So my latest experiment is an article directory. I have wanted to start one of these for a while to see if they can be lucrative at all but I never did, I was too busy building ebay affiliate sites. I took a few hours tonight and repurposed a domain that I was using for testing themes and such and built an article directory. I intend to build this into a first class article directory with a reasonably high standard of quality for articles that will be accepted here. If my name is on it, then I want it to be good. No spun junk or barely legible crap articles will be allowed.

So check out Hawgzilla! Yeah I love that name, and I think it might help the site with branding but we’ll see. I counted up the crappy article directories on the net and there are about 2 billion of them, so I have a lot of work to do to make mine better and different than the rest. If you are an article marketer or a site owner in need of content, then check out Hawgzilla! It’s light on articles right now but that will change very very soon.

Hawgzilla Article Directory

As you know from my last post I have run into a great deal of friction with our friends at EPN over this QPC payment model. I have seen a number of people report that they are seeing some amazing improvement in their EPN earnings but most that I know are similar to me, they WERE making GREAT money but have seen that cut in half or even worse since the implementation of QPC. So now that I pissed and moaned for a month or two and got it out of my system, I am back to a site building machine but using some new tactics.

Let me also say this, I am NOT one to push alot of affiliate products or try to cajole people into buying something that I don’t believe in or use myself. Here is a sample post (bookmarking demon not worth it) to show you that I tell it like it is…so understand when I say that ReviewAzon is good, it is.

The Rise of Amazon

My experience with the Amazon affiliate program has been mixed in that it never seemed to earn much for me and I had always read on blogs and sites that Amazon didn’t convert. I should have known better than to buy that nonsense because, well, it’s Amazon. They’re freaking huge for a reason but I didn’t personally shop there even though my wife LOVES Amazon, I largely ignored it in favor of Ebay. EPN was working for me so I had no reason to really push Amazon that much and I just tended to use it as second fiddle on sites IF at all.

That’s my mistake. Since the EPN bust, I decided to basically say screw EPN and started moving my sites to Amazon where it made sense. I still have work to do but it’s going well so far and I have found that if I select and build a site with Amazon in mind, that it converts INCREDIBLY well. Amazon gets a lot of flack for that 24 hour cookie but if you build your sites around providing enough information for a visitor to make a buying decision and then send them to the Amazon site that they do a remarkable job of closing it out AND adding on extra sales.

Who knew!

Enter ReviewAzon

So my plugin of choice has always been phpzon…simply because I was familiar with it but a couple of people I know suggested that I give a new plugin a try called ReviewAzon and I am extremely glad I did.

PhpZon is great and I am thankful to Wade and his support over the years but it simply doesn’t run with ReviewAzon. The amount of content and flexibility that ReviewAzon gives is simply head and shoulders one of the best Wordpress plugin type products I have ever seen.

ReviewAzon is very template driven, meaning you have the ability to utilize the really cool selection of preselected templates that you can customize to your own liking. Me personally, I really like the “tabber” setup as it keeps the page looking very clean but each tab can be loaded with content. A LONG page can be nicely cleaned up inside a tabber setup yet still enjoy the SEO benefit of a long content page.

As you can see, pretty attractive and you can customize each tab to show a wide variety of options including videos, ebay (via the phpbay plugin) Similar Items etc….which is extremely cool and makes a very attractive plugin. The Reviews and description tabs are pulled by the feed and videos can be pulled from youtube right from the admin panel.

This would be enough for me but ReviewAzon also offers a few other template modes….one you can see here on this page where you can easily pull products into the feed via your keywords. Single Inline Post Example This type of post is a Single Inline post and has its place on sites. It doesn’t offer the customizability of the tab setup but right time and place then it could work for you.

So needless to say, by now I am pretty impressed with this plugin but it gets even better.

ReviewAzon and SEO

One of my main concerns around this plugin was the duplicate content issue, how well could these types of sites rank. It seemed like a valid concern and I am still working through these issues but so far they seem to rank no differently than any other post. If you build targeted links to it then you will rank well, if you set it and forget it then you are going to be chasing long tail traffic.

The time you spend trying to make your site visually appealing can be spent building links instead. I tend to add a fair amount of unique content to each post as you can see on the Minoura post review. All of the content on TOP of the amazon links is my own unique content. When you combine this with backlinks then it won’t take long to rise up through the SERPS.

ReviewAzon also gives you the option to run SEO friendly links that have an internal redirect. You can chooose to do this or not but if you do it’s easy to setup. You select the type of link you want and the admin panel spits out the right code to place in your .htcaccess file and you’re done. Nicely handled and very simple.

ReviewAzon Review Summary

I think I have touched on all of the pertinent information regarding this plugin. As you can tell I am a big fan of it. It works great, the admin panel is very nicely done and extremely professional compared to most plugins that I am used to using. There are a lot more features that I am sure I am leaving out, like the ability to set it up to drip feed products into your site over a date range if you choose, or maybe the other template options like multi-inline product display etc but I think by now you get the idea.

This plugin will give you a LOT of flexibility and save you a TON of time compared to building your own links manually or using other plugins targeting Amazon. The posts like the Minoura review above literally take you about 10 seconds to create…(minus the unique content) and you can have a thorough description, similar products, video reviews and more right there with a couple of clicks.

If you haven’t ever given Amazon a chance, because you heard it didn’t convert, understand it’s hogwash. It will convert as well as you can build a site, the only thing that will limit you is yourself and it beats 7 cents a click from QPC in my opinion.

QCP Makes it’s Entrance

As most of the MMO world knows, Ebay recently revamped their affiliate program making it MUCH less desirable or attractive than it was before. This is a shame but I am sure they have their reasons but I still HATE it. My income had grown to the point where I was considering dropping my very lucrative day job, but fortunately I didn’t do anything that stupid.

Compared to some high rollers, I am still a small fish but I had built a steady monthly income in the range of 5k to 7k dollars a month with my peak month coming in at JUST shy of 10k dollars! I missed that magic mark by just a skitch. Skitch is kind of a technical term but in this case it means about 200 bucks….so 9800 bucks was my peak week. Again, small potatoes to some gurus but to me, it was badass.

I have suffered mightily under the QCP payout system with my income dropping to about 40% of what it was prior, still not horrible but definitely painful compared to what I was used to making. I have converted a number of the sites over to Amazon and I have more to go but it’s safe to say that this last straw broke my back when it comes to EPN. I used to be an avid defender of EPN in the BANS forum or the phpBay forum but I’ve had it. They have bungled this to the point and screwed me up to the point that I cannot waste any more of my time screwing around with them. I’m moving on!

When the Party’s Over….Move On

A pretty cool product that some of you may not be aware of is a Wordpress plugin called ReviewAzon. This plugin targets Amazon and does an amazing job of helping you build a content rich site in very little time. The posts rank well and with a moderate amount of work you can have a site up that is pretty attractive in no time. Here is an example site so you can see what I am talking about.

Bike Trainer Reviews

This site is still fairly new and I am still building content and links and ranking etc but what I like about this plugin is you build a very clean content page that could be used for a SE driven type of site OR for PPC with the holiday season coming up. I have a PPC experiment that I am starting that will be pretty cool and that I hope to replace my EPN income with.

So if Ebay and EPN have left a sore spot in your throat then consider Amazon. I have heard for 2 years now how it doesn’t convert as well and nobody buys there but quite frankly it’s BS. That site above is converting at about 6% as I write this post. The Amazon 1 day cookie will not allow you to pick up the sloppy sales that the 7 day cookie from Ebay did but honestly if you build your sites targeting products directly then it’s not that much of an issue.

All I can tell you is my own results. Amazon is converting well and this ReviewAzon plugin works fantastic. Check it out if you so choose. If not…enjoy those 5cent clicks on Ebay!

Link Juice is Good

So far my author hub score is 81 which means I was successful in turning all my links in all of my hubs to DoFollow. As long as I maintain a 75 or higher then the links I post will remain as DoFollow links and will pass some serious link juice to my money pages. At the end of 30 days I will have 200 DoFollow links that are keyword anchor texted. What this will do for my rankings remains to be seen.

What is kind of surprising to me is how few people have joined in on the challenge? I’ve sent nearly 100 referrals to hubpages and have yet to have a single person sign up? I suspect because it’s a lot of work and people tend to be lazy. They think Making Money Online is supposed to be easy, but it isn’t. It’s hard work to build a passive income and that is likely what has kept anyone from signing up. I don’t know…I stopped trying to convince people that this was hard work a long time ago.

I need Rankings

I have high hopes for this SEO Challenge and I think these targeted links are going to impact my rankings significantly. Maybe once I post some results from the Challenge, more people will sign up and try it as well. I can’t stress enough how important that page 1 ranking is, preferably top 5. I recently suffered a Google penalty on my two best sites and went from page 1 rankings for most of my keywords to page 4. The income went from about 5k a month from just these two sites to about 500 a month from these two sites. HUGE impact on earnings and really emphasized how important it is to get and stay on page 1.

In any event, just wanted to post a quick update and share how easy it was to achieve that Hub Rank of 75 or better. It happened for me in just 4 days, so from here forward I will benefit from some decent link juice and I’ve made about 6 dollars in 4 days from Google Adsense that is on the hubpage article. My last 3 articles I started including Ebay auctions as well, so we’ll see after a few days if any of them convert.

Have a great weekend and remember….it’s Hard Work in the beginning but the reward comes once the empire is built. Are you willing to do the work?

Link Building Stinks

One of the things that I have struggled with over the last two years is consistency.  I will build some sites, build a few links, the earning start rolling in and I am off to the next one.  I let the links build naturally from there.  If I get in a huff then I will build some links, watch the SERPs rise, the traffic increase and then move on to the next site.  It’s like a vicious cycle but it’s a cycle that I am going to start breaking TODAY!  I have had a nice discussion with myself and we have agreed that link building is going to be the priority for us over the next few weeks and then will become a regular part of the routine.

30 Day SEO Challenge Experiment

So, everyone loves experiments right?  Ok well…I love experiments!  I always learn a lot from them, even if I don’t always follow up on what I learn.  I read about Mark from Court’s site doing this very thing and I am going to join in and do the same thing, albeit slightly differently.    I am going to commit to writing NO LESS than 100 articles over the next 30 days and posting them as  Hubpages.    I’ve had some great results from Hubpages lately and if you aren’t familiar with them then you should be.  They are immensely popular, offer powerful links, have a revenue share program where you can get paid for your adsense clicks, EPN sales etc and they can also provide some powerful link juice if your quality score is high enough.  The best part  is that it is 100% FREE!!

The more hubs you create, the more powerful you become in the hubpages world.  Once you achieve a hub score of 74 or higher (easy) then your links become DoFollow.  The best part is, these are powerful links.  You will likely find that your hubpage will rank first page quite easily for your targeted keywords.  This generates both traffic to your hub and traffic to your site.  The traffic to your hub can be monetized via adsense as a bonus!  How much better can that deal get?

The 30 Day SEO Challenge

So here is the outline of what I am doing:

• Targeting 2 of my sites.  I have picked a total of 10 keywords each site that I am going to target and recorded my starting positions in the Google SERPS.
• I am committing to writing 3 articles per day and publishing as a HUB!
• I will record my starting positions for my targeted keywords and then publish the results after 30 days.  I will also share my average daily traffic counts pre and post test.  I am expecting a pretty decent increase across the board in addition to my targeted keywords.
• Hubs will be distributed across the 20 targeted keywords that I am focusing on.  2 sites…10 keywords each.

That’s it.  Not much to it and definitely not sexy.  It’s a lot of content writing but it’s content that once published, will be there on the net forever.  Consider it an investment in the future and a big step in the right direction towards consistent traffic and earnings.

If you want to try it yourself then feel free….Hubpages is completely free and the more you use it, the more you will earn so you really can’t lose.  Here’s to us building some powerful links and seeing what 30 days of hard work can do for a couple of niche sites.  I know it’s going to be work, but if I can write 100, then surely you could do 30 right?

Do you want to be immensely successful, or continue to be disappointed?  The choice is yours.

Herd Mentality

The herd is notorious for following the leader and charging off in whatever direction those at the front take.  They don’t think for themselves and they simply follow the ass in front of them.  The latest example of this is site flipping.  WTF is it with site flipping?  It seems like a 5 or 6 months ago one of the numbnuts, I have no idea who, must have posted about making a billion dollars flipping sites and what do you think happened?

It seems like 85% of the MMO splogs followed that lead and started posting about how they too make a fortune flipping sites and for $9.99 you can download their e-book and learn how to do it too.  It makes my stomach churn reading this crap.

I am a regular lurker on a few blogs and several forums and you can’t spit in any direction without hitting the latest site flipping guru or site flipping e-book or site flipping monkey chasing his banana.   As soon as the first monkey posts about selling a site for a few bucks, then the next monkey sees it and wants the same banana.  Before you know it, yet another industry is born.  Garbage sites are built overnight and put up for sale before they are even indexed, sold for 119 dollars on Sitepoint and on to the next one.

Blah.

Passive Income

If that is your thing then more power to you.  In my opinion most of the site flippers are guys who tried to build niche sites and couldn’t make any money.  So instead of investing the time in learning it, they install wordpress, hack a few articles and put the site up on the block.  Again no harm…but it’s my rant post.

If you were able to make more than a few hundred dollars this way a month then I’d be shocked but the biggest problem that I have with that for me….is that it still requires me to work.  I don’t want another job, I want to replace my existing job with a passive, online income that can be managed a few hours a week at most and can be done from anywhere in the world.

The magic of niche site building is that once it is built and getting good traffic you can pretty much slow the work on the site to a trickle.  A few content articles a month, a link here or there and you are good to go in most niches.  I’ve gone weeks at a time before without even touching my sites and the income still generates itself.  In fact, I was going to write an article for one of my sites today but I decided to clean the cobwebs off this site and actually post.  I miss blogging but it takes too much time, I actually have to work at it.

So, in my opinion, if I need to constantly keep my site mill running and grinding out sausage sites then that’s too much work for my taste.  I am all about passive income and quite frankly I think anyone who has enough skill to build and flip websites, probably has enough skill to build niche sites that could last.   Different strokes for different folks I guess but if you’re a site flipper…then FLIP the damn sites and quit trying to sell e-books on how to do it.

Whatever you do really is none of my business and I don’t really care but I think that if I read another blog post about site flipping from some little numbnut that thinks a couple of hundred bucks is worth the time then I think Iwill probably throw up just a little bit.

/Rant.

Oh before I forget…cause I love the Grizz…..Site Build It Blows.

I used to be an avid fan of the BANS software package and I guess for some people I still think it could be what you need but it isn’t for me.  I don’t think anyone will be surprised to hear that Google has a thing lately for thin affiliate sites and one could argue that EPN certainly is not a fan of these either.  So that said I want to build very robust, content rich sites.  My measuring stick is STILL…the site must be able to add value even if you removed the auctions.

Other Options

The BANS software does not stop you from producing a content rich site and it’s easy enough but it’s clunky and definitely not the best setup, so I went looking for options.  I first turned to a hybrid BANS/Wordpress type setup.  These worked great and I have a number of sites that use this kind of setup and they work reasonably well.  A wordpress blog for the content and the BANS store for the “store” portion of the site.  It made sense to me and if you want to see what one might look like then check out my Stormtrooper Armor site.  Content, store…good stuff right.

One of the shortcomings of BANS is that it is very easy to produce hundreds of pages of auctions and that’s ok but all of these pages are really nothing more than duplicate content and can create “issues” for niche site builders.  So I spent hours making sure that every single store category page had unique meta tags, unique content on every page, 200-300 words etc.   This all took a LOT of time.

No surprise….I am not one to complain about time invested but it seemed to me that I was doing double the work to build a content rich site.  A very content rich blog as well as a content rich store with unique meta tags.  I’m a mule and I can build a way on a store mindlessly for hours, so no harm no foul right.

Wrong.

The Epiphany

I don’t know where I suddenly came to the realization that my stores could easily stand on their own without the “store” portion of it but suddenly it did.  If you look at the Stormtrooper sites you can see that not only do I have a “store” but I have auctions under every article……how much more targeted can you get than to have an article that just drew search engine traffic….the visitor reads the article or review about what they were looking for, gets to the bottom and boom…..a convenient ebay item that is traditionally much less than what they would pay elsewhere.

Does this convert as well as the “store” you might ask, yep you bet.  A few weeks watching traffic stats on Google Analytics and you will see that visitors typically arrive on your content pages, then if you have a well designed site they might click into your store and purchase.  The fewer steps to buy and the easier it is to plant your “cookie” then the better off you will be.

My latest site, which is still under construction, is Bicycle Seat Reviews.  I am an avid cyclist and love riding bicycles to stay in shape.  So it’s a niche I love and can write endlessly about if need be.  If you look at this site setup then you won’t find a store of any kind, at least not yet.  It’s nothing but a good old Wordpress blog and a phpBay plugin.  I am experimenting with an Amazon plugin as well so visitors have a choice of Ebay OR Amazon.  Some visitors despise Ebay and distrust them, some don’t like Amazon and for those that don’t like either I have Google Adsense.

The difference between the two sites is night and day.  The WP/BANS combo is clunky and a giant pain in the arse to setup and modify templates on.  You often have to change TWO CSS sheets to make visual changes and it’s just slow and clunky compared to Wordpress standalone sites.  If you aren’t familiar with the phpBay plugin, you can add auctions that are keyword driven directly into a Wordpress blog post.  It takes literally about 5 seconds per post.

Quick, simple, not even close to as much duplicate content and HOURS saved modifying templates and writing content.  No more having to write 300 words of content on every store category page, the posts are your content and adding the auctions literally takes 5 seconds!

Oy…the hours I could have saved in the beginning but life goes on.  I just got the bicycle seat reviews site indexed about 4 days ago and it made it’s first sale yesterday.  A reader purchased one of the exact seats that are shown at the bottom of one of the reviews.  Targeted buying traffic……cool considering I haven’t built the first link to the site yet.

Conclusion

So that’s it for now…..that’s the big epiphany I was referring to last post.  I have gone from a site taking a week to build to being able to build a decent looking site in about a day, complete with a lot of content.  The bicycle seat site as it sits has about 5 hours invested in it, INCLUDING the content!  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not done but it’s on the way.  I will continue to add reviews and build links every week over the next year or two and build it into an authority site.

If you want to know more about the phpBay plugin, just ask or I will be writing an in depth review of the plug in sometime in the very near future.  It’s top shelf and makes building an Ebay affiliate site a piece of cake, assuming you are halfway competent with Wordpress.

Until next time….Best Regards.

If you read any of my former posts…yeah I know…it’s been a while then you know my point of view on a lot of things.  I will say though, that my opinion has changed dramatically over the last 12 -18 months of what it takes to making money online and the best ways to go about it….at least for me.

Rather than feverishly trying to get you to go look up some of my old posts, I can summarize here in a few simple sentences.  I don’t like MMO blogs in general, as I think most of them are written by people who don’t have a clue how to make money online.  They fake it, hoping to make it, and then usually fade away or sell it on Sitepoint for 1000 bucks to some other sucker.

When I started blogging, I did it more for fun than trying to actually make any money online but then some early success hit and I was making money with this blog selling ad space and posts and referrals and all that other piddly bullshit that MMO bloggers add up every month hoping to dupe you into thinking they know something.  It felt good and blogging was actually fun…so I went with it.

However, after a few months of building traffic and whoring myself out for a few bucks here and there, I quickly came to the realization that this wasn’t exactly my cup of tea.  Don’t get me wrong…I love to blog and find it quite enjoyable but what I didn’t enjoy was trying to make money with the blog.  I am much more of a behind the scenes type of person and I found myself spending more and more time with my niche sites.

The whole MMO blogging scene is really nothing more than a big, giant circle jerk of pretenders that pump out the same stupid posts and don’t have an original thought in their head and that isn’t for me.  I am proud of some of my past content and as my skills grew, I always made it a point to try and put a unique POV on my content or deliver a message.  Sometimes I succeeded and well, sometimes I didn’t.

All of this said, I guess the bottom line is that the typical MMO blogging scene isn’t my scene.  I would rather actually build sites that make money rather than blog about how YOU should build sites that make money.  I would rather grow my traffic than tell you how to grow your traffic.  It’s a very rare thing that any of the typical MMO bloggers actually make any money, although they are very good at making you think they do.

So Where To

So to cleanse my soul and rid myself of the stink that you get when you lay down with dogs, I took a few weeks off, ok….maybe a few months off and didn’t post a single thing.  I had a number of offers to buy the blog but well, I like it and would rather keep it.  I knew that someday it would come to me what to do with it and while I would like to say that day is here, it isn’t.

I will say that I have missed blogging and I have a LOT of recent experiences when it comes to building niche sites.  Six months ago I was a huge proponent of the BANS store concept, now six months later, not so much.  BANS is a great product but I have a much better setup now that is so much easier to use to build sites and is like wearing a second skin, and that is Wordpress.

Sexy….yeah I think so.  Would I love to collect a referral from telling you how great BANS is…sure….but I just can’t.  It’s a good program but you can do everything…and I mean EVERYTHING you can do with BANS, much easier with Wordpress.  Best of all, it’s free and most of you already know how to use it.

Six months ago, I was a big proponent of building niche sites using stats and data and Google search counts etc….six months later, not so much.  The bottom line is that to be successful in niche site building you either have to be very proficient in building links or building content and it helps to be good at both.

For me, in order to write a LOT of content, it has to be a niche I know about and have a passion for, otherwise someone that DOES have that passion will out content you every time.  So instead of starting with search counts, I start with things I love and know a LOT about.  Once I have that niche, I still check stats to make sure it makes sense and I can make a go of it but I won’t even consider a niche that isn’t a hobby or passion anymore.

These are just two of the many ways that I have evolved my site building and site selection.  I will be the first to admit, I have some definite flaws too.  I start a lot of sites and leave them half built.  I need to get better at building a COMPLETE site before starting to build a new one.  I need to get better at building links, I can write content until the cows come home but I am mediocre at building links…that’s my New Years Resolution.

All of this “stuff” is going to be future post ideas so I won’t reveal too much here today but I will say I have a LOT to write about and am anxious to hear your feedback.  I realize it will take time to build a regular readership again but that’s ok……my income comes from my niche sites, not this blog.

Conclusion

So, a lot of rambling and a lot of thoughts blowing out of my head.  That is also going to be a bit of a change in the future for me as well.  In the past, I would agonize over the wording in my post, the syntax and sentence structure and a post would sometimes take me 2 or 3 hours to write.

That isn’t going to happen anymore.  I am going to write pretty free and openly and if you get it great, if not then ask me to explain something I missed in the comments section.  I don’t want to dedicate a LOT of my “online” time to this blog, as I said, I need to build links.

Anyways….enough for now.  I hope you will grab my feed and check in for the ride and maybe we can help each other make more money online than we are currently today.

Regards,

Bill

People are Lazy

I don’t know what it is about people that they always want to shortcut or think that their is a way to easily make money on the internet. Heed this advice, as soon as it gets easy, every Tom, Dick and Larry will jump into the mix as well creating competition. Once you have competition it gets much more difficult than before. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy of sorts, the easier something is – the more competition it generates. The more competition their is, then the more difficult it becomes.

This is something that most of the BANS world seems to have not been able to pick up on just yet. They are convinced they can just throw up 300 stores and start making money online easily. Here’s a newsflash, it isn’t going to happen, at least not for long. Google will make sure that if you produce a host of garbage thin affiliate sites that they will soon either be buried deeply in the SERPS or removed from the index altogether.

Would You Buy?

Most of us that try to make money online, also often shop online and surf the internet regularly so you are aware of what sites look like and how you react when you first click onto one. An easy question to ask yourself is “Would YOU buy from your own site?”

If you are anything like me, when I click onto a site for the first time, I make some assumptions about that site. One glimpse at it is usually enough to either inspire me to look around and see what they have or to hit the back button and try another search. So what would people say about your site? What would YOU say about your site.

Let’s say for instance you were a Star Wars fan and you wanted to buy little Johnny a Stormtrooper helmet for Christmas. Let’s say that you were to do a Google search and come across say this site what does that site say to you? Does it inspire you to look around? Does it make you want to stay? If you are like me, absolutely not. It’s an out of the box garbage BANS site with no content, no modifications of any kind and really no hope of making any money. If it does even show up in the SERPS it is probably ONLY because it is new and Google for some reason, ranks new BANS sites pretty high for a few weeks but they quickly disappear.

Now let’s say you hit the back button and land on another Stormtrooper Helmets site. Does it inspire a different feeling than the other site on first glance? Are you not a bit more inclined to check it out and look deeper for that helmet for little Johnny? I would hope so, considering the second site is mine. It is far from done as I still want to jazz up the front page and add a lot of content to the blog portion.

My strategy is usually to get a decent looking site up and see how it produces over the first few months, if it does reasonably well then I will invest a LOT more time into it producing content and try to build it into a content rich site that will stand the test of both time and a Google human review if it ever were to come.

Wordpress + BANS

As you can see by the Stormtrooper site it is a Wordpress blog with a BANS store integrated into it. This is a hot trend as of late and I am experimenting with it as well. I will say this, it is getting a lot of credit from a lot of BANS sites lately but to be honest, I don’t see it as all that necessary. It is just as easy to build a quality content laden site using a BANS template as it is with WP.

Many members are running around the BANS forums crying about Google hating BANS sites and that the sky is falling and if you don’t change now you are screwed blah blah blah. It’s pretty stupid if you ask me, because Google has NOTHING against BANS sites. What they do not want in their index are thin affiliate sites. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a BANS site or one of the other hundreds of Ebay affiliate store scripts out there that exist.

If your site offers nothing for users other than auctions then Google is going to punt it. Plain and simple. I want to repeat, you can build a very high quality BANS site as easily as you can build a high quality WP/BANS site too. It just requires one thing……work.

Conclusion

I know a number of well known bloggers and so called black hat sites promote a number of shortcut ways to make money. Put up 100 sites that make a dollar a day and you’ll become rich overnight. It’s a crock of crap, because what they don’t tell you is those first 100 domains will probably be de-indexed and then you need to put up another 100 sites.

Domains aren’t cheap, especially now that Google is punting anything e-commerce that exists on a .info domain. I used to subscribe that theory of building a bunch of sites that could produce a few bucks a week but it wasn’t for me and fortunately I very quickly modified my strategy. I would rather have 20 sites that produce a few thousand a month than 100 sites that produce a giant pain in the ass.

I am considering starting to develop sites for people who aren’t quite sure how to go about building their own.  I don’t know if that is even something that would be in demand but it’s something I am thinking about.  My BANS store mentoring process is proceeding nicely and Kel has tackled the hardest parts of building a BANS site and is in the home stretch.  I will post an update on that soon.

So in conclusion, do you think people would want to have sites built for them or are they going to continue to look for the easy way out?  Also let me know what you think of my Stormtrooper site….bear in mind that it is far from done and I would expect to have 30 or 40 content rich articles on it within the next 60 days.

Stormtroopers Rule!

SEO for Dumb Dumbs

SEO for dumb dumbs (me included) has always followed a very traditional sequence.

• Build a website
• Submit to Google, MSN, Yahoo
• Pay some Malaysian kid from Digital Point 20 bucks to submit to 4000 free directories
• Spam a few blogs to build some links….even though they are probably no follow.
• Repeat the process with the next crappy site.

This is pretty much the recipe that I see on the BANS forum for site SEO. Hundreds of people are doing it and I suspect that these same people are experiencing a very low level of success.

Much of the success involved with niche sites involves quantity. It’s pretty difficult to build just a few sites that will build a sustainable income no matter how hard you try. You need to be able to find a recipe that works and repeat it. This need for repitition can really tie up your time if you let it, so you are well served to determine what actually works and what is a waste of your precious time.

Let’s take a look at each step of the process.

Search Engine Submissions

Yes, no question you want to do this. I continually hear of people that will tell you to NEVER submit your sitemap to Google. Fly under the radar. Stay low and try to keep as much of your site a secret from Google as possible.

This is probably the most retarded thing that any of these retards could possibly say. Especially when you consider that most of them don’t even know why they should do this, only that they read it somewhere on some blog and it seemed like a cool thing to repeat. It would make them seem smart.

Submit your sitemaps. You want every search engine to know exactly what you are doing and everything about your site. If you’re cheating, then maybe you want to stay low….but for most normal people…submit your site as soon as you think it’s ready. Do not submit until it’s 90% complete though.

You can submit to Google, MSN and Yahoo. The rest of them aren’t worth the time in my opinion.

Directory Submissions

This might shock some of you.

Most Directory submissions are an absolute waste of your time, effort and energy. I see so many different people offering “200 Directory Submissions” or “500 Directory Submissions” services both on Digital Point and the BANS forum that it makes me scratch my head in wonder.

Now don’t get me wrong, most of these people are not charging big money for these submissions so most people say why not. Well…if you want to waste 50 bucks then why not donate it to charity or something worthwhile because you won’t get anything from these submissions.

In most cases they submit these to “Free” Directories. Google has looooooong since discounted any links from free directories. They are the scourge of the internet and Google knows it. Google has recently penalized a number of Directories down to a PR0 but even if a Directory still has pagerank doesn’t mean it is passing any juice to you. Check the Meta and the links to make sure they are not no follow.

Just right click on View Source and look for something like this on the actual page you want to be listed on.

META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOFOLLOW”

There are some Directories out there worth submitting to of course, but they are few and far between. Something that ALL of them will have in common is absolutely no guarantee of your URL showing up. If their only requirement is a reciprocal link, then don’t waste your time. If they list anyone and everyone that sends them a link…you can forget it.

A quality Directory listing will almost ALWAYS cost you money and STILL offer no guarantee of inclusion.

I am not going to name any of these bad directories as that isn’t the point of the article but here are a few key things to look for:

• If they are included in any automated or semi-automated software for submissions.
• How do they monetize? Google adsense everywhere – almost a sure sign they aren’t the deal.
• Minimum Requirements – What does it take to be approved?
• Pay Per Submit type submissions. If you pay you are guaranteed inclusion.

Google is onto this stuff. If you must waste your time then please, continue as you are doing but I’d be willing to be that half or better of these links never even index because the Google Bot doesn’t even crawl the directory anymore.

Good Directories

There are a number of quality Directories still in existence and you really should consider these. I know it’s hard to believe that 2 or 3 quality Directory submissions are worth 50 times what 100 garbage Directory submissions are worth but the simple truth is it’s a fact.

One of the most important things to consider when looking for a good Directory is whether they have an editorial policy or not in regards to submissions. If a human editor looks at the submission and then decides whether to include you or not then that is a good sign. It’s only good though if they actually have a quality standard.

Some examples of some great Directories to consider are:

• DMOZ – Owned by Google. You want to be here….it’s free BUT hard to get included.
• Yahoo – $299 non-refundable to submit and NO guarantee of inclusion.
• Best of the Web – $99 non-refundable annually and NO guarantee of inclusion.
• Business.com – $299 non-refundable and NO guarantee of inclusion.

There are many more out there but these will give you a few good solid examples to work from. Once you see what it takes to be included in a QUALITY directory vs. the other garbage ones then you will be able to recognize what is worth it or not.

I can’t stress enough….A DMOZ and a Yahoo Directory listing is probably worth more than 1000 submissions to any of these other useless directories.

Blog Posting Links

These can have a small amount of value but they are difficult to acquire a meaningful number. To make sure they have ANY value at all they should always be on a site that is relevant to the site you are linking to and they need to be Do Follow otherwise it won’t do you much good.

Yahoo still pays no attention to the No Follow attribute but you’re way ahead of the game to build your SEO plan to cater to Google and whatever else you get is a bonus.

Link Building Alternatives

So what do you do if you have no money to submit to these high quality Directories? Good question because it can be a difficult process. The problem for most people is it takes work and that is simply something they are not willing to do.

They want the easy way out. I am not going to elaborate much on the listings below but trust me they are still very viable and very wroth your time to build links to your sites.

• Article Marketing – Ezine, GoArticles, Article Trader etc.
• Social Bookmarking – Very Web 2.0 and Google adores Web 2.0 stuff right now.
  • Digg, Propeller, Delicious, Mister Wong and more…all worth the time.
• Squidoo pages – Build a lens for each of your sites, fill with relevant content and link to your site.
• Hubpages – Hubpages and Squidoo are both Web 2.0 and currently very popular.
• Zimbio – A form of blog posting combined with Article Marketing.
• Directory Submissions – QUALITY Directories. One Yahoo DL is worth 500 crappy ones…easy.

Article Marketing is currently my favorite and most productive free method of building backlinks. I write most of my own content and outsource a small part of it. I haven’t had the greatest luck with outsourcing content as most of the services tailored to this offer crappy writers.

So I write my own and I write it the way I want it to sound. Takes longer but oh well.

Conclusion

So in summary I don’t think it’s too hard to figure out my position on this subject. I usually am fairly outspoken and tell it like I think it to be. I should say that I am in no way any kind of an SEO professional and nor would I claim to be.

I know what I know and I write what I write based on my own personal experience from building a number of these websites. SEO takes time and it takes work, just like building your sites. If you think you can build a site in a day, submit it to Google, buy a 200 Directory listing package and sit back and count your money then you are wrong.

I am going to keep working my ass off today so I won’t have to work at all tomorrow.

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Learn to Build Niche Sites