First post in a while. I’ve been so busy, my bad.
First, I’m officially a full time, very sleazy internet marketer now — mothers, be sure to keep your daughters away from the likes of me!
First, I want to apologize to person with prostate cancer — I know I told you that buying my organic Mediterranean-grown carrot seeds will cure it…but I lied. Sorry. And to the person, who bought that natural dog toothpaste I wrote a review about, well the only thing natural about it is that it’s produced in china by dollar-a-day workers using “Chinese natural ingredients: (read: dangerous industrial-strength chemicals). Opps, must have forgotten to add that part to the review. Maybe next time.
Another day in the life of an internet marketer. When people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them I’m a professional liar. It’s sad, but it’s true. If you want to make money in the game folks, you need to take little things like ethics and morals and dignity and toss them out the window. An honest internet marketer is a poor internet marketer.
Note: It appears my little comment about having to lie to make good money has offended some people. Folks, you can certainly make money online honestly — only give legitimate reviews of products you can vouch for, don’t make up bullshit when you write, etc. However, it’s going to be MUCH harder. I admire you if you take the high road, but I’m in this business for the money and nothing else. But, my hat’s off to you if you want to be an honest internet marker. It’s just that in this business, things like morals and honest really fucking get in the way of making money online sometimes.
Think for a second what it will means for your make money online strategy if you never lie when you write. From my angle, I’m hearing the cascading sound of many doors of opportunity slamming shut.
On this blog, I tell things the way it is and what it takes to make money. If you want a sugar coated version of how to make money online, look elsewhere. I tell you what works and make no apologies for it. Doesn’t mean you have to sell out your good christian morals to make money on the internet, but you will have to find a more difficult path sometimes.
As a note, if you have problems with lying online, you can make good money with adsense without lying. For the world of affiliate selling, your are going to face harder decisions about whether you should BS or not.
Anyways…
It’s great FINALLY being free of “the man.” I dithered about quitting my job for months because I didn’t feel like I was diversified enough, etc, but quitting was the right decision and as it turned out, the only decision. It was pretty funny trying to explain to my wage-slave coworkers my reasons for quitting. I pretty much gave up on explaining to them what IM is and how I wasn’t actually going to be “jobless.” From now on, I think I’ll just tell people I sell drugs when they ask what I do – it’s just so much easier.
It’s actually good that I quit. The second to last day at work, 60% of my coworkers were fired out of the blue (my job position was completely axed so I would have gotten the boot too). Nice.
And that folks is why you don’t ever want to trust in “job security.” That’s the way the way the working world sells it to you. “Join us for job security and dental benefits.” What they fail to tell you on that little promotional job pamphlet is if the company only make 200 million in profit and not 205 million in profit, they need to “streamline” the workflow. This is corpspeak for giving the boot to a few hundred hard-working employees.
It’s true that IM has it’s risk. You can get your Adsense banned by Google, get your sites deindexed, etc. But how is this really different than a normal job? You put in your 9-5, work your ass off, and you can still kicked kicked to the curb because the company didn’t meet its monthly sales expectation and that board member living in Tahiti can now only buy a Porsche instead of a Lamborghini.
So full time, how is it? Bloody good. Now don’t get me wrong, I haven’t quite my job to sit around getting a tan on the beach (in Vancouver, it’s rain rain rain everyday for the next 4 months anyways). I quit so I can get even more work done and make a lot of fucking money so that I can leave to travel around for a couple years. But now that I don’t have to go to a “job” I can set my own hours. If I want to put in an 18 hour day, I can. If I want to put in 3 hours then take the day off, I can. If I want to go live abroad, I can. The point is, I have the freedom now.
So one of John Cow’s followers guest posted an article , “7 Reasons Why Adsense Sucks”.
I read it and had a nice laugh. Most of it was way the fucking off. Clearly the author is making or has made peanuts with adsense and assumes that’s the case for everyone else. Well, maybe people on Digital Point Forums or Warrior Forums, but not REAL internet marketers.
Let’s deconstruct this article.
#1) The CPM’s are Weak
Really, that’s news to me. In fact, I’ve been only seeing MORE money from my clicks. Now, I have to agree with what Chad Randall or whatever his name is, that Google is pretty shady on how they split them money with publishers. It’s all smoke and mirrors. If the CPC is 30 bucks, you can realistically only expect about 20% of that or 6 bucks. And, to be honest, you will probably only get 2-3 bucks. Google magic formula doesn’t usually work in the favour of publishers.
But, Mr. Chad Randall, disciple of John Chow, CPC can be sky high if you know what the fuck you are doing. I regularly see single clicks so high that a handful of these clicks could provide someone with a full time income. So when I hear that CPM’s are weak, I call bull. I have no doubts that in our “Great Depression” that we are living through, as CNN loves to remind us every fucking day, CPM’s are lower than what they were. But people are still buying and web advertizing is only growing. Folks, there is PLENTY of money to be make despite “lower” CPM’s. You just have to experiment. As a hint, don’t trust what the google adwords tools says – high CPC doesn’t not mean you will get high CPC and low CPC does not have to mean .10 clicks either.
#2) They Look Like Crap
So, you want people to come to your site and ooo and ahh about how beautiful the fucking google ads look? See this is the big different between a blogger and an internet marketer. Bloggers are so caught up with making things look pretty and entertaining visitors. Internet Marketers are all about function over form. Function = money folks. Give the people hungry for what they are looking for something to click on, don’t put pretty looking distractions in the way of this, and you’ll make money.
The simple rule is that ugly sites make money. People come, see an ugly ad that offers them information they are looking for and click. Remember folks, if you are entertaining people, you’ll be funding their entertainment out of your own pocket.
#3) Inverse Relationship to Revenue
Now, I agree with this. The worse your content, them more people click. That’s the price you pay when using content-relevant ads. The worse your content and the more uglier your site, the more attractive the ads are. Now, they key is to actually find the perfect balance. You can still make money from ads if you have great content – less money for sure, but still good coin.
#4) PSA’s
One word: lousy SEO or keyword research. If you do proper keyword research you will know that there are relevant ads that will be displayed for that keyword search (you can test this out by doing a google.com search with your keyword. If you see 4+ ads on the sidebar of the search screen and the ads are RELEVENT to your keyword, then you won’t have PSA problems.). With proper keyword research, you can be sure that there are actually some ads that CAN be displayed if you put adsense ads up. The other half of the equation is to make sure the adbox has some keywords to use as ad fodder. This requires proper onpage SEO – keywords in title, keywords above the ad and below the ad, bolded keywords, etc.
This means if you have a general blog with post after post of unrelated content, you are not going to get relevant, high paying ads or end up with a lot of PSA.
The author of the blog is suppose to be an SEO or IM’er or something, but if he was, he should know this.
#5) Anyone is Approved
Not exactly – I know a lot of people who get rejected. Yes, it’s fairly easy to get approved. But it you start putting up dup content, shitty content, or splam blogs, I can assure you it’s only a matter of time before you get permanently banned from adsense.
#6) It Makes You Lazy
I do quite well with just adsense. I agree, it’s so damn easy to make lots of money with adsense that you get lazy in your diversification. I know plenty of people pulling in 5-10k a month from a single site with adsense. I’ve got a couple little old 3 post niche sites that sometimes pull in 20-40 bucks a day– not a “killing”, but not a bad income for 3 fucking posts on an ugly ass theme.
I’d rather earn passive income from adsense anyday than to have to muck around with advertizers. You slap up adsense and that’s it – go sit at a beach and get a tan. If you want to sell adspace, you’ve got to hunt down interested parties, answer annoying emails, send stats, and basically whore out your time trying to convince people to pay you. You may like doing that, but I’ve got better uses for my time, thank you.
#7) They keep your Money
I’ve heard of this, but never experienced it myself. In general, goggle is pretty fair when it comes to paying out. Quite often, bloggers get sick an tired of waiting for those .5 cents a week to add up to $100 bucks and decide to enlist the aid of friends and family to “help” reach that total faster. Clicking on your own ads is a great way to find yourself banned before getting a payout. The being banned-before-100-bucks phenomenon occurs is probably because Google doesn’t look too deeply into how you get your clicks until your 100 payout. I could be wrong, but I suspect this is the case.
So, to counter this “7 Reasons Why Google Adsense Sucks” Bullshit, I’ve come up with my greatly compressed “counter” list of “7 Reasons Why Adsense Rocks”:
1. It’s easy as fuck to set up
2. It’s passive income
3. You can make massive amounts of money
4. You can make massive amounts of money
5. You can make massive amounts of money
6. You can make massive amounts of money
7. You can make massive amounts of money
There we go, enough said. So go out and make a full time income with Adsense.
Other news:
A friend of mine is releasing a new Press Release service. He’s a very good SEO that’s been ranking high for competitive terms for years – so no bullshit there. He’s company owns a well known Web 2.0 Property.
His press release service can give your high potential niche site or authority a very nice link boost with hundreds of links from good domains. Remember, the more links you have from different IP’s, the better you can do in the SERP’S, so if you have a couple hundred dollars kicking around, you might want to give the service a try. I’m not being paid to promote this service in any way.
That’s it for today folks. I’ll post an update later this month about my MMO efforts. Things are going good, FINALLY finished my 105 adsense snipers and I’m working on backlinking every single one of them for the next 3 weeks. Talk about bitch work, but it’s got to be done. We’ll take a look to see how much they are earning then. I’ve got a few other experiments lined up like 200 ebay snipers in 30 days coming up next month and, when i finish promoting my first 105 adsense snipers, another 100 snipers to do. Now that I’m full time, I’ll see if I can post a couple times a week on this blog.
Cheers and Make Money Online
Nice to finally hear from you again. I noticed you removed the date from your post header. Trying to hide the fact that you’re not posting much? 😛
I’m afraid I’m going to have to respectfully disagree with you about morals and ethics. I’m lousy with them, and I still think I can make a decent amount of dosh off this game. I haven’t got the bank balance to back it up yet, and it will probably take me longer than it would if I was hawking toxins to sick people, but I’ll let you know when I get there 🙂
Always feel free to disagree 🙂 As long as you know where your morals stand, you can work out a strategy. You don’t have to lie to make money (especially if you use adsense), but it’s tough to not bullshit when you are doing affiliate selling.
Cheers
Ben
Hey Ben. Nice post. I can relate to how your former co-workers feel that the only type of way to make money in life is from a job. I love reading your posts… just wish they would come more often. 😉
I had to apply for an LLC. So now, rather than sell drugs or whatever as you say, I am a business owner. That shuts people up real quickly and in fact they want to know more.
I’m glad you were able to make the break. Had to stifle a big horse laugh when you related the story of the cut back coming the day before your last day.
I’ve written lots and will write more about the fallacies of so-called “job security”. One big thing to remeber about Internet marketing and being ‘out there on your own” is this … you can not be fired or laid off .. which seems to be a primary fear of so many people. Yes, income can rise and fall, but even if someone like Google were to drop you, there are still literally thousands of other ‘partners’ to work with.
Also, many people fail to consider that there are significant costs in having a regular “Job”. Payroll deductions, commuting costs, clothes for work, paying for services to get things done because you can’t do them due to work schedule, child care, the list goes on … so if you lose or give up a $110k a year job, you might easily find you live as well or better from $50k or $60k net ‘Net income.
As I think you know, I’m much older than your average reader, and I also (by choice) live outside the US (missing out on the drivel of CNN and Fox news is a big, big plus in my quality of life, by the way).
The ‘global economic crisis, a big myth in my book. This years so far has been my best year ever, by a long shot, and Google AdSense has been a big component of that … I’m making much more than ever before and working diligently to grow AdSense even larger.
I recall that John Cow article you referenced and thought at the time is was a pile of crap. Those who aren’t making money with AdSense are like those who can’t return the tennis ball to the other court because they haven’t bothered to learn how to hold the racket or not bothered to learn the rules of the game … it’s not the racket’s fault if your stroke is lousy.
I have also been an AdSense publisher since 2005 and I have to say Google has been honest and forthright with me. I wish a few other large advertising/affiliate networks would be as upstanding.
Rock on guy, your posts are cogent and you give valuable advice.
You said, “An honest internet marketer is a poor internet marketer.” That may be your perception, but I think it is flawed. I agree with Josh and I am going to have to call BS on this. I am not making the kind of money you are yet, and if it takes being a liar, I never will.
You can certainly make money being honest, but the bottom line is that people who exaggerate/lie about the products they sell, will make more money.
Do what your morals allow, fine, but just realize you will make probably make far less money.
Actually, I am making thousands of dollars without telling lies. Sometimes I am not divulging the whole story, but no lies at all.
And I write a lot of generalities that don’t answer any questions just like Grizz taught. That’s not lying though.
I should be more clear here, my bad. With adsense, you don’t have to lie or make up BS. You can of course — write advice that you have no business giving, etc. If you want to get into the world of affiliate selling, it’s much more difficult to get away without lying. Can you hawk products you’ve never used and give an honest review? Can you recommend clickbank health cures that you’ve never used and probably are complete bullshit? That’s where the difficulty lies.
>> When people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them I’m a professional liar. It’s sad, but it’s true. If you want to make money in the game folks, you need to take little things like ethics and morals and dignity and toss them out the window. An honest internet marketer is a poor internet marketer.
When I was working as a computer programmer, I had to take little things like ethics and morals and dignity and toss them out the window. An honest computer programmer is an unemployed computer programmer.
I have to admit that my time working as a programmer (for quite a number of companies and vendors) has helped to condition me to the fact that people don’t want the truth and prefer to be told a convenient lie. It made my transition to sales reasonably easy (though not successful). The further transition to IM did not bother my conscience much, although I have found that I don’t have to lie as much as before (when I was a programmer).
on a side note, I’ve come not just to look at the great posts, but I really look forward to the image you choose.
I really like the composition, and the color tones that this one shows…
maybe write an ebook on how to take great digital pictues 🙂
Hey Ben, glad to see your new post! For the past couple of days, I’ve been checking to see if you posted something new. Yea, I need a life.. I have a couple questions if you don’t mind..
1.) When I check the ezine articles I’ve written linking to my site by using seoelite or another program, I notice that it doesn’t show my anchor text..However, my anchor text does show up for other backlinks that are linked to my site. What are your thoughts about this?
2.) With the new FTC law for affiliates, how does it affect us? I haven’t read an article that really breaks the complex jargon down.
LOL Ben – what superb timing with your ex-Job – you’re fired nope I quite – nice! I am getting my lies lined up for moving home – the big advantage of leaving overseas is that no one asks you what you do ! My short list is : I play on the Intterwebs and silly people pay me; I sell drugs; I could tell you but i’d have to shoot you.
And yes you get better money lying iwthout a doubt – after all isn’t that what any advertising to some degree – as seen on TV ! Actually one of the advantages of Adsense is you don’t have to write copy – I mean lie – you just need to waffle.
CPM going down – really? Not on my Adsense account !
Just thought I’d pipe in here… when you get on some of the affiliate payrolls I’m on, you can actually honestly say you sell drugs…
Ok, they’re nice drugs for making hypochondriacs think they’re better, but wtf ethics? Nah, reality sells that stuff and if its laced with a few half truths and maybe the odd outright howler, well you gotta do what you gotta do…
Oh yeah, nice post Ben, I’m glad you stuck it to da man!
Hey Ben,
Not sure if you answered this already but are you hosting your 100+ Adsense Snipers on 1 hosting account for do you have multiple hosting accounts and spread the 100+ snipers across them?
i’d tie 100-150 accounts to one host gator reseller account and have 3-4. It’s not good (besides running out of space) to have too many sites on one account. If that particular host server goes down, your income is toast for the day.
nice to see a short post here one in a while. I have to agree with the ethics and informationless posts making more money. The very first (well maybe second) adsense site that I started, was about a health issue. I wrote a lot of it, and since I was interested in it at the moment because I was basically studying it, I put a lot of real and legit information. I wrote this one post that sits #2 for it’s keyword, gets 100 visits a day, has natural backlinks coming from good websites. The ctr is low. Not shitty low, but low – I am talking about 2% and for what I have experienced it is low. It makes me $3-8 depending on the day even though it is not a super selling keyword – no buying words in it.
Talk about not working – I am in the risk of losing my job at the end of this year. My contract ends and my boss just told me that there is a 95% chance it is not renewed. This is because of major changes in the legislation early this year, which caused all of the businesses in this line of work to lose a significant amount of income – I am talking about 30% and more.
So I’ve got two months to boost my monthly income by at least 1000€ (1450$) and if I manage that, I will quit even if they would renew my contract.
Great points about Adsense. I must say, I much prefer writing for Adsense than for affiliate stuff. I don’t write crap, but I don’t spend as much time editing and trying to be persuasive either, and there’s no need to presell. It’s just much easier in general.
But I’m wary of being too dependent on it, so I promote affiliate offers too. I’ve never felt the need to lie or promote crap though (and would feel horrible knowingly taking advantage of sick people or animals) – there are so many good products out there to choose from – some are even on Clickbank lol – that I can avoid the dodgy stuff. Still, I’m not claiming to be 100% squeaky clean (or I wouldn’t use Adsense – I’m sure many of those ads are for less than wonderful products!), and everyone has to find out what they’re comfortable with.
Adsense writing is great imo. You don’t need to worry about it being readable. I just focuse on writing some good information and just let my mind flow around the subject and write everything that comes to my mind. The result is an article that is jabbering and informative, but if the person is searching to buy, they don’t want to read an article like that, so they’ll click a way.
That’s the way to do it. Put in good information but ramble around..people get board and click out. It works best with 1500 word badly formatted text (stretch the text size to be really large so it scares people with the length). I usually do 400-500 words cause I’m lazy though.
The thing is that you don’t want to write flagrantly bad content — if you get a visual, you might lose your account. So dry, boring, and real information that’s helpful but not quite is the way to do it
Nice to to hear from you cat. Yes, at the end of the day, do whatever you are comfortable with. If you can’t budge the truth because of moral issues — don’t. You can find a way to make it work for you without stretching your morals. You have to sleep at night after all 🙂
Hey nice deconstruction on my post. Well a few corrections, I have helped generate XXX,XXX in revenue from AdSense over the years, so not exactly peanuts, but certainly sucks in comparison to the millions I’m brought in via direct advertising sales. And I’m not a disciple of John Chow, I’ve been in the game a lot longer than he has…:)
I’m a bit disappointed on your own top 7 rocks list, a bit weak, I was hoping for more. I can even come up with better reasons than that.
Thanks, for stopping by Chad. Yea, I was feeling lazy about creating my own list, sorry. I’ll have to put a real why adsense rocks list in in my next post. Good to see that you are not John Chow’s disciple.
Cheers
Adsense is a scary way to make a living. I lost my account because on one day someone decided to click a bunch of ads on one of my sites. One day, and a permanent ban. That’s after having the account for a couple of years.
Maybe those accounts which have more income are given more slack, but I wonder. Can one browser knock out your account for life? One person over whom you have no control? This is precarious.
I’ve heard a lot about this. Some people argue Google is fair UNTIL you get banned out of the blue. It’s a good idea to have a handful of different accounts (set up with family members or other LLC companies you own) and diversify into other revenue streams.
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BK
Did you realize that you just gave away all your money making niches. You are going to have tons of competition now.
No those are all my niches! Dammit!
Guys you have it all wrong. Adsense is the real evil beastie. Many people seem to think writing waffle to send people on their merry way via blue links is not lying.
You are getting them there under false pretences and you know it. I know it too. To make money with adsense you do best by fooling people in to thinking they are going to find something they are not. Google knows this yet this is totally how the system works.
If people found what they were coming for then they would leave happy and fulfilled or you would just sell them the products themselves. Is it worse than writing trying to convince someone to buy a product via an affiliate link on your own site? I don’t think so.
Ever actually gone to a load of google adsense links that are showing on your adsense site?
I can tell you now that a lot of them are for exactly what Ben is doing, crapbank ebooks. Being one step removed in the chain does not make you less of a liar. You are purposely sending people there and making money along the way. What’s the difference to just trying to convince people to buy it yourself?
Do I do it, yes. Does it make me the most money, no.
Amazingly nearly all our money comes from writing content to bring people to sites of ours that have affiliate links for actual products they are looking for. Heck, we even ensure we use programs that offer the products at the best prices to the consumer and that means less money for us.
The whole ethics of Internet Marketing is so messed up. Just adding to the crap that is already online makes me feel bad at times, but not bad enough to go back to mixing concrete for a living rather than taking breaks as and when and sometimes actually writing something good online.
Only problem is that the good stuff never makes me any money!
Yea, I hear you here. No way I’m going to go back to working a 9-5 job — even if it means stretching the truth. I don’t consider myself an honest marketer, but I am an ethical one. Despite my little intro about prostrate cancer, I never fuck around with people who can get their lives destroyed. I won’t recommend some bullshit cure to someone who is dying — also that’s a great way to make money. Same with the MMO niche — I don’t ever recommend fake shit or stuff I don’t actually use that works, even if I lose out money because of it.
But for other niches — stuff that’s won’t cost someone their fortune or lives — I will.
Amazing post as usual Ben!
I don’t think you have to a total lying sleazebag to be a successful internet marketer but being completely truthful is also not an option. Marketing is inherently deceptive and if you want to really make money online you need to do a little deceiving no matter what method you choose to monetize your efforts.
Also, congrats on taking the plunge to full time internet marketing! I bet this is a very exciting time for you.
Oh and yes, Adsense ROCKS!
You had a really lucky escape re your job. Looks like being self-employed is the only secure job now, because you are completely in control and can move swiftly regarding trends, diversification etc. Corps by contrast move so slowly that for the employees it’s like watching a train crash in slo-mo.
Re telling lies. I think it depends on whether you are making money from the “desperate visitor” type or the “rabid fan” type. With the desperate visitors, yes you have to fib to make sales. With the rabid fan visitors – eg fans of Jimmy Choos etc – you can’t get away with lying because they are such hard-core fans, they catch you out. You have to do down the truthful+seductive route, where you sell by gaining trust and providing beautiful pics of products and seductive prose.
Adsense works on the desperate visitor, not so much on the rabid fan. With the fans affiliate marketing is where the money is, because they do buy and spend lots.
I’ve been concentrating more and more on affiliate marketing these days. But that’s the beauty of MMO – there are a zillion ways of going about it, and you just have to find something that works for your personality.
@Dave
The Irony of the Internet is thick.
Lets suppose that I decide to go legit and just sell a product. I set up a site Homemadebeltbuckles.com and wait for the $$$ to come rolling.
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I wait
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I wait
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hmmm. no $$$$
. so what do I do
Step 1- Hire people to write 250 separate pages of 650 word content about everything to do with belt buckles and fashion.
a)spin that content to 1000’s of pages.
Step 2- Put that content on
a)ten top article directories
b)40 Web 2 Props-SENuke
…b(1)5 link wheels
c)10 self hosted blogs-Wordpress
d)1000 auto blogs- LFE
e)5 static sites- Xsite pro
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next I use a special tool to blast thousands of shit links to my auto blogs
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then I send those auto blog links to my self blogs & web 2.0 and outside of my network, I will never interlink them.
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Then send arbitrarily links to Money site and other supporting sites and send more links to outside my network in exchange for links back to my network.
..
I continuously scrape the serps for PR4+ comments (with a tool) I hire someone to post these comments, we want these to stick and most do. The anchors are not too important because were going to launder the links anyway. I send those comments to my Nich related blogs to launder them for relevance.
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I create videos also at 10 different vid sites with links to Web 2.0 props. I blast those vid pages with auto generated shit links further increasing the juice to Web 2’s.
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next I check on my forum posting tool to see how its doing….ah yes , I see 250,000 post were made and looks like 23,000 stuck with links shooting to my autoblogs. (server and proxies required)
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Excellent, things are moving along nicely, now start my comment poster again and shoot those links to my top 50PR forum post rotated randomly.
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Now I submit all those links and post to RSS randomly run the tool 24/7
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Oops don’t forget I’m bookmarking all those post and links and comment pages etc. Of course using a tool on a leased private server running 24/7.
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Holy cow, just in time, I buy new tool that automatically sets up profile pages, I’m sceptical of these so I only do 5000 and send the links to the directories, autoblogs and some to self hosted- I spread them out pretty good.
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Next I fire up the forum and comment posters again and send those links to ….lemme see…yup I will send them to my profile pages.
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Things are rolling
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Now what, I build another 10 blogs and make a few post on each about random stuff, I auto blog the rest (these are on separate class .coms) I leave the comments open and let the spammers pound the shit out of the comments) then I notice something…hmmm the spammers are spamming links to their spam links giving me free links! I let this go on for a while and then clean house. Of course I keep the free links. Next I launder those blogs 2 levels of blogs and through a couple static fashion sites.
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Now I build 10 bots that travel my links from site to site. They stay on each site for a random time from 30 sec to 5 min. These bots run 24/7 and show human user agents. Why? thats a story for another day.
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Now what, IMA little bored so I buy a software that builds link directories. I put up about 10 directories in my niche and let others post links for free. One day I wake up and a few have some PR so I start charging 10$ a year. And to my amazement people that claim to be SEO’s actually buy them. LOL! I then wheel them up and send article directory links to each which gives me links and a few more customers. I then send a couple really nice links to the money site.
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Now I’m really getting bored so I scrape the serps for the emails of decent PR fashion blogs, about 2,000 of them. I now go and put up 20 really nice fashion related blogs of my own. Oh I almost forgot, I use a tool that scrapes the “who is” from adsense publishers in the fashion niche also. Ok, now with all that data I email them (this part not easy) and invite them to promote their sites with guest post on one of my blogs. I have to hire an Indian to handle the post but its worth it. I’m building tons of fresh content and friends along the way(And of course backlinks)
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Now I am in control of thousands of links and I begin to barter with other authorities in my niche” I will give you 5 link wheels with a total of 100 links for your 1 in text anchored PR 6 link” hell yeah…like taking candy from babies
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Things are awsome…
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Next I get a little creative and create a free how to make belt buckles site, but one day I post a video on that site about how to bludgeon bunny rabbits with a belt buckle…It goes viral, tens of thousand of links poor in –all link juice gets directed directly to money site, even better the links are cleaned up so now they are relevant. KBoom
I wait
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Now I’m making a little cash so I buy those damn expensive directory links. Cost me about 2k but worth every penny–Wow–Didn’t know G liked those that much—And Bing LOVES them!
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Money is really starting to flow so I will pay for some press releases –Holy shit–massive juice, had know idea!
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Time for my final run at spot #1
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Next I pay a guy for some +PR3 .edu’s . Pretty expensive but worth it. Don’t know how he gets them and don’t want to know. Nice though
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One day I wake up with an idea. How bout if I hire some code monkey to make a badass widget that I give away for free. So this code gearhead makes a widget that displays fashion image suggestions based on fresh fashion images from that day. I blogg about it and have my Twitter army DIGG the shit out of it and….SERVER UPGRADE….they come in droves and download the widget for their beautiful fashion websites. (of course the widgets link back to me)
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I’m now starting to build a little authority and I decide to head to a fashion industry expo and I meet this hawt girly thats well known in the industry. I buy her a drink and tell her about my site, I ask her if she would write an article for my site about the “10 best ways to wear a belt buckle” she acts very flattered and says SURE!
So I get the article put it up and I promote it for about a month with PPC. Guess what, about 20% of my PPC traffic links to it. NICE!
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.Getting some pretty decent traffic so I pull out the oldest trick in the book–YUP, the old tried tested CONTEST. Links are hitting my site like rain..seems the Gold plated buckle prize just too much too resist. Cost me a couple grand but waaaaay worth it. Sold tons of buckles too.
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Smooth Sailing
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Hey guess what, I got more traffic than I know what to do. I hire a couple of people and install chat on my site. WOW people really like this feature, the ability to get a live person for questions doubles my conversion rates. Ima little greedy so instruct my chat employees to offer a discount on future purchases if they link to us. When the link is verified we email them a coupon code for 20% off. Nice! Even better, I got their email address.. hehe
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Now I’m starting to have fun and the dough is rolling in so I have this guy design a belt buckle that’s controversial and I send it to the top 20 fashion editor bloggers, most with major newspapers. 3 of them mention the buckle in their blogs resulting in two PR6 and one P8. Hoped for more but still worth it.
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Now the final assault, the coveted .gov from your US senator. (figure that one out yourselves)
hint: their all whores
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Victory
Profit
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Make Money-Get Paid
Yep, that about describes what you have to do to really rank for something competitive. Sucks for the people who think you can just get a couple hubpages and infobarrels links and maybe a blogger blog or two, but the reality is that you need to be a link building DEMON and think of some creative link building linkbait strategies to get those high PR links.
You hit the nail on the head. (Or whatever the saying is.) Seriously, if everyone followed your blueprint it would be impossible NOT to rank #1.
But for someone just starting out that doesn’t even know what “linkbuilding” is, they’d freak out if they read something like that, hehe 😉
yup, You have to pull out every trick in the book. With sites that sell their own product you are talking about BIG MONEY..The kind of money people do crazy shit over.
btw
I was going to put that post on my blog but I couldn’t risk it. Way too much at stake.
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Lol, so now you give me the Gman trouble instead, and after this blog finally got some authority for the domain keywords and a PR 3 — not that PR means shit these days.
j/k!
Yea, I’m always afraid that G is going to look at me closely. I have nothing directly linking my networks to this blog for good reason, but I’m sure if G really wanted to look around, they could cap my ass. Ah well, here’s to BING becoming a legit threat.
Lmao
figured it be ok in the comments, Just some Anon crazed spammer that needs to be locked in a rubber room without door knobs
yeah noticed the PR3
Your post makes me sad Ben, i’d rather be poor than be a IM liar.
People can make money by lieing and stealing – we read this in the news everyday.
but they don’t have to. Google isn’t going to like a website which lies, not in the long term
I make a lot of money on the internet and i don’t go lying. I just say that to let your readers know that you can make decent money by not lying
I just feel sorry for the people who read your reviews or websites and brought the stuff that you lied about. Do you sleep well at night?
let’s be honest guys 🙂
Different strokes for different folks. If you make good money without BSing, good for you. And I do sleep well at night, thank you.
Wow. That was a fun read…… But not the only way IMHO.
I have ecommerce sites, and I did none of that. None. My main site ranks #1 for my industry kw. I have links from real industry directories relating to my product. I write articles for real content sites related to my product. I have real .edu links to my sites (get to know the PA at the Univ that is using your stuff…)
My way is slow – but it works. I make a living in the low 6 figures with this. Key: Know wtf you are talking about if you
want to do it this way. No engineer is going to drop $5,000 on a piece of industrial equipment if the guy he calls is clueless.
Having said all that – my main niche is tapped out. Tiem ot diversify….
Yep, ecommerce is something I haven’t really talked about — but, you can make a legitimate business without stretching the truth. But with internet marketing (and specifically, niche marketing/affiliate selling, etc) it’s a bit more tricky not to stretch the truth.
But for some niches, you certainly can’t make up bullshit. Bullshit works well for health type niches and niches where there is no real way to prove is something can work or not, but not electronic niches or anything technical that has hordes of people doing detailed research and who are pretty much experts about those products/models.
Ahh the old truth in advertising argument.
The reality is that it isn’t a black and white issue here. It isn’t tell a lie or tell the truth and that’s the only thing that you can do with Internet Marketing. Most of it is inbetween.
And it also depends on what your form of monetisation is.
My Amazon sites are all very honest, but then they mostly just talk about the products and it’s all quite general.
My Adsense sites are really just information sites. I think these are all mostly truthful as well.
But my Clickbank sites. Hmm here is where things get a bit more grey. Many of the products I ‘review’ I’ve never used. Does that mean I think they are a pile of junk? Well I usually do research on what other people are saying and try and find the good and bad points about the product – but in reality most of the other ‘reviews’ I read are also written by Internet Marketers who have never used the product too.
And while I never actually say ‘I bought this product and …’ I do give a recommendation on whether I think it’s good or not based on my research. (Which again is probably flawed and therefore not entirely truthful).
I also have my own product on Clickbank. 1 year ago I thought it was a good product. I don’t anymore. But it’s still there and affiliates are still selling it for me. I personally don’t actively promote it anymore, but I’m not taking it down from Clickbank – it still earns me money each week. Is that being unethical? I don’t think so. It’s up to the buyer as to whether they like it or not and find it useful.
This is a marketing and advertising business. Do you think every ad you see on TV is truthful? Has every agency that came up with the ad’s ideas use the products they promote?
I don’t deliberately lie if I can help it. But I’m probably not entirely truthful either. It’s a grey area.
I guess that’s what it means to be in this game.
Yep. Even Seth Godin said all marketers are liar. I don’t really know who he is, but he seem right about this and I agree with him. I do rant some of my product review, rewrite other people article as my own, don’t care what it all about and damn! It makes me money LOL.
Google Adsense indeed rocks. The main reason I like Google Adsense is instant gratification every day ;).
Seeing the money in the bank is like watching your stock go up or down in some cases.
Google Adsense is a company that is going to pay me ;). I am sure there are many legit companies but Adsense works well for me too.
Good work on quitting, I wish I have that capacity to do so, I am waiting for the day it surpasses my income in my current job … hopefully it be before I make CTO of my organisation.
Right or Wrong people make money. As Ben says it is your choice, it is like anything in life there are many ways to skin the cat.
Look forward to reading more on your blog
#1 – I think a lot of people don’t get enough organic traffic to make a good assessment of CPM. Grizz talked at one point how there seems to be almost a magic CPC level at around 3000 search visitors (I assume CTR might have something to do with it as well) where you get paid a bigger share of what Google makes.
Glad you managed to post before the end of the month. Hey I had to add a link to my name this time, to invite all to howhub. It’s a new site released by associated content. Just like hubpages or infobarrel, you share adsense revenue. However you only get 50%. The real catch is referring others. As soon as you refer 10 people, all of your articles jump from 50% revenue share to receiving 100%. So you could build up some nice links, and then once you hit the 10 referals, double your earnings.
Very smart viral concept of howhub SHOULD get it lots of links and a v ery high PR and authority, so I assume that it’s going to be pretty good for linkjuice anyways.
So of course, I’m hoping you don’t mind me inviting you and anyone else that wants to join through my link so I can get 10 referals and start getting 100% revenue….
I’m putting together a plan. Basically I will use hubpages, infobarrel,howhub, (and possibly other sites like them?) and link them to a blogger blog. I will then also build links using associated content and helium.com to the main blog and those other 3. helium and associated content aren’t as good, but they can act almost as a blogfarm in the sense that you can send all the social traffic to them and if you want, focus on ranking them for the high traffic terms that may be low paying in terms of CPC. You get paid if your articles are used if you should choose, and you also get $1 per 1,000 views. There’s a few slightly more blackhat tips towards getting views wich can be a nice “cookie” of information, or you can just use socail and traffic exchange tricks. I don’t think I’m going to spend my time on that…
If anyone has a list of othersites that they have used/tried that’d be great. My idea is as I’m experimenting with different keywords withoin only a small group of niches within the same main topic in all these article sites, I’m building revenue, but I will be able to leverage those to a blooger blog where I can use adsense, build a list, sell affiliate products, etc. The strength from all of my web 2.0 articles will be able to pass a lot of linkjuice and as I get ranked for these longer tailed keywords, I build authority for my main keyword, and the amount earned could compound.
howhub appears to be nofollow.
So how did you happen to come across this post? Are you secretly a John Chow fan, Ben? 😉
Anyway, I agree with your ethics code. Don’t flog products to people whose lives or livelihoods are on the line unless the stuff “works”. To be honest, though, it’s only digital products that have a huge problem ethically. People don’t trust some previously unheard of ebook, but if you’re affiliate selling physical goods it’s much easier to actually sell, though it’s almost impossible to rank for any physical good worth selling or you won’t get any worthwhile commission if it’s easier to rank for.
(It’s Mike)..
Super lame, the invite code I put up doesn’t even work right. crap, I guess I’ll have to do howhub a different day when they figure out whatever bug they got going.
Anyways, found a few other sites that are sort of like hub pages or infobarrel and I put them in my blog which probably isn’t going to be ranked #1 for how to make money anytime soon! But it’s okay, because I’m focused on other niches, just think that keeping a log of my ideas might help keep my A.D.D brain a little more orginized.
Anyway, after doing some searching, and looking through a list, I really like Xomba and I think that running a challenge on that one would be worth considering, but I assume that you don’t want to work your tail off forever, and with all the infobarrels and everything else that you have proved will work, I certainly wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t.
Hope you enjoy being free from the system!
Just wanted to say what a great post! But you know what? I’m glad that Chad or whatever made a negative post about adsense on a blog like John Chow. Why? Because it will weed out a lot of beginners from trying adsense and they will never know just how easy it really is. Instead, they’ll try the super competitive topics like weight loss, MMO, acai berry, yeast infection, ring tones and wonder why they’re not making money.
So this can only mean good things for us who DO make a good income with adsense. Less competition and more money for us. Btw, I agree with your viewpoint on parting with your ethics in order to make good money online. Sometimes the truth is mirky but that’s the not the point. People purchase on emotions and it’s clear that advertisers know what emotional buttons to push. Just the other day I saw a billboard ad on the freeway of a Lap Band product that promises that “you will lose weight” and shows a picture of a skinny woman all cheerful. Come on, really?
Ben!
I totally understand what you are trying to say about lying. In fact i appreciate your moral courage for telling this to the whole world out loud. But i can see some folks here can’t digest that and raise hand trying to prove “I am Not This Type”. you’r right, they require different stroke :).
To put it simple “All Ad Campaigns are to an extent Lies” if you too strictly see it in Black OR White.
BTW @Anon 🙂 nice experience sharing
Looking foward to your updates on your Adsense Sniper sites!
Keep them coming!
update to come. I’m still working on backlinking which is taking far longer than I anticipated.
Hey a great Post Ben. Some really good tidbits of information.
And in general your Blog has some invaluable stuff for anyone to be successful at IM !! Very Nice
However, I will say that in the Long run you can be honest and have integrity and still make a shitload of money. Yes, I sell Affiliate Products but I never do a personal review of a Product that I never have used.
In my follow up email to my List, I will just let them know that many people have found success with this Product and it could potentially solve their problem. There is NO reason to fib or lie about it.
You just have to be creative in how you approach your List.
Come on don’t be lazy !! 😉
Also, as I have gotten older through my own experience I can honestly say that I have found that people who are deceitful will one day get bit in the Ass by it. You might sleep good at night now but Karma can be a Huge bitch !! And sooner or later it will get you.
And as sure as the Sun will rise tomorrow, I will bet the farm that you will regret it one day.
In all due respect , I just think you need to take a step back and ask yourself is Money really worth sacrificing your Integrity and Character ??
Ben, you ever hear about that interview of Ministers who give the last rites to dying people ? Almost 100% of these Ministers said that when the dying people were speaking their last words they NEVER said how they wished they had made more money or how they regret not working harder at their job to make more money. No, the majority of them said they wished they had done more positive things to their fellow man and spent more time with their loved ones.
Anyway, I am not trying to be an Ass here. Just keeping it real by providing some food for thought 🙂
Lol, good points robbie. There NEEDs to be honest markets to balance out all the liers like me 😉
It’s true though that there is a good feeling about helping people. I restrict that feeling only to this blog, where I don’t hawk crap or write fake stuff.
Thanks for your points!
Ben
Did you really quit your job and go full-time? Or is this one of those lies internet marketers tell.
No the entire site is a complete lie designed to sell you something. Sell what, I’m not quite sure yet — but I’m trying to come up with a perfect scam to steal all your hard earned money.
Adsense is still the easiest way for beginners to make money. I don’t even have my own website but make money with Adsense through sites like InfoBarrel and HubPages. More recently I’ve discovered GlobeTales.com. They pay authors 100% Adsense revenue (Looks like they make their money through InfoLinks). Obviously 100% is pretty nice, and since the niche is travel the average CPC is pretty high. I have 10 articles published so far, and am making between $1.00 – $1.50 a day in Adsense revenue. Guess it’s time to do a 100 “Globe Tales” in 30 days type challenge 😛