Niches-In-A-Box | Earn1KaDay

Wow! I have spent the week pretty super focused uploading and configuring some websites that I purchased. The effort feels intense, but gratifying. Today I have worked on the attached blogs – activating plug-ins, editing themes, etc. I feel accomplished. The next step is to load the blogs up with content using the post timestamp and drip it on over the next year.

I mentioned JP Schoeffel’s Niches-In-A-Box membership awhile ago, and I did decide to check it out. These sites are pretty cool. Pretty advanced. High quality. I’m learning a whole lot. Ultimately I’d love to be able to make sites like these for myself, but that’s a long ways off.

Next week, I tackle the “Mini Money Sites” project that Dennis Becker has taught the members of “Earn1KaDay.” I have all the tools I need and now I have to dig in and learn to put them together. I hope to get 2 or 3 sites up. It’s a really valuable, and inexpensive membership.

The step after that is learning to be profitable with adwords. This intimidates the heck out of me! Not sure I have the courage.

Something else I mentioned a few weeks ago is the AdSpyPro software that allows you to learn what keywords and campaigns are profitable through adwords. Today a new program was introduced that allows you to protect your landing pages from being spied upon. It’s free! Here’s the URL: http://www.ppcdefender.com/  (I just learned it might not really serve it’s purpose though…)

That’s enough for now. It’s time to enjoy my weekend!

Trackback Spider – A Dumb Decision for Me

I’ve been digging around in Google Analytics a little bit today. I’m pleased to see some visitors are coming. Thank you!

My original intent for this blog was to chronicle my ventures into the world of internet marketing. But, I’m finding the day to day stuff is too boring to write about. Yuck. What might be more interesting is if I focus on the stuff I’m learning — my successes, dumb stuff I do, and opportunities I become aware of.

It’s so clear that I’m still way too quick to fall for the buzz on a sales page and want to jump on new products. This is especially true when they’re about getting traffic or building links. Put a limit on the number that are going to be sold and you got me!

This occurred recently when I purchased Trackback Spider. I jumped on the bandwagon based on another marketer’s recommendation and sense of urgency. I think I made the wrong decision. Trackback Spider builds backlinks to a site by posting trackbacks on niche blogs. The goal is to attempt so many trackbacks that you’ll catch some bloggers who don’t know enough to delete your trackback or block them to begin with — and then you’ll have a backlink in a relevant niche. Everything is cloaked to help hide your identity and make it look legit.

I haven’t used it. I did watch all the demo and install videos. And I realize I’m not comfortable using it. It’s cheating and taking advantage of people — it’s spamming. I really hate spam. Why would I do it to someone else?

I didn’t really catch what the gist of the product was about before I jumped in with 2 feet. I realize now and I will back out. Lesson learned. I need to be smarter as I read sales pages, plain and simple.

A good thing I checked out recently is a product called “The Barking Videos.” Fun name and it took me awhile to figure out how the creators arrived at that, but I got it. :) The videos are short takes on about 14 different traffic generation methods. They include reference to some really cool websites that I had no clue existed. I can take these and run with them. I was already aware of each of the traffic methods and knew techniques for utilizing them, but I learned a lot of new stuff that looks effecient and effective. They’re incredibly informative and quite well done.

Okay, so I did add an adsense block to my blog. It’s a small one near the bottom of the sidebar. I just checked now and the site is indexed finally, but I still don’t know what took so long. I also don’t know if the adsense made the difference. I guess I’m on my way to learning how to test.

That’s all for now. Thanks for visiting.

Blogini 2.0 on Steroids

Lots of learning going on these past few days. I’ve been putting up some niche websites, learning about silos, and doing a ton of navigating and editing in Filezilla (ftp software). These are really good skills to develop. I’ll write more about the niche websites in a few days.

Blogini 2.0 is really getting fine tuned. It’s time to look at it again if you haven’t been there for awhile, or for the first time, if you’ve missed it up until now. Ken Fox, the creator, has created a one of a kind membership site that is HUGE.

The basic premise is that you create and maintain one or more blogs. The Blogini folks then come in and build a network of keyword relevant backlinks for your blog(s) and websites allowing you to build traffic and page rank in a natural way. They call it link building on “steroids.” Very cool, and it’s worth it just for that.

But, Ken has also added an “Affiliate Help Zone,” a video portal, an article directory, an auction site, a training center, a forum, and what am I forgetting? He is absolutely committed to every member’s success as a marketer. He provides all of these options plus a comprehensive education in Internet marketing techniques.

So, you just maintain a couple blogs, they build all the backlinks and you get a great marketing education to boot!

On top of all that, he offers Boy Million as well. Seriously, check it out. You won’t believe the membership fees either.

That’s it for now. Have a good one!

Upgrading WordPress

My project today has been to implement the suggestions from a wso I purchased called “Blogging with Success.” The ebook is great. I’m learning a ton about optimizing a WordPress blog for SEO, tags, and keywords. The author recommends a number of plugins, and I’m incorporating those as well.

In the process of playing with the blog, I upgraded to WordPress 2.1.3. I immediately noticed that most of the features that are supposed to be available in the rich visual editor are missing, like text alignment, linking, adding an image, etc.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the source of the problem and finally ended up reading about it the WordPress support. Here I learned it is an ongoing bug that hasn’t been fixed for months. Hmm. I also learned that people are having much more serious problems than just the loss of some icons for editing posts. Not cool.

Now I have to decide, go back to 2.0.7 until the problem gets fixed or stick it out here? I absolutely want to use the visual editor and not just the code option. I have a copy of 2.0.7 and I backed everything up before beginning the upgrade process, so I can go back. Not sure yet what I’ll decide.

In any event, it’s a gorgeous spring day here, and the yardwork is calling. Have a good one!

Adsense Lessons Learned

Portal Feeder opened its doors again today. It’s a huge program that teachs how to create websites and really develop a presence on the web. It’s the whole deal with built in traffic promotion, market research, and you name it. It looks fabulous and I’m so tempted!

But, I said the same thing last night about Niches-In-A-Box. Both offer a tremendous program with a ton of training. Sounds like you couldn’t lose with either. My question is, do I want to invest in a program with more structure, or do I want to continue to put the pieces together myself?

One thing I’ve realized is that the adsense website model I learned in the training I took a few months ago is a bit archaic. I wish I had the same awareness then that I do now. While the method was probably really sound a year to 18 months ago, adsense is not the same entity it was then.

The cost in time and/or money for article marketing is tremendous, and recouping that through adsense clicks is a challenge. To do so requires a huge number of adsense sites and a tremendous number of fresh articles regularly to keep the traffic flowing. I’ll continue to build up the sites I have already created, but will not put the time or money into creating any more at this point. Was taking the class a mistake? No. The education has been invaluable.

Today I learned of another cool tool. It’s called DupeFreePro and it calculates the percentage of duplication in articles you’re working with, and checks for duplicate content on the Internet. The best part is it’s free. Check it out.

That’s all for now. Have a good one.