Category: Lis Recommmends

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Lis Recommmends Rants

Self Help Guru Scams Revealed! Really

Secrets Lies and Manifestations

Are you looking for a way to improve your life, make money, or get your ex-back? Then I really think that you should immediately buy Secrets, Lies and Manifestations The Truth About Self Help by Katharine Kershaw!

Seriously I mean it.

Secrets Lies and Manifestations If you are reading this blog you are possibly looking for the simple answer to how to make money. And I’ve always tried to tell the truth – tell you I don’t have the answers, that I’m just bumbling along like the rest of you. Secrets, Lies and Manifestations does much more than that, it explains why you keep buying into books and online products. Buy the book.

I’ve evolved this blog over the years ago. When it started I seriously believed that I could make Passive Income Online. Over the years I’ve come to realise that the truth is much more complex, and getting more so. Many in my little corner of “make money online” Internet, have gone quiet, taken down their blogs, and moved on.

Some of us are focusing more on building our own products and less on ranking sites. Its tricky out there, and getting more and more difficult. One of the things I’m doing is writing more of my Indie Non-Fiction books, and to get into the spirit of things, knowing I would be asking for some reviews soon, I thought I’d get my kharma points up by doing some Amazon reviews on other books while I had quite a number of hours to kill in airports. (In case you are not familiar with how Amazon works, for Indie authors, its really important to get reviews, it helps hugely with sales, so please if you read a self-published book on Amazon, do leave a review, it doesn’t have to be glowing, just honest).

This book appealed because of the title, but I didn’t really expect to be so inspired by it that I would be furiously writing up a review in transit so I could publish it at midnight when I get home for a few hours. I was too brain dead – so here it is several weeks later! 

Katharine ruthlessly exposes the whole rotten core of the entire self help industry. From The Bible, to The Secret, Katherine uses her rather vicious wit, combined with a firm grasp on reality, to explain just why you keep buying and buying more and more products, self-help guides, and why, rather than giving you the key as promised, they doom you to repeat the cycle of failure. Her message is direct. She points out that self-help screws you, dreams aren’t enough, and how ever many times you manifest the desire to win Wimbledon or make a million dollars, your time, money and effort would be much better focused on actually taking some tennis lessons, or developing a product to serve a market that people will pay for. Which is of course the book’s failing. Katharine tells it as it is, and in doing so shatters the illusion.

There is no simple way to make money in your sleep, or to lose weight, and in so doing so she, removes the market for her follow up sequel. I hope not, because personally I’d buy it, just for her writing style and her clear-eyed worldview. So do your self a favour – buy the bloody book.

What’s not to like? Nothing really, her editing is pretty good, and she covered all the pain sacred cows in the industry. I’d probably have liked to learn more about the author, because she’s certainly one I’d buy another book from. And the final joke? The automated list of “customers who bought this book also bought …” Total Law of Attraction: Unleash Your Secret Creative Power To Get What You Want! Dr David Che Please don’t be one of those people – stop buying self-help guides/books/courses about how to live your life. Just. Live. It. Really – it is that simple!  

Although I’m pleasantly pleased to have read Katharine’s book – I’ve got to say, that she’s not going to make a fortune promoting it. Calling “scam” on self-deluded cons such as Empower Network, or Site Build It!, doesn’t exactly rake in the millions. It does, however, make some of us feel good inside.

Katharine should feel very proud of this book. So do her a favour and if you read the book and like it – write her a review on Amazon, and tell your friends.

Categories
Back Links beginners Lis Recommmends

Right Keywords + Right Platform = Cash!

Gum Digger with His Tools - (Kauri gum made some people a lot of money in 19th century NZ - if they looked in the riight place) Dargaville

Who needs new keywords then?  Well any of us who want to make money online in my experience. As I mentioned recently, I’m using Wizzley to make some fast cash – though this approach will make you money regardless of the platform – so long as the website is in Google’s good graces. 

So does it work? Let’s see – I was aiming for 7 articles/day on Wizzley – hmm not quite – I’m up to 17 articles on my main account on wizzley – so what have I have I earned? 

As as of 13 Jan – I’ve made $46 from Amazon and  as of 15 Jan $30 from Adsense, that’s not bad given the age of most of my articles and how few of them I have.  

I’m also getting a 10% order rate ie from around 450 clicks – I had 45 orders – I don’t have a huge amount of Amazon data to judge this by – but to this looks like a pretty darn good conversion rate. 

Gum Digger with His Tools - (Kauri gum made some people a lot of money in 19th century NZ - if they looked in the riight place) Dargaville

What I am doing with Wizzley is a slightly new approach to me. As some of you will know most of us have been continuously frustrated with Google’s Adwords Tool inability to provide long-tail keywords. I’ve pretty much given up on it myself for long-tails. 

Instead what I’m using is a tool which scrapes queries from Google’s autosuggest feature – Keyword Researcher.  Basically it takes a few minutes to basically give me 500-1000 suggestions on everything I’ve tried it on. 

Now KR won’t give you either competition or numbers searched. But obviously if a term is even in KR it must be searched for more than once (which is by some stats I saw ages ago is about 40% of all Google searches). 

Basically for the length of time it takes me to write a Wizzley page – I’m not too worried about how many searchers there are either.  

  1. I basically throw a seed keyword into Keyword Researcher – and let it do its thing (incredibly fast I might add)!
  2. I add all the keywords I  have into Keyword Strategy tool and sort by search volume – you will see a lot of zeros ie no search traffic, but the term is from Google’s own “auto suggest” –  Google lies – proof positive! 
  3. I basically start at the top – focus on the terms with the most searches and create about five pages – all targeting different, but related keywords. I create exact match urls with Wizzley and I interlink these pages. 
  4. Anything that raises its head in the  top 100 – I start sending links to from SEO Cobra (using a link wheel at the moment – which seems to work great!) . Eventually they will all probably get backlinks – but the ones that show most promise get prioritized. 
  5. Rinse and repeat as they say. 
  6. Wizzley is not my site. They could go away tomorrow – I’m using them as a supplement to my income – they are not my main focus long term.  If I find some nice new keyword groups that I think I can rank – I’ll build my own site and use the Wizzley pages for backlinks and traffic funnels. 

Its nothing new – in fact its almost exactly the approach advocated back in the day when Court from the  Keyword Academy – got excited about Hubs. (well except he was using Postrunner for backlinks and Hubpages not Wizzley) – it works. 

Doing exactly the same thing will work on your own site – it will work faster  if it has authority.  How do you know if a site has authority? Easy, does an easy keyword rank with little or no backlinking? In fact its a perfect tool to use to build out a niche site to be a larger one – you really will have too many keywords to deal with! 

Would I go out and buy Keyword Strategy just to get the search volumes easily?
Probably not – you can get them (about 75 at a time) – using Google’s Adwords Tool – or you can just figure out that if you are going after a competitive term like weight loss – is going to take a while and a lot of links, while going after “travel to Burma” – not so much!

If you are doing a competitive niche focus on 3 or long word phrases. Google will tell you there is no searches of course, but my stats beg to differ, and so does its own auto-suggest tool!

Do You Need Backlinks?
I rank #1 for “wizzley review” and “wizzley scam” . I haven’t built a single backlink for those terms – but this site has lots of authority for “review” and “scam” because of previous backlinks.  For “empower network scam” –  I started at #8 but dropped to #14 – so now I’m building links and I’m back to #11 –  this is a competitive term – some people are making a lot of money with this scam. 

So if you are using a tool like Keyword Researcher to find long tail keywords – you may or may not need backlinks depending on a) how competitive the niche is and b) how much authority the site you are putting content on has. 

Categories
Article Marketing Back Links Free Tools Lis Recommmends

Wizzley Review: The Answer to the Hubpages Scam?

Are Lissie and her scams right? Well its hardly my fault that scam is a the word Google likes to give this blog authority on. Well OK maybe it is my fault! And so yes I can use it to my own benefit as in HubPages Scam, SEO Scribe Scam, Keyword Academy Scam, and of course the one that started it all SiteSell Scam. 

What is Wizzley?

Wizzley is a place to write articles and get paid via affiliate programs plus get backlinks to your sites. It has a nice set of tools which are drag drop to build your “wizzes” (yeah really that’s what an article is called, where I come from is what a little boy does when he stands up to go to the loo – but whatever!). You have to have at least 400 words, the usual topics (porn, guns, drugs) are banned as are some other rather commonly over-used topics including acne, credit card debt, forex and weight loss. 

What does Wizzley offer? 

  • revenue share starts at 50% – goes to 55% after 50 articles and 60% after 100 articles; 
  • revenue is from Adsense, Amazon, Zazzle and AllPosters – and you are paid direct by those advertisers – you know like hubpages used to be. You get paid for referrals too 10% of impressions from referral’s articles – paid from Wizzley’s share. 
  • instant indexing – I created a new user on Wizzley – added an article I’d been forced to remove from HubPages – and it was indexed within the hour! 
Stuff you should know: 
  • they have human editors, don’t submit crap – they will reject it.  
  • don’t submit duplicate content – they will reject it. 
  • minimum article length: 400 words. 
  • its a new site – it opened to the public about June 2011, therefore its not huge, and it doesn’t have the internal traffic hubpages has. 
  • you can control the urls (the default is the same as the page’s title), as the site is new, you can probably get your URL of choice. 

Wizzley Compared to HubPages

  • if you want to use the site for backlinks you have to have some advertising enabled, if you don’t want Adsense on the article, turn advertising off and then add an Amazon (or Zazzle, Allposters) module somewhere. They won’t accept articles solely for the purpose of backlinks
  • unlike HubPages you don’t have to run Adsense – turn off “advertising” on the right side of the edit page if you just want to use the other modules
  • unlike HubPages Wizzley has a nice little contents module
  • unlike HubPages there are quite a number of different ways to use the Amazon module – examples  here 
  • a brand new identity of mine on Wizzley had my first article indexed in Google inside an hour. With my 4-year old ID on hubpages recent hubs have taken days to be indexed
  • others are reporting getting keyword targeted articles on the 1st or 2nd page with little backlinking. I’ll comment when I have tried myself. 
  • Wizzley has partner sites which accept German and French articles! 

If You Make Money With HubPages You Might Want to Move to Wizzley ASAP

As of 2012 – HubPages’s Amazon modules will be paid via the HPAds programs, NOT via your own Amazon affiliate ID. If you are making good money with Amazon I shouldn’t have to explain to you why this is a terribly bad idea, and why, I have spend hours today un-publishing hubs on one of my accounts so I can move them over to  Wizzley. 

If you want to know the details of why this is a bad idea: check out my Move Amazon Earning Hub to Wizzley

Ideally of course if your articles are making money, they should be on your own sites. But I haven’t time to create a bunch of sites, so in the meantime I am moving them to Wizzley. 

On the face of it I like the layout of Wizzley and think I can use it to create a good CTR to Amazon. If the site stays in Google’s good books and pages rank easily – then as they say YAH CHING! 

Oh and here’s that EVIL AFFILIATE LINK AGAIN

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beginners Blogging Lis Recommmends Making Money Online Paid Tools The Keyword Academy

Keyword Academy 2.0 Review – TKA 2.0 Review: Scam or Legit

Lissie hard at it doing more research for you!

UPDATED January 2012. The Keyword Academy drives me insane sometimes! If we could just get Mark to dot some “i’s” and “t’s” it would be so much easier! 

Its been a long time since I did my first Keyword Academy review – nearly 3 years  in fact. So is the Keyword Academy still working in 2012?  Yes it is but some of wish Mark would hurry up and update his bloody sale’s page from time-to-time – like once every couple of years OK! 

Google is always changing the game, and in 2011, in response to changes in Google (known as “”Panda-monium” by those of low humour standards) – so-called TKA2.0 was released.  The core lessons were updated, changed from video format (really hard to update) to written form, some tools had to be retired because they just didn’t work with anymore with the changes to Google’s programming feed.

But now the buzz is that The Keyword Academy 2.0 is out and I’ve had emails asking – is this program still good to go – is it worth it could you please update your Keyword Academy review? What’s changed – will it still work for me? Does Keyword Academy work in a post-Panda SEO world and as always – is it a scam or legit ?

Quick Summary of Keyword Academy 2.0  for the Attention Challenged Reader

  • Yes TKA 2.0 still works
  • The Keyword Academy is not a Scam
  • No I don’t know whether you can earn $2000/month in the next year from online marketing (but I know that I do ).
  • You will need to put serious work in to make money – but your work ethic is far more important than spending a whole lot of money up front.
  • Yes I really do use the program to make me money – and not just from the commission I get if you sign up NOW .
  • Yes I will get a commission if you do – but there is no real hurry so keep on reading, hang around, think about it – and remember if you cancel in the first 30 days you will pay nothing.

The Longer Version for the Procrastinators and For the Long-Tail Searches (thanks Google)

Lissie hard at it doing more research for you!

First is TKA2.0 a marketing ploy? Any of you who have been around the Internet Marketing/ Make Money Online world for more than a year or two will have seen how programs are always being updated and changed, usually accompanied by a price hike. The reason is usually pure marketing – make it new – make people buy now – before time runs out, hike the price while you’re at it.

That’s never been TKA’s style – lets face it they are yet to get around to creating some decent images for us poor old affiliates to use!

So why a new TKA now?

Does the change in TKA mean that the old approach of niche sites doesn’t work anymore? Did Panda (Google’s 2011 update in March and April) – ravage niche sites developed using the TKA method? Well my sites have been just fine – some have gone up, some down, but no I didn’t wake up one day and discover they are all gone. 

Its true though that some people on the forums did see some of their sites dropping. From what I’ve seen I’ve seen no real pattern – though newer sites, as always, are more vulnerable to bounces up and down the search results. From my moderately successful point of view – nothing much has changed – Google still counts backlinks, Google still can’t read or appreciate the finer points of English usage – but Google can find a keyword and related terms – just as well as ever.

What is changing is that competition is getting heavier and nastier. Google can’t tell very easily whether a site is purely a made for Adsense (or affiliate) income – but your competitors can – and its very easy for them to report you. That’s when you need to have a legit site – a site with real readers and which offers more to the web than the chance to click an ad.

So What is The New Keyword Academy Method
Basically its not a change of direction – more a change of emphasis. The emphasis is on fewer larger sites – emphasizing more personal experience and insight.

Ahh the cynics amongst you might say, well I did, like SBI or blogging – make a name for yourself, write your passion, the visitors will come and then you parlay that into a career as a speaker, writer, or (my own personal definition of Hell) a public speaker. Build your list, sell to your list retire to a pleasant beach bungalow on a Thai beach (for which you get a heavily discounted rate in return for a glowing review on your site).

Nope the heart of the Keyword Academy method is still keywords. That’s the key difference between The Keyword Academy and the  “the blog it and they will come approach”. Rather TKA combines finding something you are interested in – then finding some related keywords – writing about them and promoting them. This is not about acquiring 100,000 twitter followers or 1779  Facebook likes.

What Does TKA Offer in 2012 And Beyond

  1. A clear and precise set of instructions on how to start your online business – instructions on how to choose a topic for your sites, how to setup your sites, how to write, monetize and build traffic. 
  2. Postrunner – I’ve described a detailed case study about how I use Postrunner for real in my business. Postrunner is the easiest way on the planet to get guest posts and backlinks for your sites. In fact Postrunner even makes me some of my income as I (and you if you join) can have sites within the system. 
  3. Forum. The one thing I find that is huge with working on-line  is the loneliness and isolation.  Not one of my real life friends and family understand what I do online to make a living – they just kinda hope its legal!  Having a forum for bouncing ideas around in, is sanity saving! Its so much better than talking to yourself about it – trust me on this one! 
  4. Webinars. Mark does a weekly webinar – I dont’ always make it live – but still, after 2.5 years I make a point of listening to each and everyone (they are recorded). Mark really is an awesome trainer/coach – he should get out and do this in person – but maybe not as he’s in the US and I’m not I probably wouldn’t get to hear him in person! 

Which brings me to my final point – and I think the most important development for the Keyword Academy for 2011 and beyond. Mark Butler has done the hardest thing of all – and realised that he can’t do it all by himself. I don’t know why, but most entrepeneurs I have met are control freaks, they can’t delegate to save themselves, or their businesses. Its a character flaw which basically means their businesses grow to a certain level and no further. Mark has managed to get past this though and has partnered with a couple of new teachers to greatly expand the core lessons and basic support. He’s also opening up the Academy to other members who may have their own unique methods of making money online to add their 2c as well.

And that to me means that the Keyword Academy will continue to prosper in 2011 and beyond. So for those of you who skipped to the bottom of the page looking for the quick solution to making money online – sorry don’t have one.

If you want to learn how to build a genuine business online though – feel free to check out the Keyword Academy through my HONKING BIG AFFILIATE  link – free for the first 30 days and then billed at $33/month – you cancel via Paypal at any time.

Categories
Lis Recommmends Making Money Online Paid Tools Product Reviews Tools

Niche Reaper Review – Scam or Legit?

Well the whole world is buzzing about the launch of the newest, greatest, bright shiny object of the Make Money Online world – Matt Garrett and Gary Prendergast’s Niche Reaper – this is pretty much the best thing since the invention of the Internet  – on account of it it will pay me a nice recurring affiliate income  and hey you guys might have fun playing with it – was that hardcore affiliate marketing enough for you?

Anyone still here? OK. WTF Lissie why are you doing flogging yet another MMO product – well Splork has a way about him that makes me buy shit that gets past his bullshit radar.

So when I was procrastinating today Splork came up in my Google reader – and I am now $67 dollars frigging poorer – thanks mate.

Niche Reaper Review

So what does Niche Reaper claim to do – well their main claims are:

  • Uncover Hidden Keywords – Over 20,000 brand new fully researched keywords unearthed every single day!
  • Dominate Entire Markets – Keywords are grouped into niches so you can build authority sites, not just keyword landing pages
  • No More Keyword Research – Simply log-in and pick a colour-coded niche we’ve done all the hard work for you
  • Remove Uncertainty – Know the dollar value of each niche BEFORE you risk your precious time and money promoting it
  • Save Time, Earn More – Quickly filter by expected earnings to build your personal portfolio of killer niches
  • Rank Faster via Google’s Backdoor – Discover hundreds of new keyword domains every day with a virtually guaranteed page one ranking
  • Join The FaceBook Gold Rush – Build Fanpages and boost their value with thousands of available keyword-rich FaceBook URLs

Been been there done that you might think – well I did anyways – as I am old and jaded. But what caught my attention was the second claim – build authority sites.

Now I’ve said before that niche sites work just fine for me, but I also know from experience of this site that once you rank for one term e.g. “site build it scam” then ranking for “hubpages scam” is a lot easier than ranking a new site for the same term.  So if you can start a site based around a bunch of keywords rather than just one – its easier – particularly if those keywords are closely related.

But stepping back one step further – Niche Reaper will actually suggest keywords to you – no not just by you putting in a keyword and it returning the variations –  they have a ticker tape screen / running board of new keywords on the front page – and within minutes I’d found some new keywords which not only have never thought of but actually had a hope in hell of ranking for with my existing sites.

The Niche Reaper’s method for calculating the ease of ranking of keywords and their potential value seems to be fairly similar to that of the Keyword Academy  not identical but nothing stupid like looking at the total number of competing sites  – but what made me put me hit the subscribe button was actually the feature that the computer itself would come up with suggestions for me.

The suggestions aren’t bad –  some are more commecial than others, a few were in Spanish, some related to the UK market – but it would be hard not to find something useful in an hour or two’s browsing.

What I Didn’t Like About Niche Reaper

  1. There is no way to add your own keywords into the tool – if they are not there already – or picked up by whatever method they use to find new keywords – you are out of luck.  There’s a comment somewhere in support saying this is a possible future enhancement.
  2. There seems to be no way to download you keyword lists – you can classify keywords of interest by adding a star – but you have to stick with the tool (and the monthly subscription) – to easily access them. Looked harder you can download them into a pretty little spreadsheet.
  3. I’m pretty cynical about the suggested values of the keywords  – I happen to have been #1 for one of the keywords I found in Niche Reaper – according to them its worth  $40,956 /month. That would be nice – my experience is that when I am #1 its worth about $333/month. (Niche Refinery from the Keyword Academy thinks its worth $3600). Now this may be a fluke keyword and exposes another limitation – the keyword I rank for (and I’m #1 in Australia and #3 in the US) gets me six times more Australians than Americans – and according to Google – most of the searchers are actually from the UK (where I don’t rank at all) – so take the values with quite a lot of cynicism.
  4. Frigging two upsells before I even bought the produce – for goodness sakes – the product looks good  – you just cheapen it by offering me a one time chance to get $XXXX value for $49.95 – or whatever it was – I wasn’t paying attention. AND DON’T SHOUT AT ME WHEN I TRY TO LEAVE THE PAGE – you will not make me a customer by getting me fired from my current job where I wasn’t supposed to be surfing the web.
  5. Too much emphasis on social media particularly Facebook – for getting traffic, never found anyone who goes on Facebook to buy stuff- just saying.
  6. Most of the training videos aren’t yet available. This may because they are just not ready yet – or it could be a ploy to keep you subscribed for month after month. I didn’t like the titles of the upcoming videos on getting traffic either – I think the Keyword Academy offers a much more solid approach for traffic generation.

What I Like About Niche Reaper

  1. The software works – its not always a given online – but this has a nice interface and it works for me. I had a look in the support pages (nice they have those too) and the only people having problems are running Internet Explorer. Use Firefox or Chrome and your life will be better – in general – I promise.
  2. The keywords are reasonable keywords – they seem reasonably commercial – ie you may actually make some money if you rank for the terms being suggested and I haven’t seen one “make money online” keyword yet!
  3. They acknowledge the value of exact match domains – still working for me  though I would stick to 3 or fewer words if at all possible.
  4. The training videos are clear and no fluff.  They recommend namecheap for domains and Hostgator for hosting both solid companies that provide excellent service  even though there are others out that paying better affiliate commissions.
  5. It appears there will be step-by-step videos for the basics of getting a site up and running and they recommend that you outsource your articles (though I thought the particular recommendation was a little on the expensive side).
  6. This is a Clickbank product – you get 60 days to get a money back refund – and Clickbank provides the refund so there is no question about it. (Although I’ve not bought a subscription product on CB before – to be on the safe side I’d unsubscribe and request the refund before the next payment is due).

What I haven’t Reviewed

I didn’t review the upsell videos/ebooks on the initial purchase.

None of the training videos under First site – after “Getting Articles”, Facebook, Twitter, Traffic, Monetization, Resources were available at the time of this review.

Who Do I Recommend Niche Reaper For

  • Someone starting out who has no idea what a buying keyword was – that was me for years – so even if you are not a beginner if this is your weakness check the product out.
  • Someone who wants to find more related and easy keywords for existing sites – this is what I’ll use it for and its nice
  • Procrastinators. I don’t think its unreasonable that its a monthly subscription – there will be an overhead maintaining the system. For many people though you could subscribe get enough keywords for the next 6-12 months in a day or two and then unsubscribe. So don’t stay subscribed for months not using it (though my paypal account will thank you if you do) – get in, get out.
  • If you know how to setup a website but not how to do keyword research – this product may be worthwhile for you.

Who Shouldn’t Buy Niche Reaper

  • While the basic training videos aren’t complete – I wouldn’t recommend this for the complete beginner – try Keyword Academy instead.
  • If you can’t afford the $67 already gone up to $77/month – obviously really but possibly needs to be said in this age of credit card debt.

This May or May Not Be a Time Limited Opportunity

The claim is that Niche Reaper will be limited to 1000 subscribers (at one time I assume) and that they are about 1/2 way there as of the the time of writing. Now a time limited offer, act now or forever miss out – is an oldie but a goodie in online marketing.

It may however be true in this case because if it became incredibly popular then there would be a) a huge load on their servers and b) the keywords they are identifying as  easy to rank for would suddenly have a whole rabble of marketers going after them – thereby shooting their prediction in their metaphorical foot.

If it does close I bet there will be a waiting list though – thought the price might go up (because they have proven the demand).

Genuinely – I don’t know if you should hurry or not but:

HERE IS MY HONKING BIG AFFILIATE LINK

if you want to.

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
Case Study Lis Recommmends Paid Tools The Keyword Academy

Keyword Academy Case Study 4 Month Update

Computer dog?

OK so its been two months since I did the last Keyword Academy Case Study update!

Postrunner Articles Live

Since the 6 May I’ve published another 13 articles – with five sent but not yet published – so yes most of them have been published in the last couple of weeks! However I  now have some regular writers on board so I will hopefully get a more consistent number of articles published this month!

Computer dog?

Rankings As of 2 August 2010

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

18 pages indexed in Google (24, 26, 15 |13 pages)

13 backlink recognized in yahoo (13,13 ,6,1, 0)

domain name exact match long-tail: 8 (12, 14, 17 | 17)

main keyword:14 (21, 17, 34 | 61)

main keyword singular: 12 (19 ,19 , 31 | 61)

Sorry I’ve stuffed up the tracking of the cousins – to the point I can’t remember which was which LOL. Suffice to say that they have all improved since 2 June and are now all on page 3 or 2.

Note about the rankings – as I am still only getting trickle traffic – according to scroogle.org I am 14th for my exact match domain name and 22 for my main keyword – or in other  words my rankings are hardly stable.   So more backlink building for me!

So I guess the overall message here – is its hard to stuff this up – if you miss a week or a month – don’t quite, give up, or (shock, horror) look for a job. Just get on with getting more links LOL

What is the Competition Up to?

Tiffany updated about a month ago her Keyword Academy Case Study

Categories
Case Study Lis Recommmends Paid Tools The Keyword Academy Tools

Keyword Academy Case Study 2 Month Update

Pack me to!

How was the month – well not very productive – as I have already mentioned.  But I did say I would keep on updating the Keyword Academy Case Study series – so here we go!

Pack me to!

Rankings As of 2 June 2010

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

24 pages indexed in Google (26, 15 |13 pages)

backlink recognized in yahoo 13 (6,1, 0)

domain name exact match long-tail: 12(14, 17 | 17)

main keyword: 21( 17, 34 | 61)

main keyword singular: 19 ( 19 , 31 | 61)

cousin keyword #1 ; 33 (24 ,63 | 47)

cousin keyword #2: 15( 22, 43 | > 100)

cousin keyword #3 90( 82 ,>100 | > 100)

cousin keyword #4  >100 (100, > 100 |>100)

cousin keyword #5:  38, (25 (and 78 double listing),49 | 37)

cousin keyword #6:  50 ( 39, 60 | 71)

cousin keyword #7:  35 (33 , 60 | 71)

Postrunner Articles Live

27 articles are live – and yes I’m slack and haven’t added any more!

So really should go away and right some more articles write now!

How’s the Competition

Alana seems to be the only one left updating her Keyword Academy Experiment

Tiffany has now got her Keyword Academy Case Study update up now!

Categories
Back Links Case Study Lis Recommmends

Keyword Academy Case Study – One Month Update

c
http://beginner-blogger.com/make-money-blogging-keyword-academy-experiment-day-31/

End of the first month with my little Keyword Academy Case Study with the statistics for my new site after a month of Postrunner submissions. Basically the site seems to be growing naturally with  solid page 2 rankings for both my exact domain match and my main keyword. I have the distinct feel that the exact domain bonus drops siginficantly down if you have more than two words in the domain (this domain has four).

c
Supreme Court, Wellington New Zealand

Rankings as of 30 April 2010

Rankings on 30 April (14 April 2020 in brackets | 8 April 2010)

26 pages indexed in Google (15 |13 pages)

backlink recognised in yahoo 6 (1, 0)

domain name exact match long-tail: 14 (17 | 17)

main keyword: 17 (34 | 61)

main keyword singular: 19 (31 | 61)

cousin keyword #1 ; 24 (63 | 47)

cousin keyword #2: 22 (43 | > 100)

cousin keyword #3 82 (>100 | > 100)

cousin keyword #4 >100 (> 100 |>100)

cousin keyword #5: 25 (and 78 double listing) (49 | 37)

cousin keyword #6: 39 (60 | 71)

cousin keyword #7: 33 (60 | 71)

Postrunner Articles Live

25 articles live 2 still waiting review. Over all iIve had 3 or 4 articles returned after 7 days because the directory owner is asleep at the wheel.   When you schedule posts in Postrunner – they are not  actually sent to the directory you select until the date scheduled so you may have to wait for another 7 days for the article to be approved.

Of the 25 articles live – all but 4 are indexed. One of those has only been live 2 days the others have been live for over two weeks so I may need to build some links to get  them indexed.

Expenses to Date

25 articles @ $3/article from The Content Authority = $75

Income to Date

I haven’t put Adsense on the site – but I may do soon because I am starting to get trickle long-tail traffic. I have an affiliate product which as so far has had a bout 30 clicks (but no sales).

Hows the Competition Doing?

Alana has battled through hardware failures to update us on her Keyword Academy Experiment

Tiffany’s posted her one month’update at Passive Income Goals

Has anyone got an update? Let me know and I’ll link you here!