teaching sells does it work – Online Marketing – Websites

OK guys – this has been an interesting experiment regarding keyword authority and SEO – which was what I was playing with with my review Teaching Sells Does It Work?

I noticed recently that this site had become an “authority” site – to be honest I’d heard Grizz and others talk of authority sites before but I didn’t really understand the implications. First off to discover if a site is an authority site just google the site’s name or their main keywords – google “make money for beginners” and you will find this dubious site in #1 position:

So I have one of these pretty little listings too for my name and when I rank for something related vaguely to passive income online – I get the old double indexing with the second listing indented:

Once I post this update I suspect the 2nd indent will become this post – as it is sometimes its the tag page (that’s why you should NOT noindex your tag pages) but more often its a slight typo on the url which I noticed the instant I published and corrected – its not a 404 – the page redirects – to the correct url – I don’t understand it – but I don’t mind LOL.

The most clearest clue that you have authority though is quite easy – you go straight position #1 if you write a post on a relatively longtail long competition term something like “teaching sells does it work” for example: I got the listing immediately and it stayed there, that’s with no link building on my part. Now would it have stayed there if Grizz – the ultimate “make money” authority blogger hadn’t linked to me? I don’t know – that’s the trouble with SEO experiments – you really can’t control all the variables as you would in the lab – and you certainly can’t control who links to you – but now I know I will almost certainly stay at #1 because of all those kind people who linked to me – thanks guys!

Now it gets more interesting – as you can see on that above screen shot, from yesterday BTW, I was also ranking third and sixth for an infobarrel and hubpage. What I was actually trying to experiment with was the often quoted concern that hubpages was losing its authority was true. Well AFAIK neither of the those articles have any backlinks (I didn’t link to them from this blog either) – so by themselves they ranked on the first page and stayed there. The infobarrel out ranked the hubpage consistently – but that was probably just because I had the long-tail exact match in the url of the infobarrel: teaching-sells-does-it-work while the hubpage I’d just called teaching-sells.

It got more interesting today though – I noticed that the hubpage had got up to third place – but the infobarrel was gone – in fact its deindexed (check by googling the exact url) – odd to say the least – as I say I certainly have done no link building on it. I suspect a glitch or possibly Google didn’t like the odd characters at the end of the url – which are probably computer speak for “?” (you don’t have great control on infobarrel urls) – I do know in the past if I inadvertantly left a trailing “-” or “_” Google may refuse to index the page for a month or so.

So how do you make a blog an authority in your niche? Fairly simple really – google your keyword – and try to get links from any authority blogs that you find on the first page.

Once you are an authority site you can outrank established sites by just having your keyword long-tail in the url.
Once you are an authority site you can outrank sites which have at least part of the long-tail keyword in their domain name e.g. teachingsells.com
Once you are an authority site you can outrank much, much larger sties which are also authority sites such as hubpages and infobarrel which have the keywords in the url.

Now while this site definitly has authority is neither ranking well for my primary keyword (hint its not either Teaching Sells or Site Build It!) not does it have great PR – PR2 at the moment – it was PR3 until the Site Build It fiasco saw me got a ton of relevant links.

I’m off to build me some more authority sites – in a nice that might actually pay!

Lets get this out of the way right here – if you want a balanced, politically correct, weighed, grammatically perfect and well spelt review of CopyBlogger’s, Brian Clark’s Teaching Sells – you won’t find it here. I am a blogger, not a lawyer, I have no obligation to provide unbiased, balanced information all the time – and trust me I am pissed about this! Anyway there will be heaps of sycophantic reviews from those who are flogging the new version of Teaching Sells – about to be released for Fall semester – to counter my unbalanced and cyncial take on why teaching sells will not make you money – but will probably do quite well for Brian Clarke and his mates.

For some reason I used to occasionally read Chris Brogan’s blog – and his post titled “Why I Will Promote Teaching Sells” – Google it I am fussy about what I link to from this blog – caught my eye. Why? “Teaching Sells” was what made me give up Internet Marketing back in 2007. It may not have been Brian Clark’s Teaching Sells programs -it might have been someone else’s knock off – I don’t really care because at the end of the day the concept is the same I think that this is one of the MOST dishonest ways to make money online income from the dreams of other people.

Now lets be upfront – I haven’t bought the course – in fact its not open at the moment -they are in the building the hype stage – Google off to “teaching sells” if you want to get on the presell list so far I only have the 25 page free report plus several other transcripts of examples from the earlier course (at least they aren’t pretending this is new). I have submitted myself to endless spam updates which at the time of writing promise:

A bonus report about building quick and easy membership sites with licensed content.

A 20-Step Process Map to building an online training business.

An instructional video that reveals the solution to the “traffic dilemma” every online entrepreneur faces.

And a complete course listing of the entire Teaching Sells program.

I’ve seen enough know to, in my biased and personal opinion, warn you in VERY large letters – to stay the fuck away from Teaching Sells. Oh unless you happen to already be a real-world acknowledged expert, preferably a published author – then you may be able to use it – so long as your niche has lots of willing buyers that is.

I must say reading the 25 page pre-sales pitch free report was informative. I may not be able to sell teaching but I can recognise bullshite from 10 paces. When I first saw the version of this report they were using 2-years ago – I just felt uneasy and a bit “off” about the idea. Now I know exactly why it stinks to high heaven, guess I learnt something about bullshite detection in the last 2 years!

Now the first thing you will notice is the production quality of the 25-page free report – there are no typos and its got nice graphics. Try actually reading it though – that’s where it all goes downhill. Apparently I work for Google (so does Vic, Grizz and Court – we are all Google slaves) -apparently its not a real business model to rely on Google for traffic, Google’s Adsense for income and well – Grizz takes in one step further and has the audacity to hardly make any money online at all using a FREE blogger (i.e. Google) blog – outrageous!

Apparently Teaching Sells will teach me a better way to get traffic – I can hardly wait for that bit – but I notice it wasn’t free traffic so PPC springs to mind… Or maybe I will get real lucky and Brian Clark will recognise my intelligence and make me a business partner (I am not making this up – its in the pitch as well!). Yes it could be the joint-venture – you sell me your list and I’ll see your’s mine approach. Apparently you can’t make money by giving stuff away from money – hey Court – I hope you realise that you shouldn’t be giving away your content for $1 the first month! I hope you realise you aren’t making any money!

Apparently I don’t need a long-tail niche audience either (hell that might make me some money) – no instead I need a create my own tribe! Well much that love the 12.5 of you who regularly read this blog and occasionally make me money from my free content – we are doing no tribal meetings around here! We are not doing no sit-down kum-bay-yahs around the camp fire anytime soon around here people!

The thing that gets me most about the Teaching Sells hype this time is the blatant hypocrisy – after several pages of describing how most of the free content on the web is just not worth anything – and leaves people begging to pay money to join your membership site Teaching Sells cites how Steve Pavlina claims to have made $40,000 in one month from his free blog – by pushing his reader to a paid personal-development program which he didn’t even develop himself – yeah really ethical that, totally different from affiliate marketing! But its not advertising you know – its adding value LOL.
So with Teaching Sells you will learn that:

The big opportunity for you though, is in repurposing the vast amount of specialized text-based information into interactive, multimedia learning environments that result in recurring income and long-term customer relationships.

Lets just be crystal here – this is not about your customers making money – its about YOU making money from them… Otherwise known as hooking them up with the old membership model with the recurring charge on the credit card and making sure they don’t become self-sufficient ~~ever~~ too soon.

The only question I have for Teaching Sells – and the only reason I signed up for the spam list priority notification list was I am curious as to how much they think they can package this old course for. Old – yes that’s right – in fact there is an interesting review of the 2007 version of the course from Friar’s Review of Brian Clark’s Teaching Sells that time around it was $97 for the special price for the first 3 months – and then recurring after that – ( a little point not made that obvious in the 6 point print at the bottom of the page in lightest gray font apparently) – this time I’m figuring they will adding at least a one to the front – or maybe they will go for the currently fashionable $1997 price …

Bottom line if you really think you are already an expert on something that people are really dying to spend money on and you want to take the time to set up an interactive learning experience forum and can’t be bothered finding out how to do it yourself (or paying someone to) – then this course may be for you.

If you are like the other 99.9% of us who don’t have a useful skill to teach online, can’t, for example, teach us how to make paella online then you will probably figure out real fast that you either learn how to fake it until you make, build your wealth on other people’s shattered dreams, or just possibly, learn how to make money online without ripping anyone off.

Bugger I have a nice little set of non-controversial posts half written for this week, and some affiliate crap to push on my unsuspecting readers as well – oh well blog has reverted to its original purpose – me telling the world what I think! Seriously do your self a huge favour run a mile from Teaching Sells regardless of which of the A-listers is promoting it – you do realise that is how you make your money right – being in bed with the right people commenting on the right blogs and getting in well with the right people – you are seriously stuffed if you are hanging around here!