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Keyword Academy 2.0 Review – TKA 2.0 Review: Scam or Legit

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Lissie hard at it doing more research for you!

UPDATED January 2012. The Keyword Academy drives me insane sometimes! If we could just get Mark to dot some “i’s” and “t’s” it would be so much easier!  Its been a long time since I did my first Keyword Academy review – nearly 3 years  in fact. So is the Keyword Academy still working in 2012?  Yes it is but some of wish Mark would hurry up and update his bloody sale’s page from time-to-time – like once every couple of years OK!  Google is always changing the game, and in 2011, in response to changes in Google (known as “”Panda-monium” by those of low humour standards) – so-called TKA2.0 was released.  The core lessons were updated, changed from video format (really hard to update) to written form, some tools had to be retired because they just didn’t work with anymore with the changes to Google’s programming feed. But now the buzz is that The Keyword Academy 2.0 is out and I’ve had emails asking – is this program still good to go – is it worth it could you please update your Keyword Academy review? What’s changed – will it still work for me? Does Keyword Academy work in a [...] Read more »

Catalyst Theme and Adsense Review

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My Dutch is about at the same level as my php - I can recognise some bits but I can't write it!

OK this is another instalment in my collection of articles about how the premium WordPress theme Catalyst: it may not be free but it allows even the technically terrified to  do cool stuff! On of the things that I like about Catalyst is that its one theme that I can use for everything – from a mini-site to this site, to a client’s professional site. I use Catalyst for all  of them. Today I’m concentrating on using Catalyst with Adsense. Now there are plenty of WordPress plugins that promise to manage your Adsense easily with any theme. But plugins have their own issues- every plugin you add to a site adds a level of complexity and invariably need upgrading every time WordPress upgrades, and sometimes they break and sometimes they even send a quiet percentage of impressions to their author’s Adsense publisher ID! There are a number of ways to deal with Adsense using the Catalyst theme – I think I have the simplest - and I will point you to a couple of alternative solutions at the end of this post. How to Manage Adsense on a WordPress Blog My requirements for when I want Adsense to show – and more [...] Read more »

Catalyst Theme Review

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catalyst-468x60

Yup its all changed around here again! Well not the content just he look and feel (ie if you are reading this via RSS – click thru !). I had hoped that going from Thesis to Frugal would be my last major change.  However Eric Hamm -the guy who created Frugal – upgraded the product so much – it now has a new name – Frugal is now Catalyst ! Catalyst actually came out just before I took off for a 2 month overseas trip with a 10″ netbook – netbook are good for lots of things but doing site design is not one of them! When I got back I had a look at Catalyst and upgraded some of my niche sites with it. I liked it – but it didn’t have Frugal’s easy to install front page – with a wide choice of widgets. So I  didn’t upgrade this site. Then back in February Catalyst upgraded to 1.1 – and YES now there are EZI Widgets – which allows a flexible front page – like Frugal’s – but with even more options! Still I hesitated – this site is a pain – it has a number of different [...] Read more »

Passive Income – There Is Such a Thing – Who Want’s a Business?

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Passive Income - New Zealand Style

Had to engage in the conversation here – Leo – says there is no such thing as passive income he argues that we all should be developing businesses not just relying on SEO to climb to the top of the rankings. Funny how my name has got associated with passive income – as friends pointed out to Leo (and not saying  Leo isn’t a friend  - merely wrong )  I would be in for the argument. Not Passive Income OK so lets step back. In the dark times pre-passive income – I used to be a highly overpaid IT consultant – I was paid a nice hourly rate by companies who wanted to upgrade or replace software. I used to work on a salary – a “safe” job right. Yup, it was –  I never got fired from a permanent job – but it was huge, huge millstone around my neck.  You see turning up 40 hours a week – even if the hours were somewhat flexible – meant that I could only travel in the holidays-  I only got 4 weeks annual leave so even with creative use of leave without pay, public holidays and anticipated leave – I could only [...] Read more »

Frugal Theme Review – Frugal and Thesis Themes Compared

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frugal-banner-250

I've been running Chris Pearson's Thesis Theme on this site for over six months. By the time you read this post I will have switched over to a new theme called Frugal Theme - by Eric Hann. This is the why I made the switch. Read more »

Passive Income Online – Now Running Frugal Theme!

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Passive Income running Thesis

Update April 2011 – I have updated the theme again – Frugal became Catalyst – which is a really, really turbo charged version of Frugal -which I got a free upgrade to as an existing customer. To read more about Catalyst check out my Catalyst review Hi all – if you click thru and get your  yourself onto the actual site – you will see some stuff has changed around here! I am still getting the  edges smoothed off but Passive Income Online has had a spring clean and  is now running the Frugal Theme by Eric Hamm. I have a (very) long post coming out in the next few days describing why I decided to move away from Thesis ( a theme I’d already paid for) and install Thesis Frugal – this is the short version in case anyone happened to notice (or care) about what happened around here. In case you have already forgotten: this was this site running Thesis 1.7: After a bit of practice with Frugal (I’ve owned if for a couple of weeks) I took the deep breath and installed it here. Out of the box – i.e. just after I hit activate after uploading [...] Read more »

What is a Long Tail Keyword? Keyword Identification for the New and Clueless

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double-index

What is a keyword – or more specifically what is a long tail keyword phrase -  caused me endless confusion when I first began. I totally didn’t get it – that’s why products like Scribe SEO exist – to prey on beginner’s confusion. That’s unacceptable in my view – so here is the information that you need about keywords. Its here for free, you don’t have to sign up for any membership site or even a one off payment. There are heaps of erudite SEO expert posts on keywords out there – this isn’t one of them. Instead this is an attempt to take it back down to basics – stick with me because I want to start to with a real world business example – and then we will move onto niche sites and blogs. Keywords For a Service Business I’m going to tell you how to do it for free. Lets assume you offer house washing services – purely because I am in the market for the same at the moment. Now I may search for “house washing” now this gives me a mixture of results including DIY articles on how to wash my house down and news [...] Read more »

Tribes – Why I Don’t Belong To Third or Any Other

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70's Fashion at Wellington 7s 2010

Sorry guys this is probably gonna be an odd rambling personal post.  My Third Tribe review is honest – I do indeed think the Third Tribe  Marketing service is over priced and won’t help most beginners make money online  and yes I knew I could rank for the relevant keywords. But it was a fundamental – emotional “yuck” response which I got first – well Cat confirmed that maybe t wasn’t just me … Cat left a comment on my followup Third Tribe Marketing review which made me realise perhaps I should admit the real reason I made the original review  post. Cat said in part: And that’s an example of what bothers me about this whole notion of being in a ‘tribe’ – there’s this impression of forced conformity – that you’re either on their side, in agreement with their whole philosophy, or not. And that is something that has bothered me my whole life. I don’t know where it comes from either . When I was about 13 I was at a holiday camp run by a somewhat Evangelical Christian group – at the end of the week there was a big wrap up meeting – and towards [...] Read more »

Third Tribe Review – Inside Rowse’s Third Tribe Is it a Scam?

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You need accurate road maps in Internet Marketing - and the Northern Territory, Australia

Which Tribe do you belong to? Apparently – according to Darren Rowse, Brian Clark, Chris Brogan, Sonia Simone – you really should be in the Third Tribe. Up until now there has only been two tribes: the sleazy, scum-bag Internet Marketers who promises the earth, or usually $14,449  plus a Lamborghini, while you sleep, and then there are the nice social media folks – they hang around singing kumbaya making lots of friends and making no money. I couldn’t stand  a kumbaya video – so here’s a video of my aspirational Lamborghini – from my favourite car reviewer - Apparently there was no middle ground – which was bit of a surprise to me as I have been doing it for a couple of years and so have a whole bunch of other people I know online – but no apparently there has been a vacuum… and Darren Rowse has decided to fill it.  There is apparently a third way  – oops I mean a third tribe (apologies to Eastern Religions there) – Internet Marketing Strategies That Work (Without Being Obnoxious) – as they like to subtitle themselves. What Exactly is Darren Rowse’s Third Tribe – and How Will It [...] Read more »

New Comment Policy

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This is actually going to be a short post – I think … I have an awful lot of comments on this blog – and most of them never see the light of day – the spammers love this blog and I generally wake up to several hundred offers to enhance my sex life. They are easy to deal with. The less easy comments are the ones that are just slightly more than “nice post” but not much. There are various plugins available to manage this sort of comment spam – I have tried most of the usual suspects.  But Todd over at Todd’s Tps pointed out a recent plugin which really seems to be the business – its called SEO Super Comments. What it does  is basically redirect the link on a person’s name to another internal page on this site UNLESS I have added their website to a whitelist of “friend’s sites”. In either case the link is do-follow. This solves several problems for me: it means I can approve comments that I am not sure of knowing that I am not going to linking to a dodgy neighbourhood; I can still reward friends with a do-follow link; [...] Read more »

Online Income: One Simple Secret to Success

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OK this is a bit of a follow up on my recent post on clueless bloggers.  It probably reflects that I’ve been spending too much time on the HubPages forums recently too and I have decided that online there is a single reason why most people don’t make money online, and why online income remains just a dream. People who fail to make money online don’t fail because they can’t write, or don’t understand keywords. They don’t fail because they don’t have enough technical knowledge, they don’t have a degree, have too many kids, don’t have the support of their partner, or live outside of the developed world. They fail for a totally different reason. And I have finally figured it out. In fact its stunningly obvious now that I have though of it – and I should probably pad it out to an e-book and sell it for $97! Instead I’ll just make this post a bit long. Do you want to know what the secret of making online income is? Drum roll… You have to treat it like a business! No kidding right! Seriously though I wonder what some people think they are doing, whatever it is, its [...] Read more »