After a few months, my research has taught me several things. One is that no matter what, to make good honest money at anything online, it takes some patience and effort. Finding ways to make money with parked domains is no different. I tried several methods to make money with my parked domains and I’ll share some of my findings with you below. Let me just say this though, if you’re expecting a story about how I made a killing with parked domains, you’d better go read something else!

To be honest, the only people I’ve ever heard of, or know of, who are making a lot of money with parked domains are those who have thousands of domains. These are your domain brokers and domain speculators. I don’t know of anyone with a few hundred domains who are making huge profits. But then again, the whole notion behind a parked domain is that the only traffic it gets is type in traffic, so unless you have a few super popular domains that are one or two word keywords, you’re not going to get the traffic that you need to bring in huge amounts of dollars!

So, here’s my findings over several months.

Adsense for Domains

If you have an Google Adsense account, then you have access to this feature from Google. Basically what happens is whenever someone types in your domain name, for example; example.com, and comes to your site, you’ll get a small amount of money if they click on one of the ads on that site. These ads are very similar to Adsense ads (afterall, it is Adsense we’re talking about!).

I moved 10 domains over to Adsense for domains to see how well they’d do. I didn’t know what to expect, but I didn’t expect much. And it’s a good thing, I hardly made any money at all. But after all, they are just domain names with no content so I shouldn’t have been that surprised!

Domain Parking Sites

Chances are at some time or another you’ve typed in a domain name into the address bar of your browser and got a generic page with a bunch of ads on it. Maybe you misspelled the name or you thought the domain you wanted was adsenses.com rather than adsense.com. Whatever the reason, the generic page you see with all the ads are generally hosted by a Domain Parking Site.

In a nutshell, here’s how most domain parking sites work. You transfer your domain dns to their servers. This is generally really easy to do and most web hosting companies have a feature on their hosting dashboards to make this easy. If they don’t, you need a new host or some written instructions!

There is usually no charge for you to transfer your domain’s DNS to their server. I would be suspicious of any company who wanted to charge you to do that. These companies usually make money by putting ads up on the generic pages that pop up when someone types in your domain name. Most of these domain parking sites keyword target their sites so you have a good chance whenever someone clicks on an ad.

Don’t try and pin down any of these sites as to how much they’ll pay you per click. The price varies by how much the advertiser pays for the ads and how much of those dollars the domain parking company wants to keep.

Again, I transferred a little over 10 domains to one domain parking site to see how well they would work.

All I can say is that they paid just about as much as the Adsense for Domains did. I didn’t make enough money to get my blood pressure up, but again, the only way most people get traffic to a domain without a website is if someone just types it into a browser.

Affiliate Programs

Probably my favorite way to make money with parked domains is using affiliate programs. But the downside is it takes a lot more work!

For starters, there are two ways you can go about this.

Method number one involves getting a blog hosting account. One where you can host unlimited number of domains! Like I said above, this take some work but it can pay off a lot better than the other two methods.

Then you create a mini site. You add a page or two of content that is keyword targeted to whatever your domain is. You’ll also want to add a privacy, contact and about page to make the search engines happy (you know, just in case one of them may actually rank your site)

You’ll then find an affiliate programs that is in the same niche as your domain name. For example, if your domain is rustyoldbottlecaps.com, then you’d want an affiliate that is about rusty old bottle caps! Don’t try and feminine products to people who are looking for rusty old bottle caps, that’s affiliate marketing 101!

You can promote this mini sites the same way you promote any other site, but the whole point is that these domains are ones you don’t have time to fool with, so you throw up some content and affiliate ads and forget them.

Method number two can be easy or hard depending on your host. Some host allow redirects, others don’t. Some make it easy, most don’t! (this is also called ‘domain forwarding’ by some companies)

The thing here is that you’ll redirect (or forward) the domain to a site that closely resembles the redirected domain so your traffic is targeted. If you have a parked domain like rustyoldbottlecaps.com, you wouldn’t point it at a site about online dating. However, perhaps you have a site about antiques and that site has an affiliate program that you’re making a few bucks off of. You may do yourself a favor by having your type in traffic from rustyoldbottlecaps.com domain redirected to your antique website!

Summary

At the end of the day, I didn’t make a killing with any one method, however creating a mini site with affiliate links did end up making me the most money. But it does take a lot more time, which is why these domains were sitting in the first place, I just didn’t have time to build on them! Obviously if you have thousands, or even a few hundred domains, the mini site method won’t work for you unless your a mini site creating monster!

So what I did was to plan to take a few hours each week and work on putting up a mini site or two on each domain.

These are just a few ways to make money with parked domains. There are others, but I’d say these three ways are most popular.

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What I really wanted to see was just how well that system would work if you followed it to a “T”. Much like a beginner would do.

First off though, I want to rant a bit. I don’t visit the forums much over at the Keyword Academy. As stated above, I’m very busy and don’t have a lot of time. When I do get time, I’m working on my sites. The other reason is because of all the nonsense that goes on there.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a boat load of good info on there. The people are nice and very helpful.

No, what I mean is the ridiculous questions that keep being asked by beginners who obviously are not following Court and Mark’s program.

Look, if you’re a beginner and you’ve started the Keyword Crash Course, do yourself and others a favor and watch ALL of the video’s, especially the Core Video’s. They’ll answer just about anything you need to know. Don’t join and immediately go the forums and ask silly questions that are answered in the video’s!! It tells everyone that you haven’t sit down and watched the Core Video’s or the Webinar Video’s. It’s like saying you don’t want to take the time to watch and learn!

Okay, I’ve ranted long enough.

What’s New With The Keyword Crash Course

Court and Mark have done an amazing job with the Keyword Crash Course. I can’t imagine how much work they must have done in order to make everything run seamlessly. I have a great deal of respect for those two. They have, without question, put together the most informative and legitimate course on making money on the Internet that you’ll find anywhere. Bar none in my opinion, and I’ve seen a lot of programs come and go in my time.

Here are just a few of the things that are new.

1. The Niche Refinery. Helps you sort through keywords and helps you discover which ones have the potential to be the profitable ones. No more guessing whether or not the keywords you use will earn money. It’s the best Keyword Tool I’ve ever used, hands down.
2. The Forum has changed layouts and is much more user friendly in my opinion. There are a ton of features, including icons and badges that Members can obtain. They’ll show up next to your Screen name and Avatar.
3. The Webinars are now nicely organized so they can be downloaded and watched.
4. The Earners Club. This is a cool feature, especially if you visit the Forums. The Earners Club is a progress tracking system that is totally voluntary. You send your earnings verifications privately to Court or Mark and they’ll reward you with a badge showing how much per month you make via Internet Marketing. This let’s you know who knows what they’re doing and who is just regurgitating the same old crap found on the Internet! It’s like ‘I dunit, here’s proof’.
5. By far the best feature that I’ve found most useful is the Post Runner system. I can’t really go into detail what this system is or how it works, but once inside you’ll see that it’s worth it’s weight in Gold for getting your ranked!

Like I said earlier, Court and Mark have done an impressive and amazing job in just one year! At the time of this post, they’re running a FREE trial offer for the first 30 days. This is plenty of time for you to see what all the Course has to offer and learn some of the tools and methods successful Internet Marketers use.

The Keyword Crash Course – One Year Later

So what I did after doing the initial review was to go out and grab 7 domains for niches that I felt would be profitable using the formula for finding high paying keywords that Court outlines in the Course.

I then followed the directions outlined in the course. I did not use any of my other resources that I had available unless they were mentioned or proved by The Keyword Crash Course.

I built the sites using WordPress. I used Hostgator for my blog hosting provider.

From here, I simply followed the course’s instructions.

I have to admit, I had my doubts even though I knew this system worked. Of course, even when I do it my way, I have doubts. I don’t know why because they always work out.

In the first month or two, I saw little to movement in the rankings for these 7 sites. Of course, that’s normal unless you’re in a very Uncompetitive niche! Plus, I’m not a person who can sit for hours on end at the computer. I usually work about 3 or 4 hours total in one day and I break that amount of time over the period of the day. I guess you can say I have Affiliate Marketing ADD…LOL

But then months 3 and 4 saw these sites breaking into the top 100 and slowly creeping up the SERPS. This was exciting even though I’ve done it many times. I guess I was anxious because I was watching these 7 sites much closer than my others new sites I built doing it my way.

By month 5 and 6, a few real winners were beginning to show up among the 7. I had one that just wasn’t (and still isn’t) performing the way the numbers say it should, but that’s the real world. The site is in the top 5 for several of it’s keywords, but the traffic just isn’t there. I’m hoping it will come along once I expand the keywords it ranks for.

By months 7 and 8, I was making money with the sites. Well, actually some of them had been making money by month 4, but by the seventh and eighth months, nearly all were (all except 2).

I monetized several of the sites with Adsense and several with affiliate programs. Since I’m an affiliate marketer, I prefer affiliate programs over Adsense. You’ll also find out that some niches are just naturally easier to monetize with Adsense or affiliate programs.

Months 9 through 12 were spent tweaking the sites, adding content and promoting them further. I spent a great deal of time on the 2 slow performers and I found additional keywords to help one of the slackers. The one mentioned above is still giving me fits. Sometimes you just have to let ‘em go. Kinda like tough love for websites!

Am I making a killing off of these sites? No. But I am making some good money. How much you ask? Well, if you read my blog any amount, you know I stopped outing a lot of my methods and other info. But I’ll say they’re making just a little above 1k per month now and we’ll leave it at that.

If you need further proof this system works, as of the time of this blog post, the Keyword Academy blog has an unsolicited post from a Member who is making $800 per month from his website! Geez, it’s taking me 5 niche sites to do a little more than that!

It’s not surprising really. This system works if you’ll just put the time and effort in. I just wanted to prove it to myself even though it’s along the same lines I’ve been using for years. And the cool thing is, now that all the work has been done, they’re nearly on auto pilot. Very little work will be required to keep their rankings. This means you’ll have more time to create more sites following the Keyword Crash Course method.

They’re still running the FREE 30 Day Trial at the time of this blog post. What will you get for your free trial? You’ll have access to everything in the Keyword Crash Course. Unlike some other programs that only tease you with a few pieces of info, The Keyword Academy will allow you access to all the info. (if you choose the Premium account) The FREE trial is the best way to see what all the Keyword Crash Course consist of. If you’re a beginner or someone who has been banging their head against the wall trying to make a buck on the Internet, try the Course for Free for the first 30 days. If you’re like me, you’ve blown a lot of money on the Internet! Click here to look over this system Free for the first 30 days.

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Having said that, a while back I bought The Keyword Crash Course. This is a course that Mark Butler and Courtney Tuttle have developed. The whole course was about starting Niche sites, monetizing them and getting free traffic from search egnines like Google. Although I was sure I knew 99% of the stuff they were going to teach (afterall, I make a good income from this stuff already!), I was hoping to learn a few tricks that would make me more money or save me time. I wasn’t disappointed in the course. In fact, I felt like the Course paid for itself within the first 30 minutes of watching the first video. By the way, the course cost $597. I’ve spent a lot more on courses that didn’t have near the amount of information in them.

If you know Court and Mark, then you know that they are honest and helpful. In fact, they’re some of the most honest and helpful people I’ve ever met on the Internet. Everything is laid out for you and they don’t hold anything back. (unlike a lot of courses I’ve bought!) In fact, I’ll go as far as saying the Keyword Crash Course is the most legitimate and easy to follow course I’ve bought. It’s a nuts and bolts Course that nearly anyone can follow and make money with. You can take a look at it by clicking here.

Within the first 30 minutes of the first video, Court describes how to find profitable keywords using “The Formula“. This was the bombshell that I had been looking for. Every once in a while, something will come along that makes you set back and take a deep breath, all the while thinking “Damn, this is what I’ve been searching for!” That is how I felt when Court showed me The Formula for evaluating profitable keywords.

I’ll tell you this also, when you start finding those little Gold nuggets of Keywords, it won’t take you long to figure out that you can use them to build Affiliate Sites rather than Adsense sites if that is what you want to do. If more people would use The Formula, there would be a lot less people failing at this game.

Before this, I had my own system for finding good Keywords, but it was hit and miss. Some keywords paid very well, while others fizzled. I still get some keywords that don’t pay when I use The Formula, but a lot less. By using Court’s Formula, I’ve been able to amass about 90 keywords that will turn into some very nice Niche sites.

Now Court and Mark have opened up the site to the Public and you can see everthing in the original Course for only $1 (yeah, the same Course I paid $597 for!)

Learn How To Make Money Online With The Keyword Crash Course

Whether you’re a beginner just starting out, or an advanced marketer, The Keyword Crash Course has something for you.

What You’ll Get For $1

You’ll be able to see the original course including the 10 training video’s. These video’s will take you step by step and show you how to pick profitable keywords for your niche site (using The Formula), setting WordPress, how and where to find backlinks, how to obtain content for your niche sites and how to set up Adsense and other advertising to make money from your sites.

Plus there is a little video at the end that will show you how to flip your new sites for Money. I found this one to be very interesting and something I may try down the road.

Why Are They Only Charging $1?

Court and Mark feel that once you’ve seen the quality of the training material, you’ll want to subscribe to their monthly service where they’ll be bringing you more information about building and ranking websites, live Webinars and live Q&A sessions. This subscription is $29 per month and totally optional. You can sign up for $1, get all the information that was in the original course for $597 and forget about the rest if you want to. They’re fine with that. They only want people who are serious about making money online.

People, if I could stear you to another course that I thought was better, one that taught you how to make money online with Niche sites, I would. But there is simply nothing out there as thorough and easy to follow that Court and Mark’s Keyword Crash Course. If you’re serious about learning how to make money online, this is one course you need to take. If after the course, you can’t make money online, then this business is probably not for you. That’s how good I believe this course is. And for only $1, you sure as hell won’t find a better bargain. Click here if you want to learn more and take advantage of this opportunity.

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I know many of you use article marketing as a means to brand your blogs and websites and to drive traffic to them. That’s cool, I do for some of my blogs and websites also. Article marketing is a very good way to get the word out about your product or service.

The problem for many blog and website owners is deciding on which article submission site or service to use. There are many article submission sites on the Internet today. For the purpose of this head-to-head review, I’m choosing the most popular article submission sites that I know of. Some are free and several are paid. I have either used these services in the past and/or I currently use them. The article submission websites are Ezinearticles, iSnare, GoArticles, Article Marketer, Article Marketing Automation and Unique Article Wizard.

How The Article Marketing Smackdown Will Be Judged

To judge the Smackdown, I wrote an original article for a specific website of mine. I made it unique for each article submission site (as best as I could, each site has it’s own rules). I then submitted the article to each submission service and I’ve been waiting on the outcome for a few weeks. I believe enough results have come in now to bring this Smackdown to an end.

So, without further delay…I bring you the results of the article submission smackdown!

Unique Article Wizard

I’ve been using Unique Article Wizard (UAW) for about 6 months now.

I’m here to tell you that this has been a very good investment for me. I simply love UAW!

UAW’s is a very unique service. Due to the non-disclosure letter you have to sign when joining, I can’t go into details about how UAW works, just trust me when I say it will bring in a lot of one way links to your sites by distributing unique article to blogs, websites and directories. This service has been the fastest way to build legitimate one way back links that I’ve found, bar none!

But that’s not all. Unique Article Wizard also has another very powerful feature in that it can make each of your resource boxes unique as well. It’s possible to add links to many websites with just one article.

You can also choose how many times your article is distributed each day. You can have it blasted out to all the places at once or choose your own number. I like to “drip” my articles out as I think having a bunch of backlinks show up at once is not good for a site. Especially small sites. So I “drip” my articles out by choosing to have them submitted at a rate of about 20 to 30 per day.

After your article has been distributed, you can check to see the actual number of sites and email subscribers where your article was submitted to. You find this button in your dashboard in the column next to your article title. Neat stuff.

Now, the article I submitted to was distributed to 543 websites and directories and 71 email subscribers. Out of that number, I can track about 107 backlinks (as of this writing, I expect this number to increase over time) I received to the website I had listed in my resource boxes. That’s a pretty high number! (I’ve actually had some articles do better than that!)

The cool thing is, as people find these articles, they’ll use them and I’ll still be getting backlinks long after the submission is over with.

Another benefit that isn’t advertised is this. Hit the page reload button on your browser when you’re viewing your article on UAW and you’ll see a completely new article every time your refresh (again, I can’t tell you how they do this, but it is very powerful). It’s awesome. I then will take one of these unique articles and submit it to the free article submission sites. I’ve also submitted them to Article Marketer to have them submitted. If you have blogs or websites in the same niche, you could use one of these unique articles that UAW makes as content on your site.

Click here to learn more about Unique Article Marketing.

Article Marketing Automation (AMA)

I’ll be honest and tell you that I passed Article Marketing Automation the first time I heard about it. I wasn’t impressed with the advertising or the $47 per month price tag. Besides, I was already using UAW and figured that this service couldn’t be any better. Plus they used the words “spin” and “spun” in their advertising and that sounded cheap to me. I had visions of my sentences looking like “Affiliate marketing rolls down ice cubes after desert” or some other crap like that.

Thankfully, I was wrong.

But about two months ago an Internet Marketer who I trust told me I should be using AMA. He told me it was as powerful as UAW and had some other cool features that UAW didn’t.

So I signed up, figuring “What the hell, I’ll cancel if I don’t like it“.

Do I think that AMA is as good or better than UAW? No. But it’s close, damn close!

What I like about AMA is that its network is only made up of websites and blogs, not directories. Also, my favorite feature is that you can add up to 3 links to the body of the content. There is no resource box! All links go into the body. In my opinion, these anchored links will pass more authority when in the body of the article than a resource box. (some site owners either remove the resource box or nofollow the links in resource boxes when using other article submission services)

Here’s a big tip for you. Whether it’s an article you’re submitting or whether it’s your own site, put the links as near to the top as you can get. Google figures they must be important if you put them near the top and you’ll get more weight passed on to your site or to an interior page if the link happens to be on your site.

What I don’t like about AMA is that their network seems pretty small. They advertise 2000 sites, but I haven’t seen near that many. Of course, I know that my articles don’t go out to all of them, but the best I’ve seen is a few hundred. Word has it that they’re continually building their network, so that is the good news. Since they’re fairly new, it may take a little while longer for them to get to the size that some of the others are.

But, since the links are in the content instead of at the bottom of the page in a resource box, the backlinks I am getting are passing more weight to my sites. It’s probably only a small difference, but I’ll take all the help I can get!

The article I submitted to AMA has been published 77 times (as of this writing) and three quarters of those articles have been indexed by Google so far. Not bad!

If the level of service, both Customer service and the level of article submission, continues to grow, I see great things happening with Article Marketing Automation. Right now, I think it’s well worth the money. You can spend a lot more and get a helluva lot less with some of the other article submission services out there! This one is a keeper in my book! If they’re like any other Internet services, once they start growing, they will continue to raise the price, so you’d better get in quick if you want to lock in at a low price. Click here to learn more about Article Marketing Automation.

Ezinearticles

Ezinearticles has been around a while. In fact, I believe they were one of the first article directories. At least as best as I can remember. If any of you have read my previous post about Ezinearticles, then you know others as well as myself have had some problems with them over the years getting articles accepted. Looking back, I think this started in earnest whenever they started their “Premium” paid service. I don’t know if it was coincidence or not.

They offer both a free submission service and a $97 per month “Premium” service. I looked over the “features” of the premium service and to be honest, I don’t see the benefit. Certainly not $97 per month worth! There are too many other services that offer better service and more features for less than $97 per month IMHO.

But back to the smackdown.

I submitted the article about 3 weeks ago. It took several days for the article to be accepted. I have noticed over about the last month or so that my articles were being accepted faster. I don’t know why, I just know the last few times I’ve used them it has went off without a hitch.

Anyway, the article has been viewed 232 times and published 16 times as of the writing of this post.

Ezinearticle doesn’t tell you where they submitted the articles to or which sites have accepted your article. But judging from my WordPress dashboard, this article has sent me 19 backlinks to a site of mine. Looking through my sites, I found 8 visitors who came to my site through that article and my EZA dashboard said I’ve had 9 URL clicks. Not great, but better than nothing, especially on the backlinks.

GoArticles

GoArticles is a free submission site. Being free, the features are limited as to the stats you’ll get from your articles. The article I submitted has received 56 request since I submitted it. Now that doesn’t tell my everyone who has used my article because any article on GoArticles can be cut and pasted without requesting it.

One thing I really like about GoArticles is that you can put links in the body of the article and they don’t get bent out of shape about it.

As for the backlinks I received from that article, a search of my stats showed that I’ve received 8 backlinks from that article. One of them on an Authority blog.

Not great results, but remember, it’s free and you can add links in the body of the article without them getting all pissy about it. Also, I’ve never had an article rejected by GoArticles. From what I can tell, you’re article is accepted very quick. Hey, it’s free, what do you have to lose!

iSnare

This is a paid to submit an article service. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that they probably don’t make much money from this site because of the poor customer service and submission time I and others have had with them. It took over two weeks for my article to be accepted and distributed. From what I can tell, I haven’t received any traffic or backlinks from that article.

For the price you have to pay iSnare, their customer service and submission time should be a helluva lot better. I personally wouldn’t use them again until they start submitting articles for free or improve their customer service. There’s just too many good article submission sites out there, both free and paid ones, to put up with the B.S. from them.

Article Marketer

Update 2010: Article Marketer ceased operations around October of 2009. I figured this would happen because of the lousy service everyone was getting and the poor performance of the submitted articles. Sure enough, I was right. This service has been replaced by two other companies, which I’m now reviewing and waiting to see what the long term performance will be (or lack of). Look for the updated review here on my site. Thanks!

I’ve been using Article Marketer for over a year now. I’ve never really been happy with their service, but at the time they were one of the best article submission sites around. They advertise that you’re article will be reviewed by the next business day (or the use to advertise that, haven’t checked recently) but that hasn’t been my experience.

Here’s what normally happens. I submit an article and generally there’s something wrong with it in their eyes. Either it doesn’t meet the 400 word requirement, the keyword density is too high or a dozen other reasons I’ve had. They kick it back to me, I fix it and resubmit it. Now I’ve lost another day.

You see, apparently the “by the next day” starts at the time of the LATEST SUBMISSION, not when you originally submitted it. So when they reject your article and you go back and fix it, the submission process starts all over. You move to the back of the line.

The problem is, I think they’re overworked and their editors look for reasons to reject your articles. I’ve had some of my articles rejected for the stupidest reasons imaginable. One of the most common is that the article does not meet their 400 word requirement. Doesn’t matter that I just pulled it off MS Word document that showed the word count at 500 words. Or that I rewrote an article from EZA that said the article had 475 words. Somehow their counting doesn’t add up.

I also like their excuse. “Most directories won’t accept an article with less than 400 words” or something to that affect. Bull! I get 250 and 300 word articles accepted at many article directories all day long.

Like I said, either their editors are snowed under or they are not native English speaking editors. I have a hunch it may be a little of both.

I once wrote an article on a classic consumer product. For the sake of this post, let’s say the article was over the Model T Ford. So in this article I’m giving the history of the Model T Ford and describing how automobiles have evolved over the years.

They rejected the article the first time due to ‘too many keywords’. So I changed it up and resubmitted it. Then it was “we don’t accept articles that are product reviews. You will have to either change the wording of the article or compare the product with two other like products”.

WTF! Who’s smoking crack over there!

So I changed the article up. Sounded really stupid without using the words Model T Ford, since it was an article over the Model T Ford (well, not over the Model T, but over a Classic product that has been in service for more than 50 years). But I hope you get the point.

That’s just a few of the problems I have with them. It’s not uncommon to take a week or more to get my articles accepted by them after jumping through all the hoops they put in your way.

Since this is a paid service, I expect a lot better Customer Service than that and way better service from their submissions. I noticed that they’ve lowered their price to $21 per month now. I wonder if those of us who are already subscribed will get a discount?

I have to be honest with you. Until their submission acceptance service and their Customer Service gets a lot better, I wouldn’t recommend them. Not at $21 per month. If this was a free service, I could handle it. But when I’m paying top dollar, I expect better service from a company.

Now, on to the submitted report. Their site says my article was submitted to 945 directories and websites. It doesn’t tell me how many accepted my article. NOTE: Just because your article is submitted to a directory or website doesn’t mean it will be accepted. The site owner has the final say. This is true with all services that I’m aware of.

Out of that 945 directories and websites, I can track 22 backlinks. The reason is because of Google’s duplicate content penalty. Since this service blast out the same article to a thousand or so directories and blogs, only a few will be indexed by Google.

And the Winner of the 1st Annual Article Marketing Smackdown is…

Well, IMHO it’s a tie between Unique Article Wizard and Article Marketing Automation.

The Pro’s of Unique Artilce Wizard is that my articles were submitted to more directories and websites, bringing me more backlinks.

The Pro’s of using Article Marketing Automation is that each article ends up on a website or blog, not an article directory (that’s not a bad thing either, it’s still a backlink to your site!). Plus, I love how the anchored links are embedded into the content, not at the bottom of the page in a resource box. While I got fewer links with AMA, the links I did get were embedded into content on legitimate blogs and websites. This equals maximum passing of the link juice if the subjects are relevant!

Article Marketer comes in at third simply because of the amount of directories it submits too. The number of backlinks should have been greater, but they weren’t. Which tells me not all of the articles are getting indexed because all 945 articles were same with the same resource box. Other factors could have contributed to this, I don’t know. 

Another negative about Article Marketer is that they use two types of resource boxes. One that you can only type in your url, which does not become a hyperlink on the site it ends up on. The other is the traditional resource box with two links in it. I speculate that many site owners choose to use the 1st resource box that only shows your URL as text. This could also be the reason for low backlinks versus the numbers of sites the article was submitted to.

Down at fourth we have Ezinearticles. Pretty decent backlinks for a free service. If I had to pay for this service, I drop it in a heartbeat due to the lack of submissions and the backlinks it produces.

GoArticles isn’t great, but they’re free and you can put links in the body of the article as well as the resource box. That alone makes it worth my time to add my articles to GoArticles.

iSnare. I wouldn’t waste a dollar or my time on them until they get their act together. When I hear others starting to have good results with them, maybe I’ll try them again, but not any time soon!

So there you have it. The finals of the Article Marketing Smackdown. If you’re on a limited budget, then use GoArticles and Ezinearticles until you can afford either Article Marketing Automation or Unique Article Wizard. You’ll build backlinks with the free sites, but at a much slower pace than you will with UAW or AMA. UAW and AMA will give you the most bang for the buck and help set your linkbuilding on the fast track to higher rankings.

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Outsourcing your work isn’t for everyone. But at some point in your affiliate marketing efforts, you’ll have to decide whether or not to bring new people in. People who are just beginning in affiliate marketing generally have time to do all the things necessary to become successful.

Once you’ve started building up your portfolio, things can get pretty tight. Especially time. If you stay in this business long enough, there will come a point when you discover that you don’t have enough time to get everything you need done accomplished. When this happens, it’s time to look into outsourcing some of the chores.

For me, it was content writing. I had so many websites that I didn’t have time to write content for every one of them.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to write. But I can only do so much. Plus, there are different types of content. For my Adsense sites, I don’t need the best content. In fact, I’d say poor content will actually convert better on an Adsense site than good content. I can get 500 to 750 word articles written for these sites for as little as $3 to $5 per article. I don’t know about you, but my time is worth a lot more than that plus these articles pay for their self rather quickly.

There are literally people willing to do anything that you can think of. And many of them will do it rather cheaply. It comes down to the value of your time plus how much more money you could make by spending the time you do have on actions that create the most money for you.

By having a lot of articles written for my sites, the time this frees up is spent on building backlinks to my sites and creating more sites, which makes me a lot more money than writing content!

Where to find outsourcing resources

There Internet is a wonderful place to find people willing to work for you. All you need to do is look.

Here are some of my favorite places to find people to outsource my work to.

DigitalPoint forums. They have a section called the Marketplace. You can find anything you want here. Content Writers, Coders, Content, eBook creation, Link building services to people who will build backinks for you and submit your articles to directories and so on. Make sure you check the iTrader reputation of the person before hiring him/her to work for you. Most other Webmaster forums also have a similar marketplace. Other sites you may want to look into are; SitePoint, Webmaster World, V7N, Warrior Forum, etc.

eLance, Rent-A-Coder, RentAFreelancer, GetAFreelancer. These are great places to find people to outsource every aspect of your affiliate marketing. From building website templates to PHP coders and people who will build you landing pages, you’ll find them here.

Need-An-Article. When I need great content, I use these people. I can get 1000 plus word articles written by native English speaking writers for as little as $12.50 and these articles are as good, or in many cases – better, than ones I have paid $30 or more for. Their research is excellent as well and most of my article request are turned around in a few days.

Craigslist – Ha! Gotcha didn’t I? Yeah, I’ve found some good freelancers on Craigslist. Several Content writers and a Coder. Look toward the bottom of the page under the heading of “Services”.  Also be sure to check out the “Gigs” section. If you want someone local, just put up a post and you should have plenty of people responding shortly.

There are tons of other places to find people to outsource your work to. For many of you, you get hung up on the cost to hire these people. I think this generally comes from lack of confidence on most peoples part. If your sites are making money, then your outsourced work will pay for itself many times over. This will free you up to create more sites or work on an area that you enjoy and let the freelancers work on the chores you hate to do or are not particularly good at.

One last bit of advice here. And you’d better take this to heart. Once you find several freelancers that you like, keep their contact info close by. These people can be invaluable to you. Also, treat them fairly in all your business dealings. If they’re good, they’ll be an asset to your business. The few bucks you’ll save by trying to screw them over isn’t worth it. A good freelancer can be like the Goose that laid the Golden egg.

Remember, you’re the Money Man, the Rainmaker, the person with the Creative Ideas. Do what you do best and let the freelancers do what they’re best at!

To you people, I’d say give it a try. Budget some money and get those time sucking jobs that are holding you back outsourced! Your bank account will thank you!

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Yeah, for some of you BANS owners, it’s been a pretty tough last few months.

I’m knocking on wood here. If you remember right from my initial Build A Niche Store Review, my goal was to build 100 BANS sites. Now I’m thanking my lucky stars that I have AMADD (Affiliate Marketing Attention Deficit Disorder) and only made it to 30 sites before I lost focus and went off doing something else. So far none of my sites have been touched by either Google or eBay. I’ll give you my theories on why that is on down the page.

A Few Theories Why Google Is De-Indexing BANS sites.

I’ve been following a lot of the chatter on forums about this subject as well as receiving a lot of email. This is what I’ve figured out to this point. No one has 100% concrete proof why Google is de-indexing BANS sites. There are a few theories floating around.

1. The BANS program was being used by a lot of spammers. Many of these guys/gals were throwing up huge numbers of BANS sites on .info domains. They never bothered to change anything with the programs, their only concern was to get as many BANS sites up as they could, as cheaply as they could. This left a huge footprint for Google to follow.
2. Most of these same people never bothered to put any content on their sites. They were simply ebay sites with ebay auctions on them. This would be what Google calls a “thin affiliate” site. And we know what Google does with thin affiliate sites.
3. In order for Google to get all the spammy BANS sites, it had to take some legitimate sites along with them. It’s the shotgun approach. Use a huge pattern to make sure you get all of them. Try and limit the casualties but go forward knowing some innocent victims will be in the pattern.

My Theory On Why Google Hasn’t De-Indexed All BANS Sites

Even as far back as when I bought the Build A Niche Store program, there was talk about Google finding the footprint of all the standard BANS templates and possibly penalizing them. It seems this bird has come home to roost. From the start, here is what I did to try and make my BANS sites unique from all the other cookie cutter BANS sites.

• I changed up the CSS a little bit on every site. I made sections like the header and content fields larger and smaller.
• I changed the colors on every site.
• I changed the size of the headers on every site and used graphic headers.
• I DID NOT go out and start sending hundreds of backlinks to my sites. I built them up over time using blog carnivals, article submissions, reciprocal linking and adding one way permanent links.
• I added content to nearly every page plus I used a lot of graphics.
• I never put eBay auctions on my main page. I put content on the index page to make it look as much like a informative content site as I could. Just look at how many BANS sites have nothing more than auctions on their front page.
• On many of the domains that hosted my BANS sites, I added blogs, article directories and forums to many. (mostly just blogs that supported the main domain)
• I never put more than 2 BANS sites on one hosting account plus I paid extra for all sites to have a dedicated IP’s. I’ve read stories of people hosting all their BANS sites with one hosting company. Wow, I can’t fathom that idea. I’m just too paranoid I suppose.
• I only used dot com domains. Of course, these last two items is what I do for nearly all of my affiliate sites, not just for BANS. I want to make it as hard as possible for Google or any other search engine to spy on my websites.

Now, I’m not saying if you do these things that Google will not index your site. These are the things I did to every BANS site I had. I did these things from day one and as I said above, knock on wood, my sites haven’t been touched. In fact, many are still climbing the SERPS.

Is the Build A Niche Store Still Worth Buying?

I’ve had a few emails asking that question. Honestly, I’d say yes it is. But only if you intend to build sites that have a lot of content and you make them unique. If you’re plan is to buy it and throw up a bunch of BANS sites without adding any value to them, I think you’d be wasting your money. Google is on to you.

Alternatives to The Build A Niche Store program

If you’ve been reading this blog for more than a week or so, you know I’m impressed with the PHPBay plugin for WordPress. As I stated in my post Advanced Build A Niche Store Strategies, I’ve been using PHPBayand WordPress to make blogs and stores with eBay auctions. It seems every week that my PHPBay/WordPress stores outproduce my Build A Niche Store sites. Hey, it’s no secret that Google is crazy in love with WordPress blogs. Why not take advantage of that? Plus, to be honest, a WordPress blog and PHPBay combination site just looks much better than 99% of the BANS sites out there, mine included. (hey, maybe Google hates ugly sites?)

Whatever the real reason that Google is de-indexing or penalizing BANS sites, owners using this program need to proceed with caution. If you continue to make sites with BANS, then do everything in your power to make them unique and stand away from the crowd.

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Over the last few months I’ve noticed a trend that has helped me dominate nearly all of the local niches that I’m in. In some of these niches, which a few aren’t all that small, I’ve been able to get my business name in the top search engine rankings several times. For example, there’s one real estate related niche keyword for my local market where you’ll find information about my company 4 times in the top 10 on page 1 of Google SERPS.

It’s not uncommon for my Clients to say “I found you on the Internet, everywhere we looked, your name kept popping up.”I smile and quietly say “Really? That’s good, thanks for telling me.” All the time thinking to myself “Damn right you see me everywhere on the Internet, that’s the way I planned it!”

You see, when people go searching for something locally and they keep running into your name, it’s like you build a little bit of credibility every time they see your name. Pretty soon, they associate your name with the product or service they’re shopping for. That’s a good thing!

How To Dominate Your Local Niche

As I’ve said earlier, over the last few months, I’ve noticed this trend. I haven’t seen this happening in the last 7 years so I think something has changed with Google’s algo.

What I’m seeing is that the articles I’m submitting to article directories like Ezinearticles and GoArticles are ranking very high in Google for my local niche keywords. Many times in the #1 spot!

I’m also seeing my articles in the Top 10 when using an article submission service like Article Marketer. Article Marketer submits your articles to hundreds (and in many cases over 1000) article directories.

Now I’ve always wrote articles for my websites and my business. However none really ranked that well until lately. I’m not sure why, but I’m loving it. And it’s not only my local niches!

While searching for different products or services in other cities, I’ve noticed articles from article directories outranking many national companies as well as outranking my local niche blogs plus websites of my competitors.

Testing My Theory

To be sure this wasn’t some kind of fluke, I tested my theory by writing articles about several different products and services for other local niches outside my own area. I then submitted these articles to article directories  and waiting. It only took a few days for them to show up in the SERPS and start working their way to the top.

After about a week, 3 out of the 5 articles I wrote were in the top 3 in Google for their keyword or keyword phrase. The other two are in the top 20. Not bad for about an hours worth of work!

To get started testing this in your own local niche, all you need to do is find all the keywords or keyword phrases people are using to find your business. Then sit down and start writing articles targeting these keywords. I normally only target one or two keywords per article. Once you have a few, submit them to article directories like Ezinearticles and GoArticles. As I said earlier, I use Article Marketer to increase my backlinks and exposure. Using article marketer to build backlinks has really rocketed many of my local sites to the top 3 in the Google SERPS.

Another side benefit to this is that every time one of your articles shows up in the top 10, it will push one more of your competitors off the front page!

Now, not only do you have an article that makes you look like a pro, you now also reap the benefits of having backlinks from that article!

How Great is that!

Try it in your own local market. Make your article from 500 to 1000 words each. I like to start with 10 articles on different keywords and keyword phrases. I find the longer article are ranking and sticking much better. Go try it and let me know how it’s worked in your local market!

Article marketing doesn’t just benefit global websites, in my experience, you can use article marketing to dominate your local niche like a pro!

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“Umm, I don’t know why?” I half heartily replied because I was’t really listening.

“They sent us a check for $246.18. Are you sure you don’t know who they are”

Man, I was out of my chair quicker than Flash Gordon!

“Let me see, let me see it” I said. Halfway expecting it to be one of those phony checks you get in the mail from banks, mortgage companies and other Spammers of snail mail.

“Cool” I said.

“So you do know who Click Bank is” my Wife stared at me.

“Yeah, I may have heard of them.” I gingerly replied.

How I Used Blogger and ClickBank To Start A Profitable Blog Empire

Now, $246 isn’t going to set the world on fire, but when you’re not expecting it, it’s cool. And when you realize you can duplicate it over and over, you begin to see how you can that this technique has some power to it.

I’d like to tell you this was planned from day one, but I can’t. Here’s what happened.

Late last year I bought the eBook “Blogging To The Bank.” It’s about a technique of creating Blogger blogs and gaming MSN search, IMHO. MSN search use to have a loophole where you could quickly and easily take advantage of their love of Blogger blogs. You could easily outrank most any website with a blogger blog and some backlinks.

About the time I bought this ebook, MSN finally got around to closing this loophole, although I didn’t know it at the time.

I read the eBook. It sounded a lot like the author would use PLR articles and some RSS feeds for content on his Blogger blogs. I thought “Geez, if I pick a category I know something about and write some quality content, it should work better.”

Here’s How I Set My Blogger Network Up

I set up 5 or 6 Blogger blogs on a niche that I settled on.

To find the niche, I went to Google and searched for a niche that would have less than 1 million pages showing. I know this sounds like a big number, but trust me, not all those pages are about your niche.

For this example, I found a niche called Royal Copenhagen Glassware. As you can see, Google is showing 169,000 pages. This is a very small niche. (by the way, I love Royal Copenhagen glassware, but I don’t have a website about it)

I would then add content about Royal Copenhagen glassware to each of the Blogs. I would designate one as my Primary blog that would have the Affiliate links on it. The other blogs were designated Satellite blogs and have no affiliate links on them.

Use your main keyword for your Primary blog. Your Satellite blogs should be made up of relevant keywords to your Primary blog, but not the exact keyword. Make the network relevant to the Niche you choose. One niche blog network per Main keyword. This is where your network will get it power to generate profits from.

Each blog would have anywhere from 4 to 10 SEO keyword rich post on them. All the blogs would have links with the keyword in the anchor text pointing at the Primary Blog.

The last post on the Primary blog would be a review of the Clickbank product along with an affiliate link to the Clickbank product. “We’re pretending there is a Clickbank product about Copenhagen glassware, I have no idea if there really is”

TIP:Do not put ADSENSE ads on these blogs! In fact, do not every put Adsense ads on a Affiliate Marketing site. That site should be dedicated to selling the Affiliate product! Never give your visitor a reason to leave your site for a few cents! I’d rather have them leave and not make nothing rather than lose a potential sale because my Visitor left on an Adsense click! If you want Adsense money, build a Content site!

How To Find A Niche Product On ClickBank

One of the most important things that helped some of these sites achieve the high Click Thru Ratio that they achieved, which you need with a small niche, is the price of the ClickBank product. I chose products that had a price tag under $20. The product also had to pay me at least $9, preferably more!

The reason I look for something at or below the $20 threshold is because I believe people do not hesitate much, if any, on pulling out their credit card and buying something under $20. So far this has worked extremely well on these niche blogs.

Another important thing to do is go and look at the landing pages to see how well the Copywriting is. If you’re not compelled to order the product, chances are your Visitors won’t either.

Next, buy the product. Yes, you heard me right. You should never sell an info product if you’ve never read it or used it! If it’s crap, you’ll end up with a high return and all your hard work will be for nothing! ClickBank will not pay our for returns!

To find a good product on ClickBank, I look for a product in the marketplace that has a “gravity” of 60 or higher and a refer rate of around 75.

Gravity is the number of distinct affiliate’s who earned commission with this product. I really like products with a Gravity over 100, but that’s hard to find in some niches.

Refer rate(or Rdfd on Clickbank) is the fraction of the totals sales referred by Affiliates. The high the number, the better. This tells you that other people are having succes at selling this product.

Patience Is A Blog Empire Builder’s Best Friend

Once you have your product chosen and quality content on your site, you then need to get them indexed in Google. Just find some high PR relevant sites to link back to each of those blogs until they are indexed. It’s that easy! It usually takes a few days for my blogs to be indexed.

Next is the hard part. Wait! Have Patience! Expect your blogs to sit for 6 months to a year before they climb the SERPS and start bringing in the Search Engine traffic. You can work at driving traffic to the blogs, but I prefer the “Build ‘em and forget ‘em” approach. I have way too many other things going on!

You can help the SERP climb of each of the blogs by linking to them from other sites already indexed outside your network, but it’s not a “must-do”. The higher the PR, the better the link. Just remember to use keywords in your anchor text!

Where My Mini-Blog Empire Is At Today

What happened is that those networks that I built about 10 months ago finally started getting some PR and climbing their way up the SERP ladder in their little niches.

The Primary blog on one of these networks has only 3 post on it. Yet, somehow, it has a PR2 with no backlinks (go figure that one!). Apparently Google isn’t counting any of the backlinks to it, yet Yahoo shows 45 backlinks to the page. (backlinks I found for them)

The Primary blog is at #12 for the Primary keyword and two other lesser keywords are on the front page about halfway down in the Google SERPS. This is where the traffic is coming from for those sites.

The blog network worked it’s way into the Top SERPS positions sometime in late Aug. and early Sept. That’s when the orders started trickling in, unbeknown to me!

Build ‘Em and Forget ‘Em

I had forgotten all about these blog networks. Shortly after I built Blogger network #3, I started hearing that MSN had closed the loophole that allowed Blogger blogs to dominate its SERP’s. Sure enough, none of my Blogger blogs were indexed by MSN. So after a few weeks, I wrote off the project.

So you see how sweet it is that Google came to my rescue and started sending them traffic.

I have no doubt, that if I had used PLR articles and RSS feeds, they’d still be in SERP hell and no where near the top. The articles on those blog networks are quality how-to articles and I sincerely believe that’s why they are nearing the #1 spot in Google SERPS.

What I’m Doing Now To Boost The Blogs In The SE Rankings

In the last few days, I added more keyword anchor text pointing at my Primary blogs on the network, from high PR sites, this should be the final straw and those blogs should reach the top 3 within a month or less.

I’ve also added some more keyword rich articles to the Satellite blogs. This should help them continue upward in the SERPS.

This technique is not for everyone I understand. But it may be something you want to add for an additional stream of revenue, especially if you have a small niche! A small niche may not have enough traffic to support you by itself, but having a network of niches can provide you some good passive income!

Once you have your first network tweaked and running, wash, rinse and repeat!

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I decided to write about how to increase your Alexa rank and why it’s important for two reasons. #1 is to enter Courtney Tuttle’s “Internet Marketers United Group Writing Project” and the other is to try and clear up the misconception that the Alexa Rank is not important.

What Is The Alexa Rank?

Alexa is a website that provides traffic information on other websites.

The Alexa Rank comes when Alexa computes the traffic numbers and ranks websites in terms of popularity as determined by the number of visitors to that site that have the Alexa Toolbar installed.

Why Is The Alexa Rank Important?

The Alexa Rank is important to only a small number of web users. Advertisers and Webmasters use the Alexa rank to help them determine (right or wrong) the worth of your site and links from your site.

There are some pay-per-post companies such as ReviewMe and SponsoredReviews that determine what they pay you based on your blogs Alexa ranking. Text-Link-Ads also determines both what you will pay for a link and what they will sell your links for based partly on the Alexa Rank.

When it means dollars and cents to your bank account, the Alexa Ranking becomes very important!

Problems With the Alexa Rank

Some Webmaster are quick to point out that the Alexa Rank can be gamed. This is true. It can. Just as most other websites of this nature can be gamed.

For those who have websites and blogs that are not Webmaster related or targeted to Internet savvy users, they can find it difficult to monetize their site too it’s true value. Since Alexa only works if a visitor has the Alexa Toolbar installed, it goes without saying that many Webmasters and Internet savvy users have this tool installed on their browsers.

Most other visitors who could care less about rankings probably do not.

Since the rankings are based on visits by someone with the toolbar installed on their browser, there are scripts and other programs some people use to artificially inflate their Alexa rank. However, once a site gets an Alexa Rank of 100,000 or lower, those programs become less effective.

How To Increase Your Alexa Rank

Here are just a few ways you can increase your Alexa Rank.

• Since Alexa is geared toward Webmasters and Internet savy users, it stands to reason that visiting places such as Webmaster Forums and blogs plus Tech Forums and blogs will bring you visitors with the Alexa Toolbar installed on their browser if you leave comments with your URL. Thus increasing your Alexa rank.
• Write articles for Webmasters and other Internet Tech types.
• Download the toolbar from Alexa and visit your site at least once per day.
• Have your friends and Family download the tool bar and visit your site at least once per day.
• If you work in an office and can swing it, have the Alexa toolbar installed on the Office computers and set the default homepage as your site. That way, each day when the computers are started, you page gets a visit from a computer with the Alexa toolbar installed.
• Put the Alexa Rank widget on your website. I’ve heard several people mention that a browser clicking on the Widget will count as a “popularity vote”, although I’m not sure about this. Doesn’t hurt to try.
• Use Alexa redirects on your website url. For example, a Alexa redirect would look like - http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.affiliatewatcher.com I’ve never seen an “Official” word for Alexa whether or not this actually works, but I know plenty of Webmasters who swear by it. Your mileage may vary.
• Get StumbledUpon or Dugg. Social Network members are more likely to have an Alexa toolbar on their browsers and a flood of traffic from these sites can skyrocket your Alexa rank!

That’s about all there is too it.  There are other methods, some shady, some not so, but these are the most popular IMHO.

If you’re an average Internet user who has a non-Tech and non-Webmaster related site and do not care about what pay or link advertising, then the Alexa rank probably doesn’t mean a hill-of-beans to you. Don’t sweat it!

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Now I’m a people watcher. I can sit in one place and watch how people act and never get bored. So I started watching the other people in the cars around me. Heck, it wasn’t like we were moving all that fast. In one traffic jamb, it took me nearly an hour to get through.

Anyway, I saw people reading books and newspapers, putting make-up on, grooming, shaving, cursing and listening to their iPod;s among other things.

This got me to thinking about all the time that we waste. Many people use the excuse of “I don’t have enough time” when telling someone why they haven’t done this or that.

These people waste approximately 2 to 3 hours per day sitting in traffic. What could you do with an extra 2 to 3 hours?

Here are Tips to Take Advantage of Your Drive Time

• Although I don’t recommend it, even if you’re sitting in a Traffic Jamb, I see people using laptops with wireless cards and SmartPhones all the time. They are certainly taking advantage of their downtime.
• I personally use my drive time to listen to Self Help tapes and mp3′s. It’s a rare moment when I actually use my Radio to listen to Music!
• I’ve said before that I print out eBooks so that I can make notes in them. I usually have at least 1 eBook in the pickup with me at any given time. If I’m sitting in traffic I whip it out and start reading. I don’t recommend this if you’re driving!
• There is a guy I know who has a DVD player in his car. He uses it to watch movies in Traffic. I’d burn some tutorials on to it and watch them. You can also do this with a laptop if you have an Auto mount in your vehicle. Again, it should go without saying, don’t try this if you’re driving.
• Ever have a good idea pop in your head and you wanted to write it down but you had no paper and pen or you were driving? I keep a small digital recorder in my console. It’s great for recording my thoughts when they pop in my head. They’re also great for dictating license plate numbers of idiot drivers!

You can use these tips to turn your drive time into money making time! Life is all about the choices you make. You can choose to increase your knowledge base so you’re more profitable or you can continue listening to some idiot shock jock who is getting rich off of you listening to him/her run their mouth.

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Since the oilfield is how I entered the Working World at the ripe young age of 15, this show holds some interest for me. Yep, while my friends were flippin’ burgers and playing Atari, I was bustin’ my ass on drilling rigs and pulling units on Independent oil leases in Northern Oklahoma.

There aren’t many things that will inspire a young man to achieve high financial and educational goals in life than working in 105 degree temperatures covered with sweat and crude oil!

‘Wildcatters‘ follows a group of Independent oil producers as the search for Black Gold. Since the very best oil producing ground is already leased by the major oil companies, Wildcatters have to search the less productive areas for pockets of oil. These places have been either overlooked or discounted by the major oil companies as not being “profitable” or too much risk for the ROI.

Wildcatters take tremendous risk in exploring and trying to find these undeveloped areas. It’s not uncommon to put up a half million bucks or more in an effort to try and find oil.  In many instances, they’ll spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in testing and research just to see if an area is likely to hold oil. There’s no guarantee you’ll get you money back either. Fortunes have been made and lost in this business.

How are Affiliate Marketers like Wildcatters?

First, there are damn few marketers, including myself, who could be considered Internet Wildcatters.

I consider people who started sites like Digg, MySpace, CraigsList, AOL and others as true Internet Wildcatters. They’re the type of people who are always looking for a new technology or application to further the Internet experience.

Just as with Oil Wildcatters, Internet Wildcatters will put up a huge outlay of cash with no promise of a ROI. They ‘bet the farm’ in hopes of striking it rich. A few do, most don’t.

But as one of my favorite TV personalities, Richard Davis of The Real Estate Pros, likes to say, “The greater the risk, the greater the reward!”

That’s so true!

Remember, it was the Pioneers who got all the arrows shot at them. But those who survived were also the ones who got the best land!

Before deciding you want to be an Internet Wildcatter, measure your risk level and your bank account because your taking a chance on loosing both. =-) But if you succeed, you’ll be on top of the Internet world and if you fail, you’ll be back at square one, more experienced the second time around!

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It was very interesting to see the different personalities and see people from different walks of life and how the interacted with other people. I have to say, a couple of the people who I thought would really shine kinda fell down on the job.

The Guest Internet Marketer this week was Mark Joyner, the inventor of Simpleology. If you’ve been in the Internet marketing field  very long, you know who Mark Joyner is. If not, once you watch episode 1 you’ll have a better idea of who he is and why he’s made so much money online. The guy is just thinks outside the box when it comes to Internet marketing.

I though that the lighting through the whole thing was kinda dark and gloomy. C’mon Joel, turn on the lights! Other than that, I thought Episode 1 was pretty good, especially since it was free. And if you pay attention, you can pick up some subtle tips on Internet Marketing!

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eBay is an excellent source for niche ideas. People go there looking for bargains on hot products and topics. Lucky for us, eBay keeps tabs on what people are searching for!

Find a Hot Niche with eBay

Start by pointing your browser to http://pulse.ebay.com. This will bring you to this page. On the left you’ll see a list of the Top 10 searched for things on eBay.

You’ll see that Wii and iPods are the hot thing right now. But these categories are too broad and you may not be interested in Wii’s and iPods. Here’s what you do. Pull down the menu that says “All Categories”. Then search for a topic that interest you there. Let’s choose “Crafts”.

Now on the left side you’ll see the hottest 10 craft items that are being searched for on eBay. “Stampin Up” looks like it’s the #1 hot thing in crafts now followed by Scrapbooking. If you have a website that serves the Crafts field, I’m betting you can come up with some good post on those subjects.

If you should want to drill down to really find a narrow niche, go back to the pull down menu again and you’ll see that you can find the hottest niches inside the “Crafts” niche. From here, you can get pretty specific. Just be careful and don’t go too narrow.

1 Final eBay Niche Tip

Whenever you get to the category that you want, look on down the page for “Most Watched Items.” This is a list of items people save on their Watchlist. It’s a good indication of what people are interested in!

The important thing to remember is that these list are ever changing. What’s hot today, may not even be listed next week or next month. This is also an excellent way to get a sneak peak at what the hot new toys will be this year for Christmas!

Now, go to eBay and find that Niche you’ve always dreamed about

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“Do You Want to be the Next Internet Millionaire?”

If you’ve never heard of him, Joel Comm has written several Best Selling books and eBooks, his latest book, The Adsense Code, is already a Best Seller on the NY Times Best Seller Business List. You could say this guy knows how to make money on the Internet…lol

Joel’s Adsense Books and Video’s have given me a shortcut on the Adsense learning curve. While many of my Adsense sites had great content and were making a pretty good amount of money, it wasn’t until I read Joel’s Adsense Secrets eBook and implemented some of his ideas that my earnings started to double (and on one site they tripled) from what they had been in the past.

This man has made a lot of people money and it’s one reason I feel “The Next Internet Millionaire” will be a success.

This is the letter I received from Joel Comm last night.

When Survivor hit the airwaves in 2000, reality television was born.

When American Idol started in 2002, wanna-be singers and critics immediately took to the guilty pleasure of watching each week.

And when The Apprentice debuted in 2004, ratings soared and the world tuned in to see Trump say “You’re Fired”.

The rest of the reality shows have come and gone with barely a dent in pop culture history.

Now, there is a new reality show that is about the become the newest hit and sensation.

But this show is different than the rest for several reasons…

… It’s not on a major network

… It is all about Internet marketing

… And it is the WORLD’S FIRST competitive Internet reality show!

It’s called…

–> “The Next Internet Millionaire” <–

In case you haven’t heard yet, Joel Comm has raised the bar beyond the ceiling and has produced a show that features twelve aspiring entrepreneurs battling it out for a $25,000
cash prize and an opportunity for a large scale joint venture!

I have seen the teaser video on the web site, and believe me, the web has never seen anything like this before!

The contestants were taught by Internet marketing legends like Mark Joyner, Marlon Sanders, Armand Morin, Rich Schefren, Brad Fallon, Perry Marshall and others. They were tested in individual and team-based challenges, all the while being followed by cameras that recorded their every move!

Honestly, you have GOT to go see this video and their website right away. I can’t WAIT to see the show when it premiers on August 15th, and I think you are going to enjoy it as well.

Click this link now and you’ll see what I mean!

The Next Internet Millionaire

Viewers are leaving television in droves, and it’s no wonder why. Finally, there is original, quality programming exclusively for the web.

Enjoy the show… It’s going to be great!

The video on his website is awesome. Click the link above to watch it. It’s as good as any pre-show opening you’ll see on TV IMHO (of course, I rarely watch TV so what do I know? LOL)

If you’re new to Internet Marketing and you’ve been kicking around trying to find profitable products to sell, cruise on over to Joel’s website and look over his Internet Marketing products. Internet marketing is one of the highest search terms on the Internet. That means people are crazy to learn more about it and suck up massive amounts of information about making money online.  If you haven’t figured out the secret to making money online yet, this is the type of niche you’re looking for!

Stay tuned for August 15 and watch the Premiere of “The Next Internet Millionaire“.  If you’re wanting to get into Internet Marketing and need a product to sell, or if you want some additional profit centers for your site, go look at Joel Comm‘s website and join his affiliate program.

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I have to say, I’ve been quite pleased with the traffic from Yahoo Answers. Linda, over at 5 star affiliate programs had voiced concerns about how time consuming it seemed. Well, at first I was spending about an hour a day. Now, I spend between 15 and 30 minutes about every other day answering questions.  I just log on in the mornings, search through my niche and start laying down answers. About every 5th answer or so, I find a question where a link to one of my websites would be helpful and I leave it laying.

What I’ve Learned So Far

What I failed to take into account was that your answers will be archived. So when someone searches for something like “What are the best blue chip stocks to buy“, your answers will show up even after months if you’ve answered questions on a lot of post about “what is the best blue chip stock to buy“.

This is the beauty of Yahoo Answers. The links I lay down now will be there for a long time, just waiting for someone to do a search and find them. I like that!

I’m now seeing a steady stream of traffic to the pages I linked to.  By that I mean I’m getting around 50 to 70 hits a day on several of my sites where I’ve left answers.  This is from probably around 20 to 30 links in answers I’ve left so far. This number should go up as I leave more answers with links in them.

Another cool thing is that some people will email the posted questions to their friends. I’ve got about 50 or 60 hits from email addresses.

This traffic converts really well for Adsense sites. Nuff said.

Yes, female profiles work better than male profiles. I have one profile that gets “Best Answer” 34% of the time. Points are adding up fast! My male profile doesn’t get near that on related questions. Oh well, as long as my links get on there, that’s all that matters!

Spammers Are Stupid

I can’t tell you how many spammers I see on there. Yahoo Answers is a pretty tight group and spammers get flagged almost immediately. I see idiots on there creating bogus sounding profile names along with no avatar and every answer has 1 to 5 links in them pointng to a blogger account. Hellooooooo. It only takes a few minutes to set up a natural profile! These are the same people asking “Why can’t I make money on the Internet.” They just don’t get it.

Stay tuned for more updates if anything interesting evolves from my experiment of generating traffic with Yahoo Answers.

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