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Introduction
I think it’s safe to say that most people don’t earn as much as they would
like to. I understand exactly what that feels like. Back in 2005, I started
trying to make money using the internet because I desperately needed to
supplement my income. I made around $1200 per month at my job and I
worked way too many hours for it.
It wasn’t enough money. I couldn’t make ends meet, no matter how hard I
tried. I had school (tuition, books, fees, etc.) that I couldn’t pay for, a
girlfriend that I couldn’t take out, a $500 car that cost $700 to fix every other
month, and a lot of other necessary expenses. Things weren’t adding up.
An extra $300 per month would have solved most of my financial
problems. I believed that there had to be a way to make that happen and I
started searching and searching. I met someone who made a little money
using the internet and the lights went on. I knew that I had to start trying to
learn how to do that myself.
There was a huge learning curve for me (I didn’t know a dang thing about
the internet at the time), but I was able to make that extra $300 per month. I
wasn’t getting rich, but my life was getting a lot easier. Never tell yourself
otherwise – life is a lot easier with even a little more money. Before long,
that $300 grew to replace my income from work. After more hard work that
income grew to more than $5,000 per month. With some more hard work I
tripled that figure.
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in myself because I have developed a valuable skill-set but that’s enough
about me. Let’s get down to business.
The purpose of this e-book is to tell you exactly how I was able to go
from knowing absolutely nothing about the internet to making more
than $5,000 per month from each of my three best websites.
Let’s Begin
The methods that I’m going to talk about can be executed by most people.
I’ve taught a lot of friends to produce money this way and it works for
them. My girlfriend makes around $4,000 per month this way (she has a job
so her online income is on the side) and I have a lot of other friends who
make side incomes and full-time incomes using my methods.
If you can absorb what you read while motivating yourself to act, I can
promise that you’ll have a winning formula for achievement.
Why This Method Works
There are literally billions (and billions) of dollars in transactions taking
place online every year. Millions and millions of dollars change hands
every single day. The percentage of that money you have to grab to make
$300 or even $5,000 in a given month is frankly, very close to zero
(definitely less than a hundredth of a percent).
The whole premise behind how I make sites that can produce $5,000+ per
month is simple. I put them in between the people who are spending
money online and the people who are taking it. Let me explain…
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Big sites like Amazon.com, ELOAN.com, eBay.com, Geico.com and
Buy.com do literally hundreds of thousands of dollars each day in revenue.
How do they get enough people on their sites to do that kind of volume?
They advertise on people’s sites, sites like mine.
I don’t have a clue how a person would go about selling advertising to
these companies and I don’t have to. Google does that for me. Goog has
established relationships with millions of companies (literally) and they let
people use those relationships (for free) so they can make more for
themselves. It might sound too good to be true, but that’s how it works. In
the third quarter of 2009, Google paid $1.56 billion to people like me. Why
would they do that? Google’s ability to put advertising on sites like mine
made them an extra $3.36 billion in that quarter. They paid out $1.56
billion and pocketed $1.80 billion.
This Google talk probably sounds a lot harder than it actually is. You
probably already have a million questions so I’m going to ask for your
patience. Most of you can make this work.
In all reality, all you have to do to use Google’s advertising is sign up, log
in, copy a piece of code, and then paste it into an article on your website. If
you can copy this sentence and paste it into a Word doc, you’ll be fine
when the time is right to ad Google ads to your site.
Google will read the information that’s on your site and will then display
the ads that match up best with it. The system works great and makes a lot
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of money for Google, for the big sites that buy traffic, and for people like
me who get paid to put ads on their sites.
How Google’s Program Works
Google charges the people who buy their advertising on a per click basis.
Each time Google generates a click for one of these advertisers, they get
paid (usually a click is worth between $0.10 and $5.00 to Google). If that
click happens on one of my websites, I get about half of the money. That’s
how I put myself between the guys who are getting the money (ELOAN,
Amazon, etc.) and the guys who are paying the money (the people that
are buying products on these sites).
For example, ELOAN is paying more than $2 to buy a single visitor who is
looking for a loan. I write an article about loans, and get people who are
looking for loans to find my article (more on that step later). I put some
Google ads in or near my article. One of them is an ad for ELOAN. One of
my visitors clicks that ad and goes to ELOAN (ELOAN is making their
money by getting some of those visitors to take out loans). ELOAN pays
Google $2, of which Google gives me half ($1).
As soon as I can make that happen 167 times per day, I make $5,010 per
month.
If the process isn’t clear, watch this video. It shows you a web page that
uses Google’s advertising program to make money and explains more
about how it all works:
http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/google-ads/
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Why Many People Can’t Make This Work
If your goal is to make $5,000 per month, you have to get 167 clicks per day
that are worth $1 each. From experience, I know that I can plan that at least
5-10% of my visitors will click one of my ads. This means that I need to get
around 20 people onto my site to get ‘a precious click’.
Some people can’t get this to work and it’s for one reason: They don’t
know how to get enough traffic. If you only get 10 visitors per day on your
site, you aren’t going to generate 167 clicks. You’re going to generate one, if
you’re lucky. If you’re cool with only making $1 per day, you’re in pretty
good shape. If you have higher goals, you need more traffic.
There are more than 50,000,000 (fifty million) bloggers on the planet, and
95% of them have never made a dime. Most of them want to and frankly,
they fail. Many of them try to use Google’s program (it’s called Adsense),
and fail. The sad thing is that many of these bloggers would kill to make a
couple bucks so they work their fingers to the bone, often writing hundreds
of blog posts with no returns.
Why are most bloggers so pathetic when it comes to making money? They
go after the wrong type of traffic. They want to develop a huge following
so they are networking to the end of the world and wasting most of the day
trying to get extra visitors from sites like StumbleUpon, Facebook, and
Digg. That traffic doesn’t convert to dollar bills and I know – I’ve had
hundreds of thousands of hits from those sources.
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Search traffic is by FAR the highest converting type of traffic and that’s
where I make my money. In other words, traffic from Google and other
keyword-based search engines will get you more clicks (or sales if that’s
your game) than you can get from any other source. If you can learn to get
traffic from Google and other search engines, you’ll never struggle to make
money. I can make more from 100 Google hits than I can from 50,000 hits
from StumbleUpon, Twitter, or Facebook and that’s the honest-to-pete
truth.
The key to making dollar bills is creating websites that get traffic from
Google and other search engines. If you can do that, you can always make
money with the internet. If you want to learn to do that, read on.
How to Get Started
Countless aspiring internet marketers get paralyzed before they even get
started. This happens because they think that they have to invent the Next
Great Thing. “If I don’t come up with a unique product or website, there’s no way
I can start a business online.”
Wrong.
You don’t have to create a completely original site to make $5,000 per
month. Original ideas are for making hundreds of millions or billions of dollars.
If you don’t have those expectations, there’s no need to think that you have
to come up with something entirely original – it’s completely untrue. There
are people who have made millions online with ZERO original ideas. I
know a few of them.
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I generally only start sites around topics that are already being covered. Let
me repeat that for emphasis (pay special attention):
I only start sites that do the exact same things that other people are
already doing.
I provide information – I tell people about things. There are a million other
sites that do that and frankly, I couldn’t possibly care less. It works great for
me – why would I worry about other people who are doing it?
If you believe that you need original ideas to make money, please let go of
those beliefs. They simply aren’t true.
If you can start sites that explain things to people, you can make a killing
online.
Test: try to explain this to a friend or family member: how to apply
Chapstick.
Can you explain how to apply Chapstick? If you can, you could make
money online from that explanation. People every day online try to find
out ‘how to apply Chapstick’. Weird, I know – but true. Let’s give this a
shot:
First, you reach into your pocket and you take out the Chapstick. Next, you need to
remove the cap. This may be slightly difficult the first time because Chapstick sticks have
a seal that has to be removed. Don’t worry – this only has to be done once and most
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people can do it without too many problems. Remove the seal, and then remove the cap.
Twist the bottom of the stick until 1/8” of the balm (the stuff inside the stick) is exposed.
You will then gently press the stick against your bottom lip, applying a thin coat across
the entire lip. Take special precaution to NOT apply the balm to other areas of the face.
It’s really thick and can be hard to remove from the face.
After you finish applying balm to the lower lip, repeat for the upper lip.
You will then rub your lips together to even out the balm on the lips. Many people enjoy
wiping some of the balm off with their hand (or with a small towel) at this point to
remove excess.
You will then place the cap back on the stick. Follow this step by placing the Chapstick
back into your pocket.
Frankly I know that this explanation is weirder than a three headed cricket
but seriously, if you’re searching for ‘how to apply Chapstick’ I don’t know
what else to tell you!
I am able to make $5,000 per month because I put basic, explanatory
articles onto my websites. If you can learn to do that, you can do exactly
what I’ve done. If you can’t, you can pay someone who can to do it for you.
When I started figuring out that I could make money this way, I had a
million questions. How do I find topics to write about? How do I make websites?
How do I publish articles? How do I know which topics will make me money? Can
I really do this? What if I don’t know anything about the internet? Be patient
grasshopper – I’ll explain it all.
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Let’s get down to the nuts and bolts. I want to show you the method that I
(and hundreds of my students) have used to successfully break into
internet marketing. I’ll walk you through how to:
•Find profitable topics for sites – topics where you'll find adequate value
without too much competition.
•Set up websites – everything from registering a '.com' domain name to
setting up web hosting and adding articles to the site.
•Move the site up in Google's listings until it reaches the #1 position (or
until you reach your income goals).
•Turn the traffic into income by publishing advertising. (Using an ad
program you don't have to manage.)
I don’t stop after I have gone through this process once. I duplicate,
duplicate, and then duplicate some more. One of my biggest keys to
success is that I just keep using the system. I find new topics, add them to
my sites (or create new sites), move up in Google’s listings, and grow. I
know that if I do more work, I will make more money. I do that.
Let’s dive in.
Finding ProBitable Topics for Sites
Step one is finding a topic that has potential to make money. This process
isn’t that difficult and can be done using tools that are free. Most people
skip this step; therefore most people are terrible at making money with the
internet.
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Important concept: Google is by far the largest search engine in the world
and is therefore our largest source of potential income. We should base
our research on how much traffic we can get from Google and the value of
that traffic. Traffic from other search engines is icing on the cake and is a
natural consequence of working to get Google traffic.
Fortunately for us, Google gives us all of the information we need to
determine whether we can make money with a topic, in fact they have a
tool that gives it to us. The Google Adwords Keyword Tool tells us almost
everything we need to know:
• How much search traffic a potential a topic has
• How much advertisers are paying to buy visitors who are interested
in a specific topic
Google shows us how much value and how much traffic potential there is
for the topics that you’re looking into. This means that we can estimate
how much income we can make with a topic before we waste time
working on a website about it.
Important Equation: (skipping this step) + (trying to make money online)
= (most online entrepreneurs) = (sucky results) = (most bloggers) = (most
people that have other types of sites) = (lots of crying) = (complete and
utter failure).
I find topics that PAY.
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Let’s take a look at an example to make things more clear. Let’s do some
research around this potential topic: ‘building a new home.’
Using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, we can determine that about
2,400 people search for this phrase in Google each month. We can also find
out that there is an advertiser that buys clicks for $2.02 a piece. This is
good information – we can use it to find out how much we could make
with this topic. Click the link below to watch a video that shows you how
to use the Google adwords keyword tool:
http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/adwords-tool/
The whole point of the research process is to find phrases (we call these
keywords) that have value. One of our biggest achievements at The
Keyword Academy is that we figured out how to use the information from
this tool to estimate the profit potential of any word or phrase. This helps
us determine which phrases will be worthwhile, and which phrases will be
useless.
Our example phrase (building a new home) would break down as follows:
We now know that 2,400 people search for this phrase in Google each
month. From looking at my traffic for thousands of keywords, I can tell you
that you normally can get about 40% of that traffic if you can get to #1 in
Google (you can and will if you implement what I teach in this book). This
means you can get 960 visitors per month (2,400 x 40%) to your site if you
implement this keyword effectively into your website. At least 5% of those
visitors will click on one of your ads. That means that around 48 people
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each month will click on one of your ads (because 48 is 5% of 960, which is
40% of 2,400).
How Much Will Those Clicks Be Worth?
We can get a solid idea of how much each of our 48 clicks will be worth by
looking at the CPC (remember - CPC is ‘cost per click’ - it’s the amount an
advertiser pays for each visitor to their website) from the Google Adwords
Keyword Tool. In this case the CPC is $2.02. From looking at data from
thousands of clicks I can tell you that on average, your commission from
Google will usually end up at around 25% of the CPC. That means in this
case that each of our clicks will be worth about $0.50 because ($2.02) x
(25%) = $0.50 (it’s actually 50.5 cents).
Basic math tells us that 48 clicks at $0.50 a piece would give us $24 and that
is how much you could plan on making per month if you decided to use
this phrase.
Summing up - here’s how we go from discovering the keyword phrase
‘building a new home’ to figuring out it could be worth $24 per month to
us:
• Approximately 2,400 search ‘building a new home’ in Google each month.
• If our website ranked #1 in Google for ‘building a new home,’ we could
expect to have about 40% of those searchers visit our website (which is
960 people).
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• If 960 people visit our website, we can expect about 5% of them to click
one of the ads they find on our web pages (which means we’ll get 48 ad
clicks in the month).
• Based on the CPC we found on the Google Adwords Tool, we know
advertisers will pay roughly $2 for each of the clicks on the ads on our
website.
• Since Google manages the ad program, they keep a percentage of the $2
for themselves, and we can expect them to pay us roughly 25% (which
would be about 50 cents).
• So, I get 50 cents per click, which means I make $24.
That whole scenario actually fits into a nice clean formula - a formula my
students and I have used to generate thousands of dollars per month in
income. Here it is:
(Search Volume x 40%) x (CPC x 25%) x 5% = Monthly Income Potential of
Keyword
The last 5% of course represents the percentage of visitors to my website
who are likely to click an ad.
(I know I’m repeating myself a bit, but these concepts are pretty new to a
lot of people, so it’s worth going over them a couple of times.)
Find 10 phrases just like ‘building a new home’ and you could make $240
per month. Find 100 phrases like this one and you could make $2400 per
month. Find 209 phrases like this one and you could make more than
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$5,000 per month. 1,000 phrases like this one would give us $24,000 per
month.
I got to $5,000 per month three different times because I put literally
hundreds of these keyword phrases together and used all of them. There’s
something you should know about me – I don’t shoot from the hip. I shoot
with sand bags, a tripod, and a high powered scope.
Most people don’t even try to figure out which keywords will pay and that
is the biggest reason they fail to make money with the internet. Almost
everyone spends 90% of their time writing articles or blog posts that don’t
use keywords or working with phrases that either don’t have value or are
too difficult to rank for. Using this method, I find that over 90% of the
keywords I choose work out just like I thought they would.
Since I know how much profit I can make from keywords before I get
started, I can go after hundreds of them without fear that they won’t work.
Playing with volume doesn’t work so well when you have no idea what
you’re going to get. Thinking about what would have happened to me if I
had put in the same effort without a plan would make my head explode. I
couldn’t bear to do it.
Right now one of my three sites is using nearly 500 different keywords. It
has taken a lot of time to find them (and even more time to implement all
of them) but it was well worth the $5,000 per month in income that it
produces.
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And don’t worry - you don’t have to go after 500 keywords at a time. You
are going to start with one keyword and then work toward two, and then
three, and then four, etc.
If your mind works anything like mine, you’re probably asking yourself,
“How do I come up with ideas for topics?” Let’s dig into that.
How to Brainstorm Valuable Keyword Phrases
Coming up with keyword ideas for websites isn’t exactly second nature to
humans. At first it’s weird and awkward, but it’s easy after you get it
down.
I want to give you some basic advice on this because I have gone through
this process hundreds and hundreds of times and have found literally
thousands of profitable keywords.
One of the easiest methods that can be used to get ideas for keyword
phrases is to simply start with any word or phrase, enter it into the tool I
mentioned earlier, and take a look at the phrases that come back. For
example, right now on my desk I have a pen, a notebook, Chapstick, Clorox
disinfecting wipes, a mouse, a mouse pad, a keyboard, some scissors, a
check book, a wallet, and a few other things. I could enter any of them into
the tool and would find a bunch of phrases, any of which I could enter back
in to the tool to find more and more phrases.
You probably wouldn’t think that you could make money by writing an
article about Clorox disinfecting wipes but I can promise you that people
have. I have learned by experience that any word or phrase is a valid
option. Any word or phrase is a valid option.
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There are a lot of different methods that can be used to find words and
phrases to put into the tool. Here are five methods I like to use:
1. The Flippa Marketplace (Click the link to visit the site) - At Flippa,
people are constantly buying and selling sites to each other. This is a
great place to look for ideas because you can see what niches people
are making money in. You can take the topics you find and run them
through a keyword tool that will help you to expand upon your ideas
(more on that later).
2. Amazon.com (Click to visit) - Since Amazon sells just about
everything under the sun, it’s a great place to go to get new ideas for
keywords. Choose a category and browse through the products. Each
product and category name gives you a potential keyword or range
of keywords. Again, your keyword tool can help you to expand on
what you have.
3. eBay (Click to visit) - This one is just like Amazon. You’re simply
going to take a look at the products and categories to get ideas.
4. Billboards - When you drive down the interstate you should always
be looking at the billboards. Think about it; people are paying to
advertise there. They’re paying for a reason. What I’ve found is that
things you find on billboards often pay very well online. Why?
Billboards usually advertise products and services with high profit
margins. Sure you will have to use the numbers that the tool gives to
make a decision but the idea here is to get fresh keywords that you
can’t think of otherwise.
5. TV commercials - Again, when people pay to advertise
commercially, there has to be some profit there. If you can get the
traffic for free, it makes sense that you’ll be able to make money.
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Exercise: To get the brainstorming process started, find a piece of paper
and start writing down ideas. Write down the first 5 general topics that pop
into your head. You’ll be finished in less than three minutes - I promise.
I spend a lot of time thinking about new words and phrases that I can use.
The goal for you right now is to find your first profitable phrase, followed
by your second, and so on.
I now have sites that rank on the first page of Google for more than 400
phrases. This all began with finding the phrases in the first place. I of
course found one phrase at a time – there’s no reason that you need to find
a million keywords on your first day. Focus on finding one and then
another, and another.
Exercise: Find 10 keyword phrases that can produce more than $10 per
month in income.
After you find your first 10 phrases that produce more than $10 per month,
you’ll see it’s actually a fairly simple process.
You Need “Rankable” Keywords
Finding the potential value of your keywords is crucial, but it isn’t the
entire selection process. There is still another huge aspect of the selection
process that needs consideration.
I can tell you from experience that a phrase can look like it’s worth $24 per
month, and can be worth absolutely nothing. This happens when we can’t
get ranked in Google for the phrase, because the competition is too strong.
The value is there, but we can’t get the traffic.
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An example of this type of keyword is ‘loans’.
If your site was ranked #1 in Google for ‘loans’ – you would be rich (not
Lebron James rich – more like Paul Millsap rich). According to the
calculation percentages we discussed earlier, you would be able to make
more than $1.3 million per month (this is a very realistic figure for the site
that ranks #1).
The problem here is that for most people, it would be almost impossible to
get ranked #1 for ‘loans’. The competition is fierce and the companies that
are going for this keyword have monster budgets and limitless resources.
In this case, the keyword is useless to you because it’s impossible to rank
for it.
The bottom line is there is another variable that we really need to
understand with this type of research. You need to know how to calculate
the potential income a keyword can produce and you need to know
whether you can get your site to get listed in Google for the keyword. If
both of those variables align, you have a winning (as in profitable)
keyword.
The most ridiculous example of this-concept-gone-bad is the travesty that
is the ‘make money online’ blogger. There are about 10,000,000 of them and
every one of them is only trying to go after the keyword ‘make money
online’. To them, it’s the only keyword that exists in the universe.
Apparently, 16 year old girls, 35 year old mothers of four, and 86 year old
bus drivers all search for one and only one keyword in Google – make
money online.
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None of them can compete with people who really know what they’re
doing so what happens? They work their fingers to the bone and make
ZERO dollars. Tragic.
Going after easy keywords is…EASY. Going after hard keywords is…
HARD. Confusing, I know.
If a keyword isn’t going to be pretty easy to rank for, there’s no use going
after it (until you have the experience and the know-how to make it
happen). It makes more sense to spend a small amount of time doing extra
research than hundreds of hours working on keywords that you can’t get
ranked for.
Let’s recap. In order to make money from a keyword, it will need to have
these characteristics:
1. It needs to have potential for profit, as we talked about in the above
section on finding profitable topics for sites.
2. It needs to be rank-able. You need to be able to get a page of your
site ranked in Google for it.
How to Judge Your Competition
The most important concept in analyzing your competition is looking at
which sites currently rank in Google for your keywords, and then figuring
out how strong those sites are.
The huge misconception out there is that we should put our keyword in
quotes, search for it in Google, and judge it based on the number of results.
Frankly, that idea (which I used to believe) isn’t very effective.
Think about it…
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So we search for a keyword in Google and get 20 results. Based on what
most people say about keywords, this would be the greatest keyword ever.
So what happens when we search for the keyword in Google and see these
sites in the top 10?
IRS.gov, Stanford.edu, NYTimes.com, USA.gov, Yahoo.com, NASA.gov,
Adobe.com, Apple.com, WhiteHouse.gov, and Harvard.edu?
We lose.
The number of results in Google has no correlation with the strength of the
pages in the top 10 and we have to beat the top 10 to get traffic.
On the other hand, it’s common to see keywords that have 100,000,000
results and a bunch of super weak sites in the top 10. They look terrible
according to the common method for doing this research, but they are
actually awesome (meaning relatively easy to rank for and likely to be
worth some money to you).
The best way to analyze competition is by
looking at the sites that rank in the top of
Google’s listings for each of your keywords. If
you can beat them, you can beat everyone else.
If the sites that rank in the top of Google for your
potential phrases are weak, you’re good to go. If
they are strong, you won’t want to use those
phrases. It’s a pretty simple process once you know
how to tell the difference between a weak strong
competitor and a weak one.
Google has a system for judging the strength of web pages – it’s called
PageRank (often abbreviated as PR).
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What is Pagerank?
Pagerank (PR) is a scale
Google created to compare
the importance of one
webpage to another. The
scale runs from 0 to 10, 10
being the highest. All other
things being equal, the
higher the PR of a page,
the more difficult it will be
to pass that page in the
search engine results.
I look at the PageRank (PR) of each page that currently ranks for a keyword
that I’m considering. Google uses a lot more than PR to calculate rankings,
but looking at the PR of each page gives me an idea of how strong they are
and helps us to determine whether I can beat them.
Important concept: Sites and pages with low PageRank are much easier to
beat than sites and pages with high PageRank.
In order to make this process easier for you, I’ll explain how this process
works and then I’ll give you the exact rules that I follow to judge
competition.
How to Check PageRank
To check the PageRank of web pages, you will need to install the Google
toolbar – a free toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox. Here’s a link to
quick video that shows you how to find the PageRank of a page, after you
have installed the toolbar:
http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/toolbar-pagerank/
In this case, I looked up the keyword ‘cheap cell phones’, and discovered
that the PageRank of the top four web pages that rank for the keyword are:
3, 2, 5, 3.
Can we realistically beat these sites?
The PR2 isn’t anything to worry about. We’re comfortable going up against
PR2s – we can almost always beat them. PR0s, PR1s, and PR2s are pretty
much always fairly easy to beat out.
Even though the PR5 page is ranked in the third position here, it’s the page
that we would have to worry the most about. It is by far the strongest page
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in the top 10. If the person who owns that page knew a few simple
techniques, they could probably rank #1 within a few days.
In this case, this site doesn’t rank #1 because they have relevancy issues
(which means the text on the page doesn’t effectively cover the keyword).
As soon as they start to use the keyword effectively in their content they
will easily take over #1.
The other two sites that rank for “cheap cell phones” are PR3s. We can
always beat PR3s, we just have to keep in mind that it will take more work
to beat a PR3 than it does to beat a PR2.
In this case, the PR3 and the PR2 that are ranked above the PR5 are more
focused on the keyword ‘cheap cell phones’. That means they are using it
better within the text of the page, and are probably using it more effectively
within links that are pointing at the page. We’ll discuss this further but for
now we are going to say that this keyword is too strong to go after, because
of the PR5 page in the top 4 results. The bottom line is that we don’t want
to go up against a PR5 page that’s in the top 4 results – even if it doesn’t
rank #1 right now.
I personally wouldn’t use this keyword. There are millions of other
options – options that don’t have a PR5 in the top four search results.
The following guidelines aren’t hard and fast rules, but hopefully they will
help you to understand the basics so that you can choose your keywords
effectively. Here they are:
• PR0 – We know we can easily outrank PR0s almost every time.
• PR1 – We know we can easily outrank PR1s almost every time.
• PR2 – We know we can easily outrank PR2s almost every time, but not as
easily as we could outrank PR0s and PR1s.
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• PR3 – We can usually outrank PR3s, but they will sometimes take a lot
more work than we expected. These will be a lot easier to target if you
have a site that’s already PR3 or higher.
• PR4 – These pages are generally quite strong and will be difficult to beat. I
have been able to get in front of them on a regular basis but can tell you
that it takes a lot of work. I would avoid going up against them until
you gain a little more experience.
• PR5+ - Pages that have PR this high will generally be very difficult to beat
and I would recommend passing on keywords that have these sites in the
top 4.
You want to make sure that you can beat all of the pages in the top 4.
By now you should have your own list of keywords, so it’s time to go
through it to determine which ones you can realistically search for. I
usually mark the ones I know I can rank for green, the ones that are of
medium difficulty (these are the PR3s and PR4s) yellow, and the ones that
are too difficult (PR5+) red.
Just to restate this principle: a keyword is strictly green if all of the top
four competing pages are PR 3 or lower.
If any of the top four competing pages are PR 4, the keyword would be
desribed as moderately difficult, and if any are PR 5 (or higher) the
keyword would be strictly red.
Tip: If you’re a beginner, you may want to adjust the PR numbers so you’re
always going after really easy keywords. Taking the time to find keywords
that have all PR1 or PR0 sites will make getting ranked a lot easier.
Exercise: Go through your list of keywords and analyze the competition for
each. Mark each one green, yellow, or red. It will then look something like
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the image below. (If you want to keep up your end of the deal you’ll find at
least 10 green keywords before you finish reading the book.)
Hint: Although this isn’t always the case, keyword phrases containing
more than two terms (‘leather cat collars’) are usually less competitive than
one or two-term phrases (‘cats’ or ‘cat collars’).
After you have color coded your spreadsheet, it will end up looking
something like this:
I’d have to say that my single biggest secret to creating a $5,000 per
month income is choosing only keywords that I know I can rank for. If
keywords are green, I know I can rank for them.
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I worked hard to find hundreds and hundreds of keywords that are green
and this allows me to produce a lot of profit. In fact, proper keyword
research puts you in a position to set up very lucrative online business.
The only downside is how time consuming it is to research one keyword at
a time. You have to think of the keyword, then find out if it has any income
potential, then check to see whether it will be easy enough to rank for. In
the past it took my students 20 to 50 hours to find a list of even 25 green
keywords - because they had to do it manually.
Luckily, my students don’t have to go through keyword research process
one keyword at a time anymore. We’ve built a keyword tool that lets you
do hundreds of hours’ worth of keyword research in less than an hour. It’s
called Niche Refinery, and it’s a real game changer. Rather than try to
explain it all here, let me point you to a short video that demonstrates
Niche Refinery and shows you how you can find well over 100 green
keywords (which is enough to keep you busy for a long time) in a matter of
an hour or so.
http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/nr-demo/
My sites produce big income numbers because I find a lot of useful
keywords, and I understand how to integrate them well into the content of
the site – a skill I’ll teach you in this e-book.
Whether you use Niche Refinery to mine the gold from thousands of
potential keywords, or research one green at a time, the key to success is
setting up a website where you can publish articles about those keywords,
get rankings, and make money.
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Setting Up Sites Based On Your Keywords
Once you have some solid keywords, it’s time to get a site set up. I’ll show
you exactly how to do this – it isn’t as hard as it sounds. The first decision
that you have to make is whether you want to start your site based on a
single topic, or whether you want to have a site about anything and
everything.
If you know a lot about one topic, you might want to consider starting a
site about that topic. If you don’t, I would highly recommend starting a site
that covers everything. This leaves you open to using ANY keyword
phrase that you want to use (you can easily categorize) and you can grow
your information at your own pace. There are a lot of wildly successful
sites that use this method. A few that come to mind are:
• About.com
• EzineArticles.com
• eHow.com
• wikiHow.com
• Wikipedia.com
Your site will of course be much smaller than the above examples. They use
millions of keywords to make tens of millions of dollars. You will use
hundreds of keywords to make thousands of dollars. Or, you will use
thousands of keywords to make tens of thousands of dollars.
I am personally using around 1,500 keywords right now to produce the
income for my three sites. In other words, it’s taken about 500 keywords to
produce $5,000 per month. If you only wanted to make $500 per month,
you need 50 good keywords. If you want to make $50,000 per month, you
need 5,000 good keywords.
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The first step in the process of setting up your own informational website is
choosing a domain name – this is the .com name (or .net, .org, etc.) for your
site. Your success will depend very little on the domain name you choose,
so don’t put a lot of pressure on yourself.
One of my sites uses my own name – CourtneyTuttle.com. Right now I
stick to information about making money with the internet, but I could
open it up to any type of information. Using your name isn’t a bad way to
go if you’re comfortable putting it out there. If you aren’t, that isn’t a
problem at all. You can use a nickname or you can go with something that
describes general information. Here are some examples:
• DavidsWorld.com
• InfoUniverse.com
• PeggysAdvice.net
• AntonioRamirez.com
• AdamPedia.com
• Agent99Online.org
• DanSpeaks.com
• DonnaSays.com
• ErynsKnowledge.com
• WorldAdviceCenter.net
All of the above domains would work great. In my experience, the domain
isn’t going to determine how well you do.
If you decide to cover only one topic instead of many, you will want to
choose a domain name that’s related to your topic. For example, if you
decided that you wanted to start a site about shopping, you could use one
of the following names:
• JackiesShoppingWorld.com
• ShoppingWithJana.org
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• BuyBuyBuy.com
• JanineShops.net
Hopefully you get the idea. Again, if you don’t know where to start, pick
some keywords and get a general domain, like the ones in my first list.
I only use .com, .org. and .net domain names. There are lots of other
options, but I wouldn’t use any of them.
Registering a domain costs $9. I use ProudDomains to determine whether
domains are available, and I also use them to register my domains. They
provide 24/7 phone support (crucial if you don’t understand this process)
and cost a couple bucks less than most domain companies.
Buying a domain is a great investment. Each of my sites could easily be
sold for over $75,000, even though the domain names were $9 a piece.
I’ll show you how to develop your domain into a property that can be
sold for many times the cost.
This video linked below will show you the process of registering a domain
name:
http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/register-domain/
Once you have registered your domain name, the next step is setting up
web hosting, which is the place where your website will be stored. I prefer
to use Host Gator for my hosting. They are super reliable and have
awesome customer service. If you mess something up, they can easily
figure out what’s wrong. You can also add unlimited sites to your account
for a flat fee of under $10 per month. You can get your first month for $0.01
by using this link and the following coupon code at checkout:
wordpress.
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This next video will show you how to set up your hosting account:
http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/hosting-account/
Once you have a hosting account, the next step is to connect it to your
domain name. This video will show you how that’s done:
http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/connect-domain/
Once you have your domain connected to your hosting, you’re ready to
install your site itself. I use a free, easy-to-use, search engine friendly piece
of software to run all of my sites. It’s called WordPress and it can be
installed easily from your hosting account. I use WordPress to manage all
three of my $5,000 per month sites.
This video will show you how to install it:
http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/install-wordpress/
As you can see, this technical stuff takes time!! Don’t worry – you’re getting
close. Now all you have to do is configure WordPress so that it’s Google
friendly. Here’s another video that will walk you through that process:
http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/configure-wordpress/
You now only have one more step. You need to install a WordPress theme
(this will determine what your site looks like) that has been optimized for
the search engines. Most WordPress themes haven’t been properly
configured, and some of them even have hidden links that could get you
banned by Google if you use them with your sites.
We have created around 100 search engine optimized themes and posted
them on one of our sites. You can find them at http://courtneytuttle.com/
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seo-wordpress-themes - feel free to download as many as you like - they’re
free.
Exercise: Okay, this is where the rubber hits the road. We hope you’ve been
completing the other exercises as you’ve read the book. Buy a domain and
get your site set up.
Many people who read this book will probably never complete that step.
Don’t fall into that trap! Once you have a site set up this will all be much
easier to learn - you will have something to work with (and true to our
word, we’ll help you follow through). By having the discipline to set up
your first site you set yourself apart from the frustrated masses who say
they want to make money online, but never do. So go for it!
Adding KeywordBased
Articles to Your Site
You need to add one article for each keyword you have decided to use.
For most people, this means that you will add one article for each green
keyword you found.
Each article should be at least 300 (400+ is better) words in length. If you’re
not efficient, creating the articles (content) for your sites will be the hardest
and most time consuming part of the whole process. Your content needs to
be original - otherwise Google could penalize you for having duplicate
content.
That said, you don’t want to spend every waking hour of your life writing
articles for these sites. You’re not writing for an audience of literary critics.
You want to do a good job without taking a lot of time. If you’re able to
cover the topic better than other sites that are trying to rank for the
keyword, you will get natural links more often and this will really help to
become a trusted site by Google. However, if it takes a week to write one
article it will definitely slow down your progress.
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Setting up an article for Maximum SEO Benefit
You will absolutely set yourself apart from your competition by setting up
your articles exactly as I tell you to. If you don’t set them up according to
these instructions you’re going to have a hard time fighting off the people
who want the same rankings you’re chasing. It will put you at a
disadvantage and others will take advantage of it.
Keyword placement is crucial. You should put your keyword:
• In the HTML title of the page that your article is on (this happens
automatically if you include the keyword in the title of the article).
• In the title of your article. When you add the article to your site, you will
log in to your admin area and will then click the ‘new post’ button. It will
then load the ‘Add New Post’ page. Once it’s loaded, you will put your
article title in the box directly below ‘Add New Post’. Include your
keyword in that title.
• Near the beginning of your article, within the article itself.
• As a tag (there’s a box on the ‘Add New Post’ page that you can use to
add tags).
I’m able to outrank big companies because each of my articles is set up this
way. They are generally not aware of the smaller keywords that I go after
so their pages don’t include the keywords in the right places. Sometimes it
pays to be small.
Ninja version: Use more than one article to target a keyword and you can
absolutely destroy your competition. Write five different articles related to
your keyword and then link them all to the original. This builds up a ton of
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extra relevance with Google. 99% of the people who use the keyword won’t
do this – do this and you will pound them into the ground.
How I Build Links to My Articles
Link building is a crucial aspect of niche keyword marketing, because link
building is the key to getting rankings on Google.
Most of your time should be spent finding ways of getting sites to link to
the articles on your site. Here are some factors to consider when you go to
build links:
Variation is crucial. If you use the same text each time you get a link, it
won’t seem natural to Google. You need to mix up the text your link with
by messing with your main keyword. For example: if the keyword you
want to go after is ‘cheap cell phones’, you should use ‘cheap cell phones’,
‘the cheapest cell phones’, ‘really cheap cell phones’, and so on. We
recommend using at least 5 different variations.
Get links first from web pages that are topically related to your keyword.
Google’s ranking system (we call it Google’s algorithm) rewards links from
related pages. If you’re going after ‘cheap cell phones’, links from cell
phone related pages will do the most good.
Get links next from pages that aren’t about your keyword. Although these
links won’t be as powerful, they’ll still help you. Link building isn’t just a
game of quality - quantity is also a big factor. Put your first focus on
building links from related pages, and the rest of your efforts into just
building as many links as you can - wherever you can get them!
If your site is offering solid content related to your keyword it will be a lot
easier to create links. Other sites will be more likely to link to you if you
have a good site that’s useful for the people that will visit.
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It might be helpful for you to see what an html link looks like. Here’s an
example:
When this link is on an actual web page all that will show up is Make
Money, and in this case Make Money is what we call the anchor text of the
link.
Where to Get Links
There are a lot of different places that you can go to get links. I have spent a
lot of time using these techniques to get them:
• Trading (emailing other web masters and then trading links)
• Guest posting on blogs.
• Writing articles for article directories like EzineArticles.com,
GoArticles.com, HubPages.com, and other article directories.
• Submitting my sites to web directories.
One of my biggest resources for getting links has been guest posting on
blogs. All you have to do is write an article, link back to your site with it,
and give it to a blogger. If they publish it, you get a link.
Inside The Keyword Academy Pro membership section, you will find
nearly 500 bloggers that accept guest posts. We created an interface where
you can submit your articles to all of them – from one place. It’s an
awesome resource if you need to get links. If you would like to know more
about this program, I’ll talk about it at the end of this book.
How Long Will It Take to Start Making Money?
How long it will take varies wildly because so many factors are involved,
such as:
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·the quality of your competition
·how long it takes you to build enough links to your site
·whether your site gets tossed into the Google sandbox
Definition: When a brand new site gets into Google’s index (meaning
when Google becomes aware of it, it’s very often “put in the
sandbox” which means Google won’t let it rank well for any
keywords for a few months until the site’s content proves itself to be
unique and valuable. Google doesn’t acknowledge the existence of
the sandbox, but my experience tells me it’s very real.
There isn’t much you can do to avoid the sandbox, and it doesn’t
affect how we approach our sites at all - it just helps you understand
why you can do everything right but you still need to have patience
to see rankings and traffic.
I have started sites that got traffic after a couple of weeks and have had
others take several months. I could guess how long a site will take to start
making money, but that’s all it would be - a guess. What I can say for sure
is if you follow these key disciplines you will have a reliable, low
maintenance income online and it will often happen more quickly than you
think:
1.Start your first site right away. In the long run I would recommend
setting up more than one, but the idea of going through this whole
process can be a little overwhelming, so ease into it by just starting
one. Go from there. Each site is another net that can grab search
traffic and make you money, and getting your first one moving today
will create the one thing you need most in your new online business -
momentum!
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2.Work a little every day. Your efforts with your sites will compound.
If you work a little each day you’re going to see some really
encouraging results after a few months. The worst thing you can do
is take a week to follow all these steps and then sit and wait for them
to pay off. Trust me - they will pay off.
3.Spend 75% of your time asking for and creating links, and only
25% of your time finding new niches and creating content. Links are
the key to success. Whoever builds the most links, wins.
Where to Go From Here
This is a lot to absorb in one reading.
Some people who read this will be able to dive right in and eventually
make their sites a success, but you might be one of the many who need a
little more detail - a little more guidance.
If that’s you; if right now you believe that this method will work, but are
worried about messing up the execution – we can help.
First, we will follow this e-book up with emails that will show you specific
lessons and examples that will help you to learn a lot more. I’ve learned a
lot from teaching hundreds of people these concepts and something that
really helps most people is watching us work through the specific steps.
Over the next few months we will provide you quite a few follow-up
lessons and I really think that they will help you out.
For those of you who want to get started right away, the TKA Pro
Membership program will be a great fit. We now have more than 20 hours
of video that will walk you through everything. You can watch over our
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shoulders as we work through keyword selection, site construction, content
creation, link building, and making money from your traffic.
I find that when I teach my methods to new people, the thing that they
need the most is support. I didn’t have that support when I learned this
stuff and it took me years of struggling to figure this all out. The
membership program offers support in three crucial ways:
• I personally do a weekly Q and A session. Our members connect to
a webinar, which means that those who attend can see my computer
screen and hear my voice. I take questions and show answers from
my computer. We do these at different times each week so that people
from all over the world can find a time to attend. The session is
recorded for the members who aren’t able to attend.
• Mark (co-owner of The Keyword Academy) and I do a new content
webinar each month. During this webinar, we provide strategy
updates and alert the members about new ideas and tools that we
provide. This session is also recorded for the members who aren’t
able to attend.
• We have a private forum where you can meet and interact with other
people who are going through this learning process. We have a LOT
of people who are now making money in the forum and they can
help in a huge way to get your questions answered. Many members
have earnings badges so that you can see how much they are making
with the internet and that can help a lot with motivation.
Other people are making it happen. We of course make our members
provide proof of their earnings to make sure that they are legit. So far we
have earnings information from almost 900 members. Here’s the
breakdown:
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• 704 reported less than $100 per month in earnings
• 38 reported between $100 and $200 per month in earnings
• 20 reported between $200 and $300 per month in earnings
• 9 reported between $300 and $400 per month in earnings
• 27 reported between $500 and $1,000 per month in earnings
• 20 reported between $1,000 and $2,500 per month in earnings
• 12 reported between $2,500 and $5,000 per month in earnings
• 6 reported between $5,000 and $10,000 per month in earnings
• 1 reported more than $10,000 per month in earnings
The membership area also includes our now-famous Core Videos. These
videos provide a walk-through of each aspect of making money with our
methods. Here is what you can expect to learn from the Core Vids:
• In the first two videos we’ll show you the brainstorming process, show
you how to use the equation (we call it “The Formula”) that we use to
estimate the monthly earning potential of a keyword. We’ll show you
how to quickly organize your keywords into spreadsheets and will also
show you how to decide which keywords to use first.
• In the 5th, 6th, and 7th videos we’ll break down exactly how you can
build the links that are essential to getting rankings on Google.
• In the 7th video we’ll show you how to use a free traffic tracker on your
site to find untapped sources of traffic and income.
• In the 8th video we’ll show you how to set up, test, and maximize your
income from Google’s ad publishing program, called Google Adsense.
To do all of that, we use software that allows us to record a “screencast” of
a computer screen and also record our discussion as we work our way
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through the lessons. So what you have in the videos is me (as the teacher)
taking Mark (as the student) through our entire money-making blueprint.
The videos are accompanied by complete transcripts.
The entire program costs $67 per month. We are certain that you will be
completely blown away by the value of the membership and for that
reason we give 30 days of unrestricted access for $1. If you don’t agree
that it’s worth more than $67 per month to you, you can cancel your
subscription yourself, inside your own PayPal account.
For more information about the TKA Pro Membership Program, click here.
We’ve created an information page where the entire program is broken
down along with its benefits so you can make an educated decision about
whether it’s for you.
Whatever direction you decide to go, I really wish you the best with your
online income creation efforts. There’s no better feeling (in your finacial
life) than being able to take control of your earnings and start working
toward your goals and dreams. All the best.
Courtney Tuttle
TheKeywordAcademy.com
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