well not too much progress has really been going on. I’ve been adding as much content to my second site as I can but in reality it’s meant to be a small niche site and there’s not too much more I can add. The reason I want to add more is to try to get it up in the rankings. Along with that drive, I went and purchased Angela’s Backlinks from the Warrior Forums. It’s only been a few days and I’m very excited to see the results! So far none, which is a bummer but I have high expectations as I hear they can be quite deadly in the SEO boost!

Here’s what my analytics is looking like so far:

It seems I keep adding content, and bookmarking, and backlinking with no effect at all on my rankings. In fact after adding Angela’s backlinks I lost my site off of Google, although it was still back on like page 5. It seems a bit early to tell anything yet but it is still frustrating. Don’t believe what everyone says, this stuff isn’t easy!!

Here are some stats (for site #2):

• Backlinks: Google (19), Bing (54), Yahoo (37)
• Ranking #1 on Bing for my main keyphrase (not my main site, but a couple posts…)
• Not on Google for main keyphrase
• Page #3 on Yahoo.com

Action Recently Taken:

• Angela’s Backlink Packet (30 so far)
• Add Content
• Social Bookmark
• Blog Commenting

I’ve had my new site up and running for about a week now and things are going much smoother than before. I installed wordpress right into the directory instead of going for a static html site and I’m never looking back (..for now). The convenience of WordPress and the plugins you can use are just too great to give up!

I’ve been driving some targeted traffic through search engines so far. No sales at ALL yet, which is pretty disappointing. My 1st site is JUST starting to see backlinks. It’s had ~50 on Yahoo and MSN/Live for weeks and just finally showed up on Google. I’m not sure the reason for that but it’s pretty frustrating and I hope it happens a lot sooner for my new site so I can get some traffic!

I’ve been doing a lot of social bookmarking for my newest site but the only site that I’ve ever got a backlink from (using onlywire.com) is Digg. I’m not sure if it has something to do with the nofollow of other sites or what. I’ve also had success using Weebly and receiving backlinks from that.

Here’s pretty much what I’ve done so far:

• Set up site/WordPress
• Install Theme
• Install Plugins (all in one SEO, Analytics, Google Sitemap Gen.)
• Use Amazon.com affiliate program to set up products (about 10 on my site so far)
• Submit site to MSN/Google
• Make a HubPage, Squidoo Lens, Weebly Page, Blogger.com Blog, WordPress Blog (all pointing to main site)
• Submit feeds to Feedagg.com/Feedburner
• Submit Ezine article

This has gained me about 18 backlinks, about 2 links per post/digg bookmark. A few from weebly. Hopefully soon I’ll start seeing some from the other work I’ve been doing! (keep in mind this is all from Live as I have no data from Google).

While I wait on google to get me the information I need about my first site (backlinks, keywords) I decided to get cracking and be as productive as I can. I decided to do some keyword research and found a keyword with 1,600 monthly searches, and 3,130 competing sites. This is a pretty small niche, and I’d like to first experiment with the small niches and build up and see how high I can eventually get. Much better to start too small than too big.

I’m still going to be active on my other site as well, and will try my hardest not to neglect it to focus on my new site. The mainly discouraging error in judgement with my first site is that I didn’t use a buying keyword. It’s a great ratio of searches to competition but people are typically going to sites like that to find free information. I have products on it but decided to put in some adsense to try to pull some revenue from that since most likely people are just going to be annoyed by the products I have put there. Although I do expect at least SOME sales from it, but I don’t expect it to be very consistant.

Wish me luck!

I’ve sort of stuck in a rut waiting on google to get back to me with what works for my site.  I’m hesitant to add more content.. mostly because I’m being lazy.

What I HAVE been doing is some social bookmarking and that type of thing.  I made a squidoo lens with pieces of my articles in it and some video’s I’ve made.  I also did that with some hubpages and some free blogs sites (wordpress, blogger).  I then went on to post comments in related blogs and lens’s and linked back to my site in them.

I have done all the on page SEO that I know of, and have submitted about 8 articles to a ton of directories.  I still don’t know if that’s going to help at all since I’m not getting any type of backlinks from google yet.  I’ve got about 200 views and ~10 clicks from ezine, which I don’t see as very worthwhile.  Unless they get me some really good backlinks I don’t think I’ll be doing too much article marketing.

Although Yahoo has been giving me some awesome backlinks from submitting my articles but they have yet to index any of my pages.  Live is giving me some great backlinks from digg.com bookmarking.  If you’re promoting your site by bookmarking definitely submit it to Digg.

That’s what I’ve been up to tonight!

C’mon google, get me some backlinks

Hello!  This site will be a recording of my journey to make money being an online marketer.  I would like to share my journey with others as well as have a log to reflect back on.  I find it useful to always write things down!

Ever since graduating high school and the thought of college and a job that I’d be working for 30 years at 9-5 tormented me.  I absolutely loathed the idea of being forced to go to school AGAIN and not only that but PAYING for it.  I would spend hours upon hours doing things that I had no interest at all to me.  Just the idea of it tortured me.  I was mad at not only that but society for that being the only reliable option for earning a living.  The times weren’t like they used to be when you could go to a factory or a plant and earn your living with your hands.

I’ve always been one to be connected to the computer.  Ever since I was young I was building websites and posting in forums and learning everything I knew off of the internet.  Even when I’m working on the computer I hardly mind it.

How I got interested in marketing is pretty interesting.  My friend for months had been telling me he wanted to do some quick get rich scheme because he feels the same way I do about college.  He’d been pushing me to try out these paid surveys that paid somewhere around fifty cents per survey.  I looked into it for about a day then brushed it off as being pretty stupid.  He then went out and bought a website for $200 and started selling some make money online products.  I thought it was an interesting approach but I didn’t think it’d amount to much, not because he wasn’t capable of it, but the idea of people buying those products was just outside my reality.

Now that was my first taste of the marketing concept.  I was lead to it by a second path as well.  I had read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and that book completely changed the way I look at life, and I completely recommend you to read it.  Not only that, but I believe it to be necessary that you read it!  Anyways, I went on YouTube to look at some video’s of The Power of Now, and I did.  I found this young fellow named Jonathan Budd.  He had made an incredible video about The Power of Now and how much it had improved his life and how much it helped him in his business.  So I looked over his video description and I saw that hmm.. he was into online marketing.  He seemed like such a genuine person and his view of life couldn’t be one filled with false idea’s of making money.  So I checked out his Online MLM masterminds course.  I liked what I saw and decided to give it a try.

What I read was what lead me to where I am today.  Through that book I got some pretty decent idea’s, nothing that would take me to where I really wanted to be but it sparked the itch.  What really brought me to the light was the forum http://www.warriorforum.com.  The amount of wealthy information there is ridiculous.  It is a gold mine for incredibly valuable internet marketing information.  The people there are absolutely amazing.

I had done a whole bunch of research (not enough) and mocked up a site on a free hosting/domain site.  I thought it looked good and that I had a great idea and decided to buy my first domain and host.  I paid about $60 for the domain and host.  I’d like to keep all my domains and niche’s to myself for personal reasons, sorry!  I had all the idea’s right, but I missed one important piece of the puzzle.  I picked a good keyword, but it wasn’t a buying keyword.  I picked one in the music niche and posted information for free about my niche.  Then I would put an “advanced learning” section and there I would place my clickbank products.  So far I haven’t had much traffic and am JUST starting to get organic search hits, about 2 weeks in.  I’ve done a lot of work with it and am teetering on making a new site while I wait to see the results of the methods of SEO I tried kick in.

This is where my journey is at now!  I hope you will continue to follow as I post some of the methods I am using and give me some encouraging words of advice!

Thanks for reading,

John