Posts Tagged ‘making money online’

How To Pick Your URLs For The Challenge

January 22nd, 2010  |  by Court  |  Published in Explanations, For Beginners  |  7 Comments

It seems like the most common question I’m getting so far with the new challenge is, “How do I pick the URLs to use for the challenge?” This is a good question because the people that have the best results are going to be the ones that pick the best URLs.

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.

How Often Should We Update Our Sites?

January 2nd, 2010  |  by Court  |  Published in Content  |  10 Comments

I got an interesting reader question a few days ago and thought that it would be a good one to answer publicly. Here it is:

Hi. I made {website removed} according to your videos, and then left it for three
months. Now it’s making $40.00 a month. I was skeptical at first. But now I want
to see what can happen with my keywords that had more potential. My problem is,
I just read your article about posting daily – I haven’t touched the {site topic removed} site in
5 months. I’m working on the {site 2 topic removed} site now. I don’t understand how I could
keep writing about {site topic removed}, or any keyword that is technically
promising, but personally uninteresting. So, is it possible that daily posting
may not be necessary for every niche site? or should I not even develop a site
if I don’t plan on posting a blog everyday? Also, you have said that some
students make many many blogs, how do they keep up with them if they are posting
everyday? I’m sorry for writing so much! But THANK YOU your site has been so
helpful and I think what you do is awesome.

This is a question that a LOT of people wonder about. A lot of the problem is my fault because I have talked openly and in private about multiple approaches to internet marketing.

One option for making money is by creating niche websites. You pick a small topic and dominate that topic. It sounds like that’s the approach that’s being used by this reader.

Another entirely different option for making money online is creating authority blogs. I’ve talked about this approach a lot on CourtneyTuttle.com and I assume that this reader read a post about this topic there (or saw my 2010 goals post where I said that I was going to post six days per week on The Keyword Academy). Keep in mind that this is an entirely different approach.

How Often Do We Update Niche Sites?

I personally only update niche sites as needed. If there’s a major industry change within a topic, it usually calls for an update. For example, if I had a niche site about ‘different types of laser eye surgery’, I would want to keep it up to date. That means that I would need to update the site if a different type of laser eye surgery came into the picture.

Another reason that I would update a niche site is if it starts to slide in the rankings. If you’re sitting at #1 and your site is topically up to date, there really isn’t a reason to do any updating, in my opinion.

How Often Do We Update Blogs?

This approach is entirely different and needs to be approached differently. If you’re running a traditional blog, you’re trying to develop a following and posting regularly will really help with that. In my opinion, traditional blogging is a lot more difficult than many of the other options for making money online. You have to be more fully developed in your skillset and personality traits to pull it off.

If you are sold on being a traditional blogger, the more you update, the more success you will have. Most of the big bloggers that I know post multiple times per day and often post more than five times per day. If that doesn’t appeal to you I would probably pick a different approach like building niche sites or building informational sites where you don’t try to create a traditional blog following.

2010 Goals

January 1st, 2010  |  by Court  |  Published in Productivity, TKA News  |  11 Comments

Happy New Year!!

2009 Recap

2009 was by far my best year ever for making money on the internet. It was amazing – I seriously can’t believe it. Last year at this time I was setting a lot of goals for myself and I really didn’t know what to expect. The Keyword Academy was brand new and I was working on a lot of new projects. The goals I set were lofty and I knew that I would really have to push myself (and have good fortune) to achieve them.

I worked really hard in 2009 and was immensely blessed. I learned a lot of new things about making money online, business, and also about myself. I learned that I can do a lot more work than I thought. I’m also starting to understand how much potential there really is in making money with the internet. I achieved all of my financial goals, and then some. I went over those goals by more than 20%.

My biggest mistake of 2009 was that I didn’t set my goals high enough. Honestly, I felt myself wavering in determination after I achieved the goals I had made. I don’t want to make that mistake in 2010 and I’ve given a lot of thought to coming up with numbers that will make me push and discipline myself harder than ever.

2010 Goals

  • Make $500,000 online. This goal is really high but something about it feels possible. My goal last year, while much lower, was similar in that it felt high but seemed within the realm of possibility.
  • Post 312 times on The Keyword Academy. That’s 6 days per week for 52 straight weeks. This will be a huge change for me but making massive improvements to the bottom line will require massive improvements to my work ethic. I also want to make it as easy as possible for other people to improve their skills, and that’s going to mean sharing as much information as possible with them.

If you want to make 2010 your best year ever, it’s time to set goals. They need to be high. High goals are the easiest to achieve – without them you won’t take massive action. If you set a goal to make $500 online this year you’ll waste your year – you’ll procrastinate. If you made $500 in 2009 and set a goal to make $20,000 in 2010 you will know that you don’t have time to waste.

Set a goal that will push you harder than ever and you’ll have the best year ever.

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