Nothing like starting the New Year with a drop in PR across the board. Thanks Google. I didn’t take it personal since the PR5 sites that helped give me my PR4 on some of my sites also dropped. This blog was the only one in my stable that didn’t lose PR. I had PR1 sites reduced to PR0. Everything got reduced a point. Interesting how Google seems to delight in demoralizing the very people who help generate the billions in shareholder value. I realize that they couldn’t care less about what people think about their algorithms. And I’ve long ago stopped caring about PR. My best sites are routinely PR0 and PR1. But hey, I’d be lying if I didn’t say it wasn’t a bit of a bummer to be knocked back down again after working so hard to achieve a PR4. Eh, screw ‘em.

I spammed a lot during November/December. I created Blogger blogs for the sole purpose of collecting Ebay checks. My hope was that people would still be willing to buy shit during the holidays even though the world is in financial ruin. I used Ebay widgets, modified my template and used Frank’s delightful Blog Content Wizard to generate content. I wrote an article that was sensible for most of the spam blogs and dispersed it into Article Marketing Automation. I also used BMD to bookmark the links. Oh how nice that tool has become with version 4.1. I used PLRPro PGB’s RSS submitter to submit the RSS feed as well. It didn’t take long to get indexed. My best performer averaged about 60 clicks a day. I made about $50 from that site during this period which I think is pretty good.

It’s not like I toweled off with greenbacks though. For every 10 sites I built, maybe 5 is worth a shit (so far). Of those 5 I might make $2 a day. The upside is it literally takes 15 minutes, max, to build them. They cost me nothing but time to build too. I had one get flagged as spam.

I’ve pretty much stopped building Wordpress blogs. I’m using XSP to build my sites. As you know I’m a member of PLRPro. They have a groovy new tool to build sites with called Project Green Button. This will eventually be a tool to be reckoned with. It’s not quite there yet for me, but if you are a beginner, holy crap, you have quite a tool to create sites with that you get for the price of the membership. It has a site builder, an RSS feed submitter and a bookmarking tool. And soon to have a comment tool. It’s just tough to stop using advanced tools like XSP and BMD at this point.

The interesting thing is that I can get a niche site up from 40 PLR articles in about 2-3 days. It can get indexed and getting ranked for the keywords and within a month or two start seeing a bit of traffic. It’s amazing that I am the only one ranked for that pack of articles. I truly believe that of 11 article packs that get released to the membership of 200 about 1 or 2 actually gets used. Plus most people still don’t know how to get meaningful backlinks to their site. All of which is fantastic for me.

The guys at PLRPro have created a blueprint for getting to $2-6K a month in 12 months. Spreadsheet included with daily tasks. It’s a beaut. Since I’m too scattered to stick with anything, I’m passing it on to the marital unit and let her work the blueprint. I’m making sure that I have a decent income in the event I get laid off/fired from cubicle life this year. This is a good year to be a little more serious about making money online. Yet it will probably be harder too for numerous reasons. Like more competition, advertising will tighten, spending will decrease, etc.

My earnings over the last couple of months have been a hodge podge. I suck at Adsense. I do not with Shareasale datafeeds. I surprisingly made some excellent Clickbank sales. Even a couple from Affiloblueprint style sites, which by the way are basically a mashup of PLRPro and Affilo XSP sites. Ebay is the quickest and easiest money I’ve created I think. It just doesn’t pay that great.

A word about Article Marketing Automation: I use it a lot. I created a ton of blogs and inserted them into the system. I’ve been going back through them and creating more focused blogs from the articles. Let’s say I add a blog that captures all golf articles. After a month or so I go back through and see what the best articles are. What kind of niche can I create. So maybe out of 80 articles I have 47 that are on golf clubs. I simply go through the blog and whack the articles that don’t pertain to golf clubs, rewrite the blog title, tighten up the keywords and make sure I only except articles on the subniche and those that are rewritten better than 40%. I have maybe 50 excellent blogs, many on Blogger (Yes, they were grandfathered in after AMA stopped allowing them), that I am going to start getting backlinks. They are all indexed. Those that are getting traffic (Google Analytics is nice isn’t it?) will have Adsense piled on them. If that is not $50/day staring me in the face, I don’t know what is.

And yes, I use AMA for article submissions. I have no idea if it works all that great, because like my blogs, they are probably all new and have virtually no PR or authority. Over the course of the next year or two that should change as more blogs get added and those blogs in the system, like mine, start getting authority. All I know is that my first article I wrote for AMA gets added to about 2 blogs a week now and has been submitted a total of 357 times. And very few of the articles are the same as every time you spin it, it has a better than 90% rewritten percentage. That has to be a good thing.

I had a few affiliate sales for AMA. Quite a few signups and clicks doing some window shopping. At least half has dropped out. I have no idea why. My guess is they want instant gratification. I can tell you with certainty that if I did not write an article and submit it across AMA that my best performer on Ebay would not have made what it did. I checked out Syndicate Kahuna. I didn’t find it near as flexible and slick as AMA. But I will tell you this. You best find a way to get your backlinks. People like me with access to AMA or SK are going to smoke those that think submitting an article to EzineArticles and GoArticles to be adequate. I hate paying for shit in this racket as much as the next guy, but you simply have to spend some money to compete. To make money you have to get backlinks and I have no idea how you are going to get numerous and relevant backlinks without spending for it whether you buy a membership, tool or buy links.

I’m looking forward to this year. I’m very much a cynic and look forward to seeing how much more screwed up this world can get. I just hope as we spiral around the bowl I can continue to support my family. That is the driving force for me this year. It will motivate me to be better at this than year’s past.

And by the way: Thanks to everyone who reads this crappy blog. I appreciate every comment and pageview.

Got pimped this morning for a product called WildSEO. Quite possibly the lamest salespage I’ve ever wasted my time reading. I guess they thought that by writing an outrageous story about a stripper and a fight would help sell their product. Anyway, it seems these two guys have this week’s secret for Search Engine Optimization. They start out their salesgas with the tried and true verbage of making you feel bad about working for the man and how much better things could be if you could make thousands a day with your website on the Web. They make sure they let you know that they have been where you are and that they have spent as much as you have on crap products and that they expect you to be skeptics. Like them. Why, they are the two bigggest skeptics in the world?!

After the stripper tale runs its course they decide to give the reader proof that WildSEO will work. They throw up a website and show where it ranks in Google and Yahoo for some pretty significant terms: “Make money online”. “Make money”. They give screenshots as well. Looks imressive until you do your own search. They claim they are #2 in Google for “make money online”. Um, not at the datacenter that sends me my results they aren’t. As a matter of fact their website is not on page 1. Or page 2. Or page 3. Or anywhere really. In either search engine.

I used a tool to research their site and they have like two backlinks. I think if they were ever ranked that high it was because they have an .edu linking to them. But the page has a PR0. Anyway my manual check and tool check indicates their site is nowhere to be found. Kinda ballsy to put up something as a measure of success on a salespage that is not even correct. I half wondered if WildSEO is some product from 2004 and I am just now getting the email about it. Maybe I just do not know how to use Google.

But it gets better. After I decided to pass on the offer of $49.99 (A deal since the price will rise in two days to $97 you see), I got the magical pop up window saying I could get the piece of shit for $17.

I effing hate this unethical piece of marketing code. What if you really wanted the product and paid $50 for it? Not knowing that if you simply decided to pass on it you could have had it for $17. It’s a shitty way of treating your potential customers. It’s a sleazy marketing trick.

Oh and I doubt very much that the testimonials are legit. I have no proof but they seem to be written in the same “voice”.

IM products continue their slide down the sewer.

Funny thing. Yesterday I made the most in Adsense with a .info site I built in 2005. Made from Niche Portal Builder. This site and two others keep churning along dragging in Adsense clicks with higher CTR than any blog or website I own. Not everyday is a banner day, but one of the three is usually top 3 in earnings for the day. I keep hearing how Google will penalize me if they catch me for having these sites. I can’t see how these sites are any different than any other Adsense site out there.

These NPB sites are the ultimate in long tail keyword sites. You know how all the guberus continue to preach long tail keyword article writing? You write an article for searches that get 10-20 searches a day. You hope the keyword phrase is obscure enough that you have no competition yet get a few visitors. 10 visitors come to your site. Out of those 10 you hope three click out via Adsense and you make 50 cents. Do that for 10-20 pages and you’ve possibly got yourself a site raking in $1-200 a month. Good times.

With these NPB sites you are obviously building a keyword site. Think about loading up 30 long tail keywords that you discovered in nichebot. The site is built and uploaded in 5 minutes. If you can manage to get the thing indexed, and not banned, then you are on your way to capturing those long tail keywords.

So you’re sitting there reading this mess thinking, “well, just go build some dumbass.” I may. I should. But the noise about how these sites will ruin your Adsense account is very loud. I don’t like to do anything to piss off Google. But when you surf around and see shit sites with Adsense and note that your own NPB sites continue to do just fine, you wonder if all the worry is just guberus with an agenda and people who have no idea what they are talking about.

Maybe I’m just lucky. You know I had, I don’t remember, 10, maybe 20, of these NPB sites when I started out. Some worked out great obviously and some never made a dime. It’s why $1 .info domains were used. But I also know that I never thought about search volume when I built the sites. I simply found as many keywords as possible and used whatever the tool found. Long tail or not.

So apparently you cannot build sites solely for the purpose of Adsense. Yet you can park a freakin’ domain and put Adsense on there. I know. Google wouldn’t allow someone to buy a hundred domains and put Adsense on there. No wait. They have a program exactly for that purpose. Seems like an interesting way of creating keyword generated sites with Google’s blessing.

AdSense for domains provides advertisers with additional opportunities to find their customers, and ads on these pages convert well. In addition, we regularly receive requests from advertisers who have found domains to be an effective way to reach their users.

Really? Sounds like they are encouraging you to create a domain for the sole purpose of using Adsense. Thought that was against the rules. I would think that creating a website consisting of keywords (with NPB) that people are searching for, yet there are no websites available, or very few, would be an effective way to reach some users. Adsense for domains has typically nothing more than Adsense. NPB, or even Nichecreator, sites are built with the purpose of monetizing with Adsense, yet there are other links to click, articles to read and videos to watch. Hmmm. Perhaps I am the only one who thinks there is hypocrisy.