Category: Product Reviews

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Paid Tools Product Reviews Tools

All I Want for Christmas Are Long Tail Keywords – Keyword Researcher Review

Yeah Christmas or whatever you choose to celebrate or not in this happy/stressful/profitable time of the year!  I think its fair to say that 2011 has been a bit of an up and down year in terms of Internet Marketing, maybe I’m just bloody lucky, but really all the bad stuff that’s happened to me has been thanks to the TOS changes with HubPages plus nervous clients. 

Google has been, interesting, but the most interesting thing, and totally bloody irritating part, are their continuing moves to restrict access to their goldmine of data known as the Google keywords tool.

For a long time using the tool direct doesn’t give you real long tail keywords – you only get to about 3 or 4 words: a real long term is longer than that. Its very, very focussed, its not in Google’s best interest to reveal those because a) PPC advertisers would save a fortune only bidding on very specific terms and b) evil affiliate marketers would make way too much money. 

Google’s changes to their API TOS has meant than some previously good tools have gone away – and I am sure I’m not the only one who has found I miss my long-tail search tools 🙁  

But nature abhorrs a vacuum – well Internet Marketers do anyways – so when a tool is lost, and the whinging is loud-  something else pops up to fill its place! 

However because its Christmas – here are three two (third one coming in a day or so – the developer is just sorting out his landing page, and this is getting too long anyways) rather cool ways to work around Grumpy Google: 

Tony’s Keyword Researcher Review 

Easily get all the long-tails that Google provides through “auto-suggest” – really quick way to build out a site or an article.

This cool little tool is based on Google suggest – you know the annoying pop-up that you get when you start typing a query into Google. Its not the only tool that does this – (scrapebox.com is the common one) – but I like this tool a lot more: very, very easy to use, just watch the videos at Keyword Researcher and get on with it! I’ve been doing this for a while and Tony has some different wrinkles I’d not thought of… 

Google doesn’t say how many searchers need to be looking for a phrase before it pops up into auto-suggest, but we can all assume its probably more than a few. 

Now this tool won’t give you the competition figures, but it will give you a pretty long list of suggestions – and you can continue your investigations from there.  

Nice Features: 

  • easy and intuitive to use – doesn’t try to be overly fancy;
  • free download and trial (does everything the paid version does but only on the first 1/2 of the alphabet) 
  • one-time cost and cheap! 

Watch Out For: 

  • the tool is installed on your PC and its scrapping Google results – you’ll get banned (plus anyone else using the same IP) – its not big deal – the tool will point this out to you – wait 15 minutes – try again. 
  • this won’t give you competition or difficulty for your keyword phrase – doesn’t pretend to.  To get these you will need to put the terms through another tool: Google Adwords, Keyword Strategy, or Neale’s No Results Report (review coming this week) – would all work! 

Good For: 

Want some variation on your core keyword – for sub-headings? Want to build out a site? Looking for a few easy pages to rank on Wizzley?  

That evil, self-serving affiliate link again: Keyword Researcher – even if you don’t buy – check out the vids they are worth listening to! 

Tool number two for today (hell a girl’s gotta get her commissions up you know!) is 

Amazon Gold Mine Review 

Provides new lists each week of Amazon products based on their price/popularity/discount/top ratings and lots of reviews. In other words – the products you want to the affiliate for! Also provides a “bargain basement bin” for very cheap products – which I don’t use – but might even save you the fee if you are in the US! 

Lets be upfront – I’m not the world’s most successful Amazon affiliate, I’ve only recently started focussing on it, but I’ve sold enough random products over the years to be constantly amazed at what does actually sell on there (thank you whoever you are who decided to buy $300 worth of textbook and maths teaching guides, and the guy who bought not one, but two $500+ woodworking tools!) And no I am in neither of those niches! That’s the power of amazon-  get the customer to click through on your 99c e-book and suddenly they will remember they need to do thousands of dollars of Xmas shopping – all on your commission! 

Nice Features:

  • the last six week’s reports are available in the membership area – you don’t have to rush to download them. In fact maybe its all the reports since you became a member? Anyways I’m pretty sure on subscription you get the last 3! 
  • sorted by department – so its easy to find your niche. 

Watch Out For

  • to be up front – you can do this yourself – at least the basic query – by using some clever stuff in Google – for me – I can’t be arsed  the easy format and the tagging of which products are “NEW” on the list each week – is worth it for me! 
  • its a monthly subscription – not a huge amount of money – but yeah its money- a pain. Take a note of the sub date and remember to cancel in Paypal if you are not using it – or you have enough results for now. 
  • there’s an up-sell of some AMAZING affiliate system on the front page – I know nothing about it and don’t recommend it – all I know about Amazon I’ve learned from Dave from ZenDuck

Good For 

The criteria for product selection means that its easy for anyone to write a review – so I’m using the list to develop ideas for Wizzley for a new niche. Basically I can try a product related niche out – see if it ranks easily in Wizzley and build out a site later if it works out (and use Wizzley for the backlinks). 

Yeah and here’s that evil self-serving link again: Amazing Gold Mine – or take the criteria they use and develop your own queries! 

THE BIT AT THE BOTTOM YOU SHOULD READ!

I’ve found a cool wrinkle on the hubpages fiasco – but I don’t want to shoot my foot here – I will be saying something to subscribers later this week – so sign up OK – that’s the honking bit form just below here – that one -the big one you can’t miss! 

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
Adsense beginners Blogging Catalyst Paid Tools Product Reviews Tools

Catalyst Theme and Adsense Review

My Dutch is about at the same level as my php - I can recognise some bits but I can't write it!

OK this is another instalment in my collection of articles about how the premium WordPress theme Catalyst: it may not be free but it allows even the technically terrified to  do cool stuff!

On of the things that I like about Catalyst is that its one theme that I can use for everything – from a mini-site to this site, to a client’s professional site. I use Catalyst for all  of them. Today I’m concentrating on using Catalyst with Adsense.

Now there are plenty of WordPress plugins that promise to manage your Adsense easily with any theme. But plugins have their own issues- every plugin you add to a site adds a level of complexity and invariably need upgrading every time WordPress upgrades, and sometimes they break and sometimes they even send a quiet percentage of impressions to their author’s Adsense publisher ID!

There are a number of ways to deal with Adsense using the Catalyst theme – I think I have the simplest – and I will point you to a couple of alternative solutions at the end of this post.

How to Manage Adsense on a WordPress Blog

My Dutch is about at the same level as my php - I can recognise enough to order lunch but I don't speak it!

My requirements for when I want Adsense to show – and more importantly NOT to show on my websites come straight from the terms of service provided by our friends at Google.

  1. I only want to display at most 3 ad units and 3 link units on any one page.
  2. I don’t want to display ads on “filler” pages such as the privacy policy and “thin” pages like the “about” page.

More specifically I want:

  • to have a front page which consists of my last 3 posts;
  • a link unit in the header to show on all pages and posts except the “filler” and “thin” pages;
  • a honking big rectangle of ads to show near the top of each post  floated right in the text – including the 3 posts on the front page;
  • I want an ad block to show at the end of the post and in the sidebar – but only on single posts – not on the front page.

Now if  you know php you will be already shouting something like “use php if single command to only display on single posts” – but remember I’m an idiot and I don’t know anything about php, I struggle in html and  my CSS only got fluent since the last upgrade of Catalyst gave me the brilliant – “hold your hand point and click CSS builder” thingy.

Adsense Using Catalyst Theme Layouts

If you are used to free themes you may expect that every page and post has to have the same basic layout of sidebars and widgets. With Catalyst there is no such limitation, Every post and page can have a different layout.

Catalyst allows you to create an unlimited number of layouts – each of which can have a different arrangement of widths, widgets, sidebars – anything really. I use a combination of custom widgets and layouts to control where my Adsense ads show. This involves no php coding and a very little CSS –  it goes like this:

  1. Create a custom layout  called supportpage – this is for use of the privacy policy and about page. After creating the layout – you need to edit each page or post that you want to use the new layout by changing the drop down below the edit post area. Now you have a simple layout for these ancillary pages – job done.
  2. I also create a layout for each post page I want to display Adsense on – this I called “postpage”.
  3. Now for the custom widgets – I create three widgets: bottominpost, rectangleinpost and headerlinks – I think you get the idea what I might be putting in these! Each custom widget is hooked into a different place on the catalyst theme – a hook is just where you attach a widget into a theme – that’s how I have the yellow boxes below the header on this blog – there an awful lot of them – here is the visual for the main default catalyst home page hooks! 
  4. For each widget I have the option as to which of my layouts I want to use the widget on: so I control that none of these widgets show on the supportpage layout – but the headerlinks  and rectangleinpost widgets shows on the default and the postpage layouts and the bottominpost layout shows only on the postpage layout. You may be getting the idea about now – using descriptive names is good- because you end up with a lot of widgets!
  5. Now this is the techie bit – sorry – you need to click on the custom CSS option. The only thing we haven’t done yet is made sure that honking big rectangle of an Adsense ad floats right within your text – you can build what you want with the CSS builder option (this is a good place to change the colour or other styling of a widget too!) – or you can steal my code -here its is – suitable for the large rectangle Adsense layout:

    .rectangleinpost {
    width: 340px;
    height: 284px;
    float: right;
    padding: 2px 0px 0px 2px;
    }

    Now head over to your widgets page and drop text boxes in all your new widgets – into each text box drop the correct piece of Adsense code – job done!

Bonus – using the layouts will give you a new sidebar (if you chose that option) on your posts – so you can toss another tasteless skyscraper Adsense block in there as well.

Adsense on Catalyst Using Hook Boxes

Costa’s post on How To Create An Adsense Optimized Child Theme will walk you thru this one- must admit that post meant I kinda  understood hook boxes for the first time too! But it has that scary stuff php again …

Adsense on Catalyst Using Widgets

RT an American living in the Philippines has a similar approach to mine and wrote How To Display Adsense on a Single Post with Catalyst Theme as a guest post for Costa. But because he isn’t using layouts he’s forced to use the evil php stuff in his widgets – ugg!

Seriously there are lot of ways to achieve the same result in Catalyst –  all of these approaches will get you to the same place – but your mileage may vary depending on your skills and exactly what you are trying to achieve.

I actually think the use of layouts is really powerful – if for example you wanted to have different advertising (or no advertising) on different types of posts – e.g. some of your articles may suit Amazon ads – while others will have an affiliate offer or Adsense. In fact I may play around with something like that on this site – keep watching 🙂

I tell you what however you do it – once you have used the power of a decent framework theme like Catalyst you will NEVER EVER want to edit theme’s code again – just avoiding the whole drama of upgrading and losing all your customizations is so worth avoiding!

Oh and yeah – honking big affiliate link for Catalyst here! I’d be curious to hear from others doing something similar with a fancy theme – or are you all using plugins?

 

Categories
Paid Tools Product Reviews Rants The Keyword Academy Tools

Postrunner Review: The “Quality” Debate

These cars aren't Quality - but tourists now pay a premium to hire them in Berlin!

UPDATE: April 2012 – Postrunner V2 Review

If your response to my title was WTF is Postrunner – then check out my earlier post. If you are a member of The Keyword Academy you will know  that Postrunner is system used with TKA in order to create keyword anchored links for your sites.

I’ve compared to BuildMyRank to Postrunner – and Mark is now trying to differentiate Postrunner from BuildMyRank and similar schemes.

His argument is that Postrunner needs to evolve:

  • needs “better quality” sites in Postrunner.
  • the reason more “quality” sites aren’t in Postrunner is because of the “quality” of the articles being sent to them.
  • his proposed solution is an author scoring system which will reward the writers (or buyers) of superior articles.

The Argument About “Quality” Articles

As soon as the thread started in the forum the predictable grammar Nazi’s (Nazis’? Nazis’s ??) were out in force. Too many trailing commas – FAIL. Use of nonstandard spellings FAIL. To be fair to Mark, in the seminar he specifically mentioned that he wasn’t concerned about grammar and spelling problems, he was more worried about the articles being relevant and having a point.

Its all looking like this will be seen, by many, most of whom haven’t hit the $10/month income level yet, in the community, as an opportunity to FAIL all of those authors who use too many commas in a sentence…

I have two sites in Postrunner at the moment – one is a niche, passion quality site, the other one is a general site full of trashy Postrunner articles, which I just put back in during the webinar yesterday – inside 12 hours I have received over 7 articles.

These cars aren't Quality - but tourists now pay a premium to hire them in Berlin!

What I Look For When I Get Postrunner Articles on My Quality Postrunner Site

I put my Independent Travel site into Postrunner – basically to get content when I couldn’t be arsed writing, and to see what keywords people were trying to rank for in the travel niche – a niche that is my passion but pays me very, very poorly. Now it gets about 2/3 posts a week – which is a nice number. I reject at least a third of those. So this is how to get your well-written, gramatically perfect article declined from my site.

  1. The site linked out to – only consists of a “hello world” post (seriously its happened).
  2. If the site linked to is a general postrunner site, or similar article directory – this is a new automatic DECLINE  I picked up from Build My Rank.
  3. The 2 anchored links are in the the last words in the article – normally on separate lines -I don’t know who the hell is teaching this – its certainly not TKA – but please stop it – it looks stupid and its a loser for SEO duh!
  4. The two links are to the exact same page on the site being promoted (less of this seems to be happening these days).
  5. Write about all-inclusive vacations – like duh! The site’s main keyword is not a secret! If you have glanced at the front-page you know I, and my readers, are not interested in all-inclusive vacations!
  6. Write about timeshares – timeshares are IMHO (and its my site so my opinion rules) – an investment scam – not a holiday option.  (Note to Mark – I would explain this to the timeshare peddlers if I could have a longer site requirements description).

Hmm note how I haven’t actually read the article yet -all I looked for was the links and followed them. If I have to actually rate the article for the author score you are adding work for no good purpose here…

Now the following points – won’t get you automatically declined – but a number of them together will:

  1. The article is 301 words with 2 outbound links (doesn’t apply if there is only one link).
  2. Site still has the default header image from the default WordPress theme.
  3. If the site is selling a product but has only Adsense I am likely to reject the article.
  4. If the site is using one of Court’s old SEO themes  that have been done to death and are probably on G’s watch list.
  5. The title and sometimes the entire article is only loosely related to the anchored text of the links. Let’s get real here people – I want to rank your article – its good for you, its good for me! After all I thought you WANTED an authorative link! So don’t give me an article about packing tips and then link to fashion bags for ladies! This is probably the hardest judgement call sometimes I will get an excellent article – but with a bland generic title – frankly I rewrite the title – so we can both benefit.
  6. I rarely reject for grammar and/or spelling – sometimes I lightly edit.  If its embarrassingly bad language which is hard to read I will reject – but I do it very rarely.  Any automated grammar and spelling check would fail many of the perfectly good posts on the site – because some are written by native Englishmen, in fluent English,  some in fluent American, some in fluent English written by non-native speakers – all of the English is acceptable – and the quality can be great – but no automated system will ever deal with the complexity and depth that is English – certainly not Google.

What I Look For On My General Postrunner Site

Within 10 hours of reinstating this site into Postrunner during yesterday’s webinar, I had 8 articles! Hand on heart I do NOT read every article. I scan – if its appears to make some sense, is not badly spun and relates to the anchored text I’ll take it.

I do however check every link – and reject any article whose site fails the first 4 points above! In other words – what the article links to is FAR more important to me  than whether the nouns and adjectives are in agreement. I also reject any site promoting anything to do with owning or using firearms.

I will probably move this site to some other category – its starting to make money and I will focus on the niches that its ranking for.

Which is the Quality Site of These Two.

Well if you want passion and love and age – then midlifetravel.com is it – its my original site – its started off as an html site developed in Dreamweaver in 2007. Its been up in several forms over the years. It ranks #1 for my original keywords “travel over 30s” – unfortunately no one actually searches for the term LOL.  Its a PR0. I keep it, I love it, I post to it and I link to it. However this is a hobby site not a real money making venture.  Most of the content on it was written by me, a genuine expert, and has no outbound links.

The site that accepts practicably everything? Is just over a year old, has had very little link building to it (by me). Well its a PR2 and in the last month (when I published nothing new on it) made about $1/day – its on its way. I’ll start building out the content for which its already ranking for and adding more posts without outbound links on similar topics. In other words I will make it legitimate! Will I go back and fix the grammar and spelling -nope!

Still reading – you must be bored …

I have gotten a little fond of amplify. I started using it – because Griz did but I’ve found a use for it.  I use it to share the stuff I find genuinely interesting (or funny) in the weird and evolving world of making an online income – if you already follow this blog on Facebook (like in the footer) you will get my amplified updates – but otherwise follow Lis Sowerbutts on amplify directly. It also allows me to tweet without ever going anywhere near twitter – all good!

 

Categories
Blogging Catalyst Paid Tools Product Reviews Tools WordPress

Catalyst Theme Review

Yup its all changed around here again! Well not the content just he look and feel (ie if you are reading this via RSS – click thru !). I had hoped that going from Thesis to Frugal would be my last major change.  However Eric Hamm -the guy who created Frugal – upgraded the product so much – it now has a new name – Frugal is now Catalyst !

Catalyst actually came out just before I took off for a 2 month overseas trip with a 10″ netbook – netbook are good for lots of things but doing site design is not one of them!

When I got back I had a look at Catalyst and upgraded some of my niche sites with it. I liked it – but it didn’t have Frugal’s easy to install front page – with a wide choice of widgets. So I  didn’t upgrade this site. Then back in February Catalyst upgraded to 1.1 – and YES now there are EZI Widgets – which allows a flexible front page – like Frugal’s – but with even more options!

Still I hesitated – this site is a pain – it has a number of different looking posts and pages,  I didn’t really want to think about it.   Finally though I had to bite the bullet and get on with upgrading from Frugal to Catalyst – why?

  1. They have a discount for new sign ups of 25% (and incentives for affiliates) – so use the code: CATWP25when you sign up HERE – discount good to the 31 March 2011; (And yes I get an increased affiliate percentage in March too…);
  2. I think I can add value to Catalyst and do a series of tutorials here that will help the CSS-incompetent, design-disabled of you – you know people just like me!

I’ve already done a post on Catalyst’s SEO Options and I also what to talk about how to use Catalyst with the Keyword Academy’s Postrunner and also how to use it as a static site rather than a blog.

But I guess I should explain how I adapted the look of the site here.  I could have reproduced the look of the old site – but I decided to keep the general layout but change up the details and the look of the site.

From an SEO point of view its important not to make huge overnight changes to the main pages of your sites – or if you do be prepared to accept that your ranking will fluctuate until Google comes to terms with the changes.

How To Make a Catalyst Site Look Like This Site.

  1. Install Catalyst 1.1.1,  then install dynamik child theme and activate it.
  2. Go to dynamik options/import/export – and play around with installing some dynamik skins until you find something you like (I think this is fluid blue).
  3. I kept the same top navbar – but used a custom menu which is new in WordPress fairly recently – much easier to manage the order etc than remembering to change priority on individual pages.  Set the option Core Options/Navbar
  4. I dropped the header image – instead the header is plain text. The graphic of my sitting on the beach is a no-repeat image in the body background.  I played with the header dimensions until they were something that I liked – 930px x 75px
  5. To do the front page and also some of the featured content: I used Ezi Wiidgets and setup a front page with 1/1/3 layout PLUS 2 feature widgets above the content (not showing on the front page but they do on other pages) PLUS a “fat footer” of 4 widgets. Each Widget can be styled separately so I add a custom style to the top of the front page and use Custom CSS to make its background yellow. The middle widget  and the bottom three widgets on the front page are all featuring a single page (excerpts in the case o the bottom 3). This is why Catalyst is so easy to get up and running with – widgets are easy to rearrange and the Catalyst specific excerpts widget makes it easy to feature content from a specific page (an improvement on Frugal where you tended to write the content in text widgets which doesn’t have enough spell checking for me.)
  6. Although much of my site has a single right sidebar some major pages I prefer to minimize distractions on so they have no sidebars – for example any of the pages on the top navigation or the 3 along the bottom of the front page.  I use Advanced Options to create a custom layout with no sidebar – and then edited each page to use the “nosidebar” layout I’d just created.
  7. I’ve put most of my signup and navigational aids in the fat footer which is throughout the site -maybe its a mistake – no one will ever sign up again – but I prefer that stuff out of the way.
  8. I used 2 Ezi Top Feature widgets to create the two boxes highlighted below the header (again with custom CSS to change the background). These I chose to display on posts but not pages.
  9. I created a custom widget which shows grey at the bottom of my posts to display my TKA advertisement.

Hope this helps for someone who is trying to combining a fairly general blog with some rather specific pages!

Categories
Making Money Online Product Reviews Rants

Site Build It Review – Griz and Ken Evoy Best Friends?

I have been pretty much off grid doing the holiday (vacation) thingy. But I am beyond angry so I need to blog about it – if you don’t like bad language – back button now!

A few days ago Grizz made an interesting post about how he became one of the good guys in the Make Money Online niche – and why he walked away from it. Go ahead and have a read – a genuine apology – even though many of us considered it completely unnecessary – after all I’ve never paid Griz a cent and he’s partly responsible for the decent online income that I make these days.

To be honest his original post freaked me out a bit – maybe I was delusional that my little mini-sites with lots of links would make me money. But Google keeps sending money to my account – the evidence told me that his original methods work just fine – for me anyway. Griz’s business has changed – he appears to have found a way to combine golf with making loads of cash – good on him – but no amount of money is worth learning golf as far as I am concerned.

He wants to change the direction of  his business and has decided to share that info with the rest of us. For free as usual – as I said Griz owes no one an apology.

But I am not angry with Griz.

What has been out of the pub in Ireland and online is the comments on his post – specifically several comments from Ken Evoy. For those who haven’t been around for a couple of years – you may may not know who the hell Evoy is – he’s the owner of Site Build It!

For the back story – Griz summarises it quite nicely here: Site Build It Review.

I wrote a post a review of Site Build It – it wasn’t a good post (I’ve tidied it up a bit over the years) – it wasn’t well researched – hell it wasn’t spell checked. I would have been turned down by 1/2 of the owners of Postrunner sites!

That post ranks #1 for “site build it scam” to this day.

It ranks because of the backlinks to it – the back links orchestrated by Vic and Grizz. The entire exercise taught not just me, but many others the strength of relevant backlinks to promote content on the web.

Evoy’s initial comment was congratulating Griz for turning to the “content is King” side – whatever you want to believe, but everyone should note carefully what Griz does and read very carefully between the lines. (Note I have my own views but the Guinness is calling so that will have to wait).

I’m not furious at that comment.

What I am furious is his his next comments (well more like essays really)- which rapidly turns into a defense of SBI’s outrageous pricing structure ($300 per a Website/year).

The justification for the pricing is – (much paraphrased) – this is how Site Sell makes it money. My business model requires it. Yeah make your own choices about supporting Evoy’s lifestyle. (Oh and yes they do fire people who don’t get on in the group hug of the forums – as mentioned by Evoy).

I could debate this again – but frankly if you aren’t prepared to learn how to install WordPress on a hosting account – then you really should probably look for a different scheme to make money online.

Its not just that this is the same old, repetition of the SBI! marketing ptich – its the fact that all of this is happening on Griz’s apology post! That’s why I am not debating this on Griz’s post – its not appropriate. So Ken Evoy – here are some simple blogging etiquette hints – you may want to incorporate them into your training manuals – I am sure you can expand these into at least 2000 words of content.

  • commenting with and disagreeing with the post is fine – so long as its not abusive;
  • taking the comments totally off topic and promoting your own financial interests is not. Yes I know you didn’t start it but you sure has hell escalated it;
  • shorter is better – writing essays on other people’s blogs is the equivalent of being the grandstander at the wedding reception who won’t shut up after a 30 minute speech when 10 minutes would have been more than enough.

Enough said  I think – I’ve seen outrageous comments before – but Ken you beat the lot of them – and you claim to teach people to build a business – that’s just tragegic!

If you found this post because you were googling “sit build it review” – then please consider what Ken’s own online behavior tells you about him and his company ..

Bugger   – didn’t work still angry – more Guinness is the only answer . Find my original Site Build It Review here

Categories
Article Marketing Back Links Paid Tools Product Reviews Search Engines Tools

Build My Rank and Backlinking Profiles

Rottnest Island, Western Australia

Build My Rank really has been a business changer for me.  Well not by itself obviously – in fact if you don’t have a plan to start of with then – you don’t need this post you need the Keyword Academy instead!

Back about a month ago I signed up  to BuildMyRank: review and  rankings were on my mind, then I was pretty excited about it. Well now I am ecstatic about it! Why? I’m seeing rankings jump and jump significantly and with them income. Will the rankings hold? Who knows – but meanwhile I’ll take the money thanks.

Have I a got detailed results to prove this? Nope – these were sites that I was previously supporting using Postrunner –  so maybe  I could have waited a month and seen the results jumping on the Postrunner submissions- I don’t know – frankly it takes a lot of time to document that type of detail and I don’t have duplicate sites: same niche, same age similar content etc to do  proper split testing. Instead  I swapped my writer over from writing for Postrunner to BMR and sat back to see what happened.

What I do know is that BMR plus my writer is hands-off outsourcing for me – and Postunner plus writer wasn’t. That’s worth not just about an hour a day of my time, its more than that because it means that suddenly there are about 17 sites I don’t have to think about more than once a month – I can focus on other stuff.  Important stuff like this:

Rottnest Island, Western Australia

Oh OK and growing my business as well …

A few days ago several people posted about a minor PR update and a Google dance in their rankings. I knew that nothing dramatic had happened to mine as my Adsense was tracking nicely to an all time record – but on the 1st I ran all my sites for rankings again in Market Samurai – I was up, almost across the board, sometimes dramatically so, sometimes just a little. Now these are all sites which have fairly similar characteristics:

  • they are mainly niche sites – less than 30 pages indexed generally;
  • the youngest are 7 months old, most are over a year;
  • most are WordPress, some aren’t (I see no difference between html sites and blogs in the rankings);

But I also took an old site – hadn’t been updated for nearly 2 years. I wrote a new page focused on a new keyword – used Impact Page Builder to optimize the on-page SEO – posted 10 back links to the new page from BMR over a week – its now ranking in the 20s for a moderately competitive term.Pretty darn impressed with that.

Do I Need Backlinks At  All?

Some will say not – some successful webmasters say they never build backlinks. They argue that you might as well spend your time building your own site rather than adding it to other people’s site. Most of those webmasters don’t make any money – so I tend to discount them  – after all this ain’t a hobby! Some of them do a lot of real-world promotion – or have even got at book to their name. I discount them – that is not a business model for me.

But some of them make money , good money, better than I do.  What do they have that I don’t? Without exception they have websites which are 10 or more years old – that age thing you can’t fake! And the site has been up that whole time, even if it started off long before WordPress and is now a blog – it doesn’t matter – Google doesn’t care about your technology – but it REALLY cares that the site has been about the same general topic for 10 years.

Which tends to mean that the sites involved – are passion sites – the person started them in 1999 because they LOVED the topic – not because they could make money from it. The clever ones make money now.  And they have backlinks, lots of backlinks,  natural, organic backlinks because they are market leaders in their niche and other people link to them – and yes every one of the sites I know about in this category are SOCIAL sites too.

If you have one of those sites – you don’t need me and congratulations. Do I really, really, really wish I’d started my passion site about independent travel in 1999 – oh yes I do!  But I didn’t and you – gentle reader – probably didn’t either. So  for the rest of us – well we need to game the system basically … you need to manipulate your backlinks. You need to build them, you need to pay someone else to do it for you.

Lis’s Views on Backlink Profiles

  • If the site is new – its more important to get authority links than it is to get bulk links. You need to get some “real” links from sites which are recognized as authority in the niche (not just PR). Some Postrunner sites will work for this – as will blogs which accept guest posts in your niche – if its a social niche that is.
  • Different niches work differently for backlinks – travel bloggers, and frugal living bloggers comment on each other’s sites ALL the time.  Niches about embarrassing personal problems and serious debt – not so much.  I suspect that Google has a “normal backlink profile” for some niches – deviate too far from it – and you will be sand boxed for a while. You will come back after a while (or any competitor could take out any site at anytime).
  • I have ranked and kept a site in position #1 with only crappy backlinks and no new content – for 2 years – its hard to stuff this up but some approaches will see results faster than others. I’ve NEVER seen a site deindexed because of bad backlinks – certainly have seen sites sent to position 500 purgatory though!
  • If your sites are in a niche which is “social” then its probably worth having some twitter and Facebook love going on around it – after all it looks normal …
  • Getting the SEO right and siloing your site so that it doesn’t have unrelated links on the page – really does seem to be significant

Lis’s Views on Backlink Services

  • All backlinking services are gaming the system: Postrunner  and EzineArticles included.
  • Gaming the system works – to a greater or lesser extent.
  • Backlink services work better with a more established site – that old thing of site age is still something you can’t fake – if you want a genuine short-cut in this game – buy an aged site in the niche you want.
  • Backlinks to backlinks also works – I think this is the major weakness of Postrunner – but you can help yourself with this with things like backlinking services to keep your links indexed.
  • Until you are making about $500/month from your sites I don’t really think you can justify paying for additional backlink services – and if your sites are less than one year old you are also probably  risking your money as well.
  • There is a risk involved with using any service –  sometimes they do die a slow death – which may be terminal if the owners don’t do something about it (basically Google discounts the sites being used over time) – don’t ever signup for a service for longer than a month. On the flip side you really need to commit to 2 or 3 months to really evaluate a service so that is the amount of money you are risking.
  • Doing ANY backlinking is never a waste – at the moment BuildMyRank seems to work exceptionally well – that may drop back to just averagely well – the point is if  I am using it to build at least 10 links a day to my sites I will outrank you if you are still worrying about whether you should backlink at all.

Sorry I went on a bit – the bottom line is – this game isn’t that hard -and it doesn’t change that much over the years – and the best info you will ever get is building your own sites and EXPERIMENTING – then you will really find out what does and does not work.

I’ve just enrolled in  a new backlink scheme too – but I probably won’t have any results before the end of the year on this one – so I’m not prepared to name it here – but it does have absolutely EVIL affiliate program so contact me if you want the link LOL – we can do a deal!

So are you building baclinks? Using  what if any services? Using your own  backlink sites only? Or do you only publish on your own site?

Categories
Article Marketing Back Links Build My Rank Paid Tools Passive Income Product Reviews Tools

Build My Rank Review Compared to Postrunner

OK short version – BuildMyRank.com is the best thing since sliced bread –  will make you millions in your sleep without doing anything  – can’t imagine why they are giving it away at the current price – but I am sure it will go up – ACT now to lock in the currently insanely low price, BUY IT now!

SELF SERVING HONKING BIG AFFILIATE LINK HERE!

You still here? Darn – oh you want a real review ? Sorry I can’t actually give that to you – cause I haven’t been using it long enough to give you months and months of stats. But I’ve used it long enough to be hugely excited by it.

UPDATE: May 2011 – buildmyrank still works well – and I am still using – the price has gone up a little – details below. 

 UPDATE: November 2011 – I’m still using BMR and am happy with it but also check out a Build My Rank alternative that is a new service – SEO Cobra Backlinks

 

As I wrote recently – I am not 100% happy with Postrunner – mainly because of the percentage of articles which aren’t getting indexed. So when I  was checking out Build My Rank – this – from their FAQ – jumped out at me:

Do you build backlinks to my content? Yes, every time a post is distributed we do two things. First, we create an RSS feed mashup and submit to several feed aggregators. This really helps content get indexed super quick. And next we select a random assortment of social bookmark sites such as Delicious, and web 2.0 properties like Twitter, to submit links to. On average each post receives around 50 backlinks.

Not coincidentally I had been playing with ways of getting my Postrunner articles  indexed –  that involved RSS feeds and automated bookmarking … I knew what I had to do – but I hadn’t managed to automate it entirely and I was deep in the learning curve. And then I’d have to teach my outsourcer to do it… BuildMyRank had got there before me – I was prepared to pay for that!

So rather than doing a straight BuildMyRank review (I haven’t got a hope in hell for ranking for the term basically) – I thought I would do a side-by-side comparison of the two systems: the good the bad the ugly…

Page Rank  of the Network’s Sites: BuildMyRank v. Postrunner

BMR has no PR zero sites. Postrunner has a majority of PR0’s. BMR wins on this one. Here is a screen shot from my BMR dashboard after 29 posts had been published …

Is PR absolutely critical? No – but it helps – high PR sites often get better indexing and authority. Its not enough for me to buy a system though.

Distribution to Sites: BuildMyRank v. Postrunner

With Postrunner the writer has to choose the site that they want their article to appear on. With BMR you chose a frequency (or a schedule) for posts to be published at and move on. The sites are selected randomly. I don’t know how many sites are in the system (I know Postrunner has about 800) – but so far I’ve not seen the same site twice.

With Postrunner – I still get a lot of articles returned after 7 days – for no reason except the owner can’t be arsed approving them. I have to resubmit them – its a pain. BMR is a much smoother workflow as far as distribution is concerned.

Also in Postrunner those with high PR sites – get overwhelmed. The value of the page rank is reduced because your post will fall off the front page  often instantly or within hours. Often too the page rank is from a dropped domain – it will disappear with the next update.

The automated distribution of BMR means that PR5 sites aren’t hammered – they seem to get the same rate of posting as the PR1 sites – that is good for the long term potential. With the rate of posting it looks like most of my articles will stay on the front page for around about a week – which will also help indexing.

“Quality” of BuildMyRank Sites v. Postrunner

Oh the “quality” debate. Both sites have the same rules: no duplicate content, no spun content. Both sites have human review of every article published. BMR also reviews every site that you are links to before you can build any links to it. BuildMyRank won’t let me submit with typos.

Postrunner allows 2 links per a 300 word article. BuildMyRank allows a link per every 150 words ie. you can publish a 150 word article for one link, a 450 word article for 3 etc. Because I believe the second link is heavily discounted the BMR model allows me to get more links for the same amount of writing.

Diversity of the sites. I would probably give the edge to BMR on this because they are deliberately spreading out their sites across the world – and not just the US. Almost all Postrunner sites are hosted in the US – because its cheaper, and a great deal of them are hosted on Hostgator – because of the affiliate deal…

SEO quality. In Postrunner the owner of the site can mess with the post: they can change the permalink structure, they can add their links above mine in the post, they can additional links (internal and external). With BMR what I write is what its published – fullstop.  In Postrunner there are a lot of site owners changing my posts and frankly competing with me for my keywords. In BMR its a service – they are making their money by selling BMR not my running Adsense  on the sites (none of the sites have any monetization that I’ve seen) – its therefore in their business interests to make sure that the sites are well looked after from an SEO point of view-  if they lose the quality of their sites the service will go down hill (as many have before).

Oh and before you ask – all the BMR sites that I’ve checked are running privacy protection – so no its not suspicious that the one organization owns them all.

Grammatical quality – we are not even going there. Just to say if you own a Postrunner which requests “native English speakers only please” – you will never knowingly get content or a link from me…

Outsourcing with BuildMyRank v. Postrunner

Both sites allow your writer to login to the site on your behalf.  I’ve used the same writer  on both sites. On Postrunner I have to share my login. With BMR I setup a writer account and give my writer a unique login – I prefer this because if I have more than one writer I can monitor their performance separately.

The economics of using the same writer in both systems:

Postrunner: 8 articles a day, 8 links a day.

  • NB – I know I am the minority here but I seriously think linking twice from the same article greatly reduces the strength of both links – I prefer one link per an article.
  • My worklfow: My writer adds the post , tags, link. I log in – I check the grammar – tidy it up to get past the grammar nazi’s, chose a directory, schedule or submit it. It takes about 45minutes- 1 hour of my time.  Maybe 2 articles a day are rejected because a) 7 days have elapsed or b) an objection to the quality or content of the article – I have to resubmit it – make that an hour a day in total – worth US$100 to me …

BuildMyRank: 12 articles a day: 12 links a day.

  • My workflow: None – no article has been rejected yet – 36  posts to date.  I set up the rate of article distribution once for each site I am building links to, got the site approved – overhead per a site – about 3 minutes – once.

So between the 2 systems I am getting 50% more links and saving an hour a day using BMR …

Monitoring Backlinks with BuildMyRank v. Postrunner

Monitoring Postrunner Backlinks:

  • To do the stats on my previous post – I spent several hours: downloading the links built for one site: manually checking each article to see if it was indexed and recording the results

Monitoring BMR Backlinks:

  • The front page gives you graphs of your most used keywords for the month/year and also the PR distribution diagram I’ve used on this post. The grid of posts will give you where each article is published, its PR and whether its indexed. Effectively its saving me hours and hours of ongoing work with those 2 columns. However I can’t download the details – so I am captured by their system with their great stats…

Quality of Support for BuildMyRank and Postrunner

I have had great level of support from Postrunner for many months.  BMR I have tried out with some “dumb” questions and they responded within hours and very professionally.  I added a number of new sites for approval to BMR – the response was within an hour – on a  weekend (wherever they live in the world!). They appear to approve articles within 12 hours (because of my time zone – they seem to approve overnight for me so they are probably in the US).

Actual Results from BMR v. Postrunner

Well there aren’t any yet from BMR – I’ve only been a member for 5 days!  That said I have 29 articles live – of which nearly half, 13, are indexed. I have another 15 articles queued so will have some real results soon.  What I am seeing is that several people who have been doing this type of business for a while and have an Internet home business plan – like the network too.

So What’s the Bottom Line

Postrunner Costs

  • Postrunner is part of Keyword Academy which costs $33/month but the first month is free. Handy affiliate link here. Upfront costs Postrunner is cheaper – but in terms of ongoing costs of getting and keeping links … jury’s out so far …

BuildMyRank Costs

  • No commitment to join and try it out for 10 free links – which stay up even if you cancel and leave. If you buy within the first 15 days of joining you pay $59/month – if you take longer to decide the price goes up to $129/month. Pricing is now related to how many domains you want to build links 5 domains are $59 and the price goes up from there. Domains can be turned off and on though – so with a bit of planning you can rotate domains in and out of BMR for link building. Handy affiliate link here

In both cases the on-going subscription is via Paypal and to cancel you just cancel the sub in Paypal – no crawling back to the comapanies involved.

Neither system limits the number of sites you can build links to. Both sites limit you to the English language and “Google friendly” topics.

Both system allows you to schedule posts into the future. BMR limits the number of posts for any one of your sites to a maximum of 10 a day.

In both cases these are two of the lowest cost backlink systems out there. I have paid over $120/month for a similar service to BuildMyRank – which offered less in terms of reporting.

Which Am I Going to Use

  • I am using both going forward – for the moment anyway. The hands off outsourcing is just too good to ignore.  There are some sites in Postrunner which are developing authority and I will use them selectively.
  • You can never have enough diversity in your backlink profile – that much is certain …

What Are My Recommendations

You are making

  • Stick with Postrunner and the TKA system and get your income up there.  Get backlinks from a variety of places: HubPages and ezinearticles still work!

If you are using an outsourcer already:

  • The ability to have them use BMR “hands off” from you – priceless in my view;

If you are making $500/month and you are building at least 10 links a day

  • I’d consider buying BMR – but only if I really thought I was going to submit the content – all of these systems require you to actually doing the work.

I will back with some updates on BuildMyRank as the results start to show. I am going to be using it exclusively on quite a competitive term – I’ll be interested to see what it comes up with in a couple of months

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
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.


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Online Business Paid Tools Passive Income Product Reviews Tools

Shameless Advertisement for The Keyword Academy! Hurry Time Running Out!

Living the Dream? Western Australia, Cape le Grand

Are you reading this because you are tired of working for the “man”, never seeing your kids until late at night, juggling bills and worrying about where the next car repayment is coming from? Would you like to be younger, sexier, attract fast cars and pretty women? Well I have the answer for you – but you have to ACT NOW!

Living the Dream? Western Australia, Cape le Grand

Sorry – thought that might get your attention! Look lets me honest here – I make money from this blog and the most successful marketing I do is for the The Keyword Academy. Why is it successful ? Well I manage to con people into signing up for the $1 free trial by offering to refund their dollar if they don’t like it – and then people find its a great program and they keep on paying the monthly membership for the site. I get a commission on those monthly subscriptions.  All affiliates work the same Third Tribe Marketing, Scribe SEO – the lot. The difference is that most affiliates people cancel after a few months – which is crap for your passive online income!

You see people who enrol in TKA stay enrolled for months and months and months. Long past the initial keyword video course – much longer than can be justified just on a montly webinar or two – so why is the Keyword Academy membership so “sticky”? They stay enrolled quite simply because they consider themselves to be getting value for money – and those that are doing the work are getting far more actual real measurable value from the program than the $33/month they pay for it.

Long Term Value of The Keyword Academy

Well I don’t know about the others who are long-time members of TKA – but I’d welcome your comments below. But my reasons for staying has come down to:

  • their guest posting system which allows me to easily get links for my sites;
  • their guest posting system which allows me to receive free unique content to some of my sites;
  • their niche refinary tool which allows me to easily analyse keyword income potential and competition;
  • the forum allows me to compare results and react to changes in the Google world – more heads are definitely better than one sometimes.

Cost to Start a Passive Income Business Using The Keyword Academy

So what are the chances of making money actually using the TKA “system”?. What will it cost you to start a niche site using the TKA system?

Enrol in TKA – cost $1 free

Research keywords using TKA tools – free

Buy a domain at Godaddy.com (use the code emma30 to get 30% off dot coms) $8.99

Buy Hosting – I still recommend Hostgator (around $7/month for unlimited domain hosting)

Setup WordPress (free) as recommended on TKA and start writing keyword focussed articles for your site. (5 to 10 say). (BTW if this scares you the TKA guys will help you set up the first site as well).

Write and submit an article a day to the TKA guest posting system continue for 3/4 months

In around 5/6 months you should be ranking on page 1 and getting passive income from Adsense or whatever other approach you have taken to making money on the site.

Lets say the your site has the potential to make $50/month in Adsense.

If it takes you 6 months to rank in first place for your main keyword – that will  have cost you:

Domain registration 50% x $7.99 = $4

Hosting: $7 x 6 months = $56

TKA $1 plus 5x$33 = $166

Total costs: $226

Total revenue – if you follow the TKA model you should be looking at least $50/month from your site – so it will take less than 5 month’s earnings to cover the  sunk costs.

The figures for your second and subsequent sites are even better. For you next site:

Domain 50% x $7.99 = $4

Hosting – paid already

TKA – paid already

Total costs (per 6 months ) – $4 – around the cost of cake and a coffee in my part of the world – your mileage may vary.

So After a Year Your Business May Look Like

If you start 10 sites and after 12 months you are earning $50/site the figures are:

Revenue: 10 x $50 x 12 = $6000

Less domain registration  10 x $7.99 = $79

Less Hosting 12 months x $7 = $84

Less TKA membership 11 months x $33 = $363

Profit: $5390

Time commitment:

  • initial site setup  -takes me about an hour – it will take you longer the first time
  • then an  ongoing requirement – write and post an article a day for each site: 10x 300 words about 2.5 hours a day at my fairly rapid typing speed – probably just time you spend watching rubbish on TV now.

You don’t have to do this forever for a site – only until its solidly in the top position – that may take 6 months, more or less – this is a business not a job – its not guaranteed – but you’d have to agree there is a fair margin of error in the above figures..

Could You Use an Extra $5000 ?

It took me over 2 years to learn the stuff I just wrote in this post. Before TKA the information was scattered. Before the guest posting system in TKA it was a considerable struggle to find places to post backlinks.  There was always the doubt that what you were doing may or may not work. This works – its not exciting or sexy or even very interesting, but it will earn you money. And you know what? I have sites ranking at #1 for which I haven’t touched in months and months, which I haven’t built a link for in months. They still earn me the same amount of money …

I could rave on about how TKA has changed my life – its true – but frankly it would sound too much like one of those cheesy sales letters that I hate! Frankly you just read over 900 words about making money online – you obviously have some interest. The real question is are you ready to stop dreaming and take some action? Dreaming is great – but it won’t make you money.

So click the  bloody affiliate link NOW and signup –  and stop dreaming and reading about making money online and actually <<<<make some money>>>>> (that’s the link!)!