After reading Dave’s very funny 27 Reasons post, I was inspired to write my own numbers post so in an effort to kill an half an hour or so, here it is. 19 Reasons Why You Should Never Write a Numbers Post:

1.   Google doesn’t know how to count. He (she?) is very good at reading for keywords, but couldn’t care less if you wrote a list of numbered paragraphs or lists. He (she) only cares about the words.

2.  Bloggers care deeply about numbers posts and we all know that other bloggers don’t buy stuff from you. People searching online do. People searching online don’t give a hoot if you have one thing on your list or 9 things.

3.  I know this because I’ve had posts that have promoted one thing, and other’s that promote a bunch of things in a list with titles like ‘top 5 ..’ and ‘the 7 bestselling ..’. They don’t make any difference to my sales.

4. Experts tell you that if you are writing a number post or article then it has to be odd numbered. ‘ 5 ways to ..’, ‘7 secrets ..’, ‘19 reasons why ..’, etc. They cite examples based on marketing data they’ve read. Something about physiological barriers or something. Again having numbered articles doesn’t make a difference to how you rank in the search engines.

5. I’m loving the show CougarTown right now. It’s hilarious. Ellie is my favourite character. I seriously love this show.

6. Often times some of the points in a numbers post don’t seem to have any relevance to what it is supposed to be about and are there just as filler content. See point 5.

7. Of course, we know that Google doesn’t care about numbers but human readers do. So sometimes writing an article about the ‘11 magic secrets to ruling the world’ may get you more clicks on your article.

8. While the above has worked on ezinearticles that I’ve written, it doesn’t seem to affect my CTR to my site though. Therefore, while you might get more readers looking at your article, it doesn’t always translate to clickthroughs and therefore sales on your site.

9. Once you get to point 9, you start to struggle about things to write about to keep your list going.

10. Have you seen the flirting between Alyssa Milano and The Old Spice Guy on YouTube. Very funny stuff.

11. If you are serious about making money online then you should stay away from sites like YouTube because it’s a major time sucker, and the time you spent watching video’s could have been spent writing articles and earning you money.

12. Same goes for reading other blogs from your favourite bloggers.

13. And hanging out at forums.

14. Yep, all major time suckers which could have been used to spend time writing articles.

15. Have I got to 19 yet?

16.

17. There really was something really cool at point 16, but it’s invisible and it will only appear at midnight on the 2nd of May 2067.

18. Ok, that last point wasn’t even funny. You can see I’m struggling to fill up all 19 points here.

19. Seriously though, stop reading this stupid post and go and write some articles on your blog or submit them to ezinearticles for traffic. That will make you more money that any secrets I could ever give you in this post.

My June Results

I had the best month in June that I’ve ever had online (well since I started tracking my earnings anyway). Amazon was still by far my best earner at just over $5K, and the rest of my affiliate earnings were around $900 (my Clickbank earnings have dropped dramatically since the Google June updates). So just under $6K for the month. Not too shabby for a few hours a day onlne. My goal is to get up to $10K though. Might take a bit more work

While Amazon continues to be great, I’m not sure about the rest of my earnings because Google has dumped some of my information sites …

Google Caffeine Ranking Changes

At the beginning of June a few of my websites that had previously been getting around 100-200 visitors a day from Google suddenly dropped out of the rankings and now G is only sending me around 5-10 visitors a day. (Luckily I still get around 100 visitors a day through article marketing to these sites, but that’s not the point).

So what happened?

I suspect it was nothing that I did, but rather the dreaded MayDay changes to Google’s algorithm’s. Yes Caffeine really did shake things up for us internet marketers.

Now before we go forward, these were not tiny niche websites. They had around 50 or so pages each, all with unique content that I’d written.

So the bigger questions now is, what on earth is Google looking for now?

Now while I cannot say for sure, here are my thoughts on what I, and everyone else, should be looking at in the future.

Linking out has become important. Yes it seems that you’ll need to be more generous in your linking scheme and not try and hog all that juice for yourself. Pages where I have four or five links (even links to other pages on my own site) are doing better than pages that have no links on them. Interesting. By spreading the love, you might just be helping yourself out.

PageRank has come back into play. PR hasn’t been important for a long time but now I’m noticing that those sites that list in the top 10 for certain keywords have good PR. I’m not seeing as many tiny little sites with PR0 there anymore – they seem to have been booted out. Of course this could also be because the larger sites have more backlinks (which in turn increases PR to a site) as well.

Good internal page structure. Call it silo’ing or what you will, but sites with tidy and neat category structures seem to be doing well. I’m yet to figure out the best way to change this on existing sites, but it’s worth taking into account with new sites that you create.

Backlinks. I’m somewhat in two minds about this. On one level I hear that you no longer want 1,000’s of low quality backlinks to your site, you want good quality (preferably from high PR pages) backlinks with the anchor text of your keyword. And that doesn’t mean the PR from the domain, but from the page (unlike those spammy profile links). But I have to say that both still work for me. In fact I have two websites that support both theories. One has just a few high quality links from relevant sites, and the other has a bunch of low quality profile links. Both rank well – and they still do even after the caffeine changes, so I can’t say what I believe here.

I think I’m going to just continue building links like I usually do and see what happens.

IPK Promotion

Those on my list might have seen my last post about the fact that IPK is relaunching this month. I’ve had quite a few people want to promo it too and earn some quick cash, but don’t have a list. Is it still possible to make sales from this is you don’t have a list?

Yes it is, it’ll be a bit harder but it is possible.

I’ll be writing a blog post later this week about how to do it (and also how I’m going to do it) so you can try and get some sales as well.

Stay tuned.

This week has been fairly good online, and while it’s been fairly boring doing the same old thing everyday (except for weekends which I now take off), I’ve been quite productive.

I have to say that Internet Marketing isn’t all that glamorous. I know you hear all these stories and false promises of how you can make a million overnight just by doing this one easy thing, but really it’s like anything in life – the more you put into it, the more you get out. There aren’t any shortcuts – it’s about putting the work in: building websites, writing articles, getting backlinks and so forth.

And while you are likely to make a little bit of money in the beginning, the real money comes when you have hundreds of websites up, hundreds of articles directly traffic to them, hundreds of backlinks pointing at them.

Yes it can seem overwhelming, but just start with that first blog or first hubpage and take baby steps and build from there. If you can make $10 a month from one website, then build 100 more and you’ll be making $1,000 a month. If you can only build one hubpage or blog per day (5 days per week) then by the end of the year you could have over 250 pages out there that could potential be earning you income.

Imagine if those 250 sites/blogs/hubs (whatever you build) were making an average of $10 per month each. In 12 months time you’ve just made yourself an income of $2,500 per month. Of course you could make more or less than that – but I think that estimate is pretty reasonable.

But it does take commitment and action.

Autoblogging Update

My auto blog that I set up two weeks ago has now got over 100 posts indexed online, but the problem seems to be traffic. Yes I already knew that this was a highly competitive niche but when I had BANS on it I was still getting a trickle of traffic. Now it seems I’m getting none at all. In the past week, the search engines have sent me a total of 3 visitors. 3 !! Hmm . Perhaps this experiment isn’t turning out as lucrative as I would have hoped.

I know it’s still early days, but I might hold off adding any more new posts to it for a while until I can see that it’s going to pay off.

Making Money Online with HubPages

I’m still really enjoying the income and rankings that I’m seeing with Hubpages. Of course not every hub is paying off, but the more hubs you have out there, the more chance you will have of making some money.

Recently I’ve just started experimenting with Hubpages and the eBay affiliate program. My goal is to get as many eBay hubs going as I can. Right now I’ve only got 5 up, but I want to get at least 100 up if I can manage it over the next few months in the lead up to Christmas.

Now using the eBay affiliate program is a little different to using the Amazon one in that eBay don’t allow you to add your affiliate links directly into websites that you don’t own. You can however use the eBay module that hubpages supplies. Same goes with squidoo – no direct links, but you can use their module (or capsule or whatever it’s called).

This of course does limit the income you can make since the revenue is shared with Hubpages, but it will be a good way to see which products are winner’s so that you can then go on and expand on them.

I’m choosing the products by going to eBay Pulse and seeing what the popular searches for different categories are. Then I’ll use my usual method of choosing suitable keywords which I’ve now named Tracey’s 1000:1000 method of keyword selection.

Tracey’s 1000:1000 Keyword Selection Method

I’ve already gone over this in a few of my previous post, but for new reader’s the rules are this.

Go to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and enter your keywords. Change the match type to Exact Match. You only want the keywords that have 1000 exact match searches or more per month. Next you go to Google and check out the competition. You enter intitle:”your keyword” into the search and see how many search results you get back. If the results are 1000 or LESS then you have found a good keyword to use.

That is the method I use, it works well for me.

ClickBank Update

I don’t know what happened last week, as this week my ClickBank sales are back to normal. Admittedly I’m not a huge Clickbank affiliate since I think most of the products suck but you can make a decent living promoting them. I will probably try and increase this over the next few months though.

Making Money with Amazon

I had quite a few questions regarding the Amazon method I’ve been taking about in my last few pots which I’ll briefly go over here. Mainly asking how many incoming links you need, how many supporting sites you should have, if you have to write articles, if you can choose products not on the bestseller lists, and so forth.

Here’s the deal. Yes you will probably need some sort of backlinks to your hubs for them to rank well. Hubs do rank quite well on their own, especially if the competition is crap, but some do need more work.

How do you tell which ones need backlinks and which ones don’t?

Easy. Write a hub. Leave it two weeks. If it’s on Page 1 for your main keyword then hooray you don’t need to do any more work.

If it is not then you’ll need some backlinks to it using your keyword as the anchor text.

How do you get backlinks?

Other hubs that are related – say your first hub was promoting a certain tennis racket, then have a second hub for another tennis racket with a link back to the first hub. Or even a tennis ball, heck it doesn’t even have to be that related, link to it from your weight loss hub if you like – the whole myth that you need backlinks from related websites is a crock – I have links from all sorts of places and do well.

Articles are another great source of backlinks. Ezinearticles, GoArticles etc.

Other Web 2.0 sites. Write a blogger blog linking to your hub. And a squidoo lens. And an InfoBarrell. And a free wordpress blog. Heck if you wanted to, you could go right ahead and create your own linkwheel to boost your rankings. I’ve often done that for more competitive items.

And finally, no you don’t need to target only the bestselling items on Amazon. Target anything you like. I only suggested that as a starting point because it’s easy. Any product that fits the 1000:1000 keyword selection rule is fair game.

I suggest you get started making up some Amazon and EBay product related hubs now because come Christmas (when everyone is in a buying mode) you are likely to pocket some very nice cash. If you get all your websites and hubs set up now, you’ll be in a very good position come October/November (when Christmas buying seasons starts heating up).

Well I’m getting hungry so it might be time to end this post and go make some lunch. Hope you enjoyed it. Catch you all again next week

Tracey xx

First of all – Happy New Year! I hope that 2009 will be unbelievable profitable for you.

This year I wanted to do something a little different with by blog. Something that would help people make money without them having to fork out for an eBook or report that tells them the basics but doesn’t really give any concrete information on HOW to start earning that cash. So over the next few weeks and months I’m going to be writing some really informative posts that I believe will help you make money.

I don’t even want anything in return. As you can see I’ve taken the Adsense off my site (it earned me peanuts anyway) and I only have minimal advertising. I also won’t be trying to sell or promote a product to you that I haven’t used myself or don’t think is useful just so I can make a commission (yes I have been guilty of that in the past). It will be your choice to whether to use any product I recommend or not – as it should be.

So I guess we should start at the beginning then. Eventually I’d like you all to start creating your own products, but let’s keep it simple to begin with and make a start promoting other people’s products – affiliate marketing.

I think affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways for beginners to start making money online because you don’t need to worry about customer service or writing a product, all you do is connect buyer with seller and collect your commission.

It’s a pretty easy passive income if you know what you are doing. It doesn’t even take that much time if you do it right.

So, look out for my next post so we can get started straight away ..

Affiliate Marketing Step 1: Finding a Product to Promote
Affiliate Marketing Step 2: Choosing Your Product
Affiliate Marketing Step 3a: Setting Up Your Website
Affiliate Marketing Step 3b: Setting Up Your Website
Affiliate Marketing Step 3c: Setting Up Your Download Page
Affiliate Marketing Step 4: Your Autoresponder

Catch you soon,
Tracey

Over the past few months I have got really bored with this blog.  It didn’t seem like it had any real purpose other than to update what I have been doing online, letting you know when products I’ve written are ready or just promoting other peoples stuff.  Just like millions of other internet marketing blogs out there.

Mine didn’t stand out.

So I’ve changed a few things.  Starting obviously with the look my blog.  No longer do I have that boring 3 column design that you see everywhere, now I’ve chosen something a bit more funky and cool (and least I think so). 

I’ve also taken off the ads and adsense.  To be honest with you – I make tons of money already online – a few extra cents isn’t going to make that much difference to me and it just clutters up the space.

Starting next year I’m going to make more useful posts.  Posts that you can actually use to make money online.  Posts that don’t just give you an overview but an actual step by step plan on making money online.

Why am I doing this?

Because over the past year or so I have come a long way.  My knowledge online has increased substantially and my time has decreased substantially.  But I also remember what it was like when I was starting out and I was desperately looking for someone to show me the way to go.  I tried hundreds of different methods but never really focused.  Now if I want I can make $100 here or there pretty easily.

Twice this month I’ve already had two $1,000 + days.  I’m not telling you this to boast – ok maybe I’m boasting a little bit.  But mainly I want to let you know to hang in there, keep learning, keep doing.  Because one day it all falls into place and the money starts rolling in.

That’s how I feel.

That’s why I changed my blog and my direction.

Like?