Yangshuo, China
Ok, this is probably a record breaking post in terms of length — so grab a couple beers and sit down for a long ride.
So I want to talk a bit about outsourcing today. There comes a point where, after spending 15 hours a day writing about yeast infections, midget thongs, and galactic warrior star trek leotards, you look at your blistered fingers and say “fuck it”. I reached the “fuck it” point last week. See, it’s not worth my time grinding out articles all day, every day – I can be far more productive finding keywords, getting backlinks, and setting up sites — and by not having permanent finger damage.
You too, if you survive the MMO journey, will arrive at a similar point. So what’s that point where you hire a writer to do your dirty work? For some people, you may hate writing articles so much that you outsource everything from the start.
I don’t recommend this.
You see, before you drop the money on outsourcing, you need to find your way a bit. You should, at least until you are making money online, have pretty close connection with your article writing so that you find out what works and what doesn’t. As exciting as it may be to imagine you can throw down 2000 bucks on articles and instantly make a killing online, this is not the way to go.
Why? Because making money online is MORE than just creating hubpages, info barrels, blogs, or whatever. It’s a SKILL. You can put up content and make hubs, but if you don’t know how to pick winning niches, you are going to waste a lot of money.
The only way to get this ability is to really just keep on throwing mud out there until something sticks to the wall. Once something sticks, you figure out WHAT makes it sticks and repeat the process, but this time more mud will stick. On and one.
Guys, this doesn’t happen by luck. It’s a skill – one that takes time to develop. Yes folks, making money on the Internet is a skill like any other. The more you do it the better you get – hopefully. When you first start, you don’t know what the fuck you are doing. You fumble around, get lost, and generally go in the wrong direction. But as you start to “figure it out” and make a bit of money, one success leads to another and before you know it, you are making a lot of money. You are confident of success in your MMO ventures. You know what brings that confidence? A past history of success. But before you succeed, you are probably going to fail. A lot.
I keep on seeing people reading up on how to make money online but actually never doing anything because “what if my website fails to make any money”? Guys, if you all your failure costs is 7 bucks for a domain name, 30 bucks for a year of hosting, and some wasted time, you’ve gotten off pretty damn easy. What about people who fucking lose their house and get put out onto the street because their business fails. You want to explain to a person who mortgaged his home for a dream why you can’t pursue your dream because you might lose 50 bucks?
How to Make Money through Keyword Research
I hear a lot of blogger types talking about how great content will make you rich. Nope. You can have great content, but if it’s not targeting money making niches, you won’t make anything at all. This is what “bloggers” do – they rationalize a sort of blogging field of dreams scenario where if you build a website with great content, people will come. Yes, this certainly may happen, but this is highly dependent on exactly what sort of content we are talking about. If you are talking about your day at work, the only person who fucking cares will be your mom.
Great content is well…great, but it also needs focus. You need to write great content about content that offers to solve (or point somewhere in the direction of) a problem.
Great Content + No Keyword Research = Salvation Army, living with parents, flipping burgers
But on the other side of the coin we have:
Great Content + Keyword Research = Babes, Beer, and Boats
It’s funny because that while shills like John Clown (who just somehow shams his way back into ranking for Make Money Online) and Pro (Bull Shit) Blogger talk their bullshit about great content making you rich, many bloggers online claim that they are not making any money at all. I was browsing the Adsense forums the other day and a couple people where talking about how it was impossible to make a full time income with Adsense unless you have 200K + page impressions each day. I had to laugh; I make a full time income off a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of that.
Bloggers think that traffic = money.
Not so. Traffic is just traffic. Targeted traffic makes money and targeted traffic that are desperate for a solution make a LOT of money. You see there are three types of traffic I’ve found.
1. Untargeted traffic (digg, reddit, stumbleupon)
2. Targeted traffic (organic search engine traffic)
3. Targeted “desperate” traffic (search traffic that REALLY need a solution)
Which one makes the most money folks? In my personal experience, I have found my sites that brings in targeted “desperate” visitors make 100 x the profit of my other sites with roughly the same amount of targeted but not desperate traffic. Now, keep in mind there is a LOT of variation here, depending on the niche – so this 100 x is not an “accurate” formula by any means — it’s just my personal situation. But hands down, desperate targeted traffic will make you a hell of a lot more money than just targeted traffic.
If you want to make GOOD money with Adsense (or affiliate products) you need to pick out some topics that can make some money here. Grandma’s fantastic cookie recipe and rocking chair cradles may fascinate you, but you won’t find too many other people interested in these topics. Now, I’ve had people ask me to look at their niches and offer some suggestions. One thing I tend to notice is that you guys tend to pick niches where there is no need at all.
You want to know how to make money online? You target desperate people who are royally fucked if they don’t get help soon. Yea, were talking about that poor kid with acne so bad he’s got to wear a bag when he goes outside. Or that old lady with cancer who has four months left to live.
So what’s the secrete of getting this targeted desperate traffic? Niche selection. This type of traffic is really just organic search traffic, but terms being search for have a lot of need associated with them.
Need folks, it’s all about need. The more need, the more clicks you get. Think about it for a second and it makes a lot of sense. Now, I’m not saying only target niches where people are going to croak in a few days if they don’t quickly click on the “instantly cure cancer with miracle apple seeds” ad that comes up. But you should look for those types of niches.
Still stuck? Ok, I’ll give you a super secret formula. But first, you just need to sign up for a shitty affiliate product that does absolutely shit. Just kidding.
So here it is what I ask myself before creating a niche site. If, pretending to be my theoretical visitor, I answer YES, I create the site for that keyword:
Will my life, some part of my life, or the life of someone I know, just plain suck if I don’t find a solution?
Simple eh? But oh so effective. I’ve found this works wonders for scoring clicks. So go out and spread the gospel of your newly-discovered-only-found-in the-Himalayan-mountains cancer cure to the world, heal the faithful of their yeast infections and chunky hemroids, and spread the gospel of crap.
Now, facetiousness aside, there are some ethics to be considered here. As easy as it is to write some pure bullshit about going to sleep with Pepsi and honey smeared all over your face to cure acne, you should at least strive for a verisimilitude of honesty here. I confess to writing quite a lot of bullshit myself as an internet marketer (ok, a lot of bullshit. My current click bank scheme consist of utter and complete lies), but if someone poor bloke is dying of anal cancer, don’t fucking tell him to he’ll be cured by drinking green tea and listening to Raffy songs.
How to Make Money Online through Outsourcing
Ok, what was I talking about. Outsourcing, yes. Ok, so when to outsource. I suggest if you are making $500-$1000 or more a month, it’s worth considering outsourcing. Why? Because at that point, you know how to make money online. It’s simply a matter of replicating exactly what you are doing many many times over.
I stated in my last post that you should treat IM as a business – and it’s true. If you approach making money online as a business, you get work done and you get results. Set tangible goals and work towards them. You see me doing that here on this blog. I’ve stated I want to see 20k a month in less than a year. Impossible, right? Nope. Sure, I may not reach that go, but I’m going to damn well get as close as possible. If you are going to throw a god damn stone, make sure you flinging it as far as you can.
Now, one of the problems is to find a decent place to outsource. You might notice if you browse around places like Warrior forums that there are some cheap articles to be had. You might even see articles going for .80c -$1.00. Great deal right?
Nope and I’ll tell you why. The articles you’ll get won’t be in English, but Klingon. Folks, these type of articles have the quality level of an article produced if Jabba the Hut did twenty minutes with Dragon Naturally Speaking. Yea, that bad.
So avoid this shit because it is shit. Can you actually buy anything for .80 cents these days? Try leaving an .80 tip at an Italian restaurant. I can tell you for sure that next time you come back, that “cream” in your alfredo sauce is not really cream…
For a decent quality article, you are probably going to pay between 5-6 bucks. Were not talking award winning articles here or even articles your 12th grade English teacher would be proud of, but they get the job done.
This is an issue I’ve had to face because I’m pretty much trying to outsource most of my work now, focusing on developing sites and putting up articles. I’m looking at spending 2-4k USD a month here. Now, I want quality but I don’t want to pay 5-6 bucks an article. At 5 bucks an article, 3k USD will land me roughly 600 articles. Get it down to 4 bucks and it’s 750. 3 bucks and its 1000 articles a month.
Yes, my goal is to produce 1000 or so articles a month for the next 5-6 months. That’s roughly 5k-6k targeted articles. That’s a lot of content to handle. While I could permanently damage my hands over the next 5 months, I’d prefer that someone else lose their fingers, not me.
Can I get good quality articles (400-450) for 3 bucks only? Yep, I can and I have been. I’ve decided to share my source, since I notice many of you guys are struggling too.
The Best Outsourcing Resource I’ve Found
So I’ve been getting a lot of people asking me what I’m using to outsource my articles and If I’m willing to share. Sure. I’ve been using Human Rewriter for the past week to outsource stupid amounts of articles. This place is a fantastic article rewriting service. You can basically take any articles you find online…PLA articles…..your own articles…whatever, etc and submit the articles to them and get, within 24-36 hours, a unique article/s back. The article/s passes copyscape. What I REALLY like is that this happens through an interface — every step is tied together so conveniently.
First you buy some credits. Then you can past the article you want rewritten into a form with keywords and the titles. You are given an instant quote (charge by sentence) and you can then spend a minute or so editing the article to get a cheaper price and submit. I find with 2 minutes of editing the sentence, I can get 450-470 words for about 3 credits (3 bucks). Not bad at all. Once the article are rewritten, you are notified. You can then log onto the website to see the article, line by line, compared against the original. If you are not happy with a sentence, you can reject that sentence with the click of a button. Easy!
How’s the quality? Stellar. I’ve dropped a 1k bucks on these guys over the weekend already and I’ve gotten hundreds of high quality articles back – much better than the shit you find on textbroker.com, or god forbid, warrior forums. You get the articles back FAST. It’s been 2 days for me to get 200 articles back since I first submitted them.
There are a few cool features as well.
They have built in spinner so you can auto “spin” the rewritten article (I don’t recommend you do this for anything but third tier blogs — certainly NOT on your adsense sites) for even milage as far as unique content goes. These auto spinners produce crap though, so be warned.
Another unique feature that’s actually usefull is that for another buck or two per article, you can get them to add a spin notation to each line (up to 4 words per sentence to be put into spin notation with up to four word choices choices each of those spin notated words.) That adds a LOT of unique content milage. The auto spinner produces garbage, but if you actually get them to add manually add 4 spin notated words with 4 different choices for your article (for every sentence in your article), you get an article that’s well written and can produce MANY different unique versions of itself. You can then use the unique, rewritten and spun-notated article they return to then generate a lot of unique versions of it. This is great is you need articles for Unique Article Wizard, AMA, or some support blogs.
If you sign up, you get a free 5 dollar trial which is enough for 1 or 2 articles to test the service out with. If you do decide to throw down some coin after that, use the coupon code “warrior” (lower case) to get 10 free credits (if you spend 25 bucks). If you spend 25 bucks + request free trial + use the coupon, you get basically 40 bucks worth of articles for 25 bucks. At 3 bucks for a 450 word article, that’s 13 or so articles — not bad at all!
So if you are looking to solve your outsourcing problems for cheap, use Human Rewriter, it’s the best I’ve found so far and I’m using it for thousands of dollars. Now the downside is that you actually have to find an article and submit it to be rewritten. But, considering the price and the quality and the whole interface that ties the process together, it’s not bad – I’m doing it for thousands of articles.
That’s an affiliate link by the way, so do sign up with it so I can buy a coffee or something to pay for the 3 hours of lost work it took to write this post.
Ethics in IM
Now, I wanted to bring up the ethics issue here, especially in regards to rewriting. I’m getting a lot of questions about whether you can take an article found on say an article directory and rewrite it for your own websites, blogs, etc. You can, I feel, because the article passes copyscape and is thus defined, according to the web, as unique. Now, I would certainly not take someone’s ebook or some famous novel and rewrite it, trying to pass it off as mine. But for website content, it’s certainly fine. Now don’t be an idiot use something like the service I mentioned above to rewrite someone else’s essay to be turned into your teacher, but for IM purposes, you can save a lot of time and money by rewriting. Most IM’ers do this. It comes down to your own decision about what you feel comfortable with.
The brutal truth is that there is a slider between ethics and money, the more that slider moves towards ethics, the less money you are going to make. You need to clearly define where your personal ethics lay. If you want to be purely ethical, well promoting affiliate products by lying or writing about topics and giving advice to people that you have absolutely not fucking clue about is probably out of the question.
But I’m going to tell you that an purely ethical Internet Marketer is a poor one. If you can’t part with your ethics a bit, you may want to look at starting a few authority blogs about real topics or developing a web business — you can make money that doesn’t require a breach in your ethics.
Again, I want to reiterate that you should focus on pumping out high quality content, regardless of whether your write it yourself or rewrite other article or commission someone else to rewrite/write. You should never sacrifice the quality of writing just to get “more out there”; each article should deliver some value and be as well written as possible.
Frankly, if you are decent writer, nothing is going to match just hunkering down and doing the writing yourself, but at a certain level, it’s not practical to do so any more. And if your budget has no limit, then by all means pay 10-15 bucks for an original fantastically written article.
But given a choice between someone else’s shitty rewritten crap showing up for a search and my own well written rewritten content show up, I’d rather it be mine.
I’m not saying be an unethical person, but you *may* have to compromise your ethics a bit in this game to make some money. If that makes writing fake reviews or rewriting article directory content for your own websites, well there are worse things out there folks, trust me. But ultimately, I’d rather give YOU guys the information and let you make the decision than to try and hide you guys from what goes on or from a resource you can take advantage of.
If you really do have a problem with the ethics of rewriting, then got a hold of PLA content and use services like the one I mentioned above with abandon or rewrite it yourself — there is no problem at all, ethically or legally with this.
CLICK BANK SNIPERS
Time to get back into the slimy side of internet marketing. You know, I am becoming quite attached to my midget thong. You really should consider buying one from me.
So yea, I’m starting this project back up again this week sometime. It’s been delayed about a week because I’ve been trying to get 400 articles outsourced then posted up and that’s been taking a while. I hope to have all these articles posted to my websites by Thursday. After that, it’s midget thong selling time.
I’ve avoided really going into the fine details of how I’m trying to sell my bullshit and get my sites ranked. Frankly, until I start to see some money, I’m not going to “teach” someone anything about this. I only want to show other people stuff that works for me. Click bank can make you a killing, but you have to have the right niches. I spend 10 or so websites in the wrong niche and I’m still waiting to see what’s going to happen with my other 10. My next 80 or so are going to be in different niches. Once you find a niche that gets sales, it’s just a matter of milking the hell out of it.
Adsense Snipers
With my hubpage success and info barrel success, I want to turn my attention to Adsense snipers. Now, I’ve personally seen that with a few “tricks” you can rank pretty high with self hosted domains for low to mid competition terms (1k-10k exact) without too much in the way of backlinks. Now, I’m not saying backlinks are not important, but with a very minimal number of them, it’s possible to get a niche blog on the front page and getting traffic in as little as a day to a week. I’m going to fling 100-150 of these sites out there and see what fruits I can scrape off the ground. I’m going after the low hanging longtails. I’ve seen this work with the click bank snipers sites and I’m predicting I can make a killing with a 100 or 200 adsense self hosted blogs. My aim is to get 1 – 2 clicks a day for each site. With 100 – 200 of those, that’s a full time income. I am really sort of applying my hub strategy to my own blogs. I may make 100 self hosted blogs in a month followed by 100 bogger.com blogs the next month – all following the same strategy. I am VERY excited to try this out. I still need to finish my click bank project and make some damn money out of it, but this is, I think, the next “experiment” on my plate.
Info Barrel Experiment
Ok, so I’ve very keen to see how much money I can make with info barrel over the next couple months. I have about 100 articles up so far, and I’m probably taking in 7-10 bucks a day on average with no backlinks. Over the next 2 months, I’m going to put up another 400 info barrels and work on some backlinks. I am confident that I can squeeze out 30 – 60 bucks a day (maybe more) with about 500 or so articles and some backlinks. This is my “side project.”
I’ve also noticed that info barrels seem to rank higher than hubpages. Which leads to my mini challenge:
Hubpages vs InfoBarrel
So, I’m going to write two 400 word articles with the same title and same number of long tails and post them at the same time. Over the next month, we are going to compare which articles get indexed faster and which ranks higher. I’m going to put my money on InfoBarrels because I’m finding that they often outrank the hubs they are supporting.
Now, lucky for you guys, I am going to create a new hubpage ID and a new info barrel ID and post them for you guys to see. Everyone will be able to see for themselves which article ranks higher. I’ve been getting a lot of questions about how to write for Adsense and how to layout hubs/info barrels. Well, I’m going to show you directly now.
I’ll update this section with LINKS to my hubpage and infobarrel articles tomorrow, so check back.
How to REALLY Make Money Online
Will MMO, you have to have a bit of dedication. Most people want results now. Perhaps it’s the society we live in that seeks instant gratification for almost everything, but if you are going to be sorely disappointed if you start a couple websites and expect the cash to come rolling in the next day. Nope, won’t happen.
But if you keep on going at it, something will happen. It might not be next week, next month, or even 6 months from now, but if you keep smashing a rock with a hammer, eventually it’s going to shatter.
Once you get around 10 – 15 bucks a day, something clicks in your head and you have an “oh” moment. It dawns on you that yes, YOU yourself can actually make money on the internet. It’s one thing to hear other people talk about making money, but when YOU start to make a bit the wheels of your head spin and it all becomes real to you.
So how do you get to that 15 dollar a day point? A lot of hard hard work. Getting that first 1000 a month in the hardest part. If there is a proper analogy for MMO, it’s that MMO is a dessert. If you can just cross that dessert and reach the other side, you can make money. The problem is, getting to that other side is tough – pretty damn tough. There are a lot of skeletons you’ll see along the way – those burn outs that start voyage so full of passion but they find out part way that MMO is a lot of work and not easy money, they give up.
About a year ago, I started out doing IM with a friend. We were both pretty passionate about living on the beach while earning money – who wouldn’t be? Well, our dreams of drinking coconut juice and flirting while Thai girls seemed pretty much only that after 3 months of hard work and not a dollar to show. The difference is that I continued to work at it while my friend threw in the towel. What has he done in 4 months? Let’s see…talk about making money.
What have I done? 700 hubpages, 200 info barrels and 30 self hosted blogs.
That’s a lot of difference folks. You know what? He’s STILL talking about making money. Just not right now you know? Next month, when the weather’s not as hot or maybe when he’s got some spare time. Yea, and YOU are going back to the gym next week too, right? We’ve all heard that bullshit before. It’s called giving up.
Guys, if you want to something in life, you have to seize it with both hands and don’t let go. I’m not just talking MMO here, but everything. You know why? Because anything worth having in this life takes work, takes sweat, and takes effort.
Guys, you want that perfect six pack – you are going to have to work your ass off for 6 months to a year. Overweight and want to look like Brad Pitt in tights? Sorry, those click bank diet pills I’ve been hawking don’t fucking work. The only way to achieve anything of value is through sweat and sacrifice.
Guys, this principle applies to everything in life – including MMO. If you are the sort of person who likes to make New Year’s resolutions, then you better do some soul searching and evict that bullshit or fucking give up – either do it or don’t even try. There is no compromise here.
That mountain in high guys, but if you can take the first step, you’ll find the next step in reach. Over and over and soon enough, you‘ve climbed the fucking stairs.
Work hard and make money online
Ben Out
39 Comments
Another awesome post Ben.
Although I have to disagree about rewriting articles, I like your general ideas here.
What really makes your blog stand apart from a lot of the other make money online blogs is you are pretty much giving away a template to make money online.
The level of transparency you are offering people is second to none, and I think a lot of people will wind up making a lot of money if they follow in your footsteps.
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Love Love Love your blog Ben.
This post is gonna be short, I’m off to play the Sims 3 .. whoops, I mean create some more hubpages and make some money online.
t.
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Wow, Ben that picture is amazing! I cannot believe how much help and guidance you give us all of this! I really need to start cranking my @$$ off since I’ve only got 50 Hubs with full backlinks in a whole week :/. But, now that I’ve recieved those first clicks, it has really driven me on to continue. Your advice has helped loads of us, and I just can’t wait till I finally see the hard work paying off
I’ve noticed some of my infobarrel’s ranking way higher than hubs, which I was really surprised with.
Back to posting those wonderful articles, ahhhh. Crashin.
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I’ve been reading for a while and am absolutely blown away. You tell it like it is and it’s great for people like me to read. I make money online by writing, but I want to do things for myself and eventually make a passive income. Reading your post certainly gives me a kick in the backside to get moving more quickly!
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Ben,
I love that picture too -where is it? Great post and I am at the “oh” moment of 15.00 a day so know what you mean!
1) Do you see any issues putting in an article directory article into human rewriter? It isn’t a plr article and wonder about this if the re-write uses the same exact points but only re-phrased.
2) Would you lower your comptetition/searches number for new self-hosted sites compared to hubpages/infobarrels due to fact it has no authority yet?
3) You talked about blogrolls in another thread to a question I asked about backlinks through blogs but do you see any value in making comments on existing wordpress or other blogs that allow anchor text in name field? Obviously it is faster than writing a whole article.
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admin Reply:
July 29th, 2009 at 7:18 am
Great to see you doing 15 a day! You are half way to 1k a month. One thing that’s nice when you are pulling in 15 or so bucks a day, you really get a fire under your ass because you know the only thing limiting you from more money is the work.
1. Deb, that’s going to have to be a personal decision. As some people here have stated, there are some ethics involved. The articles pass copyscape and by definition, that’s unique. So you can’t be busted or even detected. The articles come out very different. So you are not going to get “in trouble” if you use somone else’s article — well, besides your own conscience. The thing is, most IM’ers rewrite so it’s nothing new. So, I don’t have a problem with it at all. But if you do, you can use PLA articles or your own and there is no issue.
2. I’m going to experiment with this. Probably, yes. But i’ve seen my own self hosted sites rank surprisingly well, beating PR 3’s and landing in with some unfocused PR 4’s. For some niches, you are going to see a delay or a ranking penalty for a while — nothing you can do about this. But, i’ll know more once i create the sites.
3. You can make comments — you do get traffic from this, although it’s small. As far as link juice, it depends if the comments are no follow. A link is a link so sure, do it. But as far as making a consistant plan of doing that — I think there are better uses for your time to get links such as asking for link exchanges, using article directory software, or submitting to places like UAW.
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DeMerchant Reply:
July 29th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
2. I think people need to look at snipers and have a longer vision then they do with a hubpages page. When you build a sniper site make it targeting an easy keyword but be ready to go after tougher ones with the same site once it has authority. I talk about how I do this more below in comment #18.
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Hey Ben, another beautiful picture.
I love your blog and really appreciate all the great info you share for free, but I am bummed that you are sharing a method for rewriting other people’s articles. Personally, I think it is unethical and worry about how many people will copy you now and generate more and more rewritten junk across the internet. What could happen to article directories and places like hubpages/infobarrel if IMers just fill them to the gills with crap? Will Google devalue those type of sites completely and ruin article marketing for everyone? There is certainly a precedence (BANs, etc).
Anyway, I’m not trying to judge you but I am disappointed to see this shared. I wasn’t going to say anything, but I hope other people who read this post and feel a little weird about rewriting other peoples content will think twice about it. Not sure how rewriting other people’s work is that much different than people copying your niches and keywords, something you have not been happy about when it happen to you.
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admin Reply:
July 29th, 2009 at 7:03 am
Hi Carrie. I appreciate your concern. The thing is, pretty much everything online is rewritten. Now depending on your ethics you can use other articles or your own to be written. Is it plagiarism? Maybe or maybe not. However, the articles are over 60% unique in terms of actual words and the structure, phrasing, etc is very different.
It’s a completely unique and new article and they also pass copyscape, which by “web definition”, is unique. A couple points to address your concerns:
1. Rewritten Junk
I have to really disagree here. Some of the articles are better than the original in terms of quality and the articles are not junk. The internet as it is is pretty much a copy of everything thing else. So no, you are not contributing junk per say. Most people will take an article and rewrite it anyways, so it’s really nothing new. What about the cheap 1-2 article people often buy that are atrocious — those really clog up the index.
2. Unethical
Well, here is where it get’s dicey. Is it unethical — I’m sure my university English teachers would say so. But I’m going to tell you that 99% of IM’er rewrite stuff — it’s part of the game, unfortunately. I personally don’t feel it’s unethical because you are copying idea but creating something unique. But this is a personal decision that every person will decide. With IM you have to decide very quickly where your ethics stand because, frankly, it’s a pretty unethical field. My stance is that I’ll do what it takes to make money as long as I’m not hurting someone.
I see this argument similar to the whole “steroid” phenomena effecting the sports right now. Pretty much every professional sports player HAS to take steroids t o stay in the game. The IM game is a bit like that Carrie. You don’t want to ignore the fact that your competition is doing something left and right because it’s unethical.
As long as you are clear on your own decision, work from within that frame. The thing is, and I’m going to tell this to you pretty straight, there is a slider between ethics and money in this game, the more you slide toward ethics, the less money you’re probably going to make. My click bank sites are pure shames and I’m selling worth less people junk that doesn’t work. A lot of the articles for adsense, frankly, I have no idea what I’m talking about.
I think, if you really want to be full out ethical, IM/niche marketing is going to be a hard hard game to master, but I’m not saying it’s impossible, but you going to miss a lot of opportunities. Now regarding a service like this, if you are to stick the being ethical, fair enough, use PLA stuff and your fine.
But, I’ll put a note in that section about this choice because you made some great points. I want to state that I try to keep this blog honest in terms of information, but I try to give out what works, what’s practical, and what really goes on in this game.
Ben
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Carrie Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 5:13 am
Thanks for your response, Ben. I did make a very small reply to you and Lissie below, but I do appreciate your consideration of my points.
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admin Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Hi Carrie. I understand exactly where you are coming from and that’s for your comments. It’s always good to have a voice of moderation in this feild.
A comment about your comment about Lisa’s comment (try saying that twice in rapid speed):
If someone wants to take my articles and rewrite then (as in your comment to Lisa), well go ahead. It would be pretty hypocritical for me to make a stink about that. In fact, I have so many articles that I’m 100 percent sure people are doing that. Now, that’s part of the game and I accept that — I’m only willing to dish out what I’m willing to recieve as well.
Now, I’ve been complaining about copiers — but in that situation, it’s been some readers here who have been asking questions and getting generous help from me who are blantantly ripping of my keywords and niches — that’s something different.
I hold myself to the strictest honestly on this blog and you know what, I expect my readers who use my information to have a bit of ethics too — at least in regards to not stabbing me in the back.
I’m making a lot of money right now with the information I’m giving out. I could just keep it all to myself — which is, I assure you, 99.9% of the successful internet marketers do. Why give your strategies to the competition? In my case, I like helping people and, frankly, I enjoy talking about making money. I don’t have some sort of ulterior motive and, unlike Grizzly, I’m not even trying to ranke this blog for adsense or Make Money terms. I’ve probably made 15 bucks so far from a couple affiliate sign ups despite the 60+ hours I’ve spent writing here. And you will note, I don’t spam shit MMO products like shills like John Cow and Pro Crap Blogger. It’s free, honest information in the strictest sense.
I think you’ll find most people, especially people who pursue MMO, will probably shelve a lot of their ethics in the quest to make money. It’s kind of sad but there is no avoiding it. In a real world enviroment, there are dynamics (laws, social relationships, etc) that regulate the way people and businesses act. But on the internet, it’s still the wild west and it’s no man’s land in terms of regulation.
I completely respect your personal decision and it’s good to have some integrity online. I’ll say right now, I’m probably pretty unethical in my marketing strategies and in the way I do my SEO. But, in regards to this blog, I keep things ethical — I don’t give bullshit information or recommend products/strategies that I personal don’t use and find useful for making money online.
Why am I telling people to rewrite articles? Because that’s one of the key strategies in IM and because not telling people one of the essential strategies is ripping off my readers. It’s like trying to teach someone how to drive a standard without talking about using the gearshift.
Just as long as you are aware that there are many situations where you are going to have to decide whether you want to keep to your values and lose money. I am NOT saying it’s impossible to make money as a good, ethical person online, but I’m saying it’s a lot damn harder. Should you choose to go this route, I have the utmost respect for you.
Ben
It was the $20 day for me, the second one in a row
It was like that’s the same as the unemployment benefit and I can get it without filling in any stupid govt from!
@Carrie I presume the service guarantees the content passes copyscape - it is by defintion therefore not duplicate. I’m sorry but you are being pedantic - I had to write an article today for a client - little info on the internet - basically all copied from the same source but rephrased-what on earth do you think my article was? Have you not noticed how newspapers/radios/tv news cover the same info over and over again just using slightly different words. I just thank God for the size of the English language’s vocabulary.
@Ben - where is the scene - Ha Long Bay Vietnam?
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admin Reply:
July 29th, 2009 at 7:10 am
Hi lissie. Congrads! 20 bucks a day is awesome and you are WELL on your way to reaching 30 bucks. After that, you’ll be making 60 bucks + in no time! I’m really glad for you!
That’s yangshuo, china — one of the most famous in china for it’s beauty. It’s near a city called “guilin” and famed for it’s beauty. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangshuo
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Carrie Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 5:12 am
Hey Lissie, would you mind sending me a link to all of your original content online so I can send it to Human Rewriter for my own use? Ben, that goes for you also.
Guys, I’m not going to argue with you (and Ben, I really appreciate your gracious reply) as you are all obviously free to do what you want. But if you yourself are not comfortable with people copying your own niches/keywords and rewriting your own original content then don’t call me pedantic or act like you are not hurting someone. I spend alot of time on my own articles (too long) and certainly would be annoyed if someone copied all my work with a moderate rewrite and posted it for their own gain.
That’s all I will say. Clearly everyone has to find their comfort level with becoming unethical simply to make money, but I would prefer that people not pretend that copying and rewriting someone else’s work is perfectly okay.
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lissie Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
No problem at all - all the stuff on my blog is mine plus everything on the Hubpages ID of lissie - if it passes copyscape its no threat to me ! If its just copied I’ll almost certainly out rank it with the original - if its rewritten its a non-issue
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I am glad for the points Ben brought up on this question of re-writing. I am wondering still about copyright infrigement. For instance, you can take an ebook and change phrases around so it passes copyscape, but still that would be copyright infringement. Ben, feel free to remove this link if you don’t want links but there are some interesting points in this thread:
http://www.warriorforum.com/main-internet-marketing-discussion-forum/92019-copyright-infringment-how-unique-should.html
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Ben..I have noticed that many of the hubs are not ranking well in google[but ranking top in yahoo] - is that the same with you?Do you think hubpages is losing authority?What do you say?please let me know.thanks
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admin Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 10:07 am
hubpages don’t usually rank for terms I fin, at least if there is competition. But what they do get is trickle traffic and you can still make money off that. With some backlinks, you can get them ranked though. Infobarrel is better for ranking than hubpages.
Are they losing their authority? Maybe. That’s why I suggest you make your own sites along with hubs. If you make 200 hubs, make sure you have 50 sites of your own. That way, hubpags is just a supplemental income.
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sarah Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
yes Ben.You know what a month ago i was making 0 cents a day.I had ditched everything.Now iam using just hubs and a blogger blog and touched 40 dollar mark.But iam not convinced yet.I ll catch you soon
If Google had shown the love for hubpages like it did earlier,i would have made at least 60 dollars already.But no problem iam gonna do moreeeeeeee content especially in hubpages.
thanks a lot to court and Ben for their effort in producing MMO leaders.
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admin Reply:
July 31st, 2009 at 9:21 am
fantastic sarah. Just keep on pumping em out there and your earnigns will increase. A LOT of people here are getting way to caught up in the method, strategy and other tricks. Yea, some of that can help, but I’m telling you, with hubs and my style of earnings 70% of it is sheer volume — the other stuff, writing, format, on page SEO makes up the 30% (keep in mind, these are just personal figures I’m throwing out there, I can’t show you documented proof of this70% 30% relationship). Bottom line: build enough focused ups around good niches with some decent backlinks to each, and 600-800 words of content per hub and you’ll make money.
@sarah
I say forget Yahoo. Over 80% of search engine users use Google and that is all that should matter
There are many people that are getting traffic from yahoo etc (including myself) but nothing compared to G. IMO no slap from G-master yet, still ranking pretty high. G just has different algorithms for the SERP’s. Are you doing backlink work?
@Ben
Thank you for all this info, will try human rewriter soon with just a few bucks. Not going to invest a lot yet though. I hate you for writing all these long ass posts since it takes me time to read these. I should be doing keyword research instead. I am seeing $20 days already and that is thanks to you. Basically I have only 10-15 hubs that are bringing me the dollars, and that has opened my eyes in to what works and what does not. Well actually I just know one thing that works, still need a shitload of experimentation to be calling myself an IMer. Damn, I need to do something to be coming up with more potential keywords. Love the pics, if everything goes as planned I am going to spend a month in Kerala or Goa this winter (if I start making decent coin, and maybe even if I don’t).
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“There are a lot of skeletons you’ll see along the way – those burn outs that start voyage so full of passion”
I like this..!
Ben, after Grizz and Vic retirement, i thought that no one will show people out there on how to MMO world. however, it look likes one seed out there on the desert that grow really fast. IT’S YOU. and right now, you help people on how to do that. well, i’m one of them (i get many useful tips from this blog). now, i’m growing steadily and reach $40/day. now, i try to break $50/day barrier. pray for me. may GOD bless you.
p/s: if you need a programmer, you can count me in. i will try to help anyone like you, well if i can spare my time. but i will try.
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Beautiful post. nice tip at last “”"”Guys, if you want to something in life, you have to seize it with both hands and don’t let go”"”
I am eagerly waiting for your blogger experiment.
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How are you actually modificating the articles to get the price down on Hu-men Re-write?
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admin Reply:
July 29th, 2009 at 11:10 am
make sure each sentence is between 2-3 lines long. You DON’T want short sentences. This means you need to sprinkle “;” and “–” and “, “+ conjunctions” liberally to make sure each sentence is at least two lines long. If sentences are too short, you pay more. If they are too long (more than 3 lines), you pay more.
Cheers
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I only got through about 1/3rd and I will have to come back. I must say that you are every bit as good a Griz but why are you doing this? These posts must take a long time to crank out and what is in it for you? I hope you have a master plan to make some money off the following you are getting. Again, you might have replaced Griz in my mind.
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admin Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 10:05 am
Thanks Sam. I’m definetly not grizzly — the difference is, he makes like 8 times what I do.
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Hey Ben, I’m really doing great with the InfoBarrels and have not even added any links yet… I’m building up a few powerhouse authority sites and everything is working out phenomenally.
I’m going to give Human Rewriter a shot through your aff. link. I really appreciate your post and really need to get my blistered fingers to stop typing and start looking for some outsourcing. I am currently over $600 per month and am thinking that it would be smart if I dumped all of that money back into new content for my sites.
I love how you are always taking it to the next level in each blog post and looking for ways to improve your craft. I feel that once I reach $50 bucks per day, everything will seem to get easier as far as my typing work.
The MMO path to success is really a lot of fun for me (even when I end up writing about random ish). I am certainly not here to become a writer and like you said, there is a fundamental choice that needs to be made when it comes to ethics.
Your IB vs. Hubs experiment should be interesting. I got my money on InfoBarrel FTW, I’m just noticing that all of my IB’s are IMMEDIATELY outranking all Hubs on the same topic.
Your posts are appreciated as usual… BTW>> LMAO @ all the midget thong talk!!
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admin Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 10:04 am
fabulous drew, I’m really glad for you. Infobarrels are great, I’m going to put a lot of focus on them in a few months — they outrank hubpages hands down. The only downside is that the CTR is lower because of their layout. But the admins are going to be doing a few things to change that soon.
Once you do reach about 30 bucks, your soul goes into MMO in regards to really spending some time on it because you can see a full time income around the corner…
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Ben,
you just had to keyword stuff “midget thongs” in there again didn’t you..just wait til that’s #1 on Google Hot Trends lol
Anyways, I got inspired to start setting up some Clickbank sniper sites of my own, since I was getting bored with Adsense…it’s a little harder to be motivated to make CB sites without knowing if they will work, in the past I made a few sales here or there off Squidoom, but nothin major..
With your CB project, are these all self-hosted sites you’re creating, or free Blogger blogs/Squidoo lenses also? and are you creating a certain amount of content per site? say 5 posts, more? thanks for any insight, Im finding my way with it too!
keep rockin those midget thongs!
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admin Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 9:59 am
the CB are all self hosted. THe reason is that you have no chance of ranking quickly with a blogger blog. With a self hosted blog and a few tricks, you can rank high right away. But the niche has to be lower competition and the right one. I’m going to be turning my attention to CB next week. I started up, got 20 sites out (most of them failures in regards to niche and traffic) and see if I can crank out another 80 in better niches.
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wow. ok, a few things…
#1. i absolutely love your pictures. gorgeous! your pics motivate me
#2. thank you so much for deciding to keep on with the blog. i hate that a few often ruin it for everyone else. the benefits i’ve reaped from reading your posts is astounding… and i still have to go through and read all the comments!
#3. as a server, i can attest to your tipping analogy. yesterday a lady left me a big fat ZERO. you better believe i remember what she looks like… hee
i love all your experiments. i have some of my own that i’ve been planning. in fact, i was working out the details for my own hubpages vs. infobarrel experiment.
looking forward to seeing more!
thanks!
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admin Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 9:58 am
thanks abby!
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To those talking about Hubs or IB ranking better in Yahoo than Google. This is true, I have seen it myself. BUT, if you haven’t watched the news today, with the Microsoft/Yahoo merger, the Yahoo search is going to be using the new Bing search engine very soon. And they don’t rank as well on Bing. (searching only via the Title)
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admin Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 9:57 am
yea, waiting to see how this is going to affect google. I’m delighted — more competition is good.
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Joshua Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 11:56 am
Competition has been there, the problem is… even in just the last 2 years, Google’s Market Share has gone from 50% to 70% (unbelieveable). Bing/Microsoft are spending, I think, something like 10% of total profits for 3 years to market Bing… crazy. And now that Yahoo will be using Bing… The name will be out there… the biggest problem I see, is the Google Brand. You never “bing” anything… you always “google” it, know what I mean?
P.S. new laptop is the shit!
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admin Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Yea, but the way I see it right now is that Google has too much power. They can slap around and deindex because they can. If they have a competitor nipping at their heels, they may be a bit more restrained. I personally LOVE yahoo traffic because it seems to convert very well, even though you only get a bit of it. But yea, I don’t want to have to get to the point where you have to choose wether you want to optimize for google or yahoo/bing.
Sam Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
I totally agree about Yahoo traffic. I think in general the people who use Yahoo for search convert at a much higher clip. I had a handful of EPN affiliate sites get deindexed by Google, however they all still have top Yahoo rankings and in the last month my EPC on those sites has gone way up and my ACRU quality even went up a notch, so I’ve actually come out way ahead on the deal earnings-wise, despite losing a large overall percentage of traffic.
I’m pretty sure this will carry over once Yahoo is powered by Bing, so overall I don’t see any problems at all in the future.
The Ice Cream Bunny Reply:
July 31st, 2009 at 3:27 am
“I’m delighted — more competition is good.”
Doesn’t this development technically mean that there will now be less competition? We’re going down from 3 major search engines to 2.
I don’t know how y’all see it, but Yahoo has always been good to me, and I can’t see how this change can be anything but a really fucking bad thing…
Yahoo has been my main source of traffic for a few of my sites - Susan Boyle News in particular. I rank on the first page for the term Susan Boyle over there, a position which I only briefly flirted with a couple of times on Google for all of four days. I rank bum-fuck nowhere in Bing. The site has never been terribly profitable for me, but losing the hundreds of visitors I get on that site isn’t exactly ideal for me, and I was hoping that somewhere down the road I would be able make some decent coin when her CD came out through affiliate sales - Doesn’t look too likely now. The site just doesn’t bring in enough money for me to try to deal with Google’s “fresh content” whims that push me back down as soon as I gain ground. The only future I can see for my crappy SuBo blog is a fast, miserable death. Oh well, lesson learned - buy a real fucking domain next time, Ice Cream Bunny!
I think what pisses me off the most about this deal is - Yahoo fucking had it! They were and still are the only search engine that provides results equal to and in some cases even better than Google. Bing, on the other hand, is still the same crappy search engine as Live and MSN were, at least to my internet marketing eyes. The way I see it, Yahoo and Google are democracies, whereas Bing seems to be more of a dictatorship. Yeah, there may have been some ballot-stuffing going on with the former two, but at least people still had a say in what deserved to be on top. I really don’t see that at all with Bing’s results…
In the end, all I know is this - if Bing ever manages to take over Google’s position, I’ll be out of a fucking job. It’s now Google or nothing for me.
And it should also be interesting to see where this puts all of those oh-so-useful backlink checking tools that were all built around Yahoo’s database. Now how the fuck are we supposed to scope out the competition?
Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, folks - the internet marketing landscape just changed dramatically. And as far as I can tell, it’s for the worse…
Sorry for the rant, but this is the first I’ve heard of this and I just had to bitch about it to somebody.
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admin Reply:
July 31st, 2009 at 9:23 am
Yea, it’s a big change, I agree. But in the MMO and IM fields, things change and you have to roll with the punches. Personally, I’m looking forward to see what’s there. You know why I like the fact that there might be some real competition for the first time in years? Because we dont’ have to rely on google. Google deindexes or bans your adsense, well, you have another viable alternative right there.
The Ice Cream Bunny Reply:
July 31st, 2009 at 10:48 pm
I disagree about this turning into real competition for Google. I’m sorry, but replacing a solid #2 competitor with a perennial third-place “also-ran” is not the answer to gaining any ground on the #1 spot. In fact, I think that we’re going to see a day where Google controls an even larger percentage of the search market in direct result of this - I’m thinking 90%+ is not too far off once Yahoo disappears.
We ALL took Yahoo for granted for too long. They have been the only search engine able to stand its ground against Google for years. This is just a guess on my part, but I would think that the reason they’ve managed to hold on for so long is the fact that the people who use it LIKE it - And I think that a lot of those people are going to be really pissed when they see the results that Bing gives them and can no longer find their favorite sites. And rather than just grinning and bearing it, many will probably just jump ship and seek out something that gives them what they want, the closest thing to Yahoo - Google.
Microsoft couldn’t even bribe people to use their search engine. $100M in advertising wasn’t even good enough for them to overtake Yahoo, who as far as I know doesn’t even advertise at all. This is obviously not an issue with branding or anything else that can be fixed by spending money anymore - This is a case of the marketplace flat-out saying that they just don’t like the product.
Sorry to be all doom and gloom, but I honestly believe that this will have the exact opposite effect that most people seem to think it will - Google will gain market share from disaffected Yahoo users, rather than lose it from a slightly bigger Bing customer base. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what develops, but the future is looking pretty scary to me…
admin Reply:
August 1st, 2009 at 4:32 am
Yea, we’ll just have to see how this pans out. In the mean time, SEO for Google
Ben,
I always find myself having a million comments when I read your posts. I think it’s great because I feel we’re at similar places in our SEO quests. So anyway I’m going to comment as I read. I have two beer ready to go (although I wish we had Lucky Lager out here).
I agree completly about writing your own stuff to start out. At the very least people should be breaking even in MMO with the free tools you and Griz have showed. If you want to set up your first flagship, make it a blogger blog. If you want to do pages use HubPages. I’m one of those guys who hates writing, but I did it for the first while. It’s really the only way to get a good grasp of important things like long tails.
The way I’ve always thought of finding niches is look for a problem that people have and answer it (well sort of answer it). Think of it as targeting people who are going t a store to buy something as opposed to window shoppers. You can have great window displays, but if people are just coming to look at your shop you’re not going to sell a lot of them. I think niche selection and keyword selection are the tow difficult things in MMO. People worry about content and links. Those are easy, write content and get links. The art is in niches and keywords.
I’ll have to check out HumanRewriter. Seems like a cool service and let’s face it, it’s not that hard to find a similar article most of the time. Do they let you specify a keyword or two to put in. Can you give a few tips on how to get the cost of article rewriting down?
I have no problems selling people quick fixes. As I say frequently, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is.
I think in terms of residual income online its going to be hard to ever beat AdsenseSnipers, but they take a lot of work to get for more competitive terms. I think your on the right track making a lot of them off the bat, but then hunkering down on the good ones and improving the rankings is where the good money is at. What I generally do is find a tough word I want to target and then make it a longtail, and then a longer longtail. This way you can have success building links for the longer longtail and once you rank high for that start working your way to the harder and harder words. This lets you build an income and while gaining authority for the harder terms. An example with “Widets” would be.
Red Widgets (Competitive target term)
Big Red Widgets
Cool Red Widgets
Special Red Widgets
Big Cool Red Widgets
Big Special Red Widgets
Cool Special Red Widgets
Big Cool Special Red Widgets (Easy to rank for)
If people do it like this they will be flying in no time (assuming good niche and keyword selection lol).
There are two things it takes for a successful MMO person. Hard work, patience, and perseverance. Thank God 99.9% of people don’t even have one let alone all 3.
Now onto me. I hit the 100 hub mark the other day (go me) and am already seeing better results out of the second 50 than the first. People need to go after very weak niches and it’s different to pick them then sniper style sites. I think my next 50 (which I’m preparing to outsource now ha ha) will be even better… and the 50 after that.
I’ve also been very fortunate to have my main site show some strong growth after a year and a half of hard work. It’s almost up to the point where it’s a full time income alone, and I have a few keywords that I’m sitting at position 2 or 3 and if they hit 1 it will be great. Then onto some really tough words. If anyone wants a really good niche to work in just check out…
I’ll be right back I need another beer…
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admin Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 9:57 am
Great points Justin. Yes, going after the long tail and working your way up is the way to go. I’ve done that for one blog and it works great. In regards to human rewriter, yes, you can put keywords in, the title, etc. You can (and i suggest this) email them and ask them to put in the cousin keywords as much as possible. Most of the time, i find my articles liberally sprinkled with long tails I’ve put in the keyword section. Good to see you are doing well with an authority niche blog. I’m aiming to get a few of those started in the next couple months.
In regards to my adsense snipers, I’m still debating wether I’m going to go the traditional niche marketing approach (something like court’s method) or look for lower hanging fruits and apply my click bank strategy. Maybe both, we’ll see.
With hubs, it’s a matter of putting out a few hundred then see what starts to get clicks, then you expand into those niches. You also need to see what works and what doesn’t and that takes a few hundred hubs to tell.
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LMFAO - you broke Human Rewriter Ben or at least their turn around time -from their blog
“we’ve been operating at around a 4-10 hour delay the last few days with most articles going out at around 40 hours. This is due to an unanticipated massive influx of business over the weekend,”
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admin Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 9:51 am
Yea. that was probably me
Sorry to you guys who signed up, but this weekend, I’m going to break their service even more. If you want to get some fast articles in, you better do it now cause I’m going to be shattering their service this weekend with another order
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Another awesome post Ben. I am very glad you have continued with your blog, although I think you must be slightly mad to do so. I have some catching up to do as I have only just reached over 100 hubs - I don’t know how you did 700 in 4 months with all the other stuff you do.
I do have around 500 Squidoo lenses which are virtually just a waste of space at the moment, so I am wondering whether it’s worth taking some time out from building hubs, infobarrels and blogs and building a ton of links to the lenses. My problem, as always, knowing what to do but not what to do first!
btw - I have been anxiously watching for the links to your new hub & infobarrel for the race….today?
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admin Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 9:47 am
HI Grace. I have some strategies about squidoo, specifically targetting amazon products with reviews and sending a couple backlinks to squidoo. Now, as you are a bit of an expert using squidoo here, do you think that strategy will work. I was thinking 200-300 squidoo lenses targetting amazon via the review format — but hearing that you have 500, virtually worthless lenses, makes me halt a bit on that idea. It would be better to use hubpages for that then.
However, i’m trying to diversify as MUCH as possible, so I’l like to see what I can do with squidoo.
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Grace Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 10:52 am
I used to make $2,000-$3,000 every month from sales via Squidoo, mainly clickbank, amazon & ebay, but that was before it got slapped by Google. Plus, everyone & their uncle was copying my niches. Now I am lucky to see $100 a month from them. BUT 99% of these lenses have NO backlinks outside of Squidoo.
Traffic has started to pick up a bit recently, but not sales, in part I think due to the new infolinks ads they are using which just gives visitors yet another way to click away. Now Squidoo says that these new ads will increase the monthly ad share revenue, so maybe it’s worth treating Squidoo a bit like infobarrel and putting up some articles with no outbound sales links to just earn from the revenue share.
I can’t tell you whether it’s worth trying the amazon review format on lenses at the moment - it would probably work better on hubpages as there are far fewer distractions.
I also used to sell a lot of lenses at $10 each, made to target specific clickbank products, but the bottom seems to have fallen out of that market as well.
I am reluctant to give up on Squidoo so what I am going to try is pick 20 of my best earning lenses from the past and throw a load of backlinks at them and see what happens.
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admin Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 10:56 am
hmm, I do know some people pulling in 400-500 a month with squidoo with 200 or so lenses. Not sure if this is from ebay or amazon though — I notice ebay converts a lot better than amazon. About the only way I’ve found effective for amazon is the review format; I’m reluctant to touch ebay with anything but my own self hosted blogs.
Backlinks are pretty key, if I did a couple hundred, they would all have multiple links from multiple domains — this should help quite a bit. I’m positive the amazon format works better on hubpages, but it’s not good to rely on one format or company. I may still give it a go.
i think that hubpages are slowly losing the rankings in google.Especially after posting ads like these in google,iam sure they are going to be losing authority similar to squidoo.Have a look at this ad to promote hubpages:
http://www.imagebam.com/image/41e8b043644313
Is it a good article?I mean the ad says search rankings are going to be high and so people should create content in their site.I hope you understand what i mean.Let me know what you feel.
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Hey Ben,
great stuff you wrote! So I’m from Germany and really new into the IM thing. But I think it is a great opportunity and I will run the way trough the desert
So I build German sites and you English Guys have a lot of better tools than we have available on German. So there is no real unique article wizard and so on. But I did found a tool which is called unique content producer ( http://www.unique-content-producer.com/ ) which is article spinner/rewriter available on German and English.
I really like to buy this program but after I read your article I’m not sure if it is possible to create real unique content with that tool. So what do you guys think about that tool? And do I have to pass the copyscape test to have unique content? How many percent identity must my article have to be accepted as unique content by google ( or to get a good backlink, when I posted this article on a article directory)
So in general my question is, what do you think about article spinner/rewriter, is it worth it to buy them??
So go on with your awesome posts, Ben!
Thanks a lot.
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The Ice Cream Bunny Reply:
July 31st, 2009 at 3:59 am
Without any experience with the particular tool in question, in general automated article spinners will create content that is unique but not very readable - at the very best your article will seem like it was written by someone very unfamiliar with the language their writing in. Typically it will look like it was written by a drunken space alien though. The stuff they spit out will generally make very little sense and it will be pretty obvious to anyone reading it that you used a spinner. But if you’re just going to put it up on your own, really low-tier spam blogs they do the job…
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Awesome content, and very entertaining to read too… I have no doubts you’ll go very far as a blogger, Ben… especially seeing as you have something most MMO bloggers dont have: an income other than in the MMO niche. Keep it up!
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admin Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 9:48 am
Thanks mate. I’m not really trying to be a blogger or even replace Grizzly (as some people seem to think I’m trying to do!). I’ve just found strategies that work online and am sharing them. I only share things I do myself though.
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I’m confused, I’ve put up 15 Infobarrels, and 12 of them have been declined, even though they 13 of them got declined yesterday and I edited them to what I thought seemed acceptable. It says that I’m using english awkwardly and using words out of context, even though English is my first language
Is it because I’ve written in some unusual niches?
Anyone here got any advice what may be up?
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admin Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
I think because of the influx of IM’ers to infobarrels, they have been tightening the strings on content. One thing I know they don’t like are unatural and awkward longtails being used. I.e. “how to fix used old green beautiful cars.” If you can make it to preapproved status, you won’t have any problems after.
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Gawd, where do you find the time to write such long post. Your post are excellent and are spot on.
My hubs have not been ranking as well as they should be. My guess is the hub challenge (ie Built for Adsense sites) caused a devaluation. There are a lot of sites ranking ahead of my hubs that are much weaker. Maybe a little age will help.
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admin Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Thanks BK.
Yea, I’m beginning to conclude that hubpage domain authority is not too strong. Infobarrels rank higher as do ezines. Perhaps at one point they did, but I’m not seeing it now. However, the advantage is that you can still get immediate traffic to your hub without having to wait and you can still take advantage of that. I want to create 100 blogger blogs, treating them like hubs in terms of strategy and ad layout, and see how they do in comparision to hubs.
You can still make money with hubpages though, its just that don’t expect to really rank very high right off the bat. A month or more may see you rise through the serps though as the combination of domain trust + age seems to work well in hubpages’ favor.
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The Ice Cream Bunny Reply:
July 31st, 2009 at 4:04 am
OMG Ben - I always thought you and BK were the same person. I guess you learn something new every day…
Actually, I still think that you are. You can’t fool me!
P.S. - I’m a big fan of your “Beginners” blog, BK(s).
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admin Reply:
July 31st, 2009 at 9:24 am
Haha, he’s my evil clone. No, I like BK’s blog, it’s good stuff and funny!
The promo code for Human Rewriter is case sensitive and should be entered in all lowercase. Saw this mentioned in the WF thread.
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i like to achieve what you did in 2 months. My target is 6 month.
500 hubs. i hope atleast 100 hubs will do better.
500 Low comptetion hub….1$ per week from every hub = 1,500$ per month. but in reality most hub dont perform same.
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admin Reply:
July 31st, 2009 at 9:11 am
500 hubs = 1500 is very doable, if you get your hub section down. But yes, some hubs will get clicks every day, others evey few day, others every week, others once a month, and many non (though you *may* get a click eventually). It’s pretty tough to get 500 hubs though — the burn out it attrocious. If you can put up 3 hubs a day, 7 days a week, well in 6 months you can pull it off.
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A question for you Ben, but first a sincere apology if
a) this has been asked/addressed before (I don’t remember reading it and can’t seem to find it), or
b) I’m asking you to tip your hand too much with this question. I certainly have no issue with you not wanting to answer too specifically, but I might as well ask…
What kind of criteria to you use to select your keywords? I get the sense that it’s not as formulaic as Court’s system, but I wonder if you still have some personal parameters about searches (broad/exact), CPC value, allintitle:, “keyword” in quotes, etc.
If you care to share, I’ll owe you yet ANOTHER beer if I ever have the good fortune to cross paths with you and thank you for all you’ve done in person. If you don’t want to share… cool, no worries.
Take care, and thanks again for all you do for all of us,
K-Man
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admin Reply:
July 31st, 2009 at 9:18 am
Court has a great system, but following it exactly will really limit your earnings with hubs. His formula is a great rule of thumb for full blown niche blogs, but the thing is, do you want to treat each of your hubs like a niche blog? For me, no way in hell. I’m not saying Court’s method won’t work here — no, not at all. But, if you follow that method, you better fall the WHOLE thing, including getting backlinks etc. I only go for minimal backlinks so I have to do somethings different in my selection and linking. I’m not going to send hundreds of backlinks to each hub.
The search in quotes ” ” –> I don’t pay that much attention to this. But it can be useful. Look for something under 50k. If you find something with around 10-30k, that’s usually pretty easy pickings. Keep in mind though that there are many terms that will show hundreds of thousands if you do a search for the exact title (”keyword”).
I’ve got one of court’s students writing an ebook for me here, he’s going to compile all this information into a nice teaching format, than I’m going to go over it and add in my thoughts on questions like this (criteria, what to look for, etc).
I only look at exact, and as a guide, high CPC with fairly low competition. I’m not afraid to take on an exact with high CPC that only has a few hundred.
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sarah Reply:
August 2nd, 2009 at 7:38 am
i agree.Court made me start earning and you made me start earning more - thank you both
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hi Ben.
I have very high CTR…on one of my site. 30 impressions 8 clicks but earned only 0.20$. Dont have much content. what should i do to increase my revenue to 20$ per day. I earn 1$ per day on avg….
Once i earned 3$ per click… that was amazing experience..if we get 10 those clicks than forget working hard…
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admin Reply:
July 31st, 2009 at 9:22 am
yep keep on flinging em out there to get those clicks!
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Ben, thank you for being so generous and sharing your enthusiasm for Human Rewriter! By using your suggestions, I was able to get a 428 word article priced at $2.50 on HR - and out of curiousity, I checked to see what the price would be on TextBroker. For the LOWEST quality level, a 428 word article on TB would have cost almost $2 more. This will save me SO much money in the long run - I can’t thank you enough! =)
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admin Reply:
August 1st, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Glad you like them Scarlett. Yea, if you want to get down and dirty with the editing a bit, you can really shave the price. Looks like they got flooded with orders lol so they are behind a bit. Let’s hope they catch up soon. Fortunetly for everyone, I’m won’t be sending too many order for the next week or so — gives everyone else a chance!
Ben
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Scarlett Reply:
August 5th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Hey Ben! I think you’ve thoroughly broken Human Rewriter. =)
The first three articles I received back were stellar - really quality work. The last was terrible, didn’t pass Copyscape in the slightest, and the word acount was 75+ words less than what I’d paid for. I realize they’re straining under the demand, but I hope things bounce back soon. Have you been experiencing a downturn in article quality and turnaround time as well?
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admin Reply:
August 5th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
my articles have been problem free so far, BUT, I got them before they got absolutely swamped. This weekend, I’m going to make another order, but it looks like it’s going to probably take them a week to deliver. Still, it’s better than any other solution I’ve found. As far as quality, I’m going to make sure they keep it good.
I’ve still more credits to use right now — i’ve been too buys doing ND sites and putting up artile content to use up my remaining order.
I came from Grizz site and for your info, I never leave a comment directly from my heart before, except for the sake of backlinks. I’m such an asshole… LOL. What I can say is, you damn blown me up Ben! You open my eyes to look beyond of what I’m doing right now.
I’m currently on $800 - 1000/monthly and it give me a quite comfortable life here in Malaysia even just depend on it alone. I couldn’t agree more with you that to crack more than that is outsourcing.
Got to go now. Have to read your blog from the first post. I believe there are lot more hidden jewels inside.
P/s: Sorry, my English sucks.
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Hey Ben,
I couldn’t reply to your reply to me so I’m replying down here. While we disagree on methods I do appreciate your honesty. I also greatly appreciate all of the tips you share here (for free) and how much interact with commenters.
Thanks for the discussion.
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Ben..What do you feel about the future of hubpages?I mean it is not ranking so well in google like it did earlier.So yahoo is gonna close its search results and install Bing’s SERP.I think there is going to be a huge drop in traffic for hubpages.Google has already dropped authority for hubpages.
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admin Reply:
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:57 pm
@sarah
Hubpage domain authority is mediocre at best — infobarrels outranks them everytime. But I’m still making money, a lot of money. My earnings don’t come from being ranked, so it doesn’t effect me.
I’m waiting to see how the bing/yahoo deal is going to pan out. I’d say about 30 percent of hub traffic comes from yahoo. I’m not sure how the merger is going to work right now, if yahoo will just close the doors completely or if bing will integrate yahoo results somewhat. Bing is still pretty new — hubpages gets like no bing traffic…yet. But we’ll see. I find bing results suck in general, but given time they may improve or even surpass yahoo — who knows.
This game is dynamic, so you just have to roll with the punches. I’ve always stated from the start that you need to diversify. Worst case senario, you lose 30% of your traffic. So make 30% more hubs and put more into infobarrel and your own sites.
I’ll tell you this right now sarah, instead of worrying about this and that, you should put more energy into working. Whatever happens with search engines, the more stuff you have out there, the more you will make, period.
I see a lot of people ask if they should stay away from hubs/infobarrels because this might happen or that might happen. I’m telling you right now, if you are afraid to take any sort of step in life or worry about taking some risks (even when all your risk is your time), then you are not going to achieve what you can.
If I didn’t put the work I have into hubpages for fear that something would happen in the future, I wouldn’t be making anything with them. Again, I suggest you just buckle down and work all the more harder and diversify. If you do this, you’ll be fine.
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sarah Reply:
August 4th, 2009 at 4:47 am
Thanks a lot Ben.You are right - i had a lot of time but i wasted it.I have got another chance.I just touched the 40 dollar day yesterday.Hope it increases.Thanks again
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Ben, just to follow up on Human Rewriter - I sent a note to their support email address with my concerns about that bum rewrite, and they wrote back in less than 15 minutes and offered me a full refund on that article, as well as assuring me that the rewrites would go back into the queue for the next available writer. That’s top-notch service! *Thumbs Up*
Now quit hoggin’ all the writers, dammit! =)
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Hi Ben, just to be clear, is it perfectly safe to use Human Writer articles on your money sites (e.g. self hosted adsense niche sites, authority sites)?
Thanks and keep up the awesome info! Lovin it.
Geoff
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admin Reply:
October 15th, 2009 at 11:57 pm
Yep, I do it all the time.
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is it perfectly safe to use Human Writer articles on your money sites ？
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Nice work! I can’t believe you’ve written that many hubs I’m going to hunt you out on hubpages and check out what you’re writing about!
“Targeted traffic makes money and targeted traffic that are desperate for a solution make a LOT of money”
I like this quote. It’s the initial single dollar that is hard to get. Get a solution for those looking and you will make money online and a stack of money too!
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is it perfectly safe to use Human Writer articles on your money sites ？
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admin Reply:
November 30th, 2010 at 7:07 pm
Don’t use those guys, they don’t deliver now.
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