1. The best way to make money online post Panda is to focus on one thing, build an authority site, brand yourself and build a ‘business’; or

2. Have a few sites, spread yourself around and earn money from different ventures so that if one goes bust you still have the others to rely on for income.

Lately most internet marketers are pushing for the first. Build an authority site only – yeah I’ve even pushed that myself in this post – but I have to admit I haven’t practiced what I’ve preached.

Oh I believed what I was told and I did try and focus on just one thing for a while. But I got bored pretty quick. So I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s all just bogus.

Most online entrepreneurs (me included) are ‘scanners’. We don’t WANT to focus on just one site for weeks at a time and build up its authority and brand it.

This picture is sure to alienate half my audience but whatever I like it .. purrr.

Man, that sounds like too much work, and hey True Blood is on so I might just take a break while I watch Eric .. oh Eric ..

Um, where was I?

Oh yeah. Doing more than one thing online. Can you still make money doing a bunch of different things?

A big fat YES.

And I don’t think I’m alone as who hasn’t been tempted to check out the WSO’s for the next ‘cool’ thing to do.

We don’t want to build big fat authority businesses we just want to make some fucking money. Yes I said THAT. I’m feeling naughty right now.

There is a million different ways to make money online – from investing in the stock market (<< I had to get that link in there – keywords baby) to being a freelance writer, to building affiliate sites, to taking a pic of your cat chewing a sign with a web address on it for a fiverr gig.

There are so many different ways that you can create cash it’s not funny (unless you are not making ANY money then it’s really NOT funny).

So when I’m told to just pick one thing are build that and brand yourself it makes me go crazy. I don’t want to do just one thing. Maybe I have ADD?

Nah.

Mmm. Maybe.

But right now I’m going to tell you the REAL secret to getting wads of cash to fly through your computer screen and that is that you can’t listen to anyone else, copy anyone else, or follow what anyone else is doing (unless you think it’s your thing too). (I know that seems like stupid advice since I’m actually advising you not to take anyone’s advice). Um did that make sense?

You need to follow your heart, be brave and just be DIFFERENT.

But Tracey, I hear you say, I don’t know what I want to do, so why don’t you just tell me what the fuck I need to do (OMG I’ve just cursed twice in this post – that must mean I’m really passionate about what I’m saying right now).

I just did.

DO WHATEVER IT IS THAT YOU LIKE DOING ONLINE – But do it your OWN way. Put your own spin on it. That means doing things different than 99% of the other sheep out there.

It takes guts to go against the crowd but if you do you’ll get noticed and people flock to different. I know it’s a risk to try new things, but whatever it is about internet marketing that you like (for me it’s the writing, making pretty pictures and trying new things). I’m always trying new things.

Right now I’m writing books for Kindle but next week I could be doing something completely different again. And probably will be. No need to slow down on this highway baby.

I just don’t want to build an authority site. So suck it – I don’t care what everyone is telling me I need to do. I’m quite happy just doing my own thing. It makes me happy and I make money doing it.

Follow your passion, write down that idea that you can’t get out of your head, try something you’ve never done before. Go a little crazy.

Just don’t be the same. Stand out. Be YOU.

Thanks for reading Why You CAN Do More Than One Thing Online and Still Make Money. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

However the reality is more like trying to convince my 4 year old that it’s mummy’s time on the computer while I steal fifteen minutes here and there when my 1 year old is napping in between dishes, laundry and cleaning up the banana that the baby just squashed into the TV remote.

To be honest I often am amazed that I have time to make any money online at all!

Internet marketing has taken a bit of a back seat lately while I work on ‘real’ books so I haven’t had the time to blog comment, social network, or check my Adsense account 20 times a day like I usually do.

I’ve still been lurking though (which is much easier now that I’ve set my Google reader subscriptions up on Flipboard on the iPad) (how awesome is Flipboard!) so I can read at my leisure. (did I say leisure? Ha!)

Is it possible to make money online even when you don’t have much time?

Absolutely.

But you need to work smarter. To make money online when you don’t have a lot of time you need:
1. A clear outline of what you want to achieve on a daily/weekly/monthly basis (I don’t plan anything longer than a month in advance).
2. A checklist, to do list or list of steps that are actionable to move you towards your goal.
3. Writing on a regular basis (even if that is broken up into small chunks of time)

My To Do list usually looks something like this:

DAILY

• Read / Answer emails
• Read / Answer blog comments
• Quickly check news / discussion sites / other blogs to see what info is currently topical / hot in the niche I’m working on.
• Check Twitter
• Brainstorm blog post ideas.

WEEKLY

• Choose which site/blog to focus on for that week (I have Internet Marketing ADD – so I usually work on a different site every week although I come back to my faves often).
• Write blog posts
• Get Backlinks from: articles / BMR / hubs / squids / commenting / wherever is good

MONTHLY

• Check traffic stats for all sites and compare increases/decreases from previous month . Concentrate efforts mostly on sites that are increasing in traffic.
• See if there are any domains I want to let go (because I either don’t have time to work on the project, lost interest in them, or they haven’t made me any money within a year (some sites I’m sure are just cursed).
• Start working through the SeoMoz Noob Guide to Internet Marketing (helps me keep focused and on track with those marketing steps I always seem to forget to do. And it has an infograpic.  Who doesn’t love an infographic!)

Your To Do list is probably completely different. As it should be since we all have different goals and working habits.

Although it doesn’t always go to plan, so I’ve also made a list of what not to do:

• Stare at a blank computer screen wondering what you are going to do next (me before coffee)
• Spend over an hour searching for the ‘perfect’ theme for your blog. Just choose one – you can always changing it later
• Think you need a professional looking logo so ‘research’ some design ideas – aahh that’s a pretty picture (no Tracey, focus)
• Get bored and make a controversial comment in a mother/baby forum – sooo fun, but not really conducive to getting work done.

Oh, I have to go – the baby just tipped out the breakfast cereal on the kitchen floor.

Thanks for reading How To Find Time To Write When You Have Two Kids Hanging Off You. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

I’ll have to be honest with you though, I didn’t really get affected all that much. Sure my hubs are down, but traffic is actually only down about 15 or so %. My hub adsense income hasn’t really changed all that much (perhaps down a few cents per week – but nothing I would have normally even noticed unless I looked really hard).

Overall I think my adsense income across the board is actually slightly up. I’m guessing some of the rankings for sites that I haven’t touched in a while might have moved. Again I don’t know – I haven’t really looked.

This disinterest is mainly because I haven’t been focused so much on internet marketing lately.

With reading the Millionaire Fastlane and rewriting the first book I’ve started to even question whether the whole get links, pray for rankings, feel the love thing is really for me anymore. Maybe I should just stick to writing books – even though there is even less money in that unless you get featured on Oprah or something.

My income hasn’t moved from where it was 12 months ago. I do know I make a pretty decent monthly income from all the sites/hubs/lenses/etc that I have – a monthly income that many others would think is a dream and want to aspire to.

But after linking and praying for the last twelve months, I haven’t seen any real improvements. Still a great income for sure, but you would think I would have seen a few thousand a month (at least) improvement wouldn’t you?

I guess that sounds kind of selfish on my part. Perhaps I’m just having a bad day. I know what I do works, I just can’t seem to break through that barrier.

Ok. Enough venting.

Perhaps I just need to step away from the computer and go get a nice massage or something. Oh yes that’s it. And a facial. With nice relaxing music, candles and aromatherapy oils. Ahh now I feel better.

Thanks for reading Link, Pray, Love. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco (yes that’s an affiliate link, if you don’t want to give me a tip then head over to Amazon directly and get it). 

It’s 300 pages of some awesome strategies and ways to get rich (including internet strategies) and really will change the way you do business online.  I seriously couldn’t put it down and have just started reading it again for the second time – this time taking notes.

This book will make you more money than any ebook that you could buy.  Seriously!!

I got the Kindle version for under $10.  This is awesome!!  I recommend you all get it.

Love Love Loved it!!!

Tracey

Thanks for reading Just A Quickie …. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

How many links to get to #1 Google?
Do I blast out an xrumer OR try and be frugal?
I’ve heard that backlinks are king, is it true?
And can I do it on my website that’s brand new?
Tell me do I use the exact anchor phrase?
Or when it comes to linking are there better ways?

Thanks in advance
Newbie.

Dear Newbie,

Links definitely do help you, that much is true
But it isn’t about how many you accrue
It’s about quality my friend, quality and trust
If you get the RIGHT links you can leave the others for dust
So let’s look at what a quality link really is
(By the way I learned all this stuff from Griz)
The best are in content and not the blogroll
A link from a good website is definitely your goal
It helps if the site is similar to yours
And one that Google already adores
Contact the owner and see if they guest post
Then write a kick ass post with the most
Or build your own network of sites if you dare,
They really can help if they are made with care
Even some web 2.0 sites will work
But write good stuff there too and don’t be a jerk
If you don’t like to write then make a video
See Allyn for tips and go check out his mo!
If you put the work in then your site will improve
It’s not that hard if you get in the groove
Just ignore all the ebooks asking for $97 cash,
They are written by guru’s who like to flash, cash then dash,
Focus on quality links then your rank will rise
And you’ll be able to sell more white socks and ties
When you’re counting your cash as the sun goes down,
Sip some champagne and watch Cougar Town.

Tracey
P.S. No really, Cougar Town (unfortunately named) rocks.

P.P.S.  Merry Christmas Everyone!

Thanks for reading How To Rank #1 in Google – A Poem. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

All my testing seems to point that you can easily get a penalty in Google from some sort of filter that can detect if you have an unnatural linking profile i.e. using the same anchor text to rank your page.

It used to be that you could spam your anchor keyword to hundreds of places and it actually HELPED your page to rank, but my testing is showing that this isn’t the case anymore.

You CAN still get away with it on big sites like Hubpages and Squidoo, but try it on your own sites and it’s likely to do more harm than good.

Not too long ago a test was done by Search Engine Watch on a relatively popular term ‘outdoor clothing’ to determine the backlink profile of the top 10 sites.

Interestingly enough the #1 ranking site for the term only had about 2% of its total backlinks using ‘outdoor clothing’.  And the remainder of the top 5 also had a low % of anchor backlinks using that phrase.

It’s pretty much what my testing is showing as well.  While links themselves are still a MAJOR ranking factor, the anchor text used isn’t quite as important, and can in fact harm your site when overused.

Now I know what some of you are going to say.  Yeah if it were that easy to harm a site then all a competitor would need to do is spam your main keyword to thousands of sites and your ranking would drop.  And well, um, yes it’s actually possible.  Not on bigger ‘authority’ sites, but on your basic niche site it’s VERY possible to give a site a penalty. I know – I’ve done it to some of my own sites in testing.

So what’s my conclusion?

Pretty much what most white hatters have been saying all along – vary your anchor text.  And also vary the length.  Use one word, then five, then three.  I’ve had good results with just using a single word as the anchor.  It doesn’t seem to matter what the anchor text is, as long as it’s somewhat related.

Branding

The one incidence that using the same anchor text hasn’t harmed the site (in my testing which of course is quite small) is when using the brand name of a site.  How many times do you think people link to Amazon using its name only? or eBay or FoxNews or Oprah, or – well you get the idea?  All the time.  Most people don’t think ‘keywords’ they use the name of the site when linking to it.

At first I thought the reason this didn’t seem to incur a penalty may have been due to the size, trust and authority of these sites (and to a large extent it probably is), but I have found a similar pattern on some of my smaller sites as well.

I have no idea if small one or two word anchor links are being treated differently than long tail anchor links but I’m leaning towards that theory for now.

Thanks for reading Should You Vary Your Anchor Text?. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

So is Daddy G showing Little S (who has now grown into a much bigger site lately) some love again? Is the grounding over?

Looks like it’s so.

Over the past few months (since about September) all the lenses that I previously made have started to rise in the serps ever so slightly, so I decided to test some things and I threw a few BMR backlinks at one of my more competitive lenses. An immediate jump from 40’ish something to now sitting nicely in spot 4.

I tried it again, just in case that was a fluke. A much more competitive term that wasn’t even ranked (or at least I couldn’t find it) is now 30’something with a handful of backlinks – needless to say I’ll be adding a few more to see if I can get it to jump again.

I’m thinking Squidoo might be back .. maybe for a short time, maybe for longer – I don’t know.

Now of course Squidoo isn’t the best Web 2.0 property to use because they have a lot of leakage on their pages, but they are more lenient that Hubpages in terms of allowing linked images (GOLDMINE) and up to 8 (or is it 9?) links to the one domain (YEAH BABY).

So if you are looking to make some quick Chrissy cash then they might just be worth looking into.

If you write for adsense though, forget it. They have a weird tiered payout system based on your lensrank. It looks like it’s impossible to make any decent money from Adsense with them.

Even Clickbank isn’t loved there anymore.

But for Amazon – it’s not too bad – in fact it’s pretty good. I’ve been making quite a few sales there too. Much more than last few years at any rate. So I’ll be writing quite a few more lenses over the next few weeks in the run up to Christmas (no it’s not too late – it’s NEVER too late).

So go forth, jump on Amazon and find a good product (check the bestseller lists or holiday gifts list) and make a lens about that product. Send a few Build My Rank links to it and watch it jump a few spots.

What have you got to lose?

Thanks for reading Is Squidoo Back?. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

You need good website traffic

I’ve been getting quite a few emails this week from people saying that they just are not making money online yet. Usually this is due to one of two factors:

1. You don’t have the ‘right’ type of traffic
2. You don’t have a product that converts

So let’s look at traffic first. Traffic in and of itself means nothing. You could make a website that shows funny YouTube video’s and get thousands of people that come to your site. But they probably won’t buy anything. Sure you might get an odd Adsense click here or there but this site isn’t going to make you any money.

If you are serious about making money online then you need either people ready to buy or people desperate to solve a problem.

If you want to promote ebooks or CPA offers then you will probably be looking for desperate people looking to solve their man boobs, yeast infection, how to pick up women, etc . You give them a bit of help and tease them that this cream/ebook/magical potion is going to make them rich/beautiful/thin whatever and they crave and hand over their credit cards.

Or

You can focus on people that already know that they want to purchase something. This is the crowd I mainly target which Amazon products. They usually either know what they want to buy but are looking for some sort of social proof by testimonials or reviews, don’t remember the name of the product and are searching online to try and find it, or don’t realise that they can go straight to Amazon to purchase it so find your website first (this is my favourite type of traffic).

What happens if you ARE targeting the right type of traffic, but they are not finding your website? If you are not ranked on the first page (and preferably in the top 3 spots) then you need to get more traffic to your page. Probably the best way to do this is by getting backlinks to your site. Try and get 3 or 4 a day (or more if you can handle it). You can buy backlink services or get them yourself by writing articles for blog posts, article directories, web 2.0 sites etc.

If you ARE ranked on the first page but still not getting traffic then either your product doesn’t convert or there isn’t enough people wanting that product.

If you are just not getting enough traffic then the solution is to add more products to your site. Don’t focus on just one thing, add more stuff. If you are promoting an Amazon product then you can get heaps of clues on other products to promote – they tell you things like ‘customers who bought this item, also purchased …’. Create a page or post about this product. Add 5 or 6 more. Backlink those and keep going until your site get’s enough traffic.

But what happens if you’ve got the ranking, the traffic but you are STILL not making sales? Well it could be that your product just plain sucks (some do) or your layout isn’t set up properly and people are confused what to do.

Make it clear how they purchase the product. I use both a big ass image that has a ‘buy from amazon’ somewhere on it. And I also usually include a link in the text somewhere that says something like ‘view more reviews on Amazon’ or ‘Click Here to buy widget BX from Amazon’. (And don’t forget to test your links to make sure they go to the right page – you don’t want your page not to convert because your link is wrong! LOL).

Backlink update week 2

Stats:

KW2 – 192 (ranking in top 200 now)
KW3 – 138 (gone up from 109)
KW4 – 75 (same as last week)

Backlinks indexed in YSE = 37

The article run still hasn’t been done, but the MakeBacklinks and Backlinks Philippines both have been done. There hasn’t been much improvement in rankings yet (and keywords 1, 5 & 6 are still not in the top 200).

I am however ranking quite well in Yahoo which made a few odd sales – $21.44 for this week. So getting slightly better.

Thanks for reading Why aren’t you making money?. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

Tracey,
I think I’ve read just about every word on your site – but sorry if these answers appeared somewhere else already. Do you have any opinion on the Postrunner system? Are you still finding success with creating your own Web 2.0 backlinks (not counting Hubpages and Ezines)? There is just so much info – not sure where to focus. Creating 2.0s? Angela and Paul’s backlinks? Postrunner? Or all?
I’d really like to focus my efforts to get the best results.
Thanks
Stephanie

Hi Stephanie,

Glad to hear you are enjoying my site. Let’s see if I can answer your questions:

1. re: Postrunner System

I’m not a member of the Keyword Academy anymore so don’t exactly know what this system does. I think it’s a form of guest posting on other people’s blogs through the one system thereby distributing your articles to lots of different places online to gain backlinks, am I right?

If so then yes I believe that this can be very powerful. It’s not what I do, but it can work very well if you don’t have many of your own sites online yet.

Because I have quite a few sites of my own now, I usually use them to get backlinks to my other sites. I also use web 2.0 properties for links as well.

2. Success with web 2.0 properties?

I definately do use web 2.0 sites a lot because they work great for me. I mainly use hubpages and ezinearticles, but also occassionaly squidoo, xomba, infobarrel, snipsly, weebly, blogger and others. Don’t ignore the power of these properties – especially ones that you can directly control. I have one hubpage that is a pr5. A link from that page is VERY powerful.

3. Angela & Pauls backlinks

I don’t use these anymore. Twelve months ago they were super powerful but now because so many people (newbies) use them they have lost all their link power. I also think during the last Mayday update Google gives less juice to these types of links. Plus it’s a pain to fill out all those profiles

4. What to do now?

I like to keep my system pretty simple. I believe it’s really just a numbers game. The more pages/articles you have online the more money you’ll make.

My basic system is slightly different depending on what I’m promoting.

For Amazon sites, it’s usually set up a blog or html static site (which one depends on my mood for that day, it really makes no difference to rankings). I try and get a close match domain name like redwidgets.com although sometimes it’s more general (tip: if you are having trouble getting a good domain name just add a generic word to the end. I like adding blog or site or something, so redwigdgetsblog.com.)

Next I check Google Adwords for a good main keyword. Usually it’s something with three words in it because it’s less competition.

Next I’ll do a search for that keyword online. On the left of Google search if you click advanced options, you’ll see a wonder wheel option. Click that. The related phrases that appear are usually my secondary keywords for the site (and I’ll create a page/post for each of these).

Usually my amazon sites have around six to ten content pages (or more if they are very profitable).

Now depending on whether they ranking and if they are making sales or not, I’ll then add a few hubpages and articles pointing back to the sites. These are not always related. I might have hubs on cat breeding that link to sites about lego star wars. If it’s related then great, but don’t think it definately has to be.

Oh and another tip: always add an outbound link or two to a relevant authority site. It actually helps your own site! I didn’t beleive it either until I tried it, but it really works.

For my Adsense sites, it’s roughly the same except I have way more posts on these sites. Usually I try and get AT LEAST 30 posts on these sites but many of my sites have more than 100 pages. The posts/pages target lots of different keyphrases (please don’t try and target just the one phrase with these sites, you want them to look as authorative as possible).   Tip: do a search for your keyphrase on Google then advanced options again and just look at either News or Blogs – there is some really good fresh information you can use on your blogs that is topical and gives your site some really good articles.

Definately add some tracking to your sites (I usually use Google Analytics, but sometimes I’ll use Statcounter instead). See what keywords that Google thinks that your site is relevant for and then write some more posts on that.

Adsense sites definately need more support in terms of articles and web 2.0 sites linking to them. I lot of my traffic to my adsense sites comes from ezinearticles.

I don’t have as much luck with Clickbank as I find many of the products don’t convert well for me. My best strategy is usually to do a case study, full review website covering a product (that I’ve actually used!) giving my results and experiences with the product. Can be time consuming, but ranks so much better in Google than just have a one page review that every other affiliate does. Plus it gives me credibility because I actually do use these products.

That is really all I do. As you can see it’s not complicated, it’s just a matter of lots of writing (either posts or articles) that I spread over the web either on my own site, or for backlinks on other sites.

I don’t use any special software, I do everything by hand. (I’ve played with autoblogging before as I have WPRobot but I just don’t seem to make any money this way). I only make money when I sit down and do the hard work. Writing Writing Writing.

So there you go. My big secret to making money online. And you probably knew this already.

Thanks for reading My Secret to Making Money Online. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

Well, I thought I’d help you get there by providing some simple steps on how you can do it. I mean we can all use some extra cash can’t we?

And by the way, there is no reason that you can’t scale this up to make much more than that, but I wanted to be conservative so I think a target of $700 by using this method I’m about to share is achievable.

For this to work we’ll be promoting a ClickBank product called Info Product Killer (IPK). The reason I’ve chosen this product is because it pays a commission of $70 per sale and it was hands down one of the best products I’ve ever purchased online (which you’d already know if you read this blog). (If you’d like to purchase it yourself you can do so here – although that’s not the purpose of this post – This post is all about helping YOU to make money). So to reach $700 you’ll need to make 10 sales of this.

This product converts at around 5%, which means to make 10 sales you’ve got get around 200 people to look at the offer. And I’m betting most of you already have a mailing list of more than 200 (or know how to get lots of eyes on this offer through SEO).

Sound achievable?

Awesome.

Of course I must let you know that I didn’t write/produce IPK and I’ve never met the author (although I have emailed him a few times and he seems really nice). I just really love the product, and you can’t beat that commission! $70 a sale – that’s good money.

So how do you get started?

First, register to become an affiliate for IPK. Head over to this affiliate sign up page and enter your details (for tracking your sales).  THIS IS IMPORTANT.

The product launches on July 13th and it’s only going to be live for 2 days so you’ve only got a little bit of time.

Craig Kaye (the author) has provided some pre-written emails that you can send out, starting a few days before and leading up to the launch day.

You can use these or write your own. (I prefer to write my own).

From now until then you can work at building your mailing list or you can just set up your autoresponder ahead of time.

Easy peasy.

I’ll be doing the same. In fact if you are on my mailing list, then expect to see some promo emails from me on this one. I am an affiliate after all

Good luck to everyone, and here’s to an extra $700 (or more) in your pocket.

UPDATE – Promoting Info Product Killer 2010 without a List

I’ve got quite a few people that said they would like to promote Info Product Killer 2010 but don’t have a list – is it still possible to make money? (Oh and by the way this method will work with any Clickbank Product)

Well yes it is. But it’s going to be hard work – are you ready?

Now since a lot of big name marketers are going to be promoting this, that means that lots of people are going to be searching online for reviews and information about it once they first hear about it.

That means you are going to have to make a blog post or article with words like

Info Product Killer Review
Info Product Killer 2010 Review
What’s in IPK 2010?
IPK Scam
IPK Case Study
IPK Bonuses (if you plan to offer bonuses)

And so on.

You can add this to your existing blog, hubpage, squidoo lens etc or you can make a new page or blog.

I probably wouldn’t bother writing an article for Ezinearticles at this stage since IPK is only going to be live for a few days and EA might take too long to approve your article, so use places where your article or blog post will go live immediately.

I’ll be using my already existing Info Product Killer Review site.

Remember, if you want to promote this you need to go to http://www.infoproductkiller.com/jv/859358/ and place your details in the ‘stay in the loop’ box so you can get all the latest info and get your sales tracked.

You’ll make $81 a sale.

Craig has also added some banners on the site too which you can put on your website.

Here’s to a successful campaign!

Thanks for reading Make $700 in 2 days. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)