Pedro B

I’ve been staying up on the Keyword Academy for the last few months and these guys are pros.  I very much enjoy thier posts and their “call to action” style of writing.  A lot of the MMO blogs I read are geared towards getting you to sign up to something through an affiliate link of theirs for something or other.  I absolutely LOVE how Mark and Court work towards getting their readers to do something.  They don’t just tell you to go do something, they tell you how to go do something.

Go to The Keyword Academy and sign up for their Keyword Crash Course.  There is nothing they will email you that will not help you in your online marketing endeavors.

As for me I’ve taken many of their techniques and used them to find keywords that have heavy search volume but not much competition.  I’ve used these keywords to drive more focused traffic to my websites through organic search results and it has been easy.  Using the methods Court and Mark describe I have more than enough keywords to chase after.  I actually have a list of keywords that have heavy search volume and little competition that are just waiting for me to have the time to focus on them.

If you are looking for ways to increase your presence in organic search results, sign up for The Keyword Academy.  No affiliate links here, go do it for your benefit and make some money.  It’s there for the taking!

Mark from The Niche Store Builder is holding a contest to give away a nicely built niche store built on the Build a Niche Store system and I want it!  Mark planned this niche site out using the Number 1 Way to Make Money Online guide that the creators of the BANS system wrote.  I bought the guide when it came out and have been busy using some of their techniques on all of my sites, new and old.

Anyone can enter to win and it really is a breeze to do.  Check out the Niche Store Site Contest and sign up for the contest!

I haven’t posted here for awhile but I have stayed busy.  Lot’s of stuff going on with the EPN network and BANS and I plan on posting some of my experiences here soon.

Anyways I have been enjoying Mark and Court’s Keyword Academy, which I will also post about soon.  I’ve been using their techniques for the last few months and have been very successful with what they teach.  Today I found a long-tail keyword that averages 10,000 searches a month (exact phrase) but has close to zero competition!  I plan on sharing some of the stuff I have learned along with screenshots of increased traffic for my sites thanks to the techniques Mark and Court teach.

See you soon!

I’m in the process of transfering ALL of my websites to a new hosting service and it is incredibly lame.  Hostgator wouldn’t do it for me since I’m transfering from one Hostgator account to another Hostgator account.  Ugh!!  So I’m taking a break right now.  Maybe I’ll take an extended break.

I very seriously hope I never have to do anything this excruciating again.  I had dedicated hosting that I was splitting the cost with someone else but the dude is getting out of his sites.  Which left a pretty hefty cost for yours truly to pony up and I just can’t justify the cost.  So I’m downgrading my hosting service and am now moving like fifty freakin’ websites over to this new hosting plan and it is LAME.

Most of my sites are Build a Niche Store sites, so I’m only transferring the database and theme of each of those.  But quite a few of them are WordPress sites also, and a few of those have a BANS store in a directory.  Messy stuff.  I’m seriously considering getting a server at home and putting it in the basement or something.  My bro is a geek so he could set that stuff up for me real nice and neat, then my only concern would be the cost of a business internet service.  I would want like five IP addresses and they would have to be static IP addresses.  Comcast would want a pretty penny for that but at least everything would be in-house.  That would be awesome-ness.  Check out the cheap CHEAP pc components Tiger direct is offering for some of the latest PC hardware coming out.  No I’m not getting an affiliate commission for that link, it’s just really cheap!

I’m trying to look on the bright side of things with this transfer.  Mark over at The Niche Store Builder recently wrote a few articles about Spring Cleaning for websites.  He talked about WordPress installs, Domain names, and webhosting accounts.  With the transfers I’m making I have to do all those things!  While it is lame it does let me make sure everything I have is everything I need.  The rest can be garbage.

I have transferred all of my files from my LEGO domain name to a new domain that I just registered that now includes the word “Bricks” instead of “LEGO” so as not to violate LEGO’s trademark rights.  I had a bit of help from Dave over at the Build a Niche Store Blog with this.  He recommended using the 301 redirects sitewide and letting LEGO wait a bit before I transfer the domain name so as to get the new domain indexed quickly.

I don’t think I have ever worked as quickly or efficiently as I did with this transfer.  I felt very motivated and even a little excited with the change.  I hope to use this momentum for future tasks, as in tonight, tomorrow and from now on.

Thanks again Dave!

I have been using the BANS (Build a Niche Store) system for about three months now and, as I’ve said before, it’s an exciting affiliate marketing tool.

One of my BANS sites is a niche that involves Lego sets and has the word ‘’LEGO” in the domain name.  I have been purchasing domain names for two years now and own a few that include registered trademarks in the name.  An example would be NFLAnalyst.com.  Obviously, NFL is a trademark of the National Football League and, if the NFL cared to, they could take it from me.  I have to admit that I have known for quite awhile now that the owner of a registered trademark can claim trademark infringement.  There are tons of webmasters that use trademarked names as a part of a domain name.  But I honestly never thought companies cared that much.  I feel pretty dumb now.

This morning I received an email from a representative of “The LEGO Group” advising me that I have to release one of my domain names to them or face legal action.  This representative tells me the following:

The effect of your use of the LEGO mark as part of your domain name, create the false and misleading impression that you are authorized, licensed or approved to provide information about, or goods or services with respect to, the LEGO Group’s products or the LEGO Group itself.

At first when I read the email i was pretty pissed.  The domain name mentioned in the email is one of the first I used to setup a BANS system.  I have put in a lot of effort with it as it involves a niche that I am pretty interested in.  In the last month or so i have been reading a blog about the Build a Niche Store system by a guy named Dave.  Dave has a lot of good advice for new BANS users and posts daily tips for his readers.  Using his advice, I have included lots of pages of unique content, incorporated a WordPress blog into the site and did what I could to get backlinks for my site.  Since I set the site up in November as a freshly registered domain name it has received a PageRank 3!  This is an accomplishment for me as it is not easy to be ranked that quickly for me normally.

So naturally for LEGO to just send me a letter telling me it will no longer be mine, I was mad.  Unlike a few other sites I have had to transfer, I will not be able to use 301 redirects and enjoy the PageRank juice from the old domain.  LEGO will take the domain name and let it resolve to nothing probably.  But I understand right now that this is my fault.  I should not have registered a domain name with a registered trademark.  Developing the domain into a website was an even bigger mistake as that makes the domain more valuable.  I will certainly not do this again.

I’m trying to look on the bright side of things with this.  For one, I incorporated a blog in a sub domain for this BANS install.  I always wanted to make the domain name resolve to a WordPress blog and use the BANS system in a sub directory, as Dave recommends.  I’ve been meaning to do that but I hate changing URL’s and setting up redirects.  Also I have decided to make the site even better with more unique content and landing pages.  So now I can do all these things with a brand new domain name that does not include any registered trademarks.

Moral of the story would be to avoid developing a website that includes a registered trademark, unless you own that trademark of course.

Happy New Year

I was only mildly hung over this morning.  Woke up at a friends house after staying up all night playing Con Quien, drinking Corona’s and eating ceviche.  All around a good time but next time I’m going to sleep before 5am.  I planned on getting a bunch of stuff done today, including setting up a BANS site that I’ve had an idea for, but I ended up doing squat.  I did help my youngest sister setup her own blog so the morning wasn’t a complete waste.

The year 2009 is here and it’s time to get things in gear again, so I’m going to make a list of things-to-do this year that I can reference and look back on at the end of the year.  This is going to be a rather broad list, easily attainable and should go towards producing long term residual income.

1. Master WordPress – Over the last year I’ve come to rely more on WordPress.  I’ve played around with other content management systems but I keep going back to it as it is best suited for what I’m trying to do and it’s just to easy and powerful to ignore.
2. Spend more time with Social Networking – I really need to get that aspect more involved in what I do.  Social Networking has exploded in the last two years and just dabbling in sites like Reddit and Stumbleupon make me think that Social Networking is going to be at least as important as SEO in the next year.  These sites bring traffic.  Period.
3. Block out distractions – I’ve learned I can’t watch Monday night Football and grow my income at the same time.  And, the same task takes about four times as long to boot.  I can do what I need to get done quickly, then watch Football, listen to music, eat or whatever it is that is causing me to take a long time.
4. Focus more on Content – This one is easy.  Just create content and the rest should fall into place.  Google keeps teaching me that thin affiliate sites with zero unique content will not be rewarded in the long run.  Time to roll out Plan B.
5. Break Down Tasks – I will make my tasks shorter and easier to accomplish this year.  Sometimes I can be a bit to ambitious with what I want to do.  Then when I figure out how long something will take, I tend to move on.  I think this blog is a good example of breaking down tasks.  One article a day, properly SEO’d, content driven without a ton of emphasis on immediate monetization and in a year I should have close to 400 quality articles.  Maybe Google will love me then?

That’s a broad plan for starters.  I think the key one is breaking this all down in to short tasks.  Make it easy.  Keep it simple.

Expired Domain Names

I have been collecting domain names for about a year and a half now.  It’s still just a hobby for me as I don’t generally spend a lot of money on any particular domain names but I do enjoy it and I love when I pickup a good expired domain name.

There are a ton of different systems available for picking up expiring domain names.

Pool.com

One place I’ve used to pickup expired domains is Pool.com.  Pool is, by far, the most reliable system I have used to pickup an expiring domain.  Pool uses a system that is much more likely to acquire a domain of your choosing but it’s also one of the more expensive systems available.  Pool charges a minimum of $60 if it captures your domain.  The money is taken from your credit card once Pool has verified that it caught the domain for you but there is a catch.

Unlike other systems that pickup expiring domains, Pool allows multiple users to backorder the same domain name.  This means that just because Pool acquires a domain you backordered, that doesn’t necessarily mean you will own it.  If a domain that Pool acquires has been backordered by more than one of its users it automatically goes into auction.  These Pool auctions can get out of hand sometimes because if you don’t know how many other Pool users have backordered your domain name and, obviously, you don’t know what the current max bid is of other users.  An auction goes on for three days once a domain is secured by Pool.  Pool will email you every time you are outbid and to prevent a user outbidding in the final seconds, Pool will not allow an auction to end if there is a bid in the last five minutes.  The auction just keeps goind until there has not been a bid in the last five minutes.

Snapnames

Snapnames is similar to Pool in that it costs $60 to aqcuire an expired domain name through their system.  The difference is the auction process.  It is much easier to know what your competing against and guess what the ultimate auction price will be.  Snapnames is owned by Oversee.net.  Snapnames has had a deal with Network Solutions for years now and has some sort of affiliation with Moniker.

Snapnames is not as reliable as Pool is but if a domain you are looking to backorder is registered with Network Solutions then there is a good shot that Snapnames will have first crack at backordering it.

Enom

I have never used Enom to be honest so I can’t give a good account of their service, reliability or success rate.  I am very annoyed by Enom and only have a few domains registered with them.  Enom just seems so backward.

GoDaddy

GoDaddy uses a pretty basic backorder system that only allows one user at a time to backorder a domain name.  They are the cheapest system to use but the least successful.  Godaddy charges $18.95 per backorder and that must be paid upfront, however, if the GoDaddy system is unable to capture the domain name, you receive a credit towards a future backorder.

One service I will be discussing in further detail in an upcoming post is Recommission.  I peruse Recommission’s daily list of expiring dictionary domain names often and will show you how to get the most out of it.

Wordpress Content Management System

WordPress is a complete content management system (CMS) that is used by millions worldwide mostly as a blogging platform.  It is open source software released under the GPL (General Public License.) WordPress is free and the latest version can be downloaded for free at any time.  WordPress was created in 2003 as a fork of B2/Cafelog, also sometimes known as just Cafelog.

WordPress Features

WordPress feaures a very clean, easy to use WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, the ability to tag posts, nested category structures, the ability to create clean, search engine friendly permalinks and one of the most extensive group of users and developers for any open source CMS.  These users have helped create a huge library of downloadable, easily installed plugins and themes that can help personalize a WordPress installation.

Along with its massive base of users, WordPress developers keep up a constant stream of updates that take care of vulnerabilities and exploits that are found in WordPress installations.

WordPress is used by anyone who wants to write about anything.  Some use it to build a website as WordPress is not just a blogging platform but a complete content management system.  It is also heavily and successfully used by affiliate marketers.  Affiliate marketing using WordPress is a great way to attract and keep visitors and stay on the good side of popular search engines.

Content is, and always will be, King on the world wide web.  WordPress makes creating content easy and enjoyable.