Death of Blog Networks and its Hidden Benefits

by Tom on March 21, 2012

I'm not going to go over what exactly happened as this has been talked about on every blog and forum in the IM community. If you have came from Mars or Yahoo search though… Google has destroyed (and is in the process of destroying) networks such as BMR, ALN, HighPRSociety etc…

Why?

They were helping users cheat their way to top rankings and the method become too public.

Now with that out the way…

I want to focus on BMR for a second here. That thing was big… think of the number of users and posts going into it on a daily basis.

If I had to guess, it must have been at least 2,000 users posting an average of 5 posts a day. The numbers are conservative but that's usually how I like to play it.  

Their minimum subscription cost $60 and an average post… roughly .75 cents. 

 

#1 Benefit (hole in the market)

2000 x $60 = $120,000 monthly

$120,000 x 3 (BMR, ALN, HighPRSociety) = $360,000

These are only 3 of the largest networks (many smaller ones got hit as well) but I want you to look at these numbers and let them sink in. There are now a lot of users with extra money on their hands looking for a way out… a safe place… a bit of hand holding… to help them gain what they think they lost.

They need an affordable system that will help them rank.

They will need guides and tons of help.

Many will lose clients over this, while others will be selling off their sites to survive. 

You have an opportunity to step up.

 

#2 Benefit (experienced writers)

5 (posts) x 2000 (users) x 20 (days) = 200,000 (posts per month)

300,000 (posts per month) x .75 (cost of 1 post)  = $150,000 (loss of revenue for outsourcers)

From my experience, a writer can do about of 15 of these blog posts per day (20 days per month)

15 x 20 = 300 (blog post that 1 writer can complete in a month) 

300 x .75 = $225 (average salary of a BMR writer)

20,000 (posts per month) / 300 (blog post that 1 writer can complete in a month) = 666 (writers which no longer have a job)

 

Some employers will keep them and give them other work but most will not be able to afford it. Its a great thing for people like me that always search for new and better employees. As they say… the best ones are already hired… but at least for now many of these will be looking to find another job and fast. 

 

 

… but wait… 

 

.. you haven't mentioned anything about what to do now to replace these methods…

 

… that is coming soon ;)

 

Advanced Web Ranking – SEO Software Review

by Tom on January 11, 2012

 

I normally don’t write up reviews on software or services but this is something that I now use every day and I find to be more reliable than anything else out there. Also a lot of the clients have asked me what software I’m using after seeing their reports.

These days I’ve been very invested in growing my offline business as that’s where I see the most potential for the next year or two before Google goes after this as well. Along with the holidays… it took me away from the blog. I wouldn’t have ever found out about this tool but I was talking to Cary Bergeron from the “adsense guild” about what he uses for presenting to his offline clients and he told me that this was thing was the bomb. Took me a while to follow up on that and check it out but I seriously wish that I’ve done it sooner as now it’s a part of my main toolbox.

After getting the clients’ sites ranked correctly, it was very important for me to be able to produce a nice looking report and AWR is great for that. It won’t help you if your SEO game is lacking but can definitely give you a bit of an edge.

Actual clients results after 1 month of work (competitive keyword)… what do you think his reaction was… 

 

The other programs that I’ve used before for tracking rank were market samurai and rank tracker. The problem with MS is that often it gets the rank completely wrong (when checked against scroogle.org) and that is unacceptable. I really hope someone buys that company and gets that piece of software back on track as its been a mess for a long time now.

Rank Tracker isn’t too bad but I just don’t like the way that their reports look. They’re not pleasing on the eye and SEO is already a dry enough of a subject especially when explaining to someone that paid good money for it and has no idea what we’re really doing for them. Once the traffic and the sales start then things change… but it usually takes a few weeks/months for that to happen.

The accurate tracking and nice visuals is what AWR has going for it. If you get the enterprise edition… its also possible to quickly create a .pdf of the project and print or e-mail it. I usually combine that along with some manual work and come up with a great report to show off. I will use the “snipping tool” in Win7 and copy different images from the software to later place in the word document to make the final report look amazing.

There are a ton of other options as well but I haven’t got to those yet and doubt if I ever will. There’s a 30 day free trial available so if you do any type of SEO work for online/offline clients and have been looking for a way to present the results in a very cool way then this is the seo software to use.

As with anything else though, unless you have the money to spend and can justify its cost… no tool is worth getting. I’m still amazed by how many people think that there is a shiny object somewhere out there that will do everything for them (automatically pick keywords/create sites/rank them/show results)… lol. 

My Site’s Sandboxed! Why Does Google Hate Me?

by Tom on September 16, 2011


If you've been on any of the IM forums then its very likely that you've heard someone screaming that their site was "sandboxed".

 

The phrase "sandbox" is outdated and was introduced back in the days when Google had only two indexes (primary and a smaller secondary).


When you first built a site, it would be placed in the smaller index until it gained enough trust to go to the main one. This is what being in a sandbox means. This changed in June 2010, with the "Caffeine" update and is no longer relevant.

 

I just love these names that big G comes up with.

 

Now our sites get indexed in days or hours depending on the strategy used. Social bookmarking is by far the fastest.


——–


Was It Really a Penalty?

[click to continue…]

Don’t Believe The Hype

by Tom on August 23, 2011

 

The next time you see a blog post by some joker saying that he made $2,385 in a day! …or… $23,000 in a month! … step back and look at the entire picture.

 

Then ask questions, which should quickly bring either some sarcastic or defensive remarks or have your comments deleted.

 

That's one way to find out the truth in this game :)

 

Let me put things in perspective for you:

 

My last business was making $30,000 every single month!

 

Sounds good right!

 

Not so much…

 

I ran a coffee shop twice the size of Starbucks in a college town.

 

- The rent was over $4,000 per month.

- The employees with unemployment, taxes & liability insurance was $9,000.

- The food, drinks, cups etc…. cost around $8,000.

- Utilities – $1,500+

- Health Insurance – $1,000

- Monthly sales tax was over $2,500.

- Misc expenses $500-1000 depending on the month.

 

What's that leave the owner with.. $3,000… and then one has to pay income tax.

 

No wonder I switched over to internet marketing… lol

 

So when these so called gurus or success stories appear, look at them closely. If someone worked for 5 months on a project, invested 2,000 thousand and made $6,000 in a few weeks after the product was released he is not a success story. That is a minimum wage self employed individual.

 

When you hear of someone making 20K+ with an office and employees in the united states… after expenses and uncle sam, lucky to clear $5,000.

 

They want to get us excited, make us look at them like gods but reality is far from it. If you have a solid plan and work smart in this business, you will hit the same numbers and maybe even with lower expenses.

 

I'm doing it myself and although I will not divulge my exact income for numerous reasons (main one is that I don't want people reading it and getting upset, jealous or down on themselves nor flooding my mailbox because numbers were just so exciting).

 

Let me tell you this much, my expenses & taxes are less than 25%. I've never seen that before in any business venture that I did and there have been a number of them.

 

Do look at how others make money, ask a lot of questions, perform your own calculations and if something doesn't quite make sense… it's probably not true.. so try to figure out why that is. This habit alone will move you ahead of 80% of the internet marketing community.

Content Creation Tips

by Tom on August 20, 2011

 

content creationI believe that many people make content creation more difficult than it should be. I definitely did in the beginning and have tried a lot of different techniques passed on from the gurus on the warrior forum… lol… yeah, I know that wasn't my smartest move.

 

However, I enjoy testing things so it wasn't all bad. When it comes down to it, more content isn't neccessarily the case. I've made 100+ page sites and stuffed keywords/seconday keywords everywhere and they're not ranking for almost anything.

 

Create the content for the user and then look at your keyword list (you better already have a keyword list) and find some that fit. Check the used ones off, so you do not use them again and keep moving along.

 

Ideas For Articles

If it takes long, can't be systemized, and isn't the route of least resistance… I pass on it.

 

Here are a few ways that I quickly get article ideas to do myself or pass to my team of writers.

[click to continue…]

← Previous Entries