Hualien, Taiwan
Ok, thought I’d post a bit of an update here. Yes, it’s another beast. Take out that cofee cause you’re going to drink more than a few cups before you finish reading…
Hubpages Concluded
Adsense earnings have taken off again. I’ve thought long and hard about the fact that I’m publishing my earnings and I don’t think it’s a good idea anymore for many obvious reasons. Besides every lazy fuck in the world directly trying to copy my niches every time I post my earnings and Google’s every increasing watchful eyes, I’m getting pretty damn paranoid.
After this, I won’t talk about what I’m making with Hubpages directly or post anymore shots of my Adsense. The fact that I have nicely shown people you can make money with Hubpages has already been causing me a lot of grief – so much grief, I was actually considering shutting this site down completely yesterday. I decided to keep it open because Grizzly has pretty much abandoned his blogs (it seems). And I can see exactly why.
I suppose two years of that was enough for him. I’ve been giving out valuble information that works and can make money, and I’m getting screwed over for it in a big way. Even worse, I’m not even getting paid to be screwed over. For every 100 people you spend your time helping, there are 5 assholes wanting to screw you. 95% of the people might be swell, but there is always some destitute person from punngidabistan who only want’s to put make enough so he doesn’t have to spent 18 hours working in a factory producing some nike shoes. Well, I understand the problem; but the problem is, he’s stealing my fucking 18 hours of work to lessen his — and I’m the one whose done all the real work.
So just to bring my Hubpage tale to its conclusion, here are my final Adsense earnings posting for yesterday:
I posted this against my better judgment because there are a lot of people who have lost their jobs or are going through financial difficulties. I want to give these people some hope that, yes, even if you are not seeing results, work your ass off and don’t give up, results will come. If you approach making money only on instant results, you will get disillusioned and fail. Why, because it isn’t so clear cut. Some people can find instant results, some people take longer – much longer.
I used to work on a farm. A farmer does not plant a single seed, or even a handful of seeds, and expect an instant crop. No, the farmer throws down vast quantities of seed and waits patiently. You never know what type of harvest you are going to get. Yes, one seed may really produce something special, other times it takes many seeds to get a decent crop. Sometimes, nothing pops up. But you can’t plant a couple seeds and expect a crop, and you certainly can’t expect instant results. These things take time to develop.
I set up on my goal to make a full time income from Hubpages May 15th. And I have accomplished my goal with Hubpage earnings shooting far above $100 USD a day. So please people, no more questions about doing hubpages this way because Jack D says this or doing them this way because James T said that. I’m making a lot of money with Hubpages and I doubt anyone else out there on the web can match me in terms of hub revenue. I can confidently say that I know exactly what I’m talking about when it comes to earning with hubs. It’s all there for free in my blogs guys. Apply what I suggest and you can make money too. I did and am.
So, I won’t be talking any more about Hubpages from now on. I think I’ve said all I want to say on the subject. What’s in the future? I’m going to be taking my Hubpage earnings beyond what anyone may think possible – but I’m not going to talk about it publically from now on. Just to a select group of friends.
I’m also going to spend some significant time investing in other platforms like Info barrel, Squidoo, blogger blogs, and my own self hosted blogs. I’m also going to be spending a lot of time master affiliate selling, since you can easily make more money than Adsense if you do it right. Diversity is guy guys, never forget that. Spend at least 50% of your time developing your own properties/other platforms other than Hubpages.
If you don’t know already, ebay has banned people from using affiliate links to ebay from all sites that you won. That means you can no longer use Hubpages, Squidoo (it’s still out where Squidoo is included), info barrel, blogger blogs, Twitter to market eBay products. Guys, it goes without saying that there are people who are losing their shirts right now because they ONLY have mini sites with ebay affiliate links.
What did I say about not having all your eggs in one basket? What did I say about NOT trusting your livelihood to one source? Why the fuck am I making an attempt to master affiliate selling and creating my OWN sites. Because when you use a 3rd party they have their hand resting on your balls (sorry ladies). If they start to squeeze, you’re going to squeal long and hard.
Content is King or Crap?
Both actually. Ok, here’s the deal. I’ve been harping that you should write for Adsense, and it’s true. If you are making small time earnings, then you probably need every click you can get. But writing crap will get you crap in the end.
Yes, I know, why am I now telling you this especially after posting that content was crap. Well, the difference was, I wasn’t making almost 5k a month in Adsense earnings.
That’s a pretty big difference.
That also means I have to be very very careful what I say here on this blog. A lot of my SEO friends have gone under the radar – Grizzly has abandoned his blogs and people I know are getting deindexed left and right.
I make 0 money from this blog and I don’t really rank for any MMO terms. I should be getting far more search traffic than I am, but I have a sneaky suspicion Google has sandboxed this blog because of my content and associate with Grizzly.
I certainly cannot make any money from this site via Google. And frankly, there is no way in hell I am slapping my Adsense onto this blog even if I was ranking high. So, I’m not going to risk my financial future by getting bitch slapped around by Google.
Back when the only person who knew about my blog was me and…me, I could get away with saying those things. But now, I’m pretty sure Google is watching what I’m saying. I’d rather not wake up to find my Adsense account banned and all my sites deindexed. So if that means I have to eat a bit of crow and tell you to write quality content, so be it.
Folks, the more money I make, the more I see it’s about the bigger picture. Sure you can get your hand all dirty trying to climb out of the mud and clean yourself off after, but I think it’s better for the long term to keep yourself squeaky clean. This has especially become apparent now that I have close to 700 web properties and soon will have thousands in the next couple months.
Google’s goal is to satisfy the needs of the searcher. If you write drivel, yes, it’s possible to get that drivel onto the front page and score insane amounts of clicks as people try to get the fuck out or your site. But the problem is, when a Google Engineer visits, they won’t be clicking on an ad, they’ll be clicking the fucking deindex button.
Every article your write, try to deliver value to your visitors. Give them something they are looking for – it’s doesn’t have to be the whole deal, but enough that you are offering some value. All my web properties are like that, but I’m going to be working extra hard to make sure everything can pass a visual. When I was sitting with a couple bucks a day with my Adsense, that wasn’t a bit deal. But with close to $150 Adsense days, and potential some 300-500 Adsense days in a few months, I want to be so squeaky clean, Google can see their own reflection in the mirror.
I know I was going to talk about Blackhat technique, auto blogs, etc, but I’m going to X all that. This is going to be a white hat blog only, and I’m only going to teach you guys sustainable methods that won’t fuck you up in the long run.
Think Big, Get Big. Think Small, Be Fucking Small
One of the things that disturbs me in the IM world is how small people think. People think in terms of a couple dozen sites when they should be thinking hundreds – or thousands. Folks, I’m thinking thousands.
Guys, you need to expand your horizons. I don’t care if you’re a housewife who’s never been to college. It doesn’t take college or education to make you imaginative and to have great ideas.
Frankly, I have three degrees in different fields (well, 2 and ¾ of the third) and I’ve been at university for 9 years. I think it was a waste of time. So you don’t have to be educated to think “big.” You just need to have some imagination.
One thing that I notice is there’s a heard mentality. Everyone wants to follow the latest craze. Everyone one wants to follow some Guru. I see it all the time. Guru Jack is doing this, so we should do this too. Big Joe is making 4k a month doing this, so we should do that.
You have to find your own way of doing things. Sure you may fail, but you may not. And you may discover something completely new.
I’ve learned everything I know from Grizzly, but my methods are radically different. I’m not doing what he does exactly, and I never will. And nether should you.
Don’t get caught up in someone’s method or someone strategies guys. There are a million and one different ways to make money one the way, and a million different paths to each goal. Learn as much as you can about all aspects of IM: Adsense marketing, affiliate marketing, niche blogging, domain flipping, PPC, etc. The more you know, the better off you will be. Don’t pigeon hole yourself into a single “formula” or method. Use and adapt, adapt and evolve. That’s they key to making money online.
If you only follow the path someone lays out for you and never deter, you limit yourself. Take what people teach you and run with it. But make it your God damn own method. I don’t want to train followers here; I want to train leaders – people who will pioneer new ways to do things. New ways to make money. This is why I follow the blackhat community somewhat – if at a distance, of course. Because they are constantly on the offensive, pioneering new ways to screw money out of Google. A blackhatter that doesn’t evolve, is a blackhatter that’s broke.
Too many people in the IM world claim a hill and sit on it, failing to look beyond for a bigger mountain to tackle. They don’t realize that a mountain is never stable, never solid. Mountains shift constantly, growing or shrinking. If you sit one and don’t keep climbing, you may find it starts to sink on you. Always aim upward.
I want to talk about links here. I think with my talk about volume that people may be missing the value of links. As I’ve stated, there are really two models to make money online with niche marketing. One is through vast quantities and the other is through a few high yielding sites.
You can make money without using too much in the way of SEO by sheer quantity. This is a viable method as I’m finding out, but it requires 100x the effort. You don’t need any as many backlinks to make money, but you make up the time you save backlinking writing content and producing sites.
There are two ways with the volume method here. You can make 20-100 small self hosted niche sites that you SEO high enough to squeeze out a few bucks per site — maybe 10-20 bucks each if you are lucky, thus getting a very good full time income, or you can just spend vast amounts of time spitting out content, using the domain authority of trusted social sites, ala hubpages, infobarrel, squidoo, etc to squeeze out little clicks and sales. A few sites wont make you any, but many hundreds and thousands will. Between the two, I’d rather go with less self hosted sites that are SEO’ed — you own your own property.
The other way is to be too look at making high quality, huge authority sites – sites that can rank very high for any related term in the niche. A site like this can generate thousands of dollars a month. It might take 2k mini sites to equal the revenue of a single, strong authority site. Tell me, what would you rather have, several thousand sites the micromanage, or one authority site? Exactly. The key to getting these authorities is backlinks. Not shitty backlinks, but backlinks from authority sites. Strong strong backlinks and lots of shitty ones. These sites can be a lot of work, and you may find out (as is the case for one of mine), that there is no payoff when you rank #1, even if you are an authority site. But if you get it right, you are fucking laughing all the way to the bank.
I’m not dicking around with thousands of mini sites for no reasons folks. My goal is not to own a significant portion of the web in terms of volume. My aim is to make 10-30k a month with small sites in revenue then start to fucking buy every authority site I can get my hands on with cold hard cash. You might want to spend a year or two building an authority site. I’m going to just buy one.
You might wonder why Grizzly owns “Make Money.” It’s because he’s been able to leverage the finances he’s made to outright buy authority sites to give him that term. It’s not always about making blog farms, getting squidoo links, and begging for blog role exchanges guys. You have to apply a business mindset to this game — you can drastically increase you productivity.
I think part of the problem most people in IM is that they don’t think in terms of business. I hate to break it to you non-business folks out there, but IM is a business. A business is all about cost, profit, and efficiency. You pay money to make money. The problem with people who start of in IM is that they are god damn so cheap they stunt their potential growth. Is it worth it to spend 2k dollars to yield 4k? Yes. Is it worth it to spend 2K to save you 4 months of labor so that you can make even more money? Yes and Yes.
Sure, get your feet wet learning the ropes in the IM world, but if you want to make some real money folks, you are going to have to spend money at some point. With all this complaining I hear people make about paying fucking 10 bucks a month for connect content membership, I don’t have a lot of hope here for some people. Some of you guys spend more buying slurpies at 7-11 a month than this. Comeone, there’s cheap and then their’s god damn stupid cheap. You should be selling your child’s soul to be getting as many backlinks as possible — anything that streamlines the process is worth a reasonable amount of money.
IM is cheap in terms of startup costs, but you are going to have to invest in outsourcing, site buying, and other such methods where trading cash for time can drastically increase your productivity.
I’m putting my money where my mouth is. If I make 6k a month in a month from now, it’s all going back into outsourcing. If I make 10k a month in 4 months, 10k a month is going back into buying sites and outsourcing, even if I have to live off of canned tuna and dog food.
Learn how to Really be an Internet Marketer
On a side note, for those people who want to take their keyword research to a level beyond, I suggest looking at Leo Dimilo’s Internet Marketing blog. Most people’s keyword research consists of looking at Google Keyword’s searches and the CPC before launching off into your niche blog production. That works, sure, but that’s like trying to see through window shade — you can make out the general form, but the details guys, the details are missing. The difference can mean success and failure or a CTR that’s through the roof or near the ground. So go learn from one of the best Internet Marketer guides I’ve seen online.
Backlink Experiment
I’m doing an experiment with one of my friends from Web SEO regarding the effectiveness of Backlink networks. Basically, I’m selecting 45 hubs and Web SEO will be submitting, on my behalf, unique articles to AMA, BS, and LinkVana networks for each of those 45 hubs. Over the course of 3 months, this should really increase the traffic and ranking of the hubs. So I’ll be following the progress of these hubs and post some results in a couple months.
Web SEO’s service is very useful for people who want to use backlink networks but can’t afford the monthly fees (which can be substantial). For a reasonable price, you can select which \backlink network you would like to submit your site to (or a combination of them) and supply the keywords and the sites to link to. The guys over at Web SEO will handle the content creation and submission process! A painless way to increase your rankings and traffic, without having to spend all that time writing articles and paying high monthly fees.
Note: when you go to the Web SEO site, you have to register to see the actual page — the guys want to keep out unwanted visitors. So just register an account to see the actual site.
Other Stuff
My snipers are doing ok. So far, no sales, but I’m getting more traffic an hops. I have roughly 20 sites. I am waaay behind on my goal here, mainly because these take such a long time to create. I need to get my 100 sites out as fast as possible. I’ve also entered some of the most competitive niches, which may not have been a good idea. For my next 80 sites, I’m going to look for obscure but profitable niches to enter into. These sites are all about being able to land on the front page right away for your term – and the term has to be a keyword where people are willing to shell out money. I’m keen to start making money with these, and I’m going to have to really light a fire under my ass to get 100 done soon. I can’t wait for my first sale.
Ok, that’s it for today folks.
Oh and to you lazy copiers ripping off my work, a curse on you and 7 generations of descendants.
Ben Out
49 Comments
Hey Ben,
Found my way over here a couple of days ago from a link on the KWA forums. Have really enjoyed your posts, you’ve certainly made up for the fact that we don’t have anything new to read on Grizz’s blogs at moment.
And your machine-like ability to get content up at lightning speed is an inspiration, giving me a kick up the arse to improve my own efforts.
Thanks
Ric
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Ben,
I haven’t commented much on your blog much, but I’ve read (and saved) your posts on HubPages because they’re helping me in my mission to full time income much like you. I appreciate everything you have written because it gives me inspiration and motivation to out due you in earnings
Hopefully you just write a “I’m alive” kind of post once in awhile because even receiving one of those posts from Grizz would be nice. Hopefully at some point I can contact you and tell you how things have come along in my adventure to online income.
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Thanks for the post Ben,
It is too bad that 5% of the people are ruining things for 95% but that is usually what happens. I really feel bad for Grizz because he provided one heck of a service to people trying to learn this business and in the end he felt betrayed. I hope he realizes he had a wonderful impact on a lot of people. I didn’t really have a clue about IM until I read everything he wrote and that gave me enough information to know what I didn’t know which was a lot.
It also made me realize an IM business really was possible and not just a pipe dream.
You have already provided a lot of information here and I am really thankful for the help you gave me on hubs. Thank you.
Here’s to your continued success and keep us informed of your winnings if you see fit.
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Hi Ben, I just found your blog on Sunday and already I’m making more Adsense money because of what you’ve talked about. I’m one of those people in the U.S. who is losing her job soon, so what you’ve done here has made a difference in my life.
I’m grateful enough to you to advise you to watch your back, instead of exhorting you to leave this blog up and continuing to post so you can help us all out of the woods. If I were making the kind of money you are, I’d take down all the screenshots and talk only in very general terms about what to do, not what you’ve done. In the end, what matters most is those photos you’ve put up at the top of every post. It’s not worth giving that up just to speak your mind, but I hope you continue to do so, in private forms if no place else.
Here’s to your work ethic and continued success,
Lorecee
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117, pimping! I have increased 2 sites incomes greatly in 2 weeks of backlinking… one from $5 to $30/day, and another from $2-5/day to $20/day.
Fuck Google de-indexs, I am coming back like crazy.
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admin Reply:
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:08 pm
@joshua. Good stuff man. Good to hear you brought those sites into something really productive. I’m quite anxious to start my adsense niche blogs going as well. I’ve got to finish this clickbank project first though.
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I opted for a couple beer as opposed to coffee for this one lol
Thanks for the should out Ben. I honestly look forward to seeing how WebSEO helps your sites as much as anyone. I spend a lot of money every month using my own services and it will be cool to find out how much a benifit we can see.
You really are an inspiration. I (like you) am almost done 3 degrees and am quickly realizing I’d rather put in a few years of hard labour on the net then hopefully retire lol.
Wana get an apartment in South America in a couple of years lol?
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Ben, you’re great and I really appreciate you sharing this info with me… I’m working my @$$ off crankin out a good 15 articles at 650-800 words per day, and although its not as much as you’ve done, I’m seeing solid results and averaging over $20 per day. My goal by the end of August is to hit $50 and I think that it is achievable if I keep bustin it.
You are honestly the most inspiring person that I’ve read as far as MMO goes and I’m really grateful that I found your blog. I just love your attitude because you never make any excuses and take full responsibility for your life situation. HUGE PROPS Ben!!
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admin Reply:
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:12 pm
@Drew,
Thanks man! You will be making a lot of money in no time. It’s just a matter of repeatting what your doing. If it’s 20 bucks this month and at your current output, it will be 40 bucks in a month, etc.
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Excellent, Ben.
I discovered you via KiWurd college (you know what I mean).
Now I’m paranoid to put any of my websites URLs in the post info for this post to see if you have no-no follow.
Shortly after I started out, I built a MMO site and blog because a guru told me so. And put AdSense on them. I think quite likely that was one major thing that screwed up all my other sites and blogs, so now I am not ranking for any main keywords. Not totally de-indexed, I still get Google traffic, but only from longtails.
I’m thinking I should abandon all, over time, the PR- and PR0 and build new ones recycling (rewriting) content.
That is the big question: what to do after go-ogle has bitch-slapped you.
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Hello, Ben …
With respect to your ClickBank “sniper sites” goal, I might be able to shed a little light on what works in this arena. An internet marketer in the UK by the name of Sara Brown does very well with this type of site.
If you go to google and type in — doggy health — and look for doggy-health.com (in 8th position as I write this), you’ll see an example of her work. That one-page site has been there for several *years* and makes her very good money … despite the fact that the link in the article she brought in from an article directory goes to one of those expired-domain places!
In her system, she doesn’t even write her own articles. She just goes and picks a likely one from an article directory. She doesn’t even care that the links in the resource box go to some other page! She still makes great money with this method.
Notice how she sets up the top of the page very much along the lines of a classified ad … the primary purpose of a classified ad being to persuade the reader to seek further information … and they do … they click on that red text link up there at the top!
It might interest you to know that Sara *also* drives *off*line traffic to her online presence through inexpensive thrifty-nickel-type ads and does very well for herself that way, too.
Her online promotion system is not as elaborate as Court’s, but she put a diagram of it in her book about how to do this that’s *very* helpful, because you can see at a glance all the promotional steps she takes and how they interrelate.
Anyway, I thought you might like to see this. I get a kick out of the fact that she’s making hay without even bothering to write her own articles !!!
Regards, Elizabeth …
P.S.
I’d just like to say that I echo the sentiments of those above … I’m very sorry that a few unprincipled people have caused you problems.
And I’d like to add my grateful appreciation to that expressed here by the other 95%.
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I have very much enjoyed reading your blog for several weeks now and have anxiously awaited every new post. However, I found out a long time ago that if you do something successful online and tell people about it - you will lose it or at least degrade it to the point where it’s worth nothing. My online empire that I was so proud of is now worth very little.
So Congratulations and Good Luck to you Ben - if I were you this blog would end today.
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Kudos on your hard work dude!
Speaking of curses, maybe your next sniper site should focus on some voodoo products
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Glad to see you post this soon. Too bad that it is about this topic. I’d like to say that I am up to 160 hubs, making 7-15 dollars daily, thanks to you I think I understood a lot about keyword research. Still having trouble coming up with new and potential keywords, although I think I know what works now. If you are ever up to link exchange or any other IM experiment and need something feel free to contact me. I’d like to keep following your experiments if you like to share your hub progress for a small mailing-list or something.
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Thanks for the reminder about coming up with your own tests. I have read 2-3 of your posts. I like your style. Per Grizz, people need to get off his Dick.. He runs a Fishing lodge in Canada and the summer is his busy time. So… I doubt he is gone.. If he doesn’t return by Sept-Oct.. Then I guess he is most likely gone… either way it doesn’t matter.. some of the basics are on his blog.. and he did good… Best wishes to your new MMO adventure
PS. May your Curse.. be valid..LOL
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Really awesome post and because of you I’m diversifying a lot. I’ve now got accounts at cj, ls and when clickbank gets their shit together, I’ll be applyign there (something is wrong with their app page atm).
Anyway, what did I miss from Grizz? I didnt realize he was having a tough time of it. Someone clue me in? Cuz I <3 him.
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Hey there Ben, you musty be so proud with what you have achieved in the last 2 months! I feel so sad that these terrible wanna-be’s are trying to fault all the masses of hard work you put in and destory you all.
You definately have given me a lot of inspiration, I have been building Hubs since the day I broke up (Monday). Even though I’ve only made 20-25 in the least 3 days, I made 12 today and aim to make 15 a day or so for the next two weeks.
Since I only have 5 weeks left of MMO and as you tell us all to diversify, I may go and make 10-15 niche websites with easy ranking words and let them age over the Summer.
Good luck, and hope to hearing from you every now and again!
Crashin
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Hey Ben,
I have to say this blog is the most inspirational thing I’ve probably ever read as far as Internet marketing goes. I’ve already been doing quite well making money online in several different areas for over 2 years, but after following your progress I can see so clearly how I’ve been missing opportunities by simply not putting in enough effort.
I really hope you can find a way to cash in on this blog and shake all the haters off. It would be sad to see you have to shut things down.
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Thanks for all the information that you’ve put out there to help people make money. I’ve only recently started posting on sites like InfoBarrel and creating niche sites in the attempts to create a passive revenue stream.
While I tried to avoid treading on your keywords and areas of content, I have to admit I have tried to utilize your format and keyword strategies for my own content (I’m a big fan of the copy, adapt, and innovation strategy). Sorry if I may have impacted any of your money making on InfoBarrel.
Thanks for everything, it’s helped me get on the right track and in the frame of mind to make money online.
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Sup Ben?
I’ve been dinkin along, lookin at “a lot” of MMO. I must admit that TKA and your makemaoneyonlinewithseo are the two most inspirational and direct to the point sites on Internet/Information Marketing I’ve found. Time to start bloggin!!!
PS best reason I like you, is your judicious use of the f-bomb. Now I won’t feel alone droppin a few f-bombs myself!!!!
#!bigPoppa
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Hi there,
Just a quickie to give thanks again for all your info. So far I have earn over $60 from hubpages so will reach payout shortly. I started creating hubs a few weeks ago and I love the results that i have got. I have started with info barrels and have earn a couple of bucks. Still have a way to go with this one. However I am interested in starting my own hosted sites so I look forward to hearing your results for the clickbank experiment.
I just want to reiterate that it is not hard to make money online while using the free resources. It just takes a lot of time and commitment. A lot of time and commitment - needed to repeated. You can go at whatever pace you want but the faster you can churn out hubs and barrels, the faster you will make money.
Think about it - do you want to earn money or do you want to watch TV?
I want the money thanks, so I’ll sacrifice the TV for now.
Good luck to every one.
[Reply]
admin Reply:
July 24th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
@Tiptopcat,
Yes, I’m been distracted with another massive outsourcing project the past couple days. I’m hoping that monday I can pick it back up — I have 20 CB sites so far. I’ve been lazy as far as promotion and whatnot. The first 10 CB sites were practice onces — I’m waiting to see how the other 10 pan out.
I’m very excited to get my google sniper sites going as well — I want 100 - 200 them. Going to have to wait until I finish these CB sites first.
Yes, you do have to make some sacrifices. It’s a friday night and I should be at a club hitting on beautiful women. But, I’m going to upload 40 articles instead. Suck to be me on a friday
[Reply]
Ben - thanks again for helping me out. My hubs are earning at a slow clip but at least they are earning now. I still have to go back and properly backlink them all but gettin $5 days is better than $0. And I’m just barely cresting 100 hubs. I’m taking your advice you gave me and ramping up another 200 hubs to a total of 300 and see where I’m at. I’m going to also get 200 infobarrels up in the next two months as well. Also - I’m rolling out 100 EPN sites at the same time so this will be a fun time for me. Looking to have that $3k/month or more by the end of the year my friend. Thanks for the inspiration.
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admin Reply:
July 24th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
@Thai
Fantastic man! 5 bcuks turns into 10 which turns into 20 which turns into 50 which turns into 100. The key is patience…and work. You can’t rush these things. It might take you 6 months to get to 40 bucks a day, it might take you a month. You never know. But what I know is that if you work every day, you will make your income goal — no matter the platform.
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Damn you Ben, for recommending Leo’s blog. I was up until 3 am reading, and I really am trying to get away from doing that and get to work. Between you and him, I’m not going to get anything done now.
Anyway, I haven’t got much to say that hasn’t already been said. Your posts are a true inspiration, and whether you decide to go underground or not, you have already paid it forward enough to never do anything more for anyone.
Keep earning
[Reply]
admin Reply:
July 24th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
@Josh B
Thanks,
Leo is great — the BEST internet marketing information I’ve encoutered. I suggest everyone here read what he has to say. You can improve your game big time. If your IM game is not good, your earnings won’t be what they could be.
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Hey dont ever think to shutdown this site man. It have loads of info for us. And we dont wanna lose it.
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Ben,
I hope you keep the site going too. It is really valuable. I am doing self-hosted sites but it does take a long time for some to rank. Do you think blog commenting is useful for backlinks or do you stick to web 2.0 properties primarily?
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admin Reply:
July 24th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
@Deb
blog commenting has it’s uses. But you need to make sure you chose forums that are “do follow.” Most forums these days are not do follow, so you waste your time. I think social media (bookmaking links etc) is better than forum posting.
However, the main thing you need to be thinking about is to have a varied link portfolio. All social medial links are bad. All blog roll links are bad. You want to mix it up with a set of strong authority links (these are the killer links you need to be beg,buying,and stealing for), blog roll links, social medial links, b farm links, article directories, etc.
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Hi Ben,
I am following your site forn some weeks now and it is truly amazing what you are doing. I really like your blog and it is probably the most interesting one that i found. I would like to hear your oppinion on outsourcing hubs? I work 5 days a week and also because im not englisch, it costs me very much time to write 2 hubs on a day without backlinks. If i do research on keywords and cousin keyword, you think that is enough to outsource the hubs? You have advice or experience with this?
Please don’t let a couple of bastard ruin your blog. You are helping too many people with this blog. Goodluck with your snipers this month.
Greetz, Alex
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admin Reply:
July 24th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
@Alex
Thanks. Nothing you can do about those people. Once you start talking about your sucess, you really become a target in this field. But, you just have to roll with the punches. I’ll be talking about my outsourcing resource next post. It’s amazing and if you have a bit of money to poney up, you get fantastic results — heaps better than cyberhub or those sketchy writers you pick on on DPF. I’d say it’s better than textbroker as well.
Right now, I am paying 1-2k a month in oursourcing for hundreds of articles. I do the research myself and look up the cousin keywords to use. Well worth doing, it’s saving me months of monkey labour. However, my advice is that you don’t start to outsource until you reach between 500-1000 a month in earnings. If you don’t know what you are doing in terms of keyword research and niche picking, you can lose money. Once you are getting 500-1k a month, you pretty much know what you are doing and will probably pick niches you can make money from.
Ben
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I have to admire your work ethic - the big “secret” you have told about MMO is that you have to put in a lot of work - only no-one wants to hear that! I tend to feel tired just thinking about it, but there is no doubt that it’s a quantity thing. It’s impossible to get anywhere with just a handful of sites (have tried and it didn’t work!).
Regarding Affiliate Marketing - have been experimenting with Commission Junction and Squidoo lenses, using Captain Squid’s method, and have made some sales already. Though the commission is lower on CJ than on Clickbank, they offer mainstream products and brandnames, and I think customers are more willing to buy mainstream brand names than some of the stuff on Clickbank that they haven’t heard of. One thing about Commission Junction - the merchants are picky. I applied to join a new one last week and got declined because my sites were too new. I should have been more patient - I might wait another three months and then reapply (in the meanwhile I’ve stuck Amazon on the sites).
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admin Reply:
July 24th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
@Silver Rose
Yep, there is no “secret,” just hard work. Once you start to work hard, you learn the ropes much fast and see even more ways to make money too, besides churning out a lot of sites.
Most people forget that MMO is a skill — the more you do it, the better you get. That’s why someone who’s been doing it a while can make money much faster then someone who just started out.
Yea, merchants are picky on CJ. Clickbank is good for REALLY desperate people. Desperate people = money and with CB, it’s a lot more money.
Ben
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@Silver Rose You might want to try Shareasale. They seems to be much less picky than CJ. I don’t think I’ve been turned down for any merchants there.
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Hey Ben~ I prefer to keep a low profile and try to not read a bunch of blogs, but yours is one I try not to miss. Just in case you go away, I wanted you to know there are untold numbers out here (I suspect I’m far from your only lurker) with mucho respect for you and what you’ve accomplished. Thank you for sharing your experience.
Your work ethic is AMAZING. I’ve actually wondered if you WERE Griz, and I’m TOTALLY convinced you two have been allotted more hours in each day than I have. Either that or I’m a wuss and you are ninjas. Whatever.
I hope the “authority site” you’ve planned will focus on photography (you have a GREAT eye) and that if you ever feel the need to “go away” you’ll consider exploring other options to that. I suspect you’re only just beginning to glimpse your potential future, and I predict that in two years’ time you’ll be somewhere doing something you’ve not even envisioned yet. Easy for me to say, eh?
I miss Griz, too, ~BIG TIME~ and truly hope his silence is more attributable to fun and more fun than problems and more problems.
Thanks, again, for sharing the ride with us, and I hope the future brings you everything your heart desires.
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You may want to change your outgoing links to Web SEO in this thread… they are forwarding to his wordpress admin login… actually every page is… odd. Are you using a company for content? If so, whom? Maybe better than being ripped by shoddy indians.
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shutting down this site? wohooo..!! just let it be like Grizz’s blog. i wonder how can those dudes know your niches. did you told them your hubpages’ profile? i has abandoned hubpages for 1 month bcz… some sucker do whatever i did. right now, i try to crack hubpages formula by using many different profiles. hubpages is different from blog. you know that..
my final thought about those sucker, i will kick all of your ass by making more money. it’s crystal clear all of you will never make ‘hot Net money’ if you don’t use your brain and copying others. the simple phrase, “you’re not evolving bcz monkey will never be human forever”.
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Hey Joshua,
I you’re mistaken my friend about WebSEO. It sends you to a login page because I’d prefer to keep prying eyes who don’t belong out of there. You need to click the “signup” link and create an account then I manually approve you. I’m glad you pointed this problem out though, I’ll change the image to make it clearer what people need to do. I would put a big write up there explaining everything but I’m not great at hacking wordpress.
–DeMerchant
PS - I’m from Canada, not India lol
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There I think that should be better.
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I won’t waste too much time reiterating what so many others have already said, but want you to know how very sincerely I/we mean it… your efforts, your content, your generosity in sharing and your photographic skills are superb! I would fully understand if you close shop to protect self interests, but I really hope you can keep this going without getting dinged for it.
*IF* you continue to share your knowledge and insights I would love to know more specifics about your CB strategies and your sniper sites. I’ve heard ’sniper site’ a lot (over at TKA), but not entirely sure what one is or how to implement that strategy. I’m sure I can find info, but have actually intentionally NOT searched for it as I am too easily distracted by ‘new’ ideas. I need to focus and do one or two things enough times to really get it. Still, I would love to get YOUR angle on these approaches as your straight forward, no nonsense, no BS approach is great to read.
On a final note, I wonder if you have more of your photography posted anywhere? Not only is it beautiful, but it is inspirational too… Much more inspirational for me than images of expensive cars in front of mansions with hot chics holding fistfulls of cash. OK… maybe the hot chicks part is OK :o)
Peace,
K-Man
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admin Reply:
July 26th, 2009 at 9:18 am
@K-Man
Thanks for the kind comments mate. I love photography — I made it my mission to travel to exotic and remote locales with just my camera setup. I hope to do another trip next year as well. I’ll be posting new shots each post.
I haven’t shared too much in the way of CB because I’m still trying to master it to be honest. I’m on the write track, but my niche selection was all wrong for the first 12 or so sites — very very wrong. The next 8-10 were better, but I think I chose a niche that is going to be hard to squeeze out sales. Been about 3 weeks since I started and I still don’t have sales. I have a friend with 120 or these and he’s making a solid 2k a month — so I know it can be done. But you have to have the quantity and the niche selection. I’m doing a side project this week and real life work has been intruding this week so I’ve put the CB on hold this entire week, but I’m heading back to it Monday or Tuesday to put my other 80-100 CB sites in better niches and see what happens..
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DeMerchant - Thanks for the clarification… I could have sworn I visited your site a while ago, it it wasn’t like that with the login? Maybe I am mistaken. Also, the Indian comment was directed at the content, not you! Are all you guys west coast Canadians? I’d meet if you were near Montreal!
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What a great article. you proved me the potential of hubpages. now i will work hard and learn own things to promote. my hubs.
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Ben,
At the beginning of this month, I was writing just as enthusiastically as you were.
I wrote 25 hubs in about a week. I’ve set up EzineArticles and GoArticles to link to them.
The hubs are about weight loss. But I’ve made sure to select the keywords according to Court’s rules.
The hubs are getting lousy traffic and they are making me around 10 cents per day on average.
How come you and Court can build hubs that start making a few bucks per day right off the bat?
I’d like to learn how to do that myself!
Sincerely,
Jay
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admin Reply:
July 26th, 2009 at 9:09 am
@fat weight loss
I’ve been stating, don’t expect any money till you have at least 100 hubs — preferably 150 or 200 hubs. Ans you have to wait, hubs usually don’t pick up income in a week. It takes a couple weeks.
@everyone: I keep on getting these “why am I not making money with 20 hubs in 3 days” type of questions. If you read what I’ve said, don’t bank on ANY money until you have 100 hubs and 2-3 weeks. In fact, aim for 150-200 hubs all with backlinks.
Really, this whole thing with Court making 25 bucks a day after 3 weeks has really set people on the wrong track. I didn’t even make 25 bucks after 3 weeks…It was only after a month or 5 weeks with 250 hubs all back linked that I was getting about the 25-30 level. This leads to people getting a couple dozen hubs and wondering why that can’t head off to Jamaica already. The thing is, court has been doing this for years. He’s got his niche selection down razor sharp. That’s something that only comes with a lot of experience, so you can’t expect those sort of instant results — not untill you have experience.
Niche is key also, if you find you are not making any money after a week or two with a significant amount of hubs in a niche, move to a completely separate one. I still have a niche that has not produced a single click, despite the fact that I have 20 hubs. If I continued to make more hubs in that niche, well, I would be making a few cents right now.
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Joshua,
Yeah I just changed that page so it is more clear. I’m really glad you pointed out the user interface problem. I upgraded wordpress and didn’t check back and it definatly wasn’t clear how to complete the process anymore. I’m a terriable writer so it’s no doubt my content seems like crap lol.
I’m actually from the east coast (NB) and taking a trip to Montreal on the 7th of August. Send me an email and we can work out metting up. I would love that.
Thanks,
DeMerchant
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What is it with Canadian people and mastering SEO? Don’t you have anythin better to do?;D
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admin Reply:
July 26th, 2009 at 9:24 am
@Phillip
It’s so cold down here that all we can do is stay inside. What else is there to do!
j/k
It does seem like there are many Canadians involved in SEO, hah.
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Thanks for that Ben.
I must confess I haven’t read all your posts yet, but that’s because I only recently discovered your blog.
Thanks for the inspiring words. I was beginning to think I was an outlier. But now I have the idea this is actually fairly normal.
Will read all your posts later on!
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Mia,
You are not the only lurker. I am one as well. I never comment on blogs or articles because I usually don’t have anything useful to say that hasn’t already been said. However, since this may be Ben’s last hurrah, I thought that I too would add some words about how he inspired me.
Ben, you took the same information that I got, at the same time that I got it, and you created hundreds of hubs, backlinked articles and other content. I, to date, have fourteen hubs and three or four ezines. Oh, and zero clicks. Basically. when I began reading your blog the other day it showed me just how lazy I really am. I used to use work as an excuse, but you work too, and your getting more done than if I spent all day working on IM without a job.
Thanks for kicking me in the ass. You have no idea how much this has left an impression on me.
P.S. I miss Griz too.
-Jonas
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admin Reply:
July 27th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Thanks for the kind words mate. Well, know that you realize it, you are ahead of 99% of the rest of the people. If you can motivate yourself enough you can make a lot of money online.
What drives you to keep spending the time is to see results. The only way to see results is to put in some serious work, but once you start to reach a certain level where you see that work pay off, staying motivated is easy. IT’s just that inital period that’s the toughest — this is where 95% of the people in MMO fail.
Keep going!
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Why dont take new challenge for Xomba….they have new theme..looks like Infobarrel.
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admin Reply:
July 27th, 2009 at 9:40 am
I took a look at them and there is some potential there, though I don’t like the ad layout. Might be worth it to throw up 100 or so articles and so what happens in the future. Not sure about the domain authority though. I was also thinking of playing around with ehow — with 100 to 200 aricles there, you may be able to make some decent coin, especially since they have really high domain authortiy. The cost is that you can’t use it for a backlinking resource.
I’ve got some plans for squidoo and hubpages next month that’s a completely different model of revenue — affiliate sales. Going to see what I can do there with 400-500 articles.
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Ben,
I’ve heard good things about ehow but you need to be US to be paid. They do seem to do well in search engines I see.
Deb
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Hey Ben,
thanks for sharing this stuff…if you are ever interested in a partnership please contact me. I am a ppc marketer interested in expanding into content.
Stay strong !
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Ben..are the hubs ranking well in google or only in yahoo?
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Ben,
Another question for you.
You say GoArticles are strong backlinks.
I’ve written as much GoArticles as I have EzineArticles.
The Ezines get indexed right away and their appearance on the frontpage gives me some traffic as well.
The GoArticles get no views, no votes and they don’t get indexed.
Even when I mass-bookmark them for fast indexing, they’re not indexed.
How much time does it take for GoArticles to kick in?
Jay
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admin Reply:
July 28th, 2009 at 9:28 am
GoArticles have some authority — yes, more than a no name directory. However, it is hard to get them indexed because all the spammming abuse GoArticles have had. They do get indexed, eventually, but you have to wait some time — in my experience. But, don’t bank on getting any sort of link support from GoArticles for at least two weeks, probably a month. If you have authority sites to send links to your goarticles with, you may be able to get them indexed fast, but lacking that, you are just going to have to wait.
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Ben I’m way happy to see how well you’ve done. You are inspiring to a lot of people in my little world. Glad to see your view has changed a little bit as well. I went through that same process and it’s interesting to see how our points of view can change over time.
Anyway I thought I’d offer my congrats! What you’ve been able to accomplish is REALLY impressive.
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admin Reply:
July 28th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Thanks Court, that means a lot coming from you
Glad to see so many of your students inspired — and many of them are starting to make money with hubs using your techniques, which is fantastic. Yes, I’ve really changed my mind about the whole content is crap thing. I do feel that content is not important for getting indexed and ranked (provided you do the SEO and don’t rely on natural links), but there is no denying that you end up having to watch your back when you start to make money. It’s not worth the risk, no way. Better to give good content and consistantly earn money from google without fear of penalty.
I hope your own hubs are doing well! You’re working backlinks on 100 hubs, but I’ve chosen to go with mass amounts. I’d be interested in hearing how you do with 100 SEO’ed hubs. From looking at my stats, it’s just a matter of getting more traffic, be it through less hubs with higher rankings for each hub or more many more hubs that are ranked lower.
Thanks for stopping in!
Best,
Ben
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DeMerchant Reply:
July 29th, 2009 at 5:35 am
I think you’re taking a great approach Ben. Not that there is anything wrong with building 100 good SEOed hubs, but ideally (at least in my mind) you build 1000 then look at those, take you best 100… or 250… or whatever and invest some serious effort into them. Some hubs just aren’t going to be winners, or at least aren’t going to be worth the work, so if you can weed those out you’re ahead of them game.
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admin Reply:
July 29th, 2009 at 7:12 am
exactly DeMechant. It’s not effective to really SEO every one of your hubs because most are duds. Oh, they bring in a few cents here and here and that adds up a lot when you have so many, but it’s really the consistent performers that make the money. I’m making 1000 then going to cherry pick the top money makers for serious SEO.
I have a question. I have been posting info barrel articles lately as well, with backlinks to some of my hubs, to kind of see how much juice that would give me. However, my links either appear at the bottom as the html code, or they are edited off the article completely by other users. Did you experience this? Any way to fix it?
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admin Reply:
August 3rd, 2009 at 5:20 pm
the guys at infobarrel don’t like to see links near the top of the articles and they don’t like to see what they call “call to action to leave the site”. This means you can’t say stuff like “now check out to see more information”. The links need to naturally fit in the sentence. they also don’t like spammy long anchor text like “how to change diapers for old men with wringles”.
If you don’t do the above, you won’t have a problem with them editing out your links.
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Thanks so much for taking the time to answer my question. I can’t imagine how you find time to do so, but the fact that you take the time to help us that are just starting out is very very much appreciated.
Yes, I was adding my links at the bottom of the page, which I can see how that would irritate the administrators of the site, since they want people to stay on infobarrel for as long as possible, and links at the bottom of the article would influence someone to leave the site. I have removed all of my links, and will wait a few days before attempting to put them naturally into the articles.
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Hi I’m pretty new to this whole thing but I been reading alot the past few weeks on that Grizzy earn money site etc Then went on Lis who did that phenoninal Sbi review….and they got on to this site …
Just wondering are writing hub pages better then writing blogs? after all dont hub pages take a commision of your adsense ..
appreciate any answers you can give ..
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Jonas Renfold Reply:
August 12th, 2009 at 2:01 am
Matty,
I will try to answer your questions if I can. Writing hubs rather than blogs has its pros and cons. One advantage that Hubpages has over a new blog or website is that they are indexed quickly and rank better than a new blog or domain would, because the hubpages domain already has some authority with the G-Man. But, as you mentioned, hubpages takes forty percent of your impressions (earnings) so you have to decide if the trade off is worth it.
I would say that in the case of a blog versus hubpage, you are going to want to choose hubpages every time, because in my opinion the trade off of getting only sixty percent of the clicks is worth the time you’ll save not having to do initial indexing and backlinking work to get a blog to rank as well as a non-backlinked blog.
You may want to consider more carefully if it is a domain versus hubpages. Once you register the domain it is yours. Not only will you be able to make 100 percent of the adsense revenue, but you’ll also be able to sell the domain if you want.
For me, hubpages is my choice every time, because I can’t afford to buy domains at the moment. Hubpages allows me to put up a bunch of “sites” (hubs) with no monetary cost whatsoever. However, once I am making actual money with adsense I will switch to sites because of the ownership and full adsense revenue issues.
Also, building hubs at first gives you amazing backlink opportunities for your sites. Like in my case, I will still have a use for my Hubs once I get domains because they will be in the same niche. That way I link an Ezine to two infobarrels, each infobarrel to two hubs and each hub to two domains, which gives me quite a bit of backlink power for my domains.
I hope this helped. Good luck with your projects.
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Ben,
I hope you don’t mind another question LOL. I wanted to run our plan by you and see if you approve, since we used your blog entries to make our plan.
My very trustworthy friend and I have decided to build our hubs together, with one adsense ID for now, since it is quantity more than anything else that seems to bring in clicks. After taking notes on everything you did, we came up with this plan:
1. Make 200 hubs by the end of August (20 by each of us every three days)
2. Target niches with 200-400 searches per month, with lots of adwords ads and competition pages in the top five mostly PR 0 or PR 1 or occassionally PR 2, with minimum CPC .30 cents.
3. Build 500-600 word hubs, occasionally to 800. Use no videos, news links, amazon products or ebay products.
4. Put a picture between the first and second text capsule
5. Wait until we’re done with all 200 hubs before we add any back links whatsoever.
6. From each batch of 20 we have 19 as described above, and one with searches between 1000-5000, with CPC around 70 cents or so. The competition is a bit stiffer, with PR 2 and 3 pages. Using Court’s formula this puts each batch of 20 at about $100 potential per month for the main keyword we targeted only ( not counting rankings and clicks for long tails) so $1000 per month potential not counting long tails.
7. Link each hub to four or five related hubs.
Our theory is that because we are picking such noncompetitive niches that the authority of hubpages will allow us to rank number one for our main keyword in G, without any backlinking whatsoever in nearly every case. When we are all done we will build backlinks for any hubs that are not ranking at number one for the main keyword.
We figure that overall, with ranking at number one for the main keyword on each hub, we will make about $2000 a month total, based upon searches for the main keyword ($1000/mo) and other searches for unintentional longtails ($1000 month) after 30 days. 190 hubs have a monetary potential of about $1.50-3.00 dollars a month each and 10 have a potential of around $50.00 a month each.
Any thoughts? We tried to follow the methods you said you used at the end of your experiment as closely as possible. Any suggestions, comments or chidings would be welcome.
Regards,
Jonas and Jonas’ Friend
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admin Reply:
August 12th, 2009 at 7:55 am
Jonas, thats a good plan, I like how you have a strategy about what you are doing, ala court style.
But I’ll tell you right now where the plan will probably fail.
1. For one, you won’t rank #1 with your hubs — no way without backlinks
2. You are going to need a lot more than 200 hubs got get 60 bucks a day…
3. Remember, hubpages takes 40% of your impressions, I’m assuming you didn’t calculate this in your total.
4. You and your friend are splitting your revenue, meaning you only get 50%…
3. Court’s formula is only applicable for number position, and let me tell you, it takes months of backlinking effort to get the number one spot. Do you want to put months of backlinklinking your hub to get #1? I’d say if you want to put that effort in, use a blogger blog or make your own .info site — something that does not cut you out 40%.
I’m not saying it’s not possible, but I’ve noticed hubpages domain authority is not that strong. I don’t know if it was like this several months ago, but i’ve noticed most hubs don’t even rank on the first page. Now if you find niche with ABSOLUTELY no competition, then sure you may rank, and even number one. But if there are PR 1/2 around, you won’t be number one. You probably won’t even outrank PR 0’s, at least not for a while.
So in short, you have a good strategy, but it’s not as clear cut as you make it. As for teaming up? Let me ask? Why? You are both writing hubs, so what’s the reasons for sharing your adsense. In my opinion, it’s a lot safer (trust me, if you do make some money, things can get nasty with a shared account — I wouln’t even go there) just to do it on your own. There is NO real benifit to teaming up with someone when you are yourself doing half the hub writing work. If your friend wants to spend all his time writing ezines/squido/infobarrels for backlinks, well that’s a partnership, but not when you guys both go it with hubs.
my .02
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[...] Which brings me rather neatly to the one of the hardest working guys on the Internet Ben over at Make Money Online with SEO. Now I am not going to repeat how Ben makes over $100/day with HubPages (which he started with in May BTW) – because all of that information is on his blog. And he still gets people asking him why they are failing – to which the answer is always the same – they are failing because they aren’t working hard enough! So check Ben out Ben if you want to be making money online the right way. [...]
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