Site Structure By Yoast

Joost de Valk tackles Intelligent Site Structure for better SEO in his latest post and it is a great one. Yoast walks you through developing a good site structure, naming your sections and internal link structure. Such an easy to follow post with great images to illustrate the flow of the structure as well. Best thing about it it that it is nothing new as Yoast later reveals that the post was originally wrote in October 2007 for dev.opera.com. He says the only thing that has changed since is it's appearance and the adding of a few reference links. As you can see there is nothing magic, mostly common sense, but easy things like this are easily overlooked. Great post for a Friday. Have a great weekend everyone.

Easiest Way To Make Money Online?

I get this question a few times a month, maybe more. It comes from both newbies and people that have been at this a while. Everyone wants to know the easiest way to make money online, but nobody likes the answer. It is funny how that works.

Everyone knows something about something. We all know how to do something most others don't. We all have favorite things we like to do. It may be bird watching, playing an instrument, cake decorating, keeping up with the television show Hawaii 5-0. You get the drift, I am sure. Do you blog about your favorite thing or things? Why not? Is it because you can't write? Please. I still can't write the way I want to. I am much better than what I was when I started though years ago. I have told the story plenty of times. I hated writing. My high school English teacher would be doing backflips right now if she saw me. You don't have the time? Please. If you don't have the time, you really need to start making some money so you can free yourself up some time. Give me a break. You don't make the time. You don't like to work? Stop reading this now.

If you have struggled to make money in this business, go back to step one and start building a site around what you like. Set up a Twitter and Facebook account for both and start following those that like the same thing as you do. Post EVERY DAY at least once. Yes, EVERY DAY! Share those links on Twitter and Facebook. Write interesting articles and rewrite the news associated with it. Get the drift? If you like the subject matter, it will be much more enjoyable. Post as if 1000 people are anticipating every post you make, write stuff others would like to link to and share with others on Facebook and Twitter. Become an authority on your subject if not already.

If you have not read and done the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog work book by Darren Rowse, you are missing out. It is easy to understand and easy to complete. Buy it, read it and do it. Stick with it and commit yourself to your blog or blogs. That my friends is the easiest way to make money. Many of you will not want to hear that though.

Finish Goal Setting Now For New Year

Here we are a week out from Christmas and the next two weeks will really fly by for you. Before you know it, 2011 will be here. It is time to get your goals finalized for 2011 now, not later. I always look forward to this time of year as I try to roadmap out where I want to be in so many areas of my life, not just my businesses. I try to set intermediate goals as well and be time specific with them. I also set income goals and try to stretch myself to around a 25-33% income growth over the previous year. Goal setting and planning has played a huge part in my success over the years, it is a road map of sorts for me. There are plenty of videos on Youtube and plenty written online for you to research works best for you. The key is to get it down on paper so your subconscious can absorb it going forward. heed my advice and get this firmed up now. It works.

Working Harder On Ebooks, Mobile & Social Sites In 2011

2011 is right around the corner and a few areas I am going to dive into even bigger and better in the coming year are ebooks, mobile optimization and social sites. None of these areas are new to me, especially the social sites, but I believe I have just scratched the surface on what I can do with them. I have reaped HUGE benefits in 2010 by paying attention to social networks more and I will continue that growth along with writing 12 more ebooks next year. More and more people everyday are accepting ebooks. They can buy them on a moments notice and read them just seconds after purchasing. I wrote 4 ebooks last year and 2 are doing amazingly well. As far as mobile goes, not only will I be optimizing towards it even more I want to delve deeper into the app world and have a goal for the release of 2 apps in 2011. Now is the time to start getting those goals together and it is my primary focus this time of year. That and watching my wife enjoy the fruits of our labors. Get ready 2011, I am coming.

I Hope You Too Got Some Of The $1 Billion Spent On Cyber Monday

WOW!!!!!! What a day Monday was? I am still going through some stats, but it by far was a record for me. It seems that I was not the only one as Mashable reports that the newest data from the tracking firm comScore suggests that Cyber Monday just might have been the heaviest online spending day in history with a record-breaking $1.028 billion in online spending a few days ago. According to their report, that is a 16% jump in spending when compared against the same day last year.

By no means does this mean everything is perfect with the economy, but I think we can safely say that we are on the way up from the bottom. It will take several years for certain investments and real estate values to recover, but you have to be excited if you are in this business.

Is this all new to you? Maybe the affiliate business is not new to you, but you are looking to get more involved and get your piece of the $1 Billion pie. All you need is the free Wordpress platform, a Hostgator hosting account and the PHPZon and PHPBAY Wordpress plugins. These are the basics, but will get you on your way to building towards a very lucrative Cyber Monday in 2011.

Always Room To Outsource More

If there is one thing that I have learned this past year is how to outsource more. Some things I can not automate like some types of directory submissions and certain social bookmark submissions so those are easily outsourced. It goes without saying that I have firmly embraced outsourcing a ton of my article writing and product reviews/descriptions. All of this has freed me up to concentrate on the little things like keyword research, and traffic research. I have also found a great graphics guy that knocks out any custom work I need for headers or banners on a day turn around. On any new review/product site I build all I need to do is the initial market research and install and put it together. That is pretty much it. If it is a niche I know a ton about, I will still knock out the articles that get written and spun with The Best Spinner that go out to article sites and places like SEO Link Vine. I plan on outsourcing the spinning too in 2011. Also next year, I hope to continue to try to build only one great site a month as I have a very full stable of sites that is already earning very well and mostly just needs better managing to squeeze even more income out of them. Do not be afraid to outsource anything that will free you up to do the more important task. It has worked great for me.

Auto Blog Blueprint 2.0 Coupon Code - 80 Bucks Off

Auto Blog Blueprint 2.0 will close it's doors to new members at the end of November in preparation of the Upgrade to the Auto Blog Blueprint 3.0. They are having a membership drive from now until the end of the month and you can get $80 bucks off right now if you order and use the coupon code A837D5D98B. All members of the Auto Blog Blueprint 2.0 will still have full access to the course and forum. These will not close. Also, all members will also get the upgrade to the ABB 3.0 for FREE when it is released in February. This course is chock full of training and I use it myself using the WP Robot software. If you ever wanted top learn the right way to set up an auto blog, Mike Johnson's blueprint is the way to do it. I have promoted this since buying it myself many moons ago. I paid full price and found it to be way under priced. He gives a 90 Day Money Back Guarantee if you do not believe what I am telling you. You have nothing to lose. Do not wait to New Years to jump start this. Start now as this is too good of deal to pass up.

Cosmetics Last On A Site Rebuilds

I am all ready for the meat of the holiday shopping season on most of my sites and am now turning most of my attention to a few more sites that need rebuilds from the old BANS days. I plan these out, but try to move very methodical on them so I do them right. I don't like it to eat of large chunks of my day either. The biggest urge I have to fight is trying to play with the looks and cosmetics first instead of functionality. This is a big no-no, because the site needs to function right and all links, plugins and addons taken care of first. It is better to have a site working right using a base default Wordpress template, instead of having a pretty site that is half done. I tell you this from experience. Doctoring up your look, headers and CSS styles can get time consuming if you let it. Make this the last thing you do on a rebuild. There are many times when I wish I would of followed this very advice. Of course if you have the time and means, you can have EVERYTHING ready and done on a test domain or subdomain. This way you just move the theme and etc over to the rebuild. However you do it, make sure this site is down as little time as possible.

Learn To Slow Down

We all are crunched for time. Even me and I am full time in the niche site building business. It is very easy to get in a hurry and make mistakes. The same goes with the rush to build too many backlinks too fast. Now does that mean that something can't go viral? Absolutely not, but remember that something that does go viral will have certain characteristics. In other words, a site that gains all article backlinks or all social backlinks in one week or month will certainly set off alarms with Google. Things that go viral show up on Facebook, Twitter and so on and so on. Google knows this. The days of spamming the net quickly are nearly over for ranking purposes. Does this mean you should not spin articles and send them off to SEO Link Vine and other directories? No, of course not, but pick your spots. You have more than one site I hope, if not, you likely are not getting the monies worth out of SEOLV. Do not limit yourself to just one source of backlink either and do not get so caught up in building 400 backlinks in a month. The first 30 days should be spent making sure the site is getting indexed fine and is up to snuff quality wise if it is a product review type site. I no longer build a site and head straight to backlinks. Why? I have found I get the site seeded well in 6 months by taking my time in all facets of link building.

Slowing down also relates to the building of the site. I have a written flow chart I use on product review type sites that works for my style and time budget. It helps ensure I pay attention to the details of building the site the way I know works. I work 99% of the time with Wordpress, but as easy as a platform that it is, mistakes are easy to make. My dad always said growing up, do it right the first time so you don't have to go back and do it again. Check all your links and every page of the site to make sure everything is loading and nothing has been overlooked. There is no reason to be in a hurry now, make sure you do it right. Take your time.

What’s Hot In Affiliate Marketing With JJ McCarthy Of EPN

The latest video episode of Chatting with eBay Partner Network is up now and I must admit they are getting better at these then when they first started. In the latest episide, JJ McCarthy discusses what’s hot in affiliate marketing and shares examples of leading content curators. Depending where you are at in this business, you may or may not learn something here.

Chatting with EPN: Episode 9 from eBay Partner Network TV on Vimeo.

69 Days Until Christmas

I keep a little app on my computer that runs your around that lets me know how many days there are before Christmas. Why? It really motivates me year around. I can already tell that online buying has started for Christmas as it shows in my traffic and earnings. Realistically the real HEAVY buying season does not start until Thanksgiving, so you just have over a month to try to get a few new sites built, indexed and backlinked. With the right niche and the proper use of social media, it is never too late to start. Let the countdown to Christmas motivate you. I myself have a few sites I installed a little while ago with the Keyword To Websites Plugin that are ready for their makeover with purchased original content from my writers. These sites are primed in some hot niches that I expect will do even better once we get past Halloween. It is never too late to start, even if you build out of the box sites to break the ice.

A Great Free 158 Page Ebook

A bit under the weather today and am behind getting some task done, but I came across a great new 158 page pdf ebook written by Anik Singal and wanted to point everyone to it. In it he teaches how to build an online business empire from scratch like he has done. He has laid it out nicely and you can currently opt in and get it for free for a limited time. Let me tell you that it is not earth shattering, but you can learn quite a bit from it as it is easy to follow. He goes over research, site creation and list building. Without giving too much away, just go download it. You have nothing to lose.

Your Are Probably Going To Fail If You Do Not Do The Work

I hate to be harsh, but every now and again I have to remind readers that this is a business and it requires work as I get some crazy emails. It also is not quick results more times than not. I know most of you get bombarded with the same emails that I do, that promise quick money and quick results, but if you do not have a good firm basis and solid work ethic in this business, you can forget success. Can you make money with auto blogs? Absolutely, but you have to learn the wrong and right ways to do it. Also what may work in one niche does not necessarily carry over to another niche. The purest type of site still is the product review /catalog type site. If you want the simplest way to build these, just refer back to the tutorial that Adam and Kelvin released some time ago with the Build A Niche Store Guide except use Wordpress as the platform. Do not get caught up with backlinks and all the other type stuff, learn to build a damn good site first. 200-300 words per product is super. A 30 page site should take you no more than 30 days. You can't write or pay someone to write 30 product reviews/descriptions in 30 days? If you can't, you need to find something else. These types of sites do not have to display eBay products either. Try Amazon, ShareASale, Commission Junction or the Google program if you are bugged about the EPN program. Build a good site, then SLOWLY backlink to it. They make money. Some more than others. Some less than others. Do the work, learn what a great site looks like a learn to study the traffic. There are 365 days in the year. That equates to 10 great sites you can build with 65 days off just writing one page a day. If you can't do that, yes you will fail. Wordpress is free, there are even a few free Amazon Wordpress plugins to get you started if you are broke. Hosting is cheaper than ever. Get off your ass and do this. One foot in front of the other. Put your blinders on and do the work. Let the others fail.

Mike Johnson Autoblog Blueprint Review

I was sent an invitation a while ago to review the Auto Blog Blueprint for a limited time and finally got around last week to getting inside and really see what it is all about. First of all let me say the name should let you know what it is all about. You have heard about me talk about WP Robot before and in essence this is a road map of how to use that plugin along with several others to create money making autoblogs. You will need to own WP Robot or some other autoblogging plugin, but it is centered around WP Robot, which is the best I have tried. All of the other plugins used are mostly found in my top 40 Wordpress plugin list I did a while back. The videos and instruction are top notch in this membership site and it is just a one time payment to join. Mike Johnson also offers a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee if not satisfied.

Let me say as I have mentioned before, if you get into autoblogging, you need to make sure your host can handle it. I have a few set up on shared host, but am pushing the envelope. The others I set up on a few of my VPS servers. If you want to try it out on a shared host like Hostgator, you may get a way with it for a while to learn the system, but be prepared to get better hosting the more taxing you get on the host. Just a warning up front on this.

The modules are well laid out by Mike and there is a forum for members as well. Like anything else, you need to read and learn his system before jumping in head first. There is a ton of information inside and you will be tempted to leap before understanding it all. Lay yourself out some time, to watch and read everything first. As he says in the video, most will buy and never follow his teachings because of not having the patience to learn first or stick with it. For those of you wanting a step-by-step tutorial on how to build these properly, Auto Blog Blueprint is what you are looking for. I highly recommend it and it has been around for a while.

Writing Great Product Descriptions & Sales Copy

We will do a complete 180 from turnkey keyword sites talked about yesterday and go back to thick product review, store like niche sites. Karon Thackston has an excellent article on Webmaster World entitled Seven Steps To Writing Enticing Product Descriptions where she covers the art of e-commerce copywriting. Now I farm out a ton of my writing to a few writers and specifically have trained them to the type reviews and descriptions I want. My ideal stuff is 200-300 words, any more is just too long in my opinion. You can pick up several tips to use yourself or hold your own writers to as well as how to display it on site. If need be, forward the link above to your writers. When it comes to keyword phrases in the 5th tip, don't let your writers stuff the same phrase in order to meet a word count. Over time you can train your writers to know exactly what is acceptable and what is not. Remember, they work for you. Karon has a new ebook on the way as well that looks to be a winner. You can pre order it now. Good stuff.

What Are You Doing Tomorrow?

The biggest part of my online success has been my ability to always be constant and consistent with my work. It is my business and I have always treated it as such. I know exactly what I want to get accomplished every day, whether it be working on site construction, making videos, building backlinks or researching niches or keywords. This business of site building, as I have mentioned several times in the past, often does not give you instant visible results from the work you do. This business is about being consistent and having a plan. It is so hard to stop and start in this business and using the analogy of a wheel, it takes less effort keeping a wheel already rolling, in motion than it does to get the the wheel rolling. Even if you only map out 1 day in advance, at least you have a plan. I try to work 7 days out now and yes it never goes perfect and often times gets altered. At the very least though, I know what I have to get done tomorrow, do you? Try it. I promise you will get more done and thus get more results.

SugarRae Hoffman Addresses Affiliate Sites & Google May Day Update

The well respected Rae Hoffman (SugarRae) has a great new post up today on addressing affiliate sites that use feeds in relation to the recent Google May day update. If your site suffered losses in longer tail organic traffic, Rae has some great tips and theories to try. As you can imagine, more unique content is suggested as well as changing up the order of anything default. If you are running sites that are nearly 100% automated, she suggest changing up the order on things. Also suggested is watching your internal linking structure and try to keep pages 2-3 clicks from anywhere on the site. As we long have known now, page rank sculpting is dead. You should arrange the navigation for the end user. One of the last suggestions is of course deep linking. Whenever building backlinks unnaturally, you should be mixing in as many deep linking backlinks varied with rotated anchor text. This is not a new practice by any means, but one that can lift a page. All in all, you can see what the May Day update was designed to do. Anyone can can aggregate several long tail phrases on a page, but the winner after this update is the webmaster who can effectively target 2-3 long tail phrases per page via proper content and SEO instead of trying to build aggregated, scraped pages that try to catch all. Great post and two thumbs up to Rae for a well thought out post.

Sometimes You Get Surprised

A while back I built a site using the Commission Ritual method and used a niche that I was sort of suspect about. Now let me say I did enough research on the niche to know it would be a moderate constant earner, but had no idea it would catapult into one of my top 10 monthly earners. The site has only 10 product pages and 5 articles. It was built as I said using the Commission Ritual formula, which is just one of many ways I build niche sites. The backlink building was a modest effort and the site only has 3 keyword phrases ranked in the top 3 Google results according to it's stats. What the site does do is convert. Mostly through Amazon using the PHPZon plugin. The site also shows 3 eBay results per product, but most shoppers seem to fine with being shipped off to Amazon. The site converts nearly 25% of it's Amazon clicks. That is an unreal conversion rate for sure. I plan on devoting more time to it now and go back and add about 20 more pages of product and content over the next 2 weeks. It just goes to show that some niches you think will be golden egg laying geese, lay modest scrambled eggs, while some you think may be marginal, blow the roof off. You don't know until you build it. The beauty of this business is you are only 8 bucks away from your next site. Ain't it great!

Another Great Free Ebook Especially For Beginners

I came across another great ebook for those just getting started in the make money online business or those that have been doing it a while by just winging it. The book is by Paul Myers who is a moderator on the Warrior Forum evidently and entitled, Need To Know (What You Must Know to Achieve Real Success). The ebook is free and you will have to of course opt in to get it. Myers has been working online for over 10 years and shares some basics of what it takes to make it in this business. The ebook is 112 pages long with 16 chapters. Below are the chapter titles and it is a read you can knock out in a night or so.

Chapter 0: The Starting Point - Becoming Unstoppable
Chapter 1: The 5 Things it Takes to Succeed Online
Chapter 2: The 7 Things You Must Include in Everything You do Online
Chapter 3: Cover Your Assets
Chapter 4: Become a "Model" Citizen
Chapter 5: Revenge of the Psycho-Billy Cadillac
Chapter 6: Gimmick, Toy or Tool?
Chapter 7: Of Wombats and Men
Chapter 8: The Most Important Skill
Chapter 9: "Where's the Party?"
Chapter 10: Winning The Content Contest
Chapter 11: Are You THAT Boring?
Chapter 12: How to be Interesting in Print
Chapter 13: The "THUD!" Factor
Chapter 14: The World is Your Playground
Chapter 15: Ramp it Up!

Niche Rummaging Will Turn Up Ideas

I am closing in on finishing up some site rebuilds that were long overdue. In June, I plan on focusing on a new site and have started doing some research of what niche I want to be in. Now let me say, I am more concerned about if I think the niche can make money and find as many keyword openings as I can. I have talked about using Amazon.com and Shopping.com to look for popular items and searches, but sometimes I just like to rummage through niches to see them in action and start a list of keyword phrases to run through Micro Niche Finder and Market Samurai. I will often just blindly wander through Commission Junction and Google Affiliate program dashboard for a bit to see if anything sticks out at me. I do not just jump into a niche these days with out tons of research and merely rummaging through these affiliate sites really gets my mind jump started with different ideas for my business plan. Make sure to have Notepad, Excel or Word open so you can jot down specific products and keywords to help you do bulk research on another day. Makes for a great mental exercise when tackling a new niche site.