Tag: beginners

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Back Links beginners Build My Rank Paid Tools The Keyword Academy

Build My Rank Alternatives

Bamboo builds strong buildings; links build strong websites; Khao Sak, Thailand

I originally published this post in November 2011 pointing out that people really didn’t understand how to use link networks. I’ve now updated it = UPDATED: March 2012 after Google de-indexed Build My Rank 

OK guys apparently the world changed and some of you didn’t notice. Ironic really, I’ve heard plenty of people whinging about not being able to get good backlinks. Or asking for alternatives to Build My Rank because the BMR blogs didn’t look “real” and weren’t niche specific.

There are two really obvious things that are apparently from Google’s swipe at backlink networks. First obviously backlinks from these networks were effective (otherwise Google would have just ignored them) and, in future you are going to have to play smarter. 

Bamboo builds strong buildings; Pandas like bamboo; links build strong websites; Khao Sak, Thailand

Build My Rank was not the only network to get deindexed and devalued, it was probably just the highest profile one amongst the make money crowd. SEO Nitro, SEO Linkvine. The sites that have not got hit are generally keeping a VERY low profile. 

This is quite specific – Google isn’t targeting spammy backlinks from forums, automated bookmarking or the other stuff you can buy for $5 at fiverr.  People who have spammed the hell out of their own sites are reporting no drop in rankings and no nasty messages in Google tools about “unnatural links being noted on their sites” 

This is all about networks which insisted on 150 -odd words of unique content. Google has found them and taken them down manually. 

So what do you do now to rank – what are the alternatives to BMR? 

Alternative 1: Forget Manufactured  Backlinks Make Your Site High Quality 

Yeah I know I probably just lost 90% of you. And no I’m not saying you don’t need backlinks – what I’m saying if you write really good content, engage with your readers, and be genuinely helpful. You will then, over time get natural backlinks, when people link to and promote your content. Its a sound approach, which will take a while, but at the end, you will be mainly Google-proof.  Not entirely – because you’d be an idiot to trust Google after this week – but a lot more than if you just have a mini-site of thrown together content that you don’t actually know much about. 

If you want to learn how to develop a long-term, high quality websites – CLICK to check out the Keyword Academy

Alternative 2: Find a Few High Quality links

I started a new site – 3 weeks later it was a PR3 – nine months later its still  PR3 and on page 1 for its desired keyword? What did I do? I gave it one single link from a PR3 site which I controlled which was relevant to the niche and didn’t have too many outbound links.

It not rocket science, it hasn’t changed any time recently. Some links are more useful than others. When you have access to strong links you will find it easier to rank your websites. 

Getting just one really, really good backlink can do more for your rankings than a 1000 crappy links. It will also look more natural to Google. 

What is a good backlink? A link from an authority site? So WTF is an authority site? A site which ranks well in the same niche as you, a site which has an engaged audience who find it useful, a page which has similar or the same keywords as you want to rank for, a site with PR (this is the least important factor). 

How do you get those links? Well as I said above the best way is to have such an awesome site that people in the same field WANT to link to you. But you can hurry up the process a bit. Its not rocket science. Its called guest posting. Try to find a blog who will accept a guest post from you. You’ll have to write really good content. You’ll have to make it possibly even more useful than the stuff you would publish on your own site. And in return they will give you a link. And you know what – you might even get visitors from that link – there’s a thought! 

Its pretty tough finding guest posting opportunities. You’ll have to contact a lot of webmasters, and expect a lot of rejections – or ignores. I hate doing it.  On the other hand after a while you get to know a few people in the same niche and then its a little easier.

It probably all sounds a bit overwhelming – and I can understand if you are pretty discouraged after the news of BMR. But if you give up now – Google wins – and I HATE letting the bullies win!

Check out the Keyword Academy – really – you’ll be pleased you did – its also free for the first month – so no risk to you. Really check out my new  Postrunner V2 Review – a great opportunity for quality backlinks. 

Categories
Adsense HubPages Making Money Online Online Business

You Really Can Make Thousands on Hubpages

As most of you probably already know I have been on Hubpages for a very long time – it will be three years in October actually.  I knew Hubpages very well, I liked the site, the community and my ability to publish there – I thought it was an adjunct to my “real” money sites.  I was wrong.

Over that time I saw it more as a hobby than serious online money making. In fact hubpages has earned me thousands of dollars  -indirectly – by getting me several freelance writing gigs – but I’m not talking about that.

I also used hubpages to jump start this blog as my earliest readers were fans who followed me over from hubpages – thanks guys. Its a good place to build “a brand” – but I don’t mean that either.

I knew hubpages was great for backinks – I have PR4 and PR3 pages there and they were easy to get.

I knew I could make some income on HubPages  – April was a good month it was the first month I hit over $100 in Adsense – from hubpages alone.

But I didn’t realise you could make serious money on hubpages –  I was an idiot.

I started the HubChallenge but used the wrong approach.  I started again focusing on Adsense income. I have, since the 29th May I’ve made $51 from my 40 new hubs.  In fact of those 40 only 9 have made more than $1.  Most of the hubs that have made money I published in the first week …Do the math and you will understand why I am very,very happy.

What was my secret – two things: keyword selection and building backlinks.  What are the details on how to achieve these results?

I’m following Court’s approach as detailed in broad terms on his blog with his final posted titled: Make Money with HubPages Experiment Complete he made $475 in the first month, his aim is $3000/month  – I’m not as experienced as him – I’m aiming for $2000/month to start.

You want more detail? The details are available to Keyword Academy subscribers. Am I going to repeat them here – no I’m not. One because the technique is Court’s IP and two because if you really aren’t prepared to spend a $1 to have a look – you don’t really want to make money online.

Oh and if you have been on the fence – or you still not convinced that you can really make more than hobby money from hubpages then sign up before Thurs 25 June 6pm  MDT because that’s when Court is doing a live webinar on exactly how he made his money on hubpages. (The content will be available afterewards as a video download for subscribers if you missed the date, but you won’t be able to ask live questions obviously). That self-serving affiiate link again: Keyword Academy

Categories
Back Links HubPages

Hubpage Challenge 100 Hubs in 30 Days

OK so not a day after I write about diversifying to other Web 2.0 article sites and review  InfoBarrel the great Hubpage challenge blows up all over the Internet. If you have been asleep under a rock and not paying attention it went like the: Court decided to have a new money making experiment: 100 hubs in 30 days. Well Hubpage’s marketing guy Ryan Hupfer noticed this (btw if you are wondering how this sort of thing happens – I have 2 words for you “google alerts” a great way to know what people are saying about you!). Long story short we now have The Great Hub Challenge:

100 hubs in 30 days

Continue reading “Hubpage Challenge 100 Hubs in 30 Days”
Categories
Back Links Blogging Rants

Is Today Blog a Scam?

Short version – be careful! I use sites such as HubPages as a way to create content on a different IP and to provide free backlinks to my own sites.  To honest I started with HubPages because I liked the community and now I stay because I liked the community, and because I can get free backlinks to my own sites – I think HubPages is OK with it – they make money from (some) of my hubs and I contribute to their community.

Continue reading “Is Today Blog a Scam?”
Categories
Making Money Online Online Business Paid Tools Passive Income Product Reviews Tools

The Keyword Academy Video Course – A Scam?

Another update – in 2011 The Keyword Academy have released version two: check out my most recent  Keyword Academy review.

UPDATE: A year later this post still gets traffic and sign ups so I thought it might be time to update it! Short answer is that TKA just keeps on getting better – that’s why I am still subscribed to it! Updates in bold below

Now I can teach you some stuff but I prefer to send you on to an expert – and my experts were letting me down!

I have two main mentors that I have mentioned over and over. Grizz provides great information for free – but even he admits that his sites are designed to bring in search traffic – not necessarily with sound coaching and teaching principles in mind! The information is there but you have to dig – and some people don’t learn like that. UNFORTUNATELY GRIZ NO LONGER POSTS BUT HIS ARCHIVES ARE WELL WORTH READING

Vic – is not everyone’s cup of tea – some people can’t get past the foul-mouthed persona – which is really their problem not mine or his. But more importantly Vic has closed is private forum until further notice as he is busy on a new business venture – which meant I couldn’t refer people to the place I get a lot of my information from.

Now – today – finally- I have a solution. The third person who has provided me decent, quality information is Courtney Tuttle. He started off with a free site – discovered that people don’t appreciate free and went to a coaching/mentoring pricing monitoring. Now to be honest mentoring is not really for me – I just don’t learn that way very well, and of course the time zone difference didn’t make life any easier. Mark Butler, Court’s business partner, now runs the Keyword Academy.

Now Court has, I am pretty sure, a background in consulting and/or coaching in the real world, and he and his partner Mark take a much more formalised approach to teaching the business of making passive income online than either Griz or Vic.

But, and this is the important thing, they are all basically telling the beginner the same thing in terms of doing keyword research, setting up websites, building back links and making money. Its all very professionally laid out, there is no bad language involved, and more importantly the information is good.

The Keyword Academy Membership Site

Court and his partner Mark have launched a new payment membership site: Keyword Crash Course Video Series . The site is new and the main information currently available are 10 videos taking the beginner step by step from doing keyword research, setting up a site with WordPress, adding content, getting backlinks, article marketing, Adsense setup and statistical analysis of your site visitors. Each video is around 40 minutes long. There is also Q+A associated with each video and a full transcript so you can find the bit you want again!

Now this set of videos by themselves could easily be sold for hundreds of dollars. But they aren’t charging hundreds of dollars, or even $100 dollars.  Now its free for the first month – insane!

UPDATE: When TKA launched that was all there was – a course and a forum – but over the next year they added a tool to further automate the finding of keywords (NicheRefinary) and a way to make Guest Posting waaaay easier (Postrunner)

What’s the Catch?

Is there a catch – of course there is! After the first month you get charged an ongoing rate of $33/ month (premium includes access to the forums – only way to go in my opinion). Ahhh you say – so how many months does it take to get access to the videos – 3, 6 or 9? No the initial 10 videos are available to you immediately – as  soon as you confirm your subscription – yup you have full access for 30 days before you pay anything!

What about the subscription – yes you sign up for an ongoing subscription – can you cancel it? Yes as soon as you gain access if you want – though I wouldn’t recommend it. If you use paypal to subscribe all you do is go to Paypal and cancel the subscription – you don’t have to contact Court and Mark at all.

Why do I say you shouldn’t cancel immediately? Well because the Internet is a dynamic place – the business model that worked 5 years ago or even one year ago may not work now – having access to updated information and support is one of the most important things you need to have to go forward in this business. What I do say – is leave yourself a note and evaluate whether the product is working for you after 25 days and decide whether to continue on with the subscription.

Ahh you say, having been scammed one to many times, you can’t follow the videos without the fancy software right? No, really, the main software used in the videos are:

Keyword research: Google’s free adwords tool

Excel – but you can use OpenOffice – its free

Competitor analysis – SEO for Firefox – free

Statistical analysis of visitors to your site – Statcounter – free and highly recommended by me!

Setting up the site: you will need hosting and your own domain name using the Keyword Academy approach, you can do it for free – but if you are completely new to this I’d advise not to mix and match.

Hosting Hostgator $5/month if you only want one site, $8/month for unlimited.

WordPress – free, recommended themes and plugins – free

Domain name: $0.99c for an info $7.49 for a .com (from godaddy) -cost per a year.

Link building. They mention a bunch of free methods but also recommend that you use Unique Article Wizard  for article distribution – this costs $67/month.

With the addition of Postrunner – the additional UWA product is no longer really needed

Will Keyword Academy Work For Me?

I don’t know where to start – I don’t know how to create a website – will Keyword Academy work for me?

If you are a beginner looking for a step-by-step approach to building an online business, if you are prepared to put the work in (Court recommends 8-10 hours /week) – then this will work for you.  The program will teach you how to develop sites optimized for Adsense.

I have information over-load – I don’t know where to start – I need to start reading and take action.

Know how you feel – if you are looking for a step-by-step program – check this out and ignore all the other sites for a month or two.  Don’t just watch the videos do your homework and create your first site, or first money-making one, and move forward.

I don’t do Google Adsense – I want to sell affiliate products or my own products – is there any value here for me?

Regardless of what you want to sell you need organic traffic to your site. The Keyword Academy will teach you how to do keyword research which will work regardless of your monetization method.

I’m an experienced Internet Marketer – will I learn anything?

Grizz, Vic, Court all have slightly different approaches to making money online – but all work for them. What works for you may be an exact copy of one their models- or a mash-up of your own – but these guys won’t put you wrong.

I learnt several things that were either new to me or I had been muddled on by skipping through the videos. The final video on how to flip websites was all new to me and well worth the $1  in my opinion!

Anyway you are already probably paying for link distribution services – TKA will probably save you money with the Postrunner system!

Bottom Line: Is Keyword Academy a Scam?

No its not. You are committing nothing to signing up for the video marketing course.

Try the videos and forums for a month- you may find they don’t work for you, you don’t want to make money this way, you don’t have the time – whatever  – you have lost nothing. Sign up for the forums options so that you can ask questions for a month – you may not like the answers – you can can cancel it cost you  nothing.

Will following the videos guarantee that you will make money – no it won’t! Nothing in life is free – and free money doesn’t exist. You will have to do some work. Most of us value our time so this is going to cost you some time. It is going to cost you some money for domains and hosting. But if you are flat broke you could still try this out by developing a site on blogger.com for fre e…

Why Am I Recommending Keyword Academy Video Series and Membership Site

  1. It will work for people who want a structured learning environment -the cost is reasonable, there is no long-term contract the pricing model is transparent and fair.
  2. The principles taught make me money – they work.
  3. They will make you money if you put the effort in.  I am strongly recommending that you sign up with the premium version because most people need access to a forum for on-going support.
  4. There is an affiliate program – if you click on a link to sign up with the Keyword Crash Course Video Series for free I will get a commission. I will happily take Mark”s money for introducing you.  Oh and you already have to be a member to be approved as an affiliate so anyone promoting the product has seen what they are selling.
Categories
Passive Income

Can You Make $1000/month With Adsense?

The title of this post is a quote from a question which was posed by an new writer over at hubpages – the question was naive – the questioner probably actually wanted to know how to make money online, or even how to make passive income online,  not with the specific Adsense program.

The reality is that Adsense is a tricky beast. It appears deceptively easy to earn a little money with Adsense, most people at HubPages make more from Adsense than the other options available there (eBay and Amazon particularly), $50 a month, $200, $500 even -but a $1000 is it possible?

Sure its possible to earn that sort of money -some make much, much more than that.  One of the few sources of reliable information on the internet that I’ve found is a Canadian who lives on a frozen lake who goes by the name of Grizz and writes all about how to make money online with Adsense – go on go and have a look, here’s a nice bear picture while we wait

Take Care in the Woods!
Take Care in the Woods!

You see I knew you’d come back pretty quick, or you won’t be back for weeks one way or the other 🙂

If you came back quickly you probably thought I sent you to the wrong blog eh – I mean its a blogger blog for goodness sakes!  (EDIT  not anymore – long story) Its UGLY, its hard to navigate (hint use the archives to navigate there’s no other way!). It looks boring -there is no visual interest- its not pretty. Did you notice the comments – did you notice how many comments each post has – do you notice how rarely Grizz posts? He has 2500 subscribers too. And makes a lot of money from that ugly blog – and he tells you how to make it using Adsense only. But guess what – those subscribers don’t make him money – its the search engines that do that.

Oddly I see a parallel between making $1000/month with  Adsense and ballroom dancing (that would confuse Adsense if I ran it here!).  Its easy to learn to waltz a little – anyone can learn to do it – a little.  Its easy to look good in your average social dance, and yes my partner and I do – people tell us so and ask us how we learned to dance so well.  Its quite simple – we’ve taken 1-2 hours of private lessons and practiced another few hours, every week , for the last 10 years.   Are we going to be Australian ballroom champions anytime soon – no – we’re too old, too fat, and my pain threshold is just too low. We don’t have the talent – however much we practice.

And learning to waltz is easier than learning how to make a $1000/month with Adsense – why? The waltz has a set of very,very strictly defined rules, the way to hold your partner, the timing, the position of the head, the footwork – its all defined, its all written down – there is no debate, there is only one way to dance the waltz properly.

Adsense is different, making good money from Adsense is much harder, because Google, who owns Adsense, doesn’t publish how to make money from Adsense – how to get $4 a click instead of 4c.  Google won’t explain where to place the Google ads for the best revenue, the best type of content to write, or the best types of visitors to get. Neither will I – go back to the ugly blog and find out how to make $1000 a day with Adsense from Grizz. Oh and yes its a a PR0 blog now – because Google really doesn’t want this information out in the public!

No you won’t be seeing Adsense on this blog anytime soon!

Photo Credit

Categories
HubPages Online Business Rants

Making Money On-line for Beginners

Sometimes I struggle as to where I should publish. I guess I am not a pure internet marketer because sometimes I just have to write about a topic! This weekend its been around the subject of making money on-line. Yes I know its idiotic to try and rank for that term. Yes I know I run the risk of just repeating the same old. I still had to try. So I did and you know I think it came out all right. There is nothing original per se. I am following the big three as usual as detailed in my original Internet Marketing and Hubpages article.

In the end I ended up publishing not one but two hubs, over 3600 words for goodness sake! On a revenue site that I only get 60% of the Adsense, Amazon, eBay, Kontera impressions – why did I do that. Well two simple reasons really:

  • I’m starting to see more and more new people arriving at HubPages, publishing a couple of hubs and then going to the forums and asking what’s wrong I only made 5c in Adsense! I can see this trend continuing. HubPages seems to be winning the race with Squidoo and is attracting more and more people who not only want to write they want to make money online . I know the feeling its what attracted me too. But with the worsening economic crises in the US (and hubpages are predominantly American) I expect more and more people will be looking for ways to make money in a recession I would like them to find the right sources of advice before they get scammed or give up. Although I may not be able to rank for the terms in google search I certainly can in hubpages: I can get my hubs to the first page of “hot hubs” or for a specific search really quite easily by writing good content.

    Fans
    Originally uploaded by John Charlton
  • Again a couple of times recently I have seen people do “so long and thanks for the fish” posts as they depart hubpages for bigger things. Sometimes full-time paid work work so fair enough. But also sometimes because they need to concentrate on developing their own websites you know. I’ve thought about it myself but there is one thing that keeps me publishing useful stuff on HubPages: my fans! Why abandon that list? Sure its not the most focussed list on the internet but on the other I am sometimes surprised at the quality of the people who leave me comments finding my hubs useful, often soon after the hub was published: meaning that they were notified by the email.

Yeah I know celebrity is fickle! No its not that, honest 🙂 . When you become someone’s fan at hubpages you get an email every time that person publishes a new hub (you can turn it off but that’s the default). So every time I publish on hubpages 599 people (as at the time of writing) get told – is that a list or what? Now some of them are beginners: but some are not. I got a number of sign-ups to Article Marketing Automation from my hubpage review.

So if you are not already a member of hubpages get signed up and become my 600th fan: if that spot is taken its OK I will be accepting 601, 602 etc as well! Of course if you do sign up via my any of the links in this post I will get 10% of your earnings: but from the hubpages.com share. To be honest it amounts to bugger all but that’s because most people sign up and either publish nothing or just one hub! Drop me a comment here if you do sign-up and I will become your fan too!