He describes how to use a simple bookmark/favorite to ping new or updated sites.  It could also be used to ping a blog after you make a comment for a backlink so that it will be crawled more quickly.

Take a look at the post here and let me know what you think.

It was an amazing trip.

Obviously there’s too much to fit in a blog post. Hopefully a few photos and a bit of detail will at least give you an idea of what we were doing.

First, we landed in Kathmandu and took a couple of days to get adjusted to the time zone. It's a sprawling, noisy, dusty, crowded city. If anyone is interested in going trekking in Nepal or even just going for a visit, plan no more than one day in Kathmandu on each end unless you have specific need to be there. We saw lots of sights, but the city wasn't really the reason for our trip.

There were constant reminders that we weren't in the U.S. - almost everything was different.

Next we took a 7-hour bus ride into Pokhara. Much of the route looked pretty dangerous, but we consoled ourselves that these drivers make this trip all the time. Unfortunately, around halfway up the route, a truck that was approaching us from the other direction had a blowout and tragically went over the edge as we watched. It didn't just look dangerous - it was deadly.

Once we started on the trails, we did a great deal of brutal, vertical hiking.

We shared the gospel with lots of people who were all very welcoming and interested.

We met lots of locals on the trails.

We handed out bibles and tracts.

We ate lots of dal bhat - two times a day and as much as we could eat at each meal. This dal bhat also included potato curry (we ate lots of this) and bamboo curry (bamboo shoots were in season). The vegetables change with the season and availability.

We faced our fears (to be fair, the 250m wooden suspension bridge was my fear).

We saw some interesting sights...

...including lots of amazing vistas.

And of course we made some new friends.

On the way home from the airport my dad asked if I’d go back.  My answer was, “not today.”

I’m sure I’ll go back someday.  The people are amazing.  They thirst for God’s word, and once converted they show a strength and depth of faith that’s really rare in the West.

The country and its people have tremendous need, and anything even one of us can do to help, no matter how small, could have a big impact in their future.

In Kathmandu we visited an orphanage, church and bible school (all run by the same people).   Based on their needs, I’m going to start a drive for used Christian books as well as the funds needed to ship them to the school.  The pastor plans on starting two new schools - one in the east and one in the west - so they’ll have a home for all of the books I can gather and ship.

If you have any questions at all about Nepal, Kathmandu, the mission, or anything else, just leave a comment and I’ll do my best to answer.

The thing that I find most unusual is the indignation I’ve seen from people on Internet Marketing forums.

They say things like “I can’t believe he’s trying to take advantage of the situation,” or “that’s really tasteless,” or other comments indicating that they think this “behavior” is really low and despicable.

Here’s the thing:

We’re marketers. We find people with a want or need and we fill it. Period.

Anyone who’s using a different formula will likely never succeed (pet rocks are the exception).

If someone was making claims that Product X cures or prevents Swine Flu, sure. That’s just wrong. But the targets of these attacks are giving visitors real, helpful information about the flu then presenting an offer for a product that helps them in some way.

Consider the other health-related niches. What makes the Swine Flu any different than the rest?

If someone had a blog about heart disease then offered an ebook explaining natural ways to lower cholesterol would he be vilified? Of course not.

Get off your high horse.

Please let me know if you think I’m wrong (or right).

According to her missionary friends it works very well.

Since I’m a fan of interesting things, and since I think the concept is pretty cool, I thought I’d pass it along for those who might also be interested.

The Anti-Jet-Lag Diet

1. DETERMINE BREAKFAST TIME at destination on day of arrival.

2. FEAST-FAST-FEAST-FAST - Start four days before breakfast time
   in step 1. On day one, FEAST; eat heartily with high-protein breakfast
   and lunch and a high-carbohydrate dinner. No coffee except between
   3 and 5 p.m. On day two, FAST on light meals of salads, light soups,
   fruits and juices. Again, no coffee except between 3 and 5 p.m. On day
   three, FEAST again. On day four, FAST; if you drink caffeinated beverages,
   take them in morning when traveling west, or between 6 and 11 p.m. when
   traveling east.

3. BREAK THE FINAL FAST at destination breakfast time. No alcohol on the
   plane. If the flight is long enough, sleep until normal breakfast time
   at destination, but no later. Wake up and FEAST on a high protein
   breakfast. Stay awake and active. Continue the day's meals according to
   mealtimes at the destination.

FEAST on high protein breakfast and lunches to stimulate the body's
      active cycle. Suitable meals include steak, eggs, hamburgers,
      high-protein cereals, green beans.

FEAST on high carbohydrates suppers to stimulate sleep. They include
      spaghetti and other pastas (but no meatballs), crepes (but no
      meat filling), potatoes, other starchy vegetables, and sweet desserts.

FAST  days help deplete the liver's store of carbohydrates and prepare the
      body's clock for resetting. Suitable foods include fruit, light soups,
      broths, skimpy salads, unbuttered toast, half pieces of bread. Keep
      calories and carbohydrates to a minimum.

        1            2            3            4
      FEAST         FAST        FEAST         FAST         BREAK FINAL FAST

B  high protein  light foods  high protein  light foods  Westbound: If you drink
                                                         caffeinated beverages,
                                                         take them morning
                                                         before departure.
                                                         Eastbound: take them
L  high protein  light foods  high protein  light foods  between 6 and 11 p.m.
                                                         If flight is long
                                                         enough, sleep until
                                                         destination breakfast
                                                         time. Wake up and FEAST
S  high carbo.   light foods  high carbo.   light foods  beginning with a high
                                                         protein breakfast.
                                                         Lights on. Stay active.

Coffee, tea, cola, other caffeinated beverages
allowed only between 3 and 5 p.m.

We’re going to give this diet a shot to see if it will help us to adjust to the time on the other side of the world.

If you’ve had any experience in long travel or beating jet-lag, feel free to chime in, I’d love your thoughts.

Conduit Method sites are a specific type of review site based on individual product reviews on a group of products surrounding a niche. Conduit sites tend to work extremely well for products outside of the “make money online” niche. To see specifics and an example, check out Chris Rempel’s Conduit Method as well as his package of conduit-style templates/theme.

By their nature, Conduit Method sites pull in long-tail traffic very well. The more content (review pages) you have, the more long-tail results you’ll pull from. So for one of my sites I have been focusing on adding content (review pages) first. After I add a bit more content I’ll see how the traffic pans out.

So far I am finding that as I add content, the traffic for the site increases incrementally. Given the nature of these pages, I would expect that to be the case. All I’ve done for promotion on these pages is distribute the RSS feed when the site was created and throw out a few social bookmarks using SENuke each time I add a page. The bookmarking doesn’t seem to help the pagerank or SERP position for these pages, but it always helps get them indexed - usually within minutes.

For my other site (kind of a twin of the first site in a slightly different niche), I’ve only created 5 pages/reviews, and I’m focusing on a backlink campaign using the Triple Threat System as each new page is created. I’m finding that the traffic growth happens much faster working in this order. I create the review which is added to the site’s RSS feed as soon as it’s posted. Next I do a round of social bookmarking with SENuke. Finally I set up a Triple Threat module.

Eventually, assuming the Conduit site is built around a niche with plenty of products to review, a site promoted in this manner can’t help but becoming a sort of authority review site.

The best news about my testing is that the conversions are holding steady across both niches. This formula just works.

I’m a strong believer that review sites are the easiest way to succeed as a new affiliate marketer, and that Conduit sites are among the best styles of review sites.

What have your experiences been with review-style sites?

More on that in a bit.

First, this training is a video-based course that teaches a complete system for Internet Marketing using nothing but free resources. Many “serious” IM’ers would scoff at such a system saying that you have to spend money to make money. However, in my opinion, for those who are just getting started or for those who haven’t been able to make any profit yet, such a system is a real blessing.

This course consists of 30 videos covering every single step of this system in exacting detail. I’ve watched several of the videos, and I’m very impressed with the step-by-step detail of the training. Often video training can be full of fluff just to add to the perceived value. That’s not the case with this course at all. Every single video includes actionable steps that will help you build a business. Below is a sample so you can see the level of detail these videos go into:

This isn’t the only system that advocates the use of free resources. Two other notable and popular courses are Travis Sago’s Bum Marketing and the Thirty Day Challenge. Both are great for what they teach. Quite honestly however, this course takes the best of both of these methods and adds quite a bit more detail to them. In this course all of the blanks are filled in - this isn’t a course that’s being used to sell or push a higher-end product.

It’s not for everyone.

If you’re already making sales (even as few as 1-2 per week), I’d recommend focusing on testing and tracking so that you can ramp up what’s already working for you. If you’re here, you need focus, not another system to try.

On the other hand, if you aren’t making regular sales yet and would really like to get started in affiliate marketing, this course will help build a very solid foundation.

I mentioned a discount.

He sells this 30-part video course for $97. In my opinion, he’s under pricing it at $97 (and I’ve told him so). It’s worth every dime and more for those who need the instruction. However, if you enter the coupon code backlinkage in the small box just under the order button, you’ll be able to grab this course for only $37. There are many (MANY) ebook-based “courses” on basic Internet Marketing for that price if not higher that don’t even cover the material in two or three of these videos.

His sales page isn’t the best I’ve ever seen. However, if you take a look at the list of videos, you’ll get a great feel for exactly what is covered in this course. Each of those topics is covered in depth.

It’s not often that I wholeheartedly recommend a product to the extent that I’m recommending this video course, but if you’re wanting to start making money online and need a boost, you owe it to yourself to take a look.

Click here to visit Internet Marketing 101

I’m putting the final touches on a linking strategy I’m calling the Triple Threat System. I put the system through its paces on Saturday and Sunday (hence the 60+ blogs), and I’ll know in a few days what the results will be.

I have a neglected site that’s been getting on average five visitors per day. I’m pretty sure that the results of this weekend’s work should push the traffic well over 100 visitors per day — perhaps much higher.

This system addresses a few specific things:

• Quality backlinks
• Quality visitor experience - I realize how strange that sounds when talking about mass-blogging
• Google-friendly
• Speed of implementation

While I was working through the system I was also creating documentation and recording screen captures. I’m pretty sure that with existing content (i.e. ghostwritten articles) I could work through the entire system in a day. That will be the next trial.

While the system isn’t fully automated, I did make use of two pieces of software that helped tremendously with the process.

First I used Incansoft’s RSSBot for submitting the various RSS feeds. I didn’t use my own RSS aggregating method because I want to have a minimal footprint. RSSBot makes this process very simple and fast.

Finally I used SENuke to bookmark all of the created sites. I made use of the spinner that’s built into the SENuke bookmarker and used quite a few new accounts — again to minimize the footprints. (I also used the article spinner that’s part of SENuke, but that’s really not a time saver since it’s just as easy to buy content.)

The Triple Threat System is a culmination of all of the backlinking research and testing I’ve been doing since I started in IM, and I’m pretty excited about how it’s turned out. I’ll keep everyone posted as I get close to completing the documentation.

I don’t mind answering because I believe that they are a great tool for affiliate marketers.

Review sites make it easy for visitors to make a buying decision.  Done right, the site provides honest unbiased information that the visitor can use to decide which product to buy.

These sites also help pull in traffic from the search engines via long-tail keywords. If your review is detailed and comprehensive, you’ll often be ranked for many phrases that you’ve never considered.

The most common question I get is where to find examples or themes or templates for doing clean and professional review sites.  These questions usually come from people who have tried to tweak free themes or templates to turn them into what would be needed for a review site.

I know that I’ve been a big proponent of Conduit sites (because they work), but for those who want a more traditional review site, I’ve found another resource.

The Review Site Store offers a very inexpensive ($15 each) selection of pre-built review sites.  Each site is pre-filled with content and reviews so that you could just drop in your affiliate link, upload the site, then start building backlinks.

To me, however, the real value of these sites is that you could easily swap out the header graphics and drop in reviews for any products you’re promoting.

The sites are very professional looking and present a clean streamlined look to your visitors. These are important things when you’re trying to get your visitors to take action - limit their options and make the actions easy to find.

$15 is dirt cheap for a template of this caliber, and considering that the sites come with content, it’s a real no-brainer.

Even if you’re capable of designing a site from the ground up, I recommend taking a look at the layouts he uses for inspiration.

Again, here’s the link: http://reviewsitestore.com

Let me know your thoughts!

But you have to start somewhere.

We probably all have sites that are just barely doing anything at all - sites that are part of our “stable” but nothing we’re proud of. This is a slice of the life of one of these sites:

A while back I started a new niche blog. This blog is targeting potential customers for a certain product. I set up a simple blog on Wordpress with a clean-looking template. I dropped an ad for this product in a text block on the sidebar and wrote a soft pre-sell article for the product which I made a sticky (using a plugin that keeps a specific post at the top of the main page).

I wrote 15 blog articles and 20 articles for article directories. I trickled the articles onto the blog at about one per week. I posted 10 of the other articles to Ezinearticles over two weeks, and I spun the remainder using SENuke and used them on Squidoo, Tumblr, Hubpages, Wetpaint, Blogger, Wordpress and a couple of other sites. Also using SENuke, I bookmarked everything.

I could have used more spun articles on all of the article directories built into SENuke (and still might - see below). I also could have turned these articles into Powerpoint videos and posted them to the video sites built into SENuke (I still might).

Since then I have been re-posting the Ezinearticles content one at a time to the blog every few days. Other than that, I haven’t worked on this blog.

Today the blog reached 1500 visitors (averaging 15-20 visitors a day). Not stellar numbers, and fairly low growth, but considering that I haven’t done any link-building beyond posting a few articles and using SENuke, it tells me what I need to know.

Now for what I’ve learned (in no particular order):

1. But I’m No Rembrandt

Don’t be afraid to make your own product image/banner. I wouldn’t recommend creating a unique ecover that doesn’t match what the customer will see on the sales page, but in this case, while the sales page looked good, the ecover was too plain and the banners they provide for affiliate use didn’t really do anything to encourage clickthrough. In 10 minutes I had a nice text banner that had a better chance of getting clicked. You don’t need Photoshop, either. Gimp will do everything you need and doesn’t cost a dime.

2. It’s Insignificant…

0.5% is often thrown out as the worst-case conversion number for affiliate marketing. In other words, if you aren’t getting a sale for every 200 visitors, something big is wrong. Obviously the goal is much higher than that, but 1/2% is a measuring stick for the beginning of the process. However, you can’t make this decision after 200 visitors. 2000 is a better number (statistical significance) . I’m making a change after 1500 - This site is at 0.26% conversion.

3. “But I Love ClickBank!”

Look at more than one marketplace before deciding on a product to promote. Today I found a product that’s a much tighter match with my readers/customers. They offer better much affiliate tools. The gravy is that the product is slightly higher priced and has a higher commission percentage. The end result is that even with the same conversion rate, I’ll make twice as much. If I get 0.5% conversion, I’ll be making four times as much as I did with my first 1500 visitors.

4. Made for Adsense

Adsense is easy, but do the math. In my case, I made $140 with 1500 visitors which comes out to roughly 9 cents per visitor. As poorly as this site is performing, it’s still likely miles ahead of Adsense. Does that mean that in every market it makes more sense to promote an affiliate product? Not necessarily. Does that mean Adsense doesn’t have a place? Absolutely not. Just make sure you run the numbers.

5. “Will You Be My Valentine?”

Don’t fall in love with your sites. If the change in products doesn’t make a significant change to this site’s performance after another 1500+/- visitors, I’ll flip it. With proven traffic and proven sales, it would sell well enough that I’ll get a decent return on my time.

6. *Thud* *Thud* *Thud*

Repeatedly planting your forehead into the wall gets you nowhere. While I completely agree that there is merit to sticking with a project/site full bore, I would rather do a burst of work, wait for actionable results, and then either tweak or dive in with heavy effort. Many believe that you shouldn’t pause like I did/do, but this type of effort just makes sense to me.

7. Still Writing…

Constant and consistent article submissions drives traffic, but it’s not the only free game in town. I’m also pretty sure that today you have to do more than just a bunch of social bookmarking in order to get lasting traffic (although social bookmarking works great for fast indexing). However, the number of visitors I’m seeing to this site is still rising (albeit slowly). A mix of backlinks is likely the key. If this site reaches a decent conversion rate, I’ll start a full blown backlink campaign including more articles (starting with the spun articles above), blog comments, and forum posts.

8. AdWords, Here I Come!

As poorly as this site is doing, it could still be a candidate for PPC. Crazy, I know. If I could get visitors for $.05 each and maintain the $.09 conversion, I’d make $.04 per visitor. Never ignore PPC.

9. http://someproduct.com/?page=sckrbrnevrymin&aff=007_r0f1_abc123_wwjd

Always use redirects for affiliate links. Always. It’s not just about making your links look pretty. It’s not even about cutting down on affiliate theft (Outside of the IM niche, most don’t know what an affiliate link is. Inside the IM niche, a cloaked link won’t stop them.). It’s about making your life much easier when you have to change products.

10. “I guess… I think… I hope…”

Track and analyze. If I hadn’t run the numbers, I might have just deleted the ad for the product I’ve been promoting, dropped in an Adsense block and moved on. If I’d done that, I would have been leaving money at the table, at best. At worst, I could have missed an opportunity of an “almost-there” money maker.

What’s next?

After this site gets another 1500 visitors, I’ll look at the numbers again.

If the conversion is still abysmal, it’s likely that either the crowd isn’t buying (not likely, given the niche) or that I’ve missed the mark with my articles and the pre-sell. In either case, I’ll flip the site and move on.

If the conversion has improved (I’m no oracle, but my best guess is that it will), I’ll post spun articles to a bunch of other article directories and begin creating new content for use on the site and at Ezinearticles. I’ll also begin a backlink campaign, working on both blog comments and forum posts. There are hundreds of other sites where I could build content pages. I’ll use spun content from both my old articles and my new articles to add more of these pages and will bookmark everything. Finally I’ll turn much of this content into videos and post them to multiple sites using SENuke with spun titles and descriptions.

Whew.

If I’m missing anything obvious, please let me know your thoughts below. I’d love to hear your feedback.

Some opponents to this concept say that it dilutes the value of the web - these sites are often termed “splogs” which is short for spam-blogs. Proponents say that these sites provide one more way for readers to find the information that they need to help them solve problems.

Regardless, unlike standard niche sites where unique content is added over time (coupled with a link-building campaign) in an attempt to build traffic over time, autoblogs rely on a steady trickle of traffic. Even if one of these sites only brings in $10 per month, if they can be set up in an hour or two, over time a stable of these sites could provide a nice supplemental income. Alternatively, once they’ve been running for a period of time, these sites could be flipped for a decent profit.

Over the next several days/weeks, I’m going to explore one or more methods for autoblogging and document my efforts. I intend on providing enough detail that anyone who’s following can easily duplicate my successes while avoiding my mistakes.

I know that this is a hot-button topic and that some are very opposed to the idea while others are hungry for a viable method for implementing this. Let me know your thoughts below and I’ll be sure to include those discussions in the case study.

Sign up below to join me as I work through this case study.