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| Sabtu, 18 April 2009 |
| It's All in the Back Links |
It should be evident by now that I have been trying to demonstrate the power of backlinks when it comes to making money online. It doesn't matter what niche you are in or what form of monetization you are after - without traffic you will starve. You can waste your time courting social traffic only to find out that other bloggers will not spend money on your site, use your affiliate links or click your ads. (or even give you useful links when they do link to you). Or, you can target search engine traffic right from the get go and find out how well targeted traffic converts compared to bloggers. Ranking on top of the search engines will send you a continuous flow of people who are actually looking for what you have.
Most of my readers know this by now. The problem is that most of you are unable to get the kind of backlinks needed to rank well in the serp's.
In most cases you are targeting niches that are too competitive for your resources. I have tip toed around this issue on several occasions, most recently with my credit card post. Many of you are targeting keywords that are dominated by professional marketers and this means that while you are busy getting links from articles and do-follow blogs etc, the big guns are busy buying the types of links that do the most good. This doesn't mean you are doomed but it does mean that at some point you will all have to decide just how far you want to go with your online business. I am not trying to dissuade anyone - just trying to keep things real.
I set up a little contest back in February on a blog called Asia'h Epperson and challenged my readers to outrank my site for the term "Asia'h Epperson". I offered $500 to anyone who could outrank me for the term.
As of this date no one has been able to accomplish the feat.
I will bring the contest to a close at the end of this month - October 2008. I hate leaving things open ended and have decided to split the money between the top three sites as of the end of the month. The highest ranked site will get $350, second will get $100 and the third place position will get $50. I hope this will be amenable to all involved. I had promised not to do anything with the site until a winner came forward but I would like to put the blog to use and can't until this issue is resolved. Should anyone overtake me before the end of the month they will of course get the $500. If this doesn't occur please email me at month's end with your blog and ranking and add a name to your blog so that I can verify who is who in relation to the top finishers. Should you be a winner please acknowledge the receipt in a blog post of your own just so people know I have sent out the cash as promised.
I also thought this would be a good time to explain why you have all had such a hard time overtaking the site. It all comes down to links folks. And speed. And a little luck as well.
First off. The blog was created to take advantage of short term niches. To this end you have to be fast when a popular topic suddenly appears in the news. I was quick and got the best keyword url when I started the blog. In fact the only terms in my URL are the keywords "Asia'h" and "Epperson" - nothing else. http://asiahepperson.blogspot.com/
Always use your keywords in the URL when you can. You can still rank well without them but having the right URL is a big advantage and almost impossible to overcome if the site has the right backlinks.
Btw, did any of you happen to snap up sarahpalin.blogspot.com just asking...
Because I had the right URL, Blog Title and was fast with getting properly anchored links I jumped to the second spot in the serp's instantly. This is where luck came into play. Because I ranked so high the blog was noticed by others - notably the LA Times and AOL.com Television. As a result both these sites linked to my blog and the contest was effectively over before it began.
Click to enlarge all images.
The LA Times Link.
The AOL.com Link.
Both of these links are worth a ton of juice as both websites have a great deal of trust with Google - regardless of the PR of the page the links are on. Both used the right anchor text in the links.
I got to the top quickly by simply linking to the Asia'h blog from this site. This site also has trust in G's eyes and the link was followed instantly and the Asia'h blog was indexed and ranked within hours. That is the power of having a healthy flagship blog like this one.
The screenshot below shows a partial list of the links the Asia'h blog has. You will noticed that the anchored text used is almost exclusively "Asia'h Epperson". You will also notice that most of the linking pages have no PR at all. I have mentioned this before - the right anchor text is the important part in getting links - not the PR of the page sending the link. PR is great if you get it but isn't necessary to ranking well.
Now some of you may wonder about Google Bombing - ie. too many links, too fast all using the same anchor text. In the case of this blog I was not Google bombed because it is natural to predominantly get links using the right anchor. The keyword is a person's name, the site uses that name in the title and the URL. It would have seemed strange NOT to have got so many perfectly optimized links - what other links could it have got?
In any event the cards were stacked against anyone trying to outrank the blog right from the start.
I realize that most of you don't have the resources to get the links I get but that isn't the point of this. The real point is to concentrate on niches that you can compete in until you build up a healthy stable of sites to draw upon in future. Further more, concentrate on getting what works and don't waste time with other endevours. Like my new WP make money online blog the Asia'h blog didn't require a lot of content to rank well. Both only have 5 posts. Neither have a huge amount of sites linking to them. Asia'h has about 35 links and the Griz blog has about 100. Both are only PR3 sites. The Griz site isn't at the top yet but is well on it's way and now outranks millions of older sites with thousands of links and higher PR.
So what is the common equation - the quality of the backlinks. Specifically I build sites with optimized anchor links. I concentrate on getting backlinks that use my keyword and don't waste time with anything else. This accomplishes a number of things. I get ranked fast and high up in the serp's. It sends me traffic fairly quickly. The traffic is targeted to my keyword. I know what the traffic is looking for and can monetize the sites accordingly.
The Asia'h blog was a dud for making money but so what. I still have a nicely juiced PR3 site that I can use for other things such as sending links or targeting other celeb stories. The point is that if you do things right you never waste your time and continuously build up your network.
Folks - stick with keywords and niches that you can dominate with your current resources. Build your network one site at a time if you have to but make sure you spend time doing the right things. Many of you have more posts than backlinks. What is wrong with that?
I know getting backlinks is tough. I have been trying to build up our little community over the past few months in order to help you achieve better links. If you haven't joined in on our Niche Support program I urge you to. (Note: You can use a different name and email if you wish to keep your identity quiet.) You can read more about it here. Finding Links for Niche Blogs. Also I have provided a page full of bloggers who have quality flagship sites who understand the value of helping each other out. You can visit that page here. Friendz of Griz. If you are new here then spend some time getting to know the blogs I have highlighted and get to know each other as well. Help each other.
On a related note...
Indexing Blogspot blogs.
Denise mentioned that she is having a hard time getting Blogger blogs indexed. Actually a number of readers have brought this up recently. I haven't had any problems myself but assume that G is now making Blogger harder to use for spamming purposes. What I have found is that new blogspot blogs need a few good links in order to get the ball rolling. By this I mean links from an authority site or two. This is what I do with all my new blogs - I send a link from one of my closest related authority sites. I have also found that this seems to keep the new blogs from entering the sandbox in most cases. I still get the odd one sandboxed although they would be the type of niches that raise flags as spam heavy niches. When this happens I work on adding more posts than normal and get a lot of decent links. They usually get de-boxed fairly quickly. One note - I do not monetize any site now until it is firmly ranked and getting targeted keyword traffic. I do believe this makes a huge difference in how well and fast you get indexed and gain rankings in Google. Nothing in the way of proof - it just seems to work well from my experience.
If you don't have an authority site to use then all the more reason to get to know those who do and work on building your own. This is where all those "social" blogging sites you all seem to have can come in handy. If your flagship isn't making money itself don't give up on it - keep building it up and use it to propel new sites into the system.
Btw. I am now building WordPress (ok Terry is building them - I'm just optimizing them) sites and use the exact same system with them as well. It seems to be working.
One last thing for today.
Getting links the white hat way.
I would like to add a page to the new MMO blog listing as many available sources as I can find for getting links. I have my own sources and don't spend a lot of time chasing links like most of you do. Because of this I am falling out of touch with what is available and what is and isn't working these days. To this end if any of you would like to email me with sites, directories, programs etc that you successfully get links (especially anchored links) with I will create a working list for all to use. Yes I'm lazy but in my defense you should all have a better idea of where to find legit white hat links than I do these days. (oooh I didn't just say that out loud - ouch) I spend very little time keeping up with what is available mainly because I don't have too. Those that do please share your findings. You can leave comments on this post or just send me an email with this link. Grizzly I will add the page to Make Money Online with Griz as soon as I get some feedback.
Label: make money
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posted by free games @ 00.53  |
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| Make Money Online with RevResponse |
I have been trying out a new lead generation service since July 1 called RevResponse. The program pays you to give away free magazines, podcasts, webinars, white papers etc. I hadn't planned on discussing this until the end of the month as I wanted to see how well the system worked first but the other day I came across a post on the RevResponse blog that changed my mind. In order to publicize this program the company behind it has decided to offer all its partners a $50 bonus just for mentioning the program on their blogs or websites. This type of publicity is nothing new and I usually ignore these type of paid reviews or worse I scuttle the programs that attempt to bribe me if I feel the program is crap
In this case I have decided to fill you in on RevResponse since it has actually produced some income for me in spite of the fact I have done little to promote it and I haven't added it to the kind of sites that it will probably prosper on - namely tech and trade blogs. I have quietly stuck it in my sidebar and left it alone in order to see how well it draws in my search traffic. I assume my readers are blind to the sidebar and probably haven't seen it.
I bring this up now, not to get you to sign up for some free subscriptions although please do if anything interests you, but to alert you to the fact that you can make $50 by promoting this on your own sites. Here is a blurb from the RevResponse blog explaining what is required;
(Click Images to Enlarge)
As you can see there are referral commissions involved as well and yes I stand to make a buck off of any of you who signup using my link which is this one RevResponse but not to fear - those of you who are ornery buggers can use this link and know that my children will live a life of poverty - Revresponse.
I plan on tracking both links for clicks just for the fun of it - I really want to know how many people prefer to see my kids starve as opposed to those with altruistic tendencies. Lol.
In any event I mentioned that the program actually appears to work albeit you probably won't get rich. I haven't put the links above the fold as I like to see how well a program works in spite of poor location and lack of publicity. If it can generate revenue under these conditions then it stands a good chance of doing well given a better placement and, as mentioned, a more targeted audience of users.
Here are the results for July so far;
As you can see the majority of people get rejected when filling out the required info necessary to get the free subscriptions. This is, in my opinion a good sign that the system is reputable and bodes well for the quality of the products. This is the type of product I like when it comes to leads. It's passive and so far it is producing a trickle down income with no work required on my part. While $26 isn't great it still adds up to an extra $500 - $600 per year which can be increased with a little marketing and proper site set up.
I have mentioned Project Payday numerous times in the past as another good lead generation product that has performed well for me and it too sits in a poor location (bottom of the page). The difference is that I have created some pre-sell posts to hype it and must admit that it has been a nice little earner for what little work I have put into it. Nearly $4000 since October. Not bad for passive income.
For those of you who are having problems monetizing your sites you really should look into the various types of lead generation programs available. In most cases you can plop these links on your blogs without using up your prime real estate and generate a bit of income from space that would otherwise be empty.
Label: make money online
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| posted by free games @ 00.52 |
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| Why create Make Money Online with Grizzly? |
Several of you have asked if this is the end of this blogger blog in response to the news that I have started a new MMO blog. Not at all. One of the constraints of this blog all along is that it makes money from adsense. This has meant having to optimize everything I write with consideration given to the Adsense bot rather than my readers. There are lots of things I would like to discuss but don't simply because it will bugger up my SEO and lower my earnings. This site was built for search traffic. The new site is built for social traffic. I can write freely on the new site without having to concern myself with SEO as much. I say "as much" because I will still optimize the site for keywords but I can now post non-relevant topics as well.The other reason for the new blog should be obvious to those of you who have been following along with me for a while. Once you build up one authority site use it to build up more. And not just your own. Help your friends build up theirs. Create a network. I'm not talking spam sites - real legit quality content sites. I'll be creating a page on the new site with a list of my friends online. These are people who all understand the importance of networking with others. If you are new here then these are the people you should visit and get to know them, leave comments, link to posts you like, become friends. They cover many niches - not just "Make Money Online" and we all know how hard backlinks are to find. Having friends makes this so much easier.
The list will be on going and will take a bit to complete but if you want on it just send me an email. If you are a "pay it forward" kind of person we would love to have you join us.Label: make money
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| posted by free games @ 00.50 |
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| Make Money Online Tutorial - Step 2 |
In my last post I talked about setting up an affiliate blog targeting a product or service of your choice. I have chosen Brad Callen's soon to be released website creation tool called Blinkweb. If you look at how I set up the blog called Blinkweb by Brad Callen you should be able to see which keywords I have optimized the posts and blog for.
In fact I am optimizing this post for the exact same keywords and I will explain why in a moment.
In step 1 I simply created a quick blog and posted a short article in order to get it live and indexed by Google. To speed up the indexing process I linked this blog to the new blog using the term Blinkweb in the anchor text of the link. Google crawls this blog frequently and follows all my do-follow links. The new blog showed up in the index on the same day. Now while it was in the index it wasn't showing in the serp's for any of the keywords I had optimized it for - most notably the term "Blinkweb". The only term it did show up for was it's URL name. http://callensblinkweb.blogspot.com/. (see image below)
Click to enlarge all images.
This confuses some of you still. You can be indexed and in the sandbox at the same time. The easiest way to understand this is to realize that while Google will acknowledge that it knows you exist - ie. indexing your URL - it won't necessarily index you in the serp's for related keywords - something known as being in Google's sandbox. This means that you can find your blog on Google by searching for your URL but not by using keywords. If you are sandboxed Google will de-list your blog from any of the keyword serp listings while it may or may not list your URL.
When Google has determined that your blog is legitimate and offers relevant content for certain terms it will suddenly release you from the sandbox and your blog will begin to appear in the keyword listings. These are the listings that you would like to rank number 1 for.
My new blog showed up in the keyword serp's on day two. It went from not-indexed for the term "Blinkweb" to number 3 in the serp's. (see below)
Over the next two days it dropped back to 5th and then today it has disappeared from the listings altogether. Does this sound familiar to any of you. I get a lot of comments from readers asking why they show up on the serp's and then suddenly disappear. The answer is that this has become the new normal with the current Google algorithm. I would love to give you an expert answer as to what is happening but I don't know myself - I can only tell you what "seems" to be happening from my own observations.
What seems to be happening is that fresh content plays a larger roll in serp rankings - at least for "busy" keywords - topics that suddenly get a lot of keyword hits. This means that when something new like Blinkwebs comes along there is a sudden fleury of blogs using that keyword. When someone queries the term on Google, it proceeds to build the list. Since there are no old established authority sites for the term everyone gets to play on an even field - at least for a while. In this situation the bot has it easy and simply lists sites based on it's on-page SEO (Is the keyword in the blog's URL? - in the blog's Title? - in the Post Title? - in the post's Text?) This coupled with fresh relevant posts will get your site on top of the index - at least at first. When fresh content slows down and G begins collecting more and more data regarding the keyword other factors begin having an effect on the listings - PR and backlinks come into play. Within a short time Google begins to re-order the list and in time it will settle down to the point that the page 1 listings will remain fairly stable. The back page listings are rarely stable and rankings can bounce around constantly. At least this is how Google has behaved in the past.
At present I have noticed a prolonged shake up in the serp's for old established niches like "Make Money Online" and the page 1 listings for these older niches have been in a state of constant change for several weeks now. This has all transpired at the same time as G introduced the "Personalized Results" serp's which no doubt has some bearing on all this. The end result however, is that it has become normal to get indexed, rank well in the serp's for your keywords, suddenly find yourself de-indexed, then a few days later suddenly appear back in the serp's but usually not ranking as well as you did in the beginning.
I guess I am trying to tell you to not panic if this happens to you. As long as you have a legitimate site then you will re-appear in the serp's but you may go through the disappearing act a few times before settling down. Just be patient and more importantly keep posting and securing backlinks.
Case in point.
This blog took 2nd spot in the serp's for the term "Blinkweb" the day after I posted my last article. It hung around page 1 for the better part of two days and then disappeared back to page 3 or more. Today it is back on page 1 in 4th spot. Now that it is back on page 1 my new blog has left the index. When it returns I hope to get it back on the first page along with this blog and anything else pointing to my site that I can. What I am going to explain now is something that I never see others doing and often wonder why.
Who says you can only have 1 spot on page 1?
I have touched on this in the past - if you are targeting a term then why not increase your traffic by simply ranking as many sites as you can on page 1 - this is especially true for affiliate marketing and when collecting leads. In most of my niches I usually have 3-4 different sites pointing to my money site in the top 10 on the serp's. I have had as many as 8 sites at once on the page and I have several with 6 sites. (Note: - don't do this with Adsense sites)
The reason for doing this is obvious - you will increase your traffic and ultimately your sales.
Since Blinkweb is a new program, page 1 on Google is up for grabs. The most relevant 10 sites will be chosen by relevancy, age, PR and most importantly who has the most relevant keyword anchored backlinks. You can assume the real Blinkweb site owned by the Callen's will probably be one of the top 10 sites but don't assume that they will be number 1. They should eventually as they will get the most anchored links in time but their site is new as well and can be outranked by older authority sites with better links - at least in the beginning.
Now what exactly am I babbling about? I am going to show you why backlinks are the key to everything when it comes to ranking well in the serp's.
Let's think about this logically. In time Google will run out of fresh content for a keyword like "Blinkweb". This is because there is only so much that can be written about it. In fact most of the 400 pages already indexed for the term have pretty much the same content. Every post reads much like mine - this is because the program hasn't been released yet and there has been no new info given about it from the designers. When Google runs out of fresh content it will start to rank the sites based on 1 factor - who are the authority sites? They determine this based on who has the most keyword authority which in turn is determined by who has the most links pointing to them with the keyword used in the link. Those who get links from higher PR sites will have an advantage over those who have low PR links but both will outrank all the other competitors that don't have relevant backlinks.
Knowing that this "Niche" is new also tells me that I don't need a lot of backlinks to rank well and even less if I was to procur high PR backlinks.
So...
I was fortunate to get 4 links to my last post in which 3 of the 4 links used the term "Blinkweb" in the link. One of the links came from a PR4 blog and another link came from a PR5 blog. Apparently 2 high PR links with keyword relevant links is enough for 4th spot at the moment.
The new blog Blinkweb by Brad Callen was fortunate to get 9 Blinkweb links. Several are from high PR blogs and all the links have keyword relevant anchor text. When it re-appears it should rank well. If you clicked the last link above you would have landed on the new blog's Technorati page - currently a no-PR page. It now has a PR4 keyword relevant link pointing at it. If I was fortunate to get a few more high PR links pointing at it then there is a good chance that it might make page 1 of the serp's as well. That makes 3 sites possible.
While we are at it - I mentioned that I have 4-5 high PR sites sending this blog and the new blog backlinks already. What if those blogs were to get a few high PR, keyword relevant backlinks of their own? They could conceivably make page 1 as well - hell that would make 9...
This isn't likely to happen but what will happen is that I will have stronger backlinks all the way down the line which will increase the strength of the keyword authority for the 2 sites that are the ultimate recipients of all this strong link juice - this blog and the new blog. If you get both blogs double indexed then you can easily occupy 4 of the 10 spots on page 1. You will get more than your share of traffic.
This is how I mount a campaign for every niche I target if it is a new topic.
Yes - most of you are not "Fortunate" enough to get 4-5 high PR backlinks. I realize this but want to mention that very few of your competitors are that fortunate either. If you were to create hubpages and lenses and post several articles and send links from some of your existing blogs then you would find that 4-5 low PR links using the proper keyword in the anchor text would get you ranked well compared to most of your competitors who have few links and even less using the keyword.
I noticed a surge of hubpages and lenses created in the last few days for "Blinkweb". I suspect a few of my readers have decided to jump on this niche and good for them. Most are using the hubs and lenses to send links back to their money site which is good but don't forget to build links to those hubs and lenses as well. Don't just get links for your main site - get them for all the sites linking to your main site - spend more time building keyword authority and you won't need as many links to rank well. Your competition will be busy getting hundreds of PR0 non keyword relevant links from do-follow blogs and low link juice bookmarks.
Don't panic if you aren't on page 1 in a week. Be patient and build authority. This isn't short term blogging. If your product or service is a winner it will produce sales for a while albeit usually more when new. If it takes a month to rank on top you will still have a decent run. If you keep building links you will hit page 1 - after an initial burst most of your competition will stop getting links - they either give up or they make page 1 and don't think they need to do any more work.
I have yet to find a product that I couldn't get on page 1 for. Some took longer but in the end every one made page 1 simply because I never stop getting backlinks and backlinks for my backlinks and backlinks for those backlinks as well. My main money site in any given niche may only have a dozen or so quality links but each one of those links has a dozen quality links of its own and so on. I hope you get the picture. If you build a hubpage to send link juice to your money site then build two more to send link juice to the first hubpage. Don't be surprised to one day find all three hubs on page 1 for your keyword.
Ok, a long post to tell you to work smarter and not harder. You don't need thousands of links - you just need a small number of really good links. You can get them by building up several interlinking sites from different venues - hubpages, articles, squidoo, technorati, social sites etc. Any page that links to your money site should be strengthened with keyword relevant links of their own. This pays off by ensuring your main site makes top ranking and more often than not you will rank several of the support sites as well. I do this all the time and have seen the difference in traffic when I get 3-4 sites on page 1. Btw, once you get 1 authority site on page 1 it makes it easy to get other sites on the page as well. Use it to link to new sites.
Keywords
If you read the two blog posts on the new blog you will notice some of the keywords I used. Aside from "Blinkweb" I used the term "Review", "News" and "Video" in the blog description and posts along with "Brad and Matt Callen". Experience has shown me that the quickest way to get traffic is to use "Review", "News" or "Video" in a blog post. When people can't remember the product name they will use names they remember like "Brad Callen". I don't just want to rank well for the term "Blinkweb". I also want to rank well for the term "Blinkweb Review", "Blinkweb News" and "Blinkweb Video". These are terms that will be searched for in addition to the main keyword.
In fact...
The screenshot above is from my statcounter stats and lists the keywords used to find my new blog. Notice what long tails were used?
I normally write really long posts in order to get as many long tails indexed as possible. In a case like Blinkweb I don't have to. It is an affiliate product and as such there will be a limited variety of keywords used when searching for it. A term like making money online may have hundreds of related long tails used in queries but a term like "Blinkweb" is never going to be searched for using more than half a dozen terms. It doesn't require a long post to optimize half a dozen keywords.
At the time my Blinkweb blog was ranked number 1 for "Blinkweb Review", Number 2 for "Blinkweb News" and in the top 3 for "Blinkweb". Not bad for a two day old blog.
The more keywords you rank for the more traffic so don't just target the obvious main keyword.
There you have it. I told you internet marketing is a numbers game. The more traffic you get the more money you make. The best way to increase your traffic is to rank as many sites as you can on page 1 and target all the relevant keywords - not just the main one - with each site. Remember this is possible when dealing with a new product because there are no pre-established authority sites. You can become the authority site if you are fast, SEO properly and most of all build links faster and better than every one else. Yup - it is work but more importantly - it does work.
That's enough for today. I will be adding some pure SEO posts over the next few days which won't teach you a thing. I need a real "Blinkweb" post and a few other pages so just ignore them if you are a regular reader. I will continue this tutorial in a few days after the serp's hopefully settle out a bit.
Label: make money
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| posted by free games @ 00.48 |
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| Make Money Online Tutorial - Step 1 |
I am going to take you through a complete start to finish tutorial on how I make money online. As my regular readers know I took a month long hiatus recently and aside from doing a lot of much needed maintenance on my blog network I spent a fair amount of time surfing the MMO/Blogging niches including most of my friends and readers. One thing struck me time and again - most bloggers can whip up a fancy looking site and in most cases fill their blogs with good, original and even interesting posts
A lot of you have even come to grips with the basics of SEO and have produced Google friendly pages. The only thing that was almost universally missing from the hundreds of sites I visited was the Money Maker - meaning that most of you haven't focused on how you intend to earn money with your efforts. The exception are those who have built Adsense sites.
This tutorial will not focus on Adsense. I have covered this enough for everybody to know the basics by now. I want to look at affiliate marketing and more specifically at lead generation.
Because of the impulse to produce Social friendly blogs I think a good many of you get sidetracked and lose focus. I see countless blogs that have built up PR and alexa ranking and even some search traffic for their MMO blogs but fail miserably at converting visitors into buyers. This is because just about all of you built a social site first and then slapped up a bunch of 125's as an afterthought. How many times have you seen the same "Bidvertiser" ad?, "Text Link Ads" Ad? or "SEO Book" ad? Never mind the countless "Hosting" ads. The point is that your social traffic isn't buying (hell they have the same ads on their own site) and the search traffic that you get is not targeted to your ads and they too, have seen the same stuff on every site they visit.
To make money you really have to reverse the current thinking process. You don't build a site and then figure out what to sell. You figure out what to sell first and then build the site to achieve those sales and only those sales. You must concentrate on the product and resist the urge to slap up more than one type of monetization. If you are selling an affiliate product or generating leads for others then that is what the blog is for. Period.
How do you find a product that isn't saturated? This can be tough to do but I tend to only sell "new" products or programs or stuff that has nobody else selling it (more on this shortly). You find them by subscribing to all the IM gurus who flog crap weekly - once in a while they actually come up with something decent - not often though. This is the obvious answer but not the best. Quit looking for IM products to sell to other IMer's. Join all the hobby forums. Keep abreast of new products, books, calendars, how to's etc in all the other niches online that gather traffic from the mom and pop civilian crowd. Pay special attention to what the teenage crowd is currently raving about. Use the social networks for what they were meant to do - disseminate information. You are looking for anything new that will tweak the public's interest.
Once you find something interesting the next step is to find a method to monetize it. Most of you will see if the product uses affiliates. If it doesn't you pass and move on... that is a mistake. I look for things that don't have affiliates. I don't want anybody else selling what I'm selling. I prefer to make money selling leads rather than affiliate sales - there is less competition and you can set your price if you are good at it.
An example.
I found a company that sells batteries for 2 wheeled golf carts. This is like a pull cart but has a small electric motor attached so that the golfer can control the cart with a remote hand held controller. I first noticed these being used by a lot of the elderly golfers at a golf club I belong too. The batteries only last a few years and then need replacing. I asked a couple of gents where they got the replacements. Turns out a couple of local firms carried them but didn't produce them. I found a manufacturer and several dealers in several major centers and guess what - none of them knew the slightest thing about SEO although they all had websites. I quickly created several perfectly optimized blogs targeting each of the major local niches and not surprisingly ranked on top of the serp's in short order. This brought in a steady if not large stream of traffic.
Now, I had nothing to sell. Just information about the carts and batteries. So how do you make money doing this. Yes you could slap up Adsense but there wasn't much for advertisers. What I did was simple. I picked a dealer in each city and linked to the dealers site. I left the link up for a week. I tracked the traffic that I sent to the dealer - about 20-30 people a day. (You can use feedburner to give you exit stats if you are using a free Blogger blog - no cost, no hassle)
After I removed the link I sent an email to the dealer and basically told them who I was and what I did. I mentioned that I had sent them a couple of hundred visitors and politely asked if they would like me to continue to do so. They all thanked me and said yes. I asked if the increase in sales could justify a weekly fee for the traffic - I suggested $25 per week to the first dealer. They agreed. I suggested $35 to the second and eventually raised it to $50 a week with the final dealer. (They are all paying $50 per week now during peak season (summer) and $15 per week off season. Yes I had to explain PayPal to all of them but they caught on quickly. One dealer did try to lower the fee stating that his sales weren't high enough from my traffic. I responded that I would send the traffic to his competition and see how they converted. He said he thought he might just keep paying me the $50 a week. I said fine...
That is lead generation in a nutshell. No competition and if you find a product or service with a high end ticket price you can ask for a high end fee. One thing I have learned is that very few of us can generate traffic but everyone is trying to sell something. Give them the traffic to sell too and they will kiss your ass... and pay you. If they don't the competition usually does.
I am going to keep these posts short because I want those of you who are interested to work along with me as I go. I have picked a product to promote and will walk you through the whole process in the upcoming posts. I have picked Brad and Matt Callen's soon to be released Blinkweb software that is designed for total non-techies to use in order to build websites and blogs without needing any coding experience at all. Or at least that's what they claim. They have released a short intro video about Blinkweb but that's about it. I have no idea if it's a piece of crap or not but I am hoping that it isn't. Brad Callen has created two excellent programs in the past - SEO Elite and Keyword Elite. Matt Callen's HyperVRE was/is a piece of shit though so it's a toss up as to what we will get. In the event that it turns out to be a winner I want in early and have already set up the blog. You can see it here. Blinkweb.
I have not done anything to get it ranked yet - just a link from this blog in order to get the new site indexed. Google indexed it yesterday about an hour after I added the link on this site. That is why you should all have a flagship blog at your disposal. I will be getting links shortly in order to climb the serp's but thought I would wait for the rest of you and show you that process as well.
When I say "wait for the rest of you" I mean to say - get off your butts and find a product or business that sells something and go to Blogger and set up the site just like I have done. (yes you can spend money and use self hosting but remember I like to set up dozens of these types of sites knowing that most will fail - that's why Blogger is ideal - no cost)
Note: Our friend Frank at OpTempo has built a nice plain SEO friendly theme for wordpress that is similar to this Blogger Minima theme. (Actually it's way uglier) You can learn more here Boring Memo Wordpress Theme or Download the Boring Memo Wordpress Theme or view the Demo of Boring Memo Wordpress Theme
Don't worry if the product or business has an affiliate program. Just find something that can be sold either by you or a business that needs traffic. We aren't trying to make money at this stage. We are trying to find a traffic source so keep that in mind. Find something that you believe will entice a decent amount of traffic. Once we get traffic we will worry about how to convert it - there is almost aways some kind of buyer.
A couple of don'ts
- don't email me asking what I think of your product idea. Just pick one - if it fails big deal. Find another one. I have shown some traffic stats in the past for my affiliate sites - lots of them were duds and a few were winners. This is a numbers game. Just learn how to set up these types of sites properly and then start mass producing them for everything you can think of. There is no cost other than time if you use a free host. Affiliate marketing is a numbers game. Period.
- don't pick a highly competitive niche. It will take forever to get the traffic.
- don't pick a topic that is taboo. No sex, drugs or rock n roll... G frowns on those.
Do pay attention to local niches especially for leads. Who in your town is selling something and would pay you for the traffic?
Ok - if you have been paying attention to my SEO methods then you should be able to see what I'm targeting on the Blinkweb blog and then set up your blog and first post in the same manner.
If you don't have an authority blog to use in order to get indexed send me your URL and Keyword and I'll find a link for you.
Next post we will look at getting the backlinks necessary for top serp ranking.Label: make money
Read more!
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| posted by free games @ 00.37 |
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| Anak Langit |
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| Ayat-ayat Allah |
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