Four or five years ago, when I beginning to looking at making a living on the web, I had no clue. I put the websites up, used FrontPage as my WYSIWYG editor, took a week's vacation time to write an ebook and put a website online. Six months down the road, I did it again.

Woo Hoo, I had two business websites selling ebooks. After a few months, I had a Google page rank of 4. There was no end in site to the possibilities. All I had to do was lean back and let the money roll in.

I was young and innocent and foolish then.

I did some Adwords campaigns to jumpstart traffic and bought a links program, so that eventually, my traffic would be organic.

Buying a quality links program was one of the few things that I did that was absolutely the right thing to do, and has paid off handsomely.

I had a guru who tried to point me in the right direction, but I never quite "got" what he was talking about. And since he was working with me for free in five minute blocks whenever we could meet. I never was really able to learn and absorb his wisdom about the website business.

RL (real life) and a high paying real life 9 to 5 job (more like 9A to 11P), with a huge multi-national company demanded that I take my eye off of the websites.

Also, I was getting frustrated. Website design and implementation was not easy and I was looking for a way to integrate too many things into my websites.

I took my eye off the ball. The sales dried up. And my rankings went in the toilet.

It was time to reinvent my websites.

Spanking your inner moppet or why emotional attachment to a website is a foolish thing.

I get emotionally attached to my websites. I normally write all the articles and do all the research. The artwork and photos are original and unique. But, if they aren't making money, I need to blow them up and start over again.

After all, I did get into the business to make money. Losing sight of that goal because you've impressed yourself is a very bad thing.

Why not scrape a website that's not doing well and put it to rest once and for all?

It seems that part of Google's calculations on how to rank your website, includes the age of the website. So I might purchase a name and park it, but any website that's more than a few years old, is golden to me.

Plus, there is the page rank thing. I don't mind taking a site with a page rank of 2 and trying to boost the page rank up to a 3. Trying to take an unranked page and get it ranked, is like pulling teeth.

87% of my referred traffic originates from Google searches. So ranking well on Google is a must for any webmaster or webmistress. Unless you plan on buying traffic.

I've bought traffic before and it was pretty much an even swap. Yes, I saw the results as my sales went up. But unless you have tightly focused keywords you'll spend as much as you make.

So, here I am, armed with new knowledge, ready to do battle and to whip these websites into a business that will make money online.

Whant to know what happens next? Read "7 Ways I Screwed Up My Websites."