TKA Pro has set the goal to help 1,000 people reach a minimum of $1,000 in monthly earnings from their websites by June of 2011. Watch our progress on this page.

What’s this all about?

Thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of programs claim to help people make money online. Court and I have decided to create a different kind of transparency and accountability for our program: we’ve set the goal to help 1,000 of our members reach $1,000 per month in online earnings by June of 2011.

It’s a big goal. Will we get there? Who knows. But we definitely like a challenge, and we believe our members are up to the task.

If you’d like to get on the path to earning $1,000 per month online, consider taking a free and completely unrestricted 30 day trial of The Keyword Academy Pro.

Watch the blog for updates on our 1,000 x $1,000 goal.

*Earnings are verified when members of TKA Pro submit screenshots of their income streams. Participation is purely voluntary; there’s no compensation for submitting verification of earnings.

**Both current and previous members of TKA Pro are included in the count of $1,000 earners. The only requirement for a person to be included is that you feel TKA Pro’s guidance, support, and/or tools contributed substantially to your income.

We thought we’d give a higher price a shot, and it has taken very little time for new subscribers to send us the message that $67 per month is just too much to handle when you’re trying to get a new internet business off the ground.

So without any delay, we’re switching price of TKA Pro back to $33 per month.

Hopefully this teaches us a lesson about fixing things that clearly are not broken.

The good news is TKA Pro is as strong as ever. Here are a few stats:

• TKA Pro has over 1,400 active subscribers.
• over ten million unique keywords have been researched with the help of our Niche Refinery keyword tool.
• over 140,000 original articles have been submitted through our PostRunner content distribution hub (available exclusively to TKA Pro members).
• A brand new TKA Pro tool will be unveiled within in the next 30 days. (Hint: Niche Refinery makes it easy to find keywords; PostRunner makes it easy to promote your content with high quality links….there’s a gap between the two called “staying organized, keeping track of you work, and knowing what to do TODAY to move your business forward.” The new tool fills that gap. Can’t wait to release it. Maybe I should go tell our programmer I just promised it would be ready in 30 days…)

And you get access to all of that for $33 per month.

If you’ve signed up for TKA Pro since April 7th, we’ve made it easy for you to switch to a $33 per month subscription.

Follow this link to switch your subscription from $67 (or $59) to $33 per month.

Not a member of TKA Pro yet?

Check out the benefits here!

Let me introduce myself:

* I am a student of The Keyword Academy.

* I signed up for the 1 dollar trial at TKA back in April of 2009, so I have been in the program for a little over a year now. 

* Before joining TKA, I worked very hard on a single website for 3 years, but it was not making much money to really speak of.  Some days I would make a dollar or even less in Adsense earnings.

Let’s cut right to the chase: after about a year of learning and applying new knowledge, my results can speak for themselves.  This money shot is for the last seven days, not an entire month:

Now obviously, $199 for a week in Adsense earnings will translate into some nice monthly earnings.  $800 dollars or so each month in passive earnings is not to bad for 10 months worth of effort, right?  It is certainly the best investment that I have made in quite a while.  I mean, what would you be doing with an extra $800 in cash every month?  I have it flowing into my life right now, with almost no additional work to maintain it, and let me tell you….it makes a huge difference! 

Please keep in mind that I work a full time job in the real world and do not possess amazing internet marketing skills or anything.  I am just a regular guy who was looking for an additional stream of income, and started looking for a way to learn more about how to make money online.

You are probably wondering how I was able to produce $800 per month in passive earnings using the Keyword Academy program.  I’m going to break it down into the key areas where I think the real value comes from, and how I make more money because of it:

* Extreme focus
* Support and community
* TKA Tools
* Leadership and challenges

Extreme focus

Making money on the internet can be absolutely overwhelming.  There are so many different methods you could test out, so many different techniques you could try.  This might include anything from selling stuff on eBay, to writing freelance articles for extra cash, to attempting what Court and Mark teach to develop a passive stream of income from search engine traffic.  Some people get overwhelmed before they even choose a direction to go in! 

On top of the confusing options, the market is littered with scams, especially in the make money online world.  It is a rare treat to find someone who is willing to give you 100% full access to everything for a measly one dollar test drive….not to mention that they make this offer for an entire month. 

A big part of what helped me in getting to my income goal was increased focus.  Court and Mark actually harp on this concept quite a bit, because it produces results in the real world.  They have a detailed system for generating traffic and then making money from that traffic, and they are fanatical about cutting out the extra fluff that does not lead to increased income.  Every single action you take when working on internet marketing should be driving you towards your income goals.  The TKA program has a number of ways that they go about enhancing focus for students.

Part of the success of the TKA program is in the focus and the simplicity.  Court and Mark are teaching you how to generate search engine traffic, period.  Yes, there are a million little details to pile on top of this.  Is the topic profitable?  Do searchers for a certain keyword tend to click ads or ignore them?  Is there enough income potential with a keyword to make it worthwhile?  Could we make more money by ditching Adsense and selling affiliate products instead?  And on and on.  But the core program sweeps everything aside and shows you how to answer all of these questions, and more, with focus and simplicity.  In fact, the program allows for plenty of expansion and flexibility, in that once you learn how to choose the optimal keywords for your topic and start generating traffic, it then becomes quite easy to test different methods of monetization, optimize for different keywords, expand into other keyword categories, and so on. 

Also, once you learn how to focus on the actions that produce traffic and income, it becomes so much easier to replicate those actions and scale your efforts up.  With so much clutter and junk in the world of internet marketing, it is nice to be able to sweep 99 percent of it aside and learn how to engage in the actions that can grow your passive earnings.

How focus has helped me make more money:

 At one point in my internet marketing career, I was checking my earnings once per day, and was always devastated when it was not higher than it was the day before.  Both Court and Mark helped me achieve a mental breakthrough–both in different ways and in slightly different areas–that allowed me to truly separate what made a day successful for me or not.  Once I was able to separate my earnings for the day from the amount of work I was doing, I was able to rapidly accelerate my marketing efforts and my income started to jump.  This mental conditioning led to some pretty big action for me, and helped me to move beyond a plateau that I was stuck at for months.  As a result, my income pretty much doubled over a period of 90 days, and it has been steadily rising ever since then.

You may have a website, or a couple of websites, and you put in some tough work and you get to a point where your earnings sort of levels off for a while, and you can’t really see the next major leap to make.  I have been at this point at least twice in the last 10 months.  Each time, I was able to break through this point after listening to either Court or Mark during a live webinar.  I came away from the live session with a spark of inspiration and an idea, a feeling of “I can do this!”  And thus I would start taking massive action on my web properties, somehow putting in a ton of hard work in such a way so as to seriously boost my earnings in the long run.  And both times that this happened–when I attacked my business with renewed focus–I always saw a substantial leap in earnings within the next 90 days. 

Focus is such a huge part of internet marketing, because the hard work that we put in today will not pay dividends from an SEO standpoint for several weeks or even months.  So my breakthroughs have always occurred when Court and Mark were able to convince me to take it on blind faith that “If you do X, you will get Y.”  Rinse and repeat.

Support and community

In my opinion, the forum alone is worth the price of admission.  Ask an honest question or request some feedback or opinions, and you get it right away, within an hour or less.  Instant guru help. In nearly every case, people who are earning thousands of dollars per month in internet marketing are jumping in left and right to help you with questions.  It really is an unbelievable community.  And of course, Court and Mark themselves are active on the forums, and this provides huge value as well.

Beyond the forum, there are other forms of support as well, and one of the biggest perks is a programming ninja named Peter that is on staff with Court and Mark.  He is a delight to work with, can resolve just about any technical issue, and provides incredible insight and new tools to the community. 

Participation in the private forum can be a double edged sword.  If you hang out there all day and fantasize about making money online, then you obviously are not taking the actions necessary to grow your income. 

Luckily, the TKA members help to keep each other in check with this a bit.  There are at least two nifty tricks built into the forum that make it more useful: a karma system and a badge system.  You can glance through a thread and quickly find the people who can speak with real authority, because these things are already in place to provide you with instant information.  This is not to say that the newcomer gets drowned out in the crowd, however.  Anyone can ask a question in the forums and instantly get expert advice and quality feedback within minutes.  I have never seen a question go unanswered.

How TKA support has helped me make more money:

Every couple of days I get an idea and I write up a forum post and bounce it off the community.  This is priceless.  I get ideas, other people weigh in with their ideas, and we all help each other to make more money.  I have hired people in the forums for various services, such as article writing, keyword research, and even link building, but this is all besides the point.  The instant feedback from dozens of professional internet marketers is what really keeps me coming back.  The reason I stick and stay is because I have this professional, high quality sounding board to test my ideas with. 

Tools

Here is what Court and Mark did: they hired an awesome programmer, explained the biggest bottlenecks in making money with their system, and then demanded that this guy come up with brilliant solutions that could automate nearly all of the grunt work.  What he came up with is fantastic, and there are least two major tools in the TKA program that more than make up for the price of admission, over and over again.  One tool helps you to find profitable keywords, the other helps you to rank well in the search engines.  Both tools are extremely powerful and are market leaders in their category.  Since they are private tools used only by the community, they may not be recognized as market leaders, but they are (I know because I have tested the market!). 

Really, these two tools are so good that Court and Mark could have easily justified commissioning their existence, even without ever sharing them with the community.  They are so powerful that just one person could benefit tremendously from them….so you can imagine how much value they add to an entire community.

How TKA tools have helped me make more money:

Without going into too much detail, let’s just say that roughly 90 percent of my efforts rely exclusively on tools that I use from the Keyword Academy.  Sure, I use some outside resources for things like content creation, creating and building links, and even finding keywords, but all of this has continued to shrink as the new tools at TKA have integrated most of my old methods.  The tools just automate everything and make it a “one stop shopping solution.”  No need to go elsewhere right now, as my income is steady rising with the tools I am working with.

Don’t get me wrong…the tools are not magic.  They do not make money rain down from the sky.  Ultimately, some bottlenecks still exist when it comes to increasing your income.  You still need lots of original content, you still have to find keywords, and you still have to create links.  The tools at TKA do a good job at making a serious dent in at least two of these areas.  But you will still have to put forth some real effort, and it always takes a bit of time to get things moving along as well.

Leadership and challenges

Part of the TKA program includes weekly webinars.  These are live audio and video broadcasts that you follow along with.  It is pretty impressive that you can actually ask questions during these broadcasts and get direct answers as well. 

Part of the challenge that Court and Mark face is in dealing with repeat questions, as well as newcomers to their program and people who have serious doubts about how it will all turn out.  Most students of internet marketing would much rather think about making money online rather than put in real work and effort….and this is exactly the sort of block that Court and Mark have been learning how to overcome in the minds of their students.

It has been impressive to watch these guys evolve as teachers.  You can tell that they have had moments of extreme frustration.  Yet they really have been able to push beyond that and use this as an opportunity to delve into the mind of the frustrated internet entrepreneur and make it into a lesson that can help everyone.  Their leadership, in this case, has pushed them to really learn what kinds of challenges are blocking their students, and how they can design challenges and goals that will produce real action and real results. 

A big part of this comes into play when Court will make a breakthrough of his own, and then share it with the community, challenging them to put in the same work to replicate his efforts.  He continues to push his students by pushing himself.  And now, many TKA members have come up with challenges of their own in the forums, and this is the type of atmosphere that helps to incite action and promote income growth.  

How TKA leadership has helped me make more money:

Like I said, I have experienced at least 2 major breakthroughs that have spurred me into action and drastically added to my bottom line.  One of these was inspired by Court and the other was inspired by Mark.  Each of these guys brings something unique to the table when it comes to teaching and instructing students.  Obviously, Court makes his own breakthroughs in the internet marketing world and then shares his success with others, pushing them to take action and duplicate his results.  Mark brings a business prowess to the table that is very professional and has actually shown me how to take my flagship website to the next level, something that I did not really believe could be achieved at first. 

I don’t just subscribe to Court and Mark because I think they are nice guys or because they like my website….I do it because they have taken me all the way to $800 per month in passive income!  For me, the continuing education that I get at the Keyword Academy is simply part of my business.  It is a lifeline that I would be crazy to go without, as the experience thus far has multiplied my income many times over. 

I am excited beyond words to look forward to the next year in internet marketing.  I am so grateful that I have this level of support as I transition to a full time income online. 

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.