Monday, November 24, 2008

A little light relief.

G'Day folks, just solved an interesting puzzle.

I was sent an email today with a password protected spreadsheet attached which I will upload here tonight.

There are a number of clues to work out the numerical password. Once you have worked out the password you can unlock the spreadsheet and add your name to the list of people who have worked it out.

I found a couple of people in there I know which is interesting. There must be several hundred copies of this floating about the internet by now so I have put a link to this post in the spreadsheet as well for the solvers to add a comment, if they wish.

I think the progress of the spreadsheet from me should be most interesting. Anyway, good luck with the puzzle if you downloaded it from here and welcome to the ranks of the solvers if you got here from the spreadsheet.

By the way, I know how easy it is to crack password protection in excel as there is really no protection at all. So don't, OK, just solve it properly.

Cheers

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Sunday, November 16, 2008

Hey, I got Analytics working properly...

And I can now see that I really do have some visitors here. Welcome.

That seems really weird actually, saying welcome to visitors after all the previous posts when I thought I was talking to myself. It now confers some responsibility to me to actually say things that might be useful, damn, talk about painting yourself into a corner.

Revisiting a previous post about an inter net marketer who shall continue to remain nameless and a dodgy redirection stunt he was playing, he now has one of those crappy fake 'live operator' scripts running which offers a discount but not for the affiliate.

I have actually had a gutfull of the stunts so here is the good news. Stuff them, if you really want to buy a product and you can find it in Clickbank then create your own link and buy through that. Check out the discount by moving your mouse outside the page, like you were going to close the window (this triggers the script) but make sure that when you land on the sales page that your affiliate name is on the bottom of the page so you get the rebate.

These days I only buy through someone else's link if I think thay have actually provided some value or that have a bonus I want. I have no desire to reward people who I think are just "flogging" products.

You can be confident that the owner of the product still makes their normal cut and are happy with that, it is only the crooked affiliates who get done, and they deserve it.

Keep up the good work, there has to be money out there somewhere.

In closing, well it just occurred to me that you might be interested, I have found that there are many of the Gurus who don't tell you the whole truth about how they generate their traffic. I found a forum, where there are some intersting names, that deals exclusively in what some would call black hat marketing.

I don't call it that, it is all marketing. Search engines may not like some of the methods used but since they continually manipulate the results to suit themselves, I don't have any problem in playing their games back. Apparently, neither do some quite big names. I won't name them because many of the others may be doing similar things and, unless you name them all, naming some wouldn't be fair.

That probably came as a surprise to you but it's true, they don't always tell you the truth.

The other thing that you'll probably be intersted in is that the only way to make money online is to provide a wanted product or service to a constant stream of targeted visitors.

There are some bits that make a difference to the conversion rates but that is pretty much it. I plan to expand on that after I have reviewed everthing else I have written here so I can at least have some semblance of continuity and credibility.

Cheers for now.

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Saturday, November 08, 2008

And yet another call...OmniBiz|Vanuity|Education Sales and Marketing, all Scammers

I didn't post it here but the week before last I had another call from Joe Sever, again in the morning before work and I told him about being blacklisted and asked why he called me.

He than claimed that he hadn't called am and that another comapny was using his name and that he was now very angry.

I must be all kinds of sucker because I sort of believed him. I asked him to email me so I could email him the contract that I had originally signed with Vanuity.

Thinking about it later I realised that he was BSing me and that I wouldn't be getting either a call from him on Saturday or an email.

I wasn't proved wrong this time. He didn't email or call.

This morning I had a call from someone else who claimed to be working with Google Snatch. He also dropped Joe Sever's name into the introduction.

Now I have had a fairly tough week and was in no mood to put up with another bloody salesman type so I was very short with him. I asked him who he worked for and he told me Google Snatch, I said he didn't and asked again who he worked for.

Finally he told me that it was Education Sales and Marketing - the crooks.

I then informed him that I had been put on their blacklist and they were not to call me. He asked why and I told him they were crooks and that I wanted nothing to do with them.

Typical salesman, he tried to argue the position and said that I had signed up for their program by buying a book online. Watch out for this ploy, they have all tried to use the "but you asked for this" line. Not true, buying a product online is not an invitation to be upsold by a scammer.

Do this from now on. Use any sequence of numbers which comply with the phone number pattern ie 1234 1224 rather than your phone number. Leave out part of your address so you can't be tracked. Unless you are having a physical product shipped to you they do not need that information and have no right to it.

They also all work on the "but I thought you wanted to make money online" routine. My answer to that today was "Yes I do, but not with you".

Ultimately today I got rid of him by telling him that I had had a tough week and that I had no interest in being harrassed by him. This is actually true, this has been the toughest week of my life and I really wasn't in the mood to play games with them. Otherwise I might have kept him on the line for sometime and got through to the supervisor again so I could get him p#$%^&d off with me a second time.

With luck they'll never call me again. If not I think I'll have a recording device available and post the audio here for fun.

Short post today, I'll conclude with a warning. Do not put your phone number on any form unless you really have to, do not put your full or accurate address on any form unless you have to, do not bother to talk with anyone who calls you and offers to mentor or coach you to make money online unless you personally know them.

You have been warned.

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Saturday, October 25, 2008

Omni Biz Marketing|Shanklin|Vanuity are scams!

Get a real Internet Marketing opportunity Site Sell

I am embarassed to admit that I have been scammed. Big time.

I was just going to lick my wounds and leave it be but they called again this week after I bought an eBook from Google Snatch.

I emailed Latif and got a relaitvely non-committal email back. I will be emailing him the link to this blog because I don't think he is aware of these scumbags activities.

The initial contact was several years ago and I succumbed to the high pressure tactics and paid $2,500 plus the monthly hosting for a very crippled OmniSiteBuilder.

THe difference between me and many of those other people who have been scammed is that I am reasonably experienced online and knew everything that my mentor tried to teach me, in fact I actually taught him a couple of things. Should have got some money back for that.

I built the website, with 6 or so pages, followed all the linking instructions except the pay for stuff and did everything the mentor said I should do.

There is no-where on their site to view your traffic stats, this is extremely important to growing your site. There is no-where on their site to redirect your domain - this is theft, you paid for it and you own it but you can't get it so either you abandon your site and stop paying for the hosting or they continue to leech off your credit card while not providing any information to you.

When I asked about traffic stats they suggested Google Analytics - tells you nothing if you have a low traffic site, tells you nothing about robot visits or any other information. That was when I cancelled. Should have done it much sooner. Should never have started.

This weeks call was in the morning as I was heading to work so I told them to call back Friday afternoon so I could take the call Saturday morning - I even got up early enough to be awake for the call.

Should have done more research.

In the initial call I was cautious as I thought the spin sounded familiar but they dropped Google Snatch into the conversation and I like Latif's work so I kept listening. Then Joe Sever told me the URL of the website. Alarm bells rang, lights flashed and I remained icy cool.

He also dropped the names Susy Wong (?), Mike Lasik (?) and Keith Wellman as being directors/owners. (Correct me if those names are wrong).

He also told me his bosses name was a Mr. Fagin, I nearly chocked on my coffee laughing without making a sound. I know it isn't spelt the same but the Mr. Fagan from Charles Dickens novel "Oliver Twist" is a thoroughly unpleasant crook. After having spoken with the Mr. Anthony Fagin at Omnibiz Solutions today I can assure you that there is a resemblance.

After letting him rable for a short period I told him that their system doesn't work. He told me that he himself was making "6 figures" from his own website (so why scam people?) but wouldn't reveal the URL so BS.

He then accused me of lying to him and Joe and wasting their time - please people, if they call, waste their time you are saving another person from having to listen to their crap and reducing their income so do it. Call it an investment in cleaning up the internet.

What a joke, them calling me a lier. Nothing they tell you is true. Check the list of client sites, look them up un Alexa.com for ranking, go to Yahoo and check back links and you'll find like I did that their promotion sites don't get much traffic, most haven't been worked on for years and they cannot be making much money.

Everything they attempted to teach me was old news, most of the links in the ebook they sent me don't work. The discussion got a little heated when I called Mr. Fagin out and told him I wasn't going ahead and that I had already been scammed by them. He claimed that I could have got my money back via the credit card company but I was attempting to salvage something by maintaining the website, mistake.

After he hung up, Joe rang me back to abuse me for lying to him as well, I can guarantee that I didn't lie, I did what they do insinuate an association with one thing while telling the truth about something else. They specifically accused me of lying about wanting to build a business on the internet, I do - but not with them.

Then I was told I would be blacklisted by them and would never be allowed to work with them. I stopped Joe at this and told him to make sure that the blacklist would make sure I would never be called by them again.

Since they got so nasty about being misled they probably have some idea about how I and 100s of others feel. I am also expecting, because they'll read this at some stage, that they'll attempt to retaliate with some king of spam campaign or similar.

They are the worst kind of American, the give the rest of the country a bad name in international eyes and people like these are the main reason Americans are not loved like they think they should be. Far too many American business people take advantage of others and believe that it is their right to do so.

Do they teach ethics in High School or College? Perhaps these are the people who cheat in the ethics exam.

My apologies to all the honest, hard working Americans who read this. You are also being preyed upon by these scum bags.

Regardless of the company name, if someone calls you and tells you that they can teach you how to make a living/fortune on the internet from scratch in months, they are scamming you.

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Sunday, October 05, 2008

I hate it when they're right.

I had an email from Mark Widawer. I have been a customer and recipient of his emails for several years and he usually doesn't talk rubbish.

Anyway, this email and his blog post are about saying that smart people fail in their online marketing because they are too smart for their own good and what you have t be is stupid like the gurus. Just do the things that are requird to get one project up and running before starting a second project.

Not I hat this because I keep trying to not just set up a new project but don't quite follow the steps laid out in the 'blueprint' I paid good money for. When I don't get the results that I want I abandon that one and begin another.

Have a look at these projects I have on the boil ( actually, slow simmer is probably more like it).

Personal Wealth been online since 2000.
Personal Wealth Education Online not even completed.
The Travellers Portal done for my holiday but nothing done since.
Spam Killa wrote the software for my benefit and offered it cheap to you.
Clickbank Payday have been driving traffic via adwords, not good.
Good Oil honestly I don't remember why or how I picked this one up.
Puppy Training this is and adsense site but with an affiliate link as well.
DUI Lawyer another adsense site with affiliate links.
Wealth Management Tips one of the newer ones, and almost auto posting wordpress blog.
Relationship Rescue Master my latest project.

and there are others. Scary when you look at it all. I haven't included this blog or the one I haven't posted anything to since about 2006. I haven't included the ones I have actually shut down and there are a few of those as well.

So why embarrass myself like this? I suppose it is mainly because I know that I'm not the only one to collect domains and sites without making enough money from my efforts to even pay for it all.

Don't give up, but do get a lot more stupid in your efforts. Just focus on the things that work. There, I said it, now I have to do it as well.

What works? First up set up your site with split testing. It doesn't have to cost any more than the cost to set up a domain and a host which can be done for less than $200 per year but I would recommend that a newbie spend a bit more and get a lot more help seriously look at Ken Evoy's Site Sell I know that the cost of joining the Site Sell system appears high but the tools, forum, email help etc are what has kept me renewing for 5 years. I built my first site based on the information in the first edition of Make Your Site Sell. It isn't Ken's fault that I haven't yet done the required work.

My problem is that the proper way to build sites and traffic is slow, unfortunately for me I have had ample time online to do it that way and I didn't so I've been spinning my wheels for the last (cough) years and still not gained any significant traction. Yesterday that stopped and I began doing what I should have been doing all along.

The process is simple. Choose a niche with active buyers in volume, choose a domain name that has in it the keyword or key phrase you want to target, build each page targetting just one keyword/key phrase, build the intra site links properly, put around 400 words of unique content on each page, use split testing on page/title/paragraph/images etc. to determine what the best response rate is for that page (this depends on what you want the visitor to do, it might just be to read the next page as well) and then drive traffic to your site.

Notice there is nothing about becoming an html php or javascript expert. There is nothing about becoming a professional copywriter. It is actually stupidly simple and that's the secret that we have all been looking for. Just do the basics, keep doing the basics until you have the site as profitable as you can make it and then move on to the next project.

In the next post I will put some more details about how to choose your niche, the one after setting up your pages, then split testing and then driving traffic.

Good Luck

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Friday, September 19, 2008

They've done it again, perhaps

While checking my Adsense account recently I discovered that the value of the clicks had gradually climbed from the $0.003 that I was being "rewarded" with to $1.30. OK the traffic to the site was low and the clicks were correspondingly very low but the value of each click, as you can see, was high.

Good plan I think, lets send some of the traffic from the second tier sites to these pages and see how it converts. Now I wasn't expecting the high CTR I was getting from the organic traffic but I figured somewhere around 1-2% and calculated that that could be profitable.

So I set up two campaigns on two different sites and turned them on last night. Almost instant traffic, not high quality but the CTR was in the ball park (I just checked) but the value per click has dropped like a stone to $0.007. Because I know from past experience that Google don't report instantly it is distinctly possible that the click value could rise significantly in the next 24hours so I'm not killing this campaign just yet.

It is possible that the value I am seeing right now is for only a small percentage of the clicks or just a holding value while their software/people check my site out for quality score.

I think that it has value, I read their guide lines manual and know that they do the "take off the ads - is there anything of value left" test and there are only 2 ads per page, not 2 blocks, just 2 ads. The rest of the content is original, I wrote it and it isn't highly optimised so should be rated as natural.

You can check out the landing page I am using for this campaign here core secret to wealth.

One thing I have done is change the domain name. I decided it was time that this site had it's own domain name so I registered www.your-personal-wealth.com and will now be driving traffic to that. I probably should have done this years ago but I've been slack. The old URL was a subdomain of my main site even though this has been the main part of the site since about 2000. The old URl was http://personalwealth.kentberry.com.au so you can see why I changed it.

Bottom line is this (crap, that sounds like KRudd) because it is a new domain name for Google that may explain why the clck value is low, I might try another campaign to the old URL to test that. Maybe I need to set up a 301 redirection to the new domain name. I don't know yet. In any case, the traffic to the old URL was so low that a new domain probably won't lose too much except the age value.

Good Luck

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Wednesday, September 17, 2008

And it seems they were vidicated

After an investigation by Clickbank, who were extremely professional, they determined that there wasn't a problem with the link. I also checked the link and it was working correctly so it seems that the problem may well have been one of a mistake reather than malicious.

I am happy thet I dealt with it in the manner I did. No-one should be condemmed for making a mistake, particularly if they take steps to correct it. Clickbank were, as I said, very professional. They dealt with my email promptly and neither criticised me or the publisher. Just checked the complaint and that I was using a correct link.

I might just begin promoting the product again and find out if I can get a few more conversions.

OK, new program. I have been using the second tier search engines to drive some traffic and, while I can get a lot of traffic, none of it seems to convert particularly well. It is cheap but not very useful.

I have also been writing articles and that has actually been working, a bit. I sure as hell haven't been making a retirement income but I have been making some sales. Interesting though, not every article makes money and I didn't put tracking on every article so I don't really know which ones made the sales and which ones didn't.

Big tip folks, tag every article differently for each directory as well as each article so you know where the sales come from. This will make it much easier to repeat the successes and ignore those which don't work. Working being defined not as clicks or being added to ezines but as sales.

There is another benefit of writing and submitting articles and that is the back-links you generate. It appears that the real secret to SEO success and getting a good position on the search engine results is the number of back links you have from many different sources. The keywords in the link i.e. making up with your ex is the keyword you get listed for but the site which gives you the link isn't particularly relevant.

Put links on article directories, forums and comment on blogs, even this one, I know that you won't get any traffic from this 'cause there is no traffic to get but I also know that the links count because Yahoo tells me so.

My current focus is to grow my search engine positions through back links. I am having another attempt with the second tier search engines but I think that their conversion rate just isn't good enough even at the very low cost per click.

Good Luck


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Monday, September 08, 2008

And now I have reported this person to Clickbank.

Yep I have. See what happened is that I was still sending traffic and still not getting any sales. I had a very close look at the landing page. What I was planning was to take the entire page, chop out the offending sign-up page and run it on my website as the landing page.

When I went to change the "buy it now" links I found that the links went through a tracking script not direct to clickbank. No real problem with that except when I followed that link after using my affiliate link and found that the affiliate credited with the traffic was not me but "none".

Now this is possibly a problem with with the tracking script but since the product is all about how to use Clickbank and get around the tricks the Guru's use to steal your commissions I have me doubts about this being accidental.

So this amounts to blatant theft of affiliate commissions and I reported this fact to Clickbank today. This is a breach of their conditions and allows them to block all this publishers income and suspend his account and prevent delivery of his landing page. There just might be a very loud scream.

So why am I not revealing the name of this publisher or the product? Well I believe that Clickbank should take action and, if this is proved to be accidental, no-one should be burned at the stake for an error.

However, if Clickbank fail to act and/or they determine that this was deliberate I will post the name and product details here. Not that anyone will see it but I will be the first person on the internet to really pick a crook and publicise it.

I will then generate as much traffic as I can to this page and I will also detail exactly what was being done so you can see if the product you are promoting is doing the same thing. I think that this is an isolated case but it should not be allowed to continue.

Good Luck.

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Monday, August 25, 2008

Sometimes I wish you visitors would stop using stealth mode...

That has to be the explanation surely.

It just isn't possible to have a website/blog online for however many years this has been online and still not have any visitors.

The real curiosity is that I have visited this site from different computers and different IP addresses but still they don't show up in the stats. How can that be you ask, well strictly speaking that would be asking because you aren't here are you.

Tha answer is that it can't be. I posted a video on a site of mine and the only link to it is in a single email I sent out to two people. That video has now been viewed 200 times. Part of that is the viral power of a funny email - hmmm, something to test. But another part is that perhaps the search engines have found it as well. I just did a quick search but couldn't find it in the 1.6 million results Google threw up for that phrase so who knows.

Personally I think that the algorithm for the analytics might be a bit harsh. None of the sites that I can get to the raw stats on match the analytics stats. Don't know yet, may never know not sure if I care enough to really track it down.

I'll just keep on posting here to see what happens. At some stage some real visitors may show up and talk to me.

Anyway, gurus, there is one who I have been promoting a bit until clickbank began to show real stats. Now they are showing how many visitors you actually get from your links to the product. About time I say but get this, the product I was promoting with limited success and claims a 7.4% conversion rate, mine is closer to 0.7%, shows that I sent 60 visitors for no sales over a period of time less than 30 days (I don't push it hard as the ROI isn't good enough). Now 7.4% of 60 is 4.44 so I should have converted at least 2 and possibly 5 based on a conversion rate between 2% and 8%. What is going on here I asked myself and went looking at the landing page - this particular a#$%^&e has only put a capture above the fold offering a free download for an email address. He is stealing all my and your visitors. You can only make a sale to those who ignore the freebie. You have to watch them all the time or they'll rob you blind and then sell you another ebook to "fix" your poor conversions.

Want to know who this is? Go check your landing page, I would be prepared to bet that there are a lot more than just the one I have been caught out with. There is a fix. But you'll have to comment to get it.

Regards

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Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Aha! Zero traffic on Analytics.

I put a link on a Social Networking site that doesn't seem to have been noticed. That's fine, one link doesn't cut it.

Hey, on another blog of mine I am getting some good traffic which is ramping up. I also wrote an article on a reasonable keyword phrase. The article is only about 2.5% keyword optimised and reads sensibly. Almost 100% original as well.

Currently that article is at #9 on the 1st page of Google for that phrase out of 2.6 million pages. Now I am impressed with that even if you're not ;-)

I now have a number of projects to pursue to get more traffic.

  1. Write more keyword focussed articles.

  2. Build some more software programs to give away.

  3. Spread them both all over the place.


The idea is that by generating articles and software I will generate back links and traffic from both of these.

I will be targeting the other blog at wealth management tips rather than this one but I intend to put a link to this blog from that one.

Anyway, more 'ron.

Regards

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Thursday, July 03, 2008

Well there you go then.

Yet again I am posting here for my own benefit. I have just been on the Google Analytics site for this blog and it show that I have not had any visitors, that's in the last 6 months.

Now I find that actually a fascinating statistic. I have pages on other domains that are not SEO'd or anything that get visitors. I have pages that have no links to any other page that get traffic.

I am getting google ads which are more relevant to the post content though so that is an improvement over earlier posts where I only ever go public service ads.

I posted on another blog a video which had been emailed to me, very funny but definitely not PC. I emailed the link to only two (2) other people and that video has had over 20 views in a week.

See, people follow links. This site is linked to from other sites and pages which get traffic. So the question becomes, is there really no traffic at all or is the filtering of the analytics software discounting it? I can't answer that but they probably can.

I just read a document which claims to be the training manual, or part therof, for Google's page reviewers. It has the appearance of being genuine and the information makes sense. If it is genuine it confirms what I have believed for some time, that Google really do review some pages manually.

It appears that they are more likely to declare your pages spam if you have adsense ads on them, so they are targeting the arbitrage people. That makes sense really, if you have to pay money then you'll be a bit more careful with the ratings.

Overall though what they are looking for is actual content. Which brings me back to this blog. This is all original content, not updated as regularly as it should be but original none the less, so why doesn't it get some visitors?

I suspect that it is in the "we don't like you" basket. So what I think I might do is seriously drive traffic at this blog and track the links to see what shows up on the analytics pages.

Reporting later...

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Monday, May 19, 2008

Article Marketing - Is it dead?

Article marketing is touted as the best way to get ongoing free traffic to our websites. I have to be honest here and say that I probably haven't really given this method of generating traffic a fair go.

I have produced some articles and posted them without any noticeable traffic from them. I am sure that I really should write a lot more articles to test this before I can it but, even though I actually can write coherent prose and I do have a better grasp of English and Grammar that most of those who create websites, blogs ebooks etc. I actually find it difficult to write a 600 word article that is SEO and keyword optimised.

To then create three or more non-duplicate articles on the same keywords for submission to the article directories would take me approximately 2-3 hours for each one.

For me, the notion of cranking out good articles in 20 minutes is completely alien. So I explored the 'article spinner' tools but they generate real crap. No-one should have anything to do with them at all, in actual fact Google have an ability to identify the articles that have been spun by the 'fingerprint' they leave. When they do catch them out they trash them from their index fast.

Having said all that I do use some tools to help with writing articles. I have just started using WordFlood, I am still in the 14 day trial period and I am not sure that I am prepared to pay for it yet. It is, however, pretty good. I also use DupeFree Pro which I think I like a bit more, partly because of the different way it assists you to create an article the same but not a duplicate. Did that make sense?

Anyway, DupeFree Pro is free. Get it from here. WordFlood costs only a small amount of money and I can't find the link for you so do a search.

Regards




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Tuesday, May 13, 2008

A bit more on getting SE Traffic and a gift.

Another thing I recently discovered is that the Search Engines no longer count any site with less than 50 pages. This blog is now up to 36 pages and the adsense ads are actually beginning to show some relevance.

OK, I just added a Social Bookmark link to this blog. I am proposing to run a give away for the first 50 people who visit this blog.

I just finished a small report last night, it is in pdf format and is on business names ideas, the same techniques can be used to pick a domain name. At this stage I don't even have a download link for you so you'll have to leave a comment asking for it with your email address so I can send you the link when I have set it up (probably tomorrow night as it's already 11:00PM now and time is up).

You may ask why I am persisting with this blog when there isn't any traffic, the answer is that I figure if I can get traffic to this one then traffic anywhere else has got to be a breeze ;-).

Anyway, more tomorrow and a link. Will probably be on the kentberry site but I'll decide that tomorrow as well.

Regards

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Sunday, May 11, 2008

How to Use Craigslist

Google loves Craigslist. Most marketers use Craigslist to generate backlinks and traffic but there is at least one person who has worked out how to make a living by the same methods other people have mastered on eBay.

He has detailed his methods in a new ebook to show exactly how you can make up to $5,000 per month part-time just with Craiglist sales.

An all this is without any product or website of your own. Most Craigslist ads are free so the return on investment is brilliant.

You've just got to check this out for yourself. Craigslist eBook
.

Next post will be how to use Craigslist to generate backlinks and traffic.

Regards

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Thursday, May 08, 2008

More about Clickbank Payday

If you want to make money with Clickbank it is important to generated targeted traffic to the sales page. One way to do that is Google Adwords BUT 95% of wannabes do it all wrong.

Mostly that is because they have bought all the old books about how to do it the old way that don't work any more.

Mike Hill's book Clickbank Payday is current information and he shows you what works now.

There are a few other things you need to know. One of these is about Google's 'Quality Score'. Generally Google don't tell you everything you want to know about how they decide anything but it makes sense that your keywords, adsense ads and landing pages must match.

For example
keyword = wheelchair

add = Wheelchairs for Everyone
We have the Best Wheelchairs
Wheelchair parts and New or Used
www.wheelchairs.com

landing page = [Title] Wheelchairs for Everyone
[Headline] Wheelchairs.com can supply wheelchair parts,
new or used wheelchairs for all shapes and
sizes. All ages, all types.

You'd probably think that this site had something to do with wheelchairs.

Google would like this one. The reward is cheaper clicks. That's a summary of the Quality Score, there is probably a bit more but that's about all I know just yet.

Think about that next time you are setting up a campaign. Try using SeoQuake on your Firefox browser and look at the way the seobots will see the page.


Regards

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Sunday, May 04, 2008

Can you Make Money with Clickbank?

I actually have made some sales and made a little money with Clickbank. It is interesting that I have not manages to make enough money to quit my job yet but I am learning more all the time.

For instance, I bought the Clickbank Payday book from Mike Hill and learned a couple of interesting things about making money with Clickbank. I have implemented them in the website I have linked to above. The thing is that I am beginning to realise that to really understand how all this goes together I did need to buy a bunch of books.

Despite their claims to fame and claims of success most of the 'Gurus' actually make the bulk of their money directly from the list they built several years ago and the additions they get now by their cross promotions with each other. They do make money with Clickbank but not generally in the way they tell the rest of us.

This effectively keeps them well ahead of the rest of us. So what can we do to catch up? I have determined that what I have to do is generate lots of traffic.

I know, this is the cry from many, many people and they'll all tell you they know how to do that but it isn't as simple as they claim. Again, the 'Gurus' who tell you how to get 10,000 unique visitors per day probably don't get them from where we are being told they do.

One of the tips given in Clickbank Payday is to track your visitors and results. If you really want to make money with Clickbank you'll have to track not just the sales but the keywords which generated those sales. You need to know which of your promotional tools generated those sales and which parts of your sales or landing pages generated those sales from which keywords.

That is a massive amount of tracking but it is essential if you wish to optimise your traffic and results. What I have done on the new site is create a different cloaked link for each of the links to the sales page. I have two sets of keywords with two sets of ads sending traffic.

What I need to do now is work on generating traffic. I will put a link on my other sites using different cloaked links. I am planning some articles and I think I will buy some traffic. Even crappy conversions will make money and using crappy, cheap traffic will help optimise the landing pages so the better traffic will convert even better.

Regards

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Monday, April 14, 2008

Does Procrastination Kill Your Success?

John Delavera, one of the Internets most successful marketers, has been around forever (well, as far as the internet is concerned) asks the question AND provides a solution. Check out the snippet below and follow the link.
*****
… and DO SOMETHING with that material… There are 100s of sites today that offer you articles on various niches… Take www.StealTheseArticles.com for example… Yes I know, another site of mine, but it’s the perfect example… Here is some news too: as you will see there is no order link on that site. This is because I decided to offer the access free to members of www.turbomembership.com - later on this month… Anyway… when you go on that site you will see there are many niches offered. Pick a niche. Get 10-20 articles… then WORK with those articles and create a HOW TO guide. You can do that. Just use the content and create a How to guide. It’s easy and if you cannot do that then ask for help in a forum.
***** more...

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Sunday, April 13, 2008

Nathan Neal - Traffic Broker - BS...

I've been watching this site for a while, it looks like a good deal but...

"Like I said, I poured my heart and soul into the creation of this course, making it so step-by-step that even my computer illiterate friends and family could follow along. Here’s just a taste of what’s covered inside…

*
My tested and proven business plan that even "lazy" people can use to cash-in on the Internet... ** absolutely no such thing **
*
How to profit by directing people to someone else's website - even when they leave without buying!
*
How teaming up with massive "Authority Sites" (like Google!) to promote other people's products is my biggest secret to success... ** Does he mean PPC? **
*
5 types of companies you should AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE and never promote!
** let me guess, adult, casino, horse racing, porn **
*
Amazing programs that pay you money just for getting people to enter their zip code into a form! (That's right, you can get paid REAL MONEY just for getting someone to enter their ZIP CODE into a form!) ** Only for USA traffic **
*
How free content can generate 10 times the amount of traffic as paid advertising. (I'm serious when I say you DON'T need to spend money to make money!)
*
The secret to competing with big companies who spend a fortune to advertise. (Using the "guerilla tactics" I'll teach you, you don't need deep pockets to succeed.)
*
How to tak advantage of established brands for big profits. (You win while the big companies do all the work!) ** he did mention illiterate people before **
*
...and much, much more!

In fact, that’s not even the tip of the iceberg! "

he is absolutely correct, there is absolutely no information on how to get any traffic at all despite the claims that you'll learn how to be a "traffic broker".

You can't 'broker traffic' if you don't have any so this one is full of it. I would suggest that you avoid this one.

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Saturday, April 12, 2008

Adsense Whizz Kid: Automated Money from Google Adsense in 2007

This is actually a test of a technique I am trying out.
It is part of a Blog-and-Ping tutorial. If this results in traffic on this or any other site then this technique will be written up here. Stay tuned.

Adsense Whizz Kid: Automated Money from Google Adsense in 2007: "Discover how to generate automated income from every single website in this new and unstable Adsense environment: March 2007.

The only catch is I will be letting 125, 76, 51, 39, 18 lucky people into the secrets: the strategies that set me, the Adsense Whizz Kid,
apart from the chasing pack...

....AND now YOU: if and only if you qualify
of course....."

See the above text actually came from a different website -- AND I am not at my blog posting this.

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This is an extremely interesting experience.

I just had a look at the Google Analytics for this site and there has been NO visitors at all.

What is interesting about this is that I have other sites which get traffic, not much but some, with no promotion of any sort and they show up in the search results for some keywords. Well down the list but they are there.

This site is on Google's own site and gets spidered regularly, I ping it and link to it but the analytics show nothing. Someone, somewhere must be trying to get here but nothing shows up. Makes me wonder if there is a deliberate effort to either hide the site or hide the traffic.

So I have a request to anyone who actually reads this post to leave a comment and/or send me an email at burtm10 (at) brentmilne (dot) com just to confirm that you read this.

I am also going to set up another type of traffic generating link which I will talk about if it actually works.

Cheers for now.

Monday, March 31, 2008

Hey, Where are you?

I was just having a look at the Google Analytics for this blog and apparently I have had no visitors at all.

So this is an exercise in wasted time. If I thought that I was involved in internet marketing with this blog I am completely deluded. I am now writing for my own benefit.

This of course frees me up completely, with no readers I can write any crap I like and I will not be able to offend anyone. No traffic = no readers.

That doesn't seem like a lot of fun but there you have it. I guess another advantage is that I can write this at work knowing that my boss will never read it along with the rest of the entire internet community.

Dribble for dribble's sake. Despite Google's avowed dertermination to eliminate the websites with no valid content I seem to find more and more of them every day. Everytime I search for anything there are always site with nothing but links to other sites which still go nowhere with actual content. So how can they justify getting traffic?

I put up pages with content but Google wants you to have lots of links to your site to show that it is valid. Many of the internet marketing sites I look at have been in existance for a very short period of time and yet they have lots of links and lots of traffic, how?

Then I look at the pages which are on the top of the search lists and many of them have no links at all, no metatags of any description and minimal content. Who do you think is pulling who's chain here?

Anyway, since no-one will read this I can stop at any point and so I will stop here for now.

Good Luck

Friday, March 14, 2008

New Asset Management Tool released

One of the challenges of developing your personal finances is keeping on track. You want to get started but lack some confidence. You find some good information and need/want to keep track of it or make some notes but you keep losing all the data.

If you had the money to protect your assets properly you would probably pay for professional Asset Managment. But I don't and I suspect that you might not.

If you are in this situation and either a beginning or more experienced investor you do need to manage your asset base as it grows. The Personal Asset Management Tool has all the basic information you need to eliminate your debts, why you need to begin accumulating assets and how to get started. It adds more resources and tools to help you increase your personal wealth and assist you to better manage your assets.

Hey, there is this really cool function, well 2 actually.

You can add your own resources to this tool, web pages, pdf ebooks, audio or video. So you can build and personalise your own Personal Asset Management Tool.

The other really cool function is that you can add your own notes to each section. So if you like or dislike a section or if you find a better definition or whatever then you can make notes and you can print them out.

Wow, that's what I thought when I grasped the flexibility and power of these tow functions. Total customisation of the asset management tool to your knowledge and skill level. A tool which grows with you. A single point of contact to your assets and the management of those assets.

And then...the price. Would you believe free? I sure didn't. But it is a no cost tool. Where do you get your own copy od the Personal Asset Management Tool? Click this link and yes, there is one for the Macintosh as well.

Good Luck and successful asset management.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Just a Quick note

This is really just to have a post and keep the content coming.

I have noticed lately that my Adsense ads are not producing any income. Not that I am getting much in the way of traffic either but that us something that I should be able to change.

The very few clicks I am getting have not generated any income since November last year and I find that very strange. Does this mean that the customers were running ads at no cost? Come on, since when does Google allow others to run ads at no cost. No, I think this is more proof that Google filters all the Adsense clicks through some algorithm which checks the source of the traffic and adjusts the payout to less than you paid (to destroy any arbitrage) or to zero if you happen to be in their bad books.

It seems that I am in that situation. I do wonder how many others are being similarly scammed by this behemoth. It is similar to that other American scam machine, Microsoft. They also scam the whole world with their back door monitoring of your activity online.

Some testing seems to be in order at this stage to find out if I can prove this. It would be nice if it was possible to test the Adsense links without breaching the Terms and Conditions but I don't think it is.

On another subject, I checked my Adwords campaigns. One campaign shows that my ad is showing at an average of position 3.7 and should be showing every time the keywords are used on USA sites only. I attempted to check the USA showing of the ads but cannot see them anywhere for any of the keywords.

So it seems that we are being conned again, Google is showing geographically specific ads even if you don't ask for them. How is it possible to fine tune your ad placement or CTRs if you have no idea where or when your ads are being shown?

I have been running a program called Adwords & Keywords on a small group of keywords, just 56 of them, after 3 1/2 hours it still hasn't delivered any results. Now I know that there will be people out there who would tell me that this program is brilliant and is blindingly fast but I get this problem with everything I try to use. I have upgraded the ram in this computer but I still can't sensible run video, the keyword tools are so slow they are pretty much useless to me. I have to tell you it is all very frustrating. Nothing seems to work as it should.

I have challenged a number of the USA based Gurus to come out to Adelaide with nothing, buy a s/h computer here, set up a new account with everyone and start as if from scratch and prove that their techniques work here as well as the tell us they work in the USA.

My belief levels are pretty low right now as I found out recently that most of the Adwords and Adsense numbers talked about to sell the latest book are actually from several years ago and they couldn't replicate them today.

OK, enough rant for now. This was going to be a short post. No-one will read this in any case since Google won't list this post any more than they have the others.

Good Luck on you efforts.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Can you make money online with Adsense?

There are those who will tell you (and sell you the information) that you can make massive amounts of money online with Adsense.

They'll even show you lots of lovely graphics posing as income proofs which show $100's per day. Wouldn't that be lovely? What they don't show you, claiming Google's terms of reference, is the CTR and the sheer volume of traffic required to get that cash flow. They also don't show the value per click or the fact that Google adjusts the value you get per click based on their analysis of where the traffic comes from.

Whay else do you think the reporting is delayed by so much time? If I can put a simple script on the site and get instant reporting on the activity there, why can't Google?

The answer is obviously that they can but they don't. Google clearly makes money online, they also pay out $billions per year to adsense clients so others are making money online as well with Adsense.

So the result is that there are still people making money online with Adsense. The question now has to be HOW?

With some rough analysis of what Google says about Adsense and what the SEO people say about websites indicates that, yes, you do need lots of traffic. You get this by having reasonable content that you write, add some relevant RSS for variation and then get some traffic coming. Write an article or two with a resource block to link back to your site.

The only way to get PR on your site is to have incoming links with your main keyword as the link like this <a href="http://personalwealth.kentberry.com.au/Cashflow.html" target="_blank">Cashflow</a>. When you have this in your money making article and webmasters pick it up you get backlinks all over the internet.

You also get traffic from those sites and from the emails that are sent out with your article included. How many articles do you need to write before you get lots of traffic? I don't know, how good at writing keyword targeted articles are you? Hey, you might have to practice a bit before you get good at it but even the articles which don't get picked up still provide backlinks so just keep going.

The other problem with making money online with Adsense is that you might only make $10 to $20 per day with your site (sure beats $10 per month but I can see why you might not be totally stoked with that) either work on other ways to generate traffic or build another site.

So, can you make money online with Adsense? I think that you might see that you can.

Monday, February 04, 2008

More about making money online

Should making money online be fun? Frank Kern would say so.

Most of you would have seen the Frank Kern's Mass Control online marketing exercise in the last week.

If you bought, good luck to you and I hope it pays off for you.

Frank certainly knows how to make money online and so did all his buddy gurus. Did you get an invite to the trough? No? Nor did I. Does it bother you that those in the Inner Circle get to make a bucket load of money online and the rest of us are expected to feed the beast.

Well it does me. I want to make money online, I don't need to make $1,000,000 in a couple of hours, I don't even need to make that much every year. Making money online for me is all about replacing the day job and being able to become independent and 10% of Frank's one day payday would make a good yearly income for me.

I am going to give you a single tip here, you should put up a website of some sort , a blog is good, and work on driving traffic to it. Why? Because that is actually pretty easy to do AND that is all making money online is about.

Don't believe me do you.

Think about this, if you have traffic to a website that you control then you can write an article on a particular subject "making money online" for example, post it to ezinearticles with a link back to your post on the same subject, add a freebie in exchange for an email address if you want to build a list, a freebie to bring visitors and offer an RSS feed, have a link to a product you recommend, some adsense ads etc.

Making your money online begins with somewhere to stamp your personality and somewhere to send traffic. Once you have some content and some traffic it gets easier and easier to make money.

Stop trying for short cuts, there aren't any. Frank Kern may have made $1million in a couple of hours but he has first been making money online for about 10 years and has many, many JV partners which puts his product in front of possibly 100,000,000 potential customers.

You can't do that, yet. Start getting traffic. Then make money online.

Monday, January 28, 2008

How to make money online with a blog.


Now this really is interesting. There are many people who want to know how to make money online, including me. I don't have all the answers yet but I think I found out something extremely interesting just last night.

I was talking with my daughter about SEO listings and a new tool I was playing with which gives some very interesting information.

Sorry about being a little obscure here but I need to confirm what I saw as being repeatable before I go spouting off about the "latest Google Secret". I will tell you what I was looking at though.

I did a search on Google for the phrase and examined the first few results to determine what factors made them rate so well. Fascinating. Now, according to Keyword Elite, the phrase is searched for about 15,000 times per month and there are about 13,000,000 web sites using that phrase so the competition is fierce.

What I learned I have applied to this post, now we wait and find out if this blog rates anywhere (currently PR < 0, ranking of ???>. I really should give you a tip for reading this post. If you want to search for the phrase you don't need to put the quotation marks on both sides of the phrase, you just need to put the quotation mark at the beginning of the phrase i.e. is all you need and the search engine treats the whole phrase as one. Neat huh?

Something else for you, according to the gurus, making money online is easy. Just buy their latest product which has been already shared with their fellow gurus and you'll make enough money to quit your day job. What is really interesting is that in part they are right. Their guru friends will make money by buying and then selling this latest product. They market to their lists (the money is in the list - right) and all of them have quit their day jobs.

The "" product that they flog you will have some of the information you need but not all of it. The next entry is going to have some more data for you on what I have learned about making money online.

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