Ramblings of an Internet Netknucklehead
So I had this idea for a new site after learning about a new WordPress plug-in. I was able to create it and make it live over the weekend. I’m anxious to see if my “strategy” for making money with the site pays off. Surf over to the site and take a guess how it will make money. The winning guess doesn’t actually win anything except maybe a “good job” and a virtual pat on the back.
Contractor Tools Blog (will open in a new window)
-The NetKnucklehead
The Auto Content Cash system will be available on March 9th at 11:00 CST. The guys behind the system are doing the typical pre-launch hypefest. (Click this link if you want to see an example.) Speaking of the guys behind Auto Content Cash, they include: Alex Goad, Brian Johnson, Jared Croslow. I am familiar with Alex Goad only so I can’t really say if these guys are stand-up guys or not.
What I find funny is the number of “reviews” listed in the Google search results for this system. Obviously, the only way anyone can do a review at this point is if they were allowed to use the system before it was launched. Based on some of the sites I saw, I highly doubt that’s the case. In other words, you have all these newbies doing the sheep dance – some guru said to pick a product and create a review website and all the newbie sheep followed directions.
Anyway, back to the Auto Content Cash review….I did download and install the Deep Link Engine WordPress plug-in they provide for free. It seemed to work okay at first but now, I’m getting a weird looking error message popping up everytime I do anything with a post in the WordPress admin screen. I’m able to click through it but I have no idea why it’s happening or how to fix it. I hope it’s not causing any indexing problems.
At this point, I haven’t decided if I’m going to take the Auto Content Cash (ACC) system plunge yet. Some of their site results intrigue me. For example, type ‘used textbooks for sale’ into Google and look for redlinetextbooks.com. That’s one of their sites and it’s currently listed at #5 on my list. So, that looks like a very positive result for one of these ACC sites. BUT, click on the link and look at one of the pages. What do you notice? eBay listings! They’re linking to eBay.
I have a real problem linking to eBay because I CAN’T GET THE EBAY PARTNER NETWORK TO RESPOND TO MY APPLICATION! (Can you tell I’m frustrated with eBay?) Therefore, it appears the only revenue sources for me using Auto Content Cash websites are (1) Adsense, and (2) selling the site.
To be clear though – I have not seen the system yet so maybe there are other revenue streams available. I guess I will find out *IF* I decide to join. By the way, they’re not telling anyone how much it will cost yet so that will be a big factor in deciding to join and determining if it’s worth it.
I’ll let everyone know what I decide to do.
At the end of February, I created a review page on this site for the Eva Dry 500 dehumidifier. My goal was to show you how to take a product keyword and get it highly ranked and hopefully, start making money from it. Let’s review the results (as of March 6, 2010).
I surfed over to Google and entered my product keyword without quotes. Here are the search engine results:
My page is in the #6 position for the Eva Dry 500 Review keyword phrase out of approximately 118,000 results. Keep in mind that you may see different numbers depending on your location and the Google datacenters, and all those other techie things that Google doesn’t want us to know about.
Next, let’s look at the search results using quotes – “Eva Dry 500 Review”.
Wow, I’m surprised that I am the only site matching that exact phrase. If I were looking to buy a dehumidifier and I was interested in the Eva Dry 500, I probably would use that phrase to look for reviews and opinions.
As of this post, the site has not received any traffic for that keyword so there are no monetary results to report. But I will continue to monitor it and will give you another update in a week or two.
In part 1 of the “Search Engine Ranking Case Study”, I looked at how the Netknucklehead.com site got ranked for a rather obscure keyword phrase. In that post, I talked about giving yourself opportunities to make money by ranking for *any* keywords/phrases whether it be intentional or by accident. Now, let’s take a look at my intentional attempt to rank for a particular keyword.
Part 2 of this search engine ranking case study began by identifying a popular product at Amazon. Amazon will tell you what the top selling items are for each of their categories. Simply go to Google and type in “amazon top sellers” and click on the link “Amazon.com Bestsellers”. You will be directed to the Amazon bestseller page with a list of categories displayed down the left-hand side.
My problem is that I tend to gravitate to the sports and electronics categories because I’m interested in them and a million other people are as well. So I made a conscious effort to change it up and choose a different category. In this case, I chose ‘home and garden’ – I think…..not too sure though but it doesn’t matter. Somehow I ended up finding the Eva Dry 500 dehumidifier and decided to use it for this case study.
The first two things I checked after I chose the Eva Dry 500 were the product description and the number of ratings. I needed a product that had a thorough description because I planned on rewriting it to use for my content. I also wanted to use a product with 20 or more user comments because I planned on using 4 or 5 of those on my page. The Eva Dry met both criteria so I continued on.
I decided to create a WordPress page instead of a post because I didn’t want a post about dehumidifiers mixed in with my other ‘how to make money’ posts. I figured the other advantage to using a page is that I could “hide it” meaning that I could keep it from appearing on the site’s navigation menu. Here is what the page looks like:
Eva Dry 500 Page
After I published the page, I “tweeted” about it on my Twitter account to help get it recognized and some search engine robot momentum going. Oh, and I also linked to it using the links section on the Netknucklehead.com site.
The next step is to monitor the robot traffic and the search engine indexing. I typically see new posts indexed within 4-5 hours. I’m curious to see if new *pages* get indexed that quickly.
Once the page has been indexed I will start monitoring actual traffic coming in via the keywords. If this experiment is successful, I should see some earnings from either Amazon (visitors buying the Eva Dry 500) and/or Adsense (visitors clicking on the Adsense ads).
I will keep you updated as this search engine ranking case study progresses.
In this search engine ranking case study, I’m going to show you how this site got ranked for a few obscure keyword phrases and discuss the benefits of those high rankings.
While reviewing my Google Analytics stats for Netknucklehead.com today, I noticed someone had visited my blog using the keyword “why should one become member of website”. I thought that was an unusual keyword phrase and made me wonder what content I had on my site that Google deemed a good match and enticed the visitor to choose it.
I surfed over to Google and entered that keyword phrase. Here are the results:
Netknucklehead Search Engine Ranking Case Study Exhibit 1
Turns out that my post about becoming a member of the Third Tribe Marketing website closely matched the visitor’s keyword phrase. What’s amazing to me is Netknucklehead.com is ranked #1 out of 204,000,000 competing sites for the phrase “why should one become member of website”.
Now that’s flattering and all but the fact is that particular keyword phrase is probably searched for about once a year. So does it really buy me anything that my site is highly ranked for it? In a word – YES!
Let’s take a look at what this particular visitor saw when they clicked on my link in the Google search results.
Netknucklehead Search Engine Ranking Case Study Exhibit 2
As you can see, the visitor saw the Third Tribe Membership post surrounded by three sets of Adsense ads. Let’s say the visitor viewed the page and thought “this isn’t what I was looking for”. What are they going to do next? Chances are they’re going to:
- Click their back button, or
- Click their home button, or
- Click a link on my site.
If the visitor happens to click one of the links the red arrows are pointing at, guess what happens: The Netknucklehead makes a little bit of money from the Adsense ads. (Now we all agree that’s a good thing, right?) 
That outcome obviously would not have occurred if I hadn’t posted about my experience with Third Tribe and Google hadn’t ranked the site for that obscure keyword phrase.
Did I intentionally target the keyword phrase “why should one become member of website” in my post? Absolutely not. It was simply a by-product of making the post.
By the way, in this case the visitor didn’t click one of the Adsense ads so I didn’t make any money from the visit but at least the possibility existed. That is the most important point of this entire post – Give yourself an opportunity to make money.
Here’s another example – “income kickstart anik singal” is the search phrase. My site is the top listing in the SERPs – above the website aniksingalincomekickstart.com. Again, I didn’t intentionally target that keyword phrase. I simply wrote the post.
Netknucklehead Search Engine Ranking Case Study Exhibit 3
Based on these findings, I think I will do an experiment with targeting a unique product name. If my theory is accurate, I should be able to get the post included in search results within a few hours and seeing traffic within a week. I will try to write the posting within the next few days so stay tuned.
Third Tribe Marketing (‘Inside the Third Tribe’) is the latest membership site offering on the Internet blogging/marketing landscape. ‘Third Tribe’ is the brainchild of Darren Rowse, Brian Clark, Chris Brogran, and Sonia Simone. But will joining this membership site help you become a better, more successful blogger?
Background
The ‘Third Tribe’ creators use that term to describe the type of marketing they do. According to their definition, ‘Tribe One’ consists of Internet Marketers who “…use aggressive hype and obnoxious tactics to fool people into believing there really is a “get rich quick” magic bullet“. ‘Tribe 2′ is made up of the cool social media crowd that “…reject hype and aggressive sales tactics in favor of relationships, community, and value . . . and yet seem to have taken a vow of poverty along the way“.
The ‘Third Tribe’ marketing approach attempts to find the middle ground in which the marketer attempts to establish relationships with site visitors and give them lots of great free content. In turn, the visitors will trust the marketer and buy products from them directly or buy other people’s products based on the marketer’s recommendation.
My Thoughts
When I look at myself, I tend to be more of a ‘relationship person’ when it comes to the Internet game. I’m definitely not a good sales guy, and I don’t write good salespages, and I don’t have a mailing list so I don’t believe the ‘Tribe One’ guys and gals would allow me entry into their club. Furthermore, I’ve only recently started using some of the social media services (I don’t even have a Facebook account) so I don’t think I qualify for membership in ‘Tribe Two’ either.
That is why I became very interested in the message behind the ‘Third Tribe’. So interested in fact that I joined the ‘Inside the Third Tribe’ membership site. At the time, the fee was $27 per month but it has now risen to $47 per month.
Anytime I join a membership site, I expect to have immediate access to existing material (ebooks, videos, audios, software, etc.). After all, I’ve given you my money – now what are you going to give me in return? But it seems like more and more membership sites are starting to operate on the principle of :
“Join now for a low fee. I don’t really have any content to give you but once I have a lot more money from the membership fees, then I can hire some freelancers to produce content for all of you that joined.”
In other words, the site members are funding the launch of the site itself.
Unfortunately, I got the same impression with the ‘Inside the Third Tribe’ membership site. There was a little content from one “seminar”. Personally, I wouldn’t call it a “seminar” because it consisted of an audio interview with their friend and fellow blogger, Johnny Truant. They also included a PDF version of the interview transcript, a short, not very useful action steps document, and some links to free DIY blogging content located on Truant’s blog. Needless to say, I was not very impressed with the “seminar content”.
It seems the lifeblood of membership sites today is an active forum. A membership site can be profitable for years if you can get a passionate group of people together in a forum who think they are SO lucky to be part of the crowd. It appears ‘Inside the Third Tribe’ is no different. The few times I visited the forum I read post after post from people exclaiming how great it was to be part of this very special community led by these very wonderful all-star Bloggers.
Bottom line: I decided the ‘Inside the Third Tribe’ membership was not right for me. I think the creators have come up with a clever message and a clever way to deliver their message but in the end, it’s all about making money – FOR THEM. In my opinion, this membership site is not going to help you become an all-star, rich and famous Blogger like Darren and gang. It might help you learn how to establish relationships with your blog visitors but you probably don’t need to pay $47 per month to learn it.
And finally, I came across the following post today. He doesn’t hold anything back in his opinions of the ‘Third Tribe’!
Rich Garbage Man Review
I recently received emails about the launch of THE RICH GARBAGE MAN by Scott Laevy. And I have to admit the concept of a garbage man turning his life around by making gobs of money via the internet is clever. It’s bound to raise the curiosity factor, at least it did for me.
I searched around the Internet looking for honest reviews of The Rich Garbage Man. Surprisingly, I didn’t really find any that I thought were legitimate, as in not just trying to make a fast commission.
So what do I do? I buy the product and do my own Rich Garbage Man review of course. After all, I LOVE spending money on new courses and software. It’s an addiction, I believe.
It wasn’t too surprising that I was able to buy the Rich Garbage Man ‘manuscript’ for less than half price ($27). That seems to be all the marketing rage these days. How? Just go to the main salesletter page, then try to navigate away from the page. A lot of the sites will then display a popup telling you that you qualify for special pricing.
The other big marketing trick these days is to sell you a course at a very discounted price and then display page after page of “special” one time offers on your way to actually receiving the download links to receive your purchase. The Rich Garbage Man certainly did this in a big way which is very annoying.
Finally, I arrived at the course links page. Or did I? I wasn’t sure because the page started out with an offer of a free website. That was followed by some special bonuses (mostly rehashed crap). I actually left the page and checked my email hoping to find links to the dang course. I eventually made my way back to the links page and found them. It was far, far from obvious.
I then began going through the Rich Garbage Man “manuscript” and I use the word “manuscript” VERY loosely. The first section of the prized “manuscript” was a whopping 6 pages. (The 6th page was actually blank.) But let me tell you what my reactions were upon reading the first section: Disgust, Anger, Annoyance to name just a few.
I could not believe what I was seeing. It starts out talking about how great Google Trends is. (Wow, that’s something new….NOT!!!) But get this: page 5 starts out with this text – “Once you get these steps and this system down,We encourage you to work with a few of our partners in the business”. That’s followed by 5 links to other products in which The Rich Garbage Man, Scott Laevy, earns a commission if you buy them.
I find it simply amazing that someone would have the nerve and audacity to create a course, sell it for $47, and basically tell people to “get these steps down and work with partners of mine so I can earn more money”. It’s disgusting.
Folks, stay away from The Rich Garbage Man by Scott Laevy. If you really want to make money using Google Trends, go to the Google search engine and type in “how to make money with google trends”. You will find everything you need to know for free.
So will The Rich Garbage Man help YOU escape the cubicle walls? Sorry to say “no, it will not”.
Until next time…good-bye and good luck.
- The NetKnuckleHead
Disclaimer: This post contains my personal opinions and does not reflect the opinion of any organization I am/was associated with or affiliated to.
Hello NetKnuckleHeaders!
Today, I am going to show you my latest money-making experiment. This experiment involves flipping domains. Yes, you heard right – flipping domains.
You’re probably thinking, “Has he lost his mind? Domain flipping is SOOOO 90s-ish”. And yeah the days of buying a catchy domain name and reselling it to some company for an outlandish profit are indeed gone. But this one is a little different.
This method is based on Gene Pimentel’s “Domain Flipping Success” report but I varied just a little from it. Here is what I did:
Step 1.
Think of a service-type of business. For example, dentist, florist, doctor, etc. For my experiment, I chose “divorce lawyer”. I thought it might be better to zero in on a particular type of attorney instead of the broader “lawyer” or “attorney” category.
Step 2.
Choose a city you want to target. I chose “Minneapolis” for my experiment since I am familiar with that particular area.
Step 3.
Use Google Suggest to find out how many searches are being perfomed on your phrase. For example, I was thinking about targeting the phrase “divorce lawyer minneapolis”. I started typing that into Google and got the following results:
Step 4.
Okay, this is looking really good so far – 972,000 results. Next, I wanted to find a domain name that matched my keywords EXACTLY. Matching the domain name to the exact keywords is critical. I then went over to the Name.com website to see if the domain DIVORCELAWYERMINNEAPOLIS was available. (Important Note – DO NOT use Godaddy to check the availability of your domain names unless you plan on registering them immediately. It has been reported that Godaddy will take any domain names that are searched for but not registered.)
In the screenshot below, you can see the .COM and the .NET domain names are taken.
At this point, I had to go back to step 3 and modify my search phrase since the DIVORCELAWYERMINNEAPOLIS domain name was not available. I decided to try “Best Divorce Lawyer in Minnesota”. Google Suggest showed that phrase searched for 331,000 per month.
That’s a decent amount of traffic so I went back to NAME.COM and searched for “BestDivorceLaywerInMinnesota.com”. That domain name was available along with the same name without the word “In” (BestDivorceLawyerMinnesota.com).
I then went over to Godaddy and registered both domains.
Step 5.
After registering the domains, I created the two new accounts on my Hostgator reseller account. Then, I used Cpanel and Fantastico to install a WordPress blog on each domain. Make sure to name your blog the same name as your keyword phrase. For example: “Best Divorce Lawyer in Minnesota”. Use the same phrase in the blog tagline. You DO NOT need to change the blog’s theme. You certainly can if you want but you don’t need to. Remember – you are selling a domain name, not a website.
Step 6.
I made one post to my blog. I made sure the subject of the post was the same name as my keyword phrase. The content for my post came from the paid search results located on the top and right-hand side of the Google search results. The content consisted of the people I will be contacting later on. (See example below)
Step 7.
I updated my blog’s theme to include a ‘for sale’ message with contact information. See the screenshot above.
Step 8.
Here is the really amazing part – within a few days, my site was ranked # 1 for my keyword phrase in Google. I couldn’t believe it at first but trust me, it does work. However, even if you don’t get the # 1 ranking, you should still end up on the first page.
Step 9.
After my site was ranked by Google, I was now ready to start sending emails to prospective buyers. Remember the list of sites I included on my blog post? I visited all those sites and collected email addresses from their ‘Contact Us’ pages.
Step 10.
After gathering all the email addresses of my contacts, I created an email template to use. When and if it made sense to do so, I personalized / customized it to fit the person or company. I then distributed my emails to them. Be sure to include your contact information at the end of the email. Include your email address and phone number.
Although I have not received any offers as of this writing (3/27), I feel fairly confident this method could generate some money. I paid roughly $15.00 for the two domains so I’d consider any offers above that. However, I am hoping for an offer in the $250-$500 range. The total effort of this experiment was maybe 2-3 hours so this isn’t very time-consuming.
Let me know if you have any questions. I can be reached at:
Support [AT] NetKnuckleHead.com
Thanks and good luck!
The NetKnuckleHead
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