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Pinterest For Backlinks, Affiliate Sales, and Recipes

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pinterest-pricing

I am liking Pinterest! SY gave me a heads up about why I should use Pinterest ages ago, and sent me an invite. I ignored it. Then she told me I REALLY needed to have a look, and finally I did. I figured it would be a distraction, it was, but what may well be a useful one.  First off the site scared the bejeesus out of me – it is very “pretty” – I am graphically challenged and easily scared by people who can do pretty! Apparently a lot of the users are female – I’m not surprised.  But even for the non-visual amongst us, and, dare I say it, those of us who don’t have any clues as to “our style”, and no desire to plan a wedding, its kinda cool, and useful.  Cool Stuff You Can Do On Printerest  Its good for collecting stuff together – I did a bit of baking around Christmas I was forever googling “how to make marizpan” and similar stuff – I found some good recipes – this would have been a good place to keep them all together (maybe next year).  You can upload your photos. Its as close to a good place [...] Read more »

Right Keywords + Right Platform = Cash!

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Gum Digger with His Tools - (Kauri gum made some people a lot of money in 19th century NZ - if they looked in the riight place) Dargaville

Who needs new keywords then?  Well any of us who want to make money online in my experience. As I mentioned recently, I’m using Wizzley to make some fast cash - though this approach will make you money regardless of the platform – so long as the website is in Google’s good graces.  So does it work? Let’s see – I was aiming for 7 articles/day on Wizzley – hmm not quite – I’m up to 17 articles on my main account on wizzley – so what have I have I earned?  As as of 13 Jan – I’ve made $46 from Amazon and  as of 15 Jan $30 from Adsense, that’s not bad given the age of most of my articles and how few of them I have.   I’m also getting a 10% order rate ie from around 450 clicks – I had 45 orders – I don’t have a huge amount of Amazon data to judge this by – but to this looks like a pretty darn good conversion rate.  What I am doing with Wizzley is a slightly new approach to me. As some of you will know most of us have been continuously frustrated with Google’s [...] Read more »

Empower Network Scam or Legit?

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empower-network

I was introduced to the Empower Network by an acquaintance at a rare blogging meetup in my home town.  I have said that I’ve sworn off scams – but this one came looking for me – its not just a scam, its a pyramid scheme – so illegal in most decent countries (including New Zealand). I’ve written my review on the blog they so kindly set-up for me for my $25/month.  I’m curious to see if it will rank for the appropriate terms before I get terminated!  Anyways here’s my review on the Empower Network Scam  Looks like they noticed it!  Lets take them one at a time : Wow a blogging system how cool is that? Very not cool – its just a WordPress install on their domain – you aren’t developing  your own blog – you are providing content – for them. That’s why the original review got removed – because they could. Interesting aside – when I put the original review on my very own blog on their system –  I thought it would outrank this review in the search results, it never did. In other words their own domain called “EmpowerNetwork.com” couldn’t rank for a term like “empower network scam”. [...] Read more »

Internet Marketing Business Plan – 2012 Edition

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Cape Reinga, on a bad day, the Pacific is meeting the Tasman somewhere in the background

Sorry this is a bit of long one, even for me! You might want to read my previous posts first if you haven’t (and they are shorter!): 2011 Looking Back, 2012 Goals – Introduction. Short version, why should you read over 3000 words of my ramblings? Because most people don’t have a business plan to make money online, and I think more of you need one!   A Whole Bloody Business Plan? Why Not Just Some Goals?  This started off as my 2012 goals post – and ended up as an Internet Marketing plan – how the frig did that happen?  I read some other people’s goals posts – and don’t get me wrong. I’m not knocking posts like this, or this, this one, or indeed the one that made me buy a book. I read them all, and they all seemed reasonable goals and plans.   But I wanted a bigger picture, I wanted a  vision, some frigging idea where I was going with this whole business thing, and 2012 in particular.   Or, to be allegorical, (’cause I am playing with language at the moment), I needed to know the layout of the forest, before I focussed on individual trees!  And then Google has failed me. [...] Read more »

2012 Goals – Introduction

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Ugly photo! December 2011 - though they did send me a medium when I asked for an XL!

As I mentioned in passing in my last post 2011 – wasn’t the most exciting year of my life.  Personal Goals  Gonna hit big 50 this year, which is cool because it means we can dance in the next age grade in Dancesport ie instead of competing against 35 year olds, we are the youngest couple again (well I am, partner’s 10 years older!).  HOWEVER, we want to compete in Latin again, so I need to look good wearing this:  Let’s face it, I probably won’t be going back to looking like this:   - but it’s got to better than this!:  As of today I’m 108kg, in the 1988 photo I was probably about 70kg (and yes over-weight according to the  wisdom of the day – trying to get to 65kg from memory). Now apparently 75kg is OK weight for my height (180cm) – you see why I have a problem with the weight loss industry! Frankly if I got down to 90kg that would be a) record-breaking low for the last 20 odd years for me, and b) still “obese” by the stupid “one size fits all charts” , and frankly – I’d look pretty hot in my latin [...] Read more »

2011 Review Looking Back

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looking back

Hmm, looks like although I’ve used Chris Guillebeau’s approach to planning before, I’ve not actually blogged about it!  I don’t have a lot of time for most “self improvement” blogs, and I first noted Chris’s site because he has, what I still think is, a stupid idea of visiting every country in the world. Really, I love to travel, but there are number of countries that I’ve never wanted to visit, so why spend money going there?  Anyway I like his writing and his goal setting is quite unusual. This is part 1 – looking back, check back in a few days for when I’ve actually figured out my New Year’s goals!  Anyway – this is the easy part of the process: looking back:  Pretty much I’m looking at health, travel, business,  in that order, because that’s probably what matters.     What Went Well in 2011  Frankly I was kinda worried about reaching that “certain age” that women get to.  I had heard so many bad things about menopause. Well I’ve reached it, and what happened? For the first time since I was 20 I’m not popping a daily pill, had the odd weird dream, woke up hot a couple of [...] Read more »

All I Want for Christmas Are Long Tail Keywords – Keyword Researcher Review

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no-results

Yeah Christmas or whatever you choose to celebrate or not in this happy/stressful/profitable time of the year!  I think its fair to say that 2011 has been a bit of an up and down year in terms of Internet Marketing, maybe I’m just bloody lucky, but really all the bad stuff that’s happened to me has been thanks to the TOS changes with HubPages plus nervous clients.  Google has been, interesting, but the most interesting thing, and totally bloody irritating part, are their continuing moves to restrict access to their goldmine of data known as the Google keywords tool. For a long time using the tool direct doesn’t give you real long tail keywords – you only get to about 3 or 4 words: a real long term is longer than that. Its very, very focussed, its not in Google’s best interest to reveal those because a) PPC advertisers would save a fortune only bidding on very specific terms and b) evil affiliate marketers would make way too much money.  Google’s changes to their API TOS has meant than some previously good tools have gone away – and I am sure I’m not the only one who has found I [...] Read more »

I See Video In My Future – And Its Very, Very Scary!

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IMG_2464-1

Let’s face it – I am scared of the camera – well one that takes moving pictures anyways! I don’t really have an issue with photos of me per se, particularly if they are stored on my computer so  I can delete at will. But video has always made me nervous.  I’ve tried it a couple of times – and I dislike the sound of my own voice. A lot.  Talking the camera is also perilously close to talking to an audience which is alive. And that gives me stage fright.  But the case for audio and video is becoming a bit overwhelming. For example. No prizes for figuring out that both this blog and Pat’s over at SmartPassiveIncome.com go after the same main keyword. There’s not much in it – at the moment he’s #2 and I’m #4 in the SERPs. But I’ve never been able to figure out one little thing – why the hell does he have so much more traffic than I do? According to SEMRush he doesn’t rank for another huge keyword in this niche – so WTF was going on?  Now there are a dozen ways to game social media figures and subscription numbers, but [...] Read more »

Wizzley Review: The Answer to the Hubpages Scam?

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wizzley

Are Lissie and her scams right? Well its hardly my fault that scam is a the word Google likes to give this blog authority on. Well OK maybe it is my fault! And so yes I can use it to my own benefit as in HubPages Scam, SEO Scribe Scam, Keyword Academy Scam, and of course the one that started it all SiteSell Scam.  What is Wizzley? Wizzley is a place to write articles and get paid via affiliate programs plus get backlinks to your sites. It has a nice set of tools which are drag drop to build your “wizzes” (yeah really that’s what an article is called, where I come from is what a little boy does when he stands up to go to the loo – but whatever!). You have to have at least 400 words, the usual topics (porn, guns, drugs) are banned as are some other rather commonly over-used topics including acne, credit card debt, forex and weight loss.  What does Wizzley offer?  revenue share starts at 50% – goes to 55% after 50 articles and 60% after 100 articles;  revenue is from Adsense, Amazon, Zazzle and AllPosters – and you are paid direct by [...] Read more »

NZ Electoral Law is an Ass – I Will Comment Today!

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Mt Egmont, Taranaki, New Zealand

Yeah this is my first and probably last political post on this blog! Yeah I don’t mean the politics of A-List and Z-List bloggers I mean genuine NZ politics. Yeah NZ is having an election and from middnight to 7pm on 26 November 2011 – I am supposed not to: to publish any statement intended or likely to influence any elector’s candidate, party or referendum vote. So WTF you might say? Yeah me too. This is a particularly stupid piece of legislation which was last updated in 1993 which was put in place to stop candidates and parties trying to influence voters on the day of voting. All very reasonable you might say. But now they’ve extended it to social media. And it covers everyone – well all NZers anyways – like who the else would care about NZ politics after all! According to The Aucklander- The current New Zealand Electoral Act (which prohibits any form of campaigning on polling day) means that if you type, text, televise or tweet your support for a party or person, on any public online platform (be it a blog, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or any of the other thousands of social media platforms available), [...] Read more »