2011 Action Log

The idea behind this post is that this is going to be a consistently updated log. Even when this isn’t the newest post, I’ll continue to update it and probably reference it in future posts. So this might be something worth bookmarking. Even though I explained what I plan to do this 2011 to make some dough (take top two sites and do them again on other hosts), I know some of you are not really versed at understanding the action steps that I do, so this should hopefully clarify a few things on what I’m up to.

January 1:

Didn’t really do much today, but I got the important infrastructure shit done. I bought 4 domain names that I planned on getting. I also purchased a year of hosting at a new place. I also spent sometime working on templates for the sites. I don’t really have any plans on fuckin’ around with WordPress anymore. What I do is straight HTML. I do it in PHP, for menus and shit. I probably went into detail on why I do this in another post on this site and I’m too lazy to look it up. Essentially I put the menu HTML in a menu.php file and have it called on the page. So to update the menu on my entire site (say a 100 pages) would require me to only update menu.php instead of going through each html file individually. That’s why I do it in PHP, but it’s still all very simple HTML and the pages are very basic.

I’m probably going to finish off all the templates for each of the 4 sites tonight and possibly get into writing content. Yes, very exciting secrets revealed.

January 7:

Basically what I’ve been doing now is filling up the sites with content. I’m aiming for 5 pages of content for each of them. And each page of content about 600-900 words. Sites have been indexing in Google without any links to them or me even searching for the sites on Google. I’m going to finish off all the content and probably throw a few light links at it. I won’t immediately do any linking with my authority sites to the new sites, just because it looks sort of bad in Google’s eyes. I’ll wait until I have more links coming in.

As you can see, more glorious secrets revealed. I hope you’re starting to understand that there is no gimmick, just work.

January 14:

I’m going to start doing some light backlinking to the sites. And when I say light I literally mean like 2 or 3. I’m also throwing content up onto an older site I’ve owned that really has been sitting there not earning anything.  This is part of my CJ strategies and I’ll be heavily backlinking this because the site is like 20 months old and I really have no reason to worry about punishment from Google. And even if they punished it, who gives a shit.

If you’re curious what I’m doing for other work, it’s mainly content on other sites. Mainly CJ related. Aside from getting base content down on new sites, it’s really a slow process starting out. Granted I could write more content for it, but in due time.

January 16:

Just an unrelated note. I just noticed that a forex site of mine, that has been in the dog house since August 2008, has been released from the doghouse (sandbox or whatever you want to call it). That took a while.

January 22:

I’ve just been backlinking. I’ve been going slow with my newer sites and my older sites (that are having CJ stuff added to it) are getting a much more aggressive backlinking strategy applied to it. Nothing really to report on that. My CJ content is getting strong rather quickly. It’s easy to do that with lots of links and sites that are in the range of 1-2 years of age.

January 31:

One of the groups of niche sites have been linked (all back to the main site, new sites not linked together)

Febuary 3:

Other niche sites have been linked in a daisy chain pattern.

Backlinking of new sites has become a little more aggressive. Older sites (CJ stuff) has been getting pounded with backlinks.

Filed in Log | | Permalink | Comments (1)

An Honest Look at Christmas Earnings

The month hasn’t even completed when it comes to Amazon, but as you can see I’ll probably settle somewhere around the $3600 mark. It’s been an interesting run and I really do enjoy the extra money that the Xmas season brings. Here are some interesting facts:

  • Lowest sales day: Dec 25th with 9 sales.
  • Lowest click volume day: Dec 24th with around 30% the average daily clicks.
  • Highest sales day: Nov 29th (Cyber Monday)
  • Highest click volume day: Nov 29th (Cyber Monday) with just under a 1000 clicks that day.

I should also point out that earnings with Amazon have been of a consistent daily average. Other programs I’ve used on the internet behave differently. Clickbank is a prime example of this. You’ll have below average days pretty much every day and then just one day you’ll have a shit load of sales and make a ton money. Amazon wasn’t like that. It was pretty consistent the whole way. I had a lot of $200+ days, but nothing that was explosive and really setting the mark.

So sticking both November and December together I’ll do a little more dissecting of the stats.

Total Profit: $6329.81 (sold $83,176.22 of Amazon products)

Of that profit, $2899.57 was earned by my top two sites.

The big disappointment was my Xmas sites earning only $277.83 of that profit. I think I know why this is the case, but I’ll go into this during a future post.

I could dissect all of this further and get into more detail, but I really don’t want to. Objective analysis is important for determining how things work for you, what is profitable and what is a waste of time. But there is a point where going through too much is just wasting time and literally a form of procrastinating. Go through your stats enough to understand what you did right, wrong and then move onto what you’re going to do.

2011 Goals

This is going to be a tough year for me because I have some very big goals. And these goals are outside the realm of internet marketing. A lot of them are financial in nature, so I’m hoping that pressure will keep on the straight and narrow when it comes to my websites.

The vague description of my goal is to duplicate my successes. The vivid goal is to take my two main earning sites and duplicate them (not copy content). I’m going to pick up an additional hosting account (with a new company) bringing my total to 3. I’m going to buy 2 domains for each of the sites (for a total of 4) and putting them on each of the hosts. Basically I end up with Site A (host 1), Site A (host 2), Site A (host 3), Site B (host 1), Site B (host 2), Site B (host 3).

I’m going to go after the same damn keywords. I’m going to have a similar link building strategy as the original successful sites. This isn’t rocket science and it isn’t complicated. I do have a little leverage already having a successful site already. I’m going to probably set up a linking pattern of a circle for one of the sites and just a link back pattern for the other. See image below to see what I mean.

It’s a pretty simple linking strategy. Remember each site is on a unique IP address, so search engines are none the wiser. I’ll be testing out both these strategies.

Aside from my plans to duplicate my two best sites I will be working on some other sites I own that I plan on making into big sites. I have two summer niche sites that I really want to prepare now, so they’re ready for the summer. They’re already up and going, but they need a ton of content and links. Summer is the slow time and I need to balance that out. I will work on my other less successful sites, but really my goal is just to maintain earnings for them. If they earn more, good stuff. Usually what I’ll do for maintenance for sites like that is I’ll write three pages of content, get some links for each page of new content and move on.

The other side of my goal is diversification. This is something that is more important than you’d like to know. I’ve been burned before, so please take my warning. You don’t want to earn too much from one player. Obviously making $2k/mth with Amazon is fine if you’re making $10k/mth. But if it is all your earnings it is sort of dangerous. As reliable as Amazon is, you never know what will happen in the future. Affiliates in Colorado had their accounts closed due to a state law that Amazon couldn’t possibly fulfill. It’s a very real possibility, so beaware of that. My general rule is that once you make it past that $1000/mth mark with a specific program you should diversify. I’m beyond that point, so it’s something I really need to do.

I’m going to work on Commission Junction (cj.com) and build that up to $1000+/mth. I might invest some time into Clickbank, but I haven’t yet decided on that. Personally, physical products have been beneficial for me. They have been consistent and they’re quite to easy to sell. When you’re talking about an informational product (ebook) you really have to prove to the reader that this is something they should buy. The commissions are definitely better for an ebook and Clickbank paying weekly direct deposits is something that can sway me.

That’s essentially the plan and as you can see it isn’t complicated. Basically content + links. Except the difference is that it will be in niches that I know are very profitable and with keywords I know work. And a rough idea on quality of links required to reach success. Make sure you have a game plan for yourself, even if you don’t have sites to duplicate. You need a good idea of what you’re going to do to make money this year.

Good luck in 2011.

PS: I logged into my Ezine Articles account (Last login was 113 days, 16 hours, 28 minutes ago ) and you should be happy to know that I published one article for them over 2010. I know a lot of you feel like this is really the only place to get a quality link. And it’s not true. I’ve stopped writing for them and their outrageous demands. Fuck them. 2010 was by far my best year and I owe it for giving the middle finger to a lot of article sites and going down a much different road.

Filed in SEO | | Permalink | Comments (3)

Paypal Chargeback Investigation: I win!

I hope all you guys do experiment in other realms of profit online like selling your own informational products and such. Cause I do that too, but I find that people are fuckwads and try to charge back on me. I suppose it is a part of doing business with anything. And I know you guys are familiar with Paypal. If you go to the Warrior Forum, you’ve probably heard that you’re pretty fucked no matter what when it comes to informational products. I’m happy to see after a 90 day investigation that I won.

Hello Christopher *************,

We are pleased to inform you that we have successfully disputed chargeback
case #PP-001-***-***-***.  The buyer’s card issuer has decided in your
favor and within seven days you will receive reimbursement for $****** USD.

It is PayPal’s standard practice to dispute wrongful chargebacks. One of
the benefits of using PayPal is that our team of chargeback specialists
will gather the necessary information from you and work with the credit
card company until the chargeback is resolved.

We appreciate your prompt response to our request for information about
this transaction.
———————————–
Transaction Details
———————————–
Buyer’s name: ****
Buyer’s email: ***
Transaction ID: ***

Transaction date: Aug 11, 2010
Transaction amount: -$*** USD
Case #: PP-001-***-***-***
Your transaction ID: ***************
———————————–
What to Do Next
———————————–

This case is now closed. No further action is required of you.

Thank you for your patience and cooperation in helping us resolve this
matter as quickly as possible. We appreciate your business and regret that
you experienced a chargeback.
For an overview of how PayPal works with you to investigate chargebacks,
log in to your account, click the Resolution Center tab, and then click the
Resolution Center Tutorials link.

Thanks,

PayPal
Chargeback Department

Filed in Announcement, Product Creation, Projects | | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yes, I’m Still Alive

Hey guys,

I know that it has been a while since I actually posted. I actually started working on a how to make money post on Amazon, but never actually finished it. For those of you that are not aware, I have not been working on my sites. There are a number of reasons for this, but I still have them and I want to plow into them again. I’ve went on a bit of a sabbath and Christmas earnings have been quite exciting for me. So it’s really pulling me back in. Well, I also paid off all my student loan debt and will be starting to save for a down payment on a home, so the more money the better. So those of you that don’t think Christmas is that important check out my November earnings.

I want you to also consider the fact that I haven’t worked on my sites in about 6 months and this is what Christmas is pulling in. There is a tremendous amount of volume coming in. Christmas keywords and items you purchase at Christmas have come alive with searches. If trends for December hold I should push somewhere in between $3000-$4000 for the month with JUST Amazon. We’re talking about some nice coin here. And I like earning that kind of money, on top of my regular engineer earnings.

The next post you will see from me will be done after I have a chance to investigate my earnings and figure out what is working. I’ll give you guys an honest take on what has been working for me and what I plan on doing for the future.

Cheers,

Oh and happy holidays.

Filed in SEO | | Permalink | Comments (0)

9/11: We Will Not Forget

It’s another anniversary since the September 11th attacks that saw Islamists hijacking planes and crashing them into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon. We shall never forget the attack and always fight against it.

Flash Video

Filed in Uncategorized | Tagged | Permalink | Comments (0)

What You Do Today, Pays Off In Months

This is just a short post, but I thought I’d point out the most important thing you’ll ever learn in this business. We all want instant results and want to see our work produce profits today. But this is a completely different game and everything pays off months and months down the road. Literally 6 months to a year is where the nice things happen.

I wanted to show you my Amazon earnings for August. They’re nice and growing since the last time I talked about it. They’re not blow you away or anything like that, but the point I wanted to make is that I really haven’t been working that much on the sites since Mid-June, yet my earnings keep going up and up. It’s because of the work that I’ve been putting in before that and the fact that these sites are built on a solid foundation (SEO).

Filed in Make Cash Online, SEO | | Permalink | Comments (3)

Newbie Advice for Making Money Online

Lately, I’ve been asked questions about how I make money online. When I tell people what I do they tend to just say “wow” or “interesting”, but occasionally people know enough about websites to have an interest in making money themselves. This is what happened recently and it had me contemplating what I would do if I was starting from scratch.

The first thing that needs to be understood is that there really is only three core blocks to this business: keywords, content and links. That’s it. Anyone that has been at this and is making money is doing these three things every single day. They find a keyword, they make content for it and they backlink until they’re at the 1st position in Google. You have to understand this completely and try to apply it, but this alone isn’t going to help you starting out.

Something that you learn over time is what keywords you should go after. You learn how to write content in an efficient and timely manner that actually increases sales. You learn where to get great backlinks and how to efficiently build them. The reason why new people fail big time is not that they don’t know the core building blocks, it’s the stuff I mentioned in the previous sentences. You’re picking the wrong keywords. Your content really isn’t selling. You’re not getting enough backlinks from great sources.

The hardest pat starting out is knowing which niche you should start in. The fact is all niches aren’t profitably equally. Some niches you’re going to make money out your ass with and others you’re going to struggle with even when you’re doing everything right.

Finding a great niche is just trial and error. This is something that all of us starting out went through. I’ve tried a ton of different niches and in that time I’ve found good and bad. You’re going to find that some niches are extremely profitable and easy to make money with. Other niches can be difficult. You’ll also find niches that are pretty average with profits (nothing wrong with that) and extremely easy to rank keywords, where as you’ll have profitable ones that take a long time to rank for.

The only thing you can really do is throw up as much as you can on the internet and see what works. We all have done it and you’ll have to do it too. The question really boils down to how you put up all that stuff to see what works. The free way is to sign up at Squidoo or hubpages and put shit up. This isn’t something I recommend.  I think it is important to own the website and control it. You know why? Because this is a business. Dave from Making Money On The Internet recommended going out and buying 100 .info domains. That cost is $1/domain, so $100 for a year.

And please don’t piss and moan about having to invest $100 into this starting out. This is the CHEAPEST business to get started in. There aren’t that many businesses out there where you can get started to make good money for as little as $100.

Now that we’ve settled the need to go out and buy a lot of domains, to discover profitable niches, you need to determine what domains you should get. Typically you want the right keyword(s) in the domain to help with relevance with Google. Products, not brands, are the best way to go. If you have a site about how to take amazing pictures with digital cameras, you’re going to have trouble selling because people aren’t more interested in how to take pictures. But if you had someone searching cheap digital camera, you know what they’re looking for and you know that they want to buy. Getting something like cheapdigitalcamera.info is far more beneficial for you.

You don’t have to get exact keyword domains if you don’t want to, but I suggest going that direction starting out. It just makes things a little easier for you starting out because you’ll eventually learn that when you make big authority sites it becomes less relevant to have an exact keyword domain, but that’s something that you’ll learn.

Just get product domains and a lot of them. And it can be anything. Microwaves, stereo speakers, fans, socks, collared shirts, wireless routers, rave lights, etc.

I want to say that the goal of going out and getting a hundred domain names isn’t to profit. Don’t get me wrong, you’ll make money, but the real goal is niche discovery. You’re going to have domains that will become profitable very quickly. You’ll have domains that don’t seem to do anything. You’ll have domains that will show tremendous success after 6-8 months. And you’ll have sites that literally do nothing after a year. It’s life, but it is what you’re going to learn that is valuable.

The sites that rock are going to be long term gems. Anything that shows signs of life should receive more content and more backlinks. The sites that aren’t working can be left idle or to a bare minimum (of course only after so much work is put into it).

Dave said that you should put up 10 pages of content and backlink it all. And I think that is a completely fair number. You’ll have a shit load of work to get that much content up on a hundred sites, but it is something that is well worth it. Just doing that simple thing will earn you money. All the content that you make on these sites should be product related. Preferably popular items that people want to buy. Check out Amazon’s hottest products to get a good idea.

When it comes to the content you write, you’re going to find your own groove. The idea is to find something that you can write efficiently and effectively (time wise) that sells. We’re not writing poetry here. We’re not trying to impress people with our amazing content. We want them to click the affiliate link, get off our site, buy the product and make us money.

The only real advice I can give you is to have an easy to see and read link to the affiliate link above the fold (where they can see it on the page without scrolling). A picture of the product linking to the affiliate link, as well as text under it telling people to click it helps too. People browsing the net aren’t that smart. Literally typing “click here” will make a difference.

Linking is the hard part for a lot of people. The easiest one to get into is article marketing. I’m not a big fan of this. Honestly, I have seen very little from article directories in how much their links help. You’re sort of stuck with using them because you want as many keywords as possible, but I find them more annoying than what they’re worth.

What I’ve found very helpful for links are those forum backlink packs that you can buy for $5. There’s angies and some other guys that I can’t remember the name of. You can actually look this up at Google. These are great things to have that you can use on all your sites.

But something I like to do is reverse engineer other people’s sites. Webmaster sites as I like to call them. When you search for something at Google you’ll see two different kinds of sites show up in the top 10. The ones I like to call natural “real” sites and the other being webmaster sites (or people like me). These are the people that are here to make money just like you and are building their backlinks. I like to put their website into Yahoo Site Explorer and go through their backlinks. Anything that is good I’ll put in my own person list and use it on my sites. It’s a tedious process at first, but after time you’ll have a massive list of perfect places to get backlinks.

This really is all you have to do. Coming up with the domain names should talk you about a day to figure out. Writing 10 pages of content per site (1000 pages) will take you some time. Backlinking all that content will also take a lot of time, but it is what is necessary to achieve success. If you can hold out and do this for 6 months to a year you’re going to have very solid base of sites that will be making money. And that should be all you need to push in to the future of this business. You’ll know the niches. You can buy future domain names for those niches, put them other webhosts and build them up. It’s really that easy. There’s no forums you have to visit to do this and there is no blogs you have to read. Just work your ass off for the next  6 months and get this shit done and you’re set.

Filed in Make Cash Online | | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Slow Summers

The summers happen to be the rough time for internet marketing and making money in general, unless you’re in some sort of summer business yourself. Anyway, I haven’t been doing as much work as I usual get around to doing because I’ve actually moved across the country (Canada – East to West) and I’ve actual decided to try and get a job. I know what you’re thinking… a job? Most of you don’t know is that I have an engineering degree and that is really my passion. I’ve always held the philosophy that it is immoral to live up to anything less than your full potential. I really got into internet marketing for a number of different reasons and stayed in it. A big one is that we had a pretty rough recession and difficult to find professional work.

Anyway, I plan to keep working with websites on a part time basis since having a nice second income will be nice for my monster student loans. Just need to get that first job. It is not quite as quick to get a job like you would expect in more common work. But that is enough about my life.

Basically when I do get the time I just work. No forum browsing, no research on internet marketing techniques and shit like that. I hope all my readers pretty much understand what they need to do each day. I also pounded past the $1200 mark with Amazon last month, which is also nice.

Since I don’t really have much to say about the month and about anything in general, I thought some of Dave’s posts could help you out. He has a post on how to make money with Amazon and the more beneficial one (in my opinion) on buying keywords.

I really like the buying keywords post because it actual sums up a very simple philosophy for making cash online and it actually is something quite simple to execute on your site. Just to sum up the entire post Dave made, its really about going after very popular items. The chances of you ranking for the popular item like “iPod” is highly unlikely and even “32GB iPod” is pretty unlikely, popular items have a massive search volume, but they also have a ton of related longtails that are associated with buying.

Even though you may not be able to reach the front page for 32GB iPod, you may be able to reach the top page for 32GB iPod Best Price, used 32GB iPod, 32GB iPod on sale, discount 32GB iPod, 32GB iPod online, where to buy a 32GB iPod Online”, etc.

They may not have as much search volume of 32GB iPod, but the people that search these variations are buyers. They’re someone that is looking to fork out some cash. Even though ranking for “32GB iPod” would be quite profitable, a lot of that traffic would be just people looking for general information on it.

This is a completely universal concept too, so you can use it with Amazon, Commission Junction, Clickbank or with any affiliate program that is selling an item. Any product name that people are looking for will result in variations of longtails, which include buying keywords. Make sure you read his post on it since it has a lot of variations that you can take advantage of.

I guess that is enough information for you guys. I’ll hopefully have something to say the next time I post.

Oh yeah, almost forgot. The reason that I ended up posting. Roughly a year ago I was ripped off by a vendor on Paydotcom. If you’re unfamiliar with the way things work with them, vendors sell ebooks and affiliates sell them to get a commission. The only difference is that it is the job of vendor to pay you, not PDC. Not good for us affiliates, so avoid PDC. Anyway, I put up a page on my site how he ripped me off and during this year I’ve had a lot of legal threats about defamation and libel. My page was coming up when people were searching his product and eventually he caved. I’ve officially been paid in full today and the matter settled. So there can be a little hope for those of you that have been ripped off.

If only I could get my money from Michael Jones king asshole rip off artist and Sebastian Foss (should be rotting in jail).

Anyway, that’s it.

Filed in Keyword Research, Make Cash Online | Tagged , , , | Permalink | Comments (1)

Conclusion for Sniper Site Project

I decided that I’m going to end the sniper site project and stop talking about it. This isn’t because I want to shut you guys out or anything like that, I just think they have run their course. I’ve pretty much extracted everything I could from them (knowledge) wise and they’re just going to continue growing. Plus, I don’t like to talk about the cash I’m making when it reaches a certain point, so that is another reason I suppose. I’m going to give all the numbers this time to conclude everything.

I actually had a very slow start to this month with Amazon. Weekends are usually slower since less items are shipped on the weekend, in particular Sunday. But things did push forward and things worked out pretty good. I’d like to say that the previous month was a bit of a fluke. The fluke being that I earned significantly more per sale on average than this month. But I made up for that little problem with a much larger volume of sales.

I had some very nice days this month. I had a few big sales days where I had 10-11% conversion rates, which are nice. I also had a $140 day. Amazon only pays you for shipped items and you’re given stats for sold and shipped. You get above average days with money because there will be a build up of items that sold, but haven’t been shipped yet. Typically this happens right after a weekend.

And that is why I got a little disappointed with the end of the month because it ended on a weekend and Memorial Day on Monday, which meant shipping items wasn’t high enough. So I had the following staring back at me today:

1 sale away from 7.5% tier. It’s very annoying because I have over 50 items waiting to be shipped and I missed out on the new tier, which would of earned me more money. If I hit that tier and shipped a little more of my items waiting to be shipped I would have made over $1000.

My Adsense earnings are ZERO this month because I immediately removed them from all my sites at the first of the month. The only place that currently has them is a hubpages account. That’s it.

I also didn’t work for what is about a week this month. I ended up pinching a nerve in my neck/shoulder area and it was very painful. Don’t worry, this wasn’t a result of working on a computer. I woke up at 3am with this pain in my shoulder and it was horrible. By the time morning rolled around I figured out what that pain was and it was nerve. At times it was pretty rough and other times it didn’t feel to bad. During the good times I tried to work, but that seemed to later aggravated it, so I just stopped working. I suppose that is a big benefit of working online; money still flows when you have to take some time for yourself.

Alright, here are the numbers:

May:$876.50
Apr: $805.76
Mar: $457.18
Feb: $320.02
Jan: $256.23
Dec: $149.33
Nov: $145.90
Oct: $141.02
Sep: $73.16

Total Revenue: ($3226.10)
Total Expenses: $408.20
Net Total: $2817.90

*Numbers may be off a few dollars from what reported month-to-month in previous months.

When you add it up like this over all the months, it doesn’t seem like a lot of cash over what works out to be 9 months. But the biggest gains have been coming in the last months and it is turning into something that produces a decent amount. I’ll allow you to be the judge of whether this is something that you would like to try.

My Conclusion:

If I had the choice to do this again, I would definitely take it. The thing you have to understand is that out of these 40+ sites, a lot of them aren’t even ranking. There still needs to be a lot of work done to them. But I do have plenty of sites that do rank and I have a few that are shining.

The experience of doing this is sort of the real value. I’ve had the pleasure of dipping my toes into 40+ different niches all at once. I’ve been able to see niches that are quite easy to rank for and others that just take time. I have sites that don’t convert and I have others that convert well. The value here is really about the niches and the keywords I know of now.

The hard part many people run into is finding a suitable niche to play in. It simply takes time to develop a profitable website, but a niche needs to be profitable too. If you’re investing 6 months into a site, you have to make sure that it is going to pay dividends by the time you get there. The sniper sites have given me that leverage because I know what is working.

A nice aspect of the sniper sites is that you can always take the good ones and build them into an authority site. There’s no limitation that states a sniper site always has to be one. Whatever starts working for you, just build it up.

You can’t properly manage 40+ sites and I’m literally running about 100 when you add them all up. You just can’t watch them all. I don’t think over the long run pumping out tons of sites is the best way to go. But I think pumping out some, finding niches and sticking with what works is a good way to go.

There is very little risk with sniper sites (if you avoid Adsense) because you’re bound profit. It’s just the law of averages. You’re bound to hit winners. And at $10/domain name it isn’t that big of a deal.

I stated in another post that if I was to redo this I would probably change up my objectives a bit. The goal for me was to just to rank for the main keyword and that would be it. If I was doing it again I would probably aim for 3-5 main keywords. I’ve found that those sites seem to work better when you decide to build on them. That’s really all I’d do different. I guess I wouldn’t go with Adsense (which was my intention starting out). A lot of my sniper sites have “filler” content, which isn’t keyword oriented, but just informational crap designed to fill a site up. Without the filler crap, I could target real keywords and get a few bigger ones ranking.

I guess that’s really all to say on the subject.

And to Come

I won’t be specifically updating about the sniper sites anymore, though I’ve been going back and filling out some of the sites with new keyword oriented content and backlinks. This is to help some of the ones that haven’t had the chance to really perform for me. Plus I’m also forcing myself not to buy anymore domains and play with the sites I have now.

I’m mainly going to focus the site on building authority sites and my journey with that. I have my Christmas ones that I’ve been working on since February. I’m also working on a few of my sniper sites that I’m building into authority sites. We’ll see how that works out over the next few months.

EzineArticles

It has been over 7 months since I submitted my last article to EZA. This has been something of a challenge for me because I’m a recovering bum marketer.  “Hi, I’m Chris and I’m a bum marketer” HI CHRIS! Well, 2729 articles are sitting in that account right now. I decided that I’m going to start throwing articles back on that site, but not with the intention of driving traffic off of it (bum marketing). I’m just going to use it purely for SEO purposes only. I just need as many different link sources that I can and I unfortunately can’t continue ignoring it.

I ended up cutting them out because they went totally anal and downgraded me. I was platinum for a while and they sent me back to basic plus (lame). But I don’t care anymore. I know I’ll have to write longer content for them. I guess that means 400 words or something. I’m reluctant to write long content for sites that don’t let me put the link right in the middle of the content.  I’ve begun to start hating the resource box because I don’t view it quite as valuable (for SEO) and I no Google can tell the difference. Thousands of pages of content and the outbound links are all in an HTML table at the end of it. They know.

Well, I’m hoping for 400 is enough. I don’t know how anal they are. Plus, I should advise people that you should stop going for the bare minimum of 250 words. I know that blows and I’m not the biggest fan of it, but GoArticles recently deleted all content under 300 words. And since GoArticles email is practically spam box worthy I don’t think a single person heard about it (I certainly didn’t).

I’m not saying that this will happen with EZA because they have a review process (quality control), but don’t think for a second that they wouldn’t purge every single short article if they thought it would help them. But less likely with quality control. Any site that allows you to put up content without review runs the risk of being a deleter. I’m not saying go out and write epic long articles for other sites. Fuck them. Find a happy medium I suppose.

I suppose if there was any lesson from this, you don’t need EZA to get anywhere in this business.

Plans for June

I’m going to keep it pretty simple and the plan is to work Amazon hard. I’m currently going back through all my sniper sites, writing 6 new keyword oriented pages of content and backlinking all that content. And with 40+ sites that takes some time. I plan to continue doing that and working on my Christmas sites. That’s really all I plan on doing this month. I hope to score over $1000 for the mth with Amazon. I would normally aim higher here, but it’s pushing into summer now. People are on the computer less and that puts a damper in sales.

The reason why this will be my last month working Amazon hard (for now) is that I learned very early on the necessity of diversifying. I’m not saying I won’t be working on any Amazon related sites after this month, I just won’t be investing the majority of my time in this. When I started out I went exclusively with Clickbank. I built that income up to something that was decent and then Clickbank crapped out. And anyone that knows CB knows that they don’t have the best payment processor. It’s old and craps out at times. When it is working, it is great. When it isn’t working, it sucks.

Obviously you can’t start out in this business doing 5 different affiliate programs all at once. You’re throwing your energy into way too many directions. So the rule I ended up creating was once you get something up to $1000/mth, start pushing another program hard. It’s just so you don’t have all your shit tied up in one program and you actually work one particular affiliate program hard enough to earn something decent. I’ll continue to push Amazon, but it won’t be all day everyday sort of thing. (maybe in the fall time it will be)

Planned affiliate programs:

So I’ll probably start into Copeac first since they’re pretty good. My income with them has been down since I stopped writing articles for EZA, but I picked up some domains a few months ago to help leverage what I’m promoting. They’re a CPA and I mainly stick to items that people actually whip out their credit cards for instead of things like email submits and shit like that.

If you’re looking for a CPA I definitely recommend them. I receive my check every month. I have nothing to complain about.

Next I’ll start working Clickbank hard. And even though I mentioned above their problems it isn’t that big of a deal when you don’t have to rely on this income. If you treat it more like a bonus than it is much easier to play with. And that is at least the plan. The one thing that Clickbank does get right is that they pay. They have weekly direct deposits, which are a nice touch. And since I started out with this program I find it much easier to sell.

Market Health is something I’ve had for quite some time now. I haven’t made anything decent with it. I might get a few sales a month and that’s it. I don’t have any particular goal to get this up to $1000/mth.  I’d be happy with just enough to pay my student loan min payment each month ($400). And they do pay directly into my Paypal account, so it’s really easy for me.

It would be sweet if I could get through all three of these programs by the end of August. Highly doubtful, but I could definitely build a solid foundation for them in that time. All I know is that by September I need more time for Christmas preparation.  I just really need to be on that and that’s HOPEFULLY the plan.

Filed in Projects | Tagged | Permalink | Comments (3)

Why I use Static HTML for my Websites

I think some people might think I’m crazy using static HTML for my FOR PROFIT websites. Hint: This blog is not a static HTML site. There is a method to my madness and I think it is very important why I do it this way. If you’re unfamiliar with what HTML is, it’s just the language that web browsers read to construct a website. Even though this blog isn’t a static HTML site, my web server hands over HTML pages to it for the browser to read.

There are three main reasons why I go with static HTML:

  • Speed
  • Security
  • Webhosting Problems

Speed

I think speed is by far the most important aspect of selling anything on the internet. This has nothing to do with Google or search engine optimization. Google has announced that they’re looking to speed now and have it in the algorithm, but it doesn’t make up anything substantial, YET.

A website needs to open fast. SNAP! (I just snapped my fingers) I don’t want one second of lag when it comes to potential visitors that will buy. It’s as simple as that for me.

Basically there are three types of things that a website can possess for the loading of a page: HTML code, Service Side Operations and Server Side Operations with a Database.

HTML: This is the fastest because you already have all the work done. You made the page in HTML and the web server just has to send the data to the visitor.

Server Side: This means that there is programming code in with your webpage and that the server’s CPU actually has to process the code before HTML is created and can be sent to the visitor.

Server Side With a Database: This is where you have information stored in a database. The database is on a separate server and needs to be connected locally. The programming code is processed. And when information needs to be pulled out of the database, the server has to connect to the database server and pull the information. Once this is all done, HTML data is sent to the visitor.

Guess which one takes longer. WordPress (which this blog is running on) does the Server Side with a Database. You may notice that a blog like this may have a 2 – 5 second pause as you connect and then everything loads. WordPress runs on PHP Server Side Language and accesses a mySQL database. If you’re running a Server Side Language (PHP, PERL, SSI), it is for the most part normal. The time it takes a computer to process language doesn’t take that long and visitors will never even know. But there is a reason why I brought it up, which I will go into on the webhosting problems section.

Security

HTML can’t be hacked. It can’t be cracked. It can’t be exploited. Your webhost could get hacked, but it is completely regardless of the HTML. Exploited servers happen typically because they can somehow manipulate the server side operations of the code to open up the server. That is really all there is to it.

This is why you have WordPress updates because they find holes and they need to be fixed. This is why it is important to update WordPress immediately after an update. If you miss the update, you risk getting hacked. And remember people are typically hacked before a fix is created and an update is released.

I’m not trying to scare you or anything like that. I just can’t imagine having 100 websites all running WordPress and forgetting to update just one of them.

Webhosting Problems

My biggest pet peeve with webhosts is that they offer “unlimited” everything. I think all of us recognize that nothing is unlimited and in reality they’ll shit can your account if you get anywhere close to it.

If I was on a dedicated server (on a server all by myself) I wouldn’t have a problem with it. But I’m not really interested in paying $200/mth for a dedicated server. A shared server is what most of us are on and it’s shared. There are other people on the same computer and they all have the same “unlimited” plan.

The most common webhosting problem you run into is the mySQL database server lagging. There’s always some asshole that thinks they can have “unlimited” mySQL databases (1 per WordPress site). So they setup 1000 WordPress sites in an hour and lag down the entire database server. This causes anyone on the same computer to have a lag with any site that needs the database (like this WordPress site).

Guess what? My static HTML sites load fast. SNAP! When the database server is lagging or down.

Sometimes the processing of Server Side operations actually crashes too. It’s not quite that common, but it does sometimes happen. Any site that has PHP or any other type of server side language will experience a 500 internal error, which is what people will see when they go to your site.

Guess what? My static HTML sites load fast. SNAP! They don’t need any server side operations done, so it’s not an issue.

The only way that HTML goes down is if there is an internet load problem, CPU overload or the web server just goes down. And in those cases no website setup will work for you.

This is why I use static HTML for the vast majority of my sites. I do use PHP without the database. I just use it for include() commands, so that I can do site wide editing of footers, headers and shit. So that is really the big secret for why I use static HTML. I told you there was a method to my madness lol.

Filed in Databases, Rants | Tagged , | Permalink | Comments (1)