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Hubpages Money Making Update

Written by Lis on May 31, 2011 · 22 Comments

Traffic still dropping on HubPages.com - from Quantcast.com

OK about a month ago I asked if you could still make money with Hubpages in 2011. You might want to read that again quickly but here are the results of my two case studies: Case Study 1 Adsense Niche Starting positions previously top ranking hub #4 niche vacation site #7 All links were built using BMR (Build My Rank review here). All dates in proper format! 16/5 Adsense hub is back to #1 on scroogle.org 42 articles live on BMR 31/5 after sitting at #1 consistently for a week, today is back to #2 – 60 articles live on BMR 16/5 niche site dot info – #8 on scroogle.org – 32 articles live on BMR 31/5 after sitting consistently at #2 and #3 for the last week – has now dropped to #6/#7 – 60 articles live on BMR Conclusion – a hub will rank again if you build links to it – whether you have to keep building links to it remains to be seen. For the amount of work you have to do – you might as well just build your own site. Hubpages.com will continue to drop traffic because most of the writers there believe passionately [...] Read more »

Niche Reaper Review – Scam or Legit?

Written by Lis on May 19, 2011

Well the whole world is buzzing about the launch of the newest, greatest, bright shiny object of the Make Money Online world – Matt Garrett and Gary Prendergast’s Niche Reaper – this is pretty much the best thing since the invention of the Internet - on account of it it will pay me a nice recurring affiliate income and hey you guys might have fun playing with it – was that hardcore affiliate marketing enough for you? Anyone still here? OK. WTF Lissie why are you doing flogging yet another MMO product – well Splork has a way about him that makes me buy shit that gets past his bullshit radar. So when I was procrastinating today Splork came up in my Google reader – and I am now $67 dollars frigging poorer – thanks mate. Niche Reaper Review So what does Niche Reaper claim to do – well their main claims are: Uncover Hidden Keywords - Over 20,000 brand new fully researched keywords unearthed every single day! Dominate Entire Markets – Keywords are grouped into niches so you can build authority sites, not just keyword landing pages No More Keyword Research – Simply log-in and pick a colour-coded niche we’ve done all the [...] Read more »

Hubpages – Can You Still Make Money in 2011?

Written by Lis on May 2, 2011 · 31 Comments

Traffic drop on Hubpages.com as measured by Quantcast

I started on Hubpages.com – because of Hubpages I made my first $100 online and got paid out by Google’s Adsense program. In fact the precursor of this blog was built to support my hubpages – not the other way around! Until recently I highlighted my pages explaining how I made money on Hubpages – the posts were genuine – but I also made money from those writers who signed up using my affiliate ID – personally I’d moved on from Hubpages, Hubpages is no scam, but I prefer to put time into my own sites – but my hubpages were still making me hundreds a month – until recently. Panda Update and Hubpages I’ve already written about how the Panda updated failed to deliver quality to the searcher – and still my niche sites are ranking pretty much where they were before the so-called update. But Panda was originally nicknamed “Farmer Update” by SEO’s – because the update seemed to particularly focus on large content sites – sites like HubPages. The official figures – as provided by Quantcast – seems to support this: Looking at my own analytics for the same period – its the same but different : My point [...] Read more »

Catalyst Theme and Adsense Review

Written by Lis on April 9, 2011 · 19 Comments

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 »

Postrunner Review: The “Quality” Debate

Written by Lis on April 1, 2011 · 14 Comments

These cars aren't Quality - but tourists now pay a premium to hire them in Berlin!

UPDATE: April 2012 – Postrunner V2 Review If your response to my title was WTF is Postrunner – then check out my earlier post. If you are a member of The Keyword Academy you will know that Postrunner is system used with TKA in order to create keyword anchored links for your sites. I’ve compared to BuildMyRank to Postrunner – and Mark is now trying to differentiate Postrunner from BuildMyRank and similar schemes. His argument is that Postrunner needs to evolve: needs “better quality” sites in Postrunner. the reason more “quality” sites aren’t in Postrunner is because of the “quality” of the articles being sent to them. his proposed solution is an author scoring system which will reward the writers (or buyers) of superior articles. The Argument About “Quality” Articles As soon as the thread started in the forum the predictable grammar Nazi’s (Nazis’? Nazis’s ??) were out in force. Too many trailing commas – FAIL. Use of nonstandard spellings FAIL. To be fair to Mark, in the seminar he specifically mentioned that he wasn’t concerned about grammar and spelling problems, he was more worried about the articles being relevant and having a point. Its all looking like this will be [...] Read more »

Catalyst Theme Review

Written by Lis on March 15, 2011 · 6 Comments

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 »

Catalyst Theme and SEO Options

Written by Lis on February 28, 2011 · 13 Comments

From time to time I mention the theme I like de jour – but my most abiding love affair with a theme is Frugal Theme – now replaced with Catalyst Theme – and I like them both! (Well sort of replaced I haven’t got around to doing this site yet – its still in the “not broken – haven’t fixed it yet”) pile. But with the release of Catalyst v1.1 I am pretty darn impressed and even WordPress 3.1 is appearing to be stable enough to upgrade to – so here’s my first Catalyst Theme Tutorial. So how is Catalyst for SEO – well its pretty good – its flexible, it won’t do it for you – but you can set and forget it. First if you are already using a plugin such as All-In-One-SEO or Platinum SEO – then you can keep on using them, they play happily with Catalyst 1.1. However if you are starting a new site – you can probably skip the plugins and just use Catalyst’s built in SEO. Once you’ve installed Catalyst and the Dynamik child theme – you will have a Catalyst Sub Menu on your main WordPress menu and under that three [...] Read more »

Build My Rank and Backlinking Profiles

Written by Lis on November 3, 2010 · 33 Comments

Build My Rank really has been a business changer for me. Well not by itself obviously – in fact if you don’t have a plan to start of with then – you don’t need this post you need the Keyword Academy instead! Back about a month ago I signed up to BuildMyRank: review and rankings were on my mind, then I was pretty excited about it. Well now I am ecstatic about it! Why? I’m seeing rankings jump and jump significantly and with them income. Will the rankings hold? Who knows – but meanwhile I’ll take the money thanks. Have I a got detailed results to prove this? Nope – these were sites that I was previously supporting using Postrunner - so maybe I could have waited a month and seen the results jumping on the Postrunner submissions- I don’t know – frankly it takes a lot of time to document that type of detail and I don’t have duplicate sites: same niche, same age similar content etc to do proper split testing. Instead I swapped my writer over from writing for Postrunner to BMR and sat back to see what happened. What I do know is that BMR plus [...] Read more »

Missing Your Google Alerts? Read This!

Written by Lis on October 27, 2010 · 25 Comments

Google can be more than annoying sometime – I mean, as Leo asks, what would you do if you woke up one day and all your rankings had disappeared? But that’s not what happened to me today. Instead I was talking to Dave – who runs the awesome travel blog GoBackpacking which allows old backpackers to guest post about Google Alerts – and I noticed something had changed… But first rewind: you do use Google alerts don’t you? Its the fastest way to keep an eye on what the great web is saying about you. I have alerts on my name e.g. “lis sowerbutts” my blog’s names e.g. lissowerbutts.com. But I also have some more subtle alerts: site:mydomain.com – tells me every time Google indexes a url on my site; link:mydomain.com – tells me every time Google counts a link to my site. NOT Yahoo – Google Now most of you know probably all know that and have had the alerts for years. But today I noticed there is a new column in the Manage my Alerts screen. As well as “type” and “how often” there is a new column “Volume” – the default of which is “only the best results” [...] Read more »

Build My Rank Review Compared to Postrunner

Written by Lis on October 4, 2010 · 45 Comments

OK short version – BuildMyRank.com is the best thing since sliced bread - will make you millions in your sleep without doing anything – can’t imagine why they are giving it away at the current price – but I am sure it will go up – ACT now to lock in the currently insanely low price, BUY IT now! SELF SERVING HONKING BIG AFFILIATE LINK HERE! You still here? Darn – oh you want a real review ? Sorry I can’t actually give that to you – cause I haven’t been using it long enough to give you months and months of stats. But I’ve used it long enough to be hugely excited by it. UPDATE: May 2011 – buildmyrank still works well – and I am still using – the price has gone up a little – details below. UPDATE: November 2011 – I’m still using BMR and am happy with it but also check out a Build My Rank alternative that is a new service - SEO Cobra Backlinks As I wrote recently – I am not 100% happy with Postrunner – mainly because of the percentage of articles which aren’t getting indexed. So when I was [...] Read more »