Turk Hit Box

BmwTurkiye.net - BMW Club Turkey

Turk Hit Box — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:59:51 +0000

After the success of TurboFSI.net - Audi Club Turkey, I have decided that I should be more involved with the car community. I wanted to step up my game, reaching a larger society, BMW owners. I have recently finished the design of bmwturkiye.net, and I am very happy with it, but it surely needs some touch-ups. I am using Vbulletin as the forum software and in a few months, will buy the VBSeo extension.

I have couple of goals for this website:

Since there are other bmw community forums in Turkey, its my most important goal to increase my user base to become a threat for them
Printing of Bmwturkiye.net Stickers and Handouts. (Already in progress)
Setup good relationships with BMW Dealors.
I have to reach the first page of “BMW” SERP in Google.com.tr
Increase the main page articles to significant number

If the site picks up a pace before 2009, I believe I will have a valuable assesment in couple of years time.

Is Facebook next on Turkish Internet Ban?

Turk Hit Box — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:02:59 +0000

Starting with youtube, Turkish Government is continueing to ban access to mainstream websites. These bans include Dailymotion, Wordpress.com and the latest addition, blogger.com (or blogspot.com). If we look at these sites, they are all web 2.0 trend community sites where people can express their thoughts freely.

They all got banned because some individual went to the court about what people wrote about him or her and won the case. Turkish government suggests that all these websites set up a local page like Youtube Turkey that is moderated regularly.

Well, let me tell you two reasons why facebook is going to get banned in Turkey:

On February, a soccer league referee filed a case against facebook.com after the game between soccer rivals Beşiktaş and Fenerbahçe (both Turkish teams are trying hard to get the league title).
A Turkish boy set up a poll asking how he should kill his mother. After the end of the poll, he murdered his mom and “packaged” her in little bags.

I love facebook, and I would really sad to let it go. Seeing the number of java and ajax scripts running on facebook, it would probably be impossible to access through online proxy. On the other hand, some Turkish webmasters were spamming SERP using newly registered blogspot or blogger sites to get the number 1 spot on a given keyword. Likewise, if facebook gets banned, some local facebook-clones will get their share of the friend-network sites.

I can’t imagine if Google gets banned!

Guess Who’s on Google 2001 index?

Turk Hit Box — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:57:40 +0000

Because of its 10th birthday, Google has created a nostalgic search page searching through the 2001 index. For example, if you search for Youtube or Facebook, it does not bring any results since they were created after 2001.

However, if you make a search for “turkhitbox.com” , you will get a result, which is like … awesome! I highly suggest that you visit Google 2001 search page and check if you are there. I bet some of you can make some interesting analyses.

via: Webrazzi

My New Audi A5

Turk Hit Box — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 13:25:14 +0000

Its been some time since my post titled “Selling My Audi A3 for an Audi A5“. I have received my car about a month ago, but couldn’t find any time to post the news here I know I said I was going to get a white car, but unfortunately there was no white A5’s left in Turkey. Well, most people say this color tops white anytime, so I am happy with my purchase. The color is pearlescent Avus Silver, an Audi exclusive color. Supposedly, this is the only one in Turkey, due to its high option price. I bought the car for 69,500 Euros including the dealer discount. Originally, the car is somewhere at 75000 euros.

Here is the option list:
Pearlescent Avus Silver color
S-Line sport exterior package
S-Line sport interior package
Sline sport leather steering wheel with multifunction buttons and triptronic gear selections
Piano Black interior
Electical, heated, and foldable side mirrors
Optic park assistance at the front and the back
Light package
Adaptive bi-xenons
Bang & Olufsen Sound System (505 Watt)

…. and some small stuff I don’t remember.

Currently, 170bhp TFSI is more then enoughfor in-city driving, but I am planning on getting chip tuning and some new forged wheels following months. The chiptuning should bring the car upto 220 horsepowers, which will be even more fun. One downside would be increase of the already high fuel consumption of 12liters/100kms.

You can see more photos here on my user gallery @ TurboFSI.net Audi Club Turkey

Robneville.net Web 2.0 Wordpress Theme

Turk Hit Box — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:19:09 +0000

A while ago, I designed a wordpress theme for my friend Rob Neville. He has helped me promote ways that I can’t even think of. He has recently restarted his blog using a different theme. I have asked him if I can publish his theme, and he said ok. I think it would be fair to name it after him

Robneville.net Web 2.0 Wordpress Theme is a very simplistic looking theme. Its very easy on loading times. You will need working Wordpress plugins for “most popular” and “recent comments” sections on top.

I have included the header.psd file so that you can create your own header image.

Download after the jump…

Download Robneville.net Web 2.0 Wordpress Theme

JoeAnt.com Scam

Turk Hit Box — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:42:48 +0000

After some of my websites have been hit by the July 25th update of the Google Algorithm, I decided to submit them to couple of directories.

I prefer submitting to paid directories to free directories, since they really do have more value in Google. Eventhough I was successful in submitting my websites to many directories, I was unable to get my listing up on Joeant.com

I chose “Turkey” category for my Turkish site, since thats most relevant one. Joeant says “Guaranteed review within the next two business days. (One Time Fee - $39.99)“. After I paid using paypal, I waited a full week to get a response from them. I emailed them (I found staff@joeant.com in their Terms of Use page) asking about the status of my submission, but noone wrote back. I even looked up their listed email address in WHOIS search and emailed again, but I still got no answers.

Considering I have submitted two websites, Joeant.com owes me $80s. I will be emailing paypal to refund my money, but I don’t think I’ll get it. $80 is not a lot of money, especially if you are going to get a SCAM review on a blog.

Here is another blogger who got scammed by joeant: Ripoff Report: JoeAnt.com

KingNomar.com Wordpress Theme

Turk Hit Box — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 10:26:33 +0000

Kingnomar.com was one of the sites that I have designed in my offer in Custom & Unique Wordpress Themes For Your Blog. Unfortunately, after Ramon Deterink (he is a very nice person & webmaster) sold his blog to iEntry, Inc., the company decided to remove the copyright link from the footer of the blog. I have emailed them several times to include the footer links, but I have yet to receive any answer from them.

This is why I have decided to give away kingnomar.com ’s theme. The photoshop files could be a little confusing for you since I don’t keep them organized, but you will be able to edit the template without any hard time.

Theme Files: Download
Photoshop Files: Download

PS: Don’t remove the footer link

Canliweb.com: Automated Money Making

Turk Hit Box — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 16:55:50 +0000

I love all things automated. If I could do it, I would put my body on automation so that I don’t have to do anything! I guess I am a little lazy. Canliweb.com is one of the sites I bought last year. I paid about 1000 US dollars for it, and the website returned it in just 4 months!

In April, this site made $769.49 and in May, it made $625.69 by itself with Google Adsense. It’s an incredible number considering I don’t have to do anything to keep it going. (maybe link building every now and then)

Canliweb depends on RSS Feeds; it gets the content from various portals and posts the excerpt of the content with a link back to the original page. This way its not content stealing, but at the same time, building its own content from the excerpts.

Canliweb.com gets about 15k uniques/day, since google loves website that update alot. If you want to keep your blog on high rankings, you should always update it at least once a day!

One of my moneymakers: MSNeklentisi.com

Turk Hit Box — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 13:05:16 +0000

Msneklentisi.com is one of the sites I have bough couple of months back. It ranks high for most keywords related to MSN on google.com.tr. Averaging about 10000 uniques/day, its highest is 22000 uniques on February 16th. First of all, because of the high visitor count, its very hard not to make money off of this website. Secondly, the visitors’ ages range from 10 to 18. A young audience cannot differentiate between advertisements and the actual content resulting in high CTRs.

Using Yahoo’s Yslow, I have made considerable amount of optimizing, including total site redesign. The page now loads much faster and should be able to rank much higher with valid css and xhtml. On-site optimization is always one of the first things on my mind after I buy a website.

Revenue

I bought the website for 4300 YTL, which is roughly 3300 USD. The website makes between $15 - $20 every day, but I have also seen days when it tmade around $40. To generate this income, there are 650 clicks on the ad units on average. Last month, it made $633, which means that I can get the money I paid in about 6 months. I believe that if a website investment reaches its break-even point in less then 8 months, it is a nice investment.

Like Komiksozler.net, I wish it was an English website, then I would be making $1633 instead of $633 every month :).

Traffic

Like I have said, the website averages about 10000 uniques/day, but msneklentisi.com has a forum of 3000 members, which should guarantee the growth or at least the stability of traffic. I am also hiring people to post on the forum to attract more and more members.

Link Advertising with TNX.net

Turk Hit Box — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 13:20:26 +0000

TNX.net is a text link ads service similar to Text-Link-Ads, but works in a slightly different way, where you can buy and sell points to have your text link on another website. Since most of my readers are mostly publishers, I decided I should write a review in a publisher point of view.

First of all, eventhough bloggers are just ordinary everyday people, they still want to work with the best. Seeing the “Beta” text does not turn me on, but it shows that they are still improving their systems, design or functionality. I would like to break this review into 3 parts: Design, SEO and Link Advertising

Design

The overall design is very Web 2.0, but checking the main page with Yahoo’s Yslow, the main page has a lousy score of 59. The main reasons for the low score are the 27 Css background images, no expires headers for files and no gzipping of css and js. Using CleanCSS on HIGH setting, TNX.net stylesheet dropped from 13.095KB to 9.861KB. The css file did not pass the validation, but there were only 2 small errors, which can be corrected easily.

Eventhough they have used 27 background images, I was shocked to see that they have included some images using the old school method. Without alt tags and using tables within a CSS layout, there is no chance that they could have passed the validation. A total of 62 errors should not be in a professional firm’s website. If I had designed the website, the website would load 3 times faster with less CPU load and less bandwith.

SEO

Going through some of the key phrases like “text link ads”, “text link advertising” or “link advertising”, I was unable to find TNX.net on the SERPs. This means they really need to do a SEO campaign. I would highly suggest an analysis of Google Analytics results.

They are also missing META tags, which is the first step of Search Engine Optimization. TNX.net should really consider adding a description and keyword metatags including the above mentioned keywords. Looking at their robots.txt, they have blocked Googlebot from listing their main page.

Link Advertising

TNX.net is based on points, which you can earn by serving more pages including the TNX code get using their very easy to use sidebar. You can post on this DigitalPoint thread with your TNX id, you can earn 5000 TNX points. One of the things I liked was how their system rewards the pages with high Google PageRank. So if you have a website with lots of high pageranks sub-pages, you can quickly increase your TNX points and sell them to other members with an average of $0.60 per 1000 TNX points. You can also select the pagerank of the pages that you want your text-links to be served on! Of course the prices increase as the Pagerank increases. Your earnings are sent to your PayPal account which is a plus. I really don’t like waiting for checks especially when you have to pay for the mailing fee.

Overall, I really like TNX’s system for buying text-links. I highly recommend it to people with lots of high pagerank pages since you can benefit more of the system.