Month: September 2010

Categories
Back Links Case Study Lis Recommmends Paid Tools Product Reviews

Keyword Academy Case Study: Does Postrunner Work?

Wellington Harbour Entrance - looking towards Pencarrow
Wellington Harbour Entrance - in Good Southerly

OK this is my last Keyword Academy Case Study post – its a review of where I got a new site to in the rankings by solely using Postrunner for back links and some thoughts about the quality of the Postrunner system.

Wellington Harbour Entrance - looking towards Pencarrow
Wellington Harbour Entrance - in a good Southerly

As of  27 September – my postrunner promoted site had the following statistics:

Rankings on 27 September  (2 August, 2 June | 30 April ,14 April 2010 in brackets | 8 April 2010)

  • 15 pages indexed in Google (18, 24, 26, 15 |13 pages)
  • 23  backlink recognized in yahoo (15, 13,13 ,6,1, 0)
  • domain name exact match long-tail: 5 (8, 12, 14, 17 | 17)
  • main keyword: 9 (14, 21, 17, 34 | 61)
  • main keyword singular: 1 (12, 19 ,19 , 31 | 61)
  • 4 other cousins are on page 1 and the other 2 are on page 2.

A qualified success I think – but only qualified. Why only qualified? I have published 69 posts in Postrunner to support this site the most recent went live on the 23 August 2010. However of those 69 fully 22 are not indexed.  Now each and every one of those posts went to a different site in Postrunner – so I downloaded the list of backlinked articles and looked at each and everyone of them – this is what I found:

  • one site had moved every post over to a new domain – and left a message on the old domain- friendly but useless for SEO – my post isn’t indexed and it wouldn’t be unless I put some effort it;
  • one site had completely deleted all of the Postrunner articles it had and had become a Bulgarian ecommerce site (I think – my Bulgarian is rubbish);
  • 3 or 4 sites had decided to change their permalink structure and then redirect the original post to the top level domain – thanks for nothing guys – I think this should be against the TOS (though I don’t think it is at the moment);
  • one site seems to have removed my article entirely (or maybe they just screwed up the permalink structure as above – anyway it was indexed so I couldn’t find it on a site search);
  • several sites that are or have been in Postrunner are now selling links on a popular link selling forum
  • in several cases my post wasn’t indexed but the content was indexed on category, author and tag pages – good for the site owner – useless for me;
  • although I only link once in an article (I could do it twice) – and I always link in the first paragraph – some owners still manage to get links in above my link – that’s mean spirited in my view.

Now I was about to embark on a campaign of bookmarking to get these other links indexed – but  frankly some of them are going to be difficult – once the content is indexed on other pages on the site is going to be quite hard to “correct” Google.

Of  the 47  backlinked articles which are indexed – Yahoo is only counting 23 – so I looked harder at those 23. They were an interesting set:

  • one was a scrapper site which had taken one of the other blog’s content – it was indexed with a do-follow link – don’t tell me that duplicate content doesn’t work 🙂 ;
  • in 10 cases the link counted wasn’t to the post – but to tags, categories etc, As most people use excerpts on these pages I’m not really getting a do-follow link that counts;
  • in several cases the post wasn’t indexed in Google but was being counted as a link in Yahoo. Because all any of care about is rankings in Google this means these links are probably not really in the count either.

What’s Good About Postrunner

  • There is a wide diversity of hosting and IP addresses.
  • Diversity of ownership of the sites in Postrunner.
  • If ALL you got for your Keyword Academy membership was Postrunner – it would be the cheapest deal I know for access to this amount of link diversity.
  • Unique content – duplicate content can rank – but it takes more effort – usually.

What’s Not So Good About Postrunner

  • I get no notification when articles are removed – this I think would be relatively easy to program and should be done ASAP.
  • I have to manually check whether links are indexed or not. If they aren’t indexed I have to do something about it.
  • Most owners don’t understand how to avoid diluting the power of links (read Leo’s blog on this) – I think that so few of even the indexed links are being counted relfect this.
  • Some of the site’s owners don’t know what they are doing – mucking  with the permalink structures is the obvious one.
  • Quite a number of the PR3 or higher sites are pre-owned domains which will likely lose their PR when the next update comes along (due anytime now actually).  These sites particularly likely to disappear from the system with your post, or just not get indexed at all (partly because so many posts are being approved on them). I’ve had better luck with PR0 and PR1 sites.

Do I still recommend Postrunner? Yes I do for $33/month its pretty low cost – but I am investigating another similar scheme which may be more effective – stay tuned. And if you are using Postrunner – do a periodic check of your articles and follow up the ones that have disappeared (by getting them returned via support) and those that aren’t indexed (by building more links to get them indexed).

I’d be interested in knowing  similar stats people have for Postrunner or similar program which involve the publication of unique content.

Categories
HubPages Lis Recommmends Making Money Online Passive Income

Hubpages 3 Years On

On the 19th of September 2007 I published my first hub – it was short, it was self-promotional – the url was wrong  for SEO. Over 3 years it has gained a total of 1143 page views – almost all of which are from search engines. It may have made me some money – I doubt it – but I don’t know, I didn’t track that hub 🙂 The hub was about midlife travel. That month my total online income was  $1.98

One of my most recent hubs was about the chances of a Wellington earthquake . It was indexed within a few hours – I expect it will have PR on the next update – I’ve built no links to it.  In August my online income from passive sources was $1600.

When I started on Hubpages – I had two  sites – I had made next to nothing (like less than $10 nothing) – I was newly a full-time “Internet Marketer” and I was going to making a good income my Xmas… This was long,  long before Keyword Academy, I don’t think I would have survived long enough to get to The Keyword Academy – if it hadn’t been for HubPages

What HubPages Has Done for Me

  • It taught me what a buying keyword was .
  • It was the first place that anyone ever read anything that I wrote – I sat up all night watching 100’s arrive to read a hub someone had stumbled for me, then I learnt that stumble traffic doesn’t click.
  • It made me realise that I really did want to make money online – that I wasn’t interested in writing for the sake of it (well that’s my justification for spending so many hours on the forums arguing about it).
  • HubPages prompted me to start this blog – I started wanted to write in a format which didn’t quite work with HubPages.
  • HubPages made me realise that a lot of other revenue sharing sites have what to me are “obvious” flaws – some of those sites are struggling or are gone now.
  • It taught me that you really can make passive income – I have hubs published in November 2009 which still make me money each and every day – all I do with them and go back and delete broken links from time to time.
  • It taught me that you can make even better money from referrals – yup ever hub link on this page is a referral – those 10%’s do add up…
  • Hubpages made my dream of making a living online a reality.

Top 5 Reasons Why Hubpages Works

  • Authority – because the site has built a self-policing community spammers are flagged and shut down quickly. New users find it takes a time for their hubs to be indexed and ranked – there is a reason for that – what is published and indexed are generally pretty good quality. This has meant that pretty consistently Google has trusted HubPages – I’d say even more so in the last 6 months.
  • Internal linking. Some sites seem to get it right – and you can tell because it means that good content, or content from trusted authors, should be indexed fast and get PR easily. Both happen on HubPages and has for ever as far as I am concerned.
  • Strong “hints” from management as to what to write about. You could do a lot worse as a new writer by entering the “contests” and challenges that they often run. The topics are not chosen randomly – some of my successful hubs were topics suggested by HubPages themselves.
  • Diverse content – because of the diversity in the writers at Hubpages there is a huge range of content (check out the latest hubs feed) – some of its completely non-commercial in the traditional sense – you don’t see that on many other revenue sharing sites.  I suspect that it gives them “trust points” with Google because the ONLY purpose of the site is not to make money – any writer can produce content with no ads on it – if they chose. You can’t do that on Ezinearticles for example.
  • Self Policing community. In recent months there has been the addition of many factors which allows writers  to rank other hubbers and hubs with “accolades” not just a general vote up/down (which has been there since the start). I suspect that those accolades add to a hub’s hubscore. Higher hubscores means that the hub gets more internal links both automatically (best hubs in categories for example) and both by showing high on the list for “suggested links” tools where other hubs may link to the hub with a contextural link.

If you are interested in more details on how I use HubPages to make passive income then check out my HubPages my make money with HubPages series

Top 6 Reasons Why I Recommend HubPages

  • Its easier to rank a hub than a page on your website – its faster, it stays ranked and you will get useful statistics that will tell you what works and what doesn’t (particularly actual CPC and CTR).  This advantage well over-rate the revenue split IMHO.
  • If you study what is being suggested as far as topics are concerned you won’t go far wrong with SEO.
  • It’s free – there is no cost whatsoever to try out your idea.  If it works you can always launch your own site – and you already have the back links available…
  • It works stunningly well for recent event blogging and for events that haven’t happened yet (hint earthquakes…). The authority of the site means that the hubs get indexed instantly – the search traffic will then tell you what the search terms are…
  • My  public persona’s profile page is a PR3 and routinely gets new sites indexed for me – do you know how hard it is to get a site with a consistent PR3 which you can put any link on that you want…
  • I am confident that the site has a long future ahead of it – the people behind it are well-connected in Silicon Valley and I’ve seen the staff expand from 3 to 20 and to continually improve the site for both writers and advertisers.

So do you write for hubpages? If not why not …

Categories
Catalyst Lis Recommmends Paid Tools Product Reviews Tools

Impact Page Builder Review

It's still lissowerbutts.com - just not as you know it

Hi – its OK its really me Lis! I just moved the furniture around a bit!  BTW if you are reading this via the RSS feed you may want to click thru as I am talking about the look and feel of this page in this post – you kinda have to be here! Anyway as you might have gathered this post is promoting Impact Page Builder – why? Well because I have building up your trust so that you would buy lots from me and pay for the overseas holiday to somewhere warm!

Well to be honest from what I’ve seen no one makes any serious money promoting stuff that is one off purchases like Impact Page Builder – the market is just too small and  there is no agressive upsell or membership sites – which is where the money really is at!

Anyway getting back to Impact Page Builder. This is a brand new plugin from Eric Hamm – of Frugal Theme fame.  Well its been out a couple of weeks – it took Leo’s newsletter to wake me up to its potential. (If you are not subscribed – you’re an idiot – subscribe).

Impact Page Builder – Key Features

In their own words – IPB allows you to:

Our Template Builder gives you everything you need to create attractive designs quickly and easily. Our real-time interface lets you see your template take shape before your eyes as you make adjustments. Even the code changes you make to a Template’s Custom CSS are reflected instantly.

Each Impact Template has 15 empty Hooks, such as ‘Before Header’, ‘After Sidebar’, ‘In Footer’, etc. You can use these to hold anything from WordPress Widgets to custom Text, HTML & JavaScript.

With WordPress 3.0′s new Custom Menus feature, you can create and use Template-Specific NavBars. Run an unlimited number of interlinked mini-sites with unique navigation from a single domain!

  • Its a plugin – not a theme – Impact works independently of your theme – and therefore works on ANY theme.
  • Impact Page Builder gives you total control and the ability to create page/post templates.  You can create a new template for just one post on your site (as I have done here) – or you can several templates – one for your landing pages, one for your squeeze pages, one for your blogging ramblings.
  • Impact is (mainly – see below) a WYSIWIG page builder – change the layout – the widget areas – the change will reflect on the screen in the same way I understand Headway does.
  • Impact  has a slick download which directs you immediately to the support forums if you have questions or issues – I did have a problem (of my own making) and the support was fast and effective.
  • Unlike many themes and plugins  IPB offers free upgrades for life.

Impact Weaknesses

  • The product is new – I think the Impact Page Builder team will bringing out skins to allow those of us who are design disabled to make a site look good without knowing how to create a design from scratch.  So at  the moment if you are design challenged – you will get something that looks like this page! (And yes I tried using Firebug – but it doesn’t help me very much!).
  • Eric is using eJunkie for IPB’s affiliate program – I personally prefer the idevaffiliate manager which they used for Frugal.
  • The use of custom widgets for each template is going to end up with a LOT of widget areas in your “widgets” menu!

Who is Impact Page Builder For

  • If you are building “supersites” as The Keyword Academy calls them – you need this plugin – it allows you to completely “silo” (as Leo calls it – your site so that every menu and link on a page is relevant to your keyword for that part of the site.
  • If you are developing sites for local businesses – then using this plugin (and the developer’s version allows you to deploy to client’s sites) on top of a basic theme may well give you all the flexibility you need if you know a bit of CSS
  • If you are developing mini-sites which require different pages – such as opt in pages, downloads for products etc etc i.e. if you have started googling “landing pages in WordPress” – then IPB is going to cost you less than those templates – and gives you much much more.

Who Should Give Impact Page Builder A Miss

  • If you are just developing Adsense minisites then you are probably good to go. Its only when you want to start customising parts of your site and/or doing very “special” pages that the value of this product will be obvious.
  • If you a buying it – just to see – don’t –  IPB, like most themes and plugins – does NOT offer a money back guarantee – if you think about it for 5 secs the reason why is obvious. So take the time figure out if you have the need before you buy!
  • If you haven’t got any traffic yet – well the design is pretty irrelevant isn’t it? Build more links first!

Impact Page Builder Template on This Page

Yeah well I never said I was a designer! But what I did was something like this:

  • added a text title;
  • added an image to be used as the overall background;
  • added a widget area below he title area and added a custom menu to it;
  • changed the colours and look of the menu by using custom CSS – hacked from code provided for the purpose in the support area;
  • added another widget area above content and added a big affiliate banner to it;
  • as I am using this template on a post rather than a page my  other plugins included “related posts” and “sexy bookmarks” are still showing  – but nothing from the site’s standard theme (Frugal) is.

So what do you think?  To me IPB is a game changer for the whole paid theme space.  For the same price of a single license of a premium theme (including Thesis and Frugal) you can buy a developers (unlimited) version  the Impact Page Builder plugin ($88) and have way more control than any theme can offer you. To just try it out you are looking at $44 for a single site license (and you can upgrade to the unlimited version by paying the difference later if you wish to). I just hope that Eric manages to get word out and get critical mass in the market  before the inevitable knock-off’s start coming out.


Categories
Online Business Search Engines

Shake Rattle and Roll

Christchurch Wordsworth Colombo Streets (c) NZ Herald

Drizzle with a chance of earthquakes in the afternoon…

On Saturday morning I was asleep – I usually am, but I was late getting up and getting online.  I noticed that Skype was flashing a message – it was SY from Hospitalera Blogs asking if I was OK. Hmm I thought yes – why? I turned the radio on – it was talking about the big quake – obviously not  the long awaited Wellington earthquake, and was in fact a huge quake of 7.1 in Christchurch.

Its been an interesting few days – and I don’t just mean the minor earthquakes that we  have had in Wellington (and yes quakes do come in swarms, and no I didn’t even notice them).  Two things came out of this: trends blogging and business continuity and communications in the Twitter world.

Christchurch Wordsworth Colombo Streets (c) NZ Herald
Christchurch Wordsworth Colombo Streets (c) NZ Herald

Trends Blogging

OK in my defence I knew no one was dead – but my second thought was – hmmm wonder what happens if I Google “earthquake insurance New Zealand” -ah I find my own Earthquake Insurance  hubpage (which was written almost a year ago after Hubpages did a disaster hubmob) ranking just below the government site. Interesting because the hub was about earthquake insurance  in the US – but not specifically about earthquake insurance in NZ. So that wasn’t a difficult topic to choose.

When something like a earthquake in Christchurch happens – people want information – and they want it fast.  Turning on the radio was a good start – they apparently started broadcasting about 7am – 2.5 hours after the initial shock.  But finding virtually no information in Google on Christchurch related seismic terms and seeming my semi-related hubs ranking well told me what to write about. Why did I put the articles on hubpages – not here? Authority – I knew I’d get fast indexing and fast promotion – and I have every new earthquake related hub I’ve put up is ranking for at least long tails within 4-5 hours (as fast as the hubpages analytics could tell me).  Now if there were just some relevant ads…


My office before the Earthquake – honest!

Frankly for the traffic stats it would have been better if I live in California – but in real terms I am more than happy to live in New Zealand. For those of you who consider earthquakes as terrifying acts of God – you are right – unless you happen to live in a country with good building standards. Both the dismal Haiti quake and Christchurch’s quake where about the same magnitude and depth and proximity to a city. No one died in Christchurch, maybe 230,000 died with a further 300,000 were injured in Haiti. Three were seriously injured in Christchurch. Now OK the population of Christchurch is 400,000, Haiti had a lot more – but this is all about building standards. And anymore who thinks New Zealand building standards are over the top have probably been silenced for at least a generation.

Oh and there some disasters which are just too easy to predict … Meanwhile – if  I’m not online and there has been a quake in Wellington, I live and work in modern wooden house which is on bedrock and at the top of the hill – I will be fine 🙂

Online Business Continuity

One of the shocking stats coming out of Christchurch is that some small retailers will be bankrupt if their business is out of action for a week. Frankly I’m shocked I had no idea they lived so close to the line.  I’ve already proved that I can ignore my business for months. But what I will lose in an instant in a quake is power – which will stop my modem working instantly – even though the laptop would last for several hours (if it survived being thrown on the floor hmm).

In Christchurch the cell phones stayed up for several hours until the batteries operating the towers died. The traditional phone system lasted through out (though I suspect younger people discovered that there are phones that don’t need power). Maybe I need to remember how to connect via dial up (and a cable..) and/or a cell phone which knows about the Internet. Maybe I need a decent phone which could at least allow me to update Facebook and my blog.

I probably need some more cash too – I rarely have more than $50 in my wallet – and of course EFTPOS and ATMs need power and phone lines! I do actually have a cheque book – it would be interesting trying to persuade a retailer to take one though.

You see frankly if the big one does hit Wellington I’m not hanging around for the aftershocks and waiting for the essential services to be connected. If it hit during the day my partner will probably have to walk home from the CBD – it may take him 3 or 4 hours. Assuming that neither of us are injured  – we will be walking (the roads are a disaster waiting to happen and will be impassible to a cute little urban car) north until we can hitch and find civilization (aka Gin, broadband and power) – probably Levin or Palmerston North.  Our house is fully insured – I feel no need to hang around and protect if from – well exactly what?

Do me a favour – if in future you do hear about a big eathquake in Wellington (100% chance in the new 1000 years by the way) – and you haven’t heard from me online for 24 hours – please link to this post in the forums that are asking where is Lis, and put it on my facebook wall again.

Meanwhile what are your business continuity plans in the case of a natural disaster? Must admit its the first time I’ve really thought about it…