Over Reactions

It seems to me that the majority of the warrior forum live in a constant state of caffeine fueled panic.

At the smallest thing you get pages of angry/worried/perculiar messages from people thinking its the end of the world.

The last over reaction was the FTC saying they could go after people for fake testimonials. I am sure this was a move to try to give them some more power against con-men and not to persecute blog owners. Just imagine how hard it would be to prove a testimonial is fake, and how much the court case would cost them. This legislation probably will effect less than 0.1% of internet marketers yet it has let to a constant stream of crazy posts from people convinced if you alter a testimonial you are going straight to jail. So far I am yet to hear of a single case going to court.

Now the latest fury is over Google's side wiki. People are calling it "Evil" and recommending people ban all google toolbar users from their site.

WHAT NONSENSE!

It's like a paying customer walking into a shop but you refuse to serve them because their mobile phone has some software on it you don't like.

Lets get one thing straight, I am not a fan of side wiki. It is too easy to spam negative comments at people. But guess what I am doing now? Well, I am spamming positive comments at my sites. So far on every site I have been to I am the first person to leave a message.

The truth is that only a small percentage of your visitors will bother to check it out, and I doubt people will take much stock of it as it is so easily abused either way.

Another thing, this is not new. There has been software out there that does this for years, the only difference now is that it is incorporated into the google toolbar which it very widespread.

Bottom Line: If side wiki effects your bottom line then you have some weak ass marketing. Go to the library and read some REAL marketing books and stop wasting your time with step by step get rich quick ebooks.

Sleepless Nights

I have fell back into the groove of making sites and promoting them. I have the IM bug bad and I am burning the midnight oil every night. Think I may turn into a vampire soon if I don't start gettig some sun soon lol.

My rankings are looking very promising now. I am creeping up the list on some highly searched terms. I am noticing that wordpress blogs seem to get a lot of junk traffic, I understand better now the posts from people who think they are getting 100 a day to look at their site but no sales. On one day, one of my niche blogs recorded 700 visits, but i think only about 10 of them were human. This could be due to the amount of directories I have been submitting to. They could be checking the link works or being scraped by spammers.

Now that I am starting to get traffic I need to monetize it which is always the tricky part. I got a load of work ahead of me but it feels good to be doing what I love. I have made a few good contacts recently also and I am discussing various business ideas with them.

Getting the temp ban in such a cocky way from the WF has made me not want to contribute there any more or submit guides. I will go back there eventually I guess but for the time being it is a good thing as I am focusing on getting things done.

I Got Banned!

But at least they gave me a reason. I used the phrase "trigger happy mod".

Here is what I see when I look at the site:

"You have been banned for the following reason:
Blame the "trigger happy mod""

Can't say I am upset. They have the authority there. I had thought the thread posed a good value and interesting reading, although I guess that is not what their main concern is. The main focus I guess is to keep the buyers desperate and control what information they are exposed to.

I am not here to rock the boat. I think my ban will eventually lift and I will continue to read the forum but I won't be submitting any more tutorials or how to videos.

$1,000 challenge

OK, so I am about to make a post to the WF. I truly believe this is a valuable post but I think that 1 or 2 of the moderators there with various agendas might not want it to see the light of day. The post is in no way self promotional but I thought I would video me making the post incase it gets deleted so here it is.

A Big THANK-YOU!

I originally setup this blog as a reaction to my situation. Things looked bad but it wasn't in my nature to lie down, give up and start whining. I never knew that by telling my story I would meet so many great people who were like me trying to make a success of their lives.

I would like to take this opportunity to say a big THANK-YOU to all the pople who have gone out of their way to contact me. YOU are my biggest motivation to keep going when so many people out there are so focused on the negatives. You guys keep me positive and the opportunities coming my way are more than I could have hoped for. I am establishing a network of really good people. If you have read my blog and think you have the right mindset, do not hesitate to get in contact with me. I reply to anyone who is out there, with the right attitude, and looking to be successful.

Take it easy,

Mike

London Lunch

The London lunch was interesting. Can't say it was any great motivation. People seemed to be split into two categories. Either your not making much money or your claiming to make lots of money and selling products to teach others how to do it.

I was a lot younger than pretty much everyone there but a couple were close to my age and we enjoyed a few beers. Made some good contacts and swapped some info. I don't think I will go back there again. I might arrange my own similar night for slightly younger marketers and have it set in a more lively surroundings like leicster square.

Useful Link For Footprinting

I found this link which is a good place to start when looking for sites to footprint.

http://mashable.com/2007/07/25/open-source-social-platforms/

Hope it helps

Wordpress for SEO

I am starting to love wordpress now. It took a while to get the hang of customising it to my own specifications but now I'm getting on with it like a house on fire.

As I mentioned I use article distribution services to build backlinks. Well, on those articles I include a link to one of my posts and I get pingback requests appear in wordpress.

This shows me where my article is listed. Most of the times it is buried deep within a low page rank site so the chances of the search engines counting it are low. So what I do is throw a few comment links from other peopls blogs at my spun article to make sure it gets indexed. This way I am truly benefiting from the article distribution services.

Human Spinner

I have been having great difficulty getting my spin templates made up by outsource writers. I have been waiting 2 weeks for a single article to be properly finished with my current guy.

In the forum yesterday I noticed mention of a service call "Human Spinner". I tried it out today and it is really good. I can approve or decline idividual sentances which is really cool.

Bad side of it is that it requires more of my time to go in and accept/reject than if I just outsource the whole job but I got the article back in just a few hours which is the most important thing for me right now as my current writer seems quite busy.

If you are using AMA or UAW then its worth checking out: http://www.humanspinner.com

I Am Getting LAZY!!

My motivation has seriously lapsed last few days. Other than research a few keywords I haven't really done anything. Feel like a bit of a lay-about right now, going to get my laptop out and make a couple of sites.

If anyone is heading over to the london lunch this Friday I will be there. I think a lot of people go there to JV to their lists etc.. but I am just going to have a general chat with other marketers and see how they are getting on. Would be good motivation for me I hope. Never been to one of these things so I have no idea what to expect.

Will report back on how it goes.

My Current Status

It's been an emotional month but I have finally started to relax.

A couple of months of hammering special offers to the database and shuffeling assets has cleared my personally secured debt on my business account. Still have the creditors meeting to go but fingers crossed everything should go smoothly and I will walk out of this relatively unscathed.

Haven't made a salary in a while but my credit status looks good. Have 2 untouched cards and a overdraft to use while I get myself back on my feet. Played a little golf this week, went to see some family. Even optimised a mates website as a favour. I like this pace of life - no staff hasseling me - no one kissing my arse - no awkward clients - no daily commute - no 9-5 work schedule. It's great! I just gotta make some money and get the mortgage paid lol!

So far the new sites I am setting up havent made any money (unless you include the £1.50 i made in adsense). I got through the first batch of sites and they are getting some traffic now on long tails. I am just concentrating on content right now, doing a little bit of linking but just some experimental stuff testing a few footprinting techniques (1000 non spammy links from high PR domains with the click of a button... can you say CHA CHING?).

System is simple, find opensource software that allows for posting of profile page and a link. Use website footprinting to create a list of sites using the software. Automate the registration process and profile creation.

It's like doing every one of angelas packets in 30 minutes LOL. My server has 2gig RAM and 100mbit connection. I am running this at 100 concurrent threads.

Process still needs refinement, I am still experiementing. I contacted a few so called experts for help with this and no one would help me, even with the offer of coaching fees. I feel like I have broken the back of the research now and have a solid technique in the making.

In brief it will go something like this:

Create spin template article in AMA using short tail keyword
Convert this to UAW
Convert this to linkvana
Do social nuke in senuke posting a spun version to each page as the article.
Smash out 1000 profile links with long tail keyword to each and every social page.

Expected Result: Long tail keyword domination. Social pages take up first 10 results. Main site ranks for short tail keyword.

I haven't really gone to the trouble of properly monetizing my sites yet. As I am doing such a volume of websites I am going to wait to see which ones rank fastest and concentrate my efforts there.

Have taken it easy this week, will step up my efforts next week. I need to research another 100 keywords but right now I'm eating pizza and playing computer games... ahhh... this is the life!

All In One Threads - Very Clever Thinking From Allen

So for anyone that missed it, the WF is now doing moderated "All-in-one" posts where that tag is added to title, then when you search the forum for this tag it brings back amazing content created from some of the most active and successful internet marketers.

So what's in it for us?

These threads will have great content and will be easily accessible. Inevitably they will get many inbound links and gather a good level of page rank and traffic.

Anyone who posts on these threads will get extra link juice passed to their signature links, as well as extra traffic through direct clicks if they have a related product.

So in summary, we put in some time collating a good informative resource, this will get the thread ranking in search engines really high eventually. The forum gets extra visitors and the posters get extra link juice and traffic to their signatures. It's a win win situation.

I suggest if you see one of these threads appear you spend a few minutes doing a bit of research and make a post on it. Even if you don't have a signature link now, you will still get extra benefit by adding one at a later date.

Videos

I think I need to try a different angle with my keyword research videos. Right now I do my research based on my experience. I think it is a bit too much to try and show every different situation and bit of knowledge I have learnt over the years. I need to simplify it a bit, but not to the point where is is rendered useless.

Simplyfying things is pretty complicated though when there are so many different factors that apply.

I think I will design a checklist of things that people should check on the first 10 results. Or perhaps make a flow chart and then for each section of the flow chart make a video.

If anyone has some ideas then I would love to hear them.

Keyword Research pt. 2

I made a hash of editing this video, but I patched it up ok. The next few videos are all going to be talking about theory. It might be the case I have to re-shoot this section at a later date to make it more interesting. I wrote some pitch prompts down this time to help me get through video and I sound a little wooden, but it is all good practise, the more I make the better I will get at it.

I haven't posted this one on the forum, not sure if I will or not yet. I might make these videos just for the people who have gove down the rabbit hole (aka clicking my signature link lol). **EDIT** I got impatient and posted it to WF.

Let me know what you think please:

Keyword Research pt. 1

This was my first ever video I posted in forum. Was a bit nervous on it and fluffed a bit of info but gets the point across about what info you should be looking at.

Hubtest Video

For those who missed it...

Boobs

I made a video today for keyword research. Problem is that as I was speaking I had the wrong slide up.

Can't for the life of me work out how to edit it out. Soon as I do I'll post it here.

In other news, cleared most of the crap out of my office. Now my flat is packed out with random crap that needs to be organised/sold/thrown out/obliterated.

Got so many loose ends to tie up I havent really done any IM work. Gotta try hard to sneak a bit in this week to keep up the pressure. I did however manage to sell off a load of stock and kill a large chunk of my debts. I also got a big deal that if it drops in will pretty much cure the business overdraft. Hopefully it comes through. The deal is with a company that make custom PC's. I am tempted to do a trade in exchange for a couple of top end gaming machines, but cash right now is king.