The Viral Train To Easy Money - It's Just Like Beefy Bertha's Knickers.

Have you heard? Have you heard! The secrets out about how to make easy money. Anyone can do it. You start by getting a good Technorati ranking - and it's so easy to do.

This is what Beefy Bertha has to say, "It's simply amazing two weeks ago my Technorati ranking was 1,124,674 and today it's 961. It's magic."

This part of the money making secret is all about viral marketing, sort of a chain thingy with links.

Back to Beefy Bertha, "There's always a way to work the system. When I joined Weight Watchers I wore six sweaters, five skirts, hiking boots and lead lined knickers. Then each week all I had to do was take off a sweater or skirt and I'd lost weight. No effort. I plan to be slimmer of the year when I eventually take off my lead lined knickers. The world will be agog. It's the same with these Blogging rankings you just fiddle the system."

Yes, it's all perfectly true. Catch all of the viral trains and away you go. Don't worry if you've missed one there will be plenty more along soon. You just copy all of the hundreds of links on to your blog post and that's it. Like Bertha said it's magic, down will come your Technorati ranking, no problem.

"Yes, but doesn't the person who starts up the viral train come out of it best? What with his/her link to the full instructions on his/her own blog?"

Well yes, but shhhh! let's not bother with trivialities. Let's move on to Alexa Rankings. This is the second part of the secret. You join up with the all of the Hit Exchanges, you know like Blog Explosion, Blog Soldiers and Blog Mad. Mad's the right word!

This way you can get thousands of visitors to your blog and they all stay for at least 20 seconds. Fantastic. Of course you need to spend some time visiting other blogs also for 20 seconds but that's okay because you are getting one over on the system - and that's what we all want, don't we? Blow this idea of building your customer base on a firm foundation.

Lots of cosmetic visitors will bring down your Alexa ranking. More magic. And guess what? With all of those viral links as well, then blow me down, your PageRank will improve as well. It's all sleight of hand or something.

So your Technorati and Alexa Ranking have improved dramatically, by following this formula, and your PageRank has improved (and maybe your Technorati favourites as well) so what do you do now? Sponsored Posts that's what. Fill your blog or blogs with them. Pack them into every small space. Some of them will want to pay your more now as you are such an esteemed blogger.

"Yes, but is that fair on the people who are paying for the sponsored posts?"

Do you want to make money or not?

"Yes."

Okay, in a nutshell the formula is:

(1) Start a blog.
(2) Join all of the gravy, sorry viral chains/trains.
(3) Join all of the Hit Exchanges and, as soon as possible afterwards ...
(4) Write loads of Sponsored Posts.

But be quick about it, before everyone in the Blogosphere is doing the same. Just think of what could happen then.

Be warned though, steps are already being taken. PageRank are increasing their rankings* up to 20 and Technorati are starting at minus numbers* once you get to the number one position. So the top blogs will go 3, 2, 1, -1, -2, -3 and so on. This may be confusing as you could be the number one with a number of -49,671 and you'd never know.

It's all an illusion this blogging business, a bit like life. There's no such thing as reality, there is only how we perceive things to be.

So what do you reckon? Is this the real formula for success. Tell you what, leave a comment and I may well give you some Love Link in return. Better still we could start a Love Link viral train with the links ... full speed ahead to nowhere.

Now about this Konnie Huq ...

Good luck,
Mike.

This post was sponsored by BBTS Bloggers Beating The System.
* a figment of imagination.



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Link Love Day

Link Love Day and I'll start with three posts:

What to do when someone steals your content
Julio of the 15 Thousand Dollar Mission writes: '... lately I´ve had 5 different blogs copy a post of mine, html links and all, without naming the source (while many others continue naming this blog as the source), so I was wondering, what does one do when such things happen?' The post goes on to answer the question. Must admit I get annoyed when blogs 'steal' some of my posts ... perhaps some action is needed!

What a blogger can learn from Paris Hilton
From the blog Make Money on Line: 'You might think this girl is simply a dumb blond, but is she? Let’s have a look at the facts and see what bloggers can learn from Miss Paris Hilton.' In view of my recent posts mentioning Konnie Haq and Kate Middleton this post made me smile - it's blatant search engine bait. Tut, tut!

Epions
This post from Money, Money, Money starts out by saying: 'Epinions is a US review writing site. The site is free to join and open to international members, but all reviews must be in English. It works differently from the UK sites Ciao and Dooyoo, in that ...' You'll have to read the post to discover the differences and also how you can make money with Epions.

I'll move on now to four members of my MyBlogLog community. They were picked at random.

I must give more attention to MyBlogLog as I am getting some good referrals from their site every week. Have you joined yet?


Just click on a photo to go to their MyBlogLog page. It'll be interesting to see who of the four gets the most clicks. From left to right they are: JennyHow, abhishekkumar, Retire Rich Blog and 10K-money-blog.

That's all for today. Tomorrow's post will be my Weekly Report.

Good luck,
Mike.


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Keywords, Images & Konnie Huq Again

I'm following on from yesterday's post today but mainly focusing on keywords.

I've written before about the value of having secondary keywords alongside your main keyword (or phrase). This way you can compete with the 'big boys'.

Yesterday I mentioned Konnie Huq. If I put her name into Google my blog, as you would imagine, is nowhere in the listings - at least not on the first couple of pages. But, if you remember, I also said yesterday that my keywords alongside 'Konnie Huq' were 'low + cut + dress'.

If I put 'Konnie Huq dress' into Google this blog is in on the first page, in second position. For 'Konnie Huq low cut' this blog is also on the first page.

And before anyone says that it's unlikely searches will be made with the keywords mentioned - well people have! The reason being is that the main news story yesterday in the UK, about Konnie, was because she was wearing a very low cut dress to a film premier. If she'd been out and about in jeans and a t-shirt she wouldn't have been a news story and people wouldn't have searched her name. It was the dress that was as much the news as Konnie herself. It's necessary to pick out the essence of a news story as keywords.

The above also illustrates once again, as with Kate Middleton, that if you post about hot topics you'll get extra visitors via search engines and also from Technorati tags (providing you use them, of course). It also shows how quickly you can get on Google if you do things the right way - exploit what's hot.

Moving on slightly, I would recommend that you have a tracker which shows the keywords search engines have used to send traffic to your blog. If your counter/tracker doesn't do this try eXTReMe Tracking - they list all keywords.

From this list you can then see what words are working for you. Sometimes this may be because you have written about something specific. If you see certain keywords are working, because of the subject matter of a post you have published, you can then do a follow up on the same theme. This will most likely get further search engine referrals.

The old cliche is right: Give people what they want, not what you think they want. You can judge this, to a degree, by looking at your tracker's list of keywords.

One more thing ...

About images, as per yesterdays post. Shane has left me a comment to say: 'You should use dashes instead of underscores to separate the words, since search engines don't see underscores as spaces.' He mentioned this as I wrote about how photos/images should have proper keyword titles. I gave the example of konnie_huq_low_cut_dress. According to Shane I should have used the title konnie-huq-low-cut-dress instead.

After all of this talk about low cut dresses I think it must be time to take a break. Keep an eye on those keywords!

Good luck,
Mike.


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Konnie Huq And An Eureka Moment About Images

I was thinking about keywords, while looking at a friend's blog stats, and suddenly had an Eureka moment. Okay what I'm about to write may be pretty obvious to you but it wasn't for me. The stats I was perusing showed that 13 of her last 20 search engine referrals were from Google Image Search.

It suddenly dawned on me that I wasn't using images properly, even when I did my Kate Middleton experiment. I don't think I've ever had a referral from Google Images so I reckon I'm missing out. It's not easy to bring too many images into a money making blog but, when I do, I want to now try and do this properly to make the photos, or whatever, more attractive to search engines.

Today the UK newspapers are full of photos of Konnie Huq (a children's TV presenter) in a low cut dress while attending a film premier. So I thought I'd use her photo to start out my mission to try and get a few referrals from search engines. My wife thinks I have an ulterior motive for doing this!

This is how I see images should be presented.

(1) The image should have a proper name, not something like 1003.jpg. It needs to say what the photo is all about - obviously with as few words as possible. In my example I've titled the photo konnie_huq_low_cut_dress.

As I see it konnie huq and dress are my keywords. I threw in low cut as this might also be something entered as a search.

(2) I understand that it is search engine friendly to state the size of the photo. In Konnie's case 110 x 200.
Looks like this:
height="200" width ="100"

(3) Alt should be used for your keywords. In my case I'm using the same words as my title. Looks like this:
alt="Konnie Huq in low cut dress".

In case you are not sure, alt creates the words seen when you hover over an image. It was originally used as an alternative to the image in case the photo couldn't be seen.

(4) Don't spam. By this I mean don't use too many keywords in your photo title or alt. This also applies to text - use keywords but do not over use them. It makes search engine's cross!

That's about it, you might know differently. Either way I think it's important that we use every possible trick to get more referrals via search engines. Let's not miss out on images.

Good luck,
Mike.

Further reading:
Kate Middleton Makes Wonderful Bait


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50 Blog Directories Listed With Rankings

Here is a list of 50 Blog Directories. I know I have slagged off directories in the past for not producing many referrals - see my Weekly Reports for stats - but I also accept that many bloggers like to get listed.

I have grouped the directories based on their Google Page Rank. Many Bloggers say that, by having their links in directories with higher rankings, this helps with their own PR.

A lot of directories require a link in exchange for the listing (which may help their own PR!)

PageRank 8
Technorati

PageRank 7
Blogarama
Blog Catalog
Brit Blog
LS Blogs
Blogflux
Blogrankings
Eatonweb

PageRank 6
Today
Blog Sweet
Blog-Directory.org
Bloghop
Globe of Blogs
Best of the Web
Bloggernity
addurlblog
Bloggeries
Bloggernow
BlogTastic

PageRank 5
Blogdup
eMarketing Blogs
The Vital
Rhys Wynne Toplist
Blogsbycity.com
Finding Blogs
World Top Blogs
Blogs Rater
Top Blog Area
Best Blogs
Photoarium
BlogFinds

PageRank 4
My Blog 2U
Kookkoo
Blogadr
Total Blog Directory

PageRank 3
Blogoozle
World Blog Collection
Quick Blog Directory
SpillBean
Blogpopular

PageRank 2
2-Review

PageRank 1
Infinite Info
Blog Directory
BlogDust

PageRank 0
Grokodile
Blog Universe
Insane Blog Directory
Klik Us
My Blog Directory
Conseille Moi

The PR rankings are believed to be accurate at todays date.

Good luck,
Mike.

© Mike Perry 2007


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Paris Hilton And Money Making Affiliates

If you want to make money or perhaps meet the next Paris Hilton - that's her bikini clad in the photo - you can through the Friend Finder Group. How's that for blatant use of search engine keywords! But make money, Paris Hilton and Friend Finder work for me.

What I really want to talk about is making money with affiliates and to show you some proof of earnings to verify that it all works in reality. I can't guarantee though that you'll also meet a Paris Hilton look-a-like, but the FriendFinder Group do have over 19 million worldwide members, so you never know.

A lot of bloggers sign up for various affiliate programs but overlook one important aspect. There is good money to be made, not just by selling the service or products, but also from referring new affiliates to the progam.

Here's an example. The figures below show my commission due for introducing others to the Friend Finder Group. As you can see I have over $70 dollars due on the next pay day. This is money purely from referring new affiliates to their website. Money for nothing, in a way. I earn 10% of what my referrals earn.

Now if you combine this with money made from promoting their biggest website, Adult Friend Finder, it adds up to a reasonable amount. Proof of earnings shown below.

As you will see this totals to well over $400. But there is more. I promote several of their 25 websites and my final total of commission amounts to $510.57, which is more that I declare on my Weekly Reports. Again proof below (the figures are a continuation of the form shown above).


And, yes, the Friend Finder Group pay out, and on time. The chart below shows recent checks/cheques they have sent me, again copied from my affiliate pages on their website.


I'm not recommending that you join the Friend Finder Group, though you are most welcome to do so, I just want to emphasise that:

(1) It's possible for small bloggers to make money with affiliate programs, of all kinds, and

(2) It's very worthwhile referring other people to become affiliates. Make sure, though, that the affiliate program concerned does offer some commission for doing this.

There are all sorts of ways to promote affiliate programs and to refer new affiliates. A few ideas:

(a) A post on your own blog about the program. Obvious, but many bloggers only put their ads in their side columns. You have to be pro-active.
(b) Use the forums - some for the products and others for recruiting new affiliates.

(c) Start new blogs, under different names, that concentrate on the products concerned. Even one page blogs can attract visitors if the usual ways of attracting traffic are followed.

(d) Get into the social networking sites. With Squidoo, for example you could have several lenses on different subjects.

There's lots of other things as well that can be done. The important point is to actually do something positive. Plonking a nice ad or banner on a blog is okay, but often this isn't enough. Think up other ways to get visitors to your associated affiliate programs. As I said earlier be pro-active, not passive.

That's enough from me today. This Paris Hilton, what is all of the fuss about her? Whatever it is, she has certainly mastered marketing herself and her name. Lessons to be learnt.

Good luck,
Mike.

Further reading:
Money Making Test: Friend Finder Group.


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Mike's Link Love

It's Link Love time and a mixed bag this week.

I'll start with a post from the Feldman Blog. That's Charles Feldman on the right who is an investigative television and print journalist with many years of experience across all media platforms: television, radio, newspapers, magazines and the Internet. So he should know what he's talking about, anyway this is his post:

CNN, FOX, MSNBC; Why The 24 Hour News Networks Are So Repetitive: Ratings!.
The question being answered is: 'Why the cable news channels kept running the same cell phone video of the Virginia Tech shootings over and over and over again.' This is a very emotive subject but the reason given for repeating the same material is quite simply: ratings. Not a very uplifting thought.

Next we have a post from Ruben, again answering a question, this time:

Blogging or Niche Blogging: What's the Difference?.
Ruben's blog is called Turn Your Blog Into A Money Making Machine and about himself he writes: 'I'm a website publisher and making some money online. I believe any blog can succeed making money online with the right techniques and strategies. So there you go!'

From How To Earn Money Blogging comes:

Assignment Based Paid To Blog Provider.
It's all about yet another paid to blog provider. This time it's a newish kid on the block Smorty. Who thinks up these names? The full Smorty low down is told in the post.

Moving on. When I started this blog the first four blogs I exchanged links with were:

The Million Dollar Experiment Down Under
Fantasy Football N' Stuff
Just Call Me Juice
JCM's RPG Art & NPCS
My thanks to the above four. It's strange that only one of them is actually about making money. The advice normally given is to exchange links with blogs of similar subject matter. I didn't therefore initially do the supposed 'right' thing. However, the four mentioned blogs have done me proud with their referrals. Maybe there is a message here.

If you are on a blogroll with dozens of similar themed blogs you don't really stand out. But one money making blog (as in my case) might get more notice on say sports blogs or some other non related niche. Just a thought.

My charity / good cause this week is the Samaritans, one that I support personally. When people need someone to talk to they are there. Samaritans provides confidential emotional support, 24 hours a day for people who are experiencing feelings of distress or despair, including those which may lead to suicide.

That's all for today.

Good luck,
Mike.

Further reading:
To see previous Link Love click here.


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Six Questions To Ask About Wealth Toolbox

I know I shouldn't, but I feel I've got to mention Wealth Toolbox again. It concerns me that people may part with money that they can ill afford to lose. Of course, it's up to us as individuals as to what we do, but Wealth Toolbox worries me.

Wealth Toolbox are now offering a Forex Power Strategy Course at a cost of $495 and say they have 1000 positions on offer. So that's 1000 x £495 for them - a total of $495,000.

The person sending out the emails is a Jason Steele, who says he's the founder of Wealth Toolbox, and he writes:

'I'm looking for a small group of people who would like to learn a simple but powerful investing strategy that has historically generated at least 100% profit per month.'

He also writes:

'Just to give you an idea of how powerful this stuff is, my most recent trade using this method turned $2,000 into $4,744. That's 237% profit for 45 minutes of work.'

Alarm bells should be ringing!

1) Who are Wealth Tool box? They say, on their Terms of Service, they are 'a service of GeoPoint Marketing'. But who are GeoPoint Marketing? What is their address, where are they based, do they comply with necessary financial regulations?

2) Who is Jason Steele? What are his qualifications?

3) Would you really send $495 to someone you don't know?

4) If they are so clever at making money, and getting 237% returns on investments, why do they need to start up a dodgy looking website and tout courses on investing? Wouldn't it be a lot simpler just to make money for themselves, especially as it is supposedly so easy?

5) Why would they want to give members $100 (previously $50) for simply joining? A sprat to catch a mackerel?

6) Why will they take on members as young as 13 years of age who clearly cannot enter into a legal agreement?

There are many, many other questions.

As I've said before, I joined out of interest to see how they work. I got $50 (supposedly) for joining on the 25th of February. This is now supposedly 'worth' $291.93. Dream on! They don't 'payout' until 2009 and by then they will be long gone.

By all means learn about investing but with a reputable company.

Wealth Toolbox? Forget it.

Good luck,
Mike.

Further Reading:
Money Making Test: A Warning About Wealth Toolbox


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Squidoo: Can It Produce Money Making Traffic?

Like most money making bloggers I'm always looking at ways to try and attract more visitors to my blog. As I've said before: More visitors = More Money.

Today I've been looking at Squidoo, you may well have heard of this website before. For me though, it was my first visit. I joined to see what it was all about and also to try and work out if it could divert some traffic my way.

From what I have seen so far it's all about building a lens, or even dozens of them.

"What is a lens," you may well ask.
It's a fancy name for your own page. They dress this up a bit more by saying:

'A lens is one person's view on a topic that matters to her. It's an easy-to-build, single web page that can point to blogs, favorite links, RSS feeds, Flickr photos, Google maps, your eBay auctions, CafePress designs, Amazon books or music, and more.'

So can a lens produce more traffic to your blog?
I guess if it's used properly, and you spend time on Squidoo, it may well do this. But there again so do many other places, like MyBlogLog for example.

This is what Squidoo say about traffic:

'Your lens points (if you want it to) to your blog and to your website. Lenses have huge credibility with search engines, so your lens can help your other sites rise to the top of Google searches.'

Other reasons for starting a lens include: Increases your profile, you can share knowledge and it is also possible to earn small royalty payments - but don't give up your day job! You would probably need hundreds of active lenses to make any decent amount. You can, however, add commercial 'modules' to your lens.

There is a small incentive for introducing new people to Squidoo. This is how they describe the incentive:

Refer a friend to be a Squidoo lensmaster. When your friend's lens earns its first $15, you AND your friend will each get $5, free!

Of course, getting back to the point of this post, traffic and indeed any earnings are based on your commitment and/or involvement with Squidoo. If you simply created a lens and did nothing that's what you'd likely get - nothing - no traffic and no earnings.

So is it worth creating a Squidoo lens?
Well it's as I've just indicated. It depends on the time and commitment you can devote to promotion.

I created a lens just before writing this post. Well I say created, but there's very little on it at the moment other than links to my own blogs. I didn't have the time to do much more. I will, however, go back to it when I can, to see if I can do anything worthwhile with Squidoo. I'll report back on any success

Good luck,
Mike.

The Mission Store
Blogging Good Blogs


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Kate Middleton Is Wonderful Bait

There's a lot of talk and advice about link baiting, on various blogs, but my little experiment with Kate Middleton yesterday was all about search engine bait.

Search engine bait is quite simple. If there is a hot topic it's possible to manipulate your posts so that they get more hits. I realise that some will say straight away that getting visitors interested in Kate Middleton, to a money making blog, will not do a lot of good moneywise. And in part this is correct, though I did get more AdSense hits yesterday than my usual average and two Amazon orders.

The point of the experiment was purely for illustrative purposes. It's about emphasising keywords and writing about hot subjects relative to the subject matter of your blog. With any niche there is always some aspect that has a buzz about it, something that is in the news. This doesn't matter whether your blog is about dogs, cameras, celebrities or whatever.

Search engine bait is about writing something that is going to get a lot of searches on Google, MSN, Technorati etc. If you have a Health Blog, for instance, and a new health breakthrough hits the news write a post about this. Do it immediately while it's hot news and people will be searching the subject. Don't leave it too long so that it becomes stale.

Find out what is hot and do a post - but do it properly.

1) Think about the keywords or key phrase. Yesterday it was obvious what these were for my experiment post - Kate Middleton. Therefore I included Kate Middleton into the post title and in the first sentence and also a further time within my 47 word paragraph.

2) Think about secondary keywords which people might use when doing their search. In my case these were Prince William and The Sun and, again, make sure these are in a prominent position.

3) Include some important, quality links to make it an informative post. I used three yesterday: Kate Middleton, Prince William and The Sun.

4) Add a photo.

5) Publish post.

6) Ping.

If done properly even a 50 word post can pull in several hundred extra hits.

I read that Kate Middleton has been placed on indefinite compassionate leave from her job. You know, perhaps a celebrity blog would be a good idea - if only I knew something about celebrities!

Good luck,
Mike.


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