April Sniper Site Update

Another month has gone by and I thought I could stick to the same format as the previous month. I’ll give a breakdown of what I earned with my sniper site project, which is only a side of my income for those of you who think this is all I have. It’s been an interesting journey doing this and I’ve learned a lot too.

Total Invested: $408.20 (47 websites)

I didn’t buy any domain names this month for the sniper project. In fact, I think I only bought 1 domain name the whole month and just bought a .info on a spur of the moment thing. I actually bought it to help figure out a little better how to work my Christmas authority sites.

Amazon: $701.30 (Total: $1794.39)

The odd thing here is that on the 25th of April, I actually started making this post. I was just going to add in the numbers at the end of the month. Well things changed. The first 20 days of this month I was flying and was above average. I was going to fly past the $500 goal I set last month, which when I initially thought of that number I thought it was a little high for me. Starting on the 20th of the month, I had like a week of below average and slower days.

What I initially wrote was that I did beat the $500 mark (I was expecting maybe $500-$540), but that I was disappointed because I was on track for much better numbers earlier in the month. But I ended up finishing up the month very strong. On the 28th I had my first day of $102.04 in commissions (after selling $1,457.44 worth of items). Breaking the hundred dollar day is always a nice feeling for a program, even though it’s not remotely close to daily averages. I remember when I broke the hundred barrier with Clickbank and Copeac (my CPA), it’s always a nice feeling.

For May, I really want to set a goal number of $900, but I’m not going to. I’m going to aim at $800. And the reason for that is that I can’t get past the fact that this might be a fluke month. The way I see it is that if it is a fluke, I should hopefully be able to squeeze in at $800. If not, I have no problem making extra money.

I’m still stuck in the 7% commission tier at Amazon, though I entered into it the earliest time for a month, so that is a plus. I doubt I’ll even come close to breaking out of that tier and into 7.5% in May. But I’m hoping I can in the future.

I have some hefty goals though. I want Amazon up to $1000/mth before Summer (before July). And this is sort of tricky because the summer is always slow and it really depends on a lot of factors. People are on the computer less, which means you have less time to advertise to them and they’re less likely to buy. I’d be very happy if I could hold onto a full grand each month during this time with Amazon, but I guess we’ll see what happens.

Adsense: $104.46 (Total: $521.03)

This is pretty much the same as it was last month, so nothing to really say. I haven’t been pushing Adsense and I’m actually second thinking it now. There are a lot of things going on with Google and them going on full assault. I was actually curious why Grizzly’s site wasn’t in the top 10 anymore for all his MMO links. Well, he had a post toward the end of April explaining why. And there was Ben from Make Money Online with SEO that had a ton of his sites indexed from one of his Adsense accounts.

The only reason why I have Adsense(AS) earnings is that I’m trying to diversify, which is extremely important. I ran into problems starting out having all my eggs in one basket and I’m not going to repeat it. It’s this desire to diversify that has pushed me closer to the AS system, but I’ve still been apprehensive about it. I haven’t gone full steam ahead at it and I’ve exhibited paranoia with it.

I was under the impression that the most likely punishment that you’d receive from AS would be a banning and I can deal with a banning. At $100/mth, it isn’t that big of a deal. With them deindexing sites, I’m actually pretty afraid now. A banning is no big deal, but having your sites lost like that is a slap in the face. At least if I was making several thousand with them each month I could have at least saved something in a bank account. But not at a $100.

I’m officially bowing out of AS, which I’ll probably do over the next month. I was planning on pushing into AS hard after I got my Amazon above a thousand, but I’m just going to bow out of it. I’ll move onto Clickbank and Commission Junction probably.

I know some of you are thinking “don’t give up. Just make clean sites that aren’t obvious MFAs.” I just can’t get around the point that I am trying to make money with AS. That’s really the point, I’m trying to profit with it. A site about coffee tables can’t be a friendly user site for reading. I just can’t do it. And even if I do, what’s stopping the big G from banning me anyway? If they don’t like something from the traffic or if I write something wrong; BAM, I’m done. It doesn’t matter if the site is thin or thick.

I’ve written in the past about Google on my old blog and I want to point out two posts in particular; my Google Analytics (Nov. 18 2008) post and my Adsense Sucks (June 29 2008) post. Even though they’re old posts, they still hold true and contain all the same opinions I believe.

Just to sum up why Google will always be quick with the ban hammer on AS is that it has a gambling business model. It’s pay per click. That’s the equivalent of paying someone to come in you store. It’s not necessarily good for business. Contrast that with pay per sale, where someone actually has to buy for you to make money.

Consider the abuses of the two different systems. With AS you’re going to have fraud when someone disingenuously clicks on an ad and is completely not interested in what they click. When I use the word fraud, it’s not legally fraud. For a program like Amazon, fraud is when someone uses a stolen credit card. This is actually real fraud and is criminal. The system that faces more “fraud” is the system that pays you for someone clicking on a link.

The amount of abuse that Google has to deal with must be unimaginable. The crap from people that click the ads, to the spammers that autocreate thousands of blogs within a period of an hour. As long as these people exist, Google will always have a quick ban hammer. They’ll even wipe out good people or those that are right on the border between good and bad. They don’t have any desire to be fair because fair means they’re losing money.

In the end, AS advertisers have to profit. THEY HAVE TO PROFIT. Pay per click is a failed business model if advertisers don’t make a profit because they’re not coming back without that profit. And the overzealous ban hammer is the means to insure that profit is created.

The other point I want to make is similar to the point in the Google Analytics post I made. Google is an information beast and just keeps digging, digging and digging some more for information. The problem that people fail to see is that Google has the power to use information against you. They can deindex you, which is what they are apparently doing now with your AS footprint on each site.

Like I said in the Analytics post, I don’t want Google to know shit about my sites. I don’t want them know what people are doing or clicking on. I don’t want them knowing where my traffic comes from. I don’t want them to know shit because Google views me as an enemy. Let’s just cut through the shit, Google hates us because purposely move up the ranks of Google to make cash. That’s all we’re doing. They hate us, and with the right information they can fuck with us.

Okay, that is enough of that topic…

The point is that I’m stepping away from AS and just moving onto other greener pastures. I’m not the biggest fan of Clickbank because I think they’re payment processor is outdated, but they can’t deindex my sites. Plus, the weekly direct deposits are a nice touch.

On Sniper Sites

There was something that I noticed about my sniper sites. Well, at least some of them. In April, I really went back and started spending time on some of my better performing (traffic and/or profit potential) sites. I started to add in more content and do back linking. And I started to notice some trends with some of the sites.

I’ve created an extensive look at it on my main blog area titled Sniper Sites to Authority Sites. I went into a little more on that page, so you can read about it there. My objective with my sniper sites was to select one keyword, get a keyword domain and dominate that keyword. That was my only goal.

What I noticed is that sites that have a more diverse range of keyword traffic (a smaller percentage coming from the main keyword) the better the site was and the more authority it has. When I added content (which happens to be static HTML and no pinging) the pages indexed on the front page or on the second page.

Conversely, the sniper sites that were doing well for the main keyword, but little else (majority of search traffic for one term), the less authority the site had and the harder it was to get new pages to rank. It took forever for the pages to index and when they did they were well beyond the 100th position in quotes.

The point, which is obvious, is that your site needs to have that diverse range of keywords coming in. It’s probably better to target a wide range of smaller keywords, while still pounding away at your main keyword, to really make a site with authority.

This was a nice revelation to see. Some of the sites are getting closer to some major niche keywords, so I’m excited about that.

I should also point out that a lot of my sites still need work, even though I’m spending my time working on the ones with potential right now. I’ll eventually get around to all this. Building 46 sniper sites is easy, but building them into bigger sites is a lot more work lol.

I’m actually trying to think of all the things I wanted to talk about and put it in this one monthly post, but I can’t think of anything else to mention. Hopefully next month, I’ll have something to post on the Christmas authority sites I’m working on.

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March Sniper Site Update

I thought it would be best if I gave a monthly update on what is happening with my sniper sites. I’ve been dicking around with them for a while and I should get a good idea of what I think of them so far. I have to update my total invested number since I added in a 3rd wave of sites and I recently purchased a 4th wave. I won’t include the 4th wave because most of the sites aren’t even online yet. I’ll go into more detail about the 4th wave later in this post.

Total Invested: $408.20 (6 more domains)

And I guess you want a monthly breakdown of how much I’m earning with these sites. I usually just gave you a runnning total of how much I’ve earned, but I’m going to give you a month and total this time.

Amazon: $350.41 (Total: $1093.09) On 35 sites

When it comes to Amazon, I don’t feel like I’m earning what I should with it for the amount of time invested. But the thing about Amazon is that the income keeps growing each month and I think it is much more stable. If you look at a program like Clickbank, you could get 30 sales a month at $33/sale to make a grand a month. But there are variations and getting 20 sales in a month is a big change in what you make. Where as Amazon you need a high volume of sales to actually earn something that is going to pay the bills.

For this reason I think that Amazon is good. I think it is quite stable from an income point of view and that is something that I can really appreciate. Anyone that has been doing this long enough knows that fluctuations are just part of the game, but having a nice stable source is really a solid base to work with.

This was the very first month that I actually hit the 7.0% commission tier. The way Amazon works is that they show you how many sales you have got and how many sales have been shipped. They pay you on shipped items and that is what counts toward moving up the tiers. I had enough commissions last month for it, but they didn’t get all shipped and I missed out on it. lol.

My goal in April is to get my Amazon earnings to $500/mth. I just need to keep pushing traffic through the affiliate links and keep hoping for good things. I won’t pass through to the 7.5% tier next month to reach that goal. I eventually want to get this up to a $1000/mth and the sooner the better. Essentially that is all I try to do with programs now. I work at them until I get them to around $1000/mth and move on to another program to do the same. It’s my way of diversifying.

Adsense: $106.77 (Total: $416.57) On 8 sites*

I put an asterisk by the sites because I recently converted two Amazon sites to Adsense at the end of the month. They weren’t converting and some ass emailed me asking to buy one of them. I decided I better put it on Adsense to see what it is capable of earning. My Adsense earnings aren’t anything special. I really don’t have any interest in Adsense. Making more than a hundred in a month means I’ll get money wired to my bank account, but that’s about it.

I’m just a little scared to use sniper sites for Adsense because my sites are pretty thin and Google might think they’re MFA (well they are, I don’t make sites for shits and giggles). I *HEARD* that Adsense doesn’t really do an audit of your sites until you’re making about $100/day ($3000/mth). So making a $1000/mth fits in a nice safe range when audits are concerned. Still, I’m pretty reluctant with the program. I might continue to just dick around with it and slowly build it up on the side.

Total Month: $457.18 (Overall Total: $1509.66)  On 43 Sites*

I do have more than 43 sites invested into this little sniper project, but some of them are not monetized yet. Since they’re not monetized I didn’t feel like adding them into the earning statistics. I did add them into how much I invested though.

I guess while I’m still updating people on things, I should update you on things unrelated to the sniper site project. I mentioned in a post not to long ago that I’m working on Christmas Authority Sites. This was actually quite interesting because I’ve been making a little bit of money with them already. You can look at the post I gave on Christmas Authority Sites to understand the method to my madness, but it has been an interesting run so far.

I’ve found that you’ll rank for lots of shit and most of them are duds. Most will not even bring you a drip of traffic, but you’ll hit something that does get traffic. It doesn’t take anymore work then the posts that fail, so it’s nice. The best part is that when you hit the traffic, it’s something that is going to convert. Even though I’m not getting a high volume of traffic it seems to be doing decent for new sites.

A few days ago I picked up a few domains to get this a try with Clickbank as the affiliate program. I actually just wanted to get one site, but I have a rule about domains name. If I find a keyword domain I want and .net and .org (and even .com) are available, I have to buy them all. This happens because I’ve bought a .net or .org, seen it perform well and went to go back to get the their extension and it being gone. Pain in the ass! But that is an aside.

I wanted to play with Clickbank in a very minor way. As you should all know, I think Clickbank Sucks because I made a nice little blog about it. I still think they’re pretty much incompetent, but I miss the tiny trickle of sales I was getting. Since I stopped actively promoting CB I was still making sales. I’d get anywhere from 1-3 sales a week on average and with weekly payments to my bank account it was nice to see $50-100 popping into my bank account every week. It’s not a lot of money, but something that pays for groceries.

Anyway, I wanted to get my sales back to something like that and this type of site will be like that. When I used to play with CB and was making decent money with it, I was an bum marketer (which is shit). I’m going to do it with the least amount of work to see what I can earn from it. I’ll keep you posted on how that works out too. Just a note, I’ll have two of these sites on two different webhosts, which makes my sites a lot more strategic when it comes to ranking.

Let’s see, what else to update you guys on. I bought 4 sites on Sunday to help with my CPAs. I haven’t really talked about CPAs on this blog. Might be something to talk about in the future, but not now. I can’t remember if I mentioned on this site that I bought a .info domain. After hearing loads of talk on this and how they’re punished, I thought I’d give it a try. I actually found a 1 word (5 letter) .info domain available for some piece of clothing. From my experience so far it is working like a normal domain. I don’t appear to be punished or anything like that. Granted, I haven’t played with enough .info domains to really know, but so far they’re just like any other domain.

The only real concern I have right now is that I’m juggling 50+ active domains right now and I find it a bit overwhelming at times. Like, I have a lot of domains and most of them are sitting idle and earning. Meaning I built them up and they just sit to earn. They don’t need the active attention, just a little love now and then. But with 50+ active sites that need love now and need content now is overwhelming. I’m definitely going to sit down and write a post on this blog for organizing this many active sites.

I guess that’s all for now. Just an FYI to those that read to this point. Some assclown left a comment on the blog about how one of my posts was a million words long and asked me to summarize it. Fuck off. The posts are long for a reason. If I had ads, you would of clicked on them already (which is the point).

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Double Google Listings – Not That Easy

I said in a previous post on my sniper sites that I was going to try and dominate the top 10 of Google. The philosophy is just as simple as ranking in the top 10. If I can get a site in there, I might as well get every position that I can. Double listings is (or at least was) going to be a simple way to get a second position with my sites that are already listed.

The idea behind getting the double listing is really quite simple. Let’s say that I was trying to rank for “red pants” and I have a blog post titled “The Best Red Pants of 2010″ and it ranks first for the term “red pants”. If I want to get the double listing I just make another post that has “red pants” in the title (obviously not the same title) and link both the posts together using “red pants” as the anchor. That is what you’re supposed to do based on Grizzlies post on the subject. Though that post is old and I can tell outdated.

Out of 41 attempted sites I tried to get a double listing for, only two of them have it. It would of been three, but one of my double listings disappeared. Out of the only two that actually got a double listing, one of them is double listing a page I didn’t attempt to do it for. So I suppose you could call that a natural double listing, but it doesn’t inspire hope that this particular method works.

What I’m Thinking

I have a little theory on how this must work, though I can’t fully back it up with 41 sites to verify it, but I’ll say it anyways. I think the linking pattern is something that works and I know it works because I’ve tried it with other sites. The easier it is to rank for a keyword, the easier it is to double list it. If you go after a very weak long tail keyword you can easily double list it. If you need to verify that for yourself, just try ranking for a keyword that has absolutely no competition. If you need an example of such a keyword try, “pink bucket for turkey”.

Seriously, just dick around with keywords like this and get them to double list. Something that I need to do, but haven’t is figuring out how to get a double listing twice. Let me explain what I mean, let’s say I have the two pages I want to double list…

“pink bucket for turkey” and “new pink bucket for turkey”

Now I can get to the point where if I type “pink bucket for turkey” into Google I’ll have a double listing and the second listing will be the “new pink bucket for turkey”. What I want to know how to do is get that double listing, but also if someone types in “new pink bucket for turkey” in Google, I’ll also get a double listing. That’s something I haven’t figured out yet. Feel free to dick around with that and see if you can figure that out.

The reason why I think these weak keywords are easy to double rank for is the fact that both pages need to have the ability to rank in the top 10 on their own. This is easy to see when you’re going after “pink bucket for turkey” because you don’t need any backlinks for it and absolute shit sites will rank for it. The same is true for authority sites because all new pages created have a little juice and power to them. If you have an article that ranks in the top 10 for a keyword, make another with the same keyword and you’ll probably double list. You don’t even need to link them together either.

When it comes to my sniper sites it is a little different. They’re not authority sites because they’re simply not big enough and have enough links, but they’re ranking for their selected term. I’ve built up the links to the secondary page that I want to double list and they’re not all doing that good (obviously when 2/41 double list). But I guess all I can do is wait to see what happens as I let them sit for a while and hopefully they will work.

Conclusion

Whether you can get this to work or not is irrelevant. When you do end up getting that double listing you get a lot of extra traffic for a keyword. And that is the big bonus. It doesn’t take much extra work. It’s just one page of content and building links to it. Since you should be building links to all your content, it should take no extra time.

And how much extra traffic will you get. Most people will assume that they’ll get a tiny percentage extra. If 5th position gets 3% and that is what you end up getting with your double listing, people will assume that they’ll get an extra 3% of total searches. The fact is that you’re going to see a significant jump. You’ll probably see a 30-40% jump in the amount of traffic that you’re getting from the search term. The reason is that the double listing stands out for both people and produces a better CTR.

Since it requires absolutely no extra work to orient your site to get double listings then you shouldn’t have a problem trying it. Just do it as you start building sites. As usual, start with the easy stuff to rank. When you get in the top 10 for a keyword, just try for a double listing. And just keep going with new keywords. It doesn’t have to be a difficult process.

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Christmas Authority Site

Well, in my never ending quest to make cash online, I’ve decided I better step into the realm of authority sites. Christmas is the biggest shopping even of the year. In fact, for most stores it is what turns their books from red into black (from loss to profit if you don’t understand accounting references). I was impressed with a story I heard from some guy that was really pushing his Amazon account around this holiday and he made a lot. We’re talking about someone that usually made a few hundred a month with Amazon, to someone that pulled in $10k for Christmas.

I decided that I need to make a site like this and build it into an authority. I’m going to give you the plan I will try to implement with this. Normally you’ll hear on a forum that all you have to do is make a lot of content and build a lot of links to create an authority site. And that is what I’ll be doing, but that is a vaguely simplified way of describing something that I’ll be spending a while on. It would be like saying the key to making a bridge is cement and support beams. It’s true, but it won’t help you make a bridge.

It’s funny how I stumbled upon this plan I’ll be following. I actually was looking at Grizzly’s post on getting double listings in Google. I assumed that the post was just about getting double listings, but he actually gave some great advice on building an authority site. The philosophy he gave was on “Trust Rank”. And basically that is the big G trusting your site enough that it will list it. Obviously getting a lot of links over many pages of content is a way of building trust.

Google doesn’t look at your site and sum it up as a value. It doesn’t say that your site is good, but this one is better. They rank pages. The idea is that if you have a lot of pages that show up in the top 10 then you must have a trust worthy site. This all may sound convoluted, but it isn’t. The idea is to rank for anything that is weak and will take minimal work. It doesn’t matter if it gets 5 searches a month, you rank for it. You build a few links to it, and that should hopefully push you into the top 10 for some crappy keyword.

What is an Authority Site?

Since everyone has a definition of this, I have to define it. For example, if you own the website flightsimulatorgames.com or something like that and you rank for the keyword “flight simulator games”, you’re not necessarily an authority site. You’re an authority for that one keyword, but that isn’t what makes up an authority site.

An authority site ranks in the top 10 for a wide range of keywords with little to no backlink work for the page you create. Ezinearticles is a prime example of what I’m talking about.  It is the main reason why people use the site. You create an article around a keyword and it will rank with no backlinks. Or you can do a few and it’ll rank.

I’m sure you can see the value in having a site like this. It’s nice to put up a page and it rank in the top 10 instantly. If you only have to build a few backlinks to the page, it’s also pretty sweet. Oprah has episodes where she actually looks at hot items that make good gifts. You can literally rank for those products she is plugging before the show is over. Without an authority site you’re completely out of luck.

Another great benefit is that you can go after trademarks. There are legal ramifications of buying domains with trademarks in them. But making an HTML page or blog post with a trademark is perfectly fine. It’s a way of building a site that has a huge benefit in the long run.

Just imagine how much cash you would make if it was the first of December and all you did every day was make product posts. All day long, every day and they ranked in the top 10 without having to do any backlinks. You’d literally clean up and that’s the real value.

There’s nothing wrong with having small niche sites though. It’s nice to have a mixed portfolio of sites to play with and you never know. A niche site could be turned into an authority if it gets that “Trust Rank” from Google.

The Plan I’ll Be Following

Like I said before, it is about showing up in the top 10 as much as possible. Not necessarily going after traffic keywords at first. But over time I should be able to go after more and more competitive terms.

I’m going to do product reviews or any severely low hanging fruit. It doesn’t matter whether they send a lot of traffic or not. The plan is just to go after things that are easy to rank for. They either need to rank with no backlinks or rank with around 4 backlinks. I’m just going to plug away with it like that and try things more competitive in the future.

Just to keep the numbers simple, lets say there is 300 days until Christmas.

If I write 2 pages of content per day and build 4 backlinks to each piece of content. I should have 600 pages and 2400 backlinks. If I write 3 pages I’ll have 900 pages and 3600 backlinks. As you can see it adds up very fast and I don’t have a problem writing these pages fast. Only 4 backlinks per page isn’t that big of a deal either.

So that is my plan, so I’ll keep you updated. I’m experimenting with the strategy with some of my small sniper sites. I’m keeping to the niche, when I do it, I just want to see how much Trust Rank helps.

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Sniper Sites Update

I’ve found myself in a bit of a funk where I have absolutely no motivation to do any work. I had the goal of finishing up my massive link building for all 41 of my sniper sites and I managed to get that all done last night. So I’m sort of stuck without a detailed goal right now, tired, Friday and not really wanting to work. Whenever I get in these moods, I can always come over to this site and write a blog post.

I guess we might as well get to the money right now. In my post about niche sites, I mentioned the total of $319.71 being earned since I started into the sniper sites. That was posted on November 27th, so I thought I’d do an update for all my readers.

Total Invested:  $354.20
Total Return: $652.98

So we can all chant yippie, I’m finally in positive territory, even though no where near where I’d like it to be. I think we really need to consider the fact that I just finished doing backlinks to all my sniper sites last night. Some of them had only one page of content and no monitization (which I promptly fixed). Every single one of the 41 websites had at least one new fresh page of keyword rich content that was somewhere between 500-1000 words.

The results of that work won’t be felt for a while now. I won’t expect anything for at least a month from some of the sites, so I’m not too worried about it. As of right now, I have 5 Adsense sites and the rest are Amazon. The majority of my earnings are from Amazon as well.

I only have a few sites that are in the money spot (top 3 at Google). I have a lot of them hanging at position 4, so I’m sure they’ll push up as the link juice flows through over the next few weeks. I should also say that I picked up an additional two domains, which are not listed in the above numbers. I’m going to throw them in the category of wave 3, even though there’s just two domains. They’re following the same idea. One of them is in a niche that I expect to get hot in the next few years, so we’ll see how interesting that goes.

The other domain has to do with another topic that I want to really work into.

Dominating the Top 10

I used to think the key to dominating a niche was getting the top spot for various keywords in the niche. What I’m trying to do now is dominate the top 10 positions of a keyword. This other domain I bought was the same keyworded domain as a domain in wave 1. I had the .net, so I picked up the .org (keyword.net and keyword.org). I have both sites on different hosting accounts (different IPs) and I have them ranking 4th and 5th position in Google. It used to be 3rd and 5th, but there has been a little movement lately.

I did use two different hosting accounts for the domains just so I’d have a unique IP located in a different city. I really don’t know how suspicious Google would get if keyword.net and keyword.org were ranked in the top 10 from the same IP#. If you’ve tested this please comment and let me know.

For the same keyword I’ve also created a hub (from hubpages) and backlinked the hell out of that. It’s taking an abnormal amount of time to get indexed, but once it does I’m sure it will spring into the top 10. I’ll just keep doing that with different sites until I actually fill in the top 10. And let me tell you how useful it is to have a bunch of sites fully backlinked in a niche. The keyword.net for the site was bought first and was built, backlinked and ranked for a while. The keyword.org site is a position 5 with only one backlink from my .net site. Once I do take the top 10 over, I’ll just start going into related keywords and take over the top 10 for them. And that is how to make cash or at least how I plan to make it.

That is going to be my next little project with the sniper sites. Any site that is ranked in the top 10, I will get an additional two sites that are mine to rank in the top 10. I can do this a number of ways. I can buy a domain for the keyword. So if I have keyword.net, I’ll pick up keyword.org (if available). I’ll probably go the free route with a hubpage or something like that.

Double Google Positions

Okay, now this is something that I want to do. It will allow me to occupy an extra top 10 position without actually having to hold any new site. It’s where you have your regular listing and an indented listing below it. Well, according to Griz all you have to do is link two pieces of content together with the same keyword. I linked backed to my old sniper sites post from this post I’m doing right now. What I’ll do is go back to that old post, edit it and link to this one. That is supposedly what needs to be done to create a double listing. I want to do that too.

I guess this is something that I’ll have to get done and the date to put on this will be tough. I’m predicting the best I can is two sites a day, with two extra properties each and with a double listing. Hmmm, Well, I’m heading to the Dominican Republic in March. I want to get that all done before I have to go there.

Well, I guess that is enough for this post. Just thought I’d tell you about the sites and that I’m in a positive return now, so that is a good thing. Keep at it and keep making cash.

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My Keyword Research Guide for Making Cash

I wanted to do a little keyword research guide that could help you guys make some money. I know that I’ve taken a bit of a break from the blog to do link building to this site. Honestly, I really haven’t done anything. I’ve made a support site and backlinked that, but that’s really all so far. I’ve been busying trying to finish my extensive backlinking of my sniper sites. I really want to get these 41 sites done this month, so that is where all my efforts are concentrated.

Keyword research is a very important thing to know how to do. Good keyword research means that you’ll get traffic and you can get it very soon after putting up the site. Bad keyword research means all your efforts go to waste. Building a site that no one visits isn’t enjoyable or fun, and you’re definitely not making cash doing that. Since this site is designed to show you how to make cash, I’m going to give you this keyword guide to follow.

The main tool being used today is Google’s Adword keyword tool. This is something relatively new (as in under 2 years I believe). Google used to be very secretive with their search volumes.  But they knew they had to provide something for their Adword clients, so that they would start spending money. This is the keyword tool that is the compromise. The reason that I say compromise is that sometimes it is very accurate and other times it is a complete joke.

Before Google came out with their tool, many of us used the Free Wordtracker tool. They got their data from smaller search engines and extroplated the data to overall internet volumes (IE: if search engine has 1% market share, than all keywords are multiplied by 100% to get real volume). It’s not near perfect either.

For this keyword research guide we’re going to use Google’s Tool because when it is correct, we’re good.

Finding Exact Search Volumes

Just go to the keyword tool link I gave above and type in the keyword/niche/whatever into the keyword tool and take a look at the results. The first thing you have to understand is that the results are set to broad, which makes them exceptionally over inflated. You have to set the “Match Type” to “Exact”.

When you set it to exact, you’re going to get a much  more accurate view of how many searches that you’ll get a month. For me, I’m always aiming for a minimum of 100 searches per day for the main keywords that I pick up.  That means roughly 3000 searches a month. Those are the keywords I’m trying to get. If you’re someone that is new, you might want to aim lower (though that might not help for the verification section of this post). What you’ll want to do is take all the keywords that you find and throw them into notepad.

Assess Competition

At this point of the keyword research guide I like to look at the competition and assess how much work that I’ll have to put into rank for a keyword. This can be tough for a lot of you because experience plays a big roll in this. You can look at some of the criteria out there by many of the different gurus if you want… like maybe Ed Dale or something.

Personally, all I’m looking for are weak sites listed in the top 10 when I search the keyword at Google. Just remember that aggregators are weak. An aggregator is a site that just lists products and shit automatically. They basically have a massive database of stuff. The content on the pages are minimal. 

You should also be able to pick up “webmaster” like search results. A search result like that has typical “webmaster-esque” like results coming up. You’ll see squidoo lenses, hubpages, Ezinearticles, etc. Typically with a keyword targeted domain you shouldn’t have an issue out doing them.

This is important, so don’t skimp on this. If the top 10 are dominated by power house authority sites like Wikipedia, WebMD, etc you’re going to have trouble getting anywhere near the top. I’m not saying this is impossible, or that there aren’t exceptions to the rules, but you have to recognize lost causes.

Checking for a “Dud” Keyword

Up to this point, the keyword research guide was just like any other that you would find on the internet. Essentially find the keywords, check competition and go for them. But if you’ve been at this long enough you’ve probably noticed that some keywords you go after don’t have quite as much traffic that you expected. In fact, you can be hugely disappointed by inaccurate data provided by Google.

I’m sure Google has extremely accurate data when it comes to searches, but they hide some of it. They hide it because they don’t want us gaming the search engine.

The cool thing is that I’ve found a way to find out if a keyword is a dud and can help you determine how accurate Google’s keyword tool really is. This is very valuable to those that want to make cash online.

Even though the keyword tool has issues, I’ve found that Google Trends is quite accurate with its information. I hope you’ve been using trends before this point because you can learn a lot about the keyword. Most important thing is WHERE the traffic comes from. What do you think is more profitable? Traffic from United States, Canada, Australia or traffic coming from India, Philippines, etc? We all know the western world is the best, primarly the United States. Anyway, that is an aside.

Anyway, take your keyword and type it into Google Trends search and you’re going to end up with a graph. If you get no graph, the search volume is probably below 1500/mth. There’s a cut off point on trends where it won’t give data. I’m guessing that is the magic number.

Here’s the key, an accurate keyword will have a graph that exists for a significant period of time. When I say “exists” I mean it isn’t zero. You’ll notice a lot of keywords will have sections where the graph is zero. If that makes up a small portion of the graph than you can be pretty sure the keyword isn’t a dud. But if a big portion of the graph is zero or erratic jumps from zero then it is probably a dud. And I would avoid that keyword.

Here is an example of what a good keyword would look like:

There are some zero chunks of the graph very early on. But you can see that the graph exists pretty consistently for a good two and half years. The keyword tool said this keyword gets 3600/mth. I rank top spot for it and the numbers appear to be very accurate.

Here is an example of what a dud keyword MAY look like:

 This graph is much different. Over half of the graph has the zero areas and this happens to be one of the MANY possible ways a dud keyword would show up on a graph like. The keyword tool at the time of me going after this keyword said it got somewhere around 3000 searches a month. Six months later and finally ranking for the keyword, I’ve found that it gets absolutely nothing. Maybe 10-15 people search it a day at most.

I was going to show you a graph of another keyword that I ranked for that turned out to be a semi-dud. At the time of this post trends won’t show the graph (too low volume), but as of a few days ago it showed it. It was essentially a straight line that went up. That’s all it was. Just a straight line going up. Google keyword tool says it gets 5400 searches a month. I rank for it and can obviously tell you that the volume isn’t very high.

Verifying Data Volume

You can also use Trends to verify the volume on a search term. It’s quite a useful tool. If you personally know the search volume for one keyword you can compare it against another. You just have to use a comma to do this and it can be done like in the image below.

The very first graph that I showed you in this keyword research guide was for a term that I personally know gets rougly 3600 searches each month. This allows you to create a base and judge it against the other graph. Here is an example below.

The red graph is my 3600/mth keyword term and blue is our “researched keyword”, which I also happen to rank for. As we can see, blue is just a little smaller on average than the red. It probably gets around 3000 searches a month. According to the keyword tool the blue graph is around 2900/mth and I rank for it. It gets about that.

Let’s take a look at another one.

Like before, the red is the 3600/mth base and blue is the “researched keyword”. As you can see for 2007 and part of 2008 the search volumes were about the same. Blue was probably getting about 4000/mth. But over the last year and half there has been a significant jump in the volume that is coming in. You might be thinking that the volume of this particular keyword is about 8000/mth now maybe 9000/mth. The keyword tool lists the keyword at 10,000/mth. I rank for it and I can verify that the number of searches are probably closer to 10k a month.

I can keep throwing graphs at you, but I think you get a relatively good idea of what you need to do.

Assessing WHERE the Traffic Comes From

Finishing off the keyword research guide can be done easy enough with trends. The last thing you want to know where the traffic is coming from and it should be consistent with the specific demographic you’re trageting.  If you don’t know who you’re targeting than you’re aiming for the United States. Something like the rave niche would probably be a more UK related niche. Understand? Most of the time you’ll be aiming for Americans unless it is a special niche.

Below the graph you’re going to see regions bar graph. It will list the top 10 countries where searches originate. Very simple stuff people.

Here is what a good demographic will look like:

You have the United States first and primarily Western countries in the rank. Don’t worry if you have Canada, Australia or the United Kingdom coming in first. They’re all pretty similar when it comes to a credit card.

Here is what a bad demographic will look like:

Most of the searches are coming from Nigeria. How many big spenders do you think come from the top 3? Not many. India will be a game changer in the future (a few decades), but they’re hardly the traffic to target right now. Unless, you’re targeting something specific to that audience.

I guess that is enough for the keyword research guide. I’ll add more to it if I think of it, but other than that it looks good to me. Should be enough to go on and start making cash.

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Make Cash Online Now With Niche Sites

I guess this is going to be my post that will update you on my sniper sites. It’s odd for me to be writing this on a Friday morning, but I’m just not feeling that good. I’m sick, but sorta sick. I started feeling it yesterday, but I was still able to pump out 30 articles, but I digress. I thought I should write this post and get something done while I’m not feeling that great.

Things have changed a lot. I currently have moved most of the sites to an Amazon based monetization. Currently I have 6 Adsense sites, 1 Clickbank site and 34 Amazon sites for this project right now. The thing about Adsense is that there is this thing called smart pricing. And it usually happens when Google doesn’t view your traffic as very valuable and just gives you shit for clicks.

Adsense was great at the first because my sites got a lot more search traffic at the first. When you’re in these tiny niches the Google dance doesn’t occur right away. I had sites that were hanging on the front page for nearly two months and then I was getting the dance, which pushed me way off the front pages.

I started to get smart priced and that wasn’t helping the sites that were still on the front page providing valuable clicks. A few days after I did this, my cash per clicks improved greatly and I was able to make cash online in a little more efficient manner.

Will I Change Sites Back to Adsense

Honestly, I don’t know. I can always switch back to Adsense when I’m getting more search traffic to the sites, which Google will view as quality. But the big hurdle for me is that I really have issues with Adsense as a business model. And I just can’t seem to get past it.

My mentor (who is an adult webmaster and who I talk to from time to time) told me to avoid Adsense because it is a “ripoff” as he put it.

I was reading Griz’s blog and he made the comment that Adsense was the best because it had the most people using it. That really isn’t an argument. Islam is the biggest religion, so should I stop being an atheist and convert to Islam.

Adsense is great for a certain type of site. The site that has a lot of content being added to it that comes from very diverse categories. Of course a news site is going to use the program because they need something that will target the content. The same is true for article directories. This is really the main reason why Adsense is a big program, but it doesn’t mean it is the best way to make cash online for you.

With niche sites or sniper sites, you know exactly what the hell to advertise. If I have a site on hair styling products than I already know what I’m going to have to advertise. It’s not rocket science. I could put Adsense on the site and get 50 cents a click, but is that worth it? If you actually look at the ads which come up (don’t click, type in the url manually), you’ll see that a product is being sold and that you could quite easily sell it yourself.

Let’s get right down to the facts. If someone is paying Google to show up in the ads, they’re going to want to turn a profit. If the ads are going to last for the long term than the advertiser has to be turning a profit. Google turns a profit no matter what and you get the rest of the click value. In this scenario you’re getting the short end of the stick. You can easily cut out the middle man and sell it yourself.

The big issue with Adsense is that it isn’t a business model based on value for value. It’s more like potential value for cash. There is more risk in that and I think the business model is flawed. That’s not to say you can’t make cash with a flawed business model.

You get paid for something that might not bring value. If someone clicks the ad and doesn’t buy, well, no value has been created, but you got paid. Since this is such an easy to abuse system (click on an ad) Google has to spend a lot man power watching over it. The integrity of the system is something that can knock off good people because value has to be created on both ends.

With Amazon, for example, I don’t make a single penny until someone buys. I don’t receive value until value is created for Amazon and that is the big difference. Amazon isn’t a wrecking machine trying to ban members because it doesn’t matter. As long as you’re not doing anything illegal, it really doesn’t matter. Because you can’t defraud the system. Someone has to buy and if they don’t buy, you don’t get shit.

That was sort of an aside on Adsense. I’ve been thinking about it lately and I’m just not thrilled with it. I’ll still pursue it in a minor way since I want to be a little more diversified.

Making Cash Online With Niche Sites

Well, I guess I should get right down to the numbers on this. I actually haven’t even calculated it yet, with almost 900 words written in this post. I’m going calculate it now and write it below here.

Total Invested: $354.20 US
Total Return: $319.71 US

It’s fast approaching the break even mark. I know that I’m not making any huge strides or anything with them, but I haven’t really done much work on them lately. I just got them up, built a few links to them and mainly let them site for a while. I’m making more with Amazon this month than Adsense, which is nice.

Over the last two weeks, I’ve been going into a more aggressive mode getting backlinks for these sites. And with 41 of them, it is really time consuming to get through them. I’ve been able to write 15 articles each for 17 of the sites (that’s 255 articles).

I’m basically in the crunch time right now where I want to get the sites up as high as I can for Christmas that is fast approaching. One of my sites is Thanksgiving related and it’s the first time that I built a site completely for one holiday. I wasn’t able to get the site anywhere near the front page for its main keyword by the time Thanksgiving in the United States rolled around (which was yesterday). But the interesting thing is the amount of long tail searches that I got during that time. That is all important search behavior that I can target more aggressively next year, so I will make cash online in much bigger numbers.

Site News Side Note: I thought I’d jam a little site news into the end of this post. If you actually read these posts you’ll probably see it… if not, I don’t care.

I try to write a post once a week for this site. I’ve been trying to see how valuable writing these monster posts on making cash would work out, but monster posts only go so far. I need to do a lot of link building. This site isn’t monetized, so it isn’t a priority to do work for. I have a ton of other sites that need work and they actually make me money.

I usually spend an hour or two writing these posts, so I thought instead of writing them I’ll just build backlinks. That means I’m not going to be updating the site with new posts every week. I’m probably going to stop for a month or two and get some backlink work done. We’ll be able to see the real value in all these long posts when I get it done.

FYI: If you’re planning on linking to this site, try to use some sort of long tail of Make Cash Online. You can use how to make cash online copywriting, make cash online with sniper sites, etc.

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Make Cash Online Selling Benefits

I thought it would be nice to do another post on copywriting and selling stuff. I seem to get more long tail traffic related to this sort of subject manner, than the other affiliate marketing stuff that I talk about. I am meaning to do a post on my sniper sites. It has been a while since I talked about them, and you guys really do need an update on them. But for now I’m going to continue on with copywriting talk.

A big problem that people run into when they’re selling is that they’re trying to sell a product. It seems a bit odd, considering that your goal is to sell a product. You’re not going to make any money if you don’t have people taking out their credit cards and buying. But there is a difference between what people actually buy and what you’re selling.

Let’s say that you go to Walmart and buy a bed side lamp. What you bought was a bed side lamp, but that isn’t what sold you. You didn’t buy a lamp because it is a lamp. No one buys anything because that is what it is. You don’t buy televisions because their televisions. You don’t buy for that reason because it is not a benefit.

You end up buying a bed side lamp because it provides light. It allows you to read while you’re lying in bed. You buy a television, so you can be entertained with great shows or movies. You are buying for the benefit, not for what is being sold.

This may sound a little convoluted, but it’s important. You don’t sell a product. You sell benefits a customer can derive from a product.

For main regular things that we buy, we don’t really need to be told the benefits because we already know them. We already know chocolate chip cookies at the grocery store taste good. We know that benefit. But for affiliate marketers, we are less likely to be put in this situation.

It’s All About the Customer

As a marketer, you’re in a constant battle to understand your customer. The best marketers in the world are very good at knowing them. I don’t give a shit how you do it, but you have to figure out the people that are going to buy whipping out their credit card for you.

I’m an affiliate marketer (I don’t like the term internet marketer) and I can figure out customers in a pretty good way if I was selling something related to that niche. I remember starting out and what I was doing. I remember busting my balls each day doing things, without even knowing if I would make a penny at it. I went 23 days of working full time before I made my very first sale online.

But if you’re in a niche that you really don’t understand than you have to do the research if you expect to make cash online. And the reason that you really need to dig deep down into your potential customer is because you’ll never know exactly what they want to hear. You may think you know what they want, but unless you’re living it, you don’t know.

Let’s take my latest product that I’m still playing with and testing. I have some interesting asides to add to this, after I make my point. I made my sales letter and I came out with something decent. It needs work, but I am making sales and it’s not a total dud. Trust me, making sales shows that you’re on the right track. Making no sales is dud.

I haven’t tested this yet, but it appears to be the case. I came at my customer from a very logical point of view. I was appealing to their logic and providing benefits in that way. I shouldn’t be doing that, but I still have to test it. I have to appeal to them on a different level. I’m going to be working on my 5th edit and trying to hit up a much more emotional impact on the reader.

I don’t want to go into detail about the niche until I release it, but I want my customer to have their adrenalin pumping and getting excited, not logically intrigued. Logically intrigued as been getting me sales though. In November, I’m converting at a much more respectful1:75. And that’s without any changes to the sales letter from the previous month, so it’s hard to figure it out.

My Aside on my product: Things have been getting a little more exciting. I’ve been getting more sales over the last week now, which is nice. But it looks like the niche I’m in is much more hungry than I thought.

First, I had someone contact me from a newspaper/magazine in my niche. A reporter was looking to get information on my niche. Considering that I’ve done absolutely no backlink building, I’m being viewed as an authority. I don’t know how big this newspaper/magazine is, but obviously big enough to hire reporters. I haven’t got to talk to them since the original request, so I’m not sure if they’re looking for information on the niche or if I’m possibly going to get a plug for my site.

Second, I got contacted yet again. But this time it was about the other site that ended their affiliate program and took my money. This person wanted help in tracking down information about the other owner because he was going to launch a copyright suit against him. Yes, the asshole that stole my money, also stole his product from this guy. And I want to point out that this guy isn’t an internet marketer. He has a legit business that deals with this niche.

So justice could be on the horizon. My main competitor (and scam artist) could be eliminated through legal means. Sweet. This is the big news and it is pretty exciting.

Okay, back to how to make cash online copywriting.

Customers Only Want to Know What is in it for them

A potential customer that is going to come and read your copy only cares about himself (or herself). When I read a page, I don’t give a flying fuck what you think or how good you are. It means nothing to me as some guy on your website.

…but if you’re an expert, doesn’t that make it easier to sell?

Absolutely, but that comes later. I have to know what is in it for me before I give a shit whether you’re Doctor King Shit or Affiliate Marketing Millionaire.

When someone lands on your sales page, assume that they don’t know what the fuck they’re here for. Telling them you’re Dr. King Shit doesn’t matter to them at first. Let’s say that you’re flipping through the channels on TV and you come to a station and stop for a second. “Hi, I’m Dr. King Shit and I have six medical degrees from the University of ” *click* Off to the next channel.

When you have authority like being a doctor, it will really help you sell medical related stuff. But no one is ever going to buy unless they know about the benefits. Instead of telling them that you’re Dr. King Shit, tell them the benefits.

“Imagine never having to see a single blemish on your face again. In just 30 days you can be completely cured from Acne for good,” and this can go on for a bit.

You have to view it from the point of the view of the customer. When they’re first on the site, they want to know what is it in for them – not who you are. You want the person reading to say “Hmmm, this sounds really good, but how do I know that you can help me.” Bam, Dr. King Shit enters the sales letter and reassures the customer that he/she is the real deal and has the knowledge to provide the benefit.

But that is the difference I’m talking about. Everything is about the benefit, even when the reader is told about you being Dr. King Shit. So here is what you have to take out of this whole thing…

You’re selling a benefit and the product is the answer

So let’s spend a little time talking about persuasion. I want to get right into the details about the key elements of persuasion. I’ve talked about persuasive verbs, but we really need to get down to the actual psychology of the whole thing. All of these points come out of the book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. It is a great read.

  • Reciprocation
  • Commitment and Consistency
  • Social Proof
  • Liking
  • Authority
  • Scarcity

I’ll give you a little breakdown of all these points because they’re important. You’ve probably seen some of these on sales pages. You should try to implement these too when you’re trying to sell.

Reciprocation

I guess the best way I could sum up this particular point, is that you want to create a feeling of debt in the mind of the reader. You want them to feel in debt to you. Psychologically we are driven to always even things up. If I buy you lunch at work, you’ll feel in debt to me. You’ll want to buy my lunch to even things up. But you can be pushed easily into doing things. I could spend $5 on lunch and I could easily suck more out of you if I recognize that you feel in debt to me.

You may have seen some sales pages that offer part of their product for free. Granted they’ll ask you to opt into a mailing list, but they’re going to give you something absolutely for free. This creates a feeling of debt in their mind and can be later persuaded to buy.

Commitment and Consistency

This can be best summed up as you give an inch and they take a mile. If you can get someone to hold a small position, than you can push them further and further over time. You can change the way they feel about things. This is something that requires the book to do some studying on it. It’s a little more complicated. So if you view yourself as a charitable person, than if someone positions themselves in a way where they need charity, you’ll probably give them money.

The example in the book on this subject is very interesting. He talked about the Korean War and Chinese POW camps. Americans that were in these camps actually started hating America and still hate the country to this date. And the Chinese did it through commitment and consistency. They’d have Americans write essays just asking them to write one bad thing about America and they literally exploited the hell out of it. It’s interesting stuff.

Social Proof

This is the most common thing you see and it is just a testimonial. People are sheepish in nature. You may think you’re independent, but you’re still internally wired to want to know what other people are doing. Have you ever been watching someone on a stage and they say something that could possibly funny, but you look around to wait for someone else to laugh? That is social proof. If you identify with person A. Person A bought this product and had success. You’ll feel more likely to buy.

Let’s say that you’re a nerd that can’t get a date. If the testimonials are all of nerds. You’ll identify with them. You’ll see their success and you’ll think that you can accomplish it too.

Authority

If you’re Dr. King Shit than you can probably sell any medical related product you want. I think this is pretty self explanatory.

Liking

This has to do with your likability as a seller. We’re more likely to buy from people that we like. I thought the example listed in this book was the best. Women are known to be the ones that have Tupperware parties. So you go over to your friends house, you talk, eat food, etc and then you’re sold stuff. All the women that go over to it know that they’re going to be sold something and they still go (and buy).

You’re more likely to buy from someone that you like. Guys will buy from very beautiful women. Friends will have difficulty saying no to their friends.

Scarcity

This is a way of limiting something and the idea is to force someone to ACT NOW to buy the product. As a marketer, you need them to BUY IT RIGHT NOW!!!! You can’t afford to let them go. You don’t tell them to sit down and think about it. When you give them time, they’ll come down and the emotional pull will be gone.

You want people to feel the benefit and feel a loss if they don’t act right now. It’s like the Shamwow infomercials on television. If you buy in the next 10 minutes, you’ll get two additional Shamwow’s absolutely free. You can call in anytime you want, you’re getting the two free, but they tell you that to make you want to buy. It puts pressure on your mind. “I better act now, or I might lose out on that good deal.” Ebooks are a little different. Scarcity is applied to the actual product or price. You may only limit the book to the first 50 customers, or your price might go up after the first 50 customers.

All of these points make up what it takes to persuade people. This is how you persuade with your copy and it is how you’ll make cash online. There is one other point I got from this book, but I can’t remember exactly what section it falls under. Probably falls under the Reciprocation category.

It is the concept of contrast. By nature, we are wired to compromise with other people. It’s basically what is needed for our survival as social creatures. The idea is that you can make things sound better through contrast. If you ask a friend if you can borrow $100 she’ll probably say no. But if you ask, how about $10? It’s a lot easier to give it because they’ve made a big step in asking less. Since they’ve made an attempt to compromise, you’ll want to do it too.

You should be able to see the power in such a thing. You’ll see this on sales letters where they list the price at $197, but they slash it out and say that it is $37 for a limited time. It’s a compromise and you’ll be more likely to act on it.

Another example, which I want to implement, is pricing through different packages. Let’s say that you can buy a living room chair for $299. But I also tell you that you can get the matching sofa for $649 and that you can get the chair and sofa together for $699. Contrast hits you. You’re going to go for the sofa and chair because it is the best deal. In fact, it’s a really good deal when you compare the prices. *Hint* that doesn’t mean the prices are logical to begin with. It’s the contrast that sells it.

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Stay Away from the Warrior Forum to Make Cash

Well, this is a post early in the week for once and I was actually motivated to post this one. There is just something about the Warrior Forum that you need to pay attention too because it is quite apparent. You’re going to see strategies (which blow and involve “bitch marketing”) and you’re going to hear about success stories. Hell you’ll see questions too. You’d think that is normal for a forum and I suppose it is.

Let me give you a good example. I was reading through a tread the other day on some success story. This guy talked about his “blah blah” method and what he was doing. After I got through the post I thought that it sounded pretty cool and I that I would give it a try. Guess what I see? Right in their signature it has a link to buy the “blah blah” method. I’m serious. I see this all the time.

I remember a while ago there was a thread on anti-article marketing by a person. It was several pages long and the OP mentioned something about making static RSS feeds. At the time, I wasn’t sure how to do those, so I asked a question about it in the thread. For whatever reason the OP missed the thread and it pushed onto the second page. I PMed this person and just asked them about it. Guess what the reply was? Buy my WSO on it.

Everyone on the Warrior Forum is selling. Everyone has an agenda and you need to aware of the information being fed to you. With that said, I’m not against making cash for your own methods. Do what you need to do to make money and stuff, but I know there is an agenda and it pisses me off.

Don’t get me wrong though, there are some good people there (few and far between), but you can usually tell the difference. The first is obviously these long drawn out posts that have no value. I can only describe them as Steve Pavlina posts. Just complete fluff that sounds nice, but contains absolutely no value.

This is the kind of stuff you have to watch out for. I just made a post called How to Make Cash Online Copywriting. Even though these forum posts appear to be regular posts, it fits into the elements of a sales letter. There is always some big explosive title like “How I made $100/day with one month of work” or something like that. You read it and the benefits are focused on. “It’s easy”, “saves time”, “get in the top 10 fast”, “get loads of traffic”, but the substance is missing. There really isn’t much about the method. Just how fuckin’ “uber elite” it works. And it is all topped off with a sig link.

You will also see the Warrior Forum flyer that just pops into threads related to their topic and basically talk about their method. Now, I know that I’m describing this in a way that makes it appear like this is blatant spam and that’s not what I’m talking about. They’re premium long time members of the forum and people that you would probably trust. They’ll just make long “fluff” posts that add no value, but sound nice. And it becomes even more difficult to think about what is right when every shit brain member praises them for the “amazing post”.

I’m a member of the War Room at the Warrior Forum and it isn’t too bad. There are some interesting things in that forum, but there is another aspect of it. It’s basically list building up sell central. Don’t get me wrong, there are a few things listed in there that are cool, but for the most part you’re getting teaser information or methods that are a bit old.

Oh I just got a PM about something. I guess I’ll talk about the topic. It was about Article Spinners and I was curious about how you can write articles with a 70% uniqueness. Well, of course someone highly promoting the idea of it is someone that is plugging their own program. The traditional spinners use {} syntax. It works like this:

I {like|enjoy} to {walk|drive|hitchhike} to the {mall|store}.

Essentially it randomizes the entire sequence of words, so the sentences are different. Well this guy says that the {} syntax is shit and he give me a promo video for his product to watch how he does it. He has a system that is just like it, except it doesn’t use {} syntax. It just has some other syntax and made in such a way that it actually slows you down when you’re writing.

But this guy has a kicker, he just uses paragraphs and spins entire paragraphs around.  It’s ridiculous and just stupid. You only get so many variations of the article (which are essentially unique because you wrote them) and then you’re just using copied paragraphs which I’m sure Google sees.

I’m more interested in recursive {} syntax and do it at a much more micro level, so that it is spun and you get that 70% unique rate. I’m probably going to do a post on this later though.

I just found this funny. Absolute joke on this guys part. His product is nothing more than the {} syntax he called “crap” and it is built in a less efficient way. Plus his method is all about swapping (not spinning) paragraphs. Which you can do on your own and don’t need to purchase this asshole’s product. But this is a prime example of how people are biased and lying to make cash on the forum. They’re not going to tell you the truth. They’re just trying to sell you crap. And they’re hoping you’re too dumb to fall for it.

This is just so ridiculous. I’m literally laughing at the stupidity of this video and this moron on the Warrior Forum. While I was dicking around with the crappy {} syntax I have an article up to around 70% uniqueness. I’ll be able to produce 50 copies of it at that rate and Google probably won’t even be able to tell the difference.

What a fuckwad. Stay away from the warrior forum if you want to make cash online. It is something that is going to full you with bitch work and bitch ideas that are really people selling your some bullshit.

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How to Make Cash Online Copywriting

I thought it was about time that I sat down and did another post on copywriting. Like I mentioned in the previous post I did, my copywriting post is by far the most popular with Google. That’s not to say that it gets a lot of traffic, but it seems to be viewed as a good thing with Google. When I run a site: command at G for my site, it actually comes up first. Usually your root site will come up, but not in this case. Here is the Copywriting, Persuasion and Active Verbs post.

What is Copywriting?

Take notice that the word is writing and not righting. We’re not talking about intellectual property rights here. Copywriting is the ability to write persuasively. Fundamentally it is your ability to use words to sell things. This is very important for marketing. If you’re trying to make cash online with Adsense than you really don’t need to know how to do any of this stuff. The goal of Adsense is to let someone else click and that’s how you get your money.

You can make cash with Adsense, but I’m yet to be convinced it is the best route to go. You have to accept the fact that the page people click through too is selling something. If the business that buys the ads are continuously doing it, than they’re turning a profit. I find this quite annoying because you’re getting squeezed.

When you step away from Adsense and try to make cash from home with affiliate marketing, the game changes. You don’t have to write useful content anymore. It’s bullshit. Google can’t tell whether you’re writing quality informative content or if you’re writing persuasively to sell something. The SEO value is still there, but you’re putting yourself into the position of turning more profit.

Pull on their Emotions, not their Sensibilities

The problem with being a webmaster is that we’re really desensitized to marketing. Well, if you’re an Adsense type of guy, you might not, but I’m pretty desensitized to it. What we end up thinking is that logic will inevitably win them over. And I know I make that mistake. My current sales letter for the new product I’m testing out is sort of on the logical side. It’s converting now at about 1:150. It’s not anywhere near where I want it to be, but not a total bomb.

You’re going to get people to buy on a logical level, but emotional has a bigger impact. It just hits you differently. You feel it deep down in your stomach and it hits you differently.

Let’s say that you’re going to sell a career to someone. You can say that you’ll make $50k/year. You’ll get full medical, dental and a beefed pension. You’ll get plenty of unemployed people that would want that. But that is logical and it’s a little different. Most customers aren’t like that though. Staying in their comfort zone is a lot easier and they’re more likely to do it.

Let’s say that you were going to sell a career to someone that already had a career. They get similar benefits and pay, so how would you sell this new career now? The logical approach isn’t going to sell this person, so you have to reach and think on an emotional level. What are some of the emotionally good things that this person would be doing in this career. If it was a job with the police force than they’d be hunting down criminals, kicking in doors, shooting, etc. It would be an adrenalin pumping type experience.

You have to bring that to your niche because that is what sells. There is a very good saying in copywriting that goes along the lines of “you’ll buy for emotional reasons and rationalize it later”. What that means is that you’ll pull out your credit card for the adrenalin pumping experience, but you’ll later rationalize it in a calm state as a secure job, with good benefits, etc.

There is another aspect of copywriting that I should of went into first…

Benefits and Features

This is about the biggest breakdown for most people trying to sell. Customers buy for the benefits, not for the features. If you want to make cash online you have to sell the benefits to people.

Let’s say I’m an average car owner. I don’t know much about cars, but I know I need winter tires. Telling me that you have 15 inch studded tires, doesn’t tell me shit. That doesn’t help me.  As an average stupid car owner, I really don’t know why I need to know the inches of the tire. Most people aren’t going to know that they have 14 or 15 inch rims and need a specific sized tire.

You may think that studded tires is a benefit, but it really is a feature. The benefit of studded tires is that you can stop on a dime while driving on ice. Don’t ever assume that the person you’re selling to is going to make that connection. If your customer has to figure something out, they’re probably not going to buy. Even if they do figure out that benefit they’re not necessarily going to buy because you don’t really get the same emotional response that way.

Make sure you spell this out to your customer. Just keep it simple and say it. You don’t have to leave out the feature, but if you’re going to list the feature you should at least say the benefit too. “Studded tires will allow you to stop on a dime while driving on ice.” Bam, Done!

But you also have to know who your customer is. Depending on your customer a feature could be a benefit. If you’re selling computers to high tech computer geeks, telling them that the computer is “really really fast” isn’t going to help them. Saying a “3.5 GHz Dual Core Processor” would be a benefit to them because that’s a fuckin’ powerful computer.

There are still benefits to be sold though. I keep thinking of people that build up cars for racing. Like street racing. It’s like the amateur person, but they know a lot about cars. They know a lot, but the benefit you’re selling is speed. It doesn’t matter if they’re buying nitro or if you have a new way of keeping the engine cooler. They want speed. They want to drive around at 150mph and kill themselves. Give them what they want.

Conceptual or Tangible Selling

There was a great video of Eben Pagan that I saw. Eben Pagan is the David Deangelo guy. He got famous because of his Double Your Dating brand. He was in that whole Pick up Artist, Getting Laid, etc sort of niche, but it actually launched him into marketing and things like that. When I first heard of him (David Deangelo) I heard that he was a brilliant marketer and that’s what he is.

This is a really good video. Just take note that the guy asking the question is a fuckin’ idiot and I don’t think he’s even listening half the time. He doesn’t even answer the questions directly.

Eben makes the good copywriting point here because you have to sell something tangible. People aren’t going to buy conceptual ideas. You have to dig deep into the mind of a potential customer and figure out that exact emotional trigger and tangibly hit it. In a later post, I’m going to go into what the emotional triggers, so for now I’ll just leave them out. But let’s look at a few examples. Which one is more exciting to you.

“Financial Security” or “$100,000 in Cash”

Definitely the cash. I think we all want financial security, but it is only a concept. It’s not tangible or anything along those lines. The way it is thrown around today it is literally a cliche. What is financial security? When you boil it right down to the root of it, it’s just money. Selling money to people is a good place to start because GREED is one of the emotional triggers. I said I wouldn’t get into the triggers, but that’s one to illustrate the point.

“Be An Amazing Investor” or “Earn $1000 A Week in the Stock Market With No Risk”

It should be obvious which one is going to sell. We all want to be amazing investors, but just because you say it doesn’t mean that I’m going to feel it and want to buy it. It is the tangible that I can see. Making a $1000 a week, with no risk. Fuck, sign me up now.

“How to be a Good Hockey Player” or “Discover the Triple Deke the Scores Every Time”

This is hockey reference and since I’m Canadian, you guys might not get it. A deke is when you stick handle in such a way where you can trick the goalie score. It’s used in penalty shots and shootouts.  Being a good hockey player is abstract.  If I wanted to know how to be a good hockey player, I would be looking for specific things. I want to know how to skate faster or score more goals.

This is a very big part of copywriting. If you want to make cash online you have to understand the difference between the conceptual idea and the tangible. The reason that conceptual is such a problem is because people think they’re clever when they use it. Financial Security sounds like a good idea. Who doesn’t want to have financial security? It sounds nice, but you’re not here to sound nice. If you’re copywriting your goal is to make sales, ie: make cash. You’re not here to wow the reader. Only wow them to sale.

Financial Security doesn’t get my engine revving. Making fifty grand on autopilot every year gets me all revved up.

Grab Attention

If you haven’t already noticed, sales letters really fuckin’ long. But if you want to make cash online copywriting than you need to understand that they work. A big rule of copywriting is to make sure that you make it nice and easy. You want to make sure that the reader doesn’t have to work. It seems sort of counter intuitive to have a long sales letter because the prospect has to work hard to read.

You have to get their attention and hold it. This is sometimes difficult. Don’t expect to sit down one day and start writing persuasive copy. It’s something that you’re going work at, test out, come back to later and edit. The product I’m testing out now is currently on it’s 4th copy to convert at 1:150. It can take up to 8 rough copies before you get somewhere with it.

The headline is the most important thing to grab attention because they’re not reading if you don’t get their attention. Here’s a way of looking at it. I come to a page and there is a lot of fucking text to read. Why should I? Your headline should be able to answer the question. It has to contain the most powerful benefit you’re selling to me because that is the only way I’m going to even try and read this monster letter.

But you also need those powerful subheadings throughout the letter too because we have to face the facts. Not everyone is going to read the letter word for word. They’re going to skim through it and see what they like (or don’t like). You need those headings to suck them into the copy.

It is a big part of copywriting. You’d be surprised how many people just tweak the headline at the top of the page and their conversion rate doubles. The reason is probably because their copy isn’t that bad. It’s probably pretty persuasive, but their headline wasn’t sucking them in to read the persuasive copy. That is how a simple change in the headline can help you make cash and make a lot more it.

Persuasion is a Soft Science

I come from the realm of hard science. That is the subjects of physics and chemistry. The answers are exact and to the point. Gravity is 9.8m/s on Earth and nothing changes that. Persuasion is a branch of psychology and that is a soft science. There is no exact or necessarily a right way of doing things. Somethings work and others don’t. Sometimes going against the rules can help you make cash, while following the rules can lead to failure. It’s one of those odd things because we’re playing with psychology.

When you see the link for Christine Taylor’s tight ass, do you want to click? Are those 4 words persuasive for you? What about Casey Cartwright ass? For me, it is less persuasive than tight ass, but it’s not a science.

Even though I brought in those links, which was for more of a SEO experiment then anything, the point is that you have to test things out. You have to play with. You have to throw things out there and see what happens. You still have to hit up those emotional points, but identifying them is difficult. Think of it this way, how can you identify these emotional points if you couldn’t even identify them in yourself?  You have to understand the fears, goals, desires, wants, hates, etc in your current prospects and it can be hard to figure this out. Often people aren’t willing to share things with you.

Here is an example: making cash. Investing to make cash you would assume that the prospect would be interested in money and making it. Certainly they are, but is that the big emotional trigger?

When I think of investing in the stock market, the idea of making cash from my investments sounds awesome. It is an exciting feeling, but I can also think of another powerful feeling. One that is a lot more powerful. The feeling is losing my money. If I take 10 grand and invest into a company lose it all. Holy fuck. That scares the crap out of me. I know there is a lot of people out there that feel the same way.

The fear of loss can often be more powerful feeling then gaining something. As a copywriter you should be thinking about those things because you never really know what a person wants. They might not even be interested in gaining money, more then they want to not lose money.

SEO Copywriting

This has been a hot topic in copywriting that many people have been discussing. We all understand that SEO is very important. It is by far the most important thing (on page) that you can do to get traffic from search engines. The real debate comes from the perspective of persuasion. Does SEO copywriting diminish your ability to be persuasive? I don’t know. I don’t have an answer and I’m guessing that a lot of copywriters don’t have an answer.

SEO is important and Persuasion is important. I suppose the copywriter has to find a balance. I’m going to say that balance to should fall toward persuasion since that is the most important thing. You  have to make sure that you’re able to sell and if you can work the keyword in normal conversation then you should be fine.

But let’s make no mistake, links play the bigger role in search traffic. I have a site that ranks for niche name remedies and I don’t even have the term remedies on the page. In fact I show up in the top ten when you search “niche name remedies” in quotes. It’s like Google doesn’t even give a fuck anymore about that type of query.

So How do you learn Copywriting?

I guess this is the question that will help you make cash online. I don’t know if there is necessarily a method to explain this. I fall under the category of learn by doing. And I suspect this is the best way for all people to go. You can read and read all day, but all you’re reading is ideas on persuasion and putting them into practice is a little different. Everything needs to be changed to your potential customers and that is can be tough.

It’s something that will require your attention and it will evolve over time. If you play with it, you can learn. You see what is working and what isn’t. And it really is the best way to go, at least for me. I’m currently have a bunch of copywriting books to finish reading and I’m currently on the second book (Cash Copy). The thing is that it always takes many edits and changes to your sales letter to make it work the best. And even when it is going good you still tweak it to try and get a little more out of it.

You build a sales letter for something. Grab something off of Amazon and try to be persuasive. You don’t necessarily have to write a long letter. The length of the letter is typically designed to meet how much you’re selling it for. Selling light bulbs for $1.50 isn’t going to require a huge sales letter.

Just build that sales letter for something and drive traffic to it. Remember to focus benefits over features like I mentioned above. Start learning and reading as much as you can on the subject and apply it. Seriously hang out at copywriting forums. All the douchebags hang out in the internet marketing forums, but copywriter forums are much different. You can learn a lot just by reading the threads. Read the critique requests. This is where you get to see a sales letter and watch professionals dissect it.

This is a really good skill to learn. If you want to make cash online or even make cash anywhere, you have to know how to be persuasive to sell the product. This skill can take you a lot of places. You can do a lot with it. I know that businesses like to work with people that can write persuasively.

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