Infobarrel for Online Income?
InfoBarrel is yet another site which offers writers a way to make passive income or residue income online. Its a site where you post your content and then you make money based on a percentage of the advertising revenue. Authors are free to write on almost any topic, there is no up-front payment for writers and no editorial control over content submitted to Infobarrel.
This post is about how to feel the fear and do it anyway – and how it relates to passive income. You’ve heard all the catch phrases right? Feel the fear and do it anyway, if you find what you love to do you will never work a day in your life, the wind beneath your winds etc.
OK we are third of the way through the year – lets see where Lis Sowerbutts is doing , original goals in italic from January for the first half of 2009:
Progress Against Original Goals
Get more organised and focused on the important stuff so that I can achieve the following:
Short version – be careful! I use sites such as HubPages as a way to create content on a different IP and to provide free backlinks to my own sites. To honest I started with HubPages because I liked the community and now I stay because I liked the community, and because I can get free backlinks to my own sites – I think HubPages is OK with it – they make money from (some) of my hubs and I contribute to their community.
I’ve never worked for myself before and in the pursuit of passive income I have had to develop my own systems to become more efficient.
In fact I have come to realize that the whole routine of going to work was one of the things I really,really hated about working for some one else, that and having to do what I was told of course!
Another update – in 2011 The Keyword Academy have released version two: check out my most recent Keyword Academy review.
UPDATE: A year later this post still gets traffic and sign ups so I thought it might be time to update it! Short answer is that TKA just keeps on getting better – that’s why I am still subscribed to it! Updates in bold below
Now I can teach you some stuff but I prefer to send you on to an expert – and my experts were letting me down!
I have two main mentors that I have mentioned over and over. Grizz provides great information for free – but even he admits that his sites are designed to bring in search traffic – not necessarily with sound coaching and teaching principles in mind! The information is there but you have to dig – and some people don’t learn like that. UNFORTUNATELY GRIZ NO LONGER POSTS BUT HIS ARCHIVES ARE WELL WORTH READING
Vic – is not everyone’s cup of tea – some people can’t get past the foul-mouthed persona – which is really their problem not mine or his. But more importantly Vic has closed is private forum until further notice as he is busy on a new business venture – which meant I couldn’t refer people to the place I get a lot of my information from.
Now – today – finally- I have a solution. The third person who has provided me decent, quality information is Courtney Tuttle. He started off with a free site – discovered that people don’t appreciate free and went to a coaching/mentoring pricing monitoring. Now to be honest mentoring is not really for me – I just don’t learn that way very well, and of course the time zone difference didn’t make life any easier. Mark Butler, Court’s business partner, now runs the Keyword Academy.
Now Court has, I am pretty sure, a background in consulting and/or coaching in the real world, and he and his partner Mark take a much more formalised approach to teaching the business of making passive income online than either Griz or Vic.
But, and this is the important thing, they are all basically telling the beginner the same thing in terms of doing keyword research, setting up websites, building back links and making money. Its all very professionally laid out, there is no bad language involved, and more importantly the information is good.
The Keyword Academy Membership Site
Court and his partner Mark have launched a new payment membership site: Keyword Crash Course Video Series . The site is new and the main information currently available are 10 videos taking the beginner step by step from doing keyword research, setting up a site with WordPress, adding content, getting backlinks, article marketing, Adsense setup and statistical analysis of your site visitors. Each video is around 40 minutes long. There is also Q+A associated with each video and a full transcript so you can find the bit you want again!
Now this set of videos by themselves could easily be sold for hundreds of dollars. But they aren’t charging hundreds of dollars, or even $100 dollars. Now its free for the first month – insane!
UPDATE: When TKA launched that was all there was – a course and a forum – but over the next year they added a tool to further automate the finding of keywords (NicheRefinary) and a way to make Guest Posting waaaay easier (Postrunner)
What’s the Catch?
Is there a catch – of course there is! After the first month you get charged an ongoing rate of $33/ month (premium includes access to the forums – only way to go in my opinion). Ahhh you say – so how many months does it take to get access to the videos – 3, 6 or 9? No the initial 10 videos are available to you immediately – as soon as you confirm your subscription – yup you have full access for 30 days before you pay anything!
What about the subscription – yes you sign up for an ongoing subscription – can you cancel it? Yes as soon as you gain access if you want – though I wouldn’t recommend it. If you use paypal to subscribe all you do is go to Paypal and cancel the subscription – you don’t have to contact Court and Mark at all.
Why do I say you shouldn’t cancel immediately? Well because the Internet is a dynamic place – the business model that worked 5 years ago or even one year ago may not work now – having access to updated information and support is one of the most important things you need to have to go forward in this business. What I do say – is leave yourself a note and evaluate whether the product is working for you after 25 days and decide whether to continue on with the subscription.
Ahh you say, having been scammed one to many times, you can’t follow the videos without the fancy software right? No, really, the main software used in the videos are:
Keyword research: Google’s free adwords tool
Excel – but you can use OpenOffice – its free
Competitor analysis – SEO for Firefox – free
Statistical analysis of visitors to your site – Statcounter – free and highly recommended by me!
Setting up the site: you will need hosting and your own domain name using the Keyword Academy approach, you can do it for free – but if you are completely new to this I’d advise not to mix and match.
Hosting Hostgator $5/month if you only want one site, $8/month for unlimited.
WordPress – free, recommended themes and plugins – free
Domain name: $0.99c for an info $7.49 for a .com (from godaddy) -cost per a year.
Link building. They mention a bunch of free methods but also recommend that you use Unique Article Wizard for article distribution – this costs $67/month.
With the addition of Postrunner – the additional UWA product is no longer really needed
Will Keyword Academy Work For Me?
I don’t know where to start – I don’t know how to create a website – will Keyword Academy work for me?
If you are a beginner looking for a step-by-step approach to building an online business, if you are prepared to put the work in (Court recommends 8-10 hours /week) – then this will work for you. The program will teach you how to develop sites optimized for Adsense.
I have information over-load – I don’t know where to start – I need to start reading and take action.
Know how you feel – if you are looking for a step-by-step program – check this out and ignore all the other sites for a month or two. Don’t just watch the videos do your homework and create your first site, or first money-making one, and move forward.
I don’t do Google Adsense – I want to sell affiliate products or my own products – is there any value here for me?
Regardless of what you want to sell you need organic traffic to your site. The Keyword Academy will teach you how to do keyword research which will work regardless of your monetization method.
I’m an experienced Internet Marketer – will I learn anything?
Grizz, Vic, Court all have slightly different approaches to making money online – but all work for them. What works for you may be an exact copy of one their models- or a mash-up of your own – but these guys won’t put you wrong.
I learnt several things that were either new to me or I had been muddled on by skipping through the videos. The final video on how to flip websites was all new to me and well worth the $1 in my opinion!
Anyway you are already probably paying for link distribution services – TKA will probably save you money with the Postrunner system!
Bottom Line: Is Keyword Academy a Scam?
No its not. You are committing nothing to signing up for the video marketing course.
Try the videos and forums for a month- you may find they don’t work for you, you don’t want to make money this way, you don’t have the time – whatever – you have lost nothing. Sign up for the forums options so that you can ask questions for a month – you may not like the answers – you can can cancel it cost you nothing.
Will following the videos guarantee that you will make money – no it won’t! Nothing in life is free – and free money doesn’t exist. You will have to do some work. Most of us value our time so this is going to cost you some time. It is going to cost you some money for domains and hosting. But if you are flat broke you could still try this out by developing a site on blogger.com for fre e…
Why Am I Recommending Keyword Academy Video Series and Membership Site
I previously posted about using Twitter for backlinks and I thought it might be time to do a bit of an update.
I still am not terribly convinced by twitter – but I still get do-follow backlinks from my twitwall – so why not? I also find it quite a good place to keep all my actual legit blogs linked to in one place – there are one or two deluded souls (usually related to me who) who ask me what I do all day playing online so I can point them in that direction.
Well what a difference a month makes! Sure its turning cooler here in Australia and we may have seen the end of the Perth swimming season but its all looking rosy from where I’m sitting!
I have been a whole lot more focused in March though the Site Build It fracas was a little distracting. Trust me the amount of traffic would have taken this blog down if it had been on shared hosting – hostgator reseller rocks is all I can say!
I made some new friends during the whole thing and I’d like to give a shout out to Lorecee at Work From Home On-Line Guide who really gave some thoughtful comments from an ex-customer’s point of view.
Some people thought that I did the whole Site Build It Review to make passive income from their affiliate system. I didn’t. I initially did it to build my subscribers and hopefully get noticed my some people looking for information about how to start an online business. I have put an affiliate offer on the post now – a legit piece of software which will hand-hold you through the site building process, is a one time cost, offers a 30-day money back guarantee and allows you to build as many sites as you want.
I build sites using self-hosted wordpress, blogger and MyStarterBlog but some people want prettier with less effort and are prepared to spend the money – that’s fine to.
In between approving Site Build It comments though I did manage to get some sites up and running.
So I’m pleased with the progress for the month – more keyword research than sites developed but it will keep rolling now I think!
This month I have a week off over Easter to snorkle with the whale sharks so I have to work extra hard to make up for it!
BTW remember that if you are running Adsense you need to update your privacy policy by 8 April Grizz over at make money for beginners has provided an updated version
Many people dream of making passive income online or starting their own online small business, probably home based, how to make money online they ask?
Let’s face it there are an awful lot of us who dream of firing the boss and working in their PJ’s. Few succeed though the figures often quoted is that between 95% and 99% of people who start a blog or website fail to make any money doing it.
I guess that’s why some people are looking for the “business in the box solution”. The follow this plan and all will be well. After all most of us who are trying to make money on-line are doing it after spending years as good little employees. You know do what the boss tells you what to do, when to do it by, and then praises you for getting it done correctly – or not.
Business isn’t like that. On-line busines is different from real world business – but not as much as many people believe.
Why Do Small Businesses Fail?
Apart from cash flow issues, most small businesses fail because they can’t get enough customers. There is no demand for their service or product. Think of the local lady who makes beautiful handicrafts, but no one buys. Think of the coffee shop that makes great coffee – but is 1/2 empty because its tucked away in an uninviting backstreet. Or the geek who can fix your computer just like that – but doesn’t know how to explain to potential customers what he can do.
Now consider the on-line business version of these businesses:
♦the blogger who blogs about their passion for Ancient Roman Gladiators sports – they have a beautiful blog, with lots of great information and pretty pictures: but no one wants to buy anything there because they cam looking for information which they got in spades on the site;
♦the site which provides great baby gear at the right price – but no one can find the site because the site is called “Kute Kiddies Kool”, all the links to the site are by its name – and people who search search for “cheap baby clothes online” or “cheap organic cotton baby clothes”
♦the site which is developed by a design specialist – its full of cute visual effects and great graphics – but the search engine doesn’t know that the site is offering computer setup support in the Bay Area because Google can’t read flash or images.
Luckily on-line its very easy to work out whether you will have customer for your site or not – we call them searchers.
Simple Steps to Make Your On-line Business Work
So I have a question for you guys: what bit is so hard and scary that you can’t get started? Which bit makes people search for the simple, one process fits all, turn key system. This is being in business people; its scary, there is no one-size fits all that will work for everyone – otherwise no business would be able to hire an employee.
If you are looking for a supportive membership site which will help you succeed check out my review of Keyword Academy Video Crash Course
Here at Passive Income – it seems we are famous! Apparently my previous post which had the title of Site Build It Scam Review has got a little infamy! I never thought that the “everyone gets 5 minutes of fame” thing applied to me – I guess I was wrong 🙂 Sorry to any one who subscribed to comments early on – bit of email overload I guess!
So for a brief re-cap on those who don’t have an hour to wade through the thousands of words of comments in the early post – the recap is like this:
Site Build It has been around for a while, the question is – is it a good way to make Passive Income? There are some good parts to it. But that doesn’t make it any less a scam. I’ve thought about reviewing it before but now I am MAD – and Steve Pavlina is the reason I’m mad. I like Steve – his motivational writing is great – but now he has sold out to the other side and is pushing the old Site Build It scam review bandwagon!
Latest Update Jan 2011 – read my latest Site Build It Review
UPDATE: If you are late to the riot you may want to check the comments section and also the next post for the update on Site Build It scam review.
What is Site Build It ?
Its a “one stop shop” for someone who wants a website but doesn’t know where to start. You pay them a heafty fee- PER SITE – around $300 ANNUALLY. And for this sum you get:
Now if you Google for “site builder scam” – you will find a lot of “reviews” which are just affiliate pitches. Why? Because Site Build It pays affiliates around $75 a sale, and that’s an annual fee too remember. You don’t even have to be a user of SBI to be an affiliate – how can you sell something you don’t use yourself – that’s what I turned me off affiliate marketing initially.
You will find no link here for SBI – if you want to join – type in their url direct and then sign up as an affiliate and pay yourself the commission as a discount!
So, no, SBI! is not a traditional scam. They no doubt deliver on what is promised – though you no doubt have to pay extra for the PPC champaign. Yes traditional hosting and free software won’t give you support on how to build your business.
But $300 for support is pretty darn expensive.
Yes its not all in one place, you have to learn to do some odd stuff along the way – but you are building a business aren’t you? SiteBuildIt is basically a franchise model applied to building websites – without the brand awareness that having “McDonalds” or “Avon” in your business does to customers in the real world. UPDATE: Its more like a cult – its a pretty scary one to, see the comments! Your visitors won’t feel more likely to buy from you just because your site is a “site build it!” site!
UPDATE: April 2012 The latest update of SBI’s software appears to have been a bit of a technical disaster. So rather than dealing with his customer’s complaints and sorted out the glitches, Ken Evoy has taken to hurling abuse at people who dare to complain that their website’s are broken -and has even, according to reports, banned some from the forums, and possibly even from SBI!
Think about it – do you really want to have your website held hostage to someone who behaves like that?
Yes they don’t promise that you will get rich in your sleep. Whatever tools you use to develop a website that’s the easy bit – getting the traffic is the work bit.
Bottom line with the Site build it scam you put the hard work in – you get your keywords to rank and you don’t own your website …UPDATE You do own your site but you are locked into the SBI tools and although you can take the actual words from the site and you lose the access to the tools that you use to maintain and develop the site.