The biggest problem with guest posting has always been the difficulty of getting a post onto other sites. You have always had to email the blogger who owns the site, talk about ideas for a guest post, get the thumbs up, and then proceed to write a post that’s good enough to get published on their blog. This isn’t an easy process and for that reason, most people never get around to it.

I’ve done a lot of guest posting the hard way and can tell you that it’s definitely worthwhile. However, I can also tell you that getting a post up on a site will take a lot of work and time. Even though it’s useful for bloggers and site owners to get free content, it can be difficult to establish the connections that make guest posting actually happen.

Introducing The Guest Posting System

Mark and I have been thinking for quite some time about how we can make it easier to connect with site owners and bloggers who want to receive guest posts.

With that in mind, we created an interface that allows site owners to locate sites that are willing to accept guest posts and also allows them to write the guest post and submit it to the blog of their choice, all from one location. So far more than 700 blogs have been added to this system. These blogs are organized according to categories to make it easier for people who are looking for blogs to post on.

Though we are going to eventually offer access to this service as a stand-alone product (it isn’t going to be free), the members of our program can already use it. So far the results that people have been getting are amazing. People have REALLY been liking it.

Receiving Guest Posts

Those who would like to receive guest posts from other site owners can install a simple plugin that hooks them into the system. Once they have installed the plugin, their blog will be included in the list of sites that show in the interface. When people submit guest posts to their site, those posts will show up as drafts in their WordPress admin. Currently the interface is only set up to send content to WordPress blogs.

To protect the blogs that actually publish the content, we have set up some security measures. Before a post is sent to a blog, we check it for duplicate content both inside our network and in Google’s index. This prevents spammers from being able to use the tool. Only original content can be used in the system. On top of that, the blogger has complete control over what is actually published on their site. They can reject any article that doesn’t meet their quality requirements. If an article is rejected, it simple goes back to the person who submitted it. They can submit the article to another blog or they can edit and resubmit.

Rules For Using The Guest Posting System

1. Only posts that are 300+ words can be submitted using the system.
2. Two links are allowed within posts.
3. Duplicate content is not allowed.
4. Spun content is not allowed.
5. Bloggers who receive guest posts can reject at their own discretion. Those who submitted these posts can of course submit them to another blog or they can edit them and resubmit.

Read more about the GPS here.

People Who Can Benefit From Understanding How Online Markets Work

• Professionals (doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, chiropractors, massage therapists, dentists, orthodontists, funeral specialists, etc) who already have sites or are thinking about setting sites up
• Casual internet marketers
• Professional marketers
• Bloggers
• E-commerce site operators
• People who are just getting started with internet marketing

How To Calculate The Profit Potential Of A Market

By looking at individual keyword phrases (the words and phrases people search for in Google) we can get a lot of insight into how money is flowing through a market. The Google Adwords Keyword Tool is extremely useful for this. Let’s take a look at an example keyword phrase so that we can further illustrate.

Example #1 – Provo Dentist (as a dentist)

For our first example, let’s take a look at the phrase ‘provo dentist’. If we look at the term in the the Adwords tool, we can see that the monthly search volume is 720. This means that 720 people are searching for this term each month in Google (approximately):

If we set the tool to show ‘Estimated Avg. CPC’ (which I did) we can determine that there is a dentist somewhere (or a marketing company) in Provo who is willing to pay $3.80 per click to buy traffic from Google. If we multiply the amount of searches by the CPC (the amount these people are willing to pay to buy a click from Google), we can determine that the top advertiser is willing to spend $2736 per month to buy traffic. They probably don’t spend this much because some people will click on the listings of other advertisers, but the point is that at least this much money is changing hands. This means that we can safely assume that the market size of the online ‘provo dentist’ market is at least $2736 per month, and that’s if the dentists are breaking even. If they are making a profit (likely), the actual market size will be higher than this.

It’s extremely difficult to get 100% of the traffic for any keyword phrase in fact you would need multiple web properties to come close. If your site ranks #1 in Google, you can plan on getting around 40% of the available traffic. That means that in order to get an accurate representation of your true profit potential in a given market, you are going to need to discount, using only 40% of the original number. This would mean that we would end up with a potential of $1094 per month, assuming that we could get our site to #1 in Google. This would of course be free traffic and we could increase our share of the market by also buying some of that traffic but that’s a different story altogether.

Another factor that’s still in play is that there are other keyword phrases that are used to search for dentists in Provo. The above screen-shot shows us that. There are also people who don’t live in Provo who would probably drive to Provo to go to a dentist that they liked. Springville is five minutes away from Provo, Orem is five minutes away from Provo, Mapleton is 10 minutes away from Provo, etc.

To get a true representation of the size of a market, you would need to add up the potential for all keyword phrases that could be used to search for your service. In this case, we would need to calculate and add up the potential for the following keyword phrases: provo dentist, provo dentists, dentist in provo, dentists in provo, springville dentist, springville dentists, dentist in springville, dentists in springville, orem dentist, orem dentists, dentists in orem, dentist in orem, etc. There are probably a lot of other cities that are nearby that would work well – you would have to do the research yourself to find them.

Example #2 – Provo Dentist (as a marketer)

For our first example, we assumed that we were an actual dentist who could take on clients from the traffic. If we look at the same keywords (and the same numbers) from the viewpoint of a marketer, things will come out differently:

We are still seeing the same numbers, but now we know that we aren’t going to make all of the profits – the dentists will also need to make some of the profit or the money will obviously quit flowing.

$2736 will still be available – that calculation doesn’t change. What does change is the percentage of the profit that we can make. We will still only be able to get 40% of the traffic if we end up at #1 in Google so we’re knocked down to $1094, just like before. From there we need to discount further. There are a few ways that we can do things.

If we wanted to establish an actual relationship with a dentist in Provo, we could probably do a 50/50 split of the profits which would mean that we could make about $547 per month if we got ranked #1 for ‘provo dentist’.

In order to make this work, we would of course have to talk to dentists and find one who was willing to partner with us in this way. For those of you who aren’t comfortable with that, you would have to choose another alternative like Google Adsense.

There are certainly dentists in Provo who advertise via Google Adsense, so how can we determine our profit if we decide to put these ads on our pages? We simply discount further based on how we expect our traffic to act. Here’s how the numbers will work out (approximately of course):

• There is still $2736 on the table
• However, we can still only get 40% of the traffic (knocks us down to $1094)
• We won’t get the full CPC because Google will take a cut and we won’t always get clicks on the highest paying ad. We can only expect to get 25% of the CPC number we see in the Adwords tool. This knocks us down to $273.50.
• Also we can’t get every visitor to click on an ad. In fact, we can only plan on getting 5% (in some cases you can get more clicks but we want to be conservative in our estimate) of our visitors to click an ad. This takes us all the way down to $13.68 per month.

We would still need to compensate for the fact that there are a lot of different keyword phrases that we could use as a marketer. The Springville and Orem keyword sets would still be on the table and as a marketer, geographical location really doesn’t matter. We could target keywords for any location because Google Adsense will have advertisers in most cities. We would need to make up for our small piece of the earnings pie by putting a lot of keywords together and getting traffic with all of them.

Uses Of This Skill Set

We of course can use these skills in a number of ways. A dentist could use these numbers to determine the relative value of a marketing company that’s offering their services. Any other service professional could of course do the same. On top of that, if a service professional was willing to pick up a new set of skills they could take care of their own marketing and pocket all of the money that would be available (in this case that’s $1094 per month – not a fortune but this would of course compound as the client came for additional work and referred friends). After a few years it’s likely that income would build nicely. Remember that our numbers are also very conservative here. We are assuming that the advertisers who are willing to buy the traffic are only breaking even. If they make a profit, there’s more profit to be made.

Marketers can of course use this type of market analysis to determine the profit potential of any keyword phrase or market that they want to enter. This saves them the time and hassle of creating web properties that don’t have little potential. Keep in mind that this methodology can be used for any keyword phrase or for any combination of keyword phrases. Marketers could also use this skill to sell ad space to the dentist (or of course any other service provider). By showing them the profit potential of the keywords, it could be easier to sell an ad. By cutting out Google you could get a larger share of profits. A dentist who can see that they have the potential to make over $1000 per month from a ranking would definitely be willing to spend $200 per month to buy ad space.

Questions About The Method?

If you have any questions about this method of market analysis, please let me know in the comments. I want to help each of you to understand this process as much as I possibly can.

After people have been blogging for a while, they start to hear that it’s possible to make money blogging. This usually leads them to articles like this one.

Types Of Blogs That Make Money

The blogs that make the most money are almost always blogs that share advice. News blogs also make money but it’s significantly harder to make money with a blog that provides news. Personal blogs rarely make a lot of money. In order to make a lot of money, your blog needs to line up with information that a lot of people are looking for.

Advice Blogs That Make A Lot Of Money

• StevePavlina.com – Personal Development
• ProBlogger.net – Blogging
• Digital Photography School – Digital Photography
• CopyBlogger.com – Copywriting
• Lifehacker – Productivity
• Get Rich Slowly – Personal Finance

There are of course thousands upon thousands of blogs that make a lot of money. Right here in The Keyword Academy community we have hundreds of people who are making great income from their blogs. Some of them are blogging daily and others are simply providing information on blogs that are rarely updated. It’s very possible to use either approach once you understand the concepts that lead to making money.

How To Get Paid To Blog

Step 1 in this process is starting a blog that lines up with information that people are trying to find. There are a lot of people who hope that they can make money with their personal blogs. However, massive amounts of people aren’t going to be interested in seeing pictures of your kids or in hearing about your latest trip. You would be a lot more likely to generate interest and traffic if you provided tips about your profession and/or hobbies.

The technical side of getting a blog going shouldn’t be too difficult for people that already have personal blogs. The setup will be virtually identical, it’s the topic that will be different.

How To Choose A Topic

Choosing a topic really isn’t that difficult. I personally like using an online tool to determine the size of the audience that’s looking for information. The tool shows you how many people are searching for things in Google. By entering ‘digital photography’ into the tool, I can see how many people are searching for it each month. By comparing the results against those from other topics, I can get an idea of how large the audiences for each are.

How To Develop A Popular Blog

There are two keys to developing a popular blog. The first is bringing traffic to the blog and the second is providing solid information that people look for. The Keyword Academy is full of information on developing traffic. We help people to learn to bring steady traffic from Google.

How To Make Money With Your Blog

Once you have a blog that gets a lot of traffic, it’s pretty easy to make money. Some people use advertising programs like Google Adsense and others sell their own ads. Adsense is by far the easiest way to make money and it can be used to make money on most blogs that get traffic.

Further down the road you can consider using more advanced forms of making money like affiliate marketing (selling the products of other people and companies) and even selling your own products. This of course is optional and is something that you should only consider when you are already producing income with your blog.

As you can probably see, there is quite a bit to learn. We have already created a lot of material here at The Keyword Academy that can help. There are a lot of people who have used that material to get started and have already been producing significant incomes. It takes some time to learn but it’s honestly a great way to make money.

During the conversation, my friend asked me a question that I found interesting:

How do you make any money at that when the internet is so saturated?

It was an innocent enough question and probably one that a lot of people think about. He knows that there are a million websites out there and there are a lot of people who are trying to make money with them.

The funny thing is that my friend could have easily answered his own question. Where I live it seems like there are about 8,000,000 real estate agents in a valley that only has 500,000 people. It seems like about half of my friends had their real estate license during the last real estate boom here in Utah. The fact that my friend is still able to do well even though that market tanked and everyone else blew up says something doesn’t it?

You Either Have The Expertise Or You Don’t

My friend is able to do well with real estate because he has a legitimate edge – he’s better at it than most people. The down market didn’t make him blow up like everyone else because he has skills and talents that other people don’t have.

The answer to my friend’s question is: You develop legitimate expertise and you work hard.

Internet Marketing Actually Is Pretty Saturated

The internet is saturated in the sense that it isn’t like taking candy from a baby anymore. Back in the day you could launch a site and get a ton of traffic by simply putting a lot of words on your pages. That obviously didn’t continue working once there was more competition, not to mention the fact that search engines have gotten a lot better at getting rid of those types of results.

There’s no question that there are a batrillion-zillion websites out there and this causes a lot of people concern. My belief is that there is healthy competition – enough to make you work for it. However, there isn’t enough competition to make it so people who are willing to develop themselves and work can’t make money.

Almost everyone I know who does internet marketing is ridiculously lazy. The easiest way to gain an edge over most people who do IM is to put in more work than other people. However, this isn’t the only way to gain an edge.

It’s also pretty easy to gain a ‘tactical’ edge on the competition. Most people don’t know how to pick the right keywords and don’t know how to promote their sites well. On top of that only a tiny percentage of people who do IM know how to apply any leverage to their business. If you understand these concepts AND are willing to work really hard you won’t even notice the ‘competition’.

People Who Do Well In Life Generally Earn It

I have a great friend who does really well selling insurance. He understands that you can never learn enough and you can never work hard enough. It isn’t uncommon for my friend to work until 11:00 at night and even though he is already immensely successful by the standards of most people, it isn’t uncommon for my friend to be at workshops and/or classes on the weekends to learn more about business and insurance.

There’s Plenty Of Room For Legit People In Internet Marketing

People who are willing to work on themselves and on their businesses will ALWAYS do well with online business. Internet marketing has a lot of unique characteristics that allow you to apply a tremendous amount of leverage that simply isn’t there with most other types of business.

If you are willing to spend time every single day to get better, there’s no doubt that you will find the success that you’re looking for. Here are some of the things that I would recommend working on:

• Keyword research
• Writing ability
• Persistence
• Work ethic
• Leadership
• Networking
• Friendship
• Speaking
• Link building skills
• Creativity
• Honor
• Technical ability (design, HTML, CSS)
• Courage

An outside factor like ‘market saturation’ is never going to determine whether you succeed or not. I have a theory that each market eventually saturates itself to about the same point – the point where only the people who are willing to develop themselves are able to make a lot of money. Almost all of my best friends have their own businesses and they are all businesses of completely different types. It isn’t shocking at all that the ones who are persistent, hard working, and driven are the ones who find the most success.

I would argue that in its current state, the internet provides more leverage than any other type of business. I would also argue that online business is actually a lot easier than businesses of other types. There’s no question that I have a lot more upside than many of my friends because of the opportunities that my business has to scale to places that other businesses can’t.

Useful Reading

I love reading. It helps me to expand my thinking and it helps me to learn a lot about myself. I have a lot of weaknesses and I try to become aware of them so that I can work on them. Books are extremely useful for that. Here are a few of the books that I would consider reading if you’re trying to develop your online skills:

• How To Get Rich (Felix Dennis) – This book was written by a world-class magazine publisher. It’s actually a really funny book that tells about the principles required to make a lot of money. There are a lot of parallels between publishing magazines and web properties.
• Good To Great (Jim Collins) – A must-read for anyone who is trying to establish an online business. Working with the internet can be excruciatingly slow at times and this book can help you to understand momentum as well as what it takes to develop and scale.
• Tuesdays With Morrie (Mitch Albom) – The most amazing true story of courage and friendship I have ever read.
• The Richest Man In Babylon (George S. Clason) – How to change the destructive bad habits that ruin your ability to become financially successful. I can promise that this book will make you more aware of bad financial habits. Don’t read if you don’t want to change.

Windows movie version (.wmv)

Mp3 audio version (.mp3)

It’s no secret that link building is the key to any successful SEO campaign. If you want to get traffic from Google, Yahoo, and Bing, getting linked to is crucial. The more links your site gets, the stronger it will become and the stronger it becomes, the easier it will be to get search engine rankings.

In theory, this all seems to be quite simple – get a bunch of links and that will lead to a bunch of traffic. The reality of the situation is that this isn’t always the case. It’s a lot more complicated than that. As soon as you start doing the work that’s required to get links, you will become aware of a lot more questions than you initially anticipated. I talk to people all the time who have worked hard to create hundreds of links that are providing minimal value and minimal benefit. This happens because there are a lot of variables in play, variables that need to be understood and used when you work on your sites.

Here are some of the questions/issues that need to be considered:

• Which URLs are the best ones to point links to? This question is very closely related to ‘Should I point links to my home page or sub pages?’ and ‘What percentage of links should I point at my home page versus my other pages?’.
• How quickly can I get links and does timing matter?
• Where do I get links from and does this matter?
• How do I get the best links?
• Why will no one trade links with me?
• I have some links, why do I not have any traffic?
• I have quite a few links, why do I still not have PageRank?
• How can I get high PageRank links?
• Are PR0 links worth the time it takes to get them?
• Should I spend more time creating content or trying to get links?
• How many links do I need to get before I will see results?
• Why do my tag pages with zero links rank better than my post pages that have back-links?
• I am using (insert method 1 here) and (insert method 2 here) for getting links? Is this enough or are there other methods that I should be using to get links?

The bottom line here is that there are a lot of things to think about when you are building links. The tricky part is that some of the theory that’s out there matters and some of it doesn’t.

Google, Yahoo, and MSN/Bing Have All Changed

In the last year, I’ve noticed some fairly significant changes in the way search engines weight links and rank pages. Don’t get me wrong, they haven’t turned the world upside down but by making a few simple tweaks, they have been able to filter out a lot more weak sites than they did in the past.

One huge change that I have noticed in the last year is that in some cases, links will make rankings get worse in Google. If you have multiple sites at varying levels of age and strength, chances are you have seen this happen. At first glance this seems to be quite contrary to how it should be but once you understand why this happens, it actually makes a lot of sense. This is just one of many issues in play.

Things Have Become More Confusing

While the SEO landscape is mostly the same as it’s been for a few years, small changes have made things become significantly more confusing. If you get a link and your ranking gets worse, it can definitely throw you for a loop. We all know that links help your site to get stronger and it’s REALLY weird when this doesn’t happen. However, once you understand what’s going on it isn’t that big of a deal and it certainly isn’t a ‘death penalty’ for your site.

The key to overcoming the current obstacles is understanding them. If you know what to expect, understand everything that needs to be done, and are executing, you can expect to see great results. If you don’t have all of your bases covered, who knows what will happen.

Knowledge is key. We sometimes work one-on-one with a few clients (right now we’re not taking on more clients – sorry) and it’s safe to say that our average client who we work with is able to make at least ten times as much income as the average member of our program. This is primarily because we are able to teach them what really matters while extracting what doesn’t. We teach them how to get the right links and point them at the right places, with the right timing. We have clients who are doing amazingly well based on these concepts in fact we have multiple clients who are making more than $10,000 per month with these strategies. We have others who are making $5,000+ and then some who are making $1,000+. Everyone is making at least some money. Considering the fact that we haven’t worked with many people, I’d say the results are outstanding.

I’ve been thinking about the differences between what they know and what the average visitor to The Keyword Academy knows and want to do what I can to bridge that gap for as many people as possible.

10 Crucial Linking Strategies For Creating Website Authority

With all of this in mind, I have been working on a 2-hour webinar called ‘10 Crucial Linking Strategies For Creating Website Authority’. It will teach you the strategies that you need to know to create traffic by getting the right links, from the right places, with the right timing. It will also help you to toss out the bad strategy and theory that can lead to inefficiency and confusion. I can promise that those who join us will have a fresh outlook and will understand what’s happening with their sites significantly better than they did before the session.

The webinar will be held on Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 6:00 PM, US Mountain time. All are invited to attend. You can register for the webinar here:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/969756593

What troubles me the most is that it’s blatantly obvious that some individuals aren’t seeing things clearly. They don’t want to accept the realities of being in business for themselves. There are a lot of core principles that are missing and I want to help as much as I can to fill in the gaps. To get this started, I want to explain a simple example:

Driving Around The Block

Driving around the block is super easy right? Assuming that you live on a square block, there really aren’t many steps that you need to follow to make it around the block:

1. Turn right out of your drive way.
2. Drive to the end of the block.
3. Turn right.
4. Drive one block.
5. Turn right.
6. Drive one block.
7. Turn right.
8. Drive one block.
9. Turn right.
10. Drive until you get back to your house.
11. Pull back into your drive way.

Seems to be very black and white, doesn’t it? Assuming that your goal is to make it all the way around the block, at what point in the process can you stop driving? Can you stop at the 3rd step? Can you stop at the 7th step? These questions are almost insulting, aren’t they? Everyone knows that you have to complete all of the steps before you’re going to make it back to your house.

HubPages As A Business

People don’t want to see their work with HubPages as a business. Frankly, it’s easier to see it as a hobby. If it’s a hobby, you don’t feel like a failure if it doesn’t work out. Once it mentally becomes a business, that all changes. Most people will feel like a loser if their business doesn’t become successful.

Anyone can increase their earnings on HubPages. However, most people won’t. This doesn’t mean that they can’t, it simply means that they won’t. They either won’t learn the necessary steps or they won’t follow through – they won’t complete the necessary tasks.

When we did the original HubPages experiment, quite a few people created hubs. Some people created a LOT of hubs. Some did really well with their hubs while many didn’t do well at all. The differences are easy to identify for people who understand what it takes to have success with the internet. People who don’t have this understanding seem to be totally mystified.

Steps For Creating Successful Hubs

1. Identify keyword phrases that have both solid potential for making money (decent search volume and advertiser cost-per-click) and reasonable competition (keyword phrases that have low PR sites currently ranking in Google).
2. Create a well written hub that covers the topic well, using the keyword phrase in the title of the hub.
3. Create or edit existing hubs to create links for your new hub. Getting links from other hubs that you own will help you to strengthen the hub you’re working on.
4. Promote your hub so that you can get links from other sites.

If you see this as a business, you will realize that you need to complete each of these steps to produce earnings from your hub. If you see it as a hobby you do some of these steps, however, you may be missing the knowledge required to complete all of them. Or, you might not WANT to do all of them.

If you know right now that you aren’t going to complete all of the above steps, don’t do anything. Any effort that you put in without completing the steps will be a complete waste of time.

When you have a business, you don’t make anything until you complete everything that has to be done. This unfortunately is completely contrary to the way we are trained to think. We are trained from the time we’re young to trade time for money. When you have a business, you work for free and you continue to work for free until everything is done. For some businesses this will require working for free for many years. Fortunately with hubs, it won’t take nearly that long.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read about people who have created a ton of hubs without completing all of the steps. What should they expect them to earn? Absolutely nothing. Thinking that they will earn something without completing the tasks is like thinking that you can drive around the block while doing only steps 1-5 of the above steps. It’s simply ludicrous. What happens when you don’t complete the steps is you don’t make it to where you want to go.

The funny thing about my work with HubPages is that it’s the exact same thing that I do on my own sites. I have to find solid keywords, create well written content, give that content links with my site, and promote that content so that I can gather links. If I don’t complete that work I won’t make a freaking thing.

I have spent a lot of time in my life mentoring others and can tell you that when people fail, it’s because they don’t complete what has to be done. At the end of the second block, they start to question whether they can really drive around the block. Even if they keep going, they won’t make it past the second turn.

The people who will simply execute what has to be done always seem to find success no matter what they try. If you aren’t getting better with your hub earnings or any other type of online earnings, go back to the basics. Figure out which step you aren’t executing properly and get better. Complete what has to be done and you’ll find that your earnings will increase significantly.

One of the coolest things about creating web properties like hubs is the residual benefit. Naturally I see my earnings from HubPages each month and know exactly what’s going on with them. They are fairly stable and while there are natural peaks and valleys, my hubs have continued to produce very nicely. Since the date of my first hub’s completion (April 7, 2009) until today (February 11, 2010), my hubs have produced $4,003.43:

I know that these numbers aren’t enormous and in all honesty, I could have done a lot better with hubs if I had continued to work on them. I could have updated the hubs, let websites and other ‘hubbers’ know about them, and I certainly could have written some articles to help strengthen the hubs with links. I haven’t done that so it’s pretty dang cool how well the hubs have done. I noticed in my Adsense account that my hubs produced over $400 in January of this year and it’s been more than seven months since I set them up:

There are definitely a lot of ways out there that can be used to make money online. HubPages for me has been a pretty solid one. I have a total of 105 hubs which means that each one of them on average has produced $38.13. If I compare that to the amount of work that it took to set them up, it’s a pretty dang nice hourly wage. It will get more and more exciting to watch the earnings as more and more months pass by.

The Future of my 105 Hubs

I have a lot of stuff going on right now but I think it would be pretty cool to make an extra $20,000 or so from HubPages this year. There’s no question that it’s possible. I’m already on pace to make more than $6,000 in a 12 month period and in all honesty, I’ve put very little effort into it. I did all of my work on my HubPages within a 45 day period and almost all of that work was within a 30 period, working on the project for a couple hours per day.

I plan to create some more hubs and I also plan on doing some work to improve the ones I already have. I can update them with fresh content and I can work on getting a few links for them. Generally when I do this kind of thing I see things shake up quite a bit. The earnings will either start moving up immediately or they will fall for a month or so and will move up after that. Either way they will end up in a much better place than they are right now.

How to Succeed with HubPages

I’ve given a lot of advice on hubs in the past but wanted to give a little again. As is usually the case with this type of web property, picking keywords is crucial. You want to pick keywords that have decent volumes and CPCs with limited competition. The Massive Traffic 101 webinar can help you to learn what I’m talking about if it isn’t making sense to you right now.

Hubs are like any other web property, they require content and links to get traffic. If you create a premium reference article on a topic, it’s possible that it will attract a lot of links. There are obviously other methods that can be used to build links to your hubs, including article submission and trading. The amount you earn on hubs will be fairly proportionate to the amount of hubs you produce and the amount (and strength) of links pointing at your hubs. You will of course want to include the keywords you pick in the title of your hubs and in the text of the hubs.

How To Increase Your HubPages Earnings

1. Create more hubs. Simple math tells us that if I set up 100 more hubs that were designed around keywords that were as good as the first 200 that I set up, I could double my earnings. A lot of people never reach their potential because they aren’t willing to put in enough effort. Making money with the internet requires quite a bit of work, especially in the beginning. Learning how to use math to see how big you can take any online business can be extremely useful.

2. Work harder to promote your hubs. Linking to your hubs from blogs, or getting other web sites to link to them will help you to increase your earnings significantly. Most people who have HubPages never do anything to promote them and that leaves them a lot weaker than they could be. Those who do really well with hubs generally do the ‘behind the scenes’ work to improve the strength of their hubs.

Spread Your Effort Around

HubPages certainly isn’t the only method out there for making money. I have been working on a lot of different projects in the last year and my hubs have taken a back seat for the most part. I’m going to start putting some effort there but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to be working 24/7 on them. There’s something really nice about working on your own site. It can be sold at some point and you of course get to keep 100% of the earnings. However, there are benefits to working on hubs as well. You start with more authority than you would on a new site so you can often earn more quickly (this doesn’t mean that you will earn more overall) with hubs. They are certainly worth putting some time into.

Massive Traffic 201 Synopsis
Topic: The Fundamentals of Gaining a Traffic Edge on Your Competition

There are many methods that can be used to gain an edge on your competition but there are four major areas where most sites are relatively weak. Mastering these areas can give you an enormous advantage.

Section 1: Advanced Site Structure and Authority Link Nets

To create large amounts of traffic, you will constantly be integrating new keywords into your site. Most sites do a poor job of passing existing authority to their new pages. This lesson will help you to learn how authority flows through your site and how you can redirect that flow to improve new pages significantly.

Section 2: Advanced Timing and Link Momentum

Understanding the proper way to time your efforts can prevent your site from becoming stale, can prevent you from becoming burned out, and can help you to ensure that you get actual value from your marketing efforts. The risks in not understanding proper timing can be extreme. You can lose the benefits of links by having them filtered or you can trigger a sandboxing. This lesson will help you to understand the concepts of proper timing in your marketing efforts.

Additionally, understanding the general timing of progress can prevent negative emotion that can cripple your efforts. Many people give up on a project for lack of results when the only issue holding back their success is time.

Section 3: Multi Keyword Targeting

Many people waste the strength and power of their stronger URLs. They have pages that rank well but do little to take advantage of their existing strength. Learning to add relevant keywords properly can add significantly to your successes. This lesson will teach you the principles behind finding relevant keywords, integrating them into your existing URLs, and targeting them properly.

Section 4: Principles of High Volume

Volume matters. Higher amounts of production will inevitably lead to higher amounts of success. Many people struggle because they don’t know how to produce more or they don’t know how to find help for their projects. Others fail because they use their help inefficiently. This lesson will teach you how to increase your production and will help you to avoid the pitfalls that make growth overly expensive, time consuming, and difficult.

How To Join Us For Massive Traffic 201

The webinar will be held tonight, February 4, 2010, at 6:00 US Mountain time.

Massive Traffic 201 is for those who have TKA Pro memberships. If you’re not a member, you can buy access for $1. Your dollar will cover your first 30 days in the program. If after 30 days you decide that our lessons, tools, webinars, and support are worth the price of admission, you can keep your membership for $33 per month. Click here to get your TKA Pro membership: http://bit.ly/qUi5t.

After you have signed up for your TKA Pro membership, you will be able to register for the webinar here: http://bit.ly/ab5Ujh. If you’re unable to attend, the webinar will be available for download tomorrow. The download URL will be emailed to all TKA Pro members.

1. Lack of understanding – Most people don’t understand the basic concepts required to build traffic on a large scale. Even if they are willing to put in the work, they are working on the wrong things. I’ve been there and I know exactly what it’s like. It is excruciatingly frustrating. Step 1 is to learn the concepts required and step 2 is to execute.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the most crucial concepts that I have used to make money and honestly, most people don’t understand them well. Let me give you a few examples.

Most people know that they are supposed to do keyword research for their sites but they really have no idea what that means. They don’t know what they’re looking for and they certainly don’t know how to integrate keywords into their sites properly. They don’t know how to create a structure that will help them to rank for keywords.

This causes major problems in their businesses. They start off by picking overly competitive keywords that would have no value even IF they ranked for them. Then they move on to improperly targeting the bad keywords with their sites. They then finish it all off by NOT creating any kind of authority for their site. If this is your method, you will have to throw an unbelievable amount of mud at the wall to have a few speckles stick.

Another concept that most people don’t understand is how to build the right links, to the right places. Bloggers and other site owners know that they are supposed to build links BUT they don’t know how to do this properly. They don’t know the underlying factors that could help them to dominate their niches and keywords.

This causes people to spend massive amounts of time trying to get links that will make little difference. They don’t point them to the right places so they have little effect. On top of that, most people don’t know where to get links in the first place.

2. Overload/misinformation – When I first started blogging, I had a distinct advantage. I already knew how to build traffic and let’s be frank. Making money with the internet is 100% about building traffic and making money with that traffic.

You would think that since I already understood both of those principles, it would be easy for me to make money with a blog right? Ironically, that wasn’t the case. It didn’t happen that way for me because I got sucked into the same trap as everyone else. I started reading all of the Make Money Online/Internet Marketing blogs. This caused a change in my belief system that was hard to recover from.

The problem is that many of these guys are SO good at presenting their ideas, they get you to believe concepts that simply aren’t true (sometimes they’re true but aren’t as effective as other ideas). You start reading this stuff and pretty soon your idea of what works and what doesn’t is completely warped and this causes you to put time into a bunch of activities that will make very little difference to your success.

I can’t believe how long it took for me to snap out of it. I spent over a year of my life putting in 16 hour days, mostly on tasks that didn’t work. After all of that time, I still couldn’t crack $1000 per month as a blogger, even though I had previously created other sites that made a lot more than that, with a lot less effort.

I forgot a lot of what I knew to be true. Other people convinced me that their ideas were better than the concepts I already understood and I did the weak sauce thing – I believed in them more than I believed in myself.

I was completely overloaded. My new list of tasks that had to be done was so long, it would take literally every waking hour to complete all of them.

The other part of the scenario that I got myself into was that I became addicted to the information. Every day I read more and more and every once in a while these guys would publish something absolutely ’spectacular’, something that seemed like it would send my online business to the moon. I would get all excited and would start executing this new technique, adding to my completely out-of-whack workload.

This was a completely vicious cycle and to be honest I started thinking that I didn’t know how to make this stuff work anymore.

As you can probably tell, that wasn’t the greatest part of my life and you don’t yet know the worst of it. I was so sold on the kool-aid these guys were selling, I let my already successful websites completely self-destruct. I completely stopped working on them for almost 18 months. My income was in a negative slide even though I was putting more time in than ever.

I believe that most of the people who are trying to learn how to use the internet to make money are in that same cycle. What concerns me the most is that most of them never learned the fundamentals so it will be extremely difficult for them to pull out of it.

I’m grateful that I was somehow able to escape that vicious trap. At some point in that terrible slide I hit a bottom and started looking at the facts. I started analyzing the results of all of the nonsense I had been working on. I threw out the garbage and I went back to the basics. I worked on my fundamentals again and I went back to the logic that made me successful in the first place. I completely recovered and grew my sites to many times beyond what they had ever been.

Many of you already have websites and for you, all you need is traffic. Building traffic is easy if you understand the fundamentals. It shouldn’t seem complicated and if it does, chances are that you are in a cycle of overload. Today is the day to snap out of that cycle and I’m going to help you to do it.

3. Time Management – Most people spend almost all of their time learning/researching/thinking instead of working on tasks that will produce benefit.

Don’t misunderstand – you REALLY need to learn and understand the correct principles before you’ll be able to make money, but learning them is never going to be enough. Finding the balance between research and real work is something that can’t be ignored.

This principle stands out in many areas of life. For example, let’s say that two people are overweight and want to get fit. Neither knows a lot about fitness.

Person A decides to learn everything possible about fitness and buys every book and course that he/she can find. This person then spends two hours every single day for a year studying fitness. In a year it’s likely that this person will know a LOT about fitness, right?

Person B decides that the best course of action is to spend two hours per day running (or walking) on the treadmill. This person knows little about fitness but knows that lack of exercise caused them to be overweight in the first place.

Let’s fast forward to the end of that year. Which person is going to be better off? Which person will get the most results in year one? Person B will be the clear winner in this time period.

To be fair, it could be argued that even though Person B will have a lot more success in the first year, Person A will have a tactical advantage in the second year – at least this is what we tell ourselves. We want to believe that our failures are caused by lack of knowledge. It’s a lot easier to accept them that way. It doesn’t make us feel weak if we simply don’t have the knowledge to succeed. On the other hand, recognizing that we don’t work hard enough to succeed is a lot harder to swallow.

What would actually happen in this example is that Person B would come out of the first year feeling great and Person A would come out of the first year feeling like a failure. This would happen for Person A because they will have made no real progress. Person B will have accomplished something tangible so Person B will feel good about the year. I’d be willing to bet the farm that this will cause Person B to be more likely to continue while Person A will struggle to begin down the path of effort required to change.

Two addictions would develop in the year. Person A would have failed at making a real change but would have learned some really cool things. It feels good to learn really cool things and it can become an unhealthy addiction. Person B would also likely develop an addiction, an addiction to positive growth. It feels good to grow, to change in a positive way. Person B will continue on the path that helped them to change their body.

Making money online isn’t that different from this example. Most of us allow ourselves to be Person A. We allow ourselves to spend an unlimited amount of time on activities that we believe will perfect our knowledge but spend very little ‘on the treadmill’.

Most people that do really well with building traffic become addicted positively to growth. The day before yesterday one of my sites had its best day ever, it was a HUGE day. It felt completely awesome. What did I do? I spent a bunch of time working on that site. I’m addicted to growth and this is a healthy addiction. It pushes me toward real growth.

All of that said, let’s not be naive. Making money online isn’t as simple as running two hours per day on a treadmill. There are real principles that have to be understood and executed and they aren’t principles that everyone understands.

If you feel like you don’t understand the basics, I want to help you. The basics aren’t hard and they aren’t complicated. Today is the day to learn them.

How To Solve These Problems And Build Massive Traffic

Tonight Mark and I are going to be doing a two-hour webinar called Massive Traffic 101 for our members and for the first time, we’re going to invite everyone to attend. The webinar will be free of charge, even for those who aren’t members of The Keyword Academy.

Update: We held the webinar on January 28, 2010 and it is now available for download, at the bottom of this page.

Here are some of the fundamentals that we will discuss in detail:

• Choosing keyword phrases that will produce maximum results with minimal effort. One of the biggest keys to my success is choosing easy to rank for keywords that pay. There are millions and millions of such keywords out there and if you can find them, you’ll be well on your way.
• Properly targeting keywords for optimum search engine relevancy. This process is simple and easy, once you understand the concepts.
• Link building techniques that improve search engine rankings. Many people know that they need to build links, but they don’t understand where to get them from and they don’t understand how to structure their links. I can promise that if you’re in this boat, after tonight the mystery will be solved.
• Time management. Putting time into the wrong things will cripple everything you’re working for. Learning where to put your time is critical.

Update: Download Massive Traffic 101 here:

Massive Traffic 101 – Audio Only
Massive Traffic 101 – Full Video

The most important aspect of choosing a good URL to use is making sure that it’s a URL that targets a keyword phrase that’s searched for in Google. The title of this post (How To Pick Your URLs For The Challenge) would ironically be worthless for this challenge. Think about it – no one will search for ‘how to pick your urls for the challenge’ in a million years so there’s no point in getting ranked for the phrase in Google.

Using a URL that targeted the keyword ‘bowling ball bags’ would be a lot smarter. Why? Because people actually search for ‘bowling ball bags’ in Google – 5400 times per month. This certainly isn’t the best keyword in the history of the universe but it’s much better than the alternative in this example.

What To Do To Get Started

The first step in getting started is to pick one URL from your portfolio that targets a keyword. This might be your home page or this might be a post page. Some of your have e-commerce sites so for you this might be a page that sells products. Any of these will do as long as they target a keyword.

Some of you may be new to making money online and for you, you may not have many URLs to work with. For you, you may need to do some keyword research, article writing, and publishing to even get started. This challenge will be extremely effective for you since it illustrates some of the important aspects of creating online profits.

Bloggers

Since many people who read TKA are bloggers, I want to address blogging specifically. This experiment/challenge can be extremely effective for bloggers but could also be a colossal waste of time. Bloggers traditionally have many, many URLs that don’t target specific keyword phrases. The post you’re currently reading is one such example. As a blogger you need to be especially careful to build your links to URLs that were created to target specific keywords. If you’re unfamiliar with this process I would highly recommend reading this post: How To Target A Keyword With A Post Page. The first step for you may be creating a keyword targeted post that you can then get some links for.

Keyword Research For The Challenge

Since many of you are quite new, I want to give some advice that pertains to keyword research. The TKA members know exactly how to pick the proper keywords – let me help you out a little in that arena.

The Google Adwords Keyword Tool is your best friend when it comes to keyword research. You want to find keywords with decent search volume when the tool is set to exact match. <——- This is highly important. I would recommend finding keywords that have search volumes over about 3,000 and CPCs over $1. Once you have decent keywords you can target them with post pages.

You can also search for your keywords in Google, check the PageRank of the pages that rank up top if you want to get an idea of how strong your competition is.

Those who achieve the best results with this experiment will be those who choose the best keywords.

For Those Who Have Plenty Of Keyword Targeting URLs

Those of you who already have lots of keyword-rich content are ahead of the curve. I would make a list of all of the URLs you have that currently get little traffic. I would then choose keywords based on search volume and CPCs. Higher numbers in those two areas will provide you with more potential to make profits.

Another aspect that you can consider in this process is finding keywords that you already rank somewhere for. If you have a keyword that you rank on page 2 or page 3 for, this experiment will help you considerably.

The key here is to choose one URL each day, improve it, and then move on the next day to a new URL.