A good friend of mine, the one who's pumped me a lot of *foreclosure* fodder over the years from Florida, recently asked me to incorporate a link to his site - Naples Real Estate - on this here highly-PageRanked blog. So I did, way down on my sidebar, and then again just now. He's a good friend, this costs me nothing,....plus I do owe him still for all the money I took from him (actually from his firm) in the trading pit over the years. In fact I vividly remember once selling him a 50 lot of calls (at 4 3/4?) early one volatile morning, taping the ticket on my post, boasting about how much money I was going to make, and then ultimately buying them back FROM HIM 1 1/8 cheaper that same day (for a $5,625 profit or so). Now if only I can figure out where the heck all my bull market profits from yesteryear are!
*Backlinks* are links to your site....from other sites. They are, or theoretically should be, pure gold for SEO - Search Engine Optimization - i.e. web traffic. The more backlinks you have, from high ranked sites, the more *authority* Google confers upon your site. All this I've mentioned before and this was the thrust behind my buddy's request.
Last week, our friend and moral compass(!) Anne Galivan wrote a *guest post* - The Homeschool Advantage - on the NY Times website. Now THAT is huge for her in terms of backlinking. Google her and you'll see that the article already appears on the first page of search results for her - only 2-3 days after publication! Now that she's BIG TIME I guess she won't need any more link love from me! Actually, when I think about it....since I already have a few links on her site to mine, any elevation in her authority should, again theoretically, help me. So thanks Anne....and get to work!
So it IS on my agenda - procuring backlinks for myself. I've actually brainstormed and even rough-drafted a few *killer* guest posts that I will eventually shop around to some very popular blogs. But for the moment, I'm saving them until I get my new edu-site up and running. Starting from scratch, it'll certainly need a boost from CaptiousNut early on.
Oh yeah, what exactly is the new site going to be?
Well, as I've said before, it's going to focused on *education*.
And what's going to be there?
Well, in a word....*resources* - some for free and some for a fee. I think. It may even take on *membership site* form.
My site will also be a commercial endeavor so I'm compelled to think along these vulgar profit lines. Sorry but one *personal* non-profit blog is plenty.
The hard part, like in any business, is to figure out what people will pay you for. Without offering *value*, there can be neither frequent nor significant economic transactions.
What I've learned in 2010, over the course of my Better Blogging Chronicles, is that there essentially exists a formula for *making money online* these days:
1. Start a website.
2. Give away a free ebook in exchange for someone's email.
3. Amass a few thousand (or more!) email addresses.
4. Keep the website/blog fresh.
5. And then periodically spam your *readers* with high-kickback affiliate products.
Here's a good example - Making Math Fun.
That author has essentially co-opted "math fun" in the Google search rankings (and I just gave them another link!). So anyone who Googles *math fun* has a good chance of ending up on that infomercial-esque *landing page*(?). There they can buy the product, easily, for $28.
But get this...
If I became an *affiliate* and put a link to that product on my site or spammed my subscribers with an ad to buy it....for everyone who purchases the author or whoever owns that thing will kick back, I think, $13 freakin' dollars (nearly 50% of the price) to me, the salesman. Pretty nice, eh?
You see, the product is an *eProduct*. Buyer's don't actually receive bound math books, they get ebooks, *files* on their PC. So it's an extremely high margin product to sell - really ALL PROFIT.
That author would probably sell the ebooks for $10-$13 directly but instead they opt for the *distributed* model which is nothing more than trading off a higher price with generous kickbacks in exchange for mobilizing a veritable army of mercenary salesmen, worldwide.
AND with all these interested peddlers out there itching for $13
Those hucksters are spamming affiliate links not only to their email lists but more importantly they are posting affiliate backlinks on their websites for *Making Math Fun*. Now THAT represents an ocean of link juice and most definitely propels the product right to the top of the Google search results. So you can see the thing feeds on itself, and grows to the point where it becomes very hard for another website/product to supplant them in the search engines - for those particular keywords anyway.
While I believe a whole lot of the *make money online* world to be rank husksterism and pure skimming....I'm not one to argue with economic realities. The formula has proven to work, time and again and demands consideration.
However I do think it can be done with a tad more moral sophistication.
See also my index of - Better Blogging Chronicles.
1 comment:
Thanks for the bio :) and the props. It seems your site is great for backlinks too since your mention here is already ABOVE the link to the NYT op-ed on my Google page.
You will do well. Just remember those humble souls who helped you up the ladder to success...or at least let you guest post...when you hit the big time.
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