A Google Rant

I think Google is being mean to me. I think (not sure) that there’s been another big algorithm update here in mid to late March and some weird stuff is definitely going on.

A lot of those fast, easy backlinks that you can get like Squidoo lenses, Blogger blogs, social bookmarking and stuff aren’t giving my sites any leverage right now. Sometimes I’ll use backlinks from those to strengthen new pages I’m posting at my site if I’m targeting higher competition keyphrases and I know my pages might not show up otherwise.

I spent this past week building a gazillion freaking backlinks from everywhere. Blog comments, forums, articles directories, anywhere where I could place a backlink relevant to my keyphrases. Doing this stuff can burn you the fuck out, that’s for sure. I feel a little shell-shocked and dazed. When I go out in the sunshine I feel like something that’s been living under a rock for a while in a cave, my eyes can’t adjust to the light after staring at a computer monitor for what seems like forever.

I know it’s still early for those backlinks to give my pages any juice. And many of the places where I’ve built backlinks haven’t been indexed yet. But geese Louise, would it kill Google to notice that a few of my new site pages exist?

Does anybody know any girls who work at Google who aren’t completely and utterly unattractive so I could seduce one and maybe get me some Google love?

(Don’t tell my girlfriend. She’s curled up with the cats sleeping at the moment. You heard nothing.)

Publish Short Ebooks and Make a Killing Online

Over the past six months, I’ve been getting into selling short, simple “how to” type guides. These reports are rarely more than about 20 pages long, and they’re often about microniche subjects or weird hobbies or bizarre personal problems.

I’ve been doing really well with selling these reports, and so far I think that publishing my own ebooks is just as fun as doing affiliate marketing - maybe even more fun, because I get instant payments.

When I got started I had to scramble around to find all of that basic info like how to secure my downloads, how to drive traffic to my product, how to set up payment, etc. ad nauseum.

Since then I got my uncle started creating and publishing his own ebooks, and I hooked him up with a cool home study course put out by Kevin Riley. It pretty much teaches you everything you need to know to get started selling your own reports.

I’m too lazy to write down all the stuff I’ve figured out, so I’m glad I found this course for my uncle. He’s kind of a technophobe but even he is managing to crank out his first reports and he’s seeing some decent income coming in. As a retiree whose pension got decimated in the market crash, he’s very happy to see this extra money coming in right now.

I really think anybody (except maybe for extreme dyslexics? You do need to be able to put words together) can get started creating and publishing their own ebooks. Don’t think about writing a book. Just think about writing a report.

I charge anywhere from $7 to about $37 for my reports, depending on how much competition is in my niche and how much detail I provide in the reports. And usually I’m just doing research on the subjects of my reports. I’ve only written one report on a hobby that I’m truly an “expert” in. I never present myself as an expert, anyway. I always say I’m a “researcher” or a “writer” or an “enthusiast.” That covers a lot of ground when you’re selling reports.

“Dan Gregory is a ferret enthusiast who has been admiring ferrets since 1984. He enjoys researching the mysterious and undiscovered aspects of ferrets.”

Or something like that. That’s my typical byline for these reports, anyway.

If you want to know more about what I’m doing with these reports and you don’t mind a minor sales pitch for Kevin’s excellent home study course, check out my latest post at my other site:

Publish (Your) Ebook

And if not, enjoy your day anyway. I’m not enjoying mine. I made some mistakes on my taxes and I have to call my accountant again on Monday. I’m probably going to owe even more money this year. UGH. Will tax season ever end?

A Day in the Life of an Internet Marketer

Some miscellaneous rants for the day.

1) Writers who are desperately searching for jobs - get a freakin’ grip, already, and learn to publish online.

Stop looking for jobs at newspapers, magazines, or media companies because they’re all going bankrupt. The days of writers finding jobs and ekeing out a small living from writing for a company are over - unless maybe you can still get copywriting clients from the Fortune 500 world. But many of the companies formerly on the Fortune 500 list are bankrupt, too. So guess what? It’s time to take those writing skills online and start making some real money.

I am sick of trying to convince freelance writers that they can make good money publishing and writing their own ebooks or reports. Most of them just don’t get it. I show them my checks and Paypal statements, and they don’t care. Why is there such a disconnect in the writer’s world between writing and actually learning to exploit that writing skill for big bucks?

And the relatively passive income that can come from ebook publishing is like nothing in this world. I’m still just publishing my own ebooks on a very small scale, but man, is it addictive. People are still eager to buy information in pdf file format online, as long as you’re writing about stuff they need or desperately want to know.

And with writing your own ebooks, you’re also opening yourself up to foreign markets in a way which never happens when you’re writing for US publishers. A good 50% of my own ebook sales have been to non-US citizens. They love ebooks because they can download the info instantly and save on postage and shipping costs. Plus I get a real kick out of connecting with a reader in Thailand or France or whatever.

And guess what - other than paying your payment processor a percentage (plus some money to Uncle Sam for taxes) it’s all profit for you! No paying an agent, a distributor, a bookstore chain and then waiting six months ’til they send you a check. If you’re using Paypal the money is in your account the same day you make a sale.

In some ways I shouldn’t be angry at all the struggling freelance writers who have lost their jobs but still refuse to embrace the idea of making money online with their writing skills. It makes for less competition for me.

2) A friendly advisory note to online publishers and wannabe Internet gurus: If you don’t have a face for video, stop making videos and trying to sell them.

And for God’s sake use a piece of standard clipart from a catalogue if your photograph avatar makes you look like Chester the Molestor. I’m not a great-looking guy, and I don’t photograph well, so you’ll never see a photo of me on my websites. I’m trying to entice you to buy - not scare the crap out of you.

I fervently wish that 70% of the Internet publishers out there would stop trying to do videos and would either learn to take a decent picture if they want to use a real photo of themselves for branding purposes - or use some clipart of somebody who doesn’t freak people out. Seriously.

I’ll bet that half of you are losing more sales than you’re gaining because you embraced the lie of “Everybody needs to be uploading YouTube videos to drive traffic!” when that should have been amended to “Everybody except REALLY UGLY PEOPLE (and yes, this probably means you) should be uploading YouTube videos to drive traffic!”

Just because we’re moving more and more toward video presentations these days doesn’t mean that YOU should. Take a long, hard look at yourself. When you walk down your neighborhood street, do dogs howl in terror? Do you frighten small children? That’s okay. You don’t have to be pretty in this world to be wealthy. You do, however, need to become fully aware of your strengths and weaknesses - and learn to play up your strengths.

3) A lot of people have recently found this blog through searching on the keywords “Bev Clement” or “Kim Standerline.”

This is mostly because of some really vicious stuff that was said (mostly about Kim) at Wickedfire. The offending material has since been removed by the forum owner, which is good because it was getting totally out of hand and I didn’t agree with the degree of nastiness that was happening.

However, it should be pointed out that I’m being an extremely good sport in the things that I have posted here, since Kim joined the WickedFire forum under a fake name and attempted to infiltrate there and one of the first things she did was make a comment about how I must be sucking somebody’s dick. I did not respond to her in kind. So don’t believe anything you might be hearing about how perfect and lilywhite Kim is. She can dish it out as good as others dish it out.

Kim, you need to face facts. The reason why your name was brought up at Wickedfire was because a lot of people saw through that bullshit thread at the Warriorforum where you were begging for money for your friend Bev Clement. And it made us absolutely furious since the two of you gals have been posing as long-time, “elder” Internet marketing and business experts on the Warriorforum for years. Can you possibly understand why some folks might be mad about the hypocrisy? We saw that you were obviously scamming people and we observed that dozens of people were falling for it and sending money.

I was disgusted at all the very sweet, entirely trusting newbies you suckered in to donating over $6000 in that thread. It just wasn’t right.

But that’s just my personal opinion.

My New Conduit Method Case Study

As you may or may not know, I’ve been posting case studies about conduit method sites I’ve been building at my Conduit Method Case Studies site. I just posted a new update that talks about a conduit method site I launched in late November. I was going after a weird weight loss sub-niche. Sales took off nicely in January and February. In March I didn’t make as much, but I still have a lot of work to do on the site so I can’t really complain. As long as it’s making money for me, I’m happy.

You can read this new article plus check out my case studies on my other conduit method sites: Conduit Method Case Study 5

I’ve been using the conduit method as taught by Chris Rempel for a while now and it seems to still be holding up as a good method for creating simple affiliate sites. You do have to do some things to juice up the performance, though - especially if there are other webmasters who have created conduit sites in your niche. But I teach my tricks for amping them up in a free report at my website called The Conduit Method Maxed. You can go there and just grab the pdf file if you want - no sign up required. Add that to your Conduit Method technique and you should see some nice sales. I’m seeing good sales across a variety of niches, which is great.

Building conduit style sites is a great thing to do if you’re tired of writing lots of content and reviews, and also it’s great if you’re not a native English speaker or you’re just intimidated about creating content for your sites. It’s a nice way to just launch a site and focus on building traffic - without freaking out about creating so much content.

Backlinks vs. Content - Which is More Important?

Lately I’ve been seeing that tiny sites I launched a couple of months ago with about ten pages of content have been kicking butt in the search engines for their keyphrases. I haven’t updated content on these sites since October, yet they’re showing all over the first page for their keyphrases.

I always try so many things with my sites that sometimes I forget what I did. But I do try to keep a log of everything I’m doing. I looked back at October’s notes and I saw that I launched these tiny sites and then spent about two weeks building backlinks, many of them from high page rank forums, edu sites, and blogs. I didn’t go crazy with the backlink building - didn’t build more than about 100 links per site. And I didn’t go after lots of low quality links like many webmasters do in the beginning (no mass submitting articles to directories.) I was more stragetic with my backlink building.

This seemed to really pay off. I haven’t done anything with these sites since October and they are holding really well in the engines.

When you build lots of sites it can be challenging finding that perfect balance between doing ENOUGH with your sites to give them juice but not doing TOO MUCH and wasting time which could be better spent on other projects. And since Google flips results around all the time it can be a dance of pain.

I hate to say it, but I must be a masochist, because I’m getting addicted to the pain. I’m discovering that I enjoy doing SEO and focusing on grabbing organic traffic.

Anyway, in this latest go round I’m seeing that you don’t have to throw up a ton of content, you just have to build strategic backlinks from a handful of high ranking sites and you’ll do well.

I need to get back to some of those sites and add more content and links, but I’ve been lazy about doing it because they’re already performing pretty well. But things can always be improved.

For most of those new sites I built in October I’m either doing a conduit method approach (see my Conduit Method Case Studies site for more info.) Or I’m doing a Niche Marketing on Crack style of attack where I target a single product, use buying oriented keywords like “buy x product” “where can I buy x product” as my main keywords, and keep a really tight focus on the site. Conversions are good since I’m only grabbing potential buyers, not freebie information seekers.

Since I have a history of making about ten cents a month with various informative blogs in the past, I’ve pretty much had it with freebie information seekers. I want buyers with money burning a hole in their pockets.

Anyway, I’m wondering if anybody else is seeing this - that it seems to be more about building powerful backlinks these days rather than needing tons of content?

Case in point - my conduitmethodcasestudies.com site was one of the sites I built in October. I spent two weeks building backlinks for it. Then I let it sit and didn’t do much with it for months. Very few updates, very few new backlinks except links from the forums I visit. With the next Google pagerank update, it was given a page rank of 5! That’s unbelievable for a completely new site that only launched three months earlier.

So that’s what I’m talking about - building streamlined, buyer-focused sites with a strong backlinking strategy and then you just let the site age and tweak it over time. Getting a page rank of 5 in three months is the best I’ve managed to do with a site so far.
Anyway, where do other webmasters sit in the backlinks vs. content debate? Do you think one is more important than the other right now? And why? I

Kapitalisme

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.1perdiet a, venenatis vitae, justo. Nullam dictum felis eu pede mollis pretium. Integer tincidunt. Cras dapibus. Vivamus elementum semper nisi. Aenean vulputate eleifend tellus. Aenean leo ligula, porttitor eu, consequat vitae, eleifend ac, enim. Aliquam lorem ante, dapibus in, viverra quis, feugiat a, tellus. Phasellus viverra nulla ut metus varius laoreet. Quisque rutrum. Aenean imperdiet. Etiam ultricies nisi vel augue.2

Etiam rhoncus.3 sit amet adipiscing sem neque sed ipsum. Nam quam nunc,4. Maecenas nec odio et ante tincidunt tempus. Donec vitae sapien ut libero venenatis faucibus. Nullam quis ante. Etiam sit amet orci eget eros faucibus tincidunt. Duis leo. Sed fringilla mauris sit amet nibh.5 Fusce vulputate eleifend sapien.6 Nullam accumsan lorem in dui. Cras ultricies mi eu turpis hendrerit fringilla. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae;7

Nam pretium turpis et arcu. Duis arcu tortor, suscipit eget, imperdiet nec, imperdiet iaculis, ipsum[1]. Sed aliquam ultrices mauris. Integer ante arcu, accumsan a, consectetuer eget, posuere ut, mauris.Praesent adipiscing[3]. Phasellus ullamcorper ipsum rutrum nunc. Nunc nonummy metus. Vestibulum volutpat pretium libero. Cras id dui. Aenean ut eros et nisl sagittis vestibulum. Nullam nulla eros, ultricies sit amet, nonummy id, imperdiet feugiat, pede. Sed lectus. Donec mollis hendrerit risus. Phasellus nec sem in justo pellentesque facilisis. Etiam imperdiet imperdiet orci. Nunc nec neque. Phasellus leo dolor, tempus non, auctor et, hendrerit quis, nisi.

Curabitur ligula sapien, tincidunt non, euismod vitae, posuere imperdiet, leo. Maecenas malesuada[2]. Praesent congue erat at massa. Sed cursus turpis vitae tortor. Donec posuere vulputate arcu. Phasellus accumsan cursus velit. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Sed aliquam, nisi quis porttitor congue, elit erat euismod orci, ac placerat dolor lectus quis orci. Phasellus consectetuer vestibulum elit. Aenean tellus metus, bibendum sed, posuere ac, mattis non, nunc. Vestibulum fringilla pede sit amet augue. In turpis. Pellentesque posuere. Praesent turpis.

Fusce convallis metus id felis luctus adipiscing. Pellentesque egestas, neque sit amet convallis pulvinar, justo nulla eleifend augue, ac auctor orci leo non est. Quisque id mi. Ut tincidunt tincidunt erat. Etiam feugiat lorem non metus. Vestibulum dapibus nunc ac augue. Curabitur vestibulum aliquam leo. Praesent egestas neque eu enim. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Fusce a quam. Etiam ut purus mattis mauris sodales aliquam. Curabitur nisi. Quisque malesuada placerat nisl. Nam ipsum risus, rutrum vitae, vestibulum eu, molestie vel, lacus.

Sed augue ipsum, egestas nec, vestibulum et, malesuada adipiscing, dui[4]. Vestibulum facilisis, purus nec pulvinar iaculis, ligula mi congue nunc, vitae euismod ligula urna in dolor. Mauris sollicitudin fermentum libero. Praesent nonummy mi in odio. Nunc interdum lacus sit amet orci. Vestibulum rutrum, mi nec elementum vehicula, eros quam gravida nisl, id fringilla neque ante vel mi. Morbi mollis tellus ac sapien. Phasellus volutpat, metus eget egestas mollis, lacus lacus blandit dui, id egestas quam mauris ut lacus. Fusce vel dui. Sed in libero ut nibh placerat accumsan. Proin faucibus arcu quis ante. In consectetuer turpis ut velit. Nulla sit amet est. Praesent metus tellus, elementum eu, semper a, adipiscing nec, purus. Cras risus ipsum, faucibus ut, ullamcorper id, varius ac, leo[5]. Suspendisse feugiat. Suspendisse enim turpis, dictum sed, iaculis a, condimentum nec, nisi. Praesent nec nisl a purus blandit viverra. Praesent ac massa at ligula laoreet iaculis. Nulla neque dolor, sagittis eget, iaculis quis, molestie non, velit[2].

Mauris turpis nunc, blandit et, volutpat molestie, porta ut, ligula[3]. Fusce pharetra convallis urna. Quisque ut nisi. Donec mi odio, faucibus at, scelerisque quis, convallis in, nisi. Suspendisse non nisl sit amet velit hendrerit rutrum. Ut leo. Ut a nisl id ante tempus hendrerit. Proin pretium, leo ac pellentesque mollis, felis nunc ultrices eros[1], sed gravida augue augue mollis justo. Suspendisse eu ligula. Nulla facilisi. Donec id justo. Praesent porttitor, nulla vitae posuere iaculis, arcu nisl dignissim dolor, a pretium mi sem ut ipsum. Curabitur suscipit suscipit tellus.
Bibliography
1. M. Anderson, The school of dynamics, Washington 2007
2. A. Rice, The title of the book, City 2008
3. S. Hawking, The theory of everything, New York 2006
4. A. Einstein, What is E=mc2?, Berlin, 1917
5. Another author, Another book
6. and more bibliography… :)
Footnotes
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2. Curabitur ullamcorper ultricies nisi. Nam eget dui
3. Maecenas tempus, tellus eget condimentum rhoncus, sem quam semper libero,
4. blandit vel, luctus pulvinar, hendrerit id, lorem
5. Donec sodales sagittis magna. Sed consequat, leo eget bibendum sodales, augue velit cursus nunc, quis gravida magna mi a libero.
6. Vestibulum purus quam, scelerisque ut, mollis sed, nonummy id, metus.
7. In ac dui quis mi consectetuer lacinia.