Net Strife - providing smashing tips on Internet Marketing

As expected, I’ve managed to get NetStrife.com ranking on Google’s first page for the term “internet marketing, which has around 100 million results on a broad search and ~38M in quotes. We’re now outranking sites with big seo budgets and a whole bunch of other random sites gunning for the term. Depending on where you search from, the domain netstrife.com ranks around 8-10th place.

Funnily enough, the traffic for this term is WAY lower than other keywords I have sites ranking for with way less competition - but that’s not the point. Getting the site up on google’s first page was just an experiment to see if it could be done, and I feel confident I could get a new site ranking for pretty much anything in 6-12 months. When I brought the site in Nov 2008, it had a bunch of inbound links, but it wasn’t ranking anywhere to be seen for internet marketing.

So, how did i do it?

Neurolinker, 1waylinks, some linkvana posts, and traffic kahuna are all services I’m a member of that I used. These are all whitehat linking systems. Also, I used my ~100 blogs of PR1-3 to link to netstrife.com that I setup a few months ago, which had surprisingly a very good effect (it’s not the brute number of links you get with seo, but rather the quality of links that counts). Autopligg was also used lightly, which many consider blackhat, but for competitive terms like this you really need to do stuff like this to keep up with your competition. There are a bunch of other stuff that was done, but that’s it in a nutshell.

Finally - for any “anti seo” people that feel google does manual reviews and artificial links no longer work - i’d be willing to bet (pick your stakes) that netstrife.com will stay on google’s first page for internet marketing in a couple of months from now. Simply comment below if you’d like to wager anything on it.

Check it out…

I just came across this site using special characters in it’s meta tag, as pictured above. If you look at the source of this site you can see them using phrases like “█”, which google interprets as a black rectangle - and “☑” which is represented by a tick inside a square.

It seems other search engines, like MSN and yahoo don’t convert these to the special characters if you have the code on your site, but google does. If this actually works without getting your site penalized, it’s a surefire way of getting more clicks from google searches… and honestly I doubt Google would even care if you do this. You could easily get 2-3 times more clicks and traffic just from doing this if your ste is listed around the middle of the first page for a keyword in google.

I’m going to try this on a couple of my Google money sites, maybe even on netstrife.com. This is probably old news but this is the first time (after looking at thousands of sites) that I’ve seen anyone do it. If anyone else knows about this, please comment below.

I’ve been using the MSN Loophole since the start of November, as documented in my last few posts. Here’s what I’ve posted in the Warrior Forum review thread for this product (well worth looking at).

As you can see, so far, I wouldn’t recommend doing this

If you have brought the MSN Loophole product by Chris Rempel and Dave Kelly and have tried it out, I would definitely like to know how it’s going for you. Just post a comment below.

Myself and another guy have been working on this new site at NinjaReports.com, which basically allows users to review clickbank products. Unlike most product review sites, the idea is to give objective reviews based on what people around the web are saying. I figure this will be much more useful over the average review site that just hypes up products and doesn’t provide any actual value …so if you have purchased a CB product feel free to submit a review (and of course any constructive feedback about the site is welcome )

To be honest, review sites that promote clickbank products are where I’ve made most of my money, and I still do really well with them. However, I’ve never made a site that allows the actual users to submit their own reviews. I’m half expecting this to fall flat on its face. But the idea of Ninja Reports isn’t just to make money - it’s also just kind of a fun project. Especially since up till now I’ve always promoted sites via SEO and software submissions and I’ll be marketing this site a little differently.

Other news…

The MSN Loophole Results Update

I’ve been following the MSN Loophole by Chris Rempel and Dave Kelly for about 6 weeks so far. You can read my last post for a background on this method which everyone is trying. So how is it going so far?

Well, I’ve noticed that MSN/Live as a search engine is NOWHERE NEAR as quick as google or even yahoo at crawling the web and indexing new pages. Whereas I can easily get indexed in google in just a few hours, it takes several weeks to get indexed in MSN (and even then they only show the homepage and not other pages on the site). Only a little over half of the blogs I’ve made have been indexed, and I’ve been building links to them for several weeks. Of course all my sites are indexed in google and yahoo but just not MSN.

Being that MSN is so slow to do much, none of my money sites have got top page rankings yet. Google is actually sending me traffic, an average of around 20-30 visitors a day per blog. So across all the blogs I’ve made for the MSN loophole I’m getting a couple thousand unique visitors a day from Google but that is NOT the point. I’m still waiting to get real results from MSN. From everything I’ve read, no-one has got any real results from this method yet. I still believe it will pick up as MSN finally spiders more pages, but this is definitely not an overnight type thing. I’m still interested to see what happens in a month or so from now.

A lot of people have been talking about the MSN Loophole by Chris Rempel and Dave Kelly, and since I’m always interested in SEO (it’s where 95% of my traffic normally comes from) I picked it up when it first launched on the 5th. I have also been a customer of Dave Kelly’s Linkvana system for several months and since that really delivers amazing results I figured this MSN Loophole thing had to be decent.

The Idea Behind MSN Loophole:

The theory behind this MSN Loophole thing is fairly simple - basically the idea is to game MSN/Live search by building a whole ton of blogs on different class C IP’s, having one page “money” sites, and randomizing links to your money sites on your blogs. When MSN’s spider crawls your blogs pages, each time they come back, they’ll see different links - and they count each link they find as a “new” link before they realize the old links are no longer present. Build enough blogs, and MSN’s spider will be all over your pages, and spidering all the “new” links pointing to your money sites. That means a LOT of inbound links and first page rankings for just about any keyword you want.

The actual product shows you exactly how to do all this, including how to automatically add content to your blogs and the script to randomize links. You will definitely need to buy the MSN Loophole guide before even thinking of doing this by yourself. And all of this might sound complicated, but it’s not hard at all once you get going with it, and the MSN Loophole guide explains it much better and in more detail. There’s also no specialized skills or anything you’ll need to put this in motion.

Does The MSN Loophole Work?

Evidence suggests, yes, it does. Go to MSN/Live search (live.com) now and do a search for the following keywords:

“walking shoes”
“reducing debt”
“get rid of debt”
“poor credit rating” etc…

Notice the #1 ranking site is just a one-pager site, all with the same template. These are test sites Dave Kelly has got to rank number one just to prove this system works. I also know Chris Rempel and Dave Kelly both have a reputation for putting out quality products, and this isn’t the typical kind of junk you see in the IM industry. They’re also adding a lot of video’s and new FAQ’s all the time (plus support is excellent as most people will tell you). And the fact that Dave has hit #1 rankings for ultra-competitive terms like “walking shoes” proves that this is VERY powerful stuff.

Problems with the MSN Loophole:

To do this properly and really make a lot of $$$ you’re going to need a couple hundred bucks for the MSN loophole guide, a couple more scripts the guide goes through, and a host that offers multiple class-C IP addresses (I recommend SEOhosting.com, a hostgator company). It will of course also take you several hours of work to set up a lot of blogs and money sites.

Also, don’t expect instant results. Dave Kelly himself states (and he is 100% right) how MSN has a 2-5 week cycle for indexing. So it can easily take you up to a month to get indexed in MSN right now, compared to Google where I can easily get indexed in under 24 hours. So the salesletter where it says “Imagine doing it next week for free” is a little misleading.

So is all this a walk in the park? Not exactly. But remember what you put in is what you get out of it. The more money you spend and the more dedicated you are, the more you’ll make - simple as that. So try to quit with the “I don’t want to spend much money” and “I don’t want to get out of my comfort zone” BS etc. You will NEVER get very far if you keep up that kind of attitude. Don’t be afraid to throw stuff out there and really make things happen for yourself.

Anyways - Bottom Line:

So far I’ve built 90+ blogs (some on old domains over a year old) and around 20 money sites to take advantage of this MSN loophole method. That’s more than what is recommended, but I am honestly really excited about the potential of this. We’re talking about thousands of dollars of PASSIVE income per month once more of my blogs and money sites get indexed. It’s really easy to scale this up and make way more, too. MSN’s spider is definitely slow, but from my experience with SEO, everything the MSN Loophole guide goes through makes a lot of sense. So I’m willing to really put a lot into this. I’ll keep you guys updated with rankings, income reports and all that.

You Can Pick Up The MSN Loophole Here >>>

PS: If you are familiar with SEO and have thoughts on this method, or you have purchased the MSN Loophole guide, I would like to hear from you - just comment below. I read every comment that gets posted here and welcome any discussion.

Most successful internet marketers agree that having your own product and affiliates is the #1 way to make a large income. In fact, if you look at the top players in the internet marketing field you will find that most of their sales when they launch a new product come from their JV partners and affiliates. So how do you actually go about recruiting affiliates?

First, if you have a digital product like an ebook, software or membership site, I recommend you set it up through Clickbank and let them handle your affiliate program. This gives you exposure to over 100,000 affiliates signed up at clickbank, and it’s just easier. Your affiliates won’t have to sign up and they’ll promote you because they KNOW they’ll get paid. You can of course set up your affiliate program with your own in house script like JV manager if you want, it’s totally up to you. I personally only use clickbank to sell products.

Anyways, once you have an affiliate program set up, here’s what you can do to get affiliates to sell your product. I’ve tried each of these myself, and they should work fine in any market.

Getting The Ball Rolling For Affiliates To Promote Your Product - Use Forums:

The first thing I do to pick up affiliates is go to forums. Specifically, you can use the Warrior Forum and Digital Point Forums. These are two very popular webmaster forums, with hundreds of thousands of members.

Digital Point has a separate affiliate forum where you can post a new thread advertising your affiliate program. If you sell a product through clickbank, for example, just go to their clickbank subforum and post a thread about your product and its affiliate program. This is GREAT free advertising. It only takes about ten minutes, and you’ll typically get hundreds of views. Just go through what commission you offer, your products price, and everything affiliates need to know. If you are an active member of digital point with lots of posts, you’ll get plenty of people promoting your product.

With the warrior forum, what you can do is post a WSO (Warrior Special Offer) for $20. This is WELL worth it for the price. As the name implies, this has to offer something “special” for members of the warrior forum. What you can do is make a WSO asking members to promote your product, and offer one-on-one support, as well as a free website to promote your product and other promotional material.

In addition to posting a thread on both digitalpoint and the warrior forum, you can advertise your affiliate program in your signature on these forums. This will come up at the bottom of every post you make.

After You Have Posted On Forums About Your Affiliate Program:

You want to pick up affiliates from:

• people already promoting products similar to yours as affiliates;
• product vendors that are selling a product similar to yours;
• your customers

To find affiliates that are promoting products similar to yours, I use Affiliate Elite (my affiliate link), which is a really neat piece of software that can give you a list of every website promoting a product. You can then get the WHOIS information for each site, and contact the owner asking them to promote your product too. You can find bloggers, website owners, and other marketers that already promote a product competing with yours - then just send a friendly JV request. Make sure you have a strong argument for why they should promote your product over your competitions.

You will also want to do JV’s and partnerships with product vendors selling a product similar to yours. I have to give Mike Filsaime credit for this one. Let’s say you have a generic weight loss product, and you find someone selling a product on how to build abs. These 2 products aren’t directly competing but they appeal to the same kind of person. So, you can make a deal with the person selling the product on building abs where they promote your weight loss product to their customers, and you promote their abs product to your customers. It’s beneficial for both sides.

In terms of recruiting affiliates from your actual customers, this is obviously much easier if you are selling an internet marketing or B2B product. I haven’t personally sold a make money product before so it’s harder, but you can still tell your customers that they can refer their friends to your product and make commissions. You’ll naturally get much more word of mouth exposure and customers becoming affiliates if you have a great product that actually works.

How To Make It Enticing For Affiliates To Promote You:

The main things affiliates look for in a product to promote is:

• The strength of your sales copy, and how well your website converts visitors into buyers;
• The commission % they get for each sale they send;
• The price your product is sold at;
• The quality of the product itself

Therefore, you want to invest in writing a compelling salesletter that converts, offer your product at a high price point, give affiliates high commission (you can give affiliates up to 75% in clickbank, which is what I recommend) and create a good quality product. To justify a higher price you will want to include additional bonuses and everything else that makes your product a good deal for the buyer.

Of course this post is just scratching the surface of some of the things you can do to build a successful affiliate program. I’ll touch on some more things later.

Just to clear something up, I’m not being a hypocrite here and “whining” about this issue. I want to share my thoughts with you regarding people who complain non-stop, and at the same time make some of you realize that excessive complaining about your bad experiences will not get you anywhere!

I have met some people online who were sending their complaints to me via MSN OR e-mail almost everyday about their unfortunate internet marketing experiences. Ladies and gentlemen, they did continually send me messages without fail — even though I wasn’t replying to them! I have no idea why they were doing that to me, it’s not like I’m their counselor or something.

The thing is, they don’t realize that what they’re doing is just hindering them from attaining success. Sure, they can complain all they want, they have the right — I give them that. Nevertheless, if they’re complaining that their online businesses are not improving, then I guess I would say that they MUST stop whining AND start working in order for them to get what they want!

Whiners Are Losers

Why do internet marketers whine? It’s most probably because they fail(ed) at what they wanted to accomplish. To add some spice to this post, let me tell a story about a Thomas Alva Edison, a famous scientist that you should have heard of already.

Thomas Edison is credited for the invention of the light bulb. I reckon a lot of you know that he had failed more than 500 times in creating the light bulb, but did you know that he did not think of those as failures?

He once said, “I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.” [source]

Did he complain? No. Did he stop working on it? No. Instead, he continued on until he reached his goal, that is to create a light bulb! Now, he is known for what he did and humanity has thanked him for it. He is a winner.

Think about it this way: when you whine (instead of work), you are accomplishing nothing. Well, maybe you’re getting your thoughts heard, but then again that’s it. Nothing productive, just your feelings released to the public. What do we call people who use up a lot of their time doing something, and in the end not coming up with something good? Losers! I’m not saying that it’s bad to share your thoughts, or in some cases complaints, with others. I’m just saying that doing it excessively could result into unproductive use of your time.

If you’re still not convinced that whining makes you a loser, then here’s a little something I want to share with you.

“You only reduce your distance to success when you start working, not when you start whining.”

- Me

I hope I inspired you today. Wait! This post is not over yet. I, too, tend to complain sometimes. I have a counteraction to defeat my “complaining side” though, and that is focus.

Focus, Focus, Focus

If I were to give a one-word tip to internet marketers, it would be “Focus, focus, focus.” But that’s three words, right? No, there’s only one word there: focus, with a multiplicity of 3. I probably can not stress on this more, but in order to finish whatever you’re doing, you have to concentrate on it and do all that you can to achieve your goals.

Instead of whining your heart out, why not (whine not? sort of a good pun, huh?) put yourself in a state of total focus until you totally forget about complaining? Then, you WILL attain whatever success you desire.

Summary

Whining will not get you anywhere near success. Just think of Thomas Alva Edison whenever you’re about to whine because of your failures. He “failed” nearly a thousand times, but did he complain? No. He just worked on what he’s doing and eventually, he succeeded. Also, to further eliminate the thought of whining, try to focus heavily on your goal and what you’re currently doing. By doing so, the mere idea of uttering a complaint would soon diminish.

Have a great day everyone, I’m looking forward to your comments on this one.

As an internet marketer myself, I firmly believe that the amount of clients/sales we’re generating and our profits highly depend on our reputation. I can say this with confidence because I’ve met reputable people online, and not-so-reputable ones. Comparing the amount of sales that they generate, I can attest that the latter do not produce as much as the former!

I am writing this post because I want to help you — I want you to avoid ruining your reputation, while it is still possible. You see, once you “kill” your reputation, it’s dead. I doubt that you can ever get back what you lost. Well… maybe some can, but it would prove to be very difficult!

Just How Important Is Reputation?

I know, some people don’t see reputation as an important factor in internet marketing success. They take it for granted. Hence, I am going to give a situation which will serve as a concrete example that reputation is a determining factor to achieve success in IM.

Let’s have “Person A” and “Person B”. Both of them run competing web design companies. Person A is highly respected, and a lot of people recommend his service. Person B, on the other hand, has a habit of bad-mouthing his clients. As a result, his ex-clients warn others that Person B’s company is not recommendable.

Supposing that they both have the same skills and pricing structure, who would get more client work, and, in the end, more profit? Surely, it’s Person A!

Now you see how important reputation is. I want to delve deeper into this topic by talking about my experiences on people who (seemingly) are murdering their reputation unconsciously.

Unconscious Murder of Our Own Reputation?

What Things Usually Happen…

There are times when people do things just for fun, not knowing that those things could possibly hurt their “perfect” reputation! Fake bids. Swearing at clients. Not honoring bids/not sending payments promptly. Do those phrases sound familiar? Well, unfortunately, a lot of people do those acts. What’s more unfortunate about this is, they’re killing their reputation by doing so.

A Brief Yet Interesting Experience

Allow me to share an anecdote. Last week, I was on the Digital Point Forums and I recently sold a small website there. The bid was $165 and it was a private bid. I was told that I would be receiving the payment last Tuesday, but then up until now I see no signs of any payments made. I am not whining or whatever. Besides, it’s not the money, it’s the principle of keeping your word. It’s the principle of speaking with honor!

So, what does this experience tell me about the bidder? He’s a liar, he doesn’t honor his bids, and he’s not worth my time. To be honest, I gave him an allowance of four days already. He had been reading my private messages (I know this because I was asking for read receipts through vBulletin’s system.), yet he didn’t even have the courage to tell me ANYTHING at all! At least now I know that I MUST avoid him/not accept his bids, should I sell any more sites on Digital Point.

Well, I pity him because he’s not getting any more business from me, nor from my entire network.

How to Prevent This from Happening

Always think before you act! This is a very important rule that everyone should follow. Don’t be tactless; always use your head before doing anything! Before promising a client something, make sure that it’s possible for you to do it. For example, don’t tell your client that you can come up with a marketing plan in an hour after he pays you if you really can’t.

Speak with honor… all the time. I hate it when people say something with full confidence, and then take it back in the end when they know they’ve said something unfavorable to them. If you say something, then be sure that you can back it up, and defend it until the end!

Act professionally. Shame that there are a lot of bad-mouthed, morally impaired, and ethically challenged people who call themselves professionals. In this world of business, we should all act professionally so as to avoid pointless arguments and loss of heaps of revenue. Don’t resort to using cuss words just to get your point across. Don’t disrespect anyone you’re dealing with. Just be polite and remember that having a great reputation depends on how well you know your values.

Summary

People tend to kill their reputation unconsciously. Whether it’s through scamming, not honoring their words, or even cussing at clients, it’s still a riotous act that could ruin your reputation for your entire life. To prevent this from happening, always see to it that you’re acting professionally, and you hold true to your word. A great rule to remember is, “ALWAYS think before you act.”

What’s Happening in the World of Flipping

I have noticed that a lot of people are attempting to flip website these days. The sad part about it is that quite a huge number of these people do not have plans, outlines, or whatsoever to help them make the most out of their flips. In order to address this problem, I decided to create a website flipping checklist that you can refer to so that you may know if you’ve got everything you need to maximize the earnings for your website flips.

Things You Need To Maximize Your Website Flips

I have flipped more than a dozen websites already. From niche blogs to autopilot content sites, I’ve experienced creating them all and made a profit by selling them within a specific time frame. Through my experience, I managed to think and realize what people really need in order to have successful flips.

First, you have to have a budget plan. Website flipping must be treated as a business, not as a “random thing that you want to try”. I usually do this by creating an Excel spreadsheet and listing all the things that I need to spend on. Put the cost of domains, hosting, promotion costs, etc. in there. More often than not, I include “time” in the list, and put a value of $50 or something. I do it because I value my time, but it’s totally up to you if you want to do that. Then, calculate the total amount and there you go, you have a simple budget plan. This is important because you NEED to know how much you’re going to spend in order to know what price you’re going to sell the sites for!

A relevant and catchy domain name is a plus. Some people just buy $1.00 domains from others, and often they end up with completely unrelated domains like xc45545.org for a politics blog. When flipping websites, try to resist your inner “anti-expenditures being”! Trust me, when it’s time for you to sell your site, the returns would be great if you have a good domain.

A profitable and hot niche can bring in more money. While others prefer to work on sites that actually interest them, building sites in hot and lucrative niches can help you make the most out of your flips. Supposing that you spend the same amount of money in developing websites (for example, the same premium theme for blogs, the same price for header customization, etc.), then the only factor that can increase your net income is the selling price — and this is determined by how hot your site’s niche is.

A custom logo or mascot can add value to your website. Let me ask you, which one would sell for a higher price, supposing that they have the same content - a blog using the default Kubrick theme, or a blog using a free theme with a custom header? The latter, right? I have this technique of selling websites for a higher price just by getting a logo done for it. First, I find a logo designer. Not necessarily the ones which cost $100 for one draft! There are decent designers who are willing to do a logo for $10 or maybe less. Then, depending on the quality, I state in my salesletter that the logo cost me $50 (or more). Voila, instant increase on the site’s value!

Unique and timeless content helps a lot. I know that buying databases for website flipping can save you a lot of time — I have done it myself. Then again, if you have unique AND timeless content, your website’s value will significantly increase. Sure, some people are okay with buying a recipe website which has 10,000 recipes that can be found on hundreds of other sites, but it would definitely be better even if only had 5,000 unique recipes. It would be hard, yes, but you can just pay some people to rewrite or add a little bit of zest to the recipes that you had collected. At least your site would have the potentials of standing out and becoming an authority site - buyers would be willing to pay big bucks if your site has these potentials.

Having a very good salesletter will boost your site’s sale price! I have written about this before (Sort of, well, it was about creating good site auctions). Basically, the more attractive your salesletter is, the more people are going to be interested in buying your site. This will eventually yield a “bidding war” and you will end up selling your website for the highest price possible.

Summary

There are things that you need to do/get in order to maximize your website flipping efforts. Having a budget plan is very important in order to make the most out of your website flips. While it may sound silly to some, I like treating things like flipping as a business, and not just something that I’d do during my free time. Things like a good domain, a hot niche, and a custom logo can really boost the amount for which you will be selling your sites for. Unique and timeless content can attract more potential buyers into paying more for your website. Moreover, writing a good and creative salesletter will have the same effect. All the things that I mentioned are essential if you’re taking website flipping really seriously.

If you have any more things that you want to add here, feel free to leave a comment. I’m always open to your suggestions, insights, and arguments.

P.S. The current contest will end tomorrow. Thanks to all those who joined! Good luck to everyone!

Firstly, I would like to apologize for the lack of activity on the blog. My attention these days is divided into a LOT of things and I simply don’t have all the luxury and time in the world to post. Nonetheless, this blog won’t die out. That’s just not my thing, you know.

Curiosity, Confessions, and Such

Okay, so I was just wondering about something. As an internet marketer, do you still surf the web for fun, like watch videos, read funny comics, and stuff like that? I mean, as all of us were exposed to the world of internet marketing, our naivety to the online ads and efforts of businessmen to make money from “innocent” surfers, we veer away from the idea of just surfing the internet for entertainment. Instead, we use the internet to research on market trends, chat with our fellow webmasters, and read blogs that could help us in our endeavors!

Frankly, even I do not surf the web for fun any more. Well at least, not as often as I did before. Nowadays, I just lurk around the SitePoint marketplace and look for great deals. Sometimes I chat with my fellow webmasters, but take note, that I only do it sometimes. Most of the time I’m either researching, or building/buying websites. In all honesty I actually find this new “lifestyle” a bit boring, but I know that in the end there will be great rewards.

Another thing that makes online entrepreneurs stop browsing the web for fun is the fact that they are knowledgeable of the benefits of having ads on a site. They know very well that each click (sometimes, each view) on an ad will make another person some money, and they detest that thing. I guess they are too conceited that they even want to prevent other people from attaining success.

How about you? As an internet marketer, do you still have the luxury of surfing other websites for entertainment, or are you too inclined with your work that you do nothing but transact businesses online?

New Internet Marketing Project

I would like my readers to know that I am conducting a little experiment on proxies. I have set up a dozen or so web proxies, and I have outlined a plan already. I am aiming to be making at least $50 to $100 per day from all of them in a month. I have little experience in proxies, so if you’re a guru or something, let me know if $50-$100 is too ambitious for 10 (more or less) web proxies.

After a month or so, I will be posting the results of my experiment here. Hopefully I would be able to help some people start their very own proxy business.

Question and Answer… Answers

Nope, I am not posting them today. Please wait for them tomorrow! While you are reading this, I am probably constructing my answers already so please, stay subscribed.