People are Lazy

I don’t know what it is about people that they always want to shortcut or think that their is a way to easily make money on the internet. Heed this advice, as soon as it gets easy, every Tom, Dick and Larry will jump into the mix as well creating competition. Once you have competition it gets much more difficult than before. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy of sorts, the easier something is - the more competition it generates. The more competition their is, then the more difficult it becomes.

This is something that most of the BANS world seems to have not been able to pick up on just yet. They are convinced they can just throw up 300 stores and start making money online easily. Here’s a newsflash, it isn’t going to happen, at least not for long. Google will make sure that if you produce a host of garbage thin affiliate sites that they will soon either be buried deeply in the SERPS or removed from the index altogether.

Would You Buy?

Most of us that try to make money online, also often shop online and surf the internet regularly so you are aware of what sites look like and how you react when you first click onto one. An easy question to ask yourself is “Would YOU buy from your own site?”

If you are anything like me, when I click onto a site for the first time, I make some assumptions about that site. One glimpse at it is usually enough to either inspire me to look around and see what they have or to hit the back button and try another search. So what would people say about your site? What would YOU say about your site.

Let’s say for instance you were a Star Wars fan and you wanted to buy little Johnny a Stormtrooper helmet for Christmas. Let’s say that you were to do a Google search and come across say this site what does that site say to you? Does it inspire you to look around? Does it make you want to stay? If you are like me, absolutely not. It’s an out of the box garbage BANS site with no content, no modifications of any kind and really no hope of making any money. If it does even show up in the SERPS it is probably ONLY because it is new and Google for some reason, ranks new BANS sites pretty high for a few weeks but they quickly disappear.

Now let’s say you hit the back button and land on another Stormtrooper Helmets site. Does it inspire a different feeling than the other site on first glance? Are you not a bit more inclined to check it out and look deeper for that helmet for little Johnny? I would hope so, considering the second site is mine. It is far from done as I still want to jazz up the front page and add a lot of content to the blog portion.

My strategy is usually to get a decent looking site up and see how it produces over the first few months, if it does reasonably well then I will invest a LOT more time into it producing content and try to build it into a content rich site that will stand the test of both time and a Google human review if it ever were to come.

Wordpress + BANS

As you can see by the Stormtrooper site it is a Wordpress blog with a BANS store integrated into it. This is a hot trend as of late and I am experimenting with it as well. I will say this, it is getting a lot of credit from a lot of BANS sites lately but to be honest, I don’t see it as all that necessary. It is just as easy to build a quality content laden site using a BANS template as it is with WP.

Many members are running around the BANS forums crying about Google hating BANS sites and that the sky is falling and if you don’t change now you are screwed blah blah blah. It’s pretty stupid if you ask me, because Google has NOTHING against BANS sites. What they do not want in their index are thin affiliate sites. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a BANS site or one of the other hundreds of Ebay affiliate store scripts out there that exist.

If your site offers nothing for users other than auctions then Google is going to punt it. Plain and simple. I want to repeat, you can build a very high quality BANS site as easily as you can build a high quality WP/BANS site too. It just requires one thing……work.

Conclusion

I know a number of well known bloggers and so called black hat sites promote a number of shortcut ways to make money. Put up 100 sites that make a dollar a day and you’ll become rich overnight. It’s a crock of crap, because what they don’t tell you is those first 100 domains will probably be de-indexed and then you need to put up another 100 sites.

Domains aren’t cheap, especially now that Google is punting anything e-commerce that exists on a .info domain. I used to subscribe that theory of building a bunch of sites that could produce a few bucks a week but it wasn’t for me and fortunately I very quickly modified my strategy. I would rather have 20 sites that produce a few thousand a month than 100 sites that produce a giant pain in the ass.

I am considering starting to develop sites for people who aren’t quite sure how to go about building their own.  I don’t know if that is even something that would be in demand but it’s something I am thinking about.  My BANS store mentoring process is proceeding nicely and Kel has tackled the hardest parts of building a BANS site and is in the home stretch.  I will post an update on that soon.

So in conclusion, do you think people would want to have sites built for them or are they going to continue to look for the easy way out?  Also let me know what you think of my Stormtrooper site….bear in mind that it is far from done and I would expect to have 30 or 40 content rich articles on it within the next 60 days.

Stormtroopers Rule!

SEO for Dumb Dumbs

SEO for dumb dumbs (me included) has always followed a very traditional sequence.

• Build a website
• Submit to Google, MSN, Yahoo
• Pay some Malaysian kid from Digital Point 20 bucks to submit to 4000 free directories
• Spam a few blogs to build some links….even though they are probably no follow.
• Repeat the process with the next crappy site.

This is pretty much the recipe that I see on the BANS forum for site SEO. Hundreds of people are doing it and I suspect that these same people are experiencing a very low level of success.

Much of the success involved with niche sites involves quantity. It’s pretty difficult to build just a few sites that will build a sustainable income no matter how hard you try. You need to be able to find a recipe that works and repeat it. This need for repitition can really tie up your time if you let it, so you are well served to determine what actually works and what is a waste of your precious time.

Let’s take a look at each step of the process.

Search Engine Submissions

Yes, no question you want to do this. I continually hear of people that will tell you to NEVER submit your sitemap to Google. Fly under the radar. Stay low and try to keep as much of your site a secret from Google as possible.

This is probably the most retarded thing that any of these retards could possibly say. Especially when you consider that most of them don’t even know why they should do this, only that they read it somewhere on some blog and it seemed like a cool thing to repeat. It would make them seem smart.

Submit your sitemaps. You want every search engine to know exactly what you are doing and everything about your site. If you’re cheating, then maybe you want to stay low….but for most normal people…submit your site as soon as you think it’s ready. Do not submit until it’s 90% complete though.

You can submit to Google, MSN and Yahoo. The rest of them aren’t worth the time in my opinion.

Directory Submissions

This might shock some of you.

Most Directory submissions are an absolute waste of your time, effort and energy. I see so many different people offering “200 Directory Submissions” or “500 Directory Submissions” services both on Digital Point and the BANS forum that it makes me scratch my head in wonder.

Now don’t get me wrong, most of these people are not charging big money for these submissions so most people say why not. Well…if you want to waste 50 bucks then why not donate it to charity or something worthwhile because you won’t get anything from these submissions.

In most cases they submit these to “Free” Directories. Google has looooooong since discounted any links from free directories. They are the scourge of the internet and Google knows it. Google has recently penalized a number of Directories down to a PR0 but even if a Directory still has pagerank doesn’t mean it is passing any juice to you. Check the Meta and the links to make sure they are not no follow.

Just right click on View Source and look for something like this on the actual page you want to be listed on.

META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOFOLLOW”

There are some Directories out there worth submitting to of course, but they are few and far between. Something that ALL of them will have in common is absolutely no guarantee of your URL showing up. If their only requirement is a reciprocal link, then don’t waste your time. If they list anyone and everyone that sends them a link…you can forget it.

A quality Directory listing will almost ALWAYS cost you money and STILL offer no guarantee of inclusion.

I am not going to name any of these bad directories as that isn’t the point of the article but here are a few key things to look for:

• If they are included in any automated or semi-automated software for submissions.
• How do they monetize? Google adsense everywhere - almost a sure sign they aren’t the deal.
• Minimum Requirements - What does it take to be approved?
• Pay Per Submit type submissions. If you pay you are guaranteed inclusion.

Google is onto this stuff. If you must waste your time then please, continue as you are doing but I’d be willing to be that half or better of these links never even index because the Google Bot doesn’t even crawl the directory anymore.

Good Directories

There are a number of quality Directories still in existence and you really should consider these. I know it’s hard to believe that 2 or 3 quality Directory submissions are worth 50 times what 100 garbage Directory submissions are worth but the simple truth is it’s a fact.

One of the most important things to consider when looking for a good Directory is whether they have an editorial policy or not in regards to submissions. If a human editor looks at the submission and then decides whether to include you or not then that is a good sign. It’s only good though if they actually have a quality standard.

Some examples of some great Directories to consider are:

• DMOZ - Owned by Google. You want to be here….it’s free BUT hard to get included.
• Yahoo - $299 non-refundable to submit and NO guarantee of inclusion.
• Best of the Web - $99 non-refundable annually and NO guarantee of inclusion.
• Business.com - $299 non-refundable and NO guarantee of inclusion.

There are many more out there but these will give you a few good solid examples to work from. Once you see what it takes to be included in a QUALITY directory vs. the other garbage ones then you will be able to recognize what is worth it or not.

I can’t stress enough….A DMOZ and a Yahoo Directory listing is probably worth more than 1000 submissions to any of these other useless directories.

Blog Posting Links

These can have a small amount of value but they are difficult to acquire a meaningful number. To make sure they have ANY value at all they should always be on a site that is relevant to the site you are linking to and they need to be Do Follow otherwise it won’t do you much good.

Yahoo still pays no attention to the No Follow attribute but you’re way ahead of the game to build your SEO plan to cater to Google and whatever else you get is a bonus.

Link Building Alternatives

So what do you do if you have no money to submit to these high quality Directories? Good question because it can be a difficult process. The problem for most people is it takes work and that is simply something they are not willing to do.

They want the easy way out. I am not going to elaborate much on the listings below but trust me they are still very viable and very wroth your time to build links to your sites.

• Article Marketing - Ezine, GoArticles, Article Trader etc.
• Social Bookmarking - Very Web 2.0 and Google adores Web 2.0 stuff right now.
  • Digg, Propeller, Delicious, Mister Wong and more…all worth the time.
• Squidoo pages - Build a lens for each of your sites, fill with relevant content and link to your site.
• Hubpages - Hubpages and Squidoo are both Web 2.0 and currently very popular.
• Zimbio - A form of blog posting combined with Article Marketing.
• Directory Submissions - QUALITY Directories. One Yahoo DL is worth 500 crappy ones…easy.

Article Marketing is currently my favorite and most productive free method of building backlinks. I write most of my own content and outsource a small part of it. I haven’t had the greatest luck with outsourcing content as most of the services tailored to this offer crappy writers.

So I write my own and I write it the way I want it to sound. Takes longer but oh well.

Conclusion

So in summary I don’t think it’s too hard to figure out my position on this subject. I usually am fairly outspoken and tell it like I think it to be. I should say that I am in no way any kind of an SEO professional and nor would I claim to be.

I know what I know and I write what I write based on my own personal experience from building a number of these websites. SEO takes time and it takes work, just like building your sites. If you think you can build a site in a day, submit it to Google, buy a 200 Directory listing package and sit back and count your money then you are wrong.

I am going to keep working my ass off today so I won’t have to work at all tomorrow.

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Learn to Build Niche Sites

Short update here today to share an idea that I stole from an acquaintence of mine.  One of the moderators at the BANS forums has taken on a “student” to show them how to build BANS stores from the ground up.  I thought this was a fantastic idea as I often find myself answering questions and trying to help those who are willing to learn.

So I shamelessly stole this idea and adopted it as my own and put a call out to my mailing list for a prospective student.  This was the hard part as I had a LOT of replies and a lot of people wanting help.  I’d like to be able to help everyone but that simply cannot happen, I’d never have time to do my own stuff.  As it is now I rarely post on this blog anymore because I am too busy building sites or writing articles.  They pay the bills, the blog is more for fun than anything else.

So the student I picked is a super nice gal from the land down under of Australia.  She is a potential stay at home Mom looking to earn a full time income from home.  Something all of us are probably trying to accomplish and what I liked about her is that she was incredibly enthusiastic.  So not to take anything away from anyone else, but this was the person I chose.  If this goes well maybe we can do another one down the road.

I will be blogging about the site and we will share the progress as it goes along.  The site is a very basic BANS setup for now so nothing to see.  If you’ve seen one out of the box BANS store then you’ve seen them all.  I have asked her to knock out the basics first:

• Get the site set up.  Remove the telltale signs of a BANS store.
• Make the categories unique.
• Take care of the Title tags, keywords and Meta descriptions first.

These are very dull things to be doing but they are critical to separate your BANS store from the 100 others that are in your same niche.  It’s also a very important step in optimizing your SEO.

I will share more as the project unfolds but I simply wanted to share my idea with you.  At least, the idea I stole from Dave. 

Impulse Shopping

If you are going to be successful using the BANS software then you have to realize that the first goal you have is to get targeted traffic to your sites. You can FORGET everything you know about traffic generation when it comes to blogs, because it doesn’t apply.

You want organic search traffic and everything you do in regards to “marketing” should be with the intention of building links. Forget Stumble, forget most social sites, forget Facebook….all you care about is organic search traffic, because they are buyers. Blog readers are recreational readers, search engine visitors came there for a reason. They are there to find information or buy something and in many cases both.

If you have a fuzzy blue widget store then you should have a lot of content articles about fuzzy blue widgets. How great they are, what you can do with them, how to find them cheaper, how to make them into green fuzzy blue widgets….you name it. All of this content is what will help you rank in the SERPS and ultimately bring in targeted search engine traffic.

The Art of the Cookie

Once you have a visitor captured on your site, you want to provide them as few outlets as possible and do anything you can to get your cookie into their browser. If you can get them to click on any auction, then you own them for 7 days. That is unless they click someone else’s affiliate link during that time.

You want to do anything you can to get that cookie onto their machine. You can do that by providing the exact item that they came to find out information for in a convenient and easy to find location. If your visitor comes to your site, reads your fuzzy blue widget article but then leaves, then you won’t make a nickel.

People are impulses shoppers. If at the bottom of all of your content pages, you had a series of auctions for the exact product they were just reading about, they will be very inclined to click on one of these auctions to check out the details. It’s human nature.

You successfully achieved the cookie implant. Now for the next 7 days, you will earn a commission on anything they might buy on ebay. It might be a fuzzy blue widget or it could be something entirely different. I routinely earn commissions for items that I do not have a site built around. This is a no brainer….it’s like putting the gossip magazines at the checkout counter at the grocery store, you can’t help but check out the headlines.

Conclusion

The easiest way to show you how to do this is to show you an example.  You can generate this list of products via the EPN tools using the Editor kit.  A child of 5 could figure it out once you know where to look but feel free to email me via my contact page if you need some help.   Now bear in mind that you need to put yourself in the shoes of a searcher who is thinking about buying a product and looking for more information.

You search on your keywords, click on whichever search result grabs your attention and hopefully you land on one of my sites.  You land on my content article where I am reviewing the very product you are looking to buy.  You read my article, you like what you read but now what.  In my case, I will have auctions right there in front of you.

If that is the case, then you are almost virtually guaranteed to click on one of the auctions and when you do….you just became a potential income stream for me. If you want another example of a method you can use that is similar in concept then check out my cheap motorcycle helmets site. It is a Wordpress/BANS store hybrid site where I use phpbay at the bottom of the posts instead but you get the idea. You can do the same thing with the editor kit, it just takes about 5 times as long as phpbay.

Enjoy. My passive cash machine sites are on track to smash last month’s earnings. SMASH!

Inevitably when I dig a little deeper it is almost always someone who thinks that making money online is easy, that they can just buy an ebook, throw up a website or two and the money starts rolling in. When it doesn’t start showing up by the dump truck load, they look for excuses. The blame is placed on almost anything or anyone OTHER than where it belongs and that is right on them.

Realistic Expectations

It is usually a case of not having realistic expectations, which is an unfortunate side effect of all of these wonderful internet marketers we have in the world that convince people how easy it is to become a millionaire. When they fail to hit 100k in the first month then they think they are a failure because everyone else seems to have done it.

All I can say is bullshit. Most of these internet marketers are driving around in a clapped out Dodge Caravan or something like that, I would doubt too many of them actually own the Ferrari in the picture, no matter what they claim.

I think it is critical that a new niche site builder have some realistic expectations as to how much income they can make online. I haven’t done a study on this of any kind so bear with me as I pull numbers out of thin air but I think realistically if you were to make somewhere between 10 and 20k in your first year that would be great and probably better than 98% of your peers.

It would certainly be possible to make more than that, especially if you have the skills to develop your own product but I am speaking of niche sites like BANS and Adsense type sites here. If you put in the time, effort and energy then anything is possible but I would say 10k is a decent target for your “average” niche site builder who puts in 5-6 hours a week working on these sites.

Unrealistic Expectations

I ran across a BANS user in the forum today who claims to have been working on his BANS sites (four of them) for close to a year now and has yet to even earn back the investment in BANS. Wow…Immediately I thought something has GOT to be wrong with this guy, he certainly sounded like he was sincere and truly wanted to make them work. I mean an entire year on only 4 sites, he must be dedicated right?

Wrong!

After the thread developed it turns out this guy has yet to know how to get backlinks, has no content on his site at all, is using the out of the box BANS templates and was whining that he barely even had an hour or two a week to spend on his sites.  He claimed to not even know how to get backlinks…..after a YEAR!!!

If you don’t have more than an hour a week to dedicate to this endeavour then don’t do it. You will not be successful and you will fail. So don’t bother.

If you expect to earn 10,20, 50 or even 100k a year building niche sites then you are going to have to find the time. I work 50-60 hours a week at my day job and usually am on the road 3 days a week. I find the time to unpack my laptop at night at the Hampton Inn and work on my niche sites. I am often working until 2 in the morning writing content and developing sites, because I am dedicated to my business.

Business?

Niche Sites are a Business

Yes I use the term business. If you expect to be successful then you MUST invest as much time, effort and energy that a business owner would invest in a brick and mortar business. If you know anyone that owns one they can tell you that it isn’t easy. It’s a LOT of work and can drain you if you are not prepared for the investment.

If you are smart and work hard then the huge investment in time will be worth it as your empire grows and becomes self sufficient. I am working hard now so that I won’t have to later. Every time I build and develop a niche site, it becomes a little cash register out there working for me. A cash register that requires minimal upkeep and maintenance.

I put as much time into planning my week as any business owner. I write an outline every Sunday of what I want to accomplish for the week and the plan to get it done. Will this work for everyone? I don’t know, myself I am a list person and I have to have a checklist otherwise I wander all over the place and usually end up reading blogs all night.

I don’t want anyone to misunderstand what I am saying here. It is not hard work if you compare it to someone working construction in Georgia in July. Making money online using BANS is fairly easy if you are smart enough to pay attention to the few people on the forum who do know what they are talking about and willing to invest the time to learn the fundamentals of SEO.

You can build the prettiest BANS site on the planet but if it doesn’t rank well in the SERPS then it’s going to be a pretty site that makes you NO money.

Conclusion

I guess this turned into more of a rant post than anything else. I didn’t intend it to be that way but I simply despise the false expectations that are foisted upon the masses by Internet marketers. You aren’t going to make 10k dollars this weekend or 5000 dollars a week without a lot of work. I mean a LOT of work.

If you are looking to make a few extra bucks to pay the bills then BANS sites are perfect for that. I think almost anybody could make a few hundred bucks a month. If that’s what your goal is then what are you waiting for, 1 or 2 decent sites and you could easily make this much.

If your goals are much loftier than that then you will need to take a more structured approach to your niche site building if you are going to achieve a full time income. You will also need to invest more than an hour a week…I guarantee it…..regardless of what some slick willy marketer will tell you.

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Learn to Build Niche Sites

What the heck does that mean? Well you might not know it yet but this might be the BEST advice you ever get on building niche sites. I was inspired to write this after a recent pass through the BANS forum and found a number of frustrated niche site builders who, despite their best efforts, were not making any money.

One particular post grabbed my attention that is probably a great example of why so many newbies fail to make any money.  In a nutshell this person was asking about optimizing a page around a number of different keywords.  I give him kudos for at least knowing enough to optimize the pages around keywords but the ones he listed looked rather odd to me.

Once you have been building niche sites for a while, you kind of get a feel for how people search the internet. I don’t know why and I sure wouldn’t depend on feel but after running the keyword tools for so long you just get in tune with what kinds of keywords people enter into search engines. The keywords that this poster was optimizing for might make sense in your head but I just knew they wouldn’t produce any search results.  Sure enough, a quick plug into Wordtracker and it returned ZERO results.

What a waste of time….to optimize a page around a keyword that nobody is looking for.

Why Fact Based

I often see this mistake being made….and it’s a big one. People are so confused by what a niche site really is. I think most of them are under the impression that a niche is some whacky little subset of the world where no competition exists. They will build entire sites around a niche that nobody cares about, simply so they can dominate it.

Guess what, dominating a niche that nobody cares about amounts to being the King or Queen of NOTHING. If you don’t have a decent amount of people searching for your product then there is NO money to be made. If you are ranked #1 for fuzzy blue widgets but nobody searches for fuzzy blue widgets other than you, it’s a fact that you will not make any money.

You must be FACT based in your keyword selections and build your sites around keywords that get searched on or you will not make any money. This is applicable to the pages in your site as well. If you are building custom pages for a BANS site, then optimizing for keywords that don’t get searched on is pretty much a waste of time.

That bears repeating.  Build your sites around keywords that actually get searched for, not that sound good in your head.

Traffic Interruption

This may seem simplistic but your goal with a BANS store is to interrupt the traffic flow and insert your site somewhere in the process. The “process” I am referring to is the selling process.  A person will sit down at their computer, type search terms into it looking for the product they want to buy. Google will return some relevant sites, the searcher will check out what they have to offer, evaluate whether they want to buy or not and then either proceed with a purchase or try a different search term.

Your goal is to insert your site into that process and the ONLY way to do that is to optimize around the terms they punch into Google. Once you know what someone is searching for, then you need to tackle the job of ranking well for that search term.

You are building your sites and pages around “fact based” search terms that will bring you visitors. Visitors bring sales and sales bring commissions.

Conclusion

Don’t fall for trying to build a site that you think is pretty or that makes sense to you. You are doing nothing more than rolling the dice by using keywords that you pick out of your head. I invest a lot of time in building my niche sites and I damn sure expect a return on my investment.

If I wanted to roll the dice I’d go to Vegas and gamble. I am building a passive income stream for life and I’d much rather be fact based and ensure I get a return on my investment. If I were to pick the two biggest mistakes people make it would be building a site that is either too broad or too narrow and optimizing pages around keywords that make no sense.

I personally use Keyword Elite for my own keyword work and it serves me well. It’s expensive but I like it, it works and I plan to stick with it. You can use others but at the very least use one and use it well.

Bans Site Strategy

It seems like the prevailing winds when it comes to the BANS software involves mass creation. Setting up a huge number of sites as fast as possible and hope to make a few bucks a day off each site. I don’t know where this trend started, probably left over stinking thinking from the adsense niche site builders.

A key part of many people’s adsense strategy is to actually build a sub-par site that will not solve or answer the problem that the searcher was looking for in the first place. When they can’t find the answer on your site, they click out on one of your adsense ads and move on.

I think this kind of thinking has permeated the BANS crowd as well, at least that has been my experience. You rarely see anyone touting the benefits of building a mega site but rather an empire of mini-sites. They both have their pros and cons and I used to subscribe to the “empire” theory. That has changed dramatically in the last few weeks.

Niche Site Strategy Change

I am a huge advocate of testing and trying different things and I have always said that there isn’t any ONE correct way to do anything. Some people will tell you to NEVER use Adsense on a BANS site, some will tell you not to use affiliate links on BANS sites, others will tell you that hyphens in the domain names are a bad thing. There is no shortage of bad advice being given on a daily basis.

My theory is that you don’t know if any of this is true unless you try it for yourself. Adsense might not work in some niches, but may work GREAT in others. The same could be said for affiliate links, they might not convert on your golf club site but they may convert even better than Ebay on your digital camcorder site. Just because someone else tells you that it won’t work, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try it.

My previous strategy had been to build as many sites as possible this year in order to get as big a footprint as I could and start the aging process for the domains. In order to accomplish this, I would build sites very quickly and sometimes overlook some of the key data I should be looking at. I would also find myself building niche sites in niches that I had absolutely ZERO interest in. With zero interest comes zero content creation because I cannot stomach writing articles about topics I have to research.

My typical site would be built using stock Ebay categories and would have about five 350ish word articles on the site to draw traffic. About 6 weeks ago I decided to try something dramatically different with a niche that I personally love. I build a site that was in a niche that I can generate content for all day long, because I love the topic, it’s a hobby of mine. The only thing I will say is that it is motorcycle related.

The site to date has produced more income than any other niche site I have built in its first 6 weeks and it should only get better as I continue building content. I have 15 “product review” type articles that are quite relevant to the niche so far and I plan to continue adding about 3 a week until I simply exhaust the possibilities.

Niche Site Flexibility

The best part about this niche is that I can build a network of niche sites based around this topic. I won’t reveal all that much about the niche other than to say I could easily build a small network of sites that are similar to this one that I can use to link back and forth as they are very relevant to each other.

I could see growing these into approximately a 10 store empire that will outproduce the 100 stores I planned on building all day long. I still have a number of other niche sites that are scattered amongst various topics but without that steady flow of content, they simply do not draw the type of traffic that I need to make serious cash. They produce a hit a couple of times a week and easily pay the domain and hosting fees but I have set my sights MUCH MUCH higher than a few thousand dollars a year.

If you are building a BANS store empire of your own then I would suggest that you try the same strategy and see what you think. Find a niche that you absolutely LOVE and build a site that is 5 or 10 times the size of the sites you were building before. Spend a few weeks building it as opposed to a few hours and measure your results.

If yours are similar to mine then you will be pleasantly surprised at the earnings capability. You should also find writing content to be much more enjoyable than writing about antique mantel clocks or some other scintillating topic like that. (No offense to antique clock lovers.)

Conclusion

As good as this site is doing, I know I will still have the sandbox to deal with. The movie site that I have referred to in the past has definitely hit the sandbox and traffic is down from an average of 100 uniques a day to less than 20. It’s normal and I am not concerned as I know how to bring them out of the box but it still stinks.

I am still going to build an empire of niche sites but I am going to build each one more thoroughly than before and I am not going to worry so much about hitting 100 sites as I am going to worry about how much revenue they each produce. Once you hit a strong niche, you kind of see what is possible and it can get your juices going no doubt.

I am still a fan of small numbers, I am just changing my idea of what “small” is. Whatever you do, make sure you do something. You won’t make money online sitting there like a bump on a log. You could be making money online right now, instead of reading about ME making money online.

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Learn to Build Niche Sites

Are You Kidding Me? This person has invested the time and effort as well as 100 dollars for the BANS software without even the slightest foundation of SEO or even basic niche site fundamentals.

Who doesn’t know to use Google Analytics or any of the other 10 billion stat tracking packages out there? I was flabbergasted.

Victim Mentality

I have noticed another phenomenon on the BANS board and that is what I call Victim mentality. A person will ask a basic question that they could find the answer to in 2 minutes using the search function or Google. Why would anyone wait for someone to give you an answer? You will NEVER succeed in niche site building or Internet Marketing (or anything at all) if you don’t have the gumption to go find answers for yourself.

I don’t think I have ever run into a problem that I haven’t been able to resolve using Google and a bit of common sense. If you are contemplating building niche sites or becoming an internet marketer then take a look in the mirror and make sure you have the level of commitment necessary to succeed.

Invest In Yourself

Too many people think that building niche sites is simply a matter of buying the package, a domain and building a blue widget store. It isn’t that easy or simple and never let anyone (including me) kid you into thinking it is. You will need to invest time, effort and energy along with a lot of hours if you expect to build enough sites and the right sites in order to succeed.

I would suggest that you should read everything you can find about SEO basics. You don’t need an elaborate education in SEO but you should have a working knowledge of SEO and the fundamentals involved here. A decent understanding of:

• SERPs - What is it? How do you check your rankings.
• Link Building - Anchor text, do follow, no follow and the basics.
• Title Tags, Meta Tags and Keywords - Basic understanding of what these are and how they work.
• On Page SEO/Off Page SEO
• Keyword Research
• Competition Analysis
• Niche Discovery Techniques
• Keyword density and the need for content.
• Duplicate content.
• Bookmarking, Link Directories and Article Directories.
• Blackhat methods and how to avoid them.

I know I probably missed a few basics but many of these categories are pretty broad and encompass a lot things. If you see something on the list that you don’t understand pretty well then Google it. I am sure if you play with it a few minutes you can find a TON of information on any of the topics.

Success Takes Work

A basic understanding of SEO is so important that I can hardly explain it, and upon further thought I don’t think I will even try. If you don’t have a pretty good idea of what SEO is and how you can use it to your advantage then you are destined to fail. I love analogies, not understanding SEO is like a QB not knowing the playbook, it’s like a Cook forgetting the recipe, it’s like a judge not understanding the law.

In case you haven’t figured it out then SEO is important. Actually, important isn’t even a strong enough word for it…it is CRITICAL to your success. So critical that you simply WILL NOT succeed without it.

I assume that most people have a goal of developing a sustainable income from their niche sites. If you truly expect to develop a 50-100k dollar annual income from these sites then can’t you invest in yourself to develop a crucial foundation for your future?

Of course should be the right answer.

SEO Gurus

The problem with SEO techniques is that so many claim to know it and try to teach it yet even they don’t know what works either. They simply rehash everything that they have read and make it sound like they know what they are doing.

When I was learning what I know about SEO I was fortunate enough to pick up a copy of Aaron Wall’s SEO Book which was great. It cost some money but it was an education that was WELL worth it. I would still recommend it but Aaron has changed his business model and now offers his services for a monthly fee. I am not personally a fan of monthly fees but the education is worth it in my opinion. You can check out Aaron’s SEO Training here and see if it works for you.

Another guru that I am a BIG BIG fan of is Brad Callen. Brad is the mastermind behind some of the most popular internet marketing tools ever put out on the market, SEO Elite and Keyword Elite. They are both dynamite and also worth it once you have decided to make this your career. Brad offers a program that you can buy for a one time fee of 97 dollars called SEO Mindset. 97 dollars is a lot of money to some but compared to the education that you get it is a song.

You can spend hours trying to piece together information from so called gurus or you can get an education from two people who are widely known as experts in their field. Easy choice if you ask me.

Conclusion

This is kind of a rant post and for that I apologize. It frustrates me to no end to see people jump into things completely unprepared and then disappointed when they fail. Many of these people will blame BANS or EPN or Google for their woes when the blame lies squarely on their own shoulders.

I wouldn’t THINK of taking apart a transmission without at least having a manual to consult, I wouldn’t perform surgery without an education and I sure wouldn’t practice law without the right degree so why on earth would I try to build websites without the slightest clue?

I am a firm believer in making your own luck. You can make your own luck by educating yourself before taking the plunge and failing.

Success is a choice.

Duplicate Content

I frequent the BANS forums a lot and there is always a number of questions revolving around content creation. As is usually the case, most know that content is critical, but they don’t want to do any work to create it. I see a lot of interest in using Ezine articles or article spinning software.

Posting Ezine articles on your site is almost useless. If you follow the rules and keep the original authors bio intact then all you are doing is advertising for them. If you remove their information then you are breaking the TOS for Ezine and STILL won’t get ahead because Google will easily recognize your article as duplicate content and pay it absolutely no attention. That’s right…they discriminate against duplicate content. Not all content is created equally.

I often hear people referring to a duplicate content penalty, I am not aware of any “penalty” you pay as much as the search engine will simply ignore the duplicate content. If you use enough duplicate articles then I suppose Google might consider removing your site from the index altogether. That would surely be a penalty I wouldn’t want to pay. I don’t think they do that but I am not going to be the one to find out.

No matter how you spin it, duplicate content will not help your cause in any way so why bother?

Article Directories

Even though I am a big fan of building Web 2.0 links, I still write a lot of articles related to my sites as well. These take considerably longer but they have a number of benefits that directory submissions and social bookmarks don’t offer.

First they advertise for your site. If a search engine visitor is searching on blue widgets and they come across your “blue widget” article on Ezine that grabs their attention and directs them to your blue widget site then you just gained a potential customer.

Second they allow you to build very high quality backlinks. Google will take a number of things into account when evaluating your links, PR of the two pages, the title tag of the two pages, the keyword densities of the two pages, the anchor text of the links etc. A well prepared article can really hit a homerun on all of these accounts and generate a strong backlink for you. Ezine (my favorite) is currently a PR6 backlink.

Third they carry a lot of authority with Google. At least some of them do. I don’t waste my time submitting to 100 different article directories. It has been my experience that at least half of them are completely ignored by Google and usually barely (if ever) even get the link indexed. I only use a handful of different article sites and Ezine is my clearcut favorite.

I often hear of people taking and submitting the same article to a number of different directories AND using it on their site to boot. Big mistake. The more you post that article around the web then the less weight it carries so why bother. If you are just doing it for the link, then skip the article altogether and just use a bookmarking site or link directory instead.

If you must use the same articles, then at least rewrite them a BARE minimum of 30% and I personally would rewrite 75% or better of it before I reused it. It doesn’t take that much effort and once you practice you can knock out articles at will.

Content Creation

Another mistake I think some make is thinking that they need to be writing a masterpiece or something. It is not necessary to have the mind of a Stephen King or the word count of a Tolstoy. It not that difficult to write 300-400 words on just about any subject. I can knock out a 400 word article in about 15 minutes that I think most would deem pretty decent.

I struggled with content creation in the early days but I found that cheating a bit helped me out tremendously. What I did was find an Ezine article that was close to what I had in mind for my article and then rewrite that. I found it be MUCH easier to rewrite someone else’s article than it was to write an article from scratch.

The articles would always pass Copyscape and they were my own words and thoughts, they just used someone else’s article as a blueprint. I don’t know if this will work for everyone but it worked great for me and might help you get started.

Once you have been writing for a few weeks then I’d be willing to bet you can transition to writing your own stuff from scratch quite easily. I should mention that it also helped that I was writing on this blog quite frequently too.

Conclusion

I chose my title to the post kind of tongue in cheek but in reality it is quite true. Google will discriminate against duplicate content and who knows just how far they are willing to take it. If you use enough duplicate content then you could be labelled a spam site and be removed altogether.

It really isn’t worth it and if you are going to become a serious niche site builder then you will have to master the art of content creation. You might not like it, but the facts are the facts. Start out rewriting other people’s articles and it will get easier.

I would strongly advise against using article spinners. I hate those things and while they may work today, Google is quickly working on Latent Semantic Indexing which will be able to determine if your articles make sense. Spinners will be in trouble then and to be honest, they don’t work that great now anyways.

The bottom line is that content creation is one of those things you will have to develop a gameplan for and to master. It is CRITICAL to ranking well in the SERPS and to draw longtail traffic. Try some of the things we discussed and see if they work for you.

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Update: I recently shared the revenue of one of my newly created niche sites.  It finished its first month at 70 dollars and I told you my goal for the site was about 100 per month.  It’s June 16th and I am almost at 100 dollars month to date.  I am currently sitting at 94 dollars with another 15 days to go.  Keep you posted but if you haven’t considered using BANS to build your niche sites then it’s your loss.

Types of Backlinks

I am not going to bore you with yet another backlink article as every blogger on the planet has written this post. We all know that you can:

• Submit to Link Directories
• Write Articles and Submit to Article Directories
• Comment on Blogs
• Submit to Social Bookmarking Sites
• Do Guest Posts
• Link Exchanges
• Buy Text Links
• Put links in your forum signatures and post frequently
• FaceBook Profiles
• MySpace profiles

In all seriousness you can use all of these techniques and then some that I haven’t listed. In reality you could spend all darn day building links from a wide selection of bookmarking sites. I personally think you would be better off hiring some college kid who needs a few bucks for 10 dollars an hour and get them to comment on blogs and write articles for you.

Why not outsource? Depends on whether your time is worth more than the money you would have to spend to get someone to help you.

Quality Vs. Quantity

There has always been an argument as to which is better for SERPS, the quality of the links coming at you or the quantity of the links coming at you. The answer might surprise you.

Quantity of links will definitely help you work towards your goal of SERP domination and you really can’t go wrong with the number of links you build, the more the better as long as you don’t unwittingly link from a spam farm or a banned site. I use Bookmarking Demon to quickly generate a few hundred links when getting a site up and running for the first few weeks.

It is very easy for me to generate hundreds of links using BD but if you are doing it manually then it can take you a considerable amount of time to build say 500 backlinks. Most niche site builders either use directory submissions or blog comments when they are first starting out so think how long it would take to leave 500 comments? Oooof.

The sad part is, the majority will be nofollow links and they will come from PR0 pages. PR0 links have value, but it just takes hundreds and hundreds of them to help you rank very well. They will often come from unrelated or marginally related pages and Google just doesn’t reward you very well for this type of link.

The Power of Web 2.0 Links

I will be the first one to say that I am no genius but I do try to pay attention to the things around me. I always try to pay attention to what sites rank well in a Google search for various products. It is quite often I will come across some of the following pages ranking on the first page of search results:

• Squidoo Pages - These things rank really well.
• Digg Submissions - Google digs Digg. They index these articles quickly and they always rank really, really well.
• Propeller Submissions - Very Digglike. Google loves this bookmarking site. Use it.
• Delicious Submissions - Ditto
• Bibsonomy - This bookmarking site indexes FAST and ranks well.
• Furl - Again another social bookmarking site that Google loves.
• Blogger Blogs - No question Google loves itself. Google blogs rank well.
• Ezine Articles - I often see these pages ranked in the top 5
• YouTube - Youtube videos almost always show up on page 1 search results.

If you think about it when was the last time you saw a blog comment post be indexed and rank on page 1 of Search Results? How about those 400 Directory submission links? Do you ever see any of those sites show up on page 1 of the SERPS?

The answer is no. But I bet you see Youtube videos, Ezine articles, Digg submissions etc on page 1 of the SERPS. So knowing this, how do you think you should spend your time?

Quality of Links

Let’s discuss a bit how you use these types of sites as they provide a few different opportunities for you. If you submit a Digg for an article on your site, then you of course are going to link to your site so you can build backlinks with perfect anchor text to your site. That is the first benefit.

The second benefit is that it is not uncommon for a Digg to rank page 1 within a few hours while your site may still be buried deeper in the SERPS. Your site may not be page 1 but if your Digg is, then it is essentially the same thing and a good crutch in the meantime while you continue building back links.

Google loves these types of sites. This shouldn’t be any secret to anyone if you just pay a bit of attention to the search results you get. Go try it…I bet within 3 searches you see either a YouTube video or a Digg submission on page 1 for just about anything you search on.

Why wouldn’t you harness Googles love for these sites and make sure your link building campaign always starts here. You’re a fool if you overlook the power of these sites and continue submitting to these useless directories that Google doesn’t even pay any attention to anymore in my opinion.

Web 2.0 Social bookmarking sites are the in thing right now.

Conclusion

The facts are you will need both quantity and quality of links so reality is that you will need to spend time building all kinds. My point is that you should definitely focus on the links that will give you the fastest results and I can tell you from experience that what I have written above is true.

Harness Googles love of social bookmarking and spend time on those sites early, them move on to the rest of your link building strategy. It’s a small tweak to what you are doing now, but it could yield significant advantages in traffic. I have one site that I own #3-#10 in the SERP results with my Digg submission, my Propeller submission, my Ezine article etc.

Searchers for that keyword have very few choices OTHER than one of my pages.

Is that an advantage? Uhhh yeah. Check out this new software that can automate this process for you. It’s pretty cool and I am using the trial version now to see what I think. I will write a full review later after I have some time to experiment.

On the surface, this looks like exactly the tool I have been looking for as it hits all of the sites that I listed above and then some. Let me know what you think.