The Agile Marketer

Build My Rank Review - An In Depth Three Month Report - Part 2

2012-03-24T12:52:00.001-05:00

So, you may have been wondering why I waited a full month to post my BMR results. Unfortunately, right when I had posted part one of this review, Build My Rank had decided to temporarily not allow any new sign-ups until their blog network is improved. Then, to my ultimate astonishment, Google de-indexed all of BMR's sites as of March 19th!! What an incredible shame!! I'm very disappointed.

However, with that news I'll talk a bit as to why blog networks are a bit 'gray-hat' in nature but that you could mimic BMR in a more personal way (just that it will take you much more time and effort) to earn more online. Anyway, let's look first at my results.

Build My Rank Results

I'm not going to put a lot of effort into this post considering BMR's status at this point. But, let's see just how well it worked (you can find descriptions of these sites in the previous post).

Build My Rank Review - An In Depth Three Month Report

2012-02-19T14:26:00.001-06:00

Part of what I do with The Agile Marketer is to evaluate products and services that help you extend your options so that you can learn how to make money online. Over the summer I was very intrigued by many reports about the service, Build My Rank (or BMR for short), that from others seems to be an excellent page rank building option.

Build My Rank is bascially a network of content blogs designed to give you increased page rank as their blogs naturally improve their own page ranking by subscribers posting content within their system. To use it you must first subscribe to their montly plan that then allows you to write and post articles within their network.

I knew that the only way to really test this service was to truly devote an extended period of time to testing the waters with some different sites of my own to see just how much my sites would improve in page rank. Knowing that Google takes weeks to alter rankings this test would have to span at least two months.

My hope going in was that I would gain enough back in revenue from passive income (such as ads and affiliate products) that the monthly fee ($59/month at time of this writing) would be easily offset.

Build My Rank Test Cases

I decided to use three specific test cases that would represent different levels of site age, varying traffic levels and specific keyword strategies (note - all rankings are from Google search results):

Underground Traffic Secrets - Review

2011-09-25T21:47:00.002-05:00

What if you could get as many of your favorite internet marketers into the same room to discuss their opinions on what they would do if they could go back in time with the knowledge they have now?
Phill Turner (yes, with 2 Ls) of Underground Traffic Secrets has done just that with his packaged collection of interviews with a variety of successful online experts and asked them "If you were starting again today and you had absolutely no traffic, which traffic strategy would you use to make $1000 in profit after 30 days?"

Being experienced in internet traffic myself I just about skipped over this gem - but saw the names in the list and the price and decided to purchase a copy. I've got to tell you I was pleasantly surprised to find this to be an incredible deal and wealth of information. When you get to hear experienced marketers talk candidly about their strategies to drive traffic, you'll find that they tend to give away much more information than they would in a written ebook or article.

One on one interviews work so well since the interviewee typically doesn't have time to filter their thoughts and they're so excited to help others. What is so revealing in these audio reports is that they cover so many different traffic strategies which is so important for any type of online site - plus, they really demonstrate how to make money online. Most of Phill's interviews are about 20 to 30 minutes long making this offer an even better value. With that single question offered up - the responses stay very focused on traffic with what I think were some deep, hidden slips of the tongue by these guys.

Here's a brief list of the interviews (my ratings) and some of the topics discussed:

1. Dean Hunt (very good) - an expert in buzz marketing, he focused on becoming an authority much in the same way as a talk show host or interview might do it. If you focus on learning a topic at no cost and associate your name with experts you can build a level of respect. Lots of good details on how to build out this method.

2. Kim Roach (amazing) - is one of the most successful female marketers online, she is best known for her products Traffic Dashboard, Instant Affiliate Payday and Super Affiliate Club. She focused on the very basics of marketing online - but manages to lay it out in simple terms of traffic, offer and conversion. Using solo ads, newsletters, WSOs and more, she provides an amazing wealth of information in 30 minutes.

Powerful Niche Examples - Some Final Thoughts

2011-09-06T21:52:00.004-05:00

I wanted to give you some final thoughts on my series of articles How to Find the Most Profitable Affiliate that you should think about before diving in on my tutorial. Looking for a great paying niche is a techniques that works. But, you might want to consider a few pointers about earning money online with certain topics that might affect your long term strategy. (Wondering about a strategy? Take a look at Why You Need a Strategy to Earn Money Online ).

Get Excited About These Visual Niche Examples!

Alright, I'm going to show you two fantastic examples of how you could put together niche sites. Be it an affiliate or a core product - here's how you do it! Study these over and over to see just how content is mixed with a product to get you there. I know that both of these are making huge amounts of money (these are NOT my sites nor am I making any money by showing you these examples) and if you model your product and content and promote them in the same way you can drive to some real profits:

1. Security Guard Training HQ Niche Example

2. Double Your Dating Promotion Example

Choosing the Right Affiliate for You

Ok, you're all excited about a high paying niche and you're ready to start building. You should consider a couple of points -- take extra care when looking at niches in the following categories: Health and Fitness, Betting Systems, and Business / Investing. Certain products may cause you issues in the future if related to dubious claims of health benefits, gambling, and making money.

Recently, the government has been cracking down on information products making false claims that have negative impact on people - something you should be aware of. For example, health product that claim to fix certain problems can reflect back on you if you don't have the proper Disclaimers or Affiliate relationship clearly called out. You might get backlash from Google, Wordpress, Yahoo, etc. for promoting these types of sites -- Adwords or Adsense accounts banned, Blogger banned, Wordpress blogs dropped, etc. Or, gambling sites are prohibited on certain traffic promotional tools My only advice is to pay special attention to the product you're promoting if in these niches.

Take a look at the Federal Trade Commission site on consumer protection on health products. It will help you work through your niche.

Mingling Your Niche with Your Business - Good Idea? Bad Idea?

Another consideration for your niche site is how closely you want it related to your main business. If your goal is to create many niches for a variety of topics then you should consider keeping these independent of your core internet marketing business. By that I mean that you should create separate domains, email accounts and tools/traffic generation payments instead of a single account.

My article, Establish Your Differentiating Email IDs, will show you an example. When you mingle your core business with niches, a single mistake might cost you getting banned from some critical tools or services you might want to use for future work. If you're going to use a single topic and strategy - go ahead and use a single common business.

Getting Started to Build Profits

I've given you all of the necessary ammunition to get your affiliate niche sites started to really learn how to make money online. Be sure you understand the affiliate product you're promoting, the industry topic you're supporting and what the main, helpful ideas are coming from product that you can use to build content around the site. Remember, your core buyers are looking to answer specific questions by using the search engines. Your goal is to guide the engines to your niche site so that the product will satisfy their need. Always think that way by writing content, using headers and giving them snippets of information that will drive them to want more.

You don't have to be a complete expert in any product -- just well informed and a guide to the buyer. Take the attitude that you're helping them, not selling them and you'll see results! In future posts I'll talk about promoting sites and traffic.

How to Find the Most Profitable Affiliate Product - Part 3

2011-08-24T22:14:00.000-05:00

In Part 1 I talked about the general concepts surrounding Clickbank affiliate products and in Part 2 showed you how to use the free online tool CBEngine.com to narrow down your niche choices. In this post I'll talk about how to research the competition to select your final product.

Even though I noted two good choices for a niche informational product, the final choice is really going to rely on what keyword phrase or phrases you'll use to promote the product and the competition for those phrases in the search engines. A lesson for any internet marketer trying to make money online is that it all comes down to traffic and copy. I don't care what your site looks like as long as you get loads of traffic and can convert it.

If you've watched a master like Frank Kern he notes time and again that you must find hungry markets and convert then with control through your copy. In fact, I would suggest watching this video - 'I Can't Believe How Well This Worked' (wow, he is good) to see first hand what I mean. His style is so simple yet so powerful - using straight forward marketing videos and short emails from his lists. Think carefully about how you might connect to a niche using his mindset.

Why Niche Sites Need Good Keywords

The single most important step in promoting a niche site are the keyword phrases you're going to use to rank your niche site in the search engines. (I had mentioned some basic thoughts about this in an older post - Tuning Your Affiliate Keywords). The problem with products is that initially you can rank well in Google for new products because the competition is very low. But, what typically happens is that a product will start to grow in popularity and keeping your search result rankings high gets harder and harder as some of the more powerful marketers start jumping in.

Most affiliate marketers will try to use the product name as the main keyword phrase. As in Part 2's example of 'The Lottery Blueprint' - marketers will use 'The Lottery Blueprint Review', or, 'The Lottery Blueprint Winner', etc. However, you could look at other keyword phrases such as 'How to Win the Lottery' or 'How to Pick Winning Lottery Tickets'. We'll look at this in the next sections.

Picking Your Niche Keyword Phrase

So, the next step in narrowing down the field of choices is to take a peak at the competition on the search engines. Since we looked at two products yesterday (August 23rd), let's see how the results look in Google. I'll start with The Lottery Blueprint - let's do a quick search:

This doesn't tell me a lot - but, it does show that the direct search results for the key product phrase, "The Lottery Blueprint" totals 224,000 - which means there's not a lot of sites competing for this keyword (this method is very rough to get only a 'feel' for search results - very popular Clickbank products will return over 5 million results). Let's compare that to Shapeshifter Body Redesign:

How to Find the Most Profitable Affiliate Product - Part 2

2011-08-23T21:51:00.004-05:00

From Part 1 you learned about the popular niche categories that are available in Clickbank that should provide your niche site with the highest profitability. I mentioned that you could dig deeper into Clickbank directly or use a great online tool called CBEngine.com that is free for basic research.

The best part of CBEngine is that you can easily search and sort through the Clickbank parameters such as Popularity, Gravity, Date Added, Category, Subcategory, and Affiliate Payment level. With only these search criteria you can finalize your niche pick usually within one to three hours depending on the niche popularity.

The main CBEngine search window is located on the far right side of the main page screen. Each of the search parameters means the following:

Top Category - these are the same categories in Clickbank I showed you in Part 1.

Sub Category - within each category are smaller subsets - for example, in Sports there would be a Golf sub category.

Ranked In - these are the top products ranked in a category or sub category if picked.

Keywords - any words within the products you are searching for.

Look In - what part of the product description you want to find a keyword.

Newer Than - how new the product is since its release on Clickbank.

Pays More Than - the payout to affiliate for each product sold.

Order By - in the free version you can only order by Rank, Earn% and Gravity.

Choosing a Product

My own personal secret to finding a product is to start with ONLY the last three search criteria - Newer Than, Pays More Than and Order By. I'm not too worried yet about the categories until I can see the first list. Here's the trick - be sure to start by choosing products newer than 6 months. This is critical! The reason why you want to do this is because the competition for other affiliate niche sites will be much less than if you pick a product with high popularity that has been out for over a year.

How to Find the Most Profitable Affiliate Product - Part 1

2011-08-22T22:35:00.000-05:00

For most of my internet marketing career I've been an affiliate or niche marketer. I've found that this is the easiest way to get something out the door to get some online income with a busy schedule (as I was when I started out). Being new to this game can be daunting if you are caught up in many internet marketing or affiliate marketing products and trying to learn how to make money online. And, as I mentioned in my last post, if you don't have a strategy then you'll find making those first dollars online few and far between.

So, here's your strategic goal - build one highly profitable affiliate niche site as fast and as easily as you can. If you are a new internet marketer or feel like you're struggling to find a niche this is where you need to start. I've built niche sites in as little as five hours and made thousands on them.

The good news is that building a niche site quickly isn't really that difficult and to start to see some returns. I use some pretty simple methods that get me results fast without the pain and suffering of building something that doesn't convert. My method is going to be focused strictly on Clickbank informational products in this article but could be extended to other markets. If you follow these easy steps you should be able to find a product to market in one night.

Affiliate Product Principles

So, let's get started! The basic principles for any niche affiliate product site are:

1. Choosing a popular subject area - if you scan through the Clickbank marketplace you'll see quite a few categories such as Sports, Travel and Health. It's just a fact that some markets are going to have a much larger audience than others. I'll talk about that in the next section.

2. Finding a product with low competition - this principle is the tough nut to crack, because, if you choose a popular subject area to market chances are the competition is very high. This is where most of your time will be spent.

3. Picking products with higher payouts - I have found that many forget this basic rule of thumb which seems to work against common sense. You'll find yourself drawn to lower cost products initially. I'll talk to this point later.

Basic Product Categories

As I noted before there are many Clickbank categories to choose from many of which are very narrow in interest. If you go to the Clickbank site and click on 'Marketplace' at the very top of the screen:

Why You Need a Strategy to Earn Money Online

2011-08-01T21:42:00.006-05:00

As much as you want to make some extra cash online right now - if you don't have a strategy you might just be floating in the ocean of internet marketing without a real sense of where you're going. In most large companies having a strategy is a key component to a business plan and direction setting. But, many times people confuse a strategy with a plan which are two very different things. A strategy requires some training on strategic thinking to help you define potential opportunities for the future. How does this apply to you online? Let me dig a bit deeper to show you how you might apply it.

What is a Strategy?

Have you ever met someone who was so meticulous that they planned out in detail every step and task in detail? Or, have you ever met someone who was so creative, inventive, yet so disorganized that they didn't know what day or time is was? A strategy is can be thought of as the intersection of the two. A strategy is not necessarily a plan nor is it just a set of creative ideas. The best way to think of a strategy is mix together the best of 'inventor/innovator' thinking with 'planner/organizer' thinking. This is the essence of strategic thinking.

Search Engine Ranking - The Wikipedia Way

2011-01-29T11:17:00.001-06:00

A friend recently asked me 'What's all this crazy nonsense I keep hearing about authority and trust now on all of the IM sites?'? Yes, I've preached it myself. The mantras for 2010 and 2011 have been 'You gotta have authority and you gotta have trust!' Just what is all this noise about?

If you remember from my previous post Your Not Making Any Money Online without Authority, I said that Google is trying to improve their search results continually to judge, rank and read sites just as a human would. They're basically building a form of very static artificial intelligence to be able to pick and choose your content as if you were weeding through looking for a specific result. And this engine is only getting better - to a more dynamic intelligence.

All well and good right? What does that mean to you? You need to sit back and ask yourself how you trust sites and give them authority as a normal activity. For example, how would you judge, say, a wealth building site that had AdSense ads plastered all over it with hundreds of pages that you suspect are just a pile of crappy PLR articles. They're pretty easy to spot - tons of keyword stuffing, no personal writing style, slapped together with one purpose in mind - making money off the poor git who might click an ad.

Blogger FTP Migration - Success!

2010-04-20T22:03:00.007-05:00

Whew! I have to tell you that I really sweated this one out. I wasn't sure that this migration from my own hosting center back to Blogger / Google hosting was really going to work with the upcoming FTP shutdown occurring on May 1st. The Agile Marketer has been around for about 4 years now - slowly climbing the SEO organic ladder (yes, I remember being one of the first guys to post on John Chow's site when he started it) nearing the top 10 list. I've been using this site for my personal opinions and learnings on how to make money online - making this site's Google ranking very, very important to me.

What I wasn't sure about was that the ranking would drop and/or the migration would fail miserably. So, let's go through what I learned along the way and how easy or difficult this migration turned out to be.

Let me backup a bit and describe my particular migration problem. The Agile Marketer site consists of a Blogger blog posts as the default landing pages with some ASP.NET scripts as side pages (for dynamic content such as the Free Affiliate Link Cloaker). In this case Blogger FTP's all of the files to the root path of the domain (www.agilemarketer.com). Most people have a site blog that they publish to such as (www.agilemarketer.com/blog/) - but that was not my case.

Just When You're Making Money Online - Google Cancels Blogger FTP

2010-04-16T22:14:00.003-05:00

Ugh! Yes it is tax time and Blogger time. You've probably noticed over the last few years that The Agile Marketer is a Blogger blog - something I've enjoyed using for a number of years for my core site (this one) and many other profitable affiliate and AdSense sites.

The bad news is that on May 1st Google is pulling the plug on posting your Blogger blog on an externally hosted website. This is tough news for those of us who have many blogs - and, if you haven't guessed, something I've been working on for the last four weeks.

What really bothers me, however, is the fact that The Agile Marketer has reached #26 in Google for the exact search term 'Learn How to Make Money Online ' and #52 for the unquoted term - a very, very competitive keyword phrase (125M results). This site has been slowly and surely moving up the Google ladder over the last 2 years with a significant amount of effort.

The rub now is that moving this site back to being Google hosted is going to cause a number of problems:

Read more »

Learn How to Make Money Online - Affiliate Marketing Success Story

2010-02-21T13:57:00.012-06:00

Success sometimes comes slowly. About a year ago I was posting step by step guidelines to easily build a free, yet effective affiliate marketing website. You can go back and find the series called IM101: here - Start Internet Marketing with EPIC Steps and here - Finding Your First Product to Market. (Go back and read all seven of the articles if you want more information).

So you may have wondered why I haven't written about this example in about 1 full year. The reason is pure patience. My example was a very low key, simple content driven site focused specifically on a Clickbank dieting product that I personally purchased, read, and endorse. I spent about 8 to 16 hours total last January and just left the site pretty much alone except for publishing a few more articles that I thought were good material and pertinent to the product.

Well, as you probably know, content sites do take some time to rise up the search engine ranks especially if you haven't focused on building out the site daily. Nevertheless, if you are really intent to learn how to make money online keep on reading.

Taxes, Spending and Earning More Money Online

2010-02-07T19:15:00.009-06:00

There's nothing like starting a post with the word taxes to drive you away from reading this faster than a rattlesnake right by your foot. Nonetheless, I had to start this post with something that came to mind as I was preparing my taxes this week (well, not really preparing - just hunting and gathering for the tax guy).

If you're like me you've probably found yourself spread across multiple marketing fronts online - from products, articles, affiliate work, blogs, seo, etc. As much fun as this can be (plus some work) you may have either forgotten or abandoned some of your work done in the past. This can get pretty easy when you get focused making money online with a new endeavor while giving in to some others that really didn't pan out.

What this comes down to in many ways is that you are probably spending too much money and could tighten you belt a little in 2010. Let's look at some of the core expenses and see where you might be able increase your profits with just a little effort.

Making Money Online with Daily Work

2009-12-16T21:58:00.009-06:00

Continuing from yesterday I wanted to talk more about how the site, 'Make Money Online' was able to dominate that very same keyword phrase. If you felt the urge to examine Alan's site in detail you might have noticed one interesting feature - virtually daily posts centered around his core keyword phrases. What's even more amazing is that he used completely free methods to reach his goal! Astonishing!

Let's do some simple math on what he might be making right now from that site. Twelve medium ad spaces for $120 a month = $1440, two large banners for $300 a month, and text link for $180 a month = $1920 / month just in advertising alone. Using those numbers alone you can see that day to day focus can really pay off in a high performing niche. Plus, it shows that you don't have to have an expensive, fancy site to do this.

Build it Right to Learn How to Make Money Online

2009-12-15T20:42:00.010-06:00

Ok, listen, don't make the same mistake that I did not that long ago. I built a fairly successful site a couple of years ago that was moving up in the Google rankings - I can't say it was one of my more carefully thought out sites, but, had a fair amount of content nonetheless.

You see, about a year ago I started to get very excited about keyword optimization by focusing more on my blog titles, headers and highlighted information. Thinking that I was helping my other site, I went in and altered all of the headers, meta tags, main page title, etc. Guess what? Google dropped my site like a rock out of their top listings. Ouch - that's one tough way to learn how to make money online!

After sitting back and pondering this a bit I realized that I had shot myself in the foot by over optimizing (and, really over thinking) the problem at hand. Google got it as well - my site had changed too much - thus the search king had to re-index it. Lesson learned (or, as the oddly say in England 'lesson learnt').

Today's web marketing lesson is all about building it right the first time - why keyword optimization must be a priority when you plan and prototype. Yes, you can change core keyword phrases along the way but, you must do it very gradually. That's really beside the point here.

What I want to stress to you is the need to start with good keyword research first - targeting your core keyword phrase and then all relevant variations on it. Let's take a great example that, I think, will show you how to approach this problem with some powerful ammunition for your own work.

If you've done some research online for sites devoted to earning money online - you may have noticed a site appear about 1-2 years ago for the search term 'make money online'. Go ahead and type it into Google without the quotes.

The #1 site is Alan Liew's Blogger site (yes, a Blogger site!) - here's a screenshot:

Now, if you pay special attention to his site you'll see that the keyword phrase 'make money online' is the predominate term on his site - from the main page and throughout his post titles and links. What's not quite so apparent is that all inbound links to his site are also titled 'Make Money Online' from forum posts to articles.

What Alan did right was focus immediately on the keyword phrase he desired to dominate and did it in about two years! Kudos to him and his perseverance - his example is a complete success in a massively competitive market (157,000,000 results).

This shows that staying the course with your keyword phrase is one of the most important steps to building your site. Be sure to use one of the keyword tools out there to find a phrase you want to market to and stick to it! If you keep diligent - you will succeed.

You're Not Making Any Money Online without Authority

2009-09-15T21:44:00.008-05:00

Made you wonder, didn't I?? If you read my post from a couple of days ago you saw that I assigned you to do some research by typing in an example keyword phrase 'How to Make Money Online'. If you did what I asked you, you probably wondered what you should really be looking for that defines their site's success in the search engines. I bet you felt that slight pang of jealousy that your website isn't in that top 10 list (heck, I know I did).

Many of you have probably dropped some real dollars on some ebooks and read a thing or two about search engine optimization to guess that these sites have high quality backlinks from other sites that also rank well in the search engines. And, as we all know TRAFFIC = MONEY - so, everyone's goal is to get traffic. However, (and this is a BIG however) that is not necessarily the answer to getting top rankings in Google or Yahoo (and most recently - Bing). Bada Bing! Read that last line again.

Ok, hold all of your preconceptions about SEO because you're probably submitting articles, adding entries to link directories, creating profiles in social sites, etc. etc. - i.e. - wasting valuable time! There is one secret I'm going to spill - and that is your site's authority!

By authority I mean that the content you've provided in your site or blog has relevant meaning and important to human eyes based on your key topic. Guess what? Google is trying to view your site the same way with human glasses - and, guess what - they're not rose colored.

What you might be thinking is that Google is judging your site based on the number and popularity of sites linking back to you. True, somewhat - but, there are a boatload of PhDs at Google trying to make it read your site like a human - yes, a human. That means reading from top to bottom, left to right, scanning and determining if the content has relevance (remember that term - it is important) and authority to the topic at hand - that is, your web page.

So what does that really mean? If you think about this it is about the perception the search engines have of your content demonstrating that you have the appropriate knowledge of the topic or niche. That is why you'll see sites with a significant amount of detailed content focused on specific keywords ranking high.

Recently, however, I have discovered sites that rank in page 1 of Google that do not have many backlinks, and, those backlinks are not highly ranked. I was literally floored when I found this. Why would these sites get high rank for the search term?

In one example I found a site ranked #4 of 1.4M results that had 6 pages with 717, 755, 519, 211, 373 and 12 words in each page respectively. The pages spoke directly to the main topic (page 1) and associated topics in pages 2-5 with page 6 being a contact page. It had 28 backlinks with all being simple web directories, whois and alexa rank. Pretty simple - but, it was authoritative. It reads well, has the main topic as the page title and subtopics / subheadings with content.

What this demonstrates is that getting ranked high in Google may not be as hard as you think - just as long as you build your pages in a human readable, authoritative manner. Want a great example? Just take a look at how Wikipedia is structured and you'll get a clue on what you need to do (more on this later). There's no telling how long it will take Google to get you to a high position - be patient - you should be able to build niche sites that capitalize on this and make money easier than before.

Do you Really Want to Learn How to Make Money Online?

2009-09-10T21:38:00.007-05:00

Well, an interesting start to this blog entry, huh? How to make money online? Yes, yes - everyone is out there pitching money making ideas. But, I have to start this with my noticeable absence from blogging - why no posts - what's happening in this year?

The real secret here is that I've gone deep into research and education . What do I mean by that? Over the last 8 months I made a pact with myself - walk away, dust off all of those internet marketing ebooks I've purchased over the last 4 years, go heads down and hunt for every possible tip I can find - add to that some serious online research specifically on successful SEO and Email list techniques.

Well, I can honestly say that I've picked up even more from the online research of successful sites than the library of ebooks (most have the same information) that I now own (at my current count, 27)- but, both have convinced me of some certain rules of success. Frankly, the basic rules of online success are easier than you think.

But the first rule I want to stress to you, the reader, is that making money online comes down to your mindset - yes, you! One of the biggest scams out there today is the mass of top marketers selling products to beginner marketers over and over until they walk away with millions. You say 'Hey! I want to do that!'. Well, I've got news for you - they've got a huge advantage - they've got money to repackage and sell you again using top copywriters and product packaging. Not to mention they have your psychology in mind - the hungry beginner; ready to conquer the world of online marketing and make millions!

Where they have the advantage is that only a very small percentage of the population will buy something, and, an even smaller percentage will have the ongoing motivation to keep doing it. So, back to that first rule - you have to change yourself first! You have to prove that you can do the day to day work (yes, I'm going to say it is work!) to succeed. Writing little tweets on Twitter is easy, creating a Blog is a bit harder, building a decent website is even more work, and writing a successful ebook or valuable, deep content is very hard!

So, I ask you - 'do you really want to make money online?' Or, from the seasoned internet marketer's viewpoint - 'do you really want to invest yourself into an industry that takes hard work, dedication, education and long term commitment?' Notice that the marketers don't ask you this question - because most of you will run to the hills!

Look, I don't want to scare you - but to be truthful. My best success online has come for daily commitment - that's where I've earned big dollars. My worst examples online have been quick-hit profits that promised immediate gratification and success.

Don't stop reading! Here's my motivational side - what's really missing is that anyone can do this! Yes, even the most inexperience newbie can be successful. Patience and daily work is the key - it is going to take some time. But, if you stay motivated, stay focused, set long term goals (say, over the next 12 months), establish your business ( Internet Marketing 101: Business Before Web ), you will start to see some dollars coming in.

With that said, I have an assignment for you. I want you to type this phrase into Google - "How to Make Money Online" (192M results without quotes and 2.1M with quotes) and specifically look at the top 10 results. If you haven't noticed - about 2 or 3 of the results are blogs. Go to those blogs and look at their archive history - how long have they been blogging? Take a look at their content - what is unique? Note down why you think they're successful -based on content, keywords, dialog, even subtle psychology. I guarantee this will be a better education for you than any ebook.

Google Cash Detective 2 - A Review

2009-07-10T20:17:00.010-05:00

Every once in a while I receive an offer that I'm so sure is going to work that I jump in immediately to get in early and test the waters. Recently, I did just that with Chris Carpenter's 'Google Cash Detective 2'.

I really should back up a bit before talking about my results. For some reason Google Adwords and I don't get along. I'm not sure why but for whatever reason I've spent way more than I've ever earned using Adwords. You can name the campaign type - I've done it - literally losing thousands of dollars over the last 6 years (thankfully I've made much more without Adwords).

Given that, when the email came to try out 'Google Cash Detective 2' I decide to take the leap again. After reviewing how it worked I was convinced that this was going to be my blitzkrieg to profits on Adwords once and for all!

So what is 'Google Cash Detective 2'? Basically, Chris has found a way to measure/score the top Adwords ads and their corresponding keywords by time duration. In other words, if an Adwords ad has been in a top position on Google for many months, then it must imply that the advertiser was willing to keep paying for that position - the assumption here is that he or she is making a profit on those ads.

Now add into that the keyword phrases used - you now know what ads and keywords are doing the best (at least that is the theory). Chris creates a scoring system that shows you specifically the ad you should clone for any affiliate products (most likely, Clickbank ebooks).

A great idea in my mind, GCD2 really seemed to be something to look at. So, I signed up and immediately found 2 profitable niches to try out that were targeting high gravity Clickbank books. I jumped in creating Adwords ads for both using the top keyword phrases shown in GCD2.

Well, long story short - I *FAILED* again with Adwords. My cloned ads ran for a number of days with many hits but absolutely no sales at all. Yes, nothing! Ouch - that cost me hundreds of dollars yet again.

I'm sorry to say that if you really want to learn how to make money online, then, I can't recommend this product unless you have a lot of cash to spare - hundreds of dollars. Maybe you'll find the right niche and ad clone to turn a profit - but, as always, if you're playing with Google Adwords - BEWARE! You can lose a lot of money.

You Know the Economy is Bad When...

2009-04-13T22:00:00.007-05:00

Yes, I am alive and kicking. These have been some of the strangest times for any profession including Internet Marketers. Back in January when I was finishing up Step 7 of building an affiliate site I took a step back. It wasn't because I didn't want to keep writing - but, that I started to notice something unusual about the lists of core marketers that I follow closely.

When opening my personal email I started to see more and more quick hit messages from marketers both big and small. At first I thought it was an anomaly but started seeing a pattern emerging. Marketers were starting to get desperate. How so? Every email was shifting to quick hit affiliate links for products - 'hey, take a look at....', 'I don't know if you've seen this yet...', 'he's just lowered his amazing product to only...'

You get the picture - the market is bad - people are scrambling. I've noticed it myself - product sales are down, ad revenue is WAY down, etc. The goal of promoting quick hit affiliate products is to sell your email list as fast as possible to generate revenue. Hopefully, this side income can supplement any downturn in their own products. But, it is coming too often to the point that every email now is a cross-sell and I'm tired of that.

Now, I'm not a fan of pushing more and more products to my list unless I'm truly excited about what I see out there. With the downturn I started looking for something new and different that might make what you and I do a bit easier. Sometime in the beginning of Feb. I found it - a simple, new idea that I can work into an easy side product and tool.

So, making a long story short - I've been working on my idea for a couple of months now and will talk about it soon. Meanwhile, I've also been working hard on a new guru's set of tutorials that have helped me immensely. More to come on that.

My advice for this time right now is to focus completely on a single product - your own. Write lots of content, get that email list going - and push yourself every day! Don't dawdle on affiliate sites, ads, and other experiments. To make money online in this time requires deep dedication to your idea.

IM101 Step 7: Using Blogger to Build Your Affiliate Site

2009-01-11T11:36:00.008-06:00

I've talked about Blogger many times before on The Agile Marketer. It is, in my mind, the easiest way to get a site online that can generate revenue for you quickly. With built-in RSS feeds, Adsense and the ability to customize using Javascript or HTML additions you can actually build a fully functional website.

However, your goal is not to get too wrapped up in site design - remember, the key to your success is getting content out there quickly and to notify blog search engines that content is being updated.

I'm not going to go into the details of how to sign into Blogger and set up your account - you can find many tutorials out there on how to do this - here's a great one if you need it: Vance's Blogger Tutorial

Make sure you choose a more vanilla, or sparse template. The reason for this is that you can make things stand out much better - the colors of a header or inline page photos really stand out when the template is mostly white. In case you haven't noticed, The Agile Marketer is a Blogger blog (highly customized, though).

I realize it has been a while since my last tutorial - but, part of the reason was to show you how this Blogger affiliate site I was building, namely, The Diet Solution Program, is doing in Google!!

Take a look at: The Diet Solution Program

I completed the first part of the blog in October and submitted only some free press releases and one, single article. Over time I added some more blog posts, submitted my site to a few social sites such as Spicypage and Blogcatalog, submitted the single article to some more directories and pinged some blog search services. Actually, not much work overall - I didn't do some of the standard traffic building techniques such as YouTube or a load of article submissions.

So, in two and half months - how are we doing with our keywords?
1. 'The Diet Solution Program' - now ranked 42nd in Google (534,000 results)
2. 'Isabel De Los Rios' - now ranked 22nd in Google (361,000 results)
3. 'healthy diet plan' and 'natural weight loss' - (524,000 and 2,640,000 Google results) no ranking yet for those specific phrases (but indexed by Google if the search is refined)

I haven't spent any time on optimizing the keyword phrases in #3 yet - just letting organic growth work with these. However, my future approach will be to add keyword density in my Blogger posts as well as articles that focus on these.

Not bad for the small amount of work I've put into the site - I would guess I've put in about 8-16 hours of work. With only a single article, six submissions to article sites, three press releases, about seven social site networks I'm generating some traffic, getting Adsense revenue and a few Clickbank sales.

The key with Blogger was getting my content posts out there so that they will be searched by Google right away. Keywords make the difference - you can see how just a little work can get a site moving up the organic search result ladder. Just image if you have 5 to 10 of these Blogger affiliate sites working over time....

IM101 Step 6: Tuning Your Affiliate Product Keywords

2008-11-17T22:52:00.008-06:00

Finding the best keywords for your affiliate site is not too difficult but essential to learn how to make money online. The key is finding the right terms that will have the highest density on your page with hopefully the additional benefit of a low competition in the search engines. This also works for your own product or informational sites as well.

Since I had picked a dieting product this is not as easy as something with a smaller niche such as a hobby or an aspect of a professional skill. The basic strategy for a high competition keyword subject area is to narrow it down to smaller segments by using longer keyword phrases. From my last article using the keyword tools provided can give me a very good indication of what keyword phrase is going to a) have less competition, b) ranked faster and c) visible in the first ten results of a Google search. It is important to try and analyze this before you kick into gear building your sites.

For example, the word 'diet' alone has a Google page return of 163 millions results - that is, 163 million references to external web sites. Getting to the top ten results in Google for just the word 'diet' would be a very, very tough task.

You may have noticed that I waited some time before continuing this article to work on my own articles and my ebook. But, I was also waiting for my affiliate sample site to start gaining rank in Google. Part of this plan was to focus on my core keyword phrases within the affiliate site's content.

For my example I knew that a couple of key phrases had to be part of my solution. Since I was focusing on a diet guide I had to use both the guide's title and author as keyword phrases. This is an important step for the future since I knew the guide was going to gain in popularity over time. In this case - 'The Diet Solution Program' and 'Isabel De Los Rios'. It is key to use these for future keyword phrase searches as the product gains popularity.

But, I also wanted to find a keyword phrase that has a more general health and diet search with a smaller Google result. After a couple of hours on the tools using the words 'diet', 'dieting', 'health', 'nutrition', 'diet plan', 'healthy diet' I finally hit the phrase I wanted - 'healthy diet plan' which I found to have a decent set of results in search but low enough to get ranked quickly. (Remember, to use these tools just type in the core one or two word phrases and see what results come back. Then, go to Google and see how many results come back from your phrases. The lower the number of results the easier it is for you to get ranked in the top ten.)

I typically look for keyword phrase results in Google with near one million results. Here's an example that is close:

If you focus on key phrases with results under 100,000 but greater than about 25,000 then you can get ranked very quickly in Google. The downside is that the daily search volume for your phrase may be too low so this would only generate 10-20 hits a day.

I was able to get a keyword site ranked in the top ten of Google for a result of over 25 million in the search return. However this took about six months and a lot of work. Be sure you pick one keyword phrase that has about one million results - but, don't focus on it first. Let it become a natural part of your site as you build it.

So, now I'm ready to start building a site. I'm now armed with my keyword phrases 'The Diet Solution Program', 'Isabel De Los Rios', 'healthy diet plan' and 'natural weight loss'. Enter these into Google as full search phrase enclosed in both quotes and not enclosed and you'll be able to see for yourself how many results are returned for each.

Next up, using Blogger as a simple, free way to build your site.

Your Best Weapon to Make Money Online During These Times

2008-11-16T20:04:00.010-06:00

Writing. Ah, that word that makes me cringe in an avoidance panic! Yet, I know I have to get back to it again and again. Writing is something that I just can't seem to do naturally yet it is such an integral part of my online work.

If you're new or haven't noticed, I haven't posted my next marketing steps in quite a while. Why? Well, there are many reasons but the main one was all about writing - my ebook, articles and other older material that needed refreshing.

You see, this is NaNoWriMo month (if you haven't heard of it - National Novel Writing Month). NaNoWriMo was started as an online community event to get budding writers to write more and think less (that's my addition - but, mainly true. Writers worry too much about structure and plot.) The goal is to write 50,000 words in the month of November - which, is a pretty daunting - 1666 words a day. Translate that into internet marketing work; that's three 560 word articles a day!

But, when you think about it - if you just keep writing and start to ignore the wandering mind a bit your productivity soars. Can this be translated from novel writing to content writing? Probably not at 50,000 words. Nevertheless, the concept is still the same - just doing it!

Back to my story - I've been using the NaNoWriMo concept to write my next ebook which has left much of my other work shelved for a bit. This is something I think any budding online marketer should do. It helps you get past the block and into a flow. Try it - you may see a big payoff!

This has been beneficial for another reason as well - my test affiliate marketing site that I'm using right now in the Marketing 101 steps has seen a great upswing in traffic as well as a rise in Google rankings due mainly to articles I wrote just before the end of October. If you're going to learn how to make money online - this is it.

If you go back a couple of posts you'll see that I had picked the affiliate product called 'The Diet Solution Program' to use as that educational example. Well, now my example site is ranked well in Google and rising fast. The real key to this is simple - writing original content and submitting it to article directories, forums, blogs - you name it.

It's hard and takes time - but believe me - if you do it you will see the real payback in no time which is the most exciting . So, do it! Create your own NaNoWriMo month in December and keep writing.

What is the Best Method to Make Some Money Online?

2008-10-20T21:50:00.008-05:00

Recently, I was scanning around Yahoo Answers and found this particular question. Since I spent the time answering it for that person I thought it might be useful for any of the Agile Marketer readers. Enjoy!

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This is a difficult question to answer because most of your answers are going to be pitches for products or services that claim to make you money.

I'll say right up front that even though I have made some good money online most of the money making systems are really a bad mix of techniques and promises that typically burn people out right away because of one of the following:

1. You have to pay too much money to learn or get into this business

2. You don't have the computer skills to work online

3. You are trying to make money on something you know nothing about or care about (this is my pet peave!)

4. You don't have the diligence to do the day to day work

5. You are not thinking like a small business

6. You are desperate for money and will do anything

These statements are what typically splits those who make little or nothing to those who make millions online.

I started out like you wondering what to do and how to do it and was left with a lot of frustrated mistakes. But, if there is anything I've learned online in the last 5 years is that if you don't pursue something you love (your interest, hobbies, life dreams, etc) you probably won't make much.

My advice to you is to:

1. Start with a business mindset first - what is your plan? what will you sell? do you have knowledge that is marketable? (Don't worry - many things are marketable - I've seen successful online businesses just on simple home ice dam removal because the person doing it loved construction - and saw another make a mint on care of pet fish - yes, pet fish!!!).

2. Be sure to really start your business - as a sole propietor or LLC. You get huge tax breaks for anything you buy for your business - books, computers, software, desks, phones, etc. Don't buy anything until you do this!!!! It will save you a ton of money.

3. List every thing that you love to do or know about and write them down. Then, pick what you think you could market online as a product, service or knowledge (such as a blog)- stick to it!! Don't go online trying to sell diet plans if you know nothing about nutrition or dieting. If you know something about specific pets, legal forms, cameras, - the sky is the limit! Use that knowledge to your advantage and build on it.

4. Not give into desperation - let things work out over time. You can't build a business in a day. Making big money online takes time - you have to prove yourself and have the motivation to work on it every day.

5. Invest in your education. Learn as much as you can on how to do this - buy a few online business guides. I'm constantly amazed that people are not willing to spend a couple hundred dollars to learn how to make money online when they are willing to pay thousands for a MBA or even an online college degree.

6. Don't get distracted - probably the #1 killer of online hopes and dreams. Once you start learning this business you will definitely see more opportunities - hold off!! You will spread yourself too thin. Be focused.

I hope this helps you. I've lived it and think that anyone can do this.

IM101 Step 5: Focusing on Keywords

2008-09-03T20:37:00.005-05:00

One of the very first mistakes I made when building my first marketing site was not paying attention to the main keyword search terms I was trying to focus on. At that time I didn't understand how keyword density worked nor did I get the benefits of keyword rich backlinks to my site.

So, to help you with this I'm going to take a very specific example from Clickbank and build out a low cost, ebook marketing site for you. You're welcome to follow along with the same Clickbank product, or, just find one you're really interested in. My focus for this article is validating the product and getting the keyword search terms in place.

After spending a couple of hours scanning through both Clickbank.com and CBEngine.com I found the product I wanted to market - it's called The Diet Solution Program by Isabel De Los Rios.

My key criteria were a) the product is relatively new on the market, b) it is starting to see some gravity, c) the payout per sale is reasonable (see my last article), and d) it is something I have some knowledge and passion for (my grandmother and mother were both wellness and nutrition fanatics).

One additional thing that I typically do is search Google for product reviews to make sure that the response is positive - I don't want to market something people think is a waste of money. If all looks good I go ahead and purchase the product for my last validation - making sure the final product is something I truly want to promote. From everything I could see, Isabel's Diet Solution Program looks like a great candidate.

Finding Good Affiliate Product Keywords

Next, I spent a couple of hours determining my core keyword phrases that will be the main driver to this site and get it ranked in Google. My favorite free keyword tools are Google Adwords Keyword Tool and Trellian's Keyword Discovery. At a high level these tools give me enough information to build my phrases. (I suggest that you download the Free Ebook SEO Made Easy to learn more).

Generally I like to focus on three to four key terms that give me search exposure on Google in a way that will be in the top ten results for each. Typically, one is the main term and the other two are lower volume search returns.

The first thing you want to do is identify the key terms associate with the product you're promoting - in my example it is The Diet Solution Program which was definitely a keyword challenge due to the shear number of diet and nutrition products on the market today. I had to dig down the keyword list to find just the magic phrase.

Coming next - how I identified the right keywords for my affiliate product.

IM101 Step 4: Finding Your First Product to Market

2008-08-19T20:48:00.008-05:00

I've spent some time in my earlier tutorials discussing how to make money online by pre-marketing your website. Now that you understand the basics let's get started building something easily and quickly.

There's probably no easier way to start than to market an existing electronic product. I prefer starting with Clickbank only because the products are affiliate ready - that is, they are structured in a way that every product Clickbank promotes must allow the same affilite linking, terms of service, disclaimers, refund policy, etc. Plus, they are all electronic downloads which makes your profits that much less stressful. This means you only have to pick a product that matches something you are interested in (remember, focusing on your passions will make this much easier - see Passions to Profits for more information).

The other part of Clickbank that I like is the easy way to see what products are the most popular and their gravity (a term meaning the products are accelerating in sales). I prefer picking a fairly new product that shows some gravity but is not yet in the top sellers. Here's an example from their Marketplace tab:

As you can see - I searched by highest gravity in the Fitness section of Health and Fitness. The stats underneath give you an idea about the amount you make per sale and how popular the ebook is.

Researching the Clickbank History

If you want more data on the specific product from Clickbank then I like to use another site called CBEngine.com. They have more data you can use to see how a product has been doing over time. CBEngine has both a free service and a paid service if you want more than just data (you can get specific recommendations).

Another aspect you should pay attention to before picking your product is to see how much that author is willing to pay you, the affiliate marketer, for selling their product. The payout to you for a product can range from $5 to $80 per sale which is a pretty wide spread.

When I first started I focused on the highest paying products only to find that there seems to be a price threashold for many buyers won't cross. A $99 Clickbank product is a much harder sell than a $30 one. Keep in mind that you would have to sell three to six times as many products to match a high priced one. My rule of thumb is to focus on products for less than $50 with at least a 50% affiliate payout (meaning you get at least $25 of a $50 sale).

Signing up with Clickbank is a simple task - just be sure that you have your online business ready to go (see Business Before Web) and that your TaxID is setup so you can start.

Clickbank is a very easy way to start your internet marketing business. All you need is an affiliate site, some traffic tricks (more to come!), and the perseverence I'm mentioned so many times before. Remember, the product is only a small part of the bigger picture. Getting your site ranked with traffic will be the winning formula. Imagine now that your site is #1 in Google for the keywords tied to your product - that's the real goal. I've done it and made thousands on Clickbank products - so can you.

Next up - getting your product keywords ready (before you doing anything else!) to dominate a Google search result.