Money Schemes - Learn How To Make Money Online

Life can get a little stressful and a little serious at times so I’m going to start a new series of Friday posts, i’ll do it after every hard week I have. This has been a very hard week. This is just me writing down a couple of good things that have happened over the last 7 days, as much for myself as anybody else. Besides it’s Friday and tomorrow is the weekend, I might even treat myself to a sleep in.

GBP – USD Exchange Rate Swings The Right Way

I asked for this from Santa, so it’s 8 months late, who cares! After 18 months of a low value dollar things have finally started to move in the right direction for us Brits earning dollars. What started of at the beginning of the month of an exchange rate of nearly 2 dollars to the pound is now (as I type) $1.87. That’s should be worth a couple of hundred pounds extra to me this month. If that isn’t something to be happy about then I don’t know what is.

Zac Johnson – For Showing These Stats

A big thank you to Super Affiliate Zac Johnson for this post. But why you ask? Look at how low those click through rates are from advertising with FaceBook. As you may or may not know I’ve burnt quite a lot of money with FaceBook and always had what I thought were appalling click throughs. Maybe it’s my ad copy? Maybe I’m just crap? I split tested to the nth degree. It’s really nice to know that even some of the best guys in the business can top out at around 0.1% as well! From the way some people write you’d think that all they have to do is sneeze to get a 4%CTR and conversions coming out of their nose. Zac may have made a killing on that campaign I don’t know, he didn’t mention it, but just publicizing that CTR was enough to put a smile on my face.

I started a heavy exercise routine the beginning of this year. I was hitting the gym at least once every day, I kept this up for several months. In that time I lost over 24 pounds of weight and took my body fat percentage down from around 30% to 12%. To be fair it wasn’t that much of a challenge, I was always very fit in my younger years and deep down there is a natural athlete somewhere inside me, it just took the actual decision to do it! I sometimes wonder where I’d be if I hadn’t discovered beer at search an early age, but heh ho.

The gym I’m going to I’ve been a member of for 7 years now. Over that time in the early years I’d go 2-3 lunch times a week. That’s the problem with working 9-5, you go when you can, it kept me roughly on the level but all it took was to miss a few sessions and I’d put on a bit of weight. Seeing as how I work for myself now, and with my fitness goals in mind I’ve been able to go in the mornings instead, I normally do 10:30 till mid day each day. This has caused some problems though. For a start the gym manager has serious problems with me. You’d never guess I was a paying customer.

He greets everybody else with a hello and a chat. I’m lucky if I get a grunt. The majority of his staff, especially the young lads are just as bad. What the hell is their problem? OK, so I’m a jeans and t-shirt type of person, I also don’t shave everyday but then again why should I, I didn’t start my own business to get suited and booted and scrape my face of moisture every day? I’ve come to the conclusion that I think they think I’m either unemployed and putting my benefits into a gym membership (although I don’t think this would cause the level of hate in their eyes) or more likely they actually think I’M A DRUG DEALER! WTF! Has anybody else ever had this? Ever been mistaken for a crim? If I’ve got bags under my eyes and am looking a little down trodden it’s probably because I’ve been putting in 15 hour days! I’ve got no idea how to resolve the situation, go in and sit him down and try and explain what I do for a living? Then again is it really any of his business? I dunno, but either way I know it’s no fun going somewhere every day where you’re just not welcome. It’s not like I’ve got a lot of gym choices either so if I want to carry on hitting the gym I guess I’ve just got to put up with it.

The only person in there who ever straight up asked what I do (fuelled I imagine by my strange gym hours) was cool when I told him. He’d make a point of chatting, he was genuinely interested even to the point of maybe trying to do something online himself. Unfortunately for me he’s left, a couple of the girls he was friendly with are still smiley and chatty but the others, they’ve got some serious issues.

There is a lot of buzz around the blogosphere again about just how great contests are for boosting your blog traffic. Besides the links you can gain by having people enter by posting there’s also a number of blogs dedicated to nothing else other than summarising blog contests. This is an easy way of gaining a few extra back links. All you really need then is a prize, or prizes and some way of drawing your winners. It’s such an easy way of gaining traffic and links but beware, it can also seriously damage your reputation.

The Cardinal Sin Of Blog Contests
Your prize? What prize? Twice in recent times I’ve won on a blog contest, one was supposed to be money, the other a review. Guess how many prizes I’ve actually received? Yep, not a bloody one! It’s REALLY easy to say you’re giving this away or that away, but if you talk the talk you’ve got to walk the walk and actually do it. What’s worst is that many bloggers think that they can use the standard “we’re not responsible for getting the prizes to you” blurb. Deal with the prize “sponsor” directly and chances are they’ll completely ignore any e-mails you send. Besides I entered a contest on YOUR blog, not the sponsors. If you don’t know the person well enough to know that they’re going to deliver on their prize then why the hell are you asking them to sponsor a prize anyway? If you don’t want the responsibility of having some involvement with actually making sure entrants are getting their prizes then don’t run a contest.

I’ve only ever ran one serious contest from this blog (I don’t really count the Entrecard contest). It was for a straight up $125 via Paypal. I actually ended up giving the winner more than that, why? Because I was brought up to believe that it is better to understate your position and be able to pleasantly surprise people rather than promise the world and deliver shit. Back when I worked in full time software development when ever the “how long” question was raised I’d always give a time 1 or 2 days longer than I thought. That way when I finished it a week early it looked great! Far better than saying I can do it in a day and it taking 3. All I’m trying to say is don’t make promises that you can’t deliver on, if that promise is prizes in a contest then when you fuck up you’re going to lose a lot of reputation.

And just for the record here are the 2 contests I’ve “won”:-

DNXPert

ProfitBaron

I’ve been using this a couple of weeks now and so have formed a fairly good opinion on what you are getting for your $99 a month. I’ll go through the tools one at a time and let you know what I think, remember though that it is still in Beta so what you get could change in the future (I know the price certainly will):-

SEO Tools

Domain Marketplace – Shoe has a constantly growing list of expired domain names that come with a number of back links. Besides general links this tools helps you to pick out the real gems that have .edu .gov and .mil authority back links. When you purchase you are sent an e-mail giving you the domain name so you can go away and register it. Annoyingly the entire domain name is crossed out so an issue here is knowing if a domain is in anyway relevant (Google importance) to what you already do. I bought a couple of domain names and 301′d them, time will tell if they were worth it or not.

Keyword Density Tool – Analyses a page of your choice for a given keyword and reports on its vital on-the-page stats. Where this tool comes into its own is that it also gives you the same stats for your top competition in Google so you can compare and contrast. Whilst this is all great info I actually get exactly the same information, if maybe perhaps a little more detailed from some other software I run.

Keyword Tracker – Track the URL of your choice for a search phrase of your choice. This tool tracks the changes in the SERPs for all the major search engines on a day to day basis. It’s nice to see but it’s not going to make you any money. I use a weekly ranking checker that does pretty much the same thing.

Most Linked – Find the best pages in a domain of your choosing in terms of back links. This ones a cracker for analysing your competition. Unfortunately again, I already run something similar.

PPC Tools

Ad Generator – An excellent time saving tool for generating PPC ads from a set of parameters. It basically bases your adverts on what is already out there. If you’re into your PPC then this really will save you an absolute ton of time. It’s not quite fire and forget but it does appear to work really well.

Keyword Generator – My favourite tool of the lot. Produces some excellent long tail keywords, no really! I use and have used a lot of keyword generators but this one was throwing up variations that I’d never seen before. I like this a lot.

Local Keyword Generator and Local Trademark Bidding Tools – I didn’t try these I’m afraid, I don’t live in the US so tend not to target PPC at city level (lack of zip code knowledge for a start). If you did I could see how they could be very powerful.

Link Building Tools

Find Backlinks – Find out who is linking to the top sites for any given search. It looks like this tool relies on Google because it is suffering from the Google “starve” at the moment. Once again I already have a very similar desktop tool that is just that little bit easier to drill down and pivot data in.

Get Anchor Text – Find out what text is being used to link to any domain. Does what it says on the tin and works well. Do I have something similar? …..

Related Blog Posts – Finds blog posts related to any search phrase so that you can send a ping-back from your post. I’m not really sure how valid this is as a way of getting back links though. In order not to appear spammy you need to link to that post in your post, creating a reciprocal link. Whilst it might bring some traffic I don’t think you’ll get a whole lot of SEO benefit from it.

Shoemoney Tools Conclusion

So overall. In terms of the SEO and link building tools a lot of them have limited value to me because they are very similar to tools that I already own. But that’s just me, I’ve invested hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars into buying webmaster tools over the years. The domain marketplace is a great idea, but without being able to find out what the domains relate to I’d struggle to justify buying them. It didn’t seem to worry other people though as it looked like hundreds were being sold each day (People who obviously have way more money than me to spend). Buying them and redirected them should work. I just resorted to writing my own tool that does a similar job, giving me high authority niche specific expired domains. I’ve had instant traffic results with 3 of them so far. If you don’t have a nice selection of webmaster tools sitting on your desktop though then there is just about everything here that you need.

The real ROI value in Shoemoney Tools has to be the PPC though. If you are heavily into PPC affiliate marketing then no doubt these tools will save you time and make you even more money. This is where my main problem is. No matter what I do I can’t get a decent, worth the effort PPC campaign going. It’s no reflection on Shoemoney Tools, it’s just me. I’m really crap at leveraging PPC into affiliate sales. My own products, no problem, I can get a great, huge, enormous ROI. As soon as I touch affiliate stuff it just goes wrong. Hell, if there are any gurus out there looking for a student to teach then I’d be the ultimate challenge, I’ve got the money : ) If PPC affiliate arbitrage is what you do then the Shoemoney Tools are probably worth $200-$300 a month easy What I’ve learnt is that these aren’t for the beginner, you really need a fairly solid grounding in what you are doing before you start playing with them (even I can see just how valuable the localised tools could be). For now I’m going to duck out of PPC Affiliate arbitrage and stick to what I know best.

On a personal level I’d love to keep it going for a few more months until it comes out of beta and then have another go. The trouble is that I just can’t justify $99 a month when in all likelihood I’m only going to use the Keyword Tool on a regular basis, so I’ll be bowing out. If on the other hand you don’t have access to a comprehensive selection of webmaster tools and have had some success with PPC marketing then it’s got to be worth $99 of your money.

After only 19 months of being in business for myself it looks like my money making talents know no boundaries (other than PPC affiliate marketing of course). I have officially made a bigger profit than Britain’s biggest bank this year!

I am awesome* !!!!

*alternatively The Royal Bank of Scotland may just be crap, I prefer my version though.

I guess with all the junk products I’ve signed up for over the last 5 years it’s inevitable that I’m going to get 99% of the mail shots that go around every time the “next big thing” launches. For the most part I do a quick background check and then ignore them. There is no way I would usually choose to write about them, that’s for sure. However, a new one (to me anyway) did get my attention this morning and I thought it might be worth mention, even if it’s just to see if anybody has given it a go? The product is called Google Nemesis and the creator is promising you an almost completely hands off, step-by-step system of milking the ClickBank affiliate system. In that case, why Google Nemesis? To be honest I don’t know either.

Anyway, my research has given me a good idea of what Google Nemesis is about. In short, it is using the power of comparison reviews to help sell affiliate products. The software itself is a system for quickly creating comparison review web pages of ClickBank products. I can see how this would work, a little while back I started reviewing and comparing my competition in one of my software niches and that has paid dividends so I imagine this would as well, in theory. The real power of the system, or so I’m told, is its ability to help you identify the ClickBank products that are best to compare and review. It’s going to point out the products that perform best for other affiliates so giving you the best chance.

Using a comparison review page for your PPC landing page does make a lot of sense. Not only does it provide you with an original landing page (so a better chance of a decent Adwords quality score) but it’s also presenting any visitors with multiple product options. Of course the down side to this is that rather than a quick direct link you do actually have to create your review content. Whilst the template may be there from what I’ve seen it looks like all the content has to be yours, this makes perfect sense if you want that high quality score. It’s creating the original content that takes the majority of the time, well in my experience anyway. One important factor that most of these page gen systems forget is this, getting the traffic. Google Nemesis sort of assumes that you are going to head straight to Adwords for your traffic (I guess that’s where the Google part comes in, although in reality you’ll be paying Google money not taking it, so why Nemesis? I’m confused). I’m bloody sick to death of throwing money at PPC, I’m no good at it, simple as that. What could work though is organic traffic, software comparison page does OK from nothing more than referral and natural search traffic so I can’t see any reason that Google Nemesis wouldn’t as well. As long as you could get the traffic that is. I wonder if any part of the system helps with that?

The big question is, does it work? That is the real issue with all these products, almost any review you will find will either be of the yes it’s great so sign up now (here’s my affiliate link) OR no, it’s a load of rubbish you should sign up for this instead (here’s my affiliate link). I haven’t tried it myself yet, at $77 a month it’s just too much for me, I’ve recently started committing over $500 a month to various bits and pieces and I don’t want another monthly amount coming out just yet. If you have given it a go though let me know how you found it?

I did manage to find what looked like one honest video review on YouTube, he seemed very happy with it (although it started to sound like he needed the toilet half way through), so maybe it’s worth looking in to.

(ps the above post contains affiliate links for Google Nemesis although I haven’t used it personally yet)

I spent all of yesterday creating a new content website, I think I’ve found another one of those little niches that whilst it won’t make you rich it will easily make an instant profit for relatively little work. I was going to go trough my usual routine of hooking up whatever related content I have to it and giving it that launch pad, it’s a great way of getting an almost instant return (on that massive $8 domain expense!)

Instead though I’m going to do something a little different with this one. What happens if you’re totally new to this game? If you don’t have a set of established websites to help Google find your new website? I’m treating this website as if it is my very first, I’m new and I want my site appearing “somewhere” in the search results. If you didn’t know any better and you believed all those adverts out there for services to “get your site indexed quick” you’d think that indexing was a slow process, does it really take days, weeks or months? I’m going to try and find out.

My strategy to test this is simple, I’m only going to use the resources that are 100% under my control to get my site indexed. I just want indexed at the moment, I’m not bothered about where in the SERPs I appear. So first things first, I’ve gone and created a sitemap. I prefer to use this rather funky and fully featured sitemap generator. I then sign up at Google’s Webmaster Tools website and create an entry for my new domain. The webmaster tools allow me to verify me website (confirming that I own it) and then I can submit the sitemap that I generated. Google are now aware of not only my website, but also the individual URLs for the pages that make up that website. I consider that an essential step with any website I create.

The second thing I want to do is get some free back links, I need quick back links from pages that the search engines crawl and follow frequently. Sounds like a bit of a challenge doesn’t it? Not really though. There are a number of services out there that have detailed reports on domains (age traffic etc), one of the easiest ways of getting a few quick back links is to check for your new domain with these services. This automatically creates a page for your site at their end, these sites tend to be getting crawled all the time. So I’ve checked my domain out at the following places (just replace yourdomainhere.com):-

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main/yourdomainhere.com

http://www.urltrends.com/viewtrend.php?url=www.yourdomainhere.com

http://www.iwebtool.com/pagerank_checker?domain=www.yourdomainhere.com

http://www.toolurl.com/search-domains.php?url=www.yourdomainhere.com

And that’s all I’ve done. I didn’t want to create forum users and post enough to get a signature, I didn’t want to rely on having blog comments not only approved but followed. Basically I’ve done this as simple as possible just to see how long it takes before some of my pages start to appear. I’ll be checking it every morning and will let you know as soon as I’ve got any pages indexed, my guess is 3-4 days.

It’s only 9am in the UK, I’ve already been in the office a couple of hours and I’ve already had to deal with 2 of the really annoying problems that can crop up when selling e-products online. If you ever get in to selling then chances are that you’ll come across these, and you know what, there is nothing you can do! You grin, you bear it, then you post about it (whilst smashing your head into a wall).

1. “It doesn’t work” – I’ve written a number of e-books, all of them have been very simple how-to affairs. Do this, do that, do another thing and woo hoo, magic happens. Well something like that anyway. The thing is that they aren’t subjective or opinion, they are very factual and whatever it is does work. Every single thing I’ve wrote about is something that I still use today so I know it works. When it stops working I stop selling it. But, (a big BUT) there is always a percentage of people who will swear blind it doesn’t work for them. I don’t want to name names here but there is one country in particular that counts for less that 5% of my sales but counts for over 80% of my refund requests. They even had me doubting myself. That was until I got a friend that was back packing through that same country to test it for me, surprise, surprise the method worked perfectly! The trouble is that once you agree to do refunds (and even if you don’t depending on your payment processer), once somebody asks you are obliged, even when you KNOW they are lying. What makes it even more frustrating is that a lot of the time it is so blatant. When somebody is genuinely struggling they will usually ask for help first. I do my best, if they just don’t “get it” then I’m the first to offer them a refund. On the other hand the piss taker will usually start contact with “I downloaded xxxxx, doesn’t work for me, can you send refund?” . Grit teeth, write polite reply and refund. You are allowed to swear a lot though, just not in your reply.

2. I’ve Broken All Your License Terms But Now Want Support Or A Refund – I get this with software, but I suppose it can apply to any e-product. My best example that crops up several times a year is the “home use only” problem. The software is designed for and licensed for home use only, not business. However, somebody buys it and then installs it on their 17 user Windows Small Business Server “home” network and it isn’t quite what they expected. Well no shit Sherlock. Then just to top it off this “home user” adopts the professional get it sorted now attitude as if he’s just bought £30,000 pounds worth of bespoke software development (as opposed to just paid $10 for a small of the shelf home application). Rather than get into a debate over this the only solution here is to refund and then ignore any further e-mails. Well maybe it’s not the only solution but I’m afraid I don’t do bespoke for a single $10 payment.

The recurring theme here is the rights of the person selling an e-product. Without the delivery of a physical product (why so many developers love to ship a CD) we are pretty much up shit creek without a paddle. We are reliant on the people we sell to being honest and to be fair in my experience 99% are fantastic! They understand that it’s an exchange and are brilliant to deal with. I was just unlucky today that 2 “problems” for 2 totally different products arrived on the same day. This is all part of the fun of selling online, in this regard I’m for more of a techy than customer relations. Anyway, just writing it down has made me feel better so thank you for being part of my therapy session.