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Back Links Passive Income Plan Review

Passive Income and Backlinks No Fluff

Backlinks are key in this business – I hope most of you know that already! I could go on and on about backlinks – particular backlinks for DIY sites which make lots of passive income with Adsense. But  I won’t – mainly because my mate Allyn is on and on about it – he seems to have morphed from the stroppy beer-drinking persona – to a nice non-fluff teaching bloke without a budget to afford a chair in his new fancy videos – and I do find the black background pretty dull compared to his DIY kitchen.

Waitangi Park, and Te Papa, Wellington, NZ
Waitangi Park, and Te Papa, Wellington, NZ

Anyway he has this post up which is all about backlinks – and if you understand nothing else about making a passive income online – backlinks are the #1, important thing to focus on – yes more important than the number of  twitter followers you have, more important than the number of stumbles you have and more important than the content on your site. Good content is quite useful – in fact the only reason I linking to Allyn is because he has put together the definitive post about everything you need to know about backlinks So now every time I get asked about what is a backlink I can just point to this post – handy eh?

In fact  iwas a little sore at Allyn calling me “missy” so I was sorely tempted to link to him with a click here but I thought if I gave him a good link – he might build some links to my post too. That’s something that Allyn doesn’t mention – but is worth pointing out I think – that apart from backlinks the 0ther thing that is helpful in this business is having friends.  I suspect that a lot of people who are trying to make money online are quite solitary by nature – but the reality is that having friends online is a lot easier than having them offline – you just start linking out to people you genuinely like (pssh want to see a cool picture of Ur’s Ziggurat?) or even that you think may eliminate some confusion from your readers (online cash and info domains) .

So headon over and listen to Allyn’s rant about backlinks and think about what my link from here is worth to Allyn   Am I Donald Trump or  just some Kiwi Missy with a Website? Am I Bob Villa or Jane Doe (you will have to watch his videos to figure it out!) And Allyn  WTF is a green screen –  are you going to be doing Avatar 2 next ? And dude you need a chair – or more comfortable pants I reckon!

Meanwhile back with me – January has been complete crap – its a bit better now that I figured out what was wrong. I was on a big downer about being home again. It happens every time I come “home” – I get as closed to depressed as my normally fairly bouncy personality can manage.  Whatever the opposite of being a homebody is – I am it!  This time I didn’t even really want to come home (crises in my partner’s family) – so its been worse.

And running your own business and being pissed with life is not a good a combination – even  my improved version of time management hasn’t helped. This has though – More Time Now – I don’t know the author or his blog – I found the link while aimlessly surfing the web (no TV at the moment so surfing  online instead of channel surfing) – and its quite a useful – I think – well it gave me something to think on anyways – which is unusual for my cynical self -its free -no affiliate links that I can see – worth a read if you struggle with time management

Categories
Lis Recommmends Paid Tools Product Reviews Tools

Andy Black’s Index Checker Review – Do You Need to Check If Your Support Article is Indexing?

I have updated this post  – see the end!

I bought Andy Black’s Index Checker before Christmas but only recently got around to actually installing it and using it. I liked the sales pitch – it claims to allow you to check any xml site map or RSS feed to see which url’s are indexed. This seemed to me quite useful to double check that my articles on Web 2.0 properties such as HubPages were indexed.

The product is a $7 instant download which you then need to install on one of your own domains. The instructions are detailed and accurate and I certainly managed to install Andy Black’s Index Checker on my Hostgator account with no problems.

The problems came when I tried checking the indexing of my articles on Hubpages and EzineArticles.com – check out my first ever screencast below to see why I won’t be recommending this product – even for $7.

For a larger version of the video click here.

UPDATE

As you can see in the comments Andy is acutally a respnsive and responsible developer who gets major kudos for showing up and supporting his product!  In the video below I was using an outdated version of the software – its now just a matter of drop down lists to chose ezinearticles/hubpages/squidoo feeds.  Still not perfect – ezinearticles does some odd stuff with titles with a dash in them – you might want to avoid those in the future anyways -and Hubpages is still only giving me the last 10 results – but Andy’s working on it! Meanwhile here is my shameless affliate link

Actually I forgot to mention in the video – the Index Checker failed entirely to manage the RSS feed for this blog which is a feedburner freed!

Wellington Waterfront, near Te Papa
Wellington Waterfront, near Te Papa

Help guys- this is the first time I’ve done a screen cast – am I speaking slowly enough? Its a Kiwi trick to speak too fast, especially compared to Americans – so have I slowed it down enough? Did I make you dizy with the mouse moves?

Why Indexing is Important

Its quite possible for a site to have PageRank and yet not be indexed in  Google! If I am doing guest posting or otherwise considering using a third party’s site to get a link back to my site I always double check the age of the site’s cache in Google (Google the site’s url and click “cache” in the results) – it shouldn’t be more than about 10 days old, and also check how many pages are indexed (site:theirsite.com in google.com and then go to advance to see how recnetly pages have been indexed).

Checking for Indexing of Articles

This is what I do to keep an eye on which support and other articles of mine are indexing and how fast.

  • I use Google Alerts on my author names – that tells me exactly when an article is indexed;
  • I use link:mysite.com in Google Alerts to know when a link is indexed in Google (they will never tell you them all!);
  • Grab a sentence or so of the published article and google it with quotes – you will find not just he original article but all the copies as well -if you are after plagarists chose a phrase from lower than the first paragraph – some smart ones will re-write the first paragraph.

So for now I don’t have a program that automates the checking of my support article’s indexing – Andy Black’s IndexChecker isn’t the answer for this problem – does anymore have an automated tool for this? One that actually works?

Categories
Moving Overseas Online Business Passive Income Australia/NZ

New Zealand Bloggers – Can You Make Passive Income Here?

Some of you seemed to like my photos in the Move to New Zealand – Australia compared so this post is decorated with some photos from Island Bay, Wellington – near where I am currently living.  Todd over at Todd’s Tips has been inspriring me with his Iraq photos – so here is my best effort!

Dingies, Island Bay, Wellington, New Zealand
Dingies, Island Bay, Wellington, New Zealand

My attention was caught by the local Sunday paper featuring this story on a New Zealand DIY site making a claimed $20,0000/month from Adsense. Now that’s presumably New Zealand dollars – so that’s about US$14k – but still its a lot of money being claimed from a fairly small, 1100 indexed page, site. I was initially skeptical of the claimed figures  but I do know my mate Allyn over at bloggerillustrated.net sold a website for $30,000 and that it was a DIY type site as well, though knowing Allyn I doubt that AdSense was his preferred magnetization (he hasn’t said yet – it looks like the vblog series is going to extend well into 2010 while he keeps his audience waiting for the good stuff!

According to the newspaper report the owner of the site – retired builder Les Kenny – was talking to the media because:

give a little back to Google and spread the word about AdSense (sic), and he thinks it could be particularly relevant to older New Zealanders who have so much experience to share.

Maori carving, Island Bay, Wellington
Maori carving, Island Bay, Wellington

Mr Kenny probably genuinely doesn’t know why his site is a success – or realise just how difficult it would be for someone else to replicate his success – Kiwi or not.If you look at the other sites mentioned in the article and on his main site you will see that none of these seem to rank for anything much.

The site no doubt ranks for thousands and thousands of long-tail keywords associated with the “how to build …” niche. He ranks #2 for the “how to build”  phrase which has over  18000 searches a month and would give him huge authority on any new plan or project he added to the site. The single most important thing the site has is of course age (2002) – with that longevity and relevance its going to be hard to for anyone to put up a competitor site against hi m in the niche.

Island Bay Beach
Island Bay Beach

Other stuff I found interesting on the site was:

  • the top image banner is an Adsense ad – but is not labelled as such – is that OK if you are just advertising your own sites – and why would you do that ?
  • use of image next to the main Adsense ad block near the top of most interior pages – most of us thought that was highly discouraged by Google;
  • he also has affiliate offers for building plans so its possible some largish percentage of his income are from these;
  • the backlink profile appears to be mainly from link exchanges – current wisdom is that link exchanges are dead – particularly form link pages – but they seem to be alive a kicking on this site;
  • the inclusion of a Spanish language site – directly from the original site’s page links – the Adsense ad’s appear in Spanish for me – but are not advertising anything relevant – mainly language classes – probably because the lack of Spanish language advertisers in New Zealand!
  • if you ever do have yourself in the risky position of making a large amount of money from one website and being dependent on a good  Google ranking its a very smart plan to have local media coverage – just in case …
Island Bay, Wellington, New Zealand
Wooden houses and steep hills -that's Wellington!

If you are a New Zealand blogger – you may want to keep an eye on the infamous Whale Oil blog. This blogger is currently in court over breaching name suppression orders over the last few months. In New Zealand, even if you are found guilty of a crime the court can order permanent name suppression – its getting beyond a joke when the suppression is not to protect the victim (and is sometimes against their wishes) – but is apparently becoming the “right” of any slightly  famous “New Zealand entertainer” or “New Zealand politician”. I’m watching this case with curiosity because apparently while I was away New Zealand has turned into a country happy to suppress almost any criminal’s name – if they  have a “reputation” to protect that is. If Michael Jackson had been a “New Zealand entertainer” his name would never have been associated with child abuse – even if he had been convicted (which he wasn’t).

Empire Cinema, Island Bay
Art Deco, Empire Cinema, Island Bay

Do you like the photos? I can’t be arsed doing a wholesale photo blog – my photos aren’t that good – but I thought I would just throw a few up from time to time – after all most of the stuff I talk about here about passive income is really not photogenic – but New Zealand is – so I might combine the too – might bring some interesting search traffic …

Categories
Making Money Online Passive Income

Passive Income Online: Best Posts of 2009

Well this seems to be the tradition at this time of the year to look back at your “best of” posts of the previous year. In fact its not a bad idea because internal linking is really a good idea – and hey some of your visitors may even find some benefit.

An Online Business in 2009
An Passive Income Online Business in 2009

To (mis)-quote Dickens it was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

My optimistic 2009 goals are a fairly embarassing example of now NOT to goal set – they are too vague, not tied to abig picture aim really – but at least I had some. I did at least realise that yes, you can make $1000/month with Adsense

This post was pretty much when I hit rock bottom with my hopes for making passive income online – I figured out that all the options were worse than bad – and oddly enough once I understood that  if I didn’t believe in my business no one else would things really turned a corner – mainly because of one my worst written posts ever!

May was the month of the infamous 100 hubs challenge and although I boosted my hubpage earnings significanty. They have since dropped quite a lot – not without first making me quite a few thousand dollars though! I intend to revive some of my formerly successful hubs – possibly as mini-sites or on Infobarrel

As the year progress I slowly realised that I had to more and more treat this online adventure as an online business (one of my better posts I think). I’d even worked out that I could build a legitimate online business  and sell stuff online without feeling like I needed a shower!

By the end of September I actually had some online income which needed management! By October I had written my first e-book on buying and selling websites

At the end of the day –  Ican’t imagine a better lifestyle than the one I have now – it is definitly worth trying to make an income online.

Good ideas I still use

Keyword Academy – I still use their prinicpals for keyword research – in general – I am not totally convinced on their backlink startegy but if that program had been available a year earlier it would have saved me a year of heartache and made me a lot more than the cost of membership!

An Alternative to WordPress – anyone who has more than 2 or 3 blogs will no that WordPress needs constant updating – not the content the bloody software – Mystarterblog is ideal for easy to maintain, niche blogs

If you can’t be bothered reading all of Grizz’s blog  (allow a week) – then Janet has summarised his methods in her Nomad’s Guide to Make Money Online

Online Backup – this really does work seamlessly – after the initial setup – any file I add or modify is backed up the next time I’m online – for free!

Not such good ideas from 2009

Entrecard destroys your search traffic

Today Blog Scam

So have you done a year summary for your blog? If so feel free to leave a link in the comments below!