Got news for you. Bing is damn cool. Much better organized than the collection of drippy tools from Google. Sure it’s a stupid name but so was Google. Alas, it does an interesting job of giving you alternate keywords and niche ideas to use…when you build sites for Google. Will Bing catch on? Mister Softee has a tough job ahead of itself. I mean, Aunt May just figured out how to “Google” something. It may take years to change the consciousness of netizens to “Bing” something. And rest assured someone is going to write a shitty $47 report on how to game Bing to make millions. And the beat goes on.
After a couple of years of making a half-ass effort I am about done trying to sell affiliate products via Blogger. If targeted correctly I can get some Ebay clicks from a franken site or two. But for my time and effort I will be banging out even more Blogger blogs for the express purpose of boring some visitor enough to get them to click away via Adsense. I’m done wasting blog space on some banner ad when clearly the masses prefer to explore a pretty blue text link. I place far more pennies in the bank via Adsense than trying to sell someone’s gizmo, at least on Blogger. Diversification might be great. Continued failure is not. Let’s roll more pennies.
Are the guberus losing their mojo? Seems as if there are no new ideas. Just fresh tosses of the same keyword gathering, article writing, link building, SEO salad. Every once in a while a product gets shoved down the pipe that might help with an activity you are churning through (BMD or BCD anyone?), but mostly what’s old is new again or what’s new is old again, depending on how you view it though your looking glass.
Are you having fun yet? I like that I can build a site, let it lay there and potentially make money months later. Keyword research, article creation, building sites and collecting backlinks sucks large. So what does a bloke do? Laziness is my calling. So is making money. I have demonstrated that they can co-exist. Overcome the laziness at the onset, build a stupid site and watch it collect pennies months down the road without anymore intervention. But to answer my own question: No, I’m not having fun. I think building niche site after niche site, and all it entails, is utter madness.
You know how some people say invest your profits back into your business? I don’t (yet) subscribe to that. I figure if I can’t build a few sites a week, and at the end of the year have 50 or so of those averaging a couple of bucks a day then I shouldn’t bother with the grind. Why would I pay someone to build something that I have no idea will or will not return that investment? I have numerous 15-20 page sites that have been left in the stagnate pool of SEO slime that makes $2-3, sometimes more, each day. So I take all my profits and put some aside for trips to Disneyworld with my family or snowboarding in the Rockies and the rest goes into my retirement accounts. I don’t stimulate Internet marketing any more than I have to.
On an average day I do nothing in Internet marketing. And am happy about it.
I would rather trade stocks than build sites and promote them via Adwords. It’s roughly the same risk in my mind. And trading stocks is far more enjoyable.
What is the point of do-follow and no-follow? Just another example of Google enabling the game if you ask me.
Have I mentioned how much I like Bing? At the risk of shitting in my own plate, I really hope Bing kicks the crap out of Google.
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Dammit man, you always manage to say just what everyone’s thinking.
Here’s something you might find interesting.
http://www.federaljack.com/2009/06/02/aaron-greenspan-why-i-sued-google-and-won/
The title of this site describes my state of mind after five months of banging my head against this SEO crap. Don’t know exactly when I had the aha moment. Maybe it was while writing my 99th out of 1,000 inane 100 word article directory post that reads just like the other 10,000 inane 100 word posts on the same subject written by other IMers trying to sell the same thing. Or maybe it was when I realized I’ve all but given up cooking and exercise. Next I’m going to give up going to the bathroom.
Anyway, automation is my new best friend. I already have BMD and it rocks and rolls. BCD via your link is next on the list. I can’t write anymore Ezine articles, or my head will explode.
Funny–I’m just now moving away from Adsense and toward Ebay and Amazon affiliate. Adsense needs a crapload of volume, and my sites are too young to make it work. This way I can pull some affiliate money out of them until they’re more solid. So I got a question: does Storestacker do a decent job of hiding the fact from Google that you’ve got a thin affiliate site? PHPbay is supposed to cloak everything (I don’t mean from commission stealers–I mean from the search engines). Would appreciate your opinion on this.
Oh yeah, Bing. I never thought I’d see the day when I’d find myself cheering for Macro$loth.
[end of rant]
Fantastic read. Of course taking Google to court could end up killing the golden goose.
A Storestacker site can be rather beefy if you spend the time writing or adding feeds or adding videos, etc. It’s basically a site builder with modules for selling affiliate crap. You could create a 20-30+ page niche site pretty easily. Each page could have a stack of eBay or Amazon crap to buy.
If you like BMD there is no reason you won’t like BCD. I’m just amazed at how many no follow sites there are. At some point if all blogs are no-follow, if blog owners protect their “juice”, with there be any blog juice left for Google to drink?
Thanks–about how long does it take you to put up a 20-30 page niche site with Storestacker? I think you said you use slightly rewritten PLR for it?
Hey Splork,
I was dozing off with my retirement dream of a part time income from an Internet Marketing.
You just woke me up.
After I lost a lot of money and time on guru products and WSO’s in the past 2-3 years, I stopped reading their sales letters and quit buying.
I have been reading this blog for knowledge and amusement for quite a while now. Since I trust you, I have a question for you.
Can you put in figures, the time spent and money earned per week by you in this business?
Due to a sharp drop in my pension payment, I need to generate extra $300 per week. I can work up to 4 hours a day on this. Is it realistic?
Thank you for you advice.
Bing! lol!
I reckon you hit the right note again Splork and you speak for thousands of us on this daily grind at making a few bucks
As to the ‘dofollow’-'nofollow’ stuff:
I’ve been doing a lot of reading about ‘hanging pages’ and it seems as if your page is considered ‘hanging’ if the se spiders have nowhere to go.
Evidently (but who the hell really knows for sure), pages like this are frowned on by the big G.
When I first started making blogs I didn’t know a thing about nofollow, and stuck affiliate links all over the place – I work in adult, we do that a lot
– all links were followed.
Then I read about nofollow and began to add that to all my affiliate links on newer sites and just followed link exchanges (not paid links) etc and it seemed to work better.
But then big G (it seems) decided to change the rules again.
My older crappy sites with all the followed links going to hundreds of different places from the same page are doing well, while the newer, carefully crafted ones which ‘follow the rules’, and only link out to ‘good links’ are getting hit right left and centre.
As they say where I work, it’s all a ‘circle j**k’ but this time by the big G.
And that’s why the guberus are losing their touch. They don’t know the rules any more than the rest of us and big G likes it just fine that way.
“someone is going to write a shitty $47 report on how to game Bing to make millions.”
Talk about letting the cat out of the bag. Damn, I’d better write faster…
“I am about done trying to sell affiliate products via Blogger”
I’ve discovered that unless you have a responsive list of knucklehead suckers, the affiliate game pays out far less than hawking your own product.
“I place far more pennies in the bank via Adsense than trying to sell someone’s gizmo, at least on Blogger”
Is that because it’s Blogger, or because people are hip to cloaked affiliate links on phony “review” pages?
“Keyword research, article creation, building sites and collecting backlinks sucks large. So what does a bloke do? Laziness is my calling. So is making money.”
Ezine Articles brags that they now have 4100 people set up for auto-tweeting their newest Ezine Articles on Twitter; well over a million+ articles; adding over 10,000 new authors a month. I’d call that ‘saturated’.
“No, I’m not having fun. I think building niche site after niche site, and all it entails, is utter madness”
What’s turning out to be a stronger model is to have your own product (think “quality control”) or product line, and develop a following of “raving fans”; you don’t need to reach millions/billions, you just need to be slightly famous with a customer base that believes in what you’re creating and wants more and better of it.
“On an average day I do nothing in Internet marketing. And am happy about it.”
After following a model similar to yours, I’m with you. To hell with that kind of IM. It has almost made me sick to have to sit down in from of the goddamned machine a pound out yet more swill for the exclusive purpose of pursuing mammon.
Hahaha, I love reading your posts Splork. You say it like it is.
I too love Bing. It’s got personality, pizazz, and it does everything short of giving me a hug when I use it.
I’d like to see it give Google a run for it’s money, and I think it will catch on pretty quick.
Google is cold and for once Microsoft has made something warm, squishy, and adorable. Your average internet user couldn’t care less about which search engine has the best algorithm. Bing appeals to real people.
Lorecee, it takes about as long to build a SS site as it does any other. You simply add in your articles as pages or even as articles below the products if you can visualize that. For every page of products you create you can have a huge helping of article content below it. You know, for SEO purposes. Seems like at some point you could test drive it for a buck. Maybe you still can.
Hey Sam. About the only WSO I buy anymore is articles on topics I want to create a niche site on. $300 a week is certainly doable. Absolutely. I would encourage you to read Griz and Court. Maybe join the Keyword Crash Course over at The Keyword Academy (Court). They give you the details you need to make some money. As long as you aren’t lazy and are persistent, you simply need to find the right keywords, write articles on those topics, build a site and get backlinks with the keywords you chose to write about. TKA has a free keyword ebook that is fantastic. You can do it.
I will say that I wouldn’t be expecting $300 a week for 4 hours of work right off. Build a site. Get it promoted and move to the next. Don’t look back. Keep pressing on. Honestly out of say 5 sites you build 3 might not do a thing. 1 might do ok and one might be a winner. For me a winner is one that makes about $5 a day in Adsense. Other people might say it’s one that makes $100/day. My deal is to keep building until I have a nice stable of $5/day Adsense sites. You mileage may vary. You might be far more adaptable and interested in this crap than I am. But using my “formula” you’d need to build about 50-60 sites and hope that 10-20 maybe do well.
So I would suggest each week building 5 sites. In three months you’d have 50-60 sites. You could do that with 4 hours of time each day. But I encourage you to find a plan like what Griz talks about on his site or follow Court. It’s simple but not easy.
Hope that helps
Zania, I think trying to follow rules is just not worth it. Like you indicate, there are none. When I do a BCD run I comment on sites that make the most sense. Not solely on those with do-follow. I’m sick of caring about shit like that.
Hey River. Having your own product to sell to people is definitely the way to go. That new Google Assassin/Nemesis/Day Job Killer/X Factor thingaroo is the best example I can think of. That dude has a massive following. He writes the best salecopy. He tells the best stories. And he sells a shitload of product. Each iteration of the product one ups the last which was supposed to be the greatest gift to Adwords/IM glory on the planet.
Hey Brawnydt. Thanks for reading. I hope Bing catches on. I figure it will take Yahoo’s backend to make it really fly. Guess we’ll see. But I was playing with it last night and found it to be the best keyword/idea generator I’ve ever used. It totally oine ups Google Wheel Deal or whatever that crap is.
Hi Splork, Thank you for answering my questions and laying out a plan of action to
make a modest amount of money per week.
I was reading your new post about Blogprofitz as well as other positive comments in various posts about StoreStacker, BMD, BCD AMA, PLRPro etc. I am not sure how all of those things can get integrated in my basic start up plan.
I am willing to pay you for teaching me how to put together a money generating plan in a proper order with above tools, in addition to your advice of finding the key words, writing articles, building sites, getting back links etc.
Or am I too inexperienced to use these programs? Thank you for your explanation and time.
Hey Sam. I think you just need to get started. The basic is keyword research. Get Court’s free keyword report and follow it. Take those keywords you find and start writing articles around it. Post those articles on Hubpages, Squidoo and maybe Blogger. These are free. Buy yourself a domain and create a Wordpress blog and post on that. This will require hosting. Check out Hostgator. If you use Court’s link on his website he will give you access to some very good videos that will help. Read Griz’s site. They will both explain how to best get backlinks. That is honestly all there is to it. You just have to get started, move forward. If you paid me for my time I’d tell you the same thing.
I spent probably a good year around ’03-’04 making mistakes and adjusting. I don’t learn without mistakes. I know it’s frustrating but you just have to get started, take your lumps, ask questions and eventually things will start coming together. Just about everybody will tell you the same thing.
I’ve often found that MSN’s search engine returns more varied (and therefore useful) results.
Last week when I researched a financial topic, I got at least 4 pages of dupe content off of Google’s first SERP. Most of the other 10 results were rewritten versions of the same.
I used MSN’s search engine and had a much better time. More varied results, more relevancy, etc.
MSN’s search really does kick the crap out of Google’s, sometimes. It gives better user experience. Not to mention the whole monopoly thing.
yup so far I like bling, I have gone to it exclusively for images. Images it kicks ass.