An easy backlink, is any link that can be obtained by just about anybody, fairly easily (pretty straight forward right?). Since the most recent Google update, known as the Mayday update – we have been doing a lot of testing on many of our sites. Some of the sites we operate gained more traffic and better rankings. Even more of them lost traffic and most of the rankings that were once very good. That got us digging deep into figuring out what it is that Google wants, and how we can fix the problems that were encountered. It also got me revisiting what exactly would be considered a quality link in the eyes of Google, and what will pass value.

We figured we would start with the easy links. The problem with the easy links, is that they very rarely pass any value. Most of them are low quality, and just simply are not worth the time it takes to easily build them (even if they are easy).

What is a Quality Link?

In my opinion, any link that is responsible for targeted traffic to your website is a quality link. While it helps when the link passes value, that is not always the victory link. I have had links that I have proven to pass zero value in search engines, yet has brought thousands of visitors via direct traffic from that link. This specific example happened to be a forum link.

Still, in most cases the goal for many who are building links is to get higher rankings in the search engines. So how do you know which links pass value? Well, the short answer is that you don’t. There is actually no way to know exactly what links are going to pass value. That is, until you test them out for yourself and get real results. Many times the links that you think will pass the most value never really do. Sometimes there is just no rhyme or reason to why links do not pass value.

Testing Link Value

The only way to know for sure how well a link is going to work for you in terms of search engine rankings, is to test various links. In other words, you will need to build links to your websites and then test the results of the links. Considering that the whole point is to increase rankings, that would be the only way to truly measure the success of the link.

Note: This can only work if you are trying to test link directories, blog comments, forum comments, etc. It would have to be the type of link you can obtain easily over and over again. The problem with this, is that those links usually do not have much value. Still, there are some that do, and this is how you figure out which ones have that value I keep talking about.

Step 1: Build a handful of websites, with around 10 pages of good content, then let them sit for a few weeks. This can be on whatever niche you want, and you can build them however you want – but you need to get them to the point to where they are just sitting. We want to make sure that any results that change via the SERPS is from the links that will be built to these sites in the future. They can even be free wordpress blogs or whatever. It doesn’t matter.

Step 2: Build 1 link per site (or a group of links, from the same source). It must only be 1 link, so you will know for sure if that link had any effect on your rankings or results. This can be forums, blog comments, article directories, paid link directories, free link directories, social bookmarking, or any other method you may use.

Step 3: Wait, and analyze the results.

Step 4: Rinse and repeat. This time with a different link for each site. Sometimes, it can be a combination of different links that help to obtain better rankings.

Bonus: You will be able to figure out which link opportunities bring in the most direct traffic. Of course, there are a lot of variables. It will depend a lot on the topic of the website.

I highly recommend that you test this in very non competitive niches. The reason being, is because most of these link opportunities are not likely to carry much weight. The idea behind this approach is to figure out which ones do carry the weight. It may only be 1 out of 100. If you can use that 1 link source for all your sites, and you learn about 1 gem every week, then eventually your going to have some very good starter links for whenever you build a new website.

I’ve said before on my blog www.Poverty101.net: “There is no such thing as a bad product, only bad marketing”.  History is littered with products and businesses that seemed just too stupid to work until they actually did.  It is difficult to tell why some products go viral and absolutely take over popular culture but it is a freak phenomenon that we all wish we could tap into at will.  Sometimes it’s a matter of pure marketing genius; sometimes it just seems to be a freak accident.   Anyone remember that song “Chocolate Rain”?  I’m sure that tons of idiotic, million dollar concepts are dreamed up and tossed into our cephalic warehouses every day.   What types of individuals concoct these golden bits of seeming lunacy?  We all do, only most of the time we’re too trapped in our stifling realities to take advantage of them.  As entrepreneurs, we’ve got to learn to recognize these hidden diamonds and seize the day.

Below is a list of my top 10 concepts that went crazy in the marketplace and created overnight millionaires.

10.  Eco-Spheres: You’ve probably seen these things on a kiosk at the mall.  They look like little glass balls with water and a small branch in them.  Well…I guess that’s because they are little glass balls with water and a small branch in them.   An ecosphere is a totally self-contained environment.  You don’t have to feed them or water them, just expose them to sunlight and think about them.   They cost from $58 to $450 each.  Ecosphere Associates, operated by Dan Harmony, sells over $1,000,000 worth of these things every year.   What???

www.eco-sphere.com

9.  The Banana Bunker: (giggle, giggle) Have you ever taken your favorite lunch time snack out of your brown lunch sack and was totally mortified to find that it was all bruised up?  Well, worry no more.   The Banana Bunker is here.  This phallic looking case was designed by Paul Stremple, a designer/architect, because he kept bruising his banana.  Don’t laugh; they’re now sold at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.

www.bananabunker.com

8.  Cabbage Patch Kids: Created in 1977 by Xavier Roberts, these ugly assed dolls were originally sold (sorry, delivered) exclusively through a converted medical clinic called Baby Land General Hospital in Cleveland, Georgia.  Roberts and his employees dressed up as doctors and nurses and each doll was sold with a birth certificate and adoption papers.  Roberts delivered 250,000 of them at $100 – $1000…each…in 1977.  When a contract was signed with Coleco Toys in 1982, 2.5 million dolls were sold in the first year.

www.cabbagepatchkids.com

7.  Santa Mail: Byron Reese got a postal address at the North Pole in Alaska and charged parents $10 bucks to write their kids a Santa letter from that address.  He’s written over 275,000 letters since 2002.  There is genius in simplicity.

www.santamail.org

6.  The Chia Pet: The little clay animals that grow grass hides actually originated in Mexico.  A very enterprising gentleman named Joe Pedott recognized the marketing potential of them (how, I’ll never know) and began importing them by the gaggle in 1977.  The “fur” of the Chia pet is actually seeds of a sage called Chia and at least 500,000 have been sold per year since 1977.

www.chia.com

5. Sea Monkeys: Damn, I was disappointed when my Sea Monkeys hatched to look nothing like the picture on the box!  (C’mon, I know I’m not the only one!)  Harold von Braunhut was the marketing madman behind the venerable Sea Monkey franchise.  Since 1957, literally billions of these things have sold and they’ve even gone into space!  They’re actually a variety of brine shrimp and their eggs can lay dormant for years and hatch when exposed to water.  Von Braunhut marketed them in the backs of comic books with such tantalizing ad copy as “Amazing creatures that come back from the dead…” and “…Able to be hypnotized and taught tricks”. Von Braunhut used his Sea Monkey treasure to fund non-profit organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nation.

www.sea-monkeys.com

4.  Antenna Balls: Jason Wall, founder of  In-Concept, Inc, didn’t even invent the antenna ball.  He got the idea for the potential market after hearing the news that Jack In The Box restaurant had sold over 3 million of them.  By 1998, Wall had developed his own balls ( ha ha) and had sales of $1.15 million by 1999.  His company now manufactures more than 500,000 custom antenna balls per month.

www.antennaballs.com

3.  The Hula Hoop: Although the Hula Hoop hit the America main stream in about 1957, it actually originated in Egypt roughly 3000 years ago!  However, it was the marketing savvy of Richard Knerr and Arthur Melin of Wham-o Toys that took the plastic hoops to playgrounds around Southern California and introduced them to the public at large.  Although it’s difficult to imagine the Hula Hope making the same kind of splash today in an era of Nintendo Wii’s; it is nonetheless one of the greatest business fads in U.S. History.  25,000,000 of them sold in their first 4 months in the marketplace!

www.wham-o.com

2. Million Dollar Web Page: I know you’ve heard of this one.  Launched in August 2005 by Englishman Alex Tew, the original idea was hatched to help cover the costs of Tew’s education.  The plan was to construct a web page of 1 million pixels divided into 10 x10 pixel blocks and sell them off at $100 each.  The ad space sold out in 5 months and the last 1000 pixels sold for a monstrous $38,000.  Like every great idea, the page spawned dozens of imitators and for $50 you can download the script from the site and imitate it yourself.

www.milliondollarhomepage.ws

1.  The Pet Rock: My number one craziest business that shouldn’t have made it.  Gary Dahl, an advertising executive, came up with the concept in 1975.  Each rock was purchased for a few pennies with packaging and shipping costing another $.90.  Dahl sold them for $3.95 each and it’s estimated that he sold over 5 million of them in six months.  That’s probably $60,000,000 in today dollars.  Rocks, Man…Rocks.

There you have it.  What type of fanciful, childlike, makes believe, Peter Pan, my-family-thinks-I’m-crazy ideas have you come up with?   Stop by www.poverty101.net and let’s put some of those ideas on paper.  I PROMISE I won’t think you’re out of your mind.

T. Edwards, www.poverty101.net

This guest post was written by Chris. Chris runs his own blog at http://www.TheMoneyac.com where he provides tips on blogging, internet marketing, affiliate marketing and website flipping. If you enjoyed this post be sure to visit his blog.

Debate: Niches Without Competition vs Niches With Competition

As Internet marketers and affiliate marketers we are trying to find and dominate different kinds of niches, we are trying to find our own secret and golden “eggs”. We tend to look for hot, new upcoming trends, niches that have buyers, etc. Along with these requirements we are also looking for niches with low or no competition, but are these niches really that good? Let’s analyze this for a minute, and see the advantages and disadvantages. At the end of the post I would like to hear your thoughts and your opinion about it.

Niches Without Competition

This is what every beginner is trying to find. Most of the beginners are afraid of competition or even low competition. I also was trying to find these kinds of niches, but I burnt myself heavily with this. What does a niche without any competition say? It shows us two possible outcomes:

a) The niche indeed is golden, and nobody has found it – this could be your own little goldmine.

b) Many people before you have tried to pursue this niche, but without any results they have left it standing there. Basically the niche isn’t worth your money or time.

I have found many niches with no competition, and I must say that in 98% cases I have just wasted my time and/or money. Only around 2% of the niches were profitable and are still profitable for me, and they’re my “goldmines”.

Then again if you have found a niche with no competition you have some hard work in front of you. You got to analyze the people in this niche – are they buyers, do they have a problem or maybe they’re just freebie or info seekers (I call them AdSense clickers). You got to visit forums (if the niche has any), you got analyze the people, and if you’re an affiliate marketer you need to find worthy products to promote.

Again, at the same time this could be your advantage. If nobody has touched the niche and there are no affiliate products – you got this great chance to make an expert out of yourself. You start a blog, you provide guides, tips and information to these people, after a time you will become expert of the niche, or so called “Guru” (this happens automatically – you brand yourself). This gives you a very comfortable position – if people trust you, they believe what you say, if they believe what you say, they most likely will buy stuff from you, and if you’ll make your own product (for example an eBook about dog grooming), they will buy it, as you’re the expert, the guru of the niche. But this requires for you to write quality content and it requires you to have some knowledge in the niche. But if you have some money then you can always buy the content, and still become the expert without any special expertise about the topic. With the right attitude and hard (sometimes smart) work you can make hell a lot of money in niches without competition.

Niches With Competition

Niches with competition are quite a different thing. If in the niches that have no competition you can easily become the expert, but in niches with competition there could already be experts and gurus (Just look at Weight Loss or Make Money Online niche).

To become an expert in a niche with competition could be hard – sometimes even close to impossible if some guy with Doctor’s degree is the leading expert in the niche – you have barely any chance to compete with him/her. But again, there are some advantages. You can take the advantage of the competition. Your competitors have already analyzed these people, and if the niche is with competition this means there is some money to make. You can just look at your competition and carefully analyze them and see what they do. They have already made the whole research for you; all you got to do is to make your own special twist. Niches with competition most likely will have already some affiliate products to promote and you can make money.

My Personal Advice

Since I am doing niche marketing for quite of a time, I can give you these two very essential tips:

If you’re trying to make money in a niche with competition I recommend you to stay mostly “under the radar”. If the niche already has some big Guru or expert, I recommend you just to do some clean affiliate marketing, don’t try to make the expert out of yourself. If, for example, the Guru of Weight Loss Niche is some guy with doctor’s degree and with 20 years of experience in weight loss, then don’t even try to waste your time to become the expert of the niche. Just do affiliate marketing silently and without additional “noise” and you’ll make money.

If the niche has no competition and you see that the niche is profitable I totally recommend you to make the Guru or expert out of yourself in the niche. It’s not going to be hard, and you can make truckloads of money if you’re “The One”. This will also discourage other niche marketers to pursue this niche, as the niche has already an expert that people trust.

As you can see the discussion could go endless – there are many factors involved, when you will have some experience in niche marketing you mostly will “feel” what should you do. The special “gut feeling” only comes with time.

Remember - It’s always easier to have a slice of the pie than bake your own, but sometimes it’s better and easier to bake your own pie.

I would like to hear your opinion about niches with and without competition. How do you look at them? Do you pursue niches with competition? Or you better take the risk and go only for the no competition niches? Share your thoughts!

My name is Wynter Jones and I have been working online for the past 4 years. Starting when I was only 16 when I found out people would pay good money for website designs which was only a hobby at the time. I’m now 20 years old and my life fully revolves around Internet Marketing.

I run a blog over @ www.siteflipremix.com and I’m here to help everyone take the knowledge and skills you’ve learned about link building and apply it to flipping websites.  I’m going to start with getting the basics right first to ensure success when you start flipping blogs for $1, 000+

What is Site Flipping?

It’s simply building up a blog or website and selling it to a new owner who can start creating revenue with it. Typically buyers who are looking for websites to purchase aren’t looking to do work, they want a complete fully functional blog that requires minimal maintenance.

When we are creating blogs/websites to sell, we must be sure to do all the work for the buyer so they can simply add it to their network of blogs to increase their monthly revenue.

Step #1 – Find The Site Flipping Marketplace

Before you begin creating a niche blog that you intend to sell it is important to get an idea of how the site flipping market is working at the moment. There are two options at the moment; Sitepoint & DigitalPoint. However I’m going to focus only on Sitepoint as it is the largest auction marketplace.

Sign-up for an account on the marketplace so we can get the basics done to ensure your success later on. When you’re browsing the auction listings you’ll notice each listing requires three pieces of information from the seller:

1) Website Verification 2) Phone Number Verification 3) Feedback

Right away you can go ahead and verify your phone number. You can also verify your website after you have put your blog up for auction. The third part requires you to complete one auction. It is very important to get all these done so your username will have a 100% trusted rating. This will increase your auction response rate and give buyers confidence when bidding on your auction.

Step #2 – Start Your First Flip

Now you have an account, it’s time to get your very first flip started. One thing I have learned in the 4 years of working online is to over deliver to ensure success. That’s right, your first flip won’t make you hundreds or thousands but that’s not the goal.

The goal is to over deliver to ensure you get great feedback from your first buyer and to give you some capital to pay for your next auction listing. When you start to flip more frequently you’ll soon see that buyers come back for more!

Step #3 – Make Your Plan & Execute

Since this is your very first site flip, we’re going to focus on getting you a solid ROI (Return on Investment) to help you on your next site flip. We’re going to take all the money you spend on the blog and multiply it by 2. So let’s run down the easiest way to get started:

1) Pick a Niche 2) Purchase a Domain Name $10 3) Set-up Wordpress 4) Pick a Theme 5) Write UNIQUE Content

All buyers are looking for unique design and unique content. If you can’t provide unique design then provide unique content, or vice versa. Once you provide both then you can increase you listing by hundreds of dollars.

Step #4 – Create a Revenue Stream

As I stated before all buyers are looking to make money from the websites they are buying. Your blog or website needs to make money for them, even if its only a dollar a day. You have a few options and it’s best to utilize all of them. However for you first flip we’ll focus on Adsense.  Integrating Adsense into the blog that is very simple. Plus you don’t need to make money right away with Adsense since this is your first flip.

Step #5 – Put Your Site Up For Auction

Now that you have your blog all setup with new unique content, adsense and new domain it’s time to put it up on the auction marketplace. We’ll assume you spent $10 on domain and $10 on auction listing. Everything else you did for free with your own hard work. So in total you spent $20 and you’d like to profit times 2 so your Buy Now price will be a cool $40.

You’ll want to post your listing in the “Startup Web Sites for Sale” section. You can get cool sitepoint auction templates over at my blog so you can format your listing to make it stand out.

You’ll find that with such a low Buy it Now price, you’ll get a quick response and sell it quickly. Once you get a buyer you’ll have to help them setup the blog then they’ll gladly give you great feedback to allow you take your site flipping into overdrive.

Completed My First Site Flip – Now What?

Now you do it again! But you build an even bigger and better blog. Take all the skills and information here at the LinkersBlog to create a blog with high traffic, solid Page Rank, possibly some adsense earnings and flip that for even more money! This can take a week or even a month depending on your desired Buy Now price.

Some Closing Tips for Success

Create a website that is dedicated to your site flips and leave a link at the bottom of all your SitePoint listings to this website. Create an opt-in e-mail list to allow people who are interested in your next site flip to be updated right away. Once you become more known you’ll generate a list of people who you can e-mail and tell them to go to your listing. This will make it so you can get a Buy Now bid within hours!

You can also create other types of websites to sell. You don’t need to make a blog every time. Another great option is creating sales pages that sell a product that you can buy or create. If you do this right and make some revenue before putting it up for auction you can see a great return on investment. Two awesome products to help you with creating amazing sales pages are: Amazing Mini-Site Templates & The Master CSS File.

Affiliate Video Brander

Thank you for reading this post, if you have questions or want to learn more about Site Flipping head over to my blog.

Michelle MacPhearson is no newbie to the world of search engine optimization. Her first product was the Social Media Daily, which was a free guide that went viral about increasing traffic. The idea behind 30 Minute Backlinks is very creative and original, and is rapidly becoming one the rising areas in attaining those high powered one-way backlinks that we all desire.

So how does 30MinuteBacklinks work?

The genius behind this product is that it completely takes advantage of the free software download sites (i.e. shareware, freeware sites) out there using a non-blackhat mehod. There are actually thousands of these sites out there, many of which have a more than decent Google Page Ranks of 4,5 and 6.

30 Minute Backlinks teaches you how to make software targeted for your keywords, and then how to easily send them to thousands of software sharing sites. I know you’re getting nervous now since you don’t have any programming experience so you think this is not for you. Well, that’s what I thought at first also.

But actually, it’s for you non-programming geeks also. 30 Minute Backlinks has full step by step tutorials that are clear and understandable in terms of giving over all of the information needed from start to finish in order to be able to create software. The best part is that this whole process can be done in as little as 20-30 minutes. The first sample piece that I did took me about 25 minutes to complete, start to finish, and then another few minutes distributing it all over the web. It’s not difficult to complete, and it doesn’t matter with the software sites if the quality of your product is not 5-stars material. A good backlink is a good backlink and that’s what matters for us.

Also, there’s no limit to the amount of software that you come out with. More software = More Backlinks. Unlike article marketing where duplicate content is considered valueless (and some suspect even worse, but this is not the time for that discussion), the links from these software sites are all valid links in the eyes of the search engines.

The information on distribution is also fairly simple and proven to be efficient. The links on many of these higher quality software sites are indexed within 24 hours and a good portion of the remaining sites take only slightly longer.

Best of all, this process is completely free. It doesn’t cost you any money to develop the software or to be listed on any of the shareware sites, even the higher quality sites. Essentially, you are twisting the software sites to link to your site with your anchor text. It’s just an amazing SEO opportunity.

This is the type of product, which you would think would be extremely complicated and only for those with experience programming software. But the step-by-step directions given with purchase are just sterling clear and easy for anybody out there.

One noticeable flaw is that you need your own hosting to use 30MinuteBacklinks. This is not good news for those Internet marketers who rely solely on hubpages, squidoo, EzineArticles etc. for your affiliate marketing. However, most people are working off of a blog or some other type of website which means it will work fine for you. Even if you are in the first category, you can find really cheap web hosting and start taking advantage of 30 Minute Backlinks.

In conclusion, this is an opportunity to receive 100s of high powered one-way backlinks that do not have any “duplicate content” concerns in return for 30 minutes programming a piece of software anchored with your keywords.

Learn More About 30 Minute Backlinks