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.
Sit right down and write myself a letter...
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;
it has a nice internal SEO benefit of creating additional internal pages on the fly.
Unfortunately it does mean that I”ve had to turn off commentluv – as it kinda defeats the point of this plugin.
If you want to see what the plugin does if someone’s site is not on the white lis t- click on my name in any comment.
Now I just spent 1/2 hour adding a long list of friends to my white list – but its a manual process I may have missed you – especially if you are a friend with a new website. If you think you’ve been unfairly missed out then drop me a comment or a private email via the contact form. This is a site by site basis not an IP or email basis
If your link was to a site promoting SBI or Teaching Sells – its not a mistake you aren’t on the white list…
Its been two years that we’ve been based in Perth, two years since I got my partner to agree to support me while I developed my online passive income business – he asked how long – I said Christmas…
In fact this was the blog post on my long-defunct blog of the time:
I think it just hit me that we’ve signed a 6-month lease on the flat! It seems a bit odd being in one place, but it feels even odder not going out and looking for a job. Although I have done the odd bit of travel in fact since I left uni I have either been employed or travelling. So its a little strange to be sitting here on a laptop trying to develop a self-employed online income without actually having an employer! It does have some benefits, like no starting time, but also some disadvantages, like no finishing time. Its weird to be honest – but I do “know” (in the virtual sense) people who are making over US$1000 month doing this so I think its worth a try. I seem to be able to write but at the moment I having problems with the technology setting up another blog.
Its been an “interesting” two years- in fact just after “that” Christmas, I quit thanks to dodgy programs like Teaching Sells and got myself a part-time job – two for a while. But the dream wouldn’t go away – and although I am somewhat of the school of “if you don’t succeed – walk away and don’t look back” – this dream of an online income really seemed like a much better lifestyle than working for real!
So what have I learned in two years? Well I can tell you I rarely have technical problems setting up sites anymore 🙂 And yes I can write – but I prefer to write on topics I like – not necessarily topics that pay me! Also I learned that neither of those skills are very important – better to learn how to do it yourself – but outsource if you really don’t want to.
There are well known phases of learning which you’ve probably heard before:
not knowing what you don’t know
knowing that you don’t know
knowing but having to consciously think about it
automatic knowledge
When I started online – I thought that I would write some great content and I would make some money – seriously – those are the only blogs I found – you wrote about stuff you were an expert on and then figured out how to make money later. I don’t even think I realised what search traffic was, I certainly didn’t know what a backlink was!
Here’s all stuff I’ve now learnt:
how to chose keywords which are profitable and not too competitive
how to set up websites
how to find/write/outsource content
how to build links
But that’s still the technical stuff – its easy enough to learn if you are of even average intelligence.
I wasted probably about 18 months learning that stuff – you can save yourself the time by either buying Janet’s Nomad’s Guide e-Book or enrolling in The Keyword Academy.
Neither program will guarantee to make you money though – no legitimate online businesses do. But given the cost of wasting 18 months of frustration learning this stuff the hard way they are well worth the price.
But they actually don’t teach you the most important thing that I’ve learnt in the last two years:
You Must Learn How to Sell Online
Kids Selling in Cambodia - they are some of the world's best street sellers
You can learn all that technical stuff and still not make money though. And I had an incident on the TKA forum today which made me reflect on that. Someone reviewed a product that I use and am an affiliate for – he didn’t include an affiliate link. Someone else on the thread asked for an affiliate link – I jumped on and provided the link, called myself a shameless whore and also included a link to a hub which was my fairly long review of the product – I went to bed – its a timezone thing. Someone else seeing my link thought that was pretty spammy of me – others waded in with views ranging from only the bold win and whores make good money. I saw where the thread went this morning and really did laugh out loud. It was really funny – because two years ago I would never have added my affiliate link. It didn’t seem nice somehow – you know – a bit commercial. I would have felt uncomfortable about asking for money.
And that people is the key – if you are going to be successful in any business – and certainly in an online business you have to be able to close the sale – how do you close a sale ? You ASK! Seriously – its really that simple! Don’t laugh that was a huge light bulb moment for me!
I come from an English/New Zealand background where in general talking about money and making money in a “in your face” way is not really considered “nice” – its changed a lot in the 1980’s but still the majority of people would find it hard to ask for money up front. I certainly did. I had to get over that – and if its an issue for you – you need to get over it too.
Does that make you the same as every other spammer marketer on the Internet? Well I hope not – I have a clean conscience – and this is how I do it:
I only sell products that I use and that I like. If you see my name on it here, on HubPages or on my new blog – I’ve used the product or at least bought it and read it if its informational;
I try to explain which people a product will work well for – and who will be wasting their money because they either know the information already, or don’t have enough knowledge to effectively use it ;
I try to recommend products which either have a free trial period or a money-back guarantee – this is not always possible but I try.
Think of it this way – if you find a great new restaurant do you tell people to do there? if you have a fantastic holiday do you recommend the destination to your friends? Would you do the same if you got a commission? Would your friends follow your advice? Would they be happy for you to earn a commission?
Now don’t get me wrong there are heaps of commission salesmen out there who are close to being crooks – some Mortgage Brokers spring to mind. But I use a Mortgage Broker and I am happy for him to earn the commission from the banks (you don’t pay a broker direct in my country) – I know which institutions he can’t represent, therefore I know the limits of his advice. But he saves me time and money – I’m a happy repeat customer. He provides me with a service – sure I could get a the loan from the bank without him – but he makes it easier.
So seriously if you are going to do affiliate sales you have to figure out how to provide value to your customers so they will buy from you – in fact nothing has really changed in the whole history of commerce – its just a different media these days!
And I still can’t believe I wrote a post about how to sell online LOL
We were talking last night, my partner and I, considering what we want to do in 2010 when his current contract comes to an end and the obvious question came up – do I make enough passive income online for him not to work anymore. The short answer is not quite – but we are getting close. What’s more I am definitely now of the opinion that it would be a huge financial risk for me to go and get a job now compared to my making money online – and here’s why.
Making Passive Income while crossing the Nullarbor
Passive Income in the Real World
Every month no less than eight groups of people pay me – they are tenants in various properties we own in New Zealand. I hire a property manager so I count that income as passive – every month money goes into our account at home. There is a catch though – every month money goes out of that account too – usually just a little more than went in – all going well it will balance – but if you have a month where you need to replace not one but two hot water cylinders – it does not!
We didn’t plan it that way – but we couldn’t control all the variables – the most important variable is having a tenant – we have an excellent occupancy because we bought the right houses, tenants aren’t the problem. The issue is interest rates.
We bought the last time the interest rates were low – and have weathered our floating rate go from 6.9% to 10.45% and now back to 6.45% – when you multiple that out with borrowings of just shy of $1,000,000 – it turns out to be quite a few thousand dollars a month – small in the scheme of things but large in absolute terms (BTW if the figures look wrong to you I am talking New Zealand dollars and interest rates). Yes I know fixed rates reduces your risks but in NZ you can only fix for a maximum of five years – so over the 9 years we’ve owned most of the properties the low fixed rates ran out on us.
So in the real-world property is a great way to make passive income – but it has its risks, and for us the main risk is the leverage that you need to use by borrowing money. The main way to control that risk is of course to pay some of the mortgages back. So its likely now that when we go home we will downsize our home and also sell our worst performing rental to reduce our outgoings to be comfortably less than our income – we will drop from a LVR of 60% to about 30%.
So what on earth does my adventures in property investment have anything to do with
How to Earn Passive Income Online ?
Well its about not just the basic question about how to earn income online. Well this is no secret: my preferred method is to build silly little niche sites and make money while I sleep, drive the Nullarbor or sip gins by the beach!
Because really that’s the only way I know that you work now – get paid later. Sure there are lots of other ways to make money online – I’m looking at building a Legitimate Online Business to help with the expenses – especially if my partner chooses to stop working – but that sort of business does require a bit of customer service and support – not too much, but some.
Obviously there are lots of ways to make income online which aren’t passive – but are still better than a) working for someone else and b) having to get dressed in the morning. Into this category I put activities such as freelancing (be it web design or writing), selling things (either by drop shipping or from your back bedroom), and building a flagship blog in order to become a Trust Agent and kick start your book deal or speaking career.
But if you chose the right keywords (properties) and have more rather than less (diversification) you can make a very nice income from silly little niche websites.
But some people will even say that its almost impossible to build a significant business with just passive income. I disagree. The main reason people end up as tied up with their own business as they were when they worked in corporate hell – is quite simple – personality.
You Need The Right Personality To Earn Passive Income
Let me explain, I used to think one of my strong personality traits was a negative thing, in fact so negative it wasn’t something I ever mentioned at job interviews – even when prompted to list my failings. It was a big secret, which I kept quiet – but now I’ve come to realise this personality trait of mine is in fact a huge advantage.
So what is my deep, dark secret? Well I’m lazy – yup bone idle. Give me the choice of working or playing I’d rather watch TV, or sleep, or go swimming. You see my main motivation with this online income thing, is the actually the same as it was with the property investment. Its to make passive income, because I can’t be arsed working.
With property its easy – so long as you have a good credit record, a mortgage free valuable home and two secure jobs – the bank will offer you three times what you are asking for (good thing we didn’t take it we would have been in serious trouble with the interest rates). After a few years lots of people get out of rentals: its too much hassle – the tenants ring up at all hours complaining about broken light bulbs or leaking taps, the houses need painting etc. etc. But being lazy I had set it up right – I’d found a property manager first, found out what sort of property they had the least problems managing – and bought properties that fit that criteria.
We’ve never had the problem – the tenants don’t call us – I doubt they know who we are – they deal with the property manager. Property is entirely passive income if you have the right property manager, the right properties and the right level of debt.
Online income is similar. You can make yourself a slave to your online income business as easily as you can a real-world business. For a long time i.e. 20+ years I said I didn’t want a business. I’d worked for small businesses where the owner took less out of the busienss than he paid me, worked longer hours, never took a day off. I wasn’t delighted about working for someone but at least I chose the right profession, got well paid, normally had a choice of jobs and really should have had it made.
But I couldn’t outsource my real world job – so it was still an issue with my laziness – I still had to get out of bed in the morning and get dressed – that wast he problem. Obviously I needed to own my business – but I didn’t want to work stupid hours – in fact I wanted to work as few hours as possible.
So now I need to set up a genuinely passive income online. That’s an income where the customers don’t call me – they don’t even kow who I am – they buy from me and they move on. That’s what I like about making passive income online. Some of the A-listers dont’ really believe that its possible – but they have a disadvantage – you see its important to them to work hard in a driven manner – but that’s not important to me at all. I don’t need to work to be important – I need to work to make money. If I won $5 million tomorrow in lotto – would I keep on building websites – LOL don’t be stupid – I’d put in the bank and live of f the interest! Well I might keep this passive income online website going just to have fun calling out the scams, but that would be purely for entertainment – not work or anything.
I’m a fan of WordPress – this blog actually started off on blogger a very long time a go – but I go so frustrated with their technical limitations I moved Passive Income over to self-hosted WordPress and never looked back. WordPress is free and of course there are approximately a zillion free WordPress themes around but I have now spent money on three different options for paid wordpress themes – given that I don’t like spending money – you might well ask why?
Two reasons really – support and re-saleability (is that a word ?). I’ll explain. I had this particular blog on a free theme but the down side with WordPress is that it gets updated regularly – way too regularly sometimes. Its settled down recently but at one stage they were realising updates every week or so. These updates are usually to fix security holes so you ignore them at you peril. The problem that arises of course is that the update sometimes breaks the theme, or maybe its the updated plugins you are using are broken – anyway you can spend many unhappy hours trying to fix the support. And with free themes you get the support you deserve – none – no problem with that, I don’t expect the theme developer to work for free. For many of my sites have no support isn’t really a problem – but on sites such as this one it can be.
Why I Bought Thesis Theme
So I looked long and hard to find something that would work for this site. My requirements weren’t outrageous or terribly unusual and went something like this – I wanted a
SEO friendly theme – or would at leasst work with All-In-One-SEO plugin;
theme which is supported and updated – it is the new version of Thesis was out the same day as WordPress 2.8 was released – impressive – they have active and helpful support forums;
theme which I wouldn’t have to re-do my customisations on if I had to upgrade WordPress and/or Thesis – Thesis uses a smart approach to ensure you don’t inadvertantly over-write your customisations;
customisable theme so it looked like me – but it didn’t actually require any design skills because I don’t have any;
theme that could display and nest comments in a readable fashion because I have quite a lot of them;
a theme that let me control the top level navigation
a 3 column theme with both columns on the right of the content
theme to plaster the affiliate ads in the usual place – top right, above the fold
Thesis makes for a pretty good boring niche theme out of the box – but you have to work out whether the cost of a developer’s licence is worth it for you.
Why I Don’t Like Thesis Theme
Thesis allowed me to do all these things. It fulfilled my wish list. But I don’t like it. I know that’s pretty much hearsay because Thesis, is tied up with the A-list crowd and if you Google “thesis theme review” you will find lots and lots of happy people – who are generally running Thesis on their blogs. And a lot of them have pretty nice designs as well all based on Thesis – and all, I strongly suspect customised by a professional designer who is fluent in CSS and knows how to make stuff look good. I am neither – but thanks to Thesis I am now much more conversant in CSS – now that is not a bad thing – but it was not exactly why I paid $87 for a premium paid theme. What I don’t like about Thesis:
It has not one but two Thesis Options panels – this is confusing – I am always going to the wrong one – even after months.
I had to use code to add a header image – seriously – I joke not. Now if you don’t want to do anything else most peoole want their own header – and its not a matter of just added the file to the right place in the control panel : instead I have endless options over text styles, fonts, spacing of various elements blah, blah – all I wanted was a pretty header and a background that matched <pout>;
Using images is painful – I have to import an image and then cut and paste and add the thumbnail image code so that I can have the combination of having a picture anywhere I want in the picture plus having the thumbnail appear on other pages such as categories – its a nuisance.
Thesis is expensive if you want to deploy it. If you want to run it on more than one site you need that developers editions – that’s another $77 over the initial $87 for a single user. Plus if you want to sell a customised theme to a client that’s another $15 per a client theme.
Thesis makes a big deal of being SEO friendly – but its SEO settings are no more difficult to use than the free all-in-one-seo plugin – it replaces that plugin – but most people would already be running all-in-one anyways;
if you are a designer Thesis really is a framework and you can no doubt do beautiful things -but its a bit like giving me a top-quality blank canvas and a paint brush and tell me go create – I am a rather more paint by numbers gal! You maybe able to do beautiful things with Thesis – or afford someone who can – I can’t do either;
the ability to display ads using the “multimedia” box is fine and the ability to control this down to post level is impressive. What’s not is the place you put the code shows at most 2 lines of a narrow column- you have to use a text editor to actually edit and update the code – this is because most of the screen space has been used on the unecessary design elements;
their affiliate banners are really. really ugly – yellow is the only option – and this is in the marketplace where people care about design.
I may or may not stay with Thesis – the box below the post content converts well – and I haven’t seen that in another theme – yet. I did however decided that it was just too hard to customise for me to produce unique designs for websites I might sell.
Summary:
Cost: $87 – one site or $154 unlimited sites
Affiliate progaram: 33% commission 60 day cookie Is now managed by ShareaSale – I haven’t looked into the details
Why I Bought Elegant Themes
So I wanted to start a new flagship site – the site needed to look a bit more professional that this one and I was even going to tone down that language and have a front “landing page”. To deploy Thesis Theme on the new site was going to cost another $77 – I hesitated. I noticed a few people using and recommending elegant themes and I looked harder. In fact I headed over to their site and spent days drooling over the prettiest themes I’d seen for a very, very long time. Now most premium themes appear to cost from $70 up – these themes (and there are 26 of them at the time of writing ) cost $19.95, total, not each. In the end I decided I had wasted more than $20 drooling at the shop window and I bought.
Now short of taking off a week or two just to review themes from elegant themes I am just addressing the one theme from their selection that I have deployed – eBusiness – you can see it running live at Legimate Online Business. By the way the newer themes come with options eBusiness has three completely different looks each in three colour ways- so you actually get more than 26 themes.
Now the guy who creates the themes at Elegant Themes isn’t an expert on SEO – but he’s managed to get most things right with eBusiness – I’ve set the them to use a static front page with the lastest blog posts showing. The front page is acutally of a combination of up to four WordPress pages – each page title becomes a H2 header on the front page. Meanwhile the blog side of things is controlled by making sure each blog post has a category of “blog” – this I thought was a bit clunky – but it actually works quite well – it means that if I link back to http://netmarketingtoday.com/category/blog in say comments, plugins like commentluv can easily parse the latest blog post.
Now Elegant Themes don’t claim to be SEO optimized but eBusiness works just fine with all-in-one-seo, postname permalinks all the rest of the stuff you should be doing anyways. What I particularly liked about Elegant Thems is:
good support, active forum and, more usefully, very detailed step-by-step videos for the tricky bits: thumbnails and Hostagor (see below);
there are enough options for me to customise the theme without expecting me to actually make a design decision more complex than enable/disable ;
eBusiness allowed me to have a static front page but still direct readers to the updating blog;
only a few content areas are controlled directly from the theme that is the slider at the top of the front page (not sliding at the moment as I only have one slide- can be up to three) and the “about me” photo and box at the top of the blog posts – everthing else is controlled by standard WordPress widgets which include an (optional) sidebar on posts and pages (can differ) and an (optional) footer;
they have some really interesting specialist themes for those who have art galleries or want to show off videos – I am seriously considering putting up my holiday snaps so I can play around with ePhoto! There are some slick magazine/news themes too but I am a bit over those myself.
What’s not to like about eBusiness:
out of the box the theme had links in the text only a very subtlly different colour from regular text – I made them blue so people would know to click;
this is not elegant themes fault but there is slight issue you have to deal with if you are on Hostgator and want the thumbnail images to appear. I had the problem and worked through the documentation and fixed it – but I will have to repeat for other websites I deploy their themes on (the issue is with a common plugin for managing thumbnails so is theme independent);
you cannot resell or distribute their themes legally – if you sell a site that is using the theme the new owner has to buy a membership too.
Its worth pointing out that the $19.95 is actually an annual subscription – when you pay with paypal the subscription is automatically created. You are not obliged to continue with the subscritpion to use the themes but if you cancel you lose access to the forum and future theme releases – you would want to download all the themes before you cancel and used all the support documentation that you require.
Summary:
Cost: $19.95 unlimited access to 26 33 themes (and more appear to be released every few months) for use on an unlimited number of YOUR sites
Affiliate program: 50% commission.
For both of the above themes you no one can offer a money-back guarantee – you need to put the cash up and commit before you get access to a premium themes so thing about what you are trying to achieve before you sign-up.
Free Themes for Niche Sites
I should say too that I often use simple, SEO friendly themes for my niche sites – they are pretty boring looking at that is pretty much the point. Free themes I like and use include:
Grizzly Sniper – looks just like an ugly blogger blog but its WordPress!
Adventure Tour – not as ugly as some but you can easily customise the header!
Boring Memo – and leaving the most boring of all hard to believe a designer developed this LOL
If you want something in between you might also want to check out Frank’s new site: Templates for Websites for some very cheap options (like $7 cheap!)
I have yet another solution for websites I will setup to sell – but that may have to wait for another post – this one got a little loooong !
Its really fun sometimes this blog – I enjoy the fun we have in the comments – and quite often I get an idea for a follow up post on the subject of passive income and online scams. But rarely do I get an idea from spammer – until today. Now this wasn’t just the usual brainless – “please write more on this topic” comment spam. This was a real life email sent to me via the contact form – and this is what it read – in its entirety:
message
Can you please add the spire club to the list of making passive income ?
Thanks
Hmm – that will be a NO love. In fact I think I have deleted at least one other of these – obviously I am showing up somewhere in the serps again for “passive income” – cause guess what – the site mentioned above is a passive income opportunity – seriously folks – all you have to do sign up, pay $10 and wait for the dollars to flow in. In fact as they state on the front page:
As a Spire Club member you can even make money doing nothing
Yeah right – I don’t really have to tell you its a classic pyramid scheme do I? I’d suggest you stay a long way away – unless you want to waste $10 and tell the rest of us that you have lost you money – I’m certainly not wasting my cash on it – so this is yet another sloppy, slack review from Lis – who hasn’t even bought the product LMFAO! Nice graphics though
Oh and they don’t know any SEO either – 4 backlinks for a site registered 9 months ago – way to go guys!
More Scams ForAmusement
Dirk over at his Make Money for Beginners Blog is into a bit of shit fight with those objecting to his Monelis review – this is a classic pyrmid shopping opportunity. Dirk’s also less than complementary in his New SpiderWeb Review which lost him a lot of cash. Be careful out there folks!
I had to make this quick post because my mate Mike from Retire Young and Wealthy just published a potentially controversial article on InfoBarrel titled: Don’t Waste Your Money on the World Internet Summit. Now Mike didn’t know this before he wrote this piece but I spent a day listening to Brett McFall and when he did the free version of his “How To Make Money While You Sleep” in Perth some months back.
I had never heard of Brett McFall online but the full-page in the local tabloid that passes as the West Australian newspaper caught my eye in its sheer awfulness – you know the type – 6point type, releaved by the odd large bold – I WAS BROKE TOO, NO SKILLS NOW I MAKE $100,000 WHILE I SLEEP. I signed up out of curioristy – with about a 50% desire to actually go to the event. As the day nearer I was impresed with their follow up emails and even on the day an automated call to my cellphone (taking into account the local timezone) reminding me of this once in a life time opportunity.
Now as I said on my comments on Mike’s article – I had the same experience as he did – I learned nothing about “How To Make Money In Your Sleep”, the name of Brett McFall’s book, as well as the one-day pitch. But I was fascinated by seeing how the power of bulding up a dream, relating to your audience by explaining that you were just like them, pretending that something is available only for a limited time – really will make people pay thousands of dollars.
It also showed me – who has learned all my marketing on the Internet – just how much the “real world” is still prepared to pay for information which is either free or available for a fraction of the costs involved in The World Internet summit, not to mention McFall’s mentoring program.
Is Brett McFall’s How to Make Money While You Sleep a scam – no its not – if you are an experienced internet marketer who wants to get into developing your own product for sale and/or you want to learn copyrighting from a master – then its worth buying – or at least borrowing from your local library.
If however you are brand new to the Internet – know nothing about building a website – then do yourself a favour – keep your credit card locked up and read, read, read – there’s all you need to know available online for free. And yes you can make money while you sleep – because normally the US shops while we sleep in Australia – and most online customers are from North America! That’s not to say you don’t have to do an awful lot of work – if you thnk this is as easy as making money with property or shares – think again – it is not (and I know I have done all three).
For the rest of you head on over and check out Mike’s review and Brett McFall’s response to Mike’s experience at The World Internet Summit
Now I like planning – its so much more fun than doing. I’m quite good at planning too -just ask anyone who has been travelling with me. But business planning is a whole different game – I know the theory:
Decide what the end is – say $1,000,000 in round figure and by when.
Work out where you are now – that’s easy just done the taxes
Work out how to get from 2 to 1
changing direction
Hmm yeah oops – 3 is kinda the problem in my experience. This blog started as my attempt of at least an online diary of my journey of 100 sites – but got re-named when I figured I was the ONLY person who ever searched for that keyword LOL.I thought that might be close enough to a business plan – I may have been wrong …
Last month I wrote about making $1500 from Adsense and Affiliates this month its pretty much the same – slightly different winners and losers but generally, overall add up to about the same figure. I’m actually fairly happy with that – August is usually a very slow month online and I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see my earnings drop, Also this month I was focused on building stuff which will make money in the future – not right now.
Making an income that was real rather than just a joke made me even more determined to plan B – what if I suddenly was the only income earner in the house? What if we move again and my partner can’t get/doesn’t want a job? Plan B has been SEO consulting to small business. I wasn’t going to do it seriously until we moved back to New Zealand – a real-world business needs contacts and I don’t have them here, and yes I know you can do this all online but my potential clients don’t know that!
I must admit though that SEO consulting has some downsides for me:
you have to do a lot of education with clients – and a lot of definition of roles – no I don’t do flash development or even adwords I do SEO!
you have to get dressed in the morning
Frankly the second one is the real issue! I thought for a while I might like the human contact – but I came to my senses and remembered that business meetings are not human contact!
So I wanted another Plan B – I way to raise quick cash with a bit more certainity than developing niche sites and better paid than writing articles.
So after some thought and a whole lot more reading I think I am going into the site flipping business. I will build sites, do some other magic stuff to them (SEO) and sell them for a healthy profit. It fits well with my passive income – because if they don’t sell they will probably just sit around and make me money anyways!
If any of your are into real estate investing you will understand the concept of site flipping – a property flipper will usually buy a run-down house, do it up and sell it for a profit. Website flipping is similar – but without the downside risk of mortgages!
Why do I want a plan B anyway? After all my little ugly sites make me money while I sleep right ? Yes they do – but if I needed an extra $5000 tomorrow they wouldn’t be able to deliver on that! Websites typically seem to sell for up to 10 times monthly earnings – so if I had a site making $500 a month – there’s my $5000 . At the moment if we needed that sort of cash we’d use my partner’s income or borrow it – because of our excellent credit – again because one of us has a real job. Flipping sites seems to be the obvious adjunct income for me while I build the passive income empire.
By the way I still seem to have some of you confused about why making a few dollars of passive income is totally exciting to me – much more exciting than earning $1000 in a real job. Check out John’s description of why passive income is the best of all possible incomes to have – his story the same as my story – I was delighted in early June to have hit $100 in Adesnse for the month by the 10th – my partner’s reaction was – *shrug* – in July he was delighted that I made 6 times that in Adsense, in August he was asking me how it was going on a weekly basis! So if you have trouble convincing people – don’t worry they will understand when youstart making the cash!
Is this the biggest hoodwink of the entire Internet ? We all know that Grizz is the guy that doesn’t do blogging right – he has an ugly blog, it took him ages to get on twitter, I don’t think he’s even on facebook! You can’t take someone seriously who won’t pay for his own domain and hosting can you – not really!
Well today I watched an absolutly fascinating video from Allyn at Bloggerillustrated titled Social Media, Internet Marketing, Organic Marketing and Digital Fellat…. (yeah if your English is not native you will probably NOT want to Google the final word at work..) Basically Allyn compared the visitors he got from a link from Grizz, to the traffic Allyn’s friend BloggerLens got when Chris Brogan – Mr Social Media himself – picked up and republished on his blog BloggerLens’s Chris Brogan Trust Agent Spoof Video . The traffic figures may surprise you, a lot – short answer – RSS feed subscribers mean nothing.
Allyn’s figures don’t surprise me at all – Grizz put this blog on the map. Before Grizz picked up on SiteBuildIt! post I had under 10 visitors a day- the day he mentioned my Site Build It post he said around 300 visitors directly from his blog to mine. Now I got a lot of traffic from other sources as well from that post but the single biggest source was Grizz.
I’ve been accused of being a mindless groupie of foul mouthed Puerto Ricans and ocaisionally rude, but usually polite, Grizzly’s – that’s half right – I am a groupy – those guys tell me to do it I’ll do it – why? Because I am their engaged customer in marketing speak – in plain English they helped me when I needed help. They answered my questions in comments and forums, they helped me without being asked when I really needed it they asked their followers to help me – many of which did – even when they disagreed with me. Oh and the stuff they teach works and makes me money – that helps customer loyalty quite a lot really – odd because Grizz has never actually sold me anything …
They are real leaders because they tell it how it is – its not pretty – the language is not G-rated sometimes – but the reason my language is bad on this blog – is a reaction to the smooth, elegant sales talk that A-List products like Teaching Sells – Allyn makes the point exactly – 28,000 subscribers and Chris Brogan has 20 comments – NOT one of which he responds to – says it all really – I wonder what would happen if I subscribed to his blog, followed him on twitter and then asked him a question on twitter – do you think he’ answer? Do you think he’d link to me? Yeah me neither! I remember when Grizz first linked to me – I couldn’t believe one of the big guys would do that – it was almost like he cared or something – like he was a real person not just a blog about making money online.
BTW if you are keen to increase your feedburner subscriber’s you really should check out Frank’s Earn Online Cash with Social Blogging – it tells you exactly how to fake your social proof – writing 500 of your own comments on a post though is going to take forever (you might want to check out Frank’s Blog Content Wizard to help)
And Grizz with his ugly little butt-ugly, boring, free blogger blog sitting at the top of “make money” in the SERPS – it makes him good money – but oddly enough he still has time for the little guys – now thats what I call the most ironic anti-marketing social media joke – and its not on him!
OK guys – this has been an interesting experiment regarding keyword authority and SEO – which was what I was playing with with my review Teaching Sells Does It Work?
I noticed recently that this site had become an “authority” site – to be honest I’d heard Grizz and others talk of authority sites before but I didn’t really understand the implications. First off to discover if a site is an authority site just google the site’s name or their main keywords – google “make money for beginners” and you will find this dubious site in #1 position:
So I have one of these pretty little listings too for my name and when I rank for something related vaguely to passive income online – I get the old double indexing with the second listing indented:
Once I post this update I suspect the 2nd indent will become this post – as it is sometimes its the tag page (that’s why you should NOT noindex your tag pages) but more often its a slight typo on the url which I noticed the instant I published and corrected – its not a 404 – the page redirects – to the correct url – I don’t understand it – but I don’t mind LOL.
The most clearest clue that you have authority though is quite easy – you go straight position #1 if you write a post on a relatively longtail long competition term something like “teaching sells does it work” for example: I got the listing immediately and it stayed there, that’s with no link building on my part. Now would it have stayed there if Grizz – the ultimate “make money” authority blogger hadn’t linked to me? I don’t know – that’s the trouble with SEO experiments – you really can’t control all the variables as you would in the lab – and you certainly can’t control who links to you – but now I know I will almost certainly stay at #1 because of all those kind people who linked to me – thanks guys!
Now it gets more interesting – as you can see on that above screen shot, from yesterday BTW, I was also ranking third and sixth for an infobarrel and hubpage. What I was actually trying to experiment with was the often quoted concern that hubpages was losing its authority was true. Well AFAIK neither of the those articles have any backlinks (I didn’t link to them from this blog either) – so by themselves they ranked on the first page and stayed there. The infobarrel out ranked the hubpage consistently – but that was probably just because I had the long-tail exact match in the url of the infobarrel: teaching-sells-does-it-work while the hubpage I’d just called teaching-sells.
It got more interesting today though – I noticed that the hubpage had got up to third place – but the infobarrel was gone – in fact its deindexed (check by googling the exact url) – odd to say the least – as I say I certainly have done no link building on it. I suspect a glitch or possibly Google didn’t like the odd characters at the end of the url – which are probably computer speak for “?” (you don’t have great control on infobarrel urls) – I do know in the past if I inadvertantly left a trailing “-” or “_” Google may refuse to index the page for a month or so.
So how do you make a blog an authority in your niche? Fairly simple really – google your keyword – and try to get links from any authority blogs that you find on the first page.
Once you are an authority site you can outrank established sites by just having your keyword long-tail in the url.
Once you are an authority site you can outrank sites which have at least part of the long-tail keyword in their domain name e.g. teachingsells.com
Once you are an authority site you can outrank much, much larger sties which are also authority sites such as hubpages and infobarrel which have the keywords in the url.
Now while this site definitly has authority is neither ranking well for my primary keyword (hint its not either Teaching Sells or Site Build It!) not does it have great PR – PR2 at the moment – it was PR3 until the Site Build It fiasco saw me got a ton of relevant links.
I’m off to build me some more authority sites – in a nice that might actually pay!
Lets get this out of the way right here – if you want a balanced, politically correct, weighed, grammatically perfect and well spelt review of CopyBlogger’s, Brian Clark’s Teaching Sells – you won’t find it here. I am a blogger, not a lawyer, I have no obligation to provide unbiased, balanced information all the time – and trust me I am pissed about this! Anyway there will be heaps of sycophantic reviews from those who are flogging the new version of Teaching Sells – about to be released for Fall semester – to counter my unbalanced and cyncial take on why teaching sells will not make you money – but will probably do quite well for Brian Clarke and his mates.
For some reason I used to occasionally read Chris Brogan’s blog – and his post titled “Why I Will Promote Teaching Sells” – Google it I am fussy about what I link to from this blog – caught my eye. Why? “Teaching Sells” was what made me give up Internet Marketing back in 2007. It may not have been Brian Clark’s Teaching Sells programs -it might have been someone else’s knock off – I don’t really care because at the end of the day the concept is the same I think that this is one of the MOST dishonest ways to make money online income from the dreams of other people.
Now lets be upfront – I haven’t bought the course – in fact its not open at the moment -they are in the building the hype stage – Google off to “teaching sells” if you want to get on the presell list so far I only have the 25 page free report plus several other transcripts of examples from the earlier course (at least they aren’t pretending this is new). I have submitted myself to endless spam updates which at the time of writing promise:
A bonus report about building quick and easy membership sites with licensed content.
A 20-Step Process Map to building an online training business.
An instructional video that reveals the solution to the “traffic dilemma” every online entrepreneur faces.
And a complete course listing of the entire Teaching Sells program.
I’ve seen enough know to, in my biased and personal opinion, warn you in VERY large letters – to stay the fuck away from Teaching Sells. Oh unless you happen to already be a real-world acknowledged expert, preferably a published author – then you may be able to use it – so long as your niche has lots of willing buyers that is.
I must say reading the 25 page pre-sales pitch free report was informative. I may not be able to sell teaching but I can recognise bullshite from 10 paces. When I first saw the version of this report they were using 2-years ago – I just felt uneasy and a bit “off” about the idea. Now I know exactly why it stinks to high heaven, guess I learnt something about bullshite detection in the last 2 years!
Now the first thing you will notice is the production quality of the 25-page free report – there are no typos and its got nice graphics. Try actually reading it though – that’s where it all goes downhill. Apparently I work for Google (so does Vic, Grizz and Court – we are all Google slaves) -apparently its not a real business model to rely on Google for traffic, Google’s Adsense for income and well – Grizz takes in one step further and has the audacity to hardly make any money online at all using a FREE blogger (i.e. Google) blog – outrageous!
Apparently Teaching Sells will teach me a better way to get traffic – I can hardly wait for that bit – but I notice it wasn’t free traffic so PPC springs to mind… Or maybe I will get real lucky and Brian Clark will recognise my intelligence and make me a business partner (I am not making this up – its in the pitch as well!). Yes it could be the joint-venture – you sell me your list and I’ll see your’s mine approach. Apparently you can’t make money by giving stuff away from money – hey Court – I hope you realise that you shouldn’t be giving away your content for $1 the first month! I hope you realise you aren’t making any money!
Apparently I don’t need a long-tail niche audience either (hell that might make me some money) – no instead I need a create my own tribe! Well much that love the 12.5 of you who regularly read this blog and occasionally make me money from my free content – we are doing no tribal meetings around here! We are not doing no sit-down kum-bay-yahs around the camp fire anytime soon around here people!
The thing that gets me most about the Teaching Sells hype this time is the blatant hypocrisy – after several pages of describing how most of the free content on the web is just not worth anything – and leaves people begging to pay money to join your membership site Teaching Sells cites how Steve Pavlina claims to have made $40,000 in one month from his free blog – by pushing his reader to a paid personal-development program which he didn’t even develop himself – yeah really ethical that, totally different from affiliate marketing! But its not advertising you know – its adding value LOL.
So with Teaching Sells you will learn that:
The big opportunity for you though, is in repurposing the vast amount of specialized text-based information into interactive, multimedia learning environments that result in recurring income and long-term customer relationships.
Lets just be crystal here – this is not about your customers making money – its about YOU making money from them… Otherwise known as hooking them up with the old membership model with the recurring charge on the credit card and making sure they don’t become self-sufficient ever too soon.
The only question I have for Teaching Sells – and the only reason I signed up for the spam list priority notification list was I am curious as to how much they think they can package this old course for. Old – yes that’s right – in fact there is an interesting review of the 2007 version of the course from Friar’s Review of Brian Clark’s Teaching Sells that time around it was $97 for the special price for the first 3 months – and then recurring after that – ( a little point not made that obvious in the 6 point print at the bottom of the page in lightest gray font apparently) – this time I’m figuring they will adding at least a one to the front – or maybe they will go for the currently fashionable $1997 price …
Bottom line if you really think you are already an expert on something that people are really dying to spend money on and you want to take the time to set up an interactive learning experience forum and can’t be bothered finding out how to do it yourself (or paying someone to) – then this course may be for you.
If you are like the other 99.9% of us who don’t have a useful skill to teach online, can’t, for example, teach us how to make paella online then you will probably figure out real fast that you either learn how to fake it until you make, build your wealth on other people’s shattered dreams, or just possibly, learn how to make money online without ripping anyone off.
Bugger I have a nice little set of non-controversial posts half written for this week, and some affiliate crap to push on my unsuspecting readers as well – oh well blog has reverted to its original purpose – me telling the world what I think! Seriously do your self a huge favour run a mile from Teaching Sells regardless of which of the A-listers is promoting it – you do realise that is how you make your money right – being in bed with the right people commenting on the right blogs and getting in well with the right people – you are seriously stuffed if you are hanging around here!
I took the weekend off – I drove 300km and checked out the golf course at Augusta, went whale watching, ate too much, drank too much local red wine.
Golf Course, Augusta
Did I login? Did I check my email? Did I approve comments? Did I check in with clients that it was OK to take the weekend off – no to all of those above. You see I used to have a J.O.B (Just Over Broke) – I used to have to apply for leave or arrange not to be on-call to go away for the weekend. I don’t do that anymore. Instead, I put an “out of office reply” on my main email account and disconnected.
It wasn’t that hard for me – I must admit taking breaks and travelling is what’s important to me. Yes sure I’d like to make a zillion dollars a week – but only if I can still take off every month or so for a holiday! Although I now have a lot of American friends online, I still don’t understand the need to work 24/7 – if you are desperate to pay the bills sure – but for those who aren’t? To be honest if a client doesn’t want you to go away for a couple of days – do you need the client?
Why is that so hard for some people to just take off and let their online life go on without them? I think there are two issues: one is cultural and one is about self-confidence. I come from a culture which consider a four-week holiday a bare minimum and two-months a reasonable break. I know many Americans have never taken more than 10 days annual leave. To me that is a completely incomprehensible concept. It takes me 2 weeks just to forget about the job I hated and then I settled down to being on holiday! I certainly trained several workplaces to get by without me for 6 to 8 week periods – and no I don’t mean call me if you have a problem – I never holiday within cellphone or email range! I presume its harder if employers are used to having employees around 50 weeks a year.
So when I decided to start making an online living I certainly had no intention of building an income which needed me to baby-sit it 24/7 like some idiot boss!
The second reason I believe that people have trouble going on holiday and off line is around self confidence. I know people who live the location independent lifestyle – they are sometimes out of contact – does it hurt their business ? Maybe – the clients who want them available 24/7 may not like it that you chose to hop on a 24 flight. Who cares? Do you really need that client? I have lost jobs over the years because I was female, because I was a foreigner, in time I realised I was better off without them. Its the same with an online client who wants you available at their beck and call – its not how it works around here – and because this is my business I make up the rules – and I suggest you do to.
So before you become a slave to your online business I suggest you look at the big picture. Is this a business that is going to need you online 24/7 – how easy will it be for your to delegate and grow the business? Can you develop something that you work on, not in? Make sure you are building a lifestyle that’s better than the one you’ve got!
Oh you don’t recognise Augusta’s golf course? Course details about 5km out of town – at the top of the hill, a great 360 view of the Indian and Southern Oceans. Green fees: $15 on an honour system, golf carts recommended, blacks not greens around the holes, kangaroos a hazard, beware snakes in the bush. And as far as I know Tiger Woods has never played their though its possible that other soon-to-be famous golfer Grizz Brears may want to take a second look at it – you see Augusta is in Western Australia, not just Georgia!
I had never heard of Brett McFall online but the full-page in the local tabloid that passes as the West Australian newspaper caught my eye in its sheer awfulness – you know the type – 6point type, releaved by the odd large bold – I WAS BROKE TOO, NO SKILLS NOW I MAKE $100,000 WHILE I SLEEP. I signed up out of curioristy – with about a 50% desire to actually go to the event. As the day nearer I was impresed with their follow up emails and even on the day an automated call to my cellphone (taking into account the local timezone) reminding me of this once in a life time opportunity.
