. After a few months of inattention,I noticed my visitor counts declining. They had been decreasing since December. So, I spent some time in March carefully perusing the web for viable reciprocal link sites. I was able to link to some very active RV and Horse sites in March.

I am happy to report that today I hit a record high Unique visits of 100 for yesterday. My average before this work was about 30. Then after the links started getting set up it has steadily climbed until today's report for yesterday showing my new record high of 100 in one day.

I cannot wait to run my monthly numbers at the end of April. I will definitely post an updated set of stats for before and after my linking efforts.

On a good note I am happy to see that for Natural Search Engine placement, Stuffnthingz is up to 7 rank 1 listings and a total of 61 listings which far exceeds my original expectations.

In October 2005 I talked about the total link count on the site. The original goal was 1000 which was overly optimistic. In December 2005, I reported that the total link count was 497. Today using that same free Link checker tool, Stuffnthingz has a total of 697 links.
Regarding search engine optimization, Stuffnthingz is still climbing the charts with an impressive 9 number one placements and over 101 total listings found.

Due to growth in the RV and Reiner areas, Stuffnthingz.com branched out to 3 sites. RV Stuffnthingz, live 9/28 and Reiner Stuff which went live on 9/18. This will allow for a better left navigation structure for each area that will better server their visitors. Also added SHOPPING! Yes, Stuffnthingz is embarking on an e-commerce effort to offer ever more "stuff" about these topics:). Notable statistics is Reiner Stuff sold its first Cafe Press design on 9/26! woot:)

SNT has gone through lots of changes this fall. The content was growing to the point that I really needed to branch out into separate sites. So far I have completed and launched Reinerstuff and RVstuffnthingz as their own sites. This has allowed me to fully customize each site to better serve the content I am putting on each one. I also integrated full e-commerce on all sites. I use various e-commerce tools so I can explore various selling options on the web.

Namely: eBay, CafePress and Paypal's free Web pay tool with my own database driven "stores".

CafePress is a blast! I have created lots of designs in Cafepress and that venue is doing wonderfully! I am very addicted to designing new layouts having completed a full Reining line and have just finished my second RV design with 4 more in the queue. So far I have kept to free Basic Stores, creating my own Store pages on my sites. Eventually I might go with their Paid store solution, but I need to see more consistent sales to justify it.

Ebay is not a big hit, but I figure I will use it for inexpensive advertising. By hosting my own images I save some pennies on my listing fees. I do not add all the fancy bells and whistles to keep the costs down. eBay has a way of luring you in to "adding" options to your listings which really make the listing fee spendy. I did get a high enough rating to sell via Buy it Now. I have written reviews and how tos as well as created a "me" page to further extend my presence there. Another aspect of Ebay that I am exploring is their affiliate program through CJ (Commission Junction) I have created some real time listing pages on my site and if folks buy as a result of linking to an item from my site, I get credit for it.

Finally I hand coded my own store database fully equipped with a variety of listing layout pages and custom pricing options, included item detail pages. All these stores include the free paypal shopping cart. I have researched the formatting of the Paypal shopping engine and have figured out some nice custom select box code to enable mixed pricing per item as well as color and size selections. Shippiing is one area I am staying away from and instead of incorporating a true shipping cost by zip structure I have opted to charge a flat shipping fee. This keeps pricing simple and straight forward.

On my site I felt that to be a "credible" e-commerce site I needed to post a phone number. I also felt it wasnt wise to toss my own home number on it. So I researched phone numbers and found a local Seattle outfit that provides FREE, yes FREE phone numbers that will record voicemails digitally and will email them to you. For my site this is absolutely perfect! It allows customers to feel connected to me and I am very attentive to checking it and responding right away. Folks always seem so amazed when I call them right back.

I have implemented a variety of advertising campaigns, using a mix of paid and free opportunities. I have read all I can find on how to be a successful web commerce vendor and have tried to implement a little of everything. For paid advertising I am using Adwords and Shopping.com. Why did I choose them? because they are the CHEAPEST of the paid solutions. The free solutions include Froogle, Squidoo (which you actually get paid for when folks click on their adwords they put on your pages), Craigslist (read their TOU carefully) and of course the search engines. I am an SEO (search engine optimization) nut and I have built in SEO criteria requirements for each if my web pages. There is no way to make a page work on my site without having the Meta data filled out completely. The one outstanding SEO task that is on my to do list is image alt tags. I have not been consistent with that.

Supplemental income opportunities abound with various affiliate programs. I have had the most success with Adsense. I make a little money each day ranging from a few cents to a few dollars. I figure if I can get all my web income efforts making a little each day I just might be able to realize my goal of having a successful ecommerce experience. Other interesting affiliate relationships to try that will give you some good content is CJ (Commission Junction), Linkshare and Amazon, none of them are money makers for my sites, though I did earn $24 in a quarter last summer, woohoo!

Now with all this activity going on how do I keep track of things? Well I signed up for Google Analytics and LOVE IT! I set up conversion goals that track when users hit my "post purchase" thank you pages. It shows who visited, how long they visited, what paths they took through the site, how long they stayed per page etc. This FREE tool is worth its weight in gold!

Nothing but good SEO growth for the sites, here are some screenshots with proof of the Stuffnthingz good fortune, err, results of hard work in following all SEO tips and hints! Here is an article I have written that summarizes the rules I use for SEO to achieve the great placement I am finding for my sites. Stuffnthingz SEO Tips and How Tos

www.stuffnthingz.com



www.reinerstuff.com



www.warcraftstuff.com

I can tell that by embarking on eCommerce with the Niche websites is going to take away from the focus on Stuffnthingz.com. It is still a goal to have over 1,000 links on the main Stuffnthingz site. The Technology, Fun and Art content still resides here and I will be adding more to those sections. the Stuffnthingz page rank was up to 3 for a short time, but now it is down to 1, likely because of the diversion of the Reiner, RV and Warcraft content to their respective websites.

My day job suffered the effects of the corporate king and was abolished. I have since applied for and was offered the new ITIL Release Manager job. In the mean time I will be focusing more on my own web activities especially around the money making endeavors. Never put all your eggs in one basket is a quote I am taking to heart. By the end of September I will have a full eBay store for Stuffnthingz as well as a full line of products for fall and holiday shopping.

Holiday shopping was a blast, I know that the reports said that spending was down this year, but for Stuffnthingz first full year of eCommerce, November and December rocked! Stuffnthingz even prepared a "shipping" area in the garage, with broken down boxes, shipping scale, tape and scissors and a great assortment of shipping/gift items. Also in this area was all inventory used for the eBay store that also doubles for the mobile Vend-mobile.

Here's a pic of the Stuffnthingz Shipping Center:


and just for fun, here is a couple of pics of the summertime vending rigs I use, my favorite is the RV


but in a pinch I even vend out of my truck:



oh AND Stuffnthingz has now peeked at well over 1,000 links, Xenu reports 1179 OK URLs:)

Also, Stuffnthingz Google page rank is back up to 2. www.reinerstuff.com is now 3!

It looks like MSN has changed their reporting because across the board all my sites show 0 entries in the search results. Yahoo and Google are working fine and here is how the 5 main Stuffnthingz websites are shaping up for 2008:

Current Saturation (number of pages indexed) of both Yahoo and Google links:

374 - Reinerstuff.com
299 - Stuffnthingz.com
234 - rvstuffnthingz.com
156 - pleasurehorsestuff.com
104 - warcraftstuff.com
1 - gamerstuffstore.com (new - CafePress shop)

Reiner Stuff is the oldest Stuffnthingz niche site. It has the most content so I did a Xenu link report and am proud to see that www.reinerstuff.com is now sitting at over 800 links! I do need to spend tim cleaning up the 20 or so broken links. That is the true value of running a link checker tool. Xenu is a fast multithreaded website crawler that reports a variety of statistics at the end of its site crawl. For another third party review, head on over to: Snap File The best part of Xenu is that it is totally FREE!