How to Make Money Online for Beginners

The Keyword Crash Course

2009-05-25T07:18:00.010-05:00

My regular readers are familiar with Courtney Tuttle and Mark Butler who run a teaching blog for Internet Marketing called the Keyword Academy. If you are new here or are one of the hundreds who have emailed me asking "where to start" or, more to the point, have asked me if I would be willing to tutor you directly on "how to make money online" then I strongly suggest you take a look at Court and Mark's Keyword Crash Course.

Both men are professional marketers, they teach the same basics as I do and offer one on one mentoring in this business. The Crash Course is designed for beginners just starting out and you can get your feet wet for a buck - a token introductory price for a month just to keep the tire kickers and time wasters away. If you are looking for real instruction on making a living online then join Court and Mark. If you are just looking for another "get rich quick" ebook or gimmick then they aren't for you.

If you found my site chances are you found it ranking high in Google for the term you searched for. This wasn't an accident - it is what I do and it is the keystone for making money online. How can you learn to dominate Google and the other search engines? You can start at the beginning of this blog and read or take the more focused approach offered by Court and Mark. Unfortunately I just don't have the time to offer personal guidance so please don't ask. I wouldn't recommend the Keyword Academy if I didn't endorse the fellows fully.

I would love to get some feedback from those of you who have already joined Court/Mark - good, bad or otherwise let us know.

For those of you interested in Court's affiliate program you can get more info here;

Webmasters Earn Money Here!

A Teaser...

To the regular gang of MMO'ers - Thanks for the concerned emails and comments. Everything is fine, better than fine actually and I will be posting an update on the Griz blog (soon) explaining what I've been doing etc. Sorry for the absence but all is well and I should be back shortly...

Cheers,

Griz

Privacy Policy Update

2009-04-02T10:29:00.009-05:00

You can see my Privacy Policy Update by following the link.

(note - this site (MMOFB) is not associated with Google.com or Google Adsense and you are encouraged to visit Google directly for more information.)

If you are using Adsense on your site then you must update your privacy policy by April 8, 2009. This update is in relation to the new changes enacted on Adsense in March of 2009. The new changes effect how Google collects information on your surfing habits using third party advertising vendors who leave cookies on your browsers - notably the Doubleclick DART Cookie.

The basic changes to Adsense revolve around the addition of Interest Based Advertising as opposed to the previous Placement Targeted Advertising. You can visit Google for a description of what Interest Based Advertising entails.

Your updated Privacy Policy should inform your users about the use of third party cookies on your sites and provide them with information regarding their opt out options should they wish to not have cookies placed on their browsers. See Opt Out of Behavioral Advertising

As an Adsense publisher you also have the option not to use Internet Based Advertising and may Opt out by following the instructions posted in Google Adsense Help. I do not recommend that you opt out but the choice is yours. These changes should help increase your CTR and CPC in the long run as you will become less susceptable to being smart priced. (ie. Conversions should increase as users are presented more advertisements based on their interests)

Update: I have discussed why I think Interest Based Ads should be tested before opting out in the following post on my other blog; Google's Interest Based Advertising.

It is still too early to give any conclusive feedback on how successful Internet Based Ads are but early results seem to be positive. Unfortunately March was a bit rocky for publishers as all the new changes to Adsense caused a number of glitches - several days saw CTR under-reported which Google admitted was an error on their part as they were not showing relevant ads. They maintained that it was only for a few hours but it lasted several days. You may have also experienced higher than normal pageviews for a few days.

Personally I have seen and am still experiencing strange CPC highs and lows as recently as yesterday. I'm not too concerned as I think it will take a little while to iron out all the bugs and caution everyone to just wait things out for the month of April before making any major changes to your Adsense sites. (ie. Don't concern yourself with smart price tweaking for the time being)

If anyone has seen definitive results either good or bad regarding Internet Based Ads please feel free to leave a comment.

FYI - I am on holidays with the kids at the moment (spring break here) so have been neglecting my comments but should be back to work next monday.

Cheers

Griz

Site Build It - Lessons Learned

2009-03-27T09:35:00.024-05:00

Site Build It Aftermath

One of the more humourous (international spelling) things I see online are people that use link baiting. And the people who think others are link baiting. Link baiting is simply writing contentious posts and titles designed to attract attention. A useless endeavor for making money as the visitors don't click ads or buy things. Link baiting attracts social traffic. The only good that can be said for it is that they may leave you gobs of comments full of rich keywords to feed the Google bot. Keywords that will bring you targeted long tail traffic in future.

Lissie was accused of link baiting with her recent posts concerning SBI or Site Build It. She wasn't, she was simply using a tried and true technique known as Keyword Targeting her post in order to rank well in the search engines. The point was to obtain targeted search visitors who do click ads and buy things. She wrote a second follow up post in order to link to the first post. The reason? That is how you can obtain double indexing in Google. (You have to use the exact same keywords anchored in both posts though) I wrote a post about Site Build It as well and have now linked to it and will link that post to this one.

If you use keyword targeting and people link to you then they are likely to use your post title in the anchored link pointing at you. If that happens then you will rank better for that keyword.

How did Lissie make out? (click images to enlarge)

- and that's how you make money with Adsense. Let the people flogging a program pay you to flog it for them. They do all the work - you collect the money. When one batch of affiliates have lost enough money using PPC another batch will replace them. You will still be making money with a program like SBI long after the current crop of users have quit blogging on SBI. Just be sure to target a program like Lissie did - it has been around a long time and probably will be for some time to come. To find the right programs just look for fanatical cheerleaders, and lots of fake review sites. Simply post a contrary review and the fanatics will get your post noticed. Once noticed many people who have been scammed or are simply not happy with the program in question will link to you. Google will also give your post a nice position even without the links. See Justin's SEO blog for a technical explanation of why this is so.

Lissie's post is done, ranked and she will never have to do another thing and the search traffic will show up every day and make her money should she add Adsense to the post. (assuming there is search traffic for the term - if not use the post to send authority for a term that does get search traffic - ie. Site Build IT, Site Build It Review etc) Ideally you want to rank number 1 for all the terms. I have discussed how this is done previously.

Oh... and how well does social traffic convert?

Some of the folks on Digital Point Forum seemed to think my Niche Blogging with Hot Topics post was designed as link bait. Let's see why I don't bother with forums or chase social traffic.

This past week my 5th highest source of traffic came from a thread in Digital point.

Source: Google Analytics

And let's see how well my traffic sources converted into Adsense Earnings.

Source: Google Analytics

Some of you may think $12 bucks is worth spending your time chasing 1100 social visitors but it will take a lot of work to keep that traffic coming daily. Do what Lissie did and you won't have to chase anything - Google will send them to you.

So? Does SEO work?

Lesson completed. (insert smilie dude)

Cheers

Griz

Related Posts

Site Build It Review Update

Honest Reviews Online

Site Build it - Don't Buy It

2009-03-20T11:03:00.052-05:00

This is not a fake review with a sales pitch for Site Build It - I am simply telling you not to buy it.

Lissie wrote an article entitled Site Build It Scam Review. If you read her post and I encourage all my readers to do so you will see a prime example of how many online systems work. Develop a canned project, target beginners looking to make money online, set up a sweet affiliate program to entice people to sell your product and then send out your core cheerleaders to attack and bash anyone who so much as criticizes your product. Read her post and see if you would like to be associated with the cheerleaders pimping this product.

In my experience every time I see a swarm of cheerleaders like Site Build It has, you are looking at a program that makes money by selling the program and not by using it. MLM is notorious for using this method. Is Site Build It MLM? I have no idea - doesn't matter. What matters is that the only reason you get cheerleaders to swarm en masse is to protect their source of money - ie selling "the program" - not "using it" to make money online.

If the program developed successful internet marketers then no one would give a damn if someone like Lissie writes a negative review about the program. They would know it works and are making money using it. If others dissent so what - their loss. You wouldn't care because it worked for you. On the other hand if your only means of income is selling "the program" to unwitting noobs then you can bet you will be out in full force defending "the Program". If people start reading negative opinions then your source of income is gone.

I make money doing what I do and could give a rats ass if someone doesn't agree with me, or like me or bashes me and I would never ask my readers to defend me or my system. In fact I wish you would all stop mentioning me on the noob forums like Digital Point and Warrior. Please.

If you do a search for Site Build It on Google all you see is fake affiliate reviews simply gushing over how wonderful it is. Such bullshit. There isn't a real review on it which simply tells me that real internet marketers have nothing to do with it (I wouldn't use it) - just noobs doing the noob affiliate review trick that is as old as the hills. Is that what Site build it teaches?

Thanks to Lissie's post a number of cheerleaders left their URL's. It took less than 10 minutes to review their sites and guess what? They don't know SEO, they don't make money, they don't know how to find profitable niches and they don't know how to monetize. They just have the usual generic sites like all the other millions online, neither good or bad. Nothing worth spending $300 to learn. You can learn far more reading my blogs for free. I could outrank every one of the niches I looked at in a heart beat using a free blogger blog.

I have a favor to ask all my readers who have a site - please write your own review about Site Build It. You will save future beginners from wasting their money. The serp's are full of affiliate reviews pimping this product and could use a few real reviews so that people have a better idea of what this product is really about.

Our good friend Vic has surfaced long enough to post Site Build It Noobs are Funny on Blogger Unleashed.

Steve spreads the message on his blog Is Site Build It a Scam?

Video Presentation Is Site Build It a Scam?: No It's Just Bullsh*t - by Allyn Hane (This Video is excellent and not just the content - you have to see Allyn - some serious talent)

I am sick of scum bag cheerleaders trying to bully people online especially as they are doing it simply to make money by sucking noobs into programs they don't need.

Read Justin's post if you are interested in understanding the SEO aspect of all this.

Related Posts - These are real reviews and not affiliates of SBI.

Site Build It Scam? by Jeremy

How Not to Make Money with Site Build It - by Terry Didcott

Dr Ken Evoy SiteSell.com Scam? - by April

Site Build It is a Waste of Money - by Splork (My friend Splork has wasted more money on more crap than anyone I know. If you are a beginner then listen to him - he has been there - done that!)

Site Build It Review for Beginners - by Medic

Site Build It Scam? - by Wayne

Site Build It Scam Controversy - by Archie

Site Build It Scam Review - by Ad Tracker. (Quite humorous)

Site Build It Scam Trolls - by Fiar (Excellent commentary that covers the real point of this exercise)

Make Money Online for Free - Not with Site Build It - by Denise

Is Site Build It a Scam? by Christy

Site Build it Review or SBI Review or Whatever by Vic (lol - for your entertainment pleasure folks!)

What Constitutes a Scam? - by Bruce

How to Earn Cash Online with Site Build it - by Frank Carr (A considered opinion by one of the fairest reviewers online - well worth the read if you are considering Site Build it.)

Site Build It: The Scam - by Nick

Can I Make Fast Money with SBI? - by Matt

The Blog War - by Costa

Site Build It Action Guide - by Andy

The Soap Opera of SBI Scam Review - by Simonne

Fake Scam Product Reviews - by Tracey Edwards

How to Avoid Site Build It Scam - by Jeff Lopes

Site Build It Websites without the $300 - by Hijinks

Ken Evoy Defends Site Build It - by Dennis Jr.

Review of Site Build It - The Bashing - By Nick

SBI - The Evoy Empire - by Vic W

Is SBI Site Build It a Scam? - by Derrick

Site Build It Review - Positive or Negative? - by Neena

Is Site Build It a Scam? - SBI Review - by Zania

Site Build It is Unlikely to Make you Much Money - by Lorecee

Site Build It Vs Steve Pavlina: Which is the Scarier Cult - by Personal Development for Dummies (Funny and quite perceptive)

The Great Site Build It Scam - by Max Wolfe

Site Build It - Is Site Build It a Scam? - by Lin Burress

Site Build It Scam - The SBI Cult VS Lis - by Xel

Fake Site Build It Affiliate Reviews - by Carla

When 'Site Build It' Zombies Attack - by RT Cunningham

Site Build It is Not Worth It - by Damien

SEO for Small Business - Buyer Beware - by Larry G

Lissie's Site Build It Scam Review - by Cliff Edge Consulting

Site Build It Scam - by Scooter

WTF Is it with Site Flipping - by Bill The Blog Entrepreneur

Site Build It Review: Is SBI a Scam - by Ditto

Don't Buy Site Build It! - by Niche Writer

Site Build It Scam: No Need for SEO Web Design by Norman Sheppard Web Design

Is Site Build It a Scam? - by Janetra Antigua Web Solutions

Site Build It Scam Review - By Adam

Site Build It SEO Video from Vic - By Online Stock Trading

Site Build It Review - by Bastilar

Make Money Online The Real Deal - by Lissie

The Site Build It Controversy - Carla

Site Build It - No Naysayers Allowed - by Chanya

What is the Site Build It! Stink About - by Elliot

Site Build It? Forget It! - by Thai

How to Make Money Online for Beginners for Free - by The Chetty Bear

"Site Build It" - by BK

Site Build It Scam Reviews - Reviews Collection - by Joe

Watching the Fireworks - When MMO Implodes - by MJ

Are Site Build It Reviews a Scam? - by Michael Erickson

Site Build It Blog Reviews - by Online Stock Trading

Site Build It Review Site - by Grey Brother

A Negative Review of Site Build It! - by Toban

5 Things that won't Make Beginners Money Online - by Jordan Pierreza

The Dirty Little Secret Behind the Law of Attraction - by KuleKat (Kat adeptly discusses the Western world's penchant for self help, Steve Pavlina and SBI)

Get Your Green on

How to Pinch a Penny

Billiga Bilforsakringar

Cheers,

Griz

1.5 Million Visitors in 8 Days - Niche Marketing

2009-03-15T09:21:00.021-05:00

Make Money Niche Blogging with Hot Topics

The early bird gets the worm when there is no competition.

1,512,246 visitors in 8 days.

Click images to enlarge

Translates to $9,268.05 in earnings.

I told you how last post... it's money season folks.

Most of you ignored me. Hot topics are not glamorous - they are not long term - and they won't make you famous.

But I don't really care... they make money.

Sorry I haven't had time to get to the comments... been a tad busy.

Cheers,

Griz

(before you all ask - there were 3 celebrity centered events this past week and I'll say no more)

Update:

For two days I have been getting a constant stream of "experts" from Digital Point filling my inbox with troll crap - the usual "nobody will tell you how to make money online for free", "he must be selling something", "it's a fake" and so on. It is ironic that DP and Warrior are full of people flogging crap and noobs looking for answers and yet when someone mentions that you can learn everything you need to make money online for free just by reading a blog the trolls come out in force. It says a lot about the mentality online and why people don't succeed - a smart cookie might wonder how a PR0 free Blogger blog ranks on top of the make money online niche and do a little reading. The losers will never figure it out but it doesn't stop them from voicing their noob opinions.

For your entertainment folks... Digital Point Drivel

March 18 - Update. There is a new post on the Adsense blog for those who have been waiting - the feed update won't go out until the morning.

Today.com Pays You for Usless Traffic

2009-03-08T10:56:00.011-05:00

As many of you know I signed up for a free sub-domain on Today.com. In my short time on the site I have used the domain's juice to rank a number of keywords in decent position in the serp's. Next up - "How to make money with Adsense". This wasn't hard thanks to my friends who graciously supplied me with anchored backlinks. Thanks guys and I'm repaying my debts using the SEO and Adsense page. If you have sent me a link and I have missed you please let me know. (If there is a keyword you would rather have me use then let me know that as well.)

Lissie from How to Make Passive Income Online alerted me to the fact that the blogger's on Today.com were a bit green - and she was correct. If you have been following my advice for any lenght of time - say a week - then you are already an expert compared to the folks plodding about on Today.com. This isn't to demean them - they are truly nice people but they are completely new to the ways and means of internet marketing or even just blogging in general. Moreover the moderators are just as green. Even more astonishing is the fact that the powers that be behind the domain don't seem to have a great deal of knowledge either. And this brings me to the topic at hand.

Today.com encourages people to use social networks to attract traffic. The screenshot below is from the forum and one of the "Administrators" actively encourages people to use Entrecard.

Click image to enlarge

For those of you who don't know - Entrecard is easily the most useless traffic producer online. It consists of wasting an hour or two or your day loading 300 URL's in your browser and then clicking on them in order to visit 300 websites. You never actually look at the websites you visit - you just open it in a tab and by the time it loads you are already 4 tabs away loading another url. By the time you have loaded all the sites you simply close the browser window and wait for 300 other entrecard users to load your url in their browser - none of whom bother to read your posts either. When it is all done you pat yourself on the back because you had 300 unique visitors to your site. None stayed more than 2 seconds but what the heck it makes you feel like you are popular. Oh and gee - look at that - Alexa gives you a ranking.

Most of you learned long ago that you sure don't make any money from entrecard users. This also applies to the stumblers and diggers and redditers and sphinners and twitterers etc. Useless traffic that sucks your bandwidth and leaves without so much as a comment. Traffic that you waste hours trying to garner. One huge time sink if you are trying to make money.

However - and this is the point of this post - a lot of my readers still spend their days courting social traffic. You do it because your site isn't really set up to make money - you still hold onto the fact that maybe you will get famous because of your writing. Maybe targeting the search engines is a bit too much work. Maybe you will get around to doing what Griz says... one day but for now you're just gonna go with what you started with. If that is the case then Today.com is for you.

Why?

Because they will pay you for all that useless traffic. $2 for every 1000 useless unique visitors. It ain't much but I bet it is better than what most of you make right now with your social blogs.

Now some of you are thinking that getting 1000 visitors a day is hard - even useless visitors. Nope - not really. (I can't believe I am going to tell my readers how to get social traffic - lol)

Target Celebrities, Gossip, Tech/Gadgets/Gaming, Politics, humour and hot stories (ie - American Idol is back again)

Use images - lots of properly alt tagged images.

Post photos - tag em', keyword the photo with a short blurb

Post ten times a day - 10 posts per page.

Use Linkvana, Backlink Solutions, RT's ConnectContent, and buy anchored backlinks for all the targeted keywords.

Use my niche support page - it is free.

Use all the social sites to stumble, digg etc but if you use the link networks mentioned Google images will send you a ton of visitors all by itself.

Because you are using a free sub domain you need not worry about G. Just don't link it to any of your real sites.

This is the kind of stuff I did plenty of in the old days and I still have a couple of tropical fish sites that receive in excess of 10,000 visitors a day each - most from Google images. The sites make me nothing - the odd ebook sale but if I was getting $2 for every 1000 visitors I would build more.

If Today.com wants to pay for traffic then give them traffic. You can also set up affiliate links provided by Today.com and if approved by them they will also pay you $1 a post as long as you don't do self promotion posts.

The best thing about this is that you don't need to write much content. Just small keyword optimized blurbs about the photos. This is exactly how I used to use Technorati to drive thousands of people to my hot topic sites before Technorati canned the "what's hot" page. I posted photos with scandalous post titles and short keyword optimized blurbs. Social traffic loves crap and will bounce all over the net looking for it.

Here is the most visited site on Today.com http://whybenormal.today.com/ - 7000 daily visitors. Take a look at it. How much work do you think it takes to do that? (I mean no offense to the owner - good on her I say) $300 a month for posting humorous photos. Nice.

Unfortunately Today.com doesn't accept people worldwide. They don't publicize what countries are acceptable but it appears that N. America, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Asia (Tiawan, Japan) are ok. I'll update this post if people leave comments regarding their own country - pass or fail. If any of my readers that specialize in sneaky tactics have some ideas on circumnavigating the home IP blocking then feel free to leave your ideas below.

If any of you sign up or have an account already send me an email with "Today member" in the subject and I will let you know of another way to drive traffic - a very simple system. I won't respond back until I have everyone included so be patient. Let me know your today.com url in the email.

Today won't make you rich but I suspect a lot of you wouldn't mind a few extra bucks in your pocket given the current recession. Those of you who want to work a little harder can probably make some decent money using the affiliate ads provided if you target your sites to the right traffic.

I know a lot of you aren't making anything with your social sites - you may as well do the same thing you are doing now on a site that will pay you for the visitors.

Note: To all my "I'M In" participants. I haven't forgot you. Just ironing out a few things and will send you all an email shortly. Frank and RT - haven't heard from you but would like to...

Cheers,

Griz

Make Money with Adsense - February Income Report

2009-03-02T06:48:00.009-06:00

Hi Folks. As you have all noticed I have not posted in a few weeks as I have been concentrating on my new Adsense for Beginners blog. Actually - the previous post was simply a funnel to send traffic to the new site. Over the past couple of months my social traffic has increased considerably on this site and I am attempting to send the beginners elsewhere in order to reduce my social traffic/search traffic ratio on this site. I have said this often - if you want to make optimal returns with Adsense then you need to increase your search traffic (targeted) and reduce the amount of social traffic (un-targeted) that are clicking your ads. This will drastically improve your CPC and CTR.

A secondary concern I have is the amount of questions I get regarding Adsense. I thought it best to start over from scratch so that beginners can find all their answers in one place and not have to try and navigate this site for them - an impossible task and the result is that new comers tend to ask the same questions over and over on every post. Hopefully the new site will be easier to navigate and it contains current info - this site has a lot of info but much of it is out of date spanning the last two years. There have been a lot of changes in two years and I am far to lazy to go back and update old posts. It will be much easier in future to just point people to the new blog rather than answer the same questions over and over on this blog.

That's the official story - now the unofficial story.

I have talked a lot about dominating niches. Many of you have taken that to mean build a site, optimize your posts and then work your targeted anchored backlinks until you rank number 1 on the serp's for your term or keyword. If you have been following this path then you are doing things correctly and will see results. However - this isn't how you dominate a niche - you are simply dominating a keyword or phrase.

The next step is to dominate ALL the keywords and phrases associated with your niche. This will greatly increase your overall volume of targeted traffic. If you have followed my system - long winded posts using lots of long tails then you will have noticed that you can start driving traffic to your sites in short order. When starting a new site the traffic may not find you using your main keywords but they will find you for all the long tails. Ranking well for your long tails will help you rank for your main keywords if you choose your long tails properly. I have re-demonstrated this technique and urge you to read the following post if you are still not clear on how to choose and use keywords effectively in your posts and in your backlinks. Keywords and How to use them for Backlinks and for Post Content

There is still one step left in dominating a Niche. The final phase is to use your authority on your main site to support several other sites and vice-versa. There are 10 spots on page 1 of the serp's for every keyword. You don't have to stop at just one.

I have four sites now (that you know of) working their way up the MMO niche. You know about them because I am demonstrating what I do. I don't recommend you do the same - keep yours anonymous. You can build any number of legit sites anonymously and use them to support each other. Can you build a network without fallout from G or your competition? I don't know - I don't advertise them elsewhere. This blog as usual pushes the bounds of what you can or can not do. My sites are legit and shouldn't run afoul however my content tends to discuss things that may get me into trouble at some point.

February Adsense Income For Make Money Online for Beginners

A slight dip from January's numbers - 3 less days accounts for approximately $300 but this still leaves a drop of about $500 compared to last month. Not a concern as February is back on par with earnings posted throughout the fall. November and December had dropped enough to make me wonder if the economy was beginning to affect earnings. The January/February earnings have alleviated those fears. Perhaps Adsense is recession proof - time will tell.

Click Image to Enlarge

On a side note and something my Canadian readers have benefited from - the drop in the value of the Canadian Dollar has actually helped me earn more money. Last months income of $4k USD converted into an extra $1000 in Canadian currency. Very Nice...

Helping Others

I have benefited greatly from the help given to me by my friends. Your friends can be your greatest asset and one of the things that I have been attempting to do is build a community of people who will help each other out. While this has greatly benefited me I would like to take a more active role in helping others get immediate results. Several of you have reached a point in the serp's where you could use an extra push to get to the top of your niche. I will say no more in public but ask all of you who would like a little hand to contact me directly with the subject line "I'm In".

I know who my long time readers are and this is available only to you. I don't like excluding anyone but if I am not familiar with you I ask you to be patient and get yourself known in the community before asking to be included. For now I want to do a trial run with my regulars. The basic jist is I am going to ask you all to do something for someone else and ask others to do something for you. What we do won't be publicized. Nuff' said.

Cheers

Griz

Introducing Adsense for Beginners

2009-02-17T09:30:00.003-06:00

Hey folks. I have started a new site dedicated to explaining the fine art of making money online using Adsense. You can find the new blog here; Make Money with Adsense

Due to the overwhelming amount of emails I get requesting help with or needing answers pertaining to Adsense I have decided to start from scratch and lay out the framework for my Adsense system on a site of its own. The posts are targeted to those who have no knowledge whatsoever about this business so keep that in mind if you have been a long time reader. You will have read much of it before - at least the initial posts which cover the basics. While discussing what I do I will also be demonstrating my techniques using the new site as an example of how to tweak it, SEO it and rank it in the serp's. In future I hope to send the new readers to the site for all the info they will need to earn a living with Adsense. This should reduce my emails and solve the problem of finding all the pertinent info on this blog - yes - my navigation here sucks and even I can't find what I'm looking for most of the time. Sorry about that.

The site is built as a sub-domain on Today.com and I am using it in order to demonstrate to my experienced readers my process of building a network. Like always I run the risk of showing to much but the "farm" questions that my last post aroused has led me to realize that many of you need help in establishing your own networks. This site will give you a good idea of how I go about it.

You don't always need to start a new self hosted blog. You don't really need to spend money - there are many free platforms that you can use and the more you use the better. The idea is to spread your sites out across as many C Class IP's as you can. Some sites will be anonymous or use fictitious names. Others will be flagships proudly using your name. A network consists of a variety of blogs, websites, one page sales pages or whatever you can think of. The point is to create a network that you have access to and can control the juice on. It's easy finding backlinks if you have hundreds of sites to choose from...

In any event I won't be discussing "farming" here. I am in the process of helping a "friend" set up a site dedicated to this topic though - I shall let you all know when it is ready.

Until then - go to the new site and leave a couple of hundred comments just to see if we can break Today.com's comment program... lol.

Cheers,

Griz

Why Noobs Don't Make Money Online

2009-02-08T07:38:00.016-06:00

I am accustomed to 4-5 hours of sleep. Been that way for years. Every so often I feel a bit rundown and end up crashing early. Happened last night - 8pm and I was fast asleep. Just 1 problem. At 2:15 am I'm awake - fully awake and ready to roll. So I saunter over to the office and decide to work on a few of those emails haunting my inbox.

(And that's just this weeks emails... can I say waaaaay over my head here!)

So I canned that idea in a hurry but I did check out the comments on my new post over at my "not as ugly as this blog" blog Being First with Affiliate Products At that hour of the morning my friends on the other side (and ends) of the planet are awake and Lissie from Passive Income Online had left a comment... we traded quips for a bit and this led to me re-reading a post from Lucky who has a blog called "Achieving your Goals". Apparently one of Lucky's goals was to get my attention and he did - you have to read this outrageous post Make Money Online Grizzly Style. OK - you don't HAVE to but if you do you might want to follow one of the links that point to an INC.com article written about a real internet success stemming from Vancouver. Nope. Not John Chow - I said a "real" success story. The story is about Markus Frind the creator of Plenty of Fish - the largest online dating site. 1.6 Billion (yes with a B) page views a month. Read the article - it will amaze you to learn the guy is pulling in $5 million a year doing little work with a staff of himself. (He has a couple of employees now who weed out the spam on his site) Basically the guy created a huge site sitting in his living room and totally dominated the big guns of online dating. (Match.com, Lavalife etc) How did he do it?

"Frind's account of his own exploits, published on his blog in 2006 under the title "How I Started a Dating Empire," says a lot about his worldview: "I spent every waking minute when I wasn't at my day job reading, studying, and learning. I picked out 'enemies' and did everything I could to defeat them, which meant being bigger than them. I refused to accept defeat of any kind." Around the same time, he returned to one of his old Internet hangouts, a forum called WebmasterWorld, and posted a brief how-to guide entitled "How I Made a Million in Three Months." It contained a blueprint for the success of Plenty of Fish: Pick a market in which the competition charges money for its service, build a lean operation with a "dead simple" free website, and pay for it using Google AdSense." (Italics added by Griz)

exerpt from Inc.com - Author Max Chafkin "And the Money Comes Rolling In"

Have you seen Plenty of Fish Oh it's ugly.

So let me get this straight. I am to believe that someone could take an ugly site - give away free product that people want - and pay for it all with Adsense? Oh and kick the cans of all the dominant players in the market at the same time?

Getthefouttahere...

Let's see what the Make Money Online Expert has to say about this...

Jeremy Shoemaker if you please...

By 2006, Plenty of Fish was serving 200 million pages each month, putting it in fifth place in the United States and first in Canada among dating sites. Frind was making amazingly good money, too: $10,000 a day through AdSense. In March of that year, Frind mentioned these facts to Robert Scoble, a popular tech blogger whom he met at a conference in Vancouver. When Scoble wrote about the solo entrepreneur with the ugly website making millions of dollars a year, his readers were in disbelief. At the time, AdSense was seen as a tool for amateurs. It might cover your blogging expenses, but it wouldn't make you rich. Frind's website was also downright ugly. A search-engine-optimization blogger, Jeremy Schoemaker, wrote that Frind was a liar. "Give me a break, dudes," he wrote. "You look so stupid when you buy into his crap."

Oh sorry Jeremy - you're a search-engine-optimization expert too. Silly me - I must of missed that as I was whizzing on by in the serp's.

Whew what a relief - now I know nobody could take an ugly blog, give out free info and dominate a niche where the likes of Shoemoney and John Chow and Problogger reside and actually make money at it using Adsense.

In fact Shoemoney was kind enough to give another opinion on people trying to make money with a blog... Want to Make Money from a Blog? - Don't Try

Enlightening - you need to use your blog to make money with other things (once you get famous enough of course).

Do you know why noobs don't make any money online? Because they will piss away all their time reading and commenting on the endless train of Social Blogging Ignorance.

I frittered away another hour reading the inane comments left on Shoemoney's post. I randomly followed a few links left by the commenters. Some fellow called IronBlogger left this comment;

Very good point Shoe, but I disagree with you on some levels. I love blogging and I love making money off of it. If blogs didn’t make money I wouldn’t still be doing it to this point.

So I naturally had to check out this fellows blog - he did say he made money after all.

No surprise - another wordpress site adorned with all the standard crap you see on a site built by someone who reads the A-List. No advertisers, no traffic, no comments, no readers - and of course the usual posts that scream "I'm a noob but I'm going to pretend I know how to make money by copying everything I see on the A-List".

He has a Guest Post by another generic Noob who calls himself MoneyMakingGuru and enlightens us with a post about SEO. Did you know that there are 3 things that you just have to do to make your wordpress blog search engine friendly? The money guru tells us that we need;

1. Plug ins
2. Link/Banner Exchanges
3. Guest Posting

Really?

I have a question? Do any of these people ever check the serp's - the search engine results pages. I ask because this IronBlogger fellow has the infamous Top 100 Bloggers that will make you money online list Yes the same list seen countless times on noob sites across the net hoping it will attract all the big names and nobodies to their blog. The list is of course a joke - there is only one site listed that will actually teach others how to make money online (Vic's retired BloggerUnleashed) while the rest of the list is full of the usual social bloggers like Darren Rowse and crew who certainly make money online (by selling crap to the likes of IronBlogger) but don't teach a useful thing about making money yourself.

Here is my Top 100 - the only qualification needed is that you actually teach people how to make money online, know SEO and can prove it in the serp's.

Court Tuttle/Mark Butler

Vic Franqui

Josh Spaulding

Me and everyone who reads me and now understands SEO and Google.

I'm a little short of 100 but that's because these are the only people who truly understand SEO and explain it to others. Want proof - they all rank well in the serp's. Go see where all of IronBloggers list ranks for "Make Money Online".

As for his SEO advice - maybe someone should mention that the two top sites on Google for MMO are Blogger blogs - not wordpress. They don't use plug ins, banner exchanges or have guest posts. Come to think of it neither does my wordpress blog and it outranks everyone on his list as well.

Noobs advising noobs while copying social bloggers who don't have a clue about SEO either. I get so frustrated when I hear people claim to be in the MMO niche. They don't make money online and they sure as hell don't rank in my niche. They are social bloggers going nowhere fast and dragging all the other noobs down with them.

I did get a kick out of one of the names on his list,

Did you catch it? Middle... "Broke"... hehehe Some truth to that.

Speaking of Caroline - I know I have been a little hard on her in the past mainly because she flogs all the A-list crap and doesn't make any money but plays the role as well as any of the pretenders. Case in point.

Here is a post she wrote recently Matching Revenue Streams to Traffic Sources She talks about Search Engine traffic

"SE traffic is more receptive to on-page advertising such as AdSense than other kinds. Now the trouble is, programs like AdSense are very easy to implement so many bloggers put those ads up first but it usually takes a few months to build search engine traffic because your site needs authority before it is going to rank for any decent keywords and that takes time."

Yup - she is right.

"To do well with programs like AdSense each post needs to be targeted well to a certain keyword or group of related keywords and these keywords need to be something that advertisers are bidding on. Many blogs are not focused enough to do well. Mine is a prime example - most of my mosts are long, and rambly and don’t focus on keywords all that much so when I was running my AdSense experiment I found that the ads were very poorly targeted to my audience."

Yup - right again.

So my question is this; Caroline since you don't make money from Adsense and you don't have any search engine traffic worth speaking of, where did you get this sage knowledge? Obviously not from experience - this is stuff one learns as one succeeds - not fails. Didn't you mention you made a whopping $15.26 in Adsense in January?

Would any of my readers care to take a stab at where her info came from? That's right - I see her lurking about here just like half the people on IronBloggers list. Caroline - I don't blame you for being a bit put off by me as I admit I have been hard on you (for your own good I think) but maybe you can see why. You take my knowledge - post it as your own and not a word or link of acknowledgment as to where you learned it. There is only one person online who has that knowledge and posts about it... I'm not mad and you are welcome to join us anytime - you have talent but you have your head so far up the A-List behind you are only hurting yourself. I can teach you how to make money - they can't. Are you really proud of flogging crap to your readers to make a buck? At the very least you could start giving credit where credit is due.

By now I should tell you this post is going nowhere in particular - it's what happens when I get up in the middle of the night and start surfing the web. I try and avoid doing this as much as possible - it irritates me beyond words when I read all the crap out there. I shouldn't care but I do. Maybe that is my point - do you spend all your time reading crap online? Do you know how to spot all the bullshit? Do you know why Marcus Frind succeeded? Do you know why IronBlogger won't succeed?

Here is part of a post by IronBlogger exuding his Adsense wisdom;

Ahhhh... Adsense makes a blog unprofessional. It makes people run away...

It apparently made him run away when he checked out my site;

Apparently my blog didn't look good enough for his list;

So there you go folks - words of wisdom - a site has to look good and have decent content to make money online.

Don't tell Markus Frind that... or Google... or me...

Ugly just doesn't work - so unprofessional...

Cheers,

Griz

Just for balance - here is a great article by Leo Dimilo regarding the professional approach to building Flagship sites. Internet Marketing and the Case for Remarkable Content

Update - When you crap on someone and they are gracious enough to turn the other cheek - well I can respect that and I'll go slither under a rock. Caroline well done - check out The Indirect Power of Social Traffic.

SEO Software and Link Building

2009-02-01T05:35:00.022-06:00

Hi folks. A little bit of everything in this post as I want to tie up a few loose ends and ramble a bit. The basic gist of this post will pertain to SEO - more specifically I want to show you exactly what it is I do in order to take some of the mystery out of SEO.

I want to start off by referring you to a comment left on a post I made in December.

The post was How I Find a Money Making Niche Dec 5, 2008

The comment was by Jez and you can read it below.

Hi Griz,

Problem I have with this post is that 95% of the backlinks to this sites are from blogs / social sites links.... many are from bloggers you know / are friends with.

What I would like to see is a post on link building for a "non bloggy" topic would be very useful... for example... say you had a niche site about "reactolite spectacles"... how would you approach link building on a site like that?

Jez

I have had a number of emails similar in nature. Since this keeps cropping up I think it needs to be discussed.

Yes - it's true. I get a lot of links simply because I am ranked highly in the serp's. I have lots of friends - they do link to me. What Jez and others don't realize is that I didn't develop all my friends until I was found on the search engines. I didn't (and still don't) use social networks to make friends. I had to get my site ranked well in the first place and I didn't have any help back then. The fact that this blog benefits from friends helping me now doesn't mean that this was always the case. If you think I don't really know how to build links and rank well without the help of my friends you are sorely mistaken and doing yourself a dis-service if you don't heed my advice.

Jez you wondered if I could rank well for a non-bloggy niche like "reactolite spectacles".

Here you go... Reactolite Spectacles

And you can find it ranked number 1 with double indexing in Google.

Click all images to enlarge

As for my link building approach - it only needed a handful of links. None of the links are from friends.

I'm not a one trick pony like John Chow. This blog is successful and makes a lot of money for me but it is not all I do. I created 20 new sites in December just like the reactolite blog - 16 of which are now ranked number 1 for their main keyword. Only 1 is showing any promise as far as having decent traffic. The rest will probably end up on the farm - just like the Blinkweb by Brad Callen blog. This doesn't mean I wasted my time - the farm is quite useful. One of the 4 links I needed to rank the Reactolite site came from the Blinkweb blog.

This is how I find niches - I simply throw up enough sites, get them ranked and see which ones get traffic. Those that don't become useful later on for linking to yet more sites. Over and over. Throw enough crap against the wall and sooner or later something is going to stick.

Folks you don't have to go after the big niches all the time. Learn to get non competitive sites on top of the serp's. If they pan out great - if they don't then use them for linking. Get a stable of a hundred of these simple blogs and you will find that you can chase down the more competitive niches.

Btw - as you can see it doesn't take long (a month) to get a number 1 ranked site and it doesn't take a lot of links if the niche (keyword) has no competition. In fact I have shown you how to rank number 1 in a day when targeting short term hot topics like Asia'h Epperson. Maybe some of you need to put away the "insurance" blog for a bit and hone your skills ranking for "ants scratching their asses".

Simplify things and find out what it takes to rank on top of the serp's for easy niches. Build your confidence and your network at the same time. Baby steps. I guarantee that in a year from now you will be able to get that "insurance" blog on page 1.

Speaking of "a year from now". If you are going to make real money online then get realistic. I started this blog in Dec 2006. I picked a very competitive niche. I didn't expect to earn a dime until I cracked the first page in G. I didn't think I would get there any time soon. I was patient and took my time knowing that a year or two down the road it would be worth it. It's been two years since I started this blog and yup - it was worth waiting for...

For your inspiration. My January income for this free ugly blogger blog...

Adsense income = $3999.36

Project Payday Commissions = $1922.80

Assorted Affiliate Commissions Paypal = $427.39

Assorted Affiliate Commissions Clickbank = $365.91

Advertising Revenue = $225.00

January Total Revenue = $6940.46

Expenses = $0.00

Net Income = $6940.46 usd

Yes - 7k using a blogger blog. Would you stick it out for a year or two for that kind of income?

Total January income for all sites/all networks = $37,213.76 (primarily Adsense and Leads)

Total Expenses all networks = $1029.00

The bulk of my income comes from Blogger sites and all of it is earned by using SEO to rank well in the serp's. The A-list and their readers have never heard of me but I have 37,000 reasons why I don't really care. My system makes money and all it takes is - yup - backlinks. I will beat that horse until everyone of you learn that backlinks and Google are all you need to make money online.

And where do you get those backlinks? Link networks, article marketing, your own farm, friends, social sites (I don't but you can) and our own free resource that keeps growing every week - the niche support page on my Make Money Online with Griz blog.

SEO Software

My last post touched off a discussion regarding SEO Elite. (see the comments - set aside an hour to get through them all. lol) Paul mentioned that he preferred Aaron Wall's Free SEO Toolbar over SEO Elite. (I am not including links as this is not a sales pitch) I mentioned that if there were free tools that could provide the same data as SEO Elite then I would recommend people use them instead. I have yet to check out the SEO Toolbar but Paul assures me it does the same thing as SEO Elite and Fiar was kind enough to send me a sample of the SEO Toolbar rank checker this morning. (Thanks Fiar) I use SEO Elite for a number of things but it is the rank checker that is central to my success online. From what Fiar showed me it appears that SEO Toolbar does provide a useful rank checker and therefor I will suggest you all take advantage of the toolbar sight unseen on my part.

I will continue using SEO Elite as it is paid for and I am accustomed to using it. I bought SEO Elite ages ago when there was nothing comparable. Since then a multitude of free SEO software tools have made their way onto the scene and from the sounds of things SEO Elite has become redundant. If you can find free tools that produce the info you need then there is no need to buy any program just because it has a few bells and whistles that the free tools don't. (I'm leaving SEO Elite in the sidebar just because it makes me a few bucks a month off of search visitors who don't read my posts - anyone who doesn't read my blog is fair game in my books.) If you are a reader of mine - ask me in the comments before you buy anything you see on this site - I'll tell you whether I really endorse it.

The Rank Checker

My comments in the last post brought a flood of emails from readers wanting to know what the big deal was regarding the rank checker. The big deal is that it's what I use to mount a backlink campaign. It tells me where my keywords rank, how fast they rise in the serp's, which keywords need more backlinks and when to add them, how my competition is doing, what keywords they are competing for and which ones they aren't and a whole host of other things relevant to ranking well in the serp's. In short the rank checker is my NASA control center for my linking.

The screenshot below is just a section of the hundreds of keywords and sites I have loaded into SEO Elite's Rank Checker.

You will see instantly how well a site ranks for the keywords and what direction it is moving in (higher or lower in the serp's). It allows me to see if the competition really does know SEO. Below you will see Gary Conn's name. A few months ago he didn't rank worth crap in the serp's (meaning he was all BS before). He has been reading Vic's site and mine (not that he will admit it but I see him lurking) and now he is ranking for the MMO keywords. He is competition. Problogger on the other hand doesn't appear to have a clue about SEO and is really just a social blogger (a really good one) and isn't competition. Jonathan Ledger has a 3 way link program that he sells. Does it work? Nope. How do I know? I've tracked all his keywords and he doesn't rank for anything. His 3 way links program can't be very good if the owner of the program isn't ranked for squat. The rank checker is a great tool for checking out just how well different affiliate products work. If someone claims they are an expert at something and don't rank for their area of expertise they are full of crap. In short I use this tool for spying, for planning my strategies and then for implementing my links. It gives me the feedback I need to dominate the serp's. If you don't think it's important then go back and review my income again. Dominating the serp's IS my income.

Most of you know by now that I don't post often. There are many reasons for this. One is that I make more money not posting - notice the Adsense revenue dropped off over the last two weeks of January? Go through my posts in January and see when I posted. I explained why in one of those January posts. Another reason is simply because I don't have to. The reactolite blog only required 2 posts to rank number 1. What I'm trying to say is this - content is necessary only to the extent that you need something relevant on your sites (targeted keywords). This takes 10% of my time. I spend the other 90% of my time getting links. Posting is a waste of my time unless I need to add keywords to a site or trigger different Adsense ads. Otherwise leave it alone and work on the links. The links are what make you money - not the content. This is true for what I do at least.

I don't think I can simplify my system any more than this. Yes there is lots to learn when it comes to tweaking sites to optimize your income but that is something you can all learn once you have the traffic. Put all that aside and get the traffic first. Create keyword optimized sites - get keyword optimized backlinks. This will bring you traffic. If the traffic doesn't pan out - stick it in the farm and create more. And more. And more. Build your own network and as you grow you will start to dominate the niches that do have traffic. Too many of you are starting out looking for the 1 great niche or doing the MMO thing. This is fine for the long term and you can keep plugging away but maybe you should work on some reactolite type sites just to see some immediate results.

Okay - this is long enough. I want to talk about Google and its move towards social metrics in the next post. Fiar and Gary have both questioned me on this issue and I want to explore it further.

Until then here are a couple of blog posts that made me chuckle this week.

see Splork's Crap is Still King

and VicW's Make Money Blogging

Cheers,

Griz

Making Money with Affiliate Marketing

2009-01-27T08:04:00.010-06:00

Let me start by apologizing ahead of time for being a manipulative bastard. I've just finished a set of tests on this blog and now I want to explain a few things to you about the world of Internet marketing. Some of this you will have heard before but even you seasoned readers should read on.

I just convinced several hundred people to download a firefox add-on that apparently doesn't work and only Paul from Internet Marketing Product Reviews dared mention that Brad Callen's products tend to be crap. After having a few PPC friends check their own ads with the PPC Web Spy tool - we found out that it didn't bring up their keywords. In fact it looks like the tool simply digs out the relevant keywords and CPC much like keyword elite does from the same source - Google. It doesn't appear to show the advertisers individual keywords or bids after all. If any of you use PPC then please check your own ads and let me know if the tool is working.

Why do so many people trust the word of others (yes even me) and never bother to check things out for themselves?

This is the X factor.

Do you know who really succeeds online? The people who think for themselves, the people who take everything with a grain of salt and verify things on their own. The people who know how to separate the bullshit from legitimate information.

I shouldn't have to tell you folks to verify the things I say. You should be doing it on your own. Now I realize many of you wouldn't call bullshit on me in the comments out of friendship or respect but no one did it quietly in an email either. I can list on one hand people who have taken me to task in the past - Fiar from Political Humor, Gary from Everything Everywhere, Frank at How to Earn Money Online and a few others. I love these guys and can tell you they will be successful. They sniff out the bullshit and think for themselves. (I don't want too many links but Terry, Trent, RT, Splork all belong in this category as well). Considering the amount of readers I have the list is small. I'm not trying to insult anyone or show a lack of respect - I truly value all the friends I've made with this blog but I am trying to point out one of the biggest factors when in comes to being successful online or elsewhere.

Think for yourself.

Why do the A-List have such large fan bases? Because the majority of people trying to make money online don't think or verify anything. They just follow along doing whatever the so-called expert tells them to do. They are a gold mine for anyone who wants to manipulate them. I can just imagine how much money I would have made if I had told everyone that PPC Web Spy was a great affiliate product and buy the upgrade!

I joke all the time about how I am just setting my readers up in order to scam you all big time one of these days. The scary thing is I probably could. (I won't but I'll keep threatening)

Now there is a point to this other than being a jerk. A recurring theme in my emails is "Please talk more about internet marketing". The emails aren't asking for advice on selling "Oil Filters" - the people all have MMO blogs of one kind or another and they want in on the whole "selling IM products to Bloggers and IMer's" niche. Now instead of me telling you how broke you will be following that path I set up this little experiment to show you results instead. I'm not pulling the PPC Web Spy banner down just yet. My readers have had a crack at it and now I will see what kind of response I get from my search traffic.

Here are some stats.

9156 visitors have seen the banner.
218 people downloaded it with my link. No idea how many may have downloaded it without the link.
No one paid for an upgrade. (Thankfully)

So you want to sell to internet marketers huh?

I only got a 4.2% conversion for a "free" download. And not a single sale.

Remember I have a lot of targeted traffic, I'm seen (I think) as reasonably honest and this is all I could pull off.

How well do you think you are going to do selling to other Internet marketers?

One of the biggest problems with this whole online biz is assumptions. People assume a site with 5000 visitors a day must make a killing selling things. People see someone with 50,000 feed readers and assume they get 50,000 visitors a day - not. Do you really think Darren Rowse makes a killing everyday selling the crap in his banners? No. He makes money selling ads to others who put up the banners and they make nothing from his traffic. The assumptions stem from the fact that no one who has a large traffic base is willing to tell people just how few affiliate sales are made in the IM niche. Rowse won't admit it or he wouldn't get advertisers willing to pay big bucks to put their ads on his site.

One of the reasons for me adding that banner is to gauge my own CTR when it comes to selling advertising space on top of my blog. I have run a few different banners just to see what an advertiser might expect. The results are woeful. In fact after this episode I don't think I will offer the ad spot. My Adsense revenue takes a beating (a loss of about 30% ctr every time I've added a banner). This means charging an advertiser at least $50 a day for the ad. Unfortunately the advertiser won't get their money's worth and that bugs me. I know others would just sell the spot and don't care about the results but I don't want my name dragged through the mud for ripping people off.

You have all heard the saying that there is no money in selling to other bloggers. With the exception of the developers and their handful of super-affiliates this is true. Even then the return is small. Callen may make a few grand from his latest venture but he won't retire on it. In a month he will be flogging something else. He has too to keep a steady income coming in.

But Griz - you're in the MMO niche so there must be money in it... right. Yup - using Adsense there is. Selling products? Nope. ( Yes alright - with my targeted search traffic I could probably sleaze out a living scamming beginners but would you want to do that?)

Think on this. If I put through 9000 people in two days on my shoe site how many affiliate sales (or leads) do you think I would have compared to the IM crowd? Actually it's not as high as you think but still a world away from IM. On average my conversions are in the 8-12% range and sometimes a lot higher when a hot seller comes along. Strangely enough I still tend to do better with Adsense than affiliate sales. The thing is, civilians buy and click. IMer's don't and while you are tired of hearing this I thought some hard numbers might get the point across. If I can't make a good buck selling crap to bloggers do you really think you will with a fraction of the traffic?

I'm sorry if I sound harsh and that I have avoided answering all the emails asking for help in this area. The fact is I don't want to encourage any of you to follow the IM path. I'm not hogging it for myself. It just isn't a profitable business model and especially for beginners. Learn SEO and get non - IM niches to the top of the serp's first. Once there you can experiment and flog whatever you like but at least you will have traffic to flog it too. And there is always Adsense if nothing else pans out.

Most importantly - learn to question everything and everyone. I don't mean that you should become a cynical bugger - just have a healthy skepticism about what you hear and learn how to verify the claims you come across for yourselves.

I just want to mention this - a congrats of sorts. While I was typing this up Lane left a comment on the PPC Web Spy post.

Here is part of it.

(1) When I click on each of the advertisers, they don't necessarily have the specific keyword that I queried for on their list. For instance, I just typed in the keyword phrase: buy perfume. The top advertisers are clearly looking for people looking to buy perfume, as their ad reads "Buy Perfume at Sephora" However when I click the "View Keywords" button, NONE of their ads listed are about perfime -- they, like several of the other advertisers listed show ads about other things liked shaving cream and acne.

Why don't I see the keyword that I was searching for?

(2) Sort of related to the previous question... Since I don't see the keyword that I am looking for, how can I tell which advertisers are the lower priced one that I would want to eliminate?

Finally someone actually used the tool and realized something fishy is going on with it. Well done Lane. The answer to your questions btw - it's a piece of crap.

Again sorry for misleading everyone with this download - I just had to make a point.

Don't believe everything you read online - check it out yourselves. I don't mind people calling bullshit on me. It means you are thinking things out.

I hope you will all forgive me but I imagine the old feedburner cancellations will start about a minute after posting. I hope not as my intentions were honest.

I will provide the search stats for the banner in a few days.... and then it will be gone.

Cheers,

Griz

PPC Web Spy - Brad Callen

2009-01-24T13:56:00.009-06:00

Brad Callen's New PPC Web Spy Software - Free

Update: If you found this post while searching for a Review of PPC Web Spy then read this post and then read part 2 before you act - PPC Web Spy Review Part 2

Since my Adsense is shot to hell this week anyway I may as well do another post - yes my faithful readers - 3 posts in a week! Your feedreaders must be overheating!

Full disclosure - I could make money from this "Free" product but it is unlikely and I will get to that in a moment.

You will notice the new banner ad on top of the page. If you click it you will be taken to the PPC Web Spy landing page. Type in your bonafides and you will indeed get a free copy of Brad's latest software.

What is it?

The landing page explains it all quite clearly but basically it's a tool for finding the keywords that Google Adwords users are targeting. This will be very helpful for all you PPC marketers. I don't do PPC anymore but it turns out that this little tool, inadvertently, is also a handy addition for those of us who make money with Adsense. And the tool is free so why not use it?

Essentially it highjacks your browser (you must use firefox btw - and you should be using firefox anyway!) by adding a little widget to the bottom of the browser that you can toggle on and off.

If the widget is off you see Google search results like always. If the toggle is turned on then you see search results that look like this;

Click all images to enlarge

If you click the "Keyword" Button located beneath each Adwords advertiser you will get a list of keywords like this;

By now I shouldn't have to explain to all you Adsense people how useful this is. Imagine how helpful in targeting high paying keywords?

The software also shows you who the Noob Adword users are as indicated in the next screenshot.

You will see this whenever you click the "Keyword" Button and the Advertiser doesn't have a track history. In other words don't target his/her keywords as they don't know what they are doing. Target the professionals as they will lead you to the keywords that pay.

You can also tweak your competitive ad filters in your Adsense account to eliminate all the low bidding advertisers from showing up on your content ads. (Note - I just gave you an important tip! lol)

Now what is the catch to this clever little program?

Well the software really is free and for us Adsense users and PPC users the "Catch" is not important as you can get the software for nothing. The catch, as usual is the sales spiel which will try and entice you to pay for the premium package. The premium package is nothing more than a new version of a Branded Giveaway - in this case you brand the PPC Web Spy Free giveaway software with embedded affiliate links which will then earn you money every time one of the people who downloaded your free branded copy of the software buys something. Or that's the premise but it's not likely to work so I wouldn't go hog wild paying for the premium package.

Here is the scheme.

If you pay for the upgrade and giveaway branded copies this is what happens.

When the person who downloaded the copy through you uses it they will benefit from the "Keyword" info as outlined already but in using the product they will also add 2 new serp listings to the number 1 and 2 positions in the serp's for whatever keyword they are researching. These listings will be for affiliate products and if the person clicks on them and buys then you will get the commission. Watch the video on the sales page for a complete understanding of how it works. (You can see the Video without paying anything.)

The problem with this gimmick is that anyone you get to download the free software is likely to be another marketer and/or blogger and they will see the same video and know the serp listings contain your links. And being true IM'ers they will dutifully never buy a product with your link in it. If this software could be added to the millions of browsers used by internet civilians like teenagers then yes this could make someone a lot of money. That's not going to happen though - the only people who will have it installed will be other bloggers. I don't recommend upgrading to the premium package unless you enjoy trying to sell affiliate crap to other affiliate marketers.

I do recommend you download the free software though and add it to your Adsense Keyword Tools folder. The program will be dynamite for targeting keywords. The bonus - a lot of you can stop sending me emails asking how to find "good" keywords to target. This tool is pretty useful and I don't say that about many programs online.

If you want it you can download it free from the Banner on top of the page.

Don't buy the upgrade - just my opinion.

Enjoy,

Griz

Blogger Public Service Ads Fix

2009-01-23T10:00:00.005-06:00

If you are using Blogger and run Adsense then you may have awoken this morning to find all your Ads are showing Public Service Ads (PSA's).

First off don't panic!

Second stop sending me emails! Lol.

There is an easy fix.

Why this happened is unclear but appears to be connected to several recent and ongoing changes within Adsense and Blogger.

If you are showing PSA ads then you are using the Channels feature available when setting up your ads in Google Adsense. This method requires you to set up your ads in Adsense and then transfer the code supplied over to a html/javascript Gadget in Blogger.

Simply remove all those html/javascript Gadgets (just the ones using your Adsense code) and replace them with the "Adsense" Gadgets provided in Blogger. This means opening an "Adsense" Gadget, selecting the ad format you want and then place it in the appropriate location. These ads don't require you to use Adsense setup.

The PSA ads will be gone but you will not be able to track your ad blocks as you did using the code supplied by Adsense setup.

Cheers,

Griz

How to Game Alexa

2009-01-22T06:58:00.019-06:00

Dear Alexa.com,

Your website ranking algorithm is so flawed as to be virtually useless as a barometer of online traffic. It is so poor that it is in fact misleading and should require you to add a disclaimer along the lines of "our traffic estimates are accurate to plus or minus 100%" - 100% of the time.

In layman's terms your traffic rankings are broke.

I suppose the odd beginner may take your stats seriously but the majority of experienced Internet marketers have come to realize that your algorithm is in need of serious adjustment. Anyone with more than a handful of sites online has seen the absurdity of your rankings.

To whit...

The following two sites have roughly the same amount of traffic. The first site averages 87 visitors a day. You deem that good enough for an Alexa rank of 250,000 give or take. The second site averages 102 visitors a day and you rank it 2,577,000 give or take. It appears that because the first site (with less traffic) averages 19 returning visitors daily this is enough to rank 2,250,000 spots higher than the second site (that has more visitors) but only averages 2 returning visitors a day.

Click all images to enlarge.

This site above has an Alexa ranking of 250,000 give or take.

This site above has an Alexa ranking of 2,577,000 give or take.

What else could effect the vast difference in rankings...

The first site has a bounce rate of 54%.
16% of visitors stay longer than an hour.
92% of traffic is from referrals.
8% of traffic is from search (mostly Google).
The site does get social network traffic (Stumbleupon, Digg etc).

The second site has a bounce rate of (strangely enough) 54%.
No visitor stays longer than 5 minutes.
55% of traffic is from referrals.
45% of traffic is search (mostly Google).
No social network traffic.

But let's not stop there.

The site below has an Alexa rank of 1,169,000 give or take. It averages 252 Unique visitors a day. Only 8 returning visitors...

This site has a bounce rate of 60%.
Very few visitors stay longer than 5 minutes.
21% of traffic is from referrals.
79% of traffic is search (mostly Google).
No social network traffic.

I find this interesting because you are ranking a site with 252 Uniques a day 1,169,000 ish while ranking a site with 87 Uniques a day at 250,000 ish. Better yet the site with 252 Uniques a day just barely ranks better than the site below which is ranked 1,177,000 ish.

Yup... a site with just 18 Uniques a day ranks just marginally behind a site with 252 uniques.

This site has a bounce rate of 85%.
13% of visitors stay longer than 5 minutes. (3% longer than an hour)
2% of traffic is from referrals.
98% of traffic is search (mostly Google).
No social network traffic.

Oh yes I know - you mention that your stats are more "accurate" for sites with greater amounts of traffic - sites that make your top 100,000. Hmmmm...

You may find this interesting.

The site below is ranked 70,000 ish and only averages 289 Uniques a day. It has 30 more Uniques per day than the 1,169,000 ish ranked site. Wow.

But let's see...

It has an average of 80 returning visitors a day as opposed to 8 visits a day to the 1,169,000 ranked site.

and...

This site has a bounce rate of 57%.
22% of visitors stay longer than 5 minutes. (11% longer than an hour)
87% of traffic is from referrals.
13% of traffic is search (mostly Google).
It has a relatively large amount of social network traffic in relation to it's low overall traffic.

And how about a site that really does get a moderate amount of traffic?

The site below is ranked 170,000 ish.

It averages 2500 Uniques daily and has an average of 357 returning visitors a day - more returnees than the other sites listed have in total traffic. Scratch my assumption that returning visitors is the key to gaming you. It should rank in the top 10,000 if that was the case.

So why isn't this site in the top 100k at a minimum? It has vastly more daily traffic than all the other sites combined.

This site has a bounce rate of 66%.
12% of visitors stay longer than 5 minutes. (3% longer than an hour)
14% of traffic is from referrals.
86% of traffic is search (mostly Google).
It has a relatively low amount of social network traffic in relation to it's moderate overall traffic.

I could go on and ask why another site of mine averages 5500 Uniques a day and only ranks 132,000 ish. Or why my best site, in spite of 10,000 plus Uniques a day manages to top out on your scale at a whopping 204,000 ish?

I could ask but I don't really need to.

Every site I own that get's the majority of it's traffic from the search engines ranks quite poorly.

Any site that receives the majority of it's traffic from referrals and social networks ranks inordinately high - far higher than its traffic warrants.

Moreover any site that draws predominantly social network traffic ranks absurdly high.

The other noticeable factor is that sites that garner more page views per visitor rank higher than those that don't - regardless of overall traffic.

I am not a social blogger but I'm hoping that many of my readers (when I post this on my MMO blog) who do receive social traffic will be kind enough to provide their stats in my comments (keeping their sites anonymous of course) in order to pin down just what social traffic is required to game your stats. We know you love Digg, Stumbleupon and Twitter traffic but it will be interesting to see if a pattern emerges highlighting the easiest way to game you.

Why should we game you?

Because you are a joke and it might be a good thing to warn unwary advertisers that believe your stats have some credibility.

The best way to discredit you is by gaming you.

Btw... you might want to add another disclaimer to your site stating that your stats completely ignore the single largest source of traffic online - the search engines - and as a result your sample is based solely on sites that engage in social networking. Ultimately your stats are simply a measure of which sites get the most traffic from Digg etc and are not even remotely accurate in terms of the overall total traffic online.

Sincerely,

Griz

Making Money Online Anonymously

2009-01-18T09:57:00.010-06:00

The longer I blog online the more I realize the irony involved in making money with Adsense. I'll get to that in a minute though... first up...

A big fat PR0 - yup - the big G finally slapped me good. Why?

Well when all your pages are reduced to the big goose egg it is usually a sign that they perceive you to be selling links. Am I selling links? Nope. But I can see how they might get the idea based on the amount of links I have on my homepage. I could write them and plead my case - I have a lot of friends and all my links are legit but I'm not going to. I have said this for ages - pagerank has nothing to do with serp rankings and perhaps dominating the MMO niche with a big fat PR0 site will get my point across in spades. For those who were concerned my serp rankings haven't changed and the SE traffic is still pouring in.

How this happened is likely the result of some "friend" who reported the site as selling links. You will find that dominating a popular niche is a constant battle with competitors and they will do whatever it takes to unseat you.

Which brings me back to keeping anonymous online. Yes I know this goes against every blogger's deepest desire - to get famous. The thing is I'm not a blogger - I'm an internet marketer and my goal is to make money. You make money by flying under the radar and I want to give you all a prime example of what I mean.

I don't post often. I get a lot of emails asking me to post more. There is a reason for not posting (aside from being lazy)... I make more money not posting.

Huh... wtf you say.

Tis' true... let me show you what I mean.

Some Adsense Secrets

This has taken a long time to decipher and I'm still not convinced that I have it right so don't take this as gospel but...

3000 ad impressions a day seems to be a magic number with Google.

The screenshot below shows my Adsense income for January (for this blog only) - the January 18 (today) total is not final as it shows my earnings early in the day when I took the shot.

After two months of lower than normal earnings (lack of advertiser competition I believe) my January earnings bounced back nicely and until a few days ago were on course for a new high with this blog.

Click image to enlarge

A recurring problem is that weekends see a drop in visitors. Friday night until Sunday evening is always the poorest traffic - sometimes several thousand fewer visitors. When my visitors drop below 3000 ad impressions (according to Adsense stats - not your own stat counter) I notice a drop in my CPC (how much I get paid per click). I am not allowed to divulge all the details but my CPC can drop as much as half. It varies though and it has to do with the traffic I get.

Whenever I post I get a surge of traffic - the surge is un-targeted (my readers) and my CPC drops for several days until readers tail off. As long as my ad impressions stay above the 3000 barrier my CPC doesn't drop more than 10 cents a click. If my ad impressions fall below the 3000 barrier I see a 30 cent drop in earnings per click.

Because I haven't posted since December 27, 2008 my earnings have been great - my traffic has been 80% search engine and 20% social. In other words I make more money when my readers aren't flocking to the site - ie. the less I post the more money I make.

Absurd? Yup. Unfortunately this is the key to making money with Adsense.

So what happened on Friday the 16th? My earnings nosedived without me posting.

Less clicks? Nope. I had more clicks on Friday than on Thursday but earned $50 less.

Less Ad impressions? Yup - I dropped below the magic 3000 for the first time in weeks.

and to top it off I began getting a steady stream of un-targeted traffic from the Warrior forum.

The cumulative effect was a quick drop in earnings.

And since my earnings are already in the crapper I figured today was a good time to post a new entry.

And now you know my secret to when I post. I usually only post when my earnings are down and more un-targeted traffic won't do any more damage.

This is not to say I don't appreciate all of you who read my blog - I surely do. This blog completely baffles me as it actually has readers and I have made a lot of great friends because of it. Friends can do a lot to help you online so I can't say social traffic isn't worthwhile. The conundrum I have is that I make money with Adsense and Social traffic isn't conducive to that. I, of course, want my cake and to eat it too. If nothing else this blog is a great learning tool when it comes to straddling the Internet Marketing/Social Network approach with straight up SEO. I've always known that SEO works - it did 4 years ago and it hasn't really changed today. The thing is I have learned a lot this past two years about Google and Adsense that I wouldn't have known if not for the Social traffic.

The thing that interests me now is how to convert Social visitors into earnings without resorting to the A-list method. (selling crap to your readers and advertising crap to your readers) Perhaps if there was something worthwhile to promote... the thing is... there just isn't.

I get a ton of JV emails - people wanting me to promote stuff - many of the people are legit and well-meaning but they sell crap. Sorry - no offense but if I wouldn't buy it then it's crap. I'd really like to see something worthwhile come along one of these days.

I digress - back to the point. For the thousand or so emails I have about how often should you post. If you are using Adsense - only when there is no reason not too.

If you truly want to make money online - stay anonymous. This greatly lowers the amount of "friends" who want to dethrone you. Yes I know this contradicts everything you've learned from the A-List but that crap concerns blogging and not Adsense.

In my absense...

- I have several thousand emails piled up... oops

- It's winter road season here at the Lodge, just finished building the ice road last night, it's been cold r' n' hell for weeks now - 30-40 below zero, everything that can break has broken; water lines, sewage lines, trucks, boilers etc, all fixed except the water line to my house, wife and kids unhappy about that "little" exception, haven't read a blasted email in weeks - social blogging has some drawbacks and hope everyone understands, Lodge is full and real life has intruded upon my online endeavors once again and probably why I have always liked making money passively with Adsense.

I have lots to yak about but little time at the moment. I will get to it as time permits but I have a water line to look at...

Cheers,

Griz

Related Articles:

Can You Make Money Online Hiding Your Real Identity

SEO for Google 2009

2008-12-27T10:44:00.016-06:00

The future of Search Engine Optimization

This past year I have been fortunate to rank a number of blogs on top of Google's search listings and the result has been a steady stream of income from Google Adsense, selling Advertising space and Lead Generation. This is passive income that is generated daily regardless of how much I post and is not dependent on social media or social marketing. My interest online is to make money with the least amount of effort required. My methods are widely used by Internet Marketers and almost completely unknown to Bloggers. In fact, the prevalence of social blogging has obfuscated what was once widely known - that search traffic is steady, it converts into sales or clicks and it can be grown almost exponentially by simply targeting more and more keywords.

The advent of social marketing has produced bloggers by the millions, each one chasing a dream of large readerships in hopes of generating buckets of income. Each one almost completely ignorant of search traffic or the benefits of high placement in the serp's. The irony is that social traffic is much harder to get on a consistent basis, consists mostly of other bloggers, doesn't convert into buyers and requires a huge time commitment. Worst of all it generates no income until you are able to achieve "authority" status in your niche and are pulling in thousands of visitors a day. Even then your revenue consists almost entirely of advertising fees generated by selling space to other bloggers trying to monetize your traffic. They find out soon enough that your traffic doesn't convert either - how many of you buy or click on the ads pasted on the A-List sites? The A-List is fortunate that there is no shortage of new advertisers willing to fork over large sums in order to replace former advertisers who learned that social traffic doesn't convert. In most cases the A-List is paid to promote sign-up programs - more social media networks for the most part. An endless circle...

The fact that there can only be a limited number of A-List sites or authorities in any one niche is lost to the masses who believe they have what it takes to reach the top. Everyone, it seems, believes they have the right stuff. I have seen a lot of bloggers rise quickly - develop a decent readership, some good PR and just as quickly lose interest in their blog in spite of thousands of RSS subscribers. Why? They don't make enough money to cover the time commitment required to keep the blog fresh in the readers mind.

The alternative to social blogging is of course SEO or Search Engine Optimization. In truth this can and should be applied even if you choose to chase social traffic. I don't chase social traffic at all but because of my high serp rankings I find that social bloggers find me anyway. I mention this simply to point out that those of you hoping to gain fame and recognition for your work can achieve it by dominating the top rankings in the serp's and save yourself the countless hours of work needed to make a name for yourself in the social arenas.

As 2008 draws to a close I have given a lot of thought to how Google will tweak its algorithm over the coming year. Without getting long winded it doesn't take a lot of imagination to assess Google's predicament; the search engine has to have a means by which to rank sites based on keyword relevancy - the easy part and it has to have a means for deciding which relevant site should rank at the top of the serp's - the hard part.

How would you do it?

Would you rank sites based on their RSS subscribers?

Would you rank sites based on their Page Rank?

Would you rank sites based on their social links and traffic?

Would you rank sites based on their Alexa Rank? Their Compete rank?

Would you rank sites based on the fame of the site?

If you would entertain any of these ideas then your ranking system would lead to a useless search engine. All these methods are easily gamed or have no relevancy for the vast majority of niches. How would sites related to "Oil Filters" be ranked if Google used RSS subscribers as a basis for ranking?

Google's predicament is that it has to have a system that works for all keywords and not just those that apply to social niches. Many a social A-Lister has preached that Google will use social media in its rankings - a belief that I find laughable. Google has been eliminating metrics that can be easily gamed - not adding them to the mix.

Ultimately the only system that works well but is not perfectly fair is to rank sites based on incoming links. Yes this can be gamed as well but for the vast majority of niches this is still the best measure of a site's authority.

Rather than find a new system Google has methodically tweaked its system to degrade or dismiss links of poor quality and give greater weight to links that are deemed high quality.

Almost all social links - Do-follow comments, Bookmarks, Digg, Stumbleupon etc are considered low quality and while they may be registered by G they will not gain you top ranking in a competitive niche. They will work fine in an un-competitive niche but even then a single link from a quality source will outrank all your low quality links.

Google's algorithm will reward you well if you follow my recommendations outlined below.

4 Steps to Google Dominance

Keyword Research

Forget Quality Content (No such thing to a machine) - use Relevant Content.

On Page Keyword Optimization

Develop 1 way Inbound Links to your site.

Target the most popular keywords in your niche, add relevant content, use your main keyword in your URL, Blog Title, Page and Post titles and then spend the rest of your time developing quality inbound links.

I have said this many times - quality inbound links are the single most important aspect for ranking well in Google.

The 5 Measurements of Inbound Links

The Quantity of inbound links.

- This is least important but effective for low competition keywords.

The Title keywords on the page linking to you.

The Anchor Text used in the link pointing to you.

- You will only rank for the terms others use in their links pointing at your site. This is crucial for gaining top ranking.

The Relevance of the content on the page linking to you.

- The site with the most keyword anchored links coming from relevant content posts/pages will outrank all others.

The Quality of the inbound link.

- The best link you can possibly get is a PR10 link using your main keyword in the anchor coming from within a post relevant to your keyword. The further from this optimum the less quality the link. A few of these quality links will easily have you outranking sites with 1000's of lesser quality links.

I have not talked about Domain Age or the popular SEO blathering regarding keyword density, blog platforms, site design, posting frequency or any of the other "tips" spouted at length by all the so-called experts online. The reason is simple - it is all window dressing in the greater scheme of things and ultimately unimportant when it comes to serp domination.

The simple truth is that I can rank any site on top of the serp's with the right backlinks and provided the site has legit content (but only because it may get a human review - I could do it with spam if I only had to dupe the machine). How much content or how well it is written is insignificant for ranking purposes.

If you just have to chase social media then do yourself a favor - as you get yourself known ask your friends and readers to use your keywords when they link to you. Do you know how many times I have heard a social blogger tell me that social media is great because it gets them PR and backlinks. When I check they have hundreds of links using their name in the anchor. Yup - they rank really well for a term no one searches for. What a waste and yet the links could be so beneficial. As for PR - just remember this - your own PR has no bearing on your ranking. It's the PR of the sites linking to you that effects your ranking and only if they use your keywords.

Making Money Online is not complicated. Rank on top of the serp's for as many keywords as you can. Add Adsense. Collect money. Rinse and repeat.

It really does work and I hope many of you will achieve the same success as I have over the coming year.

Have a very happy and prosperous 2009

Cheers,

Griz

ConnectContent.com

2008-12-11T07:24:00.010-06:00

Dumb question - are you looking for backlinks?

I'm posting an article below written by RT Cunningham of Untwisted Vortex. I have known RT for a while now and he has created a site which will enable users to obtain "relevant" one-way backlinks from within the community. I'm not a sales man so I'll tell you up front that it will cost you $12 a month to join. This isn't a pitch to make money though and $12 is cheap anyway - this is a pitch to see if anyone is interested. I'll let him explain the system below but I want to mention that this wont work unless we get enough people interested. One hundred would be good - a thousand even better. Is it Black Hat? Let's call it grey.

RT offered me $6 a signup (you get the same deal as an affiliate) but I have removed my affiliate link from the article - I don't want you to think I'm doing this for the money - I'm doing this because I myself would like to find another "network" for building links. This could be the best yet but not unless we get enough people to join who understand the value of "relevant keyword anchored" backlinks. I would have made the system free to use but RT is wary of the amount of spammers it would attract and settled on a small fee. Most link networks run $150 per month.

Btw - I say we but I am not involved as a business partner or agent of any kind - just a user and it's in my interest to convince as many of you to join up as I can. I want this to work.

Many of you know RT so I don't need to hype him - he's a good guy testing out an idea that should work. Nothing is certian as we all know things like this depend on the active participation of others. We all know how that usually turns out.

Is this Google safe? Nope - nothing is but this is about as hard to track down as anything I have seen. Hard because the links will all be from relevant sites - using relevant anchored keywords - and contained in a real post. These - in case I haven't mentioned it more than 100 times - are the best links that you can get. Bar none. They are also the absolute hardest for competitors and Google to spot let alone penalize. Remember that 100 or so links like these are what puts my new money making blog so high in the rankings, in a competitive niche, in less than 5 months. These kind of links are gold and as you all know are a real pain to get. The difficulty in getting them is also why Google weights them so heavily. Conversely do-follow comments are easy to get and not endorsed by the site owner and hence have little juice - if any these days.

Well that's about as sales pitchy as I can get. If you have niche sites built then you need links. I hope we can all work together and help each other out.

I'll hand this over to RT now...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
R.T. Cunningham - ConnectContent.com

As Griz has mentioned many times on both of his make money online blogs, there are multiple ways to build backlinks. I don't want to spend any time rehashing what works because I want to emphasize a different and possibly better approach to building backlinks. Before I do that, however, I want to quickly mention what doesn't work very well.

Comment Chasing

A whole lot of people spend a whole lot of time commenting on "do follow" blogs in their efforts to build backlinks. There are several problems with this tactic. If the blog owner doesn't delete your keyword anchored in the name field, chances are that your keyword still won't be related to the topic at hand. While experts may tell you that any backlink is better than no backlink, backlinks that have little relevance don't do much -- they don't carry any link authority.

Reciprocal Link Exchanges

Besides carrying far less weight than one-way links, reciprocal link exchanges between relevant blogs takes up a lot of time. In my opinion, that time is far better spent on working out one-way link exchanges. One-way link exchanges are actually the same thing as reciprocal links, but without being directly linked. Party A links to one of party B's posts and party B links to one of party A's posts but from a different post.

The hardest part about link exchanges of any kind is getting the links with the right, targeted anchor terms. Anchor terms that point to blog post titles, blog titles, blog author names, etc. are just about worthless most of the time.

The White Hat Google Game

If you read what Google has to say about link exchanges, you have to write content that naturally compels readers to link to the source to be completely safe. It's a nice thought, but it doesn't work in the real world unless you're a socially popular blogger.

That kind of thing defeats the purpose of targeting search visitors in the first place and doesn't make any money for you or for Google. In my personal opinion, it's a smokescreen for what they really want you to do and I'll leave it at that.

What Always Works

Linking from within a post to another post on another blog with targeted, relevant anchor terms will always carry the greatest amount of link authority. You can get very few links of this kind and literally watch an optimized post rise to page 1 of the Google SERPS if it doesn't have too much competition. If you get a lot of links of this kind, you'll destroy the competition.

This is where ConnectContent comes into the picture. It's all about embedding relevant anchor terms into older posts or creating new posts around relevant anchor terms. The procedure is so simple, it's almost ridiculous. You list your desired anchor terms and where you want them to point to and other people grab that information and put it to work. The site takes care of the tracking part of it.

It isn't free ($12.00/month or $120.00/year) even though I think it should be. The problem with providing a powerful tool like this for free is that the scammers and spammers would come out of the woodwork to take advantage of it while everyone else would get left behind. Not only that, but I think the generous 50% commission could really be another asset for anyone able to drive the affiliate sales.

Would you get penalized by Google?

Since I announced the public launch of ConnectContent, the most frequently asked question has been "Does it leave a footprint that Google can detect?" The short answer is "No, not if you do it the way you're supposed to do it."

Ever since people were slapped by Google for doing sponsored posts (paid links), something I call "Google Paranoia" has set in. Everyone seems to be worried about getting penalized by Google for one thing or another. I think the biggest problem is that people refuse to read, or they don't understand, the Google webmaster guidelines concerning - Webmaster Help Center" link schemes.

Google talks about excessive link exchanges, both reciprocal and otherwise. In other places, Google talks about relevance. The Google search engine algorithms are all designed around relevance because that's where they make their money -- by showing AdSense targeted to specific content. Their automated spam detection techniques are also based around relevance. Their algorithms, other than checking for duplicate content, are very good.

ConnectContent is a link exchange in the loosest meaning of the phrase, and not much more than the web as a whole. The entire purpose of the network is to list what you want as anchor terms as opposed to people guessing what you want. There is no guarantee that your requested terms will ever get linked to and that's what sets it apart from other networks and it's why I think it wouldn't matter to Google even if they knew what links were being generated and where.

Despite my beliefs, I don't want to make it easy for anyone (not necessarily Google) to see what's going on. No real names are ever used and nothing is publicly displayed outside of the network. I'm more concerned with malicious individuals (your competitors) than I am with Google. The gist of all this is that producing logical and relevant backlinks should never incur the wrath of Google.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks RT.

Nothing more to add other than I hope you will give this a shot. Follow the link if interested and thanks for reading. ConnectContent

Cheers,

Griz

Knowing When to Add Adsense to your Blog

2008-12-09T06:56:00.008-06:00

Tips for Optimizing your Adsense Earnings

A common mistake beginners make is adding Adsense to a brand new blog. I have talked about this before but a refresher is in order as well as an update on how I monetize with Adsense.

Most new blogs have no traffic at first so there is little point in having Adsense on it. Doing so can send out flags that the site is a made for Adsense blog and this is a no no with Google. You are not allowed to create a site for the sole purpose of making money with Adsense. By not adding Adsense in the beginning you appear to be a legit site and will find that you will rank faster and avoid the sandbox. (Getting a few authority links from others appears to be the best way to avoid the sandbox coupled with not monetizing a new site.)

You will also avoid smart pricing your whole account. A new site needs to build up targeted search traffic first. If the traffic to your site is mostly social visitors and you run Adsense and some of the un-targeted traffic clicks your ads you will likely see poor conversions for the advertiser and G will discount your clicks and pay you pennies. At the same time all your other blogs will see their earnings discounted as well.

Remember - Adsense should only be used on sites that get the majority of their traffic from the search engines. This is targeted traffic that will convert for the advertisers.

So...

How do you know when to start using Adsense?

This is my method.

Most of you know I created a new blog on Wordpress called "Make Money Online with Griz" back in July. I created the blog for a number of reasons but primarily to demonstrate my system for making money online.

At present the site is ranked pages 2 and 3 for most of the "Make Money Online" terms I've targeted. An exact search in quotes for my main keyword shows the blog ranked 10th on page 1 of the serp's. This is a highly competitive niche and this shows that you can rank well even in a competitive niche in 3 to 4 months if you accumulate quality backlinks.

It also demonstrates that you don't need a lot of posts either. I only have a half dozen posts on the site but they will give you a good idea of how "On Page SEO" works. Titles, headers and content are focused and target my keywords.

As for "Off Page SEO" (read - backlinks) the site has a few thousand links but many are from site-wide links on other blogs and this tends to confuse the issue. A site-wide link can give you hundreds of links from a single blog. This is ok but pay attention to getting unique links. The new blog really only has about 100 unique links. By this I mean there are only about 100 sites linking to me in spite of the number of total links (pages linking).

The more unique links you get the better. This should also indicate to you that you really don't need 1000's of links to do well in a niche - you just need quality links.

In this case most of my links are keyword anchored which is rare and the reason the blog ranks so well so quickly in a tough niche. Because my friends have sent me links and they understand the concept of "anchored keyword links" most of the links use my keywords - hence my quick ranking for those keywords.

I admit that this is not something most of you can obtain until you build up a network of like minded friends. I point it out simply to show you the power of getting targeted links to your site and urge you to ask your friends to provide you with the same kind of links rather than the "click here" variety or those using your name in the anchor. I'm basically trying to show you what works best whether you are able to get the links at this point in your progress or not. These are the type of links you should be aiming for eventually if you want to see better serp rankings.

To this end I have set up a few resource pages on the new blog filled with like minded people who understand the value of anchored backlinks and I urge you to visit the people and sites listed in order to help each other. Start with "Finding links for your Niche Blogs" and email people with similar niches or send anchored links in posts to the people on my "Friendz of Griz" page and you may just get a nod in return. (assuming your site is relevant to theirs. Don't spam them)

Now back to Adsense.

The new blog averages about 300 unique visitors a day. Normally I would have added Adsense a while ago as 300 visitors is enough to start making a little Adsense income. The problem in this case is that 7 out of 8 visitors are coming from social sources - bookmarks, referrals from other blogs, stumbleupon etc. Only 1 in 8 are coming from the search engines. In other words the majority of the traffic is not targeted for my keywords and won't be targeted for the Adsense ads. This means that my Adsense could be smart priced pretty quick if the social traffic decides to click the ads.

Testing the water to find out how your Adsense will perform.

Last week I added an Adsense block to the new blog. I did not let it go live though. By this I mean that while the ads are displayed on the blog I have not "Allowed" the blog to record clicks in my Adsense account. This is done by "not" adding the site URL to the list of "allowed sites" in your "Adsense Setup" Tab. The end result is that I can monitor clicks without fear of being penalized by G. The ads are being clicked but not recorded.

After two days I noticed that I was only getting 5 - 10 clicks per day which made me happy as it indicates that the social traffic is not clicking my ads or very little if they are. Based on this I added the site to my allowed list and monitored the results. Over the next few days I continued to see 5-10 clicks a day and noticed a CPC of 75 cents to $1 a click. So far so good. Then I started seeing the dreaded 5 cent clicks. At the same time I watched my CPC on my other sites and sure enough my earnings per click started dropping. Not good.

I took the new blog off of the allowed sites list and over the course of another two days my CPC is back to normal on my other sites.

This is how I find out if a new site is ready for Adsense. In this case the new blog is not yet ready and won't be until I start drawing more search traffic than social traffic. At that point I will let the ads go live again and see what happens.

In the mean time I will leave the ad block on the site and start playing around with position, number of blocks, size of blocks and finding just the right "ugly" balance (how the blog looks) needed to increase click thru rates (CTR). I can do all this while waiting for more search traffic.

On a side note: Several readers have already mentioned how much they hate the "puke" green background. lol. This is good - maybe - if it helps to drive people away. Some will just leave but some will "click" to leave - which is the goal behind the site. I didn't create the site for the benefit of readers - I created the site to make money. Readers are always welcome of course but like this blog they will have to put up with my Adsense tweaks.

Each niche is different but this should give you an idea of how I approach optimizing a site for Adsense and more importantly how I know when to use Adsense and when to let it be.

One second to last thing - I already know how this niche performs thanks to the blog you are currently reading. If you are making decent money from Adsense in your niche then create more blogs in the same niche. The guesswork has been removed. Just rinse and repeat and use the same resources you used to build the initial blog. You don't always have to keep searching for new niches.

The Asia'h Contest.

I had mentioned that I would split the money with the top three sites if no one could outrank my site. As it happens that won't be necessary as Dinesh managed to outrank me after all!

click image to enlarge

Congrats Dinesh and I will send you the $500 as soon as I get your Paypal Acct. I will be emailing you shortly.

Cheers,

Griz

How I Find A Money Making Niche

2008-12-05T06:55:00.024-06:00

How I Make Money Online... over and over again

I've been in Winnipeg for the past couple of weeks and in between taking care of some Lodge business I spent the best part of a day tutoring an old friend in the art of making money online. I've known Jim for about 15 years - he's a mechanic and travels north every few months to work on various pieces of heavy equipment. He is an avid car buff and rebuilds old cars in his spare time. This led him to join several internet communities who shared his passion which then led him to start his own website which led him to learning that some people could make money with a website which led him to start searching for methods in which to do so which led to him finding a blog that explained the process. In Jim's words "I spent 3 days reading the blog before bothering to see who the writer was - I clicked the about page and fell off my chair - it was YOU!"

This has happened frequently over the past year. I have tried to separate my Lodge business from my online business but more and more friends from the "real" world have been coming across this blog and while they don't know me by my online nick name (I got it years ago when I bar tended my way through University) they quickly put it together when they see the about page. Unfortunately this is something I was hoping to avoid. Let me explain.

I spent most of yesterday sitting in the airport waiting on plane delays (weather related) and finally took a peak at my mountain of emails that have accumulated over the last two weeks. As usual there were a few that I wish I had read in a timely fashion. (Court, Monika, Chanya, Frank - sorry, will be getting back to you today) The rest can be categorized as follows; people asking me to review their blog, people asking me to JV with them, people asking to advertise on this blog, people writing really nice comments about how my blog has helped them and not asking for anything (thank you all), people wanting to trade links, people asking to pay me to mentor them and of course the usual spam. There are also a fair number asking me why their blog isn't ranking well on Google without supplying me with all the pertinent info.

Having spent a day with Jim I learned a great deal. He reminded me of just how confusing this whole MMO biz is and gave me an appreciation of just what beginners are facing these days. I confess that I have lost touch with a beginners point of view as it has become a fairly easy game for me. Bruce who runs a work from home blog asked me on the Affiliate Academy forum a few weeks ago about this very issue;

Bruce's comment

You always make it sound simple but I am questioning what I am missing and probably others are missing as well or everyone would be succeeding like you are.

I worked hard and was seeing some real nice results up until about a month and a half ago. I was a happy camper as I was solidly on page one of Google for a handful of terms and getting more and more search traffic.

I've mentioned this before but now the bottom has come off and I am way down to the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th pages if at all for most of my terms. It started and has continued where I would take two steps back (in the rankings) and then one step back up. Over and over until I am where I am now. (talking about my main blog only here)

I have done nothing differently to my knowledge to start this downfall and so I am wondering how someone like you (or anyone) can have such spectacular success. I have now gotten out of AMA and deleted all my articles so that no more will be published but this all started way before that.

This is my big question: Is it the quality of your links? I have to think that your ability to get better links than most is a very important factor in your success. You write with the best of them but it seems that your SEO can only take you so far.

Bruce's comment has stuck with me and after working with Jim I've mulled this issue over a great deal.

Why does this seem so simple to me and not to others?

Put the coffee pot on and I will tell you all a story.

When I started online web 2.0 didn't exist. Social Media didn't exist. I started out knowing from day 1 that if you are going to make any money online you needed a steady stream of traffic and the only way to get that traffic is with Google.

I have never changed my position on this. Google is still and always has been the best source of traffic online. Social media showed up and everyone jumped on it because it is easy to get traffic using social means. The problem is that social traffic is sporadic, requires hours and hours of work to maintain and in the end it doesn't convert well into money. You have all heard this from me before but in spite of this almost everyone of you still chases it and this is your downfall.

I had several emails informing me of yet another list of "Top 100 Make Money Online Blogs" that doesn't have me included on the list. My readers like to rib me about such things and I must have a hundred emails asking why I am not on the former 45n5 list. The fact is that these lists are part of the problem - many of you are trying to get on these lists and that's because at the heart of the matter you are a blogger looking for recognition from other bloggers. You want to be the next Problogger and spend all your time trying to get attention from other bloggers thinking this is the road to making money. Well yes it is a road but you have no idea about just how much traffic you need from the social arena before any serious advertising offers show up.

Do you realize that most large advertisers won't even look at you if you aren't pulling in at least 250,000 unique visitors a month? Do you have any idea of how much traffic that is? That's 8300 visitors a day - every day. That's 350 visitors every hour or almost 6 visitors a minute - every minute of every hour of every day.

You think that stumbleupon or digg or making a top 100 list or commenting on blogs is going to get 6 visitors a minute to your site month in and month out? And now the harsh part (and I don't mean to insult) you think that your site is so unique and interesting that 250 thousand people will keep coming back to read it. Okay - so you realize that maybe you aren't the most talented and interesting writer so you resort to gimmicks like starting a Top 100 list in hopes that people will spread the word and maybe even use your Badge and send you links. Or you will run a contest. Or you will give away a free ebook to pad your RSS numbers. Or you will come up with any number of tricks or treats to get people to your site. And then they are gone...

Perhaps the hardest thing to realize is that you aren't talented enough to capture 250k of readers based on your writing alone. Let's face it - if you are an exceptional writer word will get out and you will eventually have thousands of followers without you having to chase them down. Think about that. If you need contests and lists to keep people coming back then maybe you aren't producing value that will do it naturally.

But Griz - social media gets me links.

Sure it does - for your name or blog name. All useless. Ranking in Google for your name won't get you traffic.

Yes many of you finally understand the power of keyword anchored backlinks but you are trying to get them using social media.

And that is your downfall. You are at heart a blogger and not an internet marketer. You want to rank on Google but wouldn't it be nice to combine that with becoming well known.

I spend zero time using social media - okay, I have stumbled a few friends blogs in the past and tried everything half assed just to see what the fuss was about but always toss these networks to the side.

I do one thing and one thing only - I study Google.

I experiment constantly while you guys are socializing. I don't read about SEO from others - I learn it first hand. I have developed a system that while changing as G changes still proves to be the most effective way to make money online with the least work involved.

The first rule I have is focus on the task at hand - making money. Toss your dreams of becoming famous out the window as it will simply sidetrack all your efforts.

Find a Niche

Yes I slap up hundreds of blogs to test the waters with but I do have a general system in place in order to find the best niches.

I always start with the goal of making money from Adsense. Why? Because it is the largest advertising network in the world. 5.5 billion in sales last quarter - 1.7 billion in profit. Google has a 67% share of search traffic and is by far the biggest source of traffic online. All the social media sites combined don't handle any where near the daily traffic that Google does.

If you want to make money online then go with who provides the most traffic and use the largest advertiser. In this case Google just happens to be both. A no brainer.

How I do It

I look for niches that can provide me with at least 1000 visitors a day. I didn't say keyword - I said niche.

I look for niches that have enough keywords to provide me with 1000 visitors a day.

I want a niche that lets me build keyword rank in ascending order from least competitive to highly competitive. (I will show you what I mean below)

I want a niche that is competitive.

I want a niche that has lots of Adsense advertisers.

I want a niche that allows me to write long rambling posts.

An Example

Make Money Online

Just for the hell of it let us pretend I could possibly dominate a niche dominated by such well known bloggers as Darren Rowse, Shoemoney, John Chow and the rest of the A-List. And just for a lark let us pretend I could do it using a free Blogger Blog that looks like crap. Why - well maybe if I did people might catch on that you don't need a fancy looking site like the experts claim and that you don't really have to spend money on hosting either. Yes - a bold claim I know. Some people might even figure out that nothing makes people click on Adsense ads better than an ugly site.

So if I was to take on this task how would I do it.

First off I would target a long tail keyword that contains all my shorter competitive keywords in the long tail.

I would use a variation of the long tail for my URL.

example

"How to Make Money Online for Beginners" - my long tail
makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com - my URL

or

"How to Learn Knitting for Beginners"

or

"How to Make Chocolate Chip Cookies for Beginners"

These are all examples of killer long tails. Why? Because they contain "How to" and "Beginners" in them. One term "How to" is used by people looking for information. I use "Beginners" because people will notice it in the serp's and click on your site because they are likely beginners looking for info on "How to" do something. And they contain my prime and secondary keywords as well. Let me show you.

How to Make money Online for Beginners - least competitive. A Long Tail
How to Make Money Online - more competitive. A secondary keyword.
How to Make Money - very competitive. 50,000 searches. A secondary keyword.
Make Money Online - extremely competitive. 27,000 searches. A secondary keyword.
Make Money - really extremely competitive. - 200,000 searches. A secondary keyword.
Money - the big Kahuna - 3.3 million searches last month. The prime keyword.

This niche also allows for literally hundreds of related keywords that you can rank well for and though the traffic might not be much for any particular term they all add up.

Here is a list of some of them.

(Click Images to Enlarge)

Btw - Statcounter is a huge site - millions of visitors. Notice how he monetizes his site? Notice how Technorati monetizes their site? Check out most of the big sites and ask yourself why they use Adsense to earn money? Because it pays better than anything else online...

So - that's how I would plan my site.

Next, while you folks start stumbling and digging and leaving comments to and fro, I get down to the task of building backlinks. Real backlinks. Backlinks that contain my keywords. Backlinks that are contained in posts on other sites. Not sidebar. Not in the do-follow comments. In the posts! And they don't just point to my home page - they vary to all my pages. And they don't just contain my main keyword or main keyword phrases - they contain terms like the list you just read on my stat counter page. They don't appear in bunches - they show up regularly, consistently and continuously.

This is a long slow process and it doesn't get me on those "Top 100" lists and Darren Rowse doesn't send me any link luv but I do start getting search traffic. A little at first when I rank number 1 for my long tail.

Then a little more traffic shows up as I rank well for more terms.

Then a few more terms...

Then a few of the more competitive terms...

The big Kahuna... well actually I don't rank at all for "Money". Yet... if it takes another year or two so be it - it will be worth it.

Now obviously no one in their right mind would set out to take on a competitive niche like Make Money Online using a free ugly blogger blog and hope to succeed against the likes of John Chow and company... ;-) but if you actually focused on what matters (think anchored keyword backlinks) and spent your time gathering up those links then maybe you could just possibly dominate a not so competitive niche. And maybe just maybe you would look at this as a business and do what it takes to get those anchored links. And maybe just maybe you would set aside instant gratification and console yourself to making a not so bad income from Adsense a few years down the road instead of looking for money today.

Then again what the hell do I know about dominating a niche - let alone a competitive one. Maybe I should try and use a wordpress blog to make money instead... come to think of it - why just use one blog to dominate a niche. There are ten spots on Google's page one listings. Imagine the traffic.

Btw - this site doesn't get 250k uniques a month - it only averages 3 visitors a minute so the advertisers aren't lining up yet. Well that's not quite true - I do get a few requests as it seems the advertisers don't just look for social blogs with huge readership - they seem to find me because I rank on top of the serp's. Go figure. The thing is they don't want to pay me what I earn with Adsense so I'm not much interested.

Now all facetiousness aside. I have gone through everything I do online in my posts over the past few years. Does it work? Yes it apparently does. I'm not famous but I do make money at this game which was the whole point in the first place. Would I rather be Darren Rowse? No. He works too hard. I don't.

and that brings me back to Jim and all those who want me to tutor them.

I don't want to.

I used to manage a large Resort hotel and Golf Course. I had 13 Board of Directors and several hundred staff - all of whom made it their purpose in life to bother me. I made lots of money and hated every minute of it. I quit and bought a nice little Fishing Lodge in the middle of nowhere just so I could have some peace and quiet and not work for anyone else. I do what I want when I want and life is good. I started online just to while away my time and found it challenging. The internet was new (still is) and I wanted to see if I could make money on it. I succeeded beyond my expectations - well not really, I expect a lot but I have found my forte online and can duplicate it over and over.

Unlike the A-List and most of you I am not interested in selling you anything and this includes my time. Tutoring people for money means I am working for them and my time becomes their time. Not interested as quite frankly folks I don't need the money and don't want the responsibility of you not succeeding. I am more than happy to tell you all what I do for free and hope that a few of you catch on and succeed at this. Those of you who treat this as a business and spend your money and time wisely can do exactly what I have done. Those of you who just want to be bloggers will have a hard time gaining money or fame from your efforts as you tend to spend most of your time copying and following people that are selling something.

Learn the basics and you will find that everything else will follow. Get ranked on top of Google and you will find that not only do you make money but if your niche is a social one you will also gain readership, advertisers and hell maybe a little fame without ever having to waste time chasing it.

I'm not saying anything new here but I need to say it often as I get new readers every week who find my site while... yup, searching on Google. Invariably they write me and ask how to make money online. They don't want to read two years worth of posts and think I can send them back an answer in an email. I can't. If you are new here then start reading. Those of you who have been with me a while have another question - "How do we get those quality backlinks?". I have answered this privately on a few forums not available to the public. Most of you understand what I have told you but still don't know where to look. I have subtly left a trail in my sidebar and footer sections that will lead you to where you want to go. The lower they appear in my blog the least effective they are and that's as much as I will say about this in public. They will get you started but the most effective means is to get out there and contact the sites that can help you most. It is slow and tedious but that's how I have done it. One link at a time. I can be patient and wait a year or two to reap the rewards. Can you?

I hope this post doesn't come off badly as I do enjoy yakking with my readers but I have created a monster when it comes to emails and people looking for direct help. I simply can't get back to everyone - hell I can't even find the time to read all the mail never mind respond to it. In most cases your answers are already on this blog and you will have to look for them. Don't skip the comments - there is a goldmine of info in the comments and I will try and target the lesser asked questions in future posts. I feel a sense of guilt that this has become larger than I can handle and ask for your understanding if I don't get back to you.

Oh in response to not making those Top 100 lists - I'm on top of the only list that matters - Google's.

I suggest you get on top of Google's list as well and stop wasting time with anyone else's list.

Cheers

Griz

How to Make Money Flipping Blogs and Products

2008-11-30T13:12:00.003-06:00

I'll keep this short and to the point. It has been a long time since I found another marketer who impresses me. To impress me you only have to do one thing - show me a system that actually makes money and is easily duplicated. Ok two things - show me the system for free. That's not really asking much is it? The list of marketers who meet this criteria could be counted on one hand. In other words there are very few people that really make a living online using a system that can be divulged to others without it causing the system to stop working.

I tell people (for free) how to make money online using SEO and Adsense.

How to Flip Websites and Products for Profit

Jason AKA The University Kid has a system for selling product and flipping websites that he has made available for free. Read the post linked to above and then shuffle over to his new site MakeMoneyDynamo and download his free ebook which explains exactly how to make money online selling ebooks and then how to make even more money by flipping the ebook's domain. It's a clever system that can be duplicated as many times as you feel motivated to do it.

In case it matters I am not being paid to promote this (it's free anyway). I simply want to offer my readers another alternative for making money online and to introduce you all to Jason who caught my attention a while back and has steadily built up a site that delivers real info and real methods for earning a living online. Keep it up Jason - you are a breath of fresh air in this niche.

Btw - I am on vacation (yes - again) while waiting for the lake to finish freeze-up and haven't touched my emails for the past two weeks - sorry if you have been waiting for a reply. I am busy with some real world business matters at the moment but should be home in the next week.

Cheers

Griz

How to Make Money

2008-11-10T11:13:00.006-06:00

Sorry for the bland Post Title my friends but I won't be giving away my topics in the titles anymore and if you want to know why then read on.

For the past month I have been fiddling with this blog in order to come to a few basic conclusions. The goal of this blog is to make money with Adsense and not just a little money but rather I want it optimized to bring in the most earnings possible. I have written extensively on this topic before and I am currently trying to fashion a short "everything you need to know about Adsense" book for others to duplicate my success so I won't get into much here. Oh for those interested, you can see my Adsense earnings for the past year here Make Money with Adsense

What I will tell you is that your post title is the hinge that your adsense income swings on. Yes there is more to it than that but in brief let me fill you in on what I have been doing.

My last post was entitled "Does Trackback Spamming Make Money Online" and no sooner did I post the article than my earnings per click dropped in half - about 30 cents per click. The post prior to it was entitled Make Money Online in Canada. While that post sat on the front page I earned 60 cents per click.

So why the sudden drop in earnings?

I'm going to keep this short and simple.

Below is a list of keywords visitors have used over the past hour and half (approx) to find my site.

Click Image to enlarge.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what keyword brings in the most search traffic. "How to Make Money" is by far my best traffic gatherer.

Now let me explain this so that there is no confusion.

Your post title sets the tone of your post in regards to how the Adsense Bot reads your page. Yes it looks at other factors but the single biggest factor is the Post Title.

When it read the last post it determined that my main focus was on "Trackback Spamming" and when it failed to find relevant ads for that term it then produced ads for "make money online". However it did not provide me with the prime ads for make money online because the post was really about trackback spamming. My traffic came looking for "how to make money" and clicked on the ads but G paid me half of normal because the traffic really wasn't targeted for the post title.

Today the Adsense bot will give me prime ads for "How to Make Money" and the majority of my traffic will come here looking for exactly that - and I will get the best earnings per click.

I will be discussing a number of my findings over the past month in a series of short posts (yes faithful readers - just 1 cup posts) starting soon.

I will leave this post for you to think about - if you are using adsense and not making more than a few cents a click then you now know the biggest reason for your dismal earnings.

You need targeted traffic and targeted posts.

Cheers,

Griz

Update Nov 12

I thought it might be useful to show what happened as far as my Adsense Earnings reacted to the change in post titles. I posted the "Trackback Post" late on November 6 and while the day finished with decent earnings you can see below how quickly the revenue began dropping over the next several days. I posted the "How to Make Money" post on Nov 10 and look at how quickly my earnings changed direction.

Click Image to Enlarge.

Griz

Does Trackback Spamming Make Money Online?

2008-11-06T10:34:00.008-06:00

submit-trackback.com and Trackbackspider.com - Two of the biggest scams online.

How much spam do you get? If you are using Blogger you probably don't get much - if any. I don't. Not so with wordpress blogs though.

Look at my spam from my Make Money Online wordpress blog.

Click all images to enlarge.

Wow 79 new spam messages - half in the form of comments and half from trackbacks. As I was scrolling through the assorted dr*g and S*x spam I came upon one that made me laugh...

Check out this loser...

The highlighted spam is from the dipsh*t who is responsible for most of the crap you see in your spam folder each day. If you don't see the irony then let me spell it out for you - this Trackback spamming software that he sells and others use doesn't work. His own spam talking about how his software can fool the anti-spam software like Akismet didn't fool ummmm... Akismet.

A lesson for all you aspiring spammers - pay attention because you are all noobs and haven't learned how to do a little research before wasting both your time and money on all the crap being pedaled online by arse-wipes like the owner of Submit Trackback. Never mind that this nose-wipe couldn't get past Askimet using his product - his own website is a failure which should tell you just how ineffective his product is.

You would think a guy bragging about getting "Millions of links" would have a PR8 at least and should have ranked himself for all the highest traffic keywords online thus bringing in thousands if not millions of visitors a month. I can get a PR3 with a dozen links and my Make Money Blogging site has an Alexa rank of 285,000 and it only gets 50-60 visitors a day. (Alexa is pure crap and has zero value but I'll use it anyway.)

This joker also brags about ranking #1 for the term "trackback software" which is funny as a quick check on Keyword Elite and Google's Keyword Tool shows no searches for that term.

I have talked about this before - before you buy anything that promises to drive traffic to your site or claims to teach you SEO or guarantees you a higher PR check out the site selling the product. Here is a prime example of what to look for. This website sells nothing but spamming crap including the Submit Trackback software just mentioned. The site is called getbacklinks.net and I love outing this kind of sh*t.

By all means check them out and ask them why they can't seem to rank higher than a PR1 if the products they sell are so effective?

If a site tells you how to rank number one in Google for a term like "How to Make Money" then they had better rank number 1 on Google or pretty damn close. If they do then maybe you should listen to them - if they don't then find the site that does. (hehe...)

If a site tells you to buy something from them then at least check to see if the product worked for the seller - 99.9% of the time it doesn't so save your money.

So does spamming make money online?

No!

And the sooner you noobs, who get sucked into this learn it - the better.

Alright - enough fun for one day - down to business.

The Asia'h Contest is Done.

I'm trying to give away $500 bucks and I need the paypal emails from the top three ranking sites for my Asia'h Epperson contest. It is officially over and while no one outranked me I still want to give away the cash.

At the moment I have heard from Elliot who sits in 8th spot with his Squidoo Lens http://www.squidoo.com/allaboutasiahepperson.

All those who attempted this contest get your results into me by Saturday November 15.

(Who knew giving away money could be so hard?)

email me with Asia'h in the subject line here Grizzly

That's it - except for a quick shout out to a new friend in Ireland that I have been getting to know over at Vic's Affiliate Academy. Dave has a quick wit and has just launched a new site called Niche Renegade and I want to wish him well.

On a related note Courtney Tuttle has been missing in action for a while and has come out swinging with a brand new site. He and long time collaborator Mark have just launched a new blog catering to a topic close to my heart - Keywords. Check them out at The Keyword Academy

Cheers,

Griz

Make Money Online in Canada

2008-11-01T09:53:00.008-05:00

Make Money Blogging - The Importance of Blog Post Titles

Wait - this really isn't just about making money online in Canada. It's about post titles and they are the lifeblood of getting traffic for your long tail keywords. In the last post I mentioned the importance of using your main keyword in your Blog Title tag and preferably in your URL if you want to attract visitors from the search engines. See Making Money Online with Social Traffic.

Whether you are trying to make money with your blog or just after social readers then the next step is to pay attention to your post titles. Most social bloggers use catchy titles in order to grab their readers interest. This, unfortunately, doesn't work too well with the search engines. If you are writing a post about a subject then you should really try and fit the topic's keyword into your post title - Google will index you for the term and with a few anchored backlinks containing the same term you can quickly find yourself ranking well for it. The thing is - you want a term people will be searching for and most searchers don't search for snappy titles.

For some reason Google doesn't rank this blog very well in several data centers - Google.ca (Canada) is one of them. I am attempting to change that and this post is step one. I could have used a reader friendly title like "Hey G, WTF! Why don't you rank me in Canada?" The problem with this is that it wouldn't get me in the right serp listings and it wouldn't reinforce my main keyword - "make money online". When possible always try and combine your post subject with your blog's overall theme. If you are trying to earn money from your blog this tip is mandatory. (Your post title determines the type of Adsense ads you will get among other things) If you are a social blogger then you can take this under advisement - I know many of you don't want to turn your readers off and prefer to use an eye catching title. I would suggest adopting more of your keywords in the post title if you can.

This isn't going to be a long post today as I'm short on time but for those of you who took my advice about changing your Blog title - well done - and now one more tip just to raise your awareness. Put the keyword first. Both Kathy and Turnip made the changes I suggested in my last post but, in both cases, they added the keyword after their regular Title. ie. Kathy's Humor for the Masses keyword follows her "The Junk Drawer" which shows up in the browser as "The Junk Drawer - Humor for the Masses". Turnip's Social Networking site now reads "Turnip of Power - Social Networking".

Both sites should read as follows; "Humor for the Masses - The Junk Drawer" and "Social Networking - Turnip of Power".

Why? Because the serp's list the most relevant sites first when users type in a keyword. Hence when someone types in Humor blogs then the sites are listed (usually) in order of who shows the keyword first in the Blog's title. Search for that term and you will see what I mean. Once all the sites with the term "Humor" used at the beginning of their blog title are listed then Google lists all the blogs that have "humor" used elsewhere in their title. Always use your main keyword first.

In the two example sites just mentioned both bloggers could increase search traffic by adding their keyword in each or most of their post titles. Kathy's latest post is called "Why did the chicken cross the road?" A better search engine title would be "Humor - Why did the chicken cross the road?" As I said this may not appeal to social bloggers as it may look a little goofy - it will bring in traffic from the search engines though.

In Turnip's case his/her (I don't really know - sorry Turnip) latest post is "Social Networking Contest Update", which is absolutely perfect as is.

Here is another tip that most Canadians know about. In Canada we spell humor as humour and color as colour and center as centre and various other words differently than in the States. I mention this because most spell checkers are based on the American spelling. If you have a site that uses keywords like Humor you can increase traffic by using the Canadian spelling in your post as a lot of Canadians refuse to spell it the American way when using search. The important thing is to only use the misspelling once in your post - G will ignore it as spam if you use a misspelling more than once. I mention this because you will find yourself ranked high in the serp's for the misspelled term and gain traffic from Canada and elsewhere. Btw - this applies to any misspelled keyword - only use a misspelled term once - never twice.

Okay that should get me started on my Canadian serp campaign as I cleverly fit Canada into this post enough to hopefully get G's attention. Hence the post title that 1) Uses my main keyword "make money online" and 2) combines it with my (short) long tail for this post - Canada. Now all that is left is to gather some backlinks that use "make money in Canada" in the anchor text.

That is really all you need to know about SEO folks.

A quick note - Google is busy doing another Google shuffle at the moment and the result is that you may find your blog ranked well one day and totally gone the next. They have been doing this periodically for most of the last year. I don't really know what they are up to other than it appears to be another house cleaning. Several readers have wrote me in a panic and I have told them to just relax as there is little that can be done. Several of my sites have disappeared for a day or two and then reappeared a few days later. Some with better rank than before and some farther back in the serp's. In the past this has gone on for a few weeks before things settled down so wait it out before making any abrupt changes to your site. You will likely find yourself back in the rankings as if nothing occurred provided your site isn't a spam blog or you have not been doing things that G frowns upon.

Cheers,

Griz

Oh Btw - just in case you are wondering how effective targeting keywords in your post titles are - this post didn't take long to start bringing in traffic...

Making Money Online with Social Traffic

2008-10-20T10:28:00.008-05:00

Can you make money online with social traffic?

This is the million dollar question and believe me people are desperately trying to do just that - make money from traffic generated through social networks like Stumbleupon, Digg, Entrecard etc. So far the general consensus is that social traffic doesn't convert into buyers or at least not very well. In fact, the only meaningful money being made from social traffic is indirect - sites that have managed to attract a large enough audience are able to sell advertising. They make money not from the social traffic but because of the social traffic - advertisers are willing to pay in hopes of attracting the traffic to their product or service.

Most people are familiar with the so called A-List blogs. These blogs for one reason or another have managed to attract tens of thousands of readers or subscribers and are able to sell advertising as a result of their large readership and their blogs subject matter. They post large earnings and this in turn has spawned legions of others trying to duplicate the success of the A List. So is it working? Not really but rather than dissuade people, as I usually do, from following this strategy I want to make a couple of suggestions that can drastically improve your chances of gaining a large enough readership to enable you to make money from advertising.

My regular readers know that I myself do not chase social traffic nor do I promote it. Search engine traffic provides me with a good income without requiring all the work necessary in promoting a social site. However, I am always looking for new ways to make money online and if it can be made from social traffic then so be it.

The blog you are reading is for better or worse, an Adsense blog. My goal with this blog is to rank well in Google for as many "make money online" terms as I can and earn money from the revenue generated from Adsense. All in all I have been quite successful and make a decent buck - about $100 - $125 a day. My serp rankings generate several thousand visitors a day - most from Google.

The funny thing is - I also have a lot of regular readers. Rather astounding in light of the fact that I don't do anything to promote a readership. I don't stumble, digg or bookmark. I avoid forums as much as possible (a huge time sink) and I have never made a YouTube video. In general I DON'T do all the things I see everyone else doing that IS trying to build a readership.

So the question is this - why do I have more readers than most of the sites who are trying to get readers? Am I doing something that they (you) aren't?

Yes. I'll get to it in a moment...

Some of you may think that quality of content has something to do with it and you are right - good content will make people subscribe and keep them coming back. The thing is almost all of you chasing social traffic have quality content. What you are lacking is a means of getting new people to your site. Most of you belong to one or more social groups and are able to build up a few hundred RSS subscribers and even a few hundred links from your friends within the social circles you frequent. Unfortunately you soon run out of new people in the group and everything stalls. No new blood - no new subscribers.

The trick to building large readerships is not found in the social networks - it is found in the search engines. The bulk of my readers haven't found me through social networks - I don't use any. Yes, a lot of readers have been sent this way from my online friends but the vast majority of my readers found me while searching for information on Google. Remember I push thousands of people through this site everyday and a few actually stop and read - some end up subscribing.

Now I know what you are saying - great if you happen to get search traffic but most of you don't. I want to make two suggestions that will drive search traffic to your social blog and both suggestions are easy to do.

I am going to use two blogs as examples. Both these blogs have great content and a small existing fan base. Many of you are in the same position as the sites I am about to look at so apply what I say to your own blog and watch what happens.

Turnip of Power is a blog about Social Networking. Turnip's blog is on a mission to find ways to make money from social networks. Using Google's Keyword tool there appears to be about 15k searches a month for the term "social networking" and another 15k or so worth of searches for related terms. Turnip has spent a year building the site and has about 180 RSS readers. The problem is that Turnip doesn't get any of the search traffic looking for social networking sources. If the blog did get search traffic I can guarantee the RSS numbers would be much higher. Turnip can make two little changes in order to rectify this situation - changes I urge all of you to make if you are after readers.

The number 1 mistake - of all time - when it comes to search traffic is...

Most of you don't tell Google what your main keyword is. You tell Google what the name of your blog is but in most cases the name of your blog and the subject matter are totally different.

Here is Turnips Blog Title. (Click images to enlarge)

I'm showing you the title as you see it in a browser window because this is what Google sees. Turnip's blog is about "Turnips" and "Power" as far a Google is concerned. In reality the blog is about social networking and Entrecard. In fact Google can decipher this using the blogs content but when it comes to serp ranking the sites that use "social networking" or "Entrecard" in their Title will far outrank the sites that don't.

Quick fix - Turnip should add "Social Networking" or "Social Networking with Entrecard" to the blog Title. The on-page title can stay the same (In the header) but remove it from the Blog Title tag and only use keywords relevant to the blog content.

Let me show you something. Turnip has 600 links according to SEO Elite and just about every link pointing to the site has "Turnip" or "Turnip of Power" in the anchor text.

As a result Turnip ranks number 1 in Google for the term "Turnip of Power" and probably ranks not bad for "Turnip". This would be great if the blog was about turnips and people were searching for turnips in droves. The thing is no one looking for blogs about "social networking" will ever find Turnip's site. Would you think to type in "Turnip of Power" if you were searching for info about social networking?

Quick fix - I'm sure Turnip knows most of the people linking in. Ask all the friends linking to you to change the anchor text so that the keyword "social networking" is used and not Turnip of Power. I can guarantee that any blog with 600 backlinks using the right keyword would rank on top of the serp's.

I have used Turnip's blog as an example because it is the type of site that contains quality posts and the owner has above average work ethic and most importantly some actual talent. Given a steady stream of new visitors there is no reason that the site couldn't gain a large and loyal following. The problem until now is that Turnip has really only used the Entrecard traffic to build the site and after a year this has only netted 180 readers. A lot of work for little results.

A note to everyone - notice that my link to Turnip's blog above uses the keyword and not the blog name. I have just given Turnip the first Good link in a year. All of you can and should link to each other the same way - use a keyword that is relevant to the site you are linking to and stop using the person's name or blog name.

Another site I want to show you is Kathy's Online Humor blog called The Junk Drawer.

I feel like a total shit as I promised to give Kathy some tips a while ago and just haven't got around to it. Kathy I am sorry but I didn't forget about you - just swamped. I have met a number of exceptionally talented writers online and Kathy is as good as they get. I believe she could become quite well known if only people knew she was there. The two things I just told Turnip to do applies to Kathy as well.

In Kathy's case her blog title is "The Junk Drawer". A cool name but not something that someone will type into the search box when looking for a humor blog. Kathy you can keep the name in the header but change your blog title tag to "Humor" or "Online Humor" or "Humorous Stories Online" or well, anything related to humor.

Secondly, like Turnip, Kathy has a ton of great links but all of them use "The Junk Drawer" or "Kathy" in the anchor text of the links. Kathy I know your fans love you (I do) and if you asked them to change the anchor text to various "humor" related keywords they probably would. Do it - you won't believe how quickly the search traffic will come.

It has taken me ages to convince people that these two SEO tips make all the difference in the world when it comes to getting search engine ranking and the traffic that comes with it.

If you need convincing please drop in on RT's Philippine blog called Untwisted Vortex and ask him what happened when he changed his title from Untwisted Vortex to Philippine.

Or, ask Fiar what happened when he changed the title of his Radioactive Liberty blog to Political Humor.

Or, ask Chanya about what happened when she changed her Blogstruk title to Blogging Tips... oh wait... Chanya you haven't done it yet! Tsk Tsk.

A word of warning - I'm expecting all my friends to get with the program and make these simple little changes and if they don't I will list the whole works of them in my next post and give em' all such a verbal ass kicking that I won't have any readers left. :-)

Do it folks - let the search traffic find you. It is well worth it.

Cheers,

Griz

It's All in the Back Links

2008-10-06T08:25:00.015-05:00

It should be evident by now that I have been trying to demonstrate the power of backlinks when it comes to making money online. It doesn't matter what niche you are in or what form of monetization you are after - without traffic you will starve. You can waste your time courting social traffic only to find out that other bloggers will not spend money on your site, use your affiliate links or click your ads. (or even give you useful links when they do link to you). Or, you can target search engine traffic right from the get go and find out how well targeted traffic converts compared to bloggers. Ranking on top of the search engines will send you a continuous flow of people who are actually looking for what you have.

Most of my readers know this by now. The problem is that most of you are unable to get the kind of backlinks needed to rank well in the serp's.

In most cases you are targeting niches that are too competitive for your resources. I have tip toed around this issue on several occasions, most recently with my credit card post. Many of you are targeting keywords that are dominated by professional marketers and this means that while you are busy getting links from articles and do-follow blogs etc, the big guns are busy buying the types of links that do the most good. This doesn't mean you are doomed but it does mean that at some point you will all have to decide just how far you want to go with your online business. I am not trying to dissuade anyone - just trying to keep things real.

I set up a little contest back in February on a blog called Asia'h Epperson and challenged my readers to outrank my site for the term "Asia'h Epperson". I offered $500 to anyone who could outrank me for the term.

As of this date no one has been able to accomplish the feat.

I will bring the contest to a close at the end of this month - October 2008. I hate leaving things open ended and have decided to split the money between the top three sites as of the end of the month. The highest ranked site will get $350, second will get $100 and the third place position will get $50. I hope this will be amenable to all involved. I had promised not to do anything with the site until a winner came forward but I would like to put the blog to use and can't until this issue is resolved. Should anyone overtake me before the end of the month they will of course get the $500. If this doesn't occur please email me at month's end with your blog and ranking and add a name to your blog so that I can verify who is who in relation to the top finishers. Should you be a winner please acknowledge the receipt in a blog post of your own just so people know I have sent out the cash as promised.

I also thought this would be a good time to explain why you have all had such a hard time overtaking the site. It all comes down to links folks. And speed. And a little luck as well.

First off. The blog was created to take advantage of short term niches. To this end you have to be fast when a popular topic suddenly appears in the news. I was quick and got the best keyword url when I started the blog. In fact the only terms in my URL are the keywords "Asia'h" and "Epperson" - nothing else. http://asiahepperson.blogspot.com/

Always use your keywords in the URL when you can. You can still rank well without them but having the right URL is a big advantage and almost impossible to overcome if the site has the right backlinks.

Btw, did any of you happen to snap up sarahpalin.blogspot.com just asking...

Because I had the right URL, Blog Title and was fast with getting properly anchored links I jumped to the second spot in the serp's instantly. This is where luck came into play. Because I ranked so high the blog was noticed by others - notably the LA Times and AOL.com Television. As a result both these sites linked to my blog and the contest was effectively over before it began.

Click to enlarge all images.

The LA Times Link.

The AOL.com Link.

Both of these links are worth a ton of juice as both websites have a great deal of trust with Google - regardless of the PR of the page the links are on. Both used the right anchor text in the links.

I got to the top quickly by simply linking to the Asia'h blog from this site. This site also has trust in G's eyes and the link was followed instantly and the Asia'h blog was indexed and ranked within hours. That is the power of having a healthy flagship blog like this one.

The screenshot below shows a partial list of the links the Asia'h blog has. You will noticed that the anchored text used is almost exclusively "Asia'h Epperson". You will also notice that most of the linking pages have no PR at all. I have mentioned this before - the right anchor text is the important part in getting links - not the PR of the page sending the link. PR is great if you get it but isn't necessary to ranking well.

Now some of you may wonder about Google Bombing - ie. too many links, too fast all using the same anchor text. In the case of this blog I was not Google bombed because it is natural to predominantly get links using the right anchor. The keyword is a person's name, the site uses that name in the title and the URL. It would have seemed strange NOT to have got so many perfectly optimized links - what other links could it have got?

In any event the cards were stacked against anyone trying to outrank the blog right from the start.

I realize that most of you don't have the resources to get the links I get but that isn't the point of this. The real point is to concentrate on niches that you can compete in until you build up a healthy stable of sites to draw upon in future. Further more, concentrate on getting what works and don't waste time with other endevours. Like my new WP make money online blog the Asia'h blog didn't require a lot of content to rank well. Both only have 5 posts. Neither have a huge amount of sites linking to them. Asia'h has about 35 links and the Griz blog has about 100. Both are only PR3 sites. The Griz site isn't at the top yet but is well on it's way and now outranks millions of older sites with thousands of links and higher PR.

So what is the common equation - the quality of the backlinks. Specifically I build sites with optimized anchor links. I concentrate on getting backlinks that use my keyword and don't waste time with anything else. This accomplishes a number of things. I get ranked fast and high up in the serp's. It sends me traffic fairly quickly. The traffic is targeted to my keyword. I know what the traffic is looking for and can monetize the sites accordingly.

The Asia'h blog was a dud for making money but so what. I still have a nicely juiced PR3 site that I can use for other things such as sending links or targeting other celeb stories. The point is that if you do things right you never waste your time and continuously build up your network.

Folks - stick with keywords and niches that you can dominate with your current resources. Build your network one site at a time if you have to but make sure you spend time doing the right things. Many of you have more posts than backlinks. What is wrong with that?

I know getting backlinks is tough. I have been trying to build up our little community over the past few months in order to help you achieve better links. If you haven't joined in on our Niche Support program I urge you to. (Note: You can use a different name and email if you wish to keep your identity quiet.) You can read more about it here. Finding Links for Niche Blogs. Also I have provided a page full of bloggers who have quality flagship sites who understand the value of helping each other out. You can visit that page here. Friendz of Griz. If you are new here then spend some time getting to know the blogs I have highlighted and get to know each other as well. Help each other.

On a related note...

Indexing Blogspot blogs.

Denise mentioned that she is having a hard time getting Blogger blogs indexed. Actually a number of readers have brought this up recently. I haven't had any problems myself but assume that G is now making Blogger harder to use for spamming purposes. What I have found is that new blogspot blogs need a few good links in order to get the ball rolling. By this I mean links from an authority site or two. This is what I do with all my new blogs - I send a link from one of my closest related authority sites. I have also found that this seems to keep the new blogs from entering the sandbox in most cases. I still get the odd one sandboxed although they would be the type of niches that raise flags as spam heavy niches. When this happens I work on adding more posts than normal and get a lot of decent links. They usually get de-boxed fairly quickly. One note - I do not monetize any site now until it is firmly ranked and getting targeted keyword traffic. I do believe this makes a huge difference in how well and fast you get indexed and gain rankings in Google. Nothing in the way of proof - it just seems to work well from my experience.

If you don't have an authority site to use then all the more reason to get to know those who do and work on building your own. This is where all those "social" blogging sites you all seem to have can come in handy. If your flagship isn't making money itself don't give up on it - keep building it up and use it to propel new sites into the system.

Btw. I am now building WordPress (ok Terry is building them - I'm just optimizing them) sites and use the exact same system with them as well. It seems to be working.

One last thing for today.

Getting links the white hat way.

I would like to add a page to the new MMO blog listing as many available sources as I can find for getting links. I have my own sources and don't spend a lot of time chasing links like most of you do. Because of this I am falling out of touch with what is available and what is and isn't working these days. To this end if any of you would like to email me with sites, directories, programs etc that you successfully get links (especially anchored links) with I will create a working list for all to use. Yes I'm lazy but in my defense you should all have a better idea of where to find legit white hat links than I do these days. (oooh I didn't just say that out loud - ouch) I spend very little time keeping up with what is available mainly because I don't have too. Those that do please share your findings. You can leave comments on this post or just send me an email with this link. Grizzly I will add the page to Make Money Online with Griz as soon as I get some feedback.

That's it for today.

Cheers

Griz.

Note: The new page has been started and is called Link Resources