How to Make Money The Honest Way

Ah, its Sunday morning and I have a theory… What if…?

Its all a smokescreen. A great big craftily engineered smokescreen. To try and stop all the damn noobs creating tons of mini sites that were once a lucrative source of links and in the case of hub pages, money, for those of us who know what we’re doing. To stop the directionless masses in their tracks from building tons of thin sites that were clogging up the search index and get them to concentrate on…

Authority sites!

Well, sorry to burst the bubble and throw my spanner into the nicely oiled works, but its not a new fad, as is being touted around by the big names right now. Big content rich authority sites were always there. And in most cases they always ranked well as long as they had the links to back them up. But its only recently that the Internet marketing trend has swung back to building large, content laden authority sites because we’re all being told that’s what Google now wants to see in its index.

But that’s the beauty of this little ruse. Its not new!

Google has always wanted that. But people have short memories and will latch onto whatever any mentor or highly respected and knowledgeable marketer or SEO expert tells them. And we’re all being told that we should be concentrating on building authority sites if we want to dominate the SERPs. Thin sites simply don’t cut it any more and the dreaded algorithm is sniffing them out and tossing them asunder while giving more emphasis to authority sites.

There’s a little marketing psychology going on there because its quite stunning how everyone is suddenly focusing on the authority site theory and that means their focus has been diverted away from the splatter mini site theory of a few months ago. Is it just me or are Hub Pages starting to earn a little more money these last few days? Is there a slowdown in them being built because we’ve all been told its not worth it any more, because Hub Pages lost some of their SERP authority?

Maybe. Also, I don’t know if this is new, but I’ve recently noticed some PPC ads promoting Hub Pages appearing on Google’s front page for some make money terms. Why would they need to do that, I wonder? Perhaps the recent surge in page building has abated and the owners started to like the extra income it was generating for them and now that it has fallen off, they want some more? Only theorising here, by the way. I could be way off. But I’m not so sure I am.

But don’t take any notice of my Sunday morning ramblings. What do I know? Get back to building your authority sites and leave those mini sites alone as they’re no good to you. Honest!

Good! I’m happy now I’ve sorted that out. I’m also happy that I have more coffee. I’m not making a big deal about this minor discovery, either. I want everyone to keep concentrating on their authority site(s) while I can get back to building mini sites. I might be completely wrong here and those mini sites might not stand a better chance of ranking and making money, now everyone else and their dog have averted their radar to something else.

I might go write a few blog posts about how important authority sites are… Oh, I already did!

Gotta love the Internet, God bless Google and God help the rest of you!

Never give up!

Make Money The Honest Way Blog

          

Here’s some interesting news I just heard that might help you Make Money The Honest Way. If you are already well versed in the art of writing articles to provide your sites with strong anchored backlinks, then here is another option that has just presented itself.

Technorati have just announced that they will be adding a new feature to their already well known and high authority name and domain, which is for authors to publish original articles there. Now, details are sketchy right now as the system is not live yet and only in the announcement stage. But if they follow the pattern set out by ezine articles whereby all articles are manually checked for originality and relevance, then we could be seeing another very good source of backlinks. That is assuming they allow a resource box with a link back to your site, which I believe is pretty much the done thing when it comes to publishing anyone’s work on your site.

So technorati should be no different, and if, if they can be strong like ezine articles and really only accept quality articles, they will keep the spammers out and provide us with a strong authority source of links.

How does this help me to make money online?

Unless you are a complete noob and have no idea how this works, or you have been chasing the get rich quick scams that all the A-listers peddle online, in order to make money online you need to be able to attract targeted search traffic to your site where you sell whatever it is you sell. The only way to get search traffic is to rank well in the main search engines, primarily Google and the only way to do that is to have a strong authority site and the only way to get that is to have lots of original, relevant content that is linked to from a wide variety of strong, authority sources.

In other words, you need to build a strong site with lots of relevant content first and get links to it from as many different sources as possible for it to rank well in the serps for your chosen keywords.

Those links need to be anchored with your keywords and those keyword anchors need to be varied in order to look as natural as possible. You do this by several different means, but one of those is to write articles and post them to respected article directories (those that have good authority) such as Ezine Articles. Now with technorati entering this playing field, you have potentially one more source of authority links that you can get by submitting articles. As long as they do it right and don’t screw up like most article directories have done by allowing crap articles, or duplicate articles to be published on their site.

Are there lots of article directories that will provide good authority links? No there are not, as most of them accept duplicate content and badly written or spun articles. In fact there are probably only a handful of article directories that will do you any good with strong links, which is why any newcomer with a strong domain authority such as technorati is a very welcome addition to this sector of the Internet.

Doesn’t this mean more work for me?

Yes it does. It means you will have to write more original articles and submit them,each with a keyword anchored backlink to your site for maximum link strength. The more links you can put in an article, the weaker the link strength get, by the way. If you want the full juice from an article, you really should only put in one or two links max. One is obviously best. It means more work because you’ll have to submit more articles, but that’s the best way to get links for yourself, apart from exchanging links with other bloggers and website owners, which as we all know is never an easy thing to do, nor are directly exchanged links as strong as one-way inbound links.

There is another option if you are already making money online and that is to outsource your article writing. You take a chance on quality but if you are prepared to pay a little more for each article, you can get pretty good quality that will be good enough to put on Hub Pages, or InfoBarrels (two excellent sources of links) and may be good enough for Ezine and now, technorati.

Outsourced articles that are of decent quality can be had for around $5 per 400 words these days, which is good if you are buying and terrible if you are writing them for sale! Ok, the quality may not always be up to the standard you could write yourself, but it will save you a lot of time and if you can make more money in the long term from a well placed link in an article that cost you $5, then its worth the outlay.

However you get your articles, you have to be aware that Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving and getting ever better at finding spun content or badly re-written or duplicate articles. There are already strong rumours circulating that Google is altering the ratio of the weight it gives to sites in its index and their placement towards good on-site SEO and away from external links. That’s because Google recognizes that too many site owners now know how to game its index by fabricating their own inbound links. So the emphasis, while still on backlinks, is shifting to more weight being given to authority sites that contain lots of original, relevant content and good on-site SEO in terms of keyword relevant titles and text.

That means those of us who have been quietly building our own authority sites over the years will begin to see a shift in their serps placement for the better over crappy, thin sites with little or no original content that are propped up purely by a ton of inbound links.

So bring on more human edited, authority article directories! The real winners will be authority, content rich sites that also have lots of strong, keyword anchored backlinks from lots of different, authority sources. You mark my words. But above all else…

Never give up!

Make Money The Honest Way Blog

          

Do you want to know how to make money link building? Better still, do you want to know what link building is, so you can make money the honest way from it? And if there were a solid, affordable way of building links to your website or blog, would you like to know all about it? Well, if the answer is yes to all three, pull up a seat, make yourself comfortable and I’ll tell you.

First of all, what do I mean by link building?

Link building, as I have doubtless explained at length in previous posts in this blog as well in one or two of my other “how to make money online” type blogs, is the process of obtaining relevant, keyword anchored, one way back-links to your website. You do that so your site’s authority grows as seen by Google and the other search engines. When your authority grows, your position in the search engines index will rise, eventually placing you at the top of page one for your main keywords. When that happens, you will attract a lot of organic search traffic to your site, which will, assuming your site is correctly set up, earn you money from your chosen monetisation method.

There are no hard and fast rules about link building, as it really depends upon the niche your site occupies and the keywords you are targeting. It depends upon how competitive your niche is and this is usually, but not always dependent upon the volume of search traffic those keywords attract on a regular basis. But that’s as deeply as I’ll explain niches and keywords for this post, as the real reason for it is to talk about how to make money link building. Or more especially, how to obtain sufficient back-links to make a difference to your site’s organic traffic levels.

Backlink Building

Traditionally, people obtained back-links to their site through the use of article directories, social bookmarking, forum posts, blog comments, web directories etc. Most of those methods are still as valid as they ever were, but they have been so diluted by spammers that Google doesn’t really give those links as much weight as they used to. Meaning you need other avenues of obtaining those all-important one-way, keyword anchored back-links that do still hold weight with the main search engines. These are best obtained from related blog posts where your link is placed in the content of the post. Its better if the blog itself already has plenty of SERPs authority to begin with, as this means it will pass on some of that authority in the link to your site.

But obtaining these high juice links is either difficult at best, or downright expensive if you choose to buy them. Ok, I just said a bad thing and will make amends. You should know that Google and the other top search engines do not condone the practice of buying (or selling for that matter) links to other sites as this is seen as attempting to game their system to artificially inflate your site’s SERPs authority, which in turn devalues the integrity of their search index.

Having made that point clear, you should also know something.

Your competition is buying links like there is no tomorrow and that is how they are staying at the top of the SERPs for their high power keywords and getting all the traffic and making all the money. If you do not compete on their level, you will never beat them. fact.

So the alternatives are not altogether palatable, but the harsh truth is you have to fight as dirty as your competition if you ant a slice of the same pie. Again, depending upon the competitiveness of yoru chosen niche, you will need to either spend a lot of money on buying links to overcome your competition, or spend years doing it the hard and (unfortunately) honest way and still maybe never getting there. So unless you’re prepared to settle for second best, you need a battle plan.

Another fact is that buying links is expensive and in some niches, beyond the pockets of mere mortals. There are other alternatives such as paid link schemes, but even these can work out expensive with a recurring monthly subscription that you have to keep up with or you’ll lose what links you have gained. Oh, didn’t you know that? Well now you do.

There is another alternative that takes an enormous amount of work, but will, in time, allow you to compete. That’s to build your own stable of supporting sites for your niche and try to dominate that way by using your supporting sites to link to your main money generating site. The downside is that you still need to get authority for those supporting sites and their number will often need to be in the several hundreds or even thousands for them to be truly effective. Oh, one other thing about that… it is also deeply frowned upon by the search engines to build and use a link farm to generate links to a website. So while I’m pointing out that it is an available option in the battle to beat your well equipped competition, I’m also saying that it is a no-no and you shouldn’t do it. At least don’t get caught, because the de-indexing of hundreds of sites that you may have put many hundreds of hours work into can be soul destroying…

Ok then. Where does that leave us?

Traditional methods of obtaining free links just doesn’t have the effect you need to overcome your competition any more (your competition are probably the ones who spammed the living daylights out of them already).

You can’t buy links because Google says you can’t (even though your competition seems to be able to do it with abandon and get away with it) and you probably can’t afford them in any case.

You can’t build your own link farm of supporting sites, because Google says you can’t (even though you can bet your competition has their own enormous link farm that seems to pass under the radar) and even if you did, it would take many months of hard work to start seeing any results.

You can’t buy into paid link schemes because Google say you can’t (even though your competition almost certainly does… again, without getting caught) and their ongoing expense makes them a big commitment to make for the average person. They also require you to write the original articles that will be submitted to the network of sites yourself, which is time consuming in the extreme.

So what’s left?

WebSEO

What’s WebSEO? This is a compromise for people who can’t afford to pay the recurring monthly subscriptions to the paid link services. It gives you a one-shot at producing a big cache of links from one, two or more of the major link building services for a one-off fee.

The benefits are obvious and some not so obvious but of great importance. The obvious benefits are that you get a guaranteed batch of keyword anchored back links from authority sites for any campaign you are currently working on for a one-off fee, rather than having to pay for the monthly subscription. But it gets better. You don’t have to write any articles. Saving you a heap of time.

Maybe less obvious but of vital importance is that if you were to sign up for one of the monthly services and place your links and then cancel your subscription, your links disappear with your subscription. This doesn’t happen with WebSEO.org. Once your one-off submission is accepted, the links get placed and they stay in place for good. I’d say that is a major benefit, wouldn’t you?

Does it work?

Yes. I can personally confirm that a website of mine that was nowhere in the SERPs climbed to page one in Google’s main data centre for a relatively competitive keyword in the weight loss niche within just two weeks of using the service. It absolutely works.

Please use the link above to head over to the site and see for yourself. Its not an affiliate link, so I’m not actually making anything from this. I just wanted to give you the heads up that it is there for anyone who needs it to use.

You will need to sign up for it, which is free. This allows the Admin to verify you are not a spammer, as they don’t want any of that messing up the works of what is destined to be a very highly sought after service for those who do not want to commit to an expensive monthly subscription service.

Once you’ve been approved, you simply log-in, then click on the link service you require from their list of alternatives and pay via PayPal. You submit the keyword anchored links you want to promote and they go away and do the rest. Simple!

You can use this system as little or as often as you need, when ever you need it. No strings attached, no on-going fees, no article writing and no worries. How bad is that?

So give it a try. What are you waiting for?

Terry Didcott
The Honest Way

          

A slight apology to everyone for leaving it so long since my last post How to Make Money with Keywords. I’ve been very busy putting together my little army of sites and blogs and it takes up all my time, which is ok as I’m building a small empire that will eventually make enough money to allow me to slow down a bit!

I’ve just been over at Griz’s blog, you know the one that tells you how to make money online, and read through another brace of comments (sometimes they’re almost as entertaining as the post itself – only kiddin’!) and right at the bottom, an anonymous reader posted the question “Do you have any books to recommend?”

Well here’s my own answer to that!

Anonymous, why do you want more to read? Everything you need to know about how to make money online is right there in that blog.

The rest you’ll get with experience – the experience of doing!

I, like just about everyone else, started out reading a load of stuff and most of it was bullshit. If I counted up all the hours wasted reading all that bullshit that could have been better spent in actually doing what they were telling me, I’d be far more advanced today than I am.

Getting past the hurdle of wanting to do it and actually doing it can be tough and most people simply don’t go past that point. They continue to read every post that every knowledgeable (and plenty of not so knowledgeable) people write and then wait patiently for the next post that is going to reveal “The Big Secret”.

But that post will never come.

That’s because it doesn’t exist. The big secret to making a success of this (and any other) business lies within each and every person. They have to make the breakthrough themselves, because no one else can do it for them.

I’ll be blunt and say most of the commenters in Griz’s blog are readers, not doers.

Why do I say that? Because they’re still there, asking the same old questions just re-phrased a bit.

Then you’ll see them over at Vic’s blog asking the same rephrased questions. Then they’ll turn up someplace else. They’ll never do anything with the information, but they’ll keep on believing that if they ask enough questions, they’ll eventually find their holy grail and then figure out how to make money online.

They’ll also be the first ones to get upset by reading this apparent tirade, because they won’t believe the truth about themselves. Nobody like the truth when it hurts!

The truth is that 95% of everybody that sets out to make money online will fail. That’s a big number but also a truthful one. You got to ask yourself, do you want to keep reading and asking questions and join the 95%’ers? Or do you want to take a chance and join the 5%’ers who are the ones spending their time doing this stuff?

Ok, that’s pretty a pretty tough cookie to swallow, but its also a good wake up call to those people who really do want to make money blogging online. It’s in the doing stage that results start to show up. Believe me, they take a while to show up when you do things as legitimately as possible, maybe with a few shortcuts and underhand tricks, but Internet Marketing is a hare and tortoise race. The hares go for it with all guns blazing and in some cases will make some good money before being shot down by the search engines that soon see through their shenanigans.

The tortoises are the ones who take it slow and steady, building up their sites naturally and gathering links over time. Sure, it takes a lot of time and you need a lot of patience because when you’re learning how to make money online, results are a long time coming, but they will come and when they do they’ll keep on coming because you won’t have burned out too fast, like the hares in the race.

You see the secret to making money online is no big secret!

Its all about getting people to see what you’re offering. Get enough people to window shop at your store and some of them will come in and buy from you. Selling stuff is a numbers game. It always was and it always will be. Doesn’t matter what you’re selling, be it affiliate products, your own ebooks or software packages, advertising space, or PPC. You absolutely positively must get people to see your goods. And to do that you need traffic. Not any old traffic, but organic search traffic – people who will find your website or blog by typing in a phrase at Google and your site coming up on the front page of the search results.

Enough has been said about why attracting organic search traffic is essential to the success of your business. Go re-read Griz’s blog in the link I gave you at the start of this post. He explains it much better than anyone else I know.

What I will tell you is that to attract that search traffic you need to do plenty of work and have lots of patience to get your site up there onto the front page of the keywords you’re working. You need to not only optimize your site, but you need lots of strong anchored links to give your site the authority to deserve its place on page one. That’s because all the other sites that are on page one have that authority and you’re going to have to come along and get more authority than at least one of them in order to displace them. You might have a fight on your hands, because no one is going to like a young upstart coming along and nosing their site out of its cosy place. They’ll likely respond by getting more links for themself.

Well, you’re going to have to keep going, getting more and more of the authority that you’ll need to out-rank all of those sites to get to the top of the front page, because that’s where you’re going to get most of the traffic. Depending upon the competitiveness of the niche you’re working, it will either be fairly simple, or damn difficult! It could even turn out to be an all-out war, but its one you’re going to have to win of you want a slice of a very big pie.

This is all about doing, by the way.

Reading about how to do it is not going to get your site up there. Doesn’t matter if you know everything there is to know and some, you still won’t get up there unless you start rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty.

You’re going to have to find places to get those links from and if you can’t find them, then you’re going to have to make some yourself. The more you make, the more links you’ll be able to send to your main site. I’ve talked about this strategy plenty of times in here not to have to repeat it again.

But, I will repeat this one more time for good measure: Nothing will happen until you start doing it for yourself!

If this post raises a few hackles, then so be it. That’s what a good pep talk is designed to do because it’ll make some people more determined to get out there and do something. The rest will go bury their heads back in the sand and wait for that next post…

Terry Didcott
The Honest Way