*This is the first post in a series focusing on creating mobile apps – from idea to the store. Stay up-to-date by following me on Facebook or twitter.

One of my goals this year was to diversify my income and create a mobile app.

The biggest problem I faced was coming up with an idea that I felt comfortable investing in.

Creating mobile apps isn’t cheap (at least I thought) and you’re not guaranteed a return on your investment.

I had many ideas on my plate, but none that I wanted to pull the trigger and actually have developed.

Until…

Out Of Tragedy Comes Inspiration

Friday the 13^th in a small town just a few miles from my house, 10 year old Lyric Cook and 9 year old Elizabeth Collins went missing.  Their bicycles, a purse and a non-working cell phone were left near a lake just a few miles from their house.

The response from the community was HUGE!  I was fascinated by the support of all the people who came out and helped search for the girls, organized candle light vigils, and so on.  I have friends living hundreds of miles away in completely different states that saw the story on Facebook and the national news.

I was so impressed by the outpouring of support from my surrounding community that I personally wanted to help in the most effective way I felt I could.

I saw how fast the word of these missing girls spread through social media and thought if there was a way to easily notify people when a child goes missing and make it as easy as possible to post information and a picture of the child on their Facebook wall, that it may help bring these missing children home.

And that’s how the idea of my Missing Child Alerts App was born.

My initial goal of coming up with that million dollar app idea turned into creating an app that hopefully makes a difference in people’s lives. And also, to help support the National Center For Missing & Exploited Children, since the app wouldn’t have been possible without their hard work and dedication.

I do have small ad at the bottom of the free app, but I don’t expect that to cover the cost of creating the app or to even pay for the monthly cost of push notifications if I outgrow or have to change to a paid solution.  And like I said before, that wasn’t the point of creating this app…

So, that’s the back story to how I came up with the idea for my first mobile app.

Creating Mobile Apps

Then next few posts in this series will cover exactly how I created this mobile app for both iOS and Android devices for under $1600, how I’m currently sending out push notifications for free, submitting the app to their respective stores and finally how to market the mobile app once completed.

While I didn’t create this app with generating a large income in mind, you will hopefully be able to take a few pointers away from what I learned and apply them to your unique situation/idea and create a profitable app for pennies on the dollar…And without a lot of the headaches I faced!

So, be sure to follow along!  And, of course, if you have any questions/comments please leave them below.

Finding The Perfect Idea For My First Mobile App

Dan McGonagle of LinkvanaReviews.com and I have thrown together a little guide to help those wanting to get the most out of Link Emperor and to get a general overview of what’s working now as far as SEO is concerned.

This guide is ONLY available to those who buy Link Emperor through my affiliate link below, through Dan’s link on his site or it’s free if you’re a member of MarketersRelief.com.

What’s Inside:

• As the title would suggest, this guide will ensure you get the most out of the already powerful Link Emperor! This is an extremely powerful service so make sure you use it right!
• How to PROPERLY do tiered link building.  There’s a lot of information out there on how to do tiered link building – folks putting videos on forums, people selling tiered link building services, etc. – but MOST of them aren’t doing it right, or should I say most effectively.
• Importance of anchor text variation and how to do it right.
• And MORE!

All you have to do is try out Link Emperor through this link, then send me an email with your order number.  I will then email you the Link Emperor Best Practices Guide asap.  It’s that simple!

Updated: The feedback is starting to roll in:

Ive been using LE for 2+ months now so I know their system pretty well. Even with my knowledge the book gave me new ideas to deploy which I didn’t use & think of myself. – Dave

If you’re not quite sold yet on what Link Emperor can do for you, then check out this in-depth Link Emperor Review.  It’s a 100% hands-off total link building solution that I use myself – with great results!

Start your 7 day trial of Link Emperor for only $7 AND get the Link Emperor Best Practices Guide NOW!

Link Emperor Best Practices Guide

**Update 9/15/2012: Grab your own FREE copy of the powerful Link Emperor Best Practices Guide when you subscribe through my affiliate link. This guide will ensure you get the most out of this ultra-powerful service!  But, first read through my detailed Link Emperor review below and check out my case study to see exactly how you can start ranking your websites completely hands-off!

**Update 11/19/2012: The guys at Link Emperor just made a few considerable improvements to the program, even fixing one of my main gripes! First they added the ability to do tier link building, completely hands off.  And they even take it a step further by only juicing up the best tiers based on their built-in algorithm.  Secondly, you now have full-control over the types of links built to your site! I believe this is especially important in the current climate of the SEO world!

Link Emperor is another one of those link building services that claims to be totally hands-off, building you a multitude of links completely on autopilot. But, does it deliver?

What is Link Emperor?

In a nutshell, it combines some of the most popular link building services/strategies out there and organizes them in one central dashboard.

Have you considered using SocialAdr, Dripable, etc, or software such as Xrumer, Sick Submitter, SENuke and so on, but never knew if they were worth the money? With Link Emperor you get the best of all of those along with many other link building services to build links to your sites 24 hours a day.

Blog posts, web 2.0’s, article submissions, Google +1′s, .Edu & .Gov Links, Wiki links, High-PR blog comments, press releases, forum profiles, tiered link building, social bookmarking and so on…ALL included in Link Emperor! And you get to choose which types of links you would like built. For example, if you want to increase social signals sent to your site, then you can allocate more of your link credits to go towards those. Or if there are certain spammy link types you want to avoid then you can completely turn those off.

More than that however, it combines keyword research, link building and rank tracking all in one tool. This means it does the keyword research for you after analyzing your pages, it then automatically targets the keywords that their built-in algorithm decides will be easiest to rank for, then it builds links for these keywords to help your rankings and traffic sky-rocket. You can even track all of your rankings for these keywords and any keyword you choose.

Another important point, especially post-penguin, is that it allows for random prefixes and suffixes for anchor text, as well. And you can easily adjust the randomization of anchors.

Another benefit for those with clients is you can use Link Emperor to run a hands-off SEO business. If you charge a local SEO client $1,000 a month and you spend $147 on the “Soldier” Level account you could pocket $853 in profit every month – completely hands-off! Plus your clients get a custom branded dashboard area featuring your logo’s.

I was almost dreading writing up this Link Emperor review because of the multitude of features it has built-in, so if you want to learn more about the features then check out their sales page and watch their video. They even a have a forum you can ask pre-sales questions, etc.  Anyways, let’s jump in and look at the exact strategy I used for this case study.

Link Emperor Review

Link Emperor has four different pricing options at the time of this case study, which are:

Now, for this case study, I wanted to give Link Emperor a fair shake, but at the same time, I know a lot IM’ers don’t have enormous budgets to work with. So, I chose the Gladiator option. For those on an extremely small budget or those who are a little skeptical they do have a special for $7 for 7 days where you get 7,000 link building credits.

Specifics of the site I used for this case study:

• 6 months old
• Price comparison site for recreational water crafts
• Monetized with Amazon affiliate links
• No active link building for two months prior to test

My strategy was to play it (relatively) safe and be less aggressive with certain spammy looking link types (which can be subjective). It’s very possible that I could have received better/faster rankings by being more aggressive with certain links, however I tried to avoid blasting my site with tons of spun content, especially since some of the link providers I noticed didn’t take the level of care I personally would when it comes to spinning articles (one of the cons I found. I did recently notice that they have Jon Leger’s ArticleBuilder.net built-in which you can use to generate your own unique articles if you so wish).

Here’s a snapshot of exactly how I have my links allocated:

*You can email support at support@linkemperor.com and ask for a free account evaluation and they will have a look-see and offer suggestions to get the most out of your link building efforts. Be sure you include your username or registered e-mail address for your account when you email them.

When you add your lander pages, or the URL’s you want to rank, Link Emperor works it’s magic and finds a bunch of easy to rank for keywords, which you can adjust how much link building you want, if any, done using these anchors.

You can also add your own keywords that you would like to rank for. I added three high competition “buyer” keywords, each pointing to a different URL on this test site, that I would like to eventually rank for.  These were:

Keyword 1 – 4,400 exact local. This keyword I’ve been tracking for a while with Rankerizer and it’s a brand name. Went from nowhere, to position 39 after a week and is sitting at position 28 at the time of this post.

Keyword 2 – 6,600 exact local, high competition buyer keyword. Not the best keyword to track for such a short test, but still saw some progress; started at position 83 and moved to 78 at the time of this post. (Click to enlarge)

Keyword 3 – 3,600 exact local, high competition buyer keyword. Another keyword that isn’t the best keyword to run a short test on, but would be highly lucrative once in the top 3. Started at position 42 and moved to 14 at the time of this post. (Click to enlarge)

No too bad after only 5 weeks, but for the money you might expect a lot more. However, remember when I mentioned that Link Emperor builds links using long-tail keywords that are easy to rank for? Well, I ended up getting a lot more first page results then I initially anticipated (click to enlarge):

Because of these first page rankings my traffic doubled in the short amount of time I ran this test:

*You get detailed reports of all the links built, so take advantage of this and run them through Linklicious or your favorite link indexer. I might actually contact Justin from Linklicious and see if they’ll integrate with Link Emperor to make it completely hands off.

As mentioned above, the site that was the subject of this case study is an Amazon affiliate site for water crafts, many which sell in $1000 to $2000 range, that result in an average of $100 in profit per sale. So, when I was able to double my traffic, I was easily able to get my money back from using this service in just one month. I’m excited to see where this site will be a few months down the road without any work done on my part.

I know for many the price is going to be an issue. When I started out I would scoff at the idea of shelling out $497 a month. Even the $147 a month plan would have been a stretch. But, in the absence of money, I had time! I had plenty of time and desire to manually build backlinks. Then when income started rolling in I was able to reinvest that money into link building services to free up some of my time to focus on starting new websites. As your portfolio and income grows, so does the amount of money you can reinvest.

With that being said, do I feel this service is for everybody? History and my own experience would say no. But, if you have solid converting site(s) or simply prefer hands-off link building and are comfortable investing in your business, then by all means try it out! There’s a 30-Day money back guarantee, which is rare in this industry, so if you don’t see results simply cancel and ask for your money back. I review products in a completely unrelated niche and one of my “rules” is I will only support products that offer a money-back guarantee, so it’s extremely refreshing to see that sort of guarantee in a link building service.

Give link Emperor a try for just $7 for 7 days!

*To be totally transparent with you, the links pointing to Link Emperor within this review are affiliate links, which means I may earn a commission if you click through and order their service.  Keep in mind this in no way affected my final viewpoint of their service. Thanks!

Link Emperor Review – The ONLY Link Building Service You’ll Ever Need?

If you’re into the whole SEO thing and frequent blogs/forums etc. then you’ve probably heard of the penguin update…

And you’re probably sick of hearing about it – or more so the speculation and mass hysteria.

So, for me personally, I plan on looking past the speculation and clearing the waters the only way I know how…

Through testing on my personal sites!

So, what does this have to do with my niche site?  Well, this particular site was kicked square in the nuts by the penguin.

Now, where most people would give up or cry about how evil Google is, I plan on taking the lemons Google gave us and making lemonade!

A few things:

Testing

I have a mixed bag of sites – some affected negatively and some actually gained ground.

Two of my sites I created at the same time and have the exact same backlinking portfolio, meaning I only used one service for both of these sites, yet one gained ground while the other fell off the map on the exact same day – April 24^th.

Because of this, I plan on focusing on on-page factors first.  There are a few glaring differences between the two sites, especially when it comes to content, outbound links, etc.

Secondly, I plan on creating a more “chaotic” backlink portfolio to my affected sites.  By this I mean varying anchor text and so on.  Google love chaos, and subsequently penalize sites by identifying certain patterns  that look “unnatural”, so I plan on feeding the penguin what it wants.

There are too many factors to decisively tell what will be responsible if/when I’m able to bring my affected sites back, but it may help identify what has a better chance of working.

Am I Mad I Had A Few Sites Affected?

Yes and no.  It’s all part of the game so you must brace yourself for it and prepare for doomsday!

And don’t let people fool ya into saying this is why you must go white hat!  There are plenty of examples I’ve personally seen of sites that aren’t over-optimized (following conventional wisdom I guess) AND had never built a link to their site at all – ever – and they were still affected.

Plus, with this particular niche site I created, and actually ALL of my sites, I create VALUE!  I don’t make small niche sites with one page and slap up Adsense.  I create real value driven sites that aim to help people.  And the only reason I may be slightly upset is that the sites that replaced mine on the first page are laughable in most cases.

Fighting web spam my ass.  Increasing the likelihood of people using Adwords? More likely the case. Remember, Google is a for-profit business.

Moving Forward

I plan on using my aforementioned tests results and applying what works to this niche site to see if it helps.  It still receives longtail traffic (which convert better anyways), and is still making money.

If you have personally used a technique that helped get your sites rankings back please share in the comments or email me and I will test it out on my site. 

More importantly, I plan on building up traffic through various other sources for this site, thus cutting Google out of the equation.  I recently added a forum to help build a “community” and give people a reason to come back.  I created a YouTube page and plan on adding multiple videos and building up that subscriber base, as well as adding an email list.

These are just a few things I already do with my authority sites, but thought I should quit putting it off for this niche site.

Time to make that lemonade!

Niche Site Update #5 – When Google Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade!

I’m about to show you how to be 30x more productive with your SEO efforts…

And like a lot of the methods I use, this little tip/tool is absolutely FREE!

But, first I want to bore you with a quick story about myself.

I’m very meticulous (nice way of saying I suffer from OCD – thanks mom) in that I track and plan most everything I do.

For example:

I have a spreadsheet set up for all of my workouts which detail every rep and pound I’ve lifted over the last ten years…

I have my diet plan written out in detail, displaying my caloric, carb, protein and fat goals for each day, displayed in my kitchen…

*In all fairness, I’m not a total prude…I do have a spontaneous side, which usually just gets me in trouble…

Now, this may seem crazy to most, but it helps me analyze what works, what doesn’t and to identify patterns so I can spend my time more efficiently.  It may take a little work upfront, but it pays off tenfold in the end.

This meticulous tracking of data has helped in countless ways with improving my conversion optimization and SEO productivity, as well.

For every site I’ve owned and still own, I have an excel sheet set up to track certain backlinks like my web 2’s, guest posts, anchor text’s I used, etc.  I also track what services I used to backlink these anchor sites.

But, this is where the fun part comes in!

Introducing SEO Tools For Excel

This little add-in to Microsoft Excel can make tracking your campaigns and analyzing data a snap.  In fact, it has saved me countless hours…and more importantly my sanity.

SEO Tools For Excel was created by Niels Bosma and turns a simple Excel sheet into a powerful SEO tracking tool.

So, how can SEO Tools For Excel help YOU?

• It allows you to monitor and analyze your back links
• Check if you’re backlinks, or your site’s links, are indexed
• Check Google pagerank for sites
• Count the number of Facebook likes, Google + and Tweets for any URL
• Research a sites Alexa popularity
• Scrape any website or web service and pull that data directly into Excel
• Conduct domain research, for example, find out when a domain expires, etc.
• Pull data from Google Analytics
• Avoid duplicate content
• Onpage SEO analysis

And that’s just a few of the features of this popular tool!

Installation is easy.  Just visit the downloads page and download either the 32 bit or 64 bit version, depending on what version of Excel you’re using.  If you’re not sure what version your Excel program is then simply click File ==> Help and over on the right hand side you’ll see your version.  It looks like this in Office 2010:

Once you’ve downloaded the file and have it installed, which is as simple as dragging and dropping the SeoTools.xll file into an open spreadsheet, then you’ll now have the Seo Tools tab at the top:

Simply click that tab and it will display the full suite of tools you can use:

How you use the extensive suite of tools is up to you and your unique situation. But, don’t be afraid to jump in and test all the different features.

And since you’re soon to have all this extra free time on your hands now, feel free to comment below!

Turning Excel Into An SEO Productivity Powerhouse!

I’ve been strangely addicted to that show on National Geographic Channel called Doomsday Preppers.

You know, the show where various people reveal their plans for survival when, as they all seem to put it, “shit hits the fan”!

Weirder yet, it was my wife who turned me onto the show…

Anyways, I couldn’t help but notice the glaring similarities between the show and SEO.

After all, BuildMyRank, ALN, High PR Society and a few other blog networks recently met their doom.

And, unfortunately, so did the livelihood of a lot of IM’ers who relied on those networks for their rankings.

First, let’s cover a few facts:

• Search engines are constantly evolving.
• It’s getting increasingly harder to rank your site/keep it ranked.  Still not necessarily difficult, but just think about how easy it was 5 years ago!
• You never know when the next algorithm is going to hit and your site is going to drop off the map.

If you’re running an online business who’s success relies on the search engines then doomsday is inevitable, as I’m sure you’re well aware.

So, how do you prep your business to avoid catastrophe?

How, even after all the Panda updates and the demise of some major blog networks, did my rankings and income actually improve for all of my sites?

Diversify your link portfolio
Those who rely heavily on one type of link, link network or service are bound to be hit sooner or later. Remember, there are MANY types of links you can build plus networks or services to utilize if that’s the route you want to take. I cover a variety of these in my link building strategies page.  These are all strategies that I still use to rank my sites.

Don’t rely on the search engines
Google is great, don’t get me wrong.  And Bing and Yahoo have their place, as well. But, they’re just one source of traffic.  And relying on them to fuel your business is not a very good idea.

So be sure to take advantage of the many other avenues out there like Facebook or Twitter to help drive traffic. Build an email list.  Add a forum to your site to give visitors a reason to stick around and come back often.  Network with others in your niche.  Submit guest posts.  Write kick ass content!  But above all, give readers what they want, which brings us to…

Provide value
You need to provide value to give your site’s visitors a reason to come back, share your site with their friends and so on.   The search engines, in my opinion, are a great way to get tons of targeted traffic.  But, it’s up to you keep those visitors coming back or convert them into sales if that’s your goal!  Some people profit well with one page niche sites, but since I don’t have any experience doing that, I can’t comment either way.  However, in my personal experience and the basis of my online success, building content rich authoritative sites that naturally give people a reason to want to come back and promote your site is a better long-term strategy.

Am I immune to the evolving world of internet marketing?  Is my business model “doomsday proof”?

Unfortunately not.  But, the old “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” saying that you’re probably sick of hearing is not only true, but vital to your future success.

Remember, diversify your business portfolio in every way that makes sense to your unique situation…

For example, if one site fails, have 4, 5, 6 or maybe more sites to fall back on.  (I’ve had more sites fail than I care to admit!)

If one linking source gets wiped out, you have a wide enough backlink portfolio that your site holds strong.

If your site gets deindexed, have another source of traffic!

These are just a few examples…

So, long story short, Prepare for the worst!

The best way to do this is to stop, take a step back and ask yourself if you could handle a major catastrophe to your business.

Put yourself in a position where you’re comfortable if your business was to take a hit.

In other words, prep yourself for an online doomsday!

Btw, I’m in no way a Doomsday prepper in real life.  In my current state, if “shit WAS to hit the fan” and the world saw a major catastrophe, my survival odds aren’t looking so well!

Luckily my wife is formulating a plan!

How Doomsday Preppers Can Help Your Online Business Thrive!

In this edition of my Fiverr gig review, I will be looking at 4 more SEO related gigs to see what impact thay had, if any, on my test site rankings.

Plus, I want to uncover a few other Fiverr gigs I use and the reasons why.

And in case you missed it, check out part one of my SEO Fiverr Gig Review.

So, let’s get started!

Transform your article to powerpoint and PDF and submit it for backlinks for $5

This gig basically takes an article you provide, turns it into a powerpoint and pdf file, then submits it to the top 10 document sharing and slide sharing sites. They then ping the backlinks for, as they say, faster indexing.

I tried this gig on an inner page of my niche site and I targeted a long tail keyword with easy to medium competition.  The page was nowhere in the top 100 before testing this gig.  It took a few days but it appeared at around position 45 then after a few weeks of slight movement it’s now sitting at position 41.

I will do 200 social bookmarking submission for your 2 URLs for $5

This gig will submit your URL, up to two of them, to 100 social bookmarking sites.  For an extra $5 they will spin the descriptions, create RSS feeds and submit those feeds to RSS directories.  I ordered the gig, used just one URL and ordered the extra’s to try and get the most benefit.

I pointed this gig at another page on the same niche sites as above with easy to medium competition.  Before starting this gig the page was not in the top 100.  It jumped around position 80 or so for a few weeks then completely disappeared again.  It hasn’t been in the top 100 for the last month.

I will submit your article to my man myarticlenetwork, ArticleRanks and spinandsend account for $5

This service will submit an article you provide to MAN (My Article Network), ArticleRanks and Spin And Send.  I linked back to an inner page on an authority site of mine that was a product name and medium competition.  The page was not in the top 100 to start out with and two months later still hasn’t broke the top 100.

Sorry, there’s no screen shot for when my page doesn’t reach the top 100 for the keyword.

I will prove that you can rank ANY low or medium competitive keyword to the first page of Google with my powerful link building service for $5

Obviously, the ol’ bullshit detector was going off before even testing this gig, but hey, why not give it a shot.

I tested this gig on an easy to medium competition keyword, a keyword they claim they can take to the first page of Google.  The page is an inner URL on an authority site and is also a product name (not the same as the one mentioned above).

This particular page was at position #24 at the start of this gig and has slowly been dropping since and is now at position 49.  To be fair, the page was as high as position 4 at one time and was starting on a decline before I ran this gig. Either way, it didn’t help.

In addition to the gigs I tested for this review, there are a few that I frequently use for various reasons.  In no particular order:

• I will make 20 000 GUARANTEED Instant Blog Comment Backlinks with Scrapebox for unlimited urls and keywords for $5 and I will create Xrumer Backlinks 20 000, 30 000, 40 000, 50 000, 100 000 Links Verified Forum Profile Backlinks for $5: You’ve probably heard of the importance of getting your backlinks indexed.  Furthermore, you’ve probably heard of, and perhaps even tried out, a few different backlink indexers, but IMHO none of those backlink indexers work as good as blasting your backlinks with comments and profiles.  Both of these gigs WAY over deliver so you typically end up with hundreds of thousands of links AND you can point these links at an unlimited amount of URL’s!  And notice that I point these to my tier 2′s and tier 3′s, NOT my money site!  So, once a month I spend $10 and blast my money sites backlinks with  these two packages.  Works better than any backlink indexer and is affordable.
• I will use 22 PR8 to PR5 social bookmark to create backlinks MANUALLY to your website for $5: I’m a big fan of social bookmarking…when it’s done right!  These social bookmarks make great tier 2′s and I usually blast these with comments or profiles to pass more juice through.
• I will spin and submit your article to 7450 Article Directories, Get 500+ Google Backlinks + Full Report + Ping for $5: Sometimes I like to blast my web 2.0′s and other tier 2′s with AMR blasts and this gig does just that.  I like this gig because they even provide the article for you, making it completely hands off.

Now, I’d like to hear from you…What Fiverr gigs am I missing?  What gigs do you frequently use if any?  Let us know in the comments below!

Fiverr Fever! A Review Of Various SEO Fiverr Gigs – Part 2

This niche site is now about two months old and not only has it made it in the top 10 for all three keywords I’m targeting, but it’s ranking #1 for one.  Here’s the breakdown:

Keyword 1
Exact monthly searches: 33,100 - Current position: #8 in Google

Keyword 2
Exact monthly searches: 18,100 - Current position: #4

Keyword 3
Exact monthly searches: 720 - Current position: #1

Not too shabby.  Typically though, I would like to be at #1 for all three keywords by now, but I decided to use this site as a test ground for some Fiverr gig reviews, which I believe has led to the slower than normal climb up the ranking ladder.

But, that’s fine, as I found some pretty good and worthwhile Fiverr gigs that I will be using for future projects, as well as some worthless gigs that seemingly had a negative impact on rankings (perhaps from a negative link velocity due to Big G deindexing a lot of the links).

Traffic

Unique visitors is a little erratic right now as Big G is deciding exactly where to place my site.

And while, my keywords have been jumping around on the first page, the two main one’s which will send the most traffic haven’t broke the top 3, so my current daily unique visitors is nowhere near what it’ll be if/when I make the #1 spot.

Here’s what my traffic looks like for the last two weeks:

Earnings

Even though traffic is low, the site has been making a decent amount of money through Adsense.

I also plan on diversifying the income by adding private advertising options and also promoting the job board a little more, which I will reveal the entire process for that when I get to it.

So far, the site has made a total of $449.12 with about half of that having been made in the last two weeks.  So, we’re heading down the right path!

I expect that number to really take off if/when I hit the first spot.

Future Plans

So, now I must concentrate on getting the two main keywords, the ones that will send the bulk of the traffic, to the first spot.

To do this I am going to concentrate more on manually creating quality web 2.0s and backlinking the hell out of them.

I have always found tiered linking to be a safe way to climb the serps and it really stabilizes the rankings (stops them from jumping all over the place).

And with Big G now handing out warnings to people in their webmaster tools about unnatural links pointing at their site, I’m going to try and play it safe and build a natural looking diverse link portfolio.

I was careful about only choosing certain Fiverr gigs to point at this site as to make the links still look natural and to build diverse types of links, ie. Manual comments, social bookmarks, wiki’s, etc.

As I’ve said before, I don’t build one page micro-niche sites, I build fleshed out authority sites that hopefully stick around for many, many years to come!

And, as usual,I will periodically update you as the site’s ranking and income improves and let you know what other tests, etc I perform on the site.  You can follow along on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus or enter your email address below! If you have any questions please leave them below.

Niche Site Diary #4 – Progress Update

I’ve recently been testing out a handful of different Fiverr gigs that offer backlinking services.

I’ve sifted through hundreds of gigs looking for effective services and narrowed it down to roughly 5 services to test out initially.

There are a few more which I’m currently testing and some of the results I’m about to give you may be a little premature to form a decision, so I will revisit them in part 2 of this series.

So, here are the gigs that made the first cut and their results:

I will setup link wheel for your page Be on the first page in Google search in 1 month for $5

This is apparently the oldest link wheel gig on Fiverr and it may just be since he has an insane amount of positive reviews. I’m not a huge fan of link wheels, but since this is an extremely popular service I thought I better give it a try.

The keyword I tested this service out on was sitting at position 15 when I started.  It gets 880 exact local searches and is a popular brand of elliptical. As you can see the keyword jumped up as high as position 4 and has seemingly settled at position 10 for now.  Not too bad considering it’s completely hands off  - you just pay $5 and give the guy your URL and anchor text.

I will spin and submit your article to U A W, Articleranks and A L N blog network for $5

There are many services on Fiverr offering a UAW, AR or a single ALN blast, but to find one for 5 bucks that submits to all three is a pretty good deal!  They even do the spinning for you.

This would be a great gig for hitting your anchor sites, and I actually did that a few times with this particular gig.  But, I also pointed it at a money page to test it’s effectiveness.  The page I pointed it at is an inner page on one of my niche sites and the keyword I targeted gets 8,100 exact local searches a month with medium competition.  When I started the test the page was ranked at exactly 100 for my keyword naturally. In 3 days it jumped to spot 22 where it’s now been resting at for a few weeks.  I would say that was a success for $5 bucks!

I will create 30 contextual high pr LINKS to your website for $5

I was really hoping for this gig to be successful.  I ordered the gig extra for this service which distributes your article to 40 extra blogs to give it a little more fire power so to speak (an additional $10).  And, so far it’s generated decent results.  It took a few weeks to see any movement, which is really no time at all in SEO, but it did move. The page I pointed this service at was a Facebook  Fan page for one of my authority sites that was at position 48 at the start.  The keyword I’m going after gets 8,100 exact local searches and is a popular diet term.  Site just reached position 35.  It’s starting to climb in the right direction so it will be interesting to see where it ends up.

I will syndicate your web content to over 2000 social media sites through TribePro for $5

I’ve been reading more and more about social signals playing a role in the SERP’s, so I thought I would give it a test.  I’ve heard good things about TribePro, but never really wanted to go through the hassle of setting up my own account and so on.  So, this gig piqued my interest. I tested this on an inner URL on one of my niche sites that is a long tail keyword with 1,300 exact local searches and a .gov as the #1 listing.  The page on my site ranked naturally at 27 with no backlinking or anything done to it.  The keyword almost immediately jumped to position 20 and sat there for a while, then eventually fell back to 35.  It’s still a little early to tell, but not looking so good right now.

I will spin and submit Article to over 1200 Article Directories, article submission for $5

This gig is extremely popular and has a ton of positive reviews, 3926 at the time of writing this.  But, I was little curious at first as to what tool the service provider uses to submit the articles since he doesn’t mention it. Turns out it’s an AMR (Article Marketing Robot) blast.  I’ll be the first to admit that I wrote off AMR as being a productive tool a while ago, but the results of this gig were really impressive.  I targeted a tough keyword that is another name brand name of a workout machine and gets 14,800 exact local searches a month.  My page started at 86 and one day after completing this service it jumped to position 19!  And it’s even held that position since.

I have a few other gigs that I’m currently testing that involve social bookmarking, a stumbleupon service, an edu/gov backlink service and more, which I will report on once I’m comfortable sharing the results.

And let me know if you have any favorite Fiverr gigs or even gigs that you provide so I can test them out!

Fiverr Fever! A Review Of Various SEO Fiverr Gigs – Part 1

It’s no secret that I try to get as much done with as little effort as possible (some call it laziness)…

But, that doesn’t mean I don’t work my ass off, it just means I spend little to no time doing meaningless work and instead focus all my energy on tasks that count (or at least I try, I still have those not-so-productive days at times…Damn You YouTube!).

Simply put, I strive to get the most bang for the buck, in terms of my work output.

This is extremely important for obvious reasons:

1. Wasting time on fruitless tasks doesn’t pay.
2. Spending time on menial jobs that are better off delegated just doesn’t make sense – You NEED to value your time.
3. By performing ONLY the tasks that are necessary, you are less likely to get burnt out.

With that in mind, here are 3 productivity tips that I have found to be most useful to not only save me time, but to get more done!

Make A To-Do List… At This Specific Time

I’m sure you’ve all read about the importance of writing a to-do list, and I’ve covered how to create a Not-To-Do list, but what I want to talk about here is creating the almighty to-do list… right before bed!

For about the last ten years or so I’ve had troubles sleeping.  Well, not so much sleeping, but falling asleep.  I have no problem lying in bed for hours before I fall asleep.

And after trying about every piece of advice out there, I found that by simply writing down what I wanted to get done tomorrow, I was able to shut my brain off and fall asleep faster.

Plus, when you wake up tomorrow you start your day off in a productive way!

On a side note, don’t get frustrated if your daily to-do list doesn’t get finished.  You’re going to have days where more important tasks are going to just pop-up, so you may not get to everything on your list.  It happens, just carry it over to the next day.

Goal setting is important at the micro and macro level, and think of your daily to-do list as a set of micro goals that you want to accomplish.  Over time, these small goals will add up!

Develop A Routine… But, Don’t Stop There

Routines may seem boring, but greatness is achieved when you fall into a productive pattern. Think of an Olympic athlete who wakes up every day at the same time, goes to the gym every day for a set amount of hours, eats at the same time, and so on.

It’s this routine that molds them into incredible athletes.  You can bet if they wandered aimlessly, with no routine or plan, hitting the gym when they felt like it, eating whatever/whenever they want, they wouldn’t get the same results.

So develop a daily/weekly routine where you set aside a certain amount of time for certain tasks.  This way you’re not aimlessly jumping from task to task and getting lost in checking your Facebook updates or watching videos on YouTube for hours (DAMN YOU YouTube…).

Ok, so routines are great and all, but more importantly after following your routine you need to every once in a while take a step back.

This is important for two reasons:

1. Asses your routine
2. Shake things up

You don’t want to get caught up in a routine that is getting you nowhere, so it’s important to take a step back and assess it.  Likewise, it’s a good idea to shake up your routine from time to time to get a new perspective on things and get those creative juices flowing.

Publicize Your Goals…And Conquer!

There’s a lot to be said for accountability.  It’s human nature to not let your friends and followers down, so by publicly stating your goals you are more likely to follow through with them.

This is extremely important from a productivity stand point, as you now have a team of people checking on your progress and pushing you to ultimately reach your goals.

It’s like a constant stream of motivation slapping you in the face.

Simply post your goals in a blog post, write them down and hang them in your kitchen, post them on Facebook or twitter, call up grandma and tell her your goals (she’d love to hear from you anyways) and so on.

These are 3 tips that have made a big difference in my work output.

What works for you?

3 Productivity Hacks You’d Be Crazy Not To Use