I received this “Ask The Plumber” question from Adrien the other day:

Hi Electron Plumber,

Your site is really full of REAL and HONEST advice. I simply love your site! Thanks for creating so much original, unique and wonderful content, especially the great link building service!

I have 2 questions:

1. I have tried Market Samurai’s Rank Tracker. I have tried the firefox rank tracker plugin by SEOBook.com. I have tried Scroogle.org. Unfortunately, they never show the exact same result! So do you have any recommendation for rank tracker tools? Both free and paid ones are okay.

2. After the Great Link Building Experiment, I have 1 single question on my mind: why don’t we just build links with BMR? Ranking on the first page in 5 weeks is certainly a good result! Will you recommend it? If not, what other things should be done apart from just submitting posts to BMR?

Thanks. I am so glad I have found your blog. Hope there are more high quality blogs like yours on the Internet

Adrien, great questions.

For the first one, I generally use the Firebox rank tracker plug by SEOBook myself.  There are a bunch of rank trackers out there and you have to take all the results with a grain of salt.  You will generally see different results based the following variables:

1. Who you are logged in as
2. Your physical location
3. Which Google server you happen to connect to
4. The rank tracker you are using
5. If the result returned “special” results like videos or shopping items.

Really the only way to minimize it is to use a single tracker as an anonymous user from the same location each time and double check a few ranks manually.  Honestly, at the end of the day tracking your rank in Google is NOT the best metric to focus on.  Focus first on how much traffic you are getting and how much money you are making!  I have one site that floats around #6 to #7 in Google for the keyword I’m focusing on but is #1 or #2 ranked for many other keywords around that main keyword and gets a bunch of good converting traffic.

For the second question, BMR worked really really well really really fast for the site I built.  Better than I ever expected.  But now almost a year later, it’s no longer ranking first and has been passed by the UniqueArticleWizard site.  So far in January the UAW site is beating the BMR site 2 to 1 in profits.  And I haven’t done any more link building since last October and no cross linking the sites at all.

So it seems while BMR has the initial kick, UAW appears to have all the staying power and is FAR less work since you can use spun content.

As you’ve probably read elsewhere, the key is to diversify as much as possible.  Use more than one link building service, keep building links manually, submit to social media sites, etc.  Hit it from all sides and vary your keyword text for the best results.

Ask The Plumber – January 2012 is a post from: ElectronPlumber

I get a lot of comments here at the Electron Plumber, and every once in a while I get one that is worth writing a full article follow up on.  Today someone named Entrepreneur 1224 asked:

Why would u still have a job if u are making numbers like this? I’m sorry but that’s very hard to believe, if you’re actually that good at making so much money you would be smart enough to invest all your time and effort to make even more, please explain.

Luckily for me, your belief is not required for Amazon and Google and a bunch of other direct affiliate programs to deposit money directly into my bank accounts each month.  My big guns deposits in November:

The top two are Paypal, the bottom two are direct into my checking account.  There are more smaller deposits as well, but so far it’s been around $2600 for November.  Expenses are around $250 for link building services, hosting and domain costs.

So why aren’t I living the good life and sleeping in every day on that $2400 you might ask?  Or quit my job and put in 100 hours a week towards doubling or tripling that?  It’s fairly often that I wake up and ask myself the same thing you just asked.  But I already know the answers.

Let me explain my situation to you and maybe my readers can offer some advice for me here.

Reason #1: Quality vs Quantity

First off, I adamantly refuse to make money by ever screwing anyone over ever.  Ever ever ever ever.  Many affiliate marketers make their money by promoting whatever pays the most commissions.  Scammy get rich schemes, fake weight loss free trials, ringtone offers with monthly hidden rebills, penny auction scams, you name it.  They are making money by screwing over Joe Consumer, and I will not ever do that.  Never ever.

I also will only promote products I believe have some decent value.  That’s why I mostly stick with Amazon.

I also hate list building and using psychological techniques to convince people to buy something.  The product has to be worth owning and worth buying without me needing to trick you and beat you about the head and neck with spam to buy it.   This is where I probably lose the most money.

I don’t want clients or to train people right now, the time demand is too great.

So what do I do?  I create web properties and write my own unique copy for everything that a person might see and click on to get to an offer or product I think they should buy.  Some people make money by throwing up 500 thin affiliate sites and making $.25 a day off each one, but spam like that never works long term.  I want to only spend my time on project that can build and grow long term value.

Take my Great Link Building experiment from this past year as a perfect example.  That helped monetize ElectronPlumber.com in a way that I never had before.   Real content with real results showing real value.  No BS fake reviews, no hard sell, just the facts.  These services are worth paying for based on this exact measured performance.

So that’s reason #1:  It takes time and effort to do Quality work.  But it’s also why my profits are consistently growing year over year and I’m less susceptible to offers disappearing and Google changing their algorithm.

Reason #2: It’s All Relative

While I am not the 1%, I am the 10% and things are pretty darn good.  Nice big house near the coast (with a sizable mortgage), beautiful wife, kids in private school, etc.

I have an Engineering degree and 15+ years experience in high tech.  I earn a very nice six figure salary running a department at a rapidly growing high tech company, big pile of stock options that aren’t done vesting yet, company health/dental/vision plans, 401k, the whole kit.  The work is fulfilling, promotion opportunities abound, occasional travel to exciting yet safe destinations, and for the most part my work is self directed.

So I think of Internet marketing as a hobby that happens to also make money  like some people make money playing online poker or selling gold they earned in an online game.  However, my employer might not see it like that, which is one of the reasons I don’t reveal my name or plaster my face all over this site like you see other successful internet marketers doing.

So from where you sit in your apartment, a few thousand dollars a month might seem like just the thing to get you out of a crappy job and kick start an internet marketing career.  But for me, that’s barely half my mortgage.  Or half a month of the kids private school for that matter.  And I actually have a damn good job.

That’s reason #2.  To replace my job and percs and keep my comfortable lifestyle for me and my family I need to be consistently earning 6-8 times what I am today in IM.

And because of my issues with quality and not scamming people and my desire to put my effort into projects that build long term value, that takes time to build.

If I quit my job today and worked my ass off building many more sites and quality content, I wouldn’t start seeing results for around 6 months at least.  And one more big algorithm change with Google could push that out to 12 months or more.

Reason #3: Consistency & Safety

As an internet marketer, you are always at the whim of the search engines or affiliate networks.  Just when you think you have a offer dialed in and a product converting well, the offer is canceled.

Just when you get an original article to the top of Google for your chosen keyword and start making good money off it, Google changes their algorithm and it drops to page 2.

Products on Amazon that are converting run out of stock or go up in price or come out with a new model or name and your SEO becomes useless.

Google rejects your PPC ad because the page you’ve been working hard on looks too much like a bridge page (by the way Dan if you’re reading, I’m still working on it…)

But you need to be diverse enough to not feel the pinch when any one of those things happen, and you need to keep inventing ways to stay ahead.

You could say something similar about having a regular job, that they aren’t consistent, companies go out of business, you could get laid off at any minute, etc.  But you don’t know just how good I am.  I’ve been in the hardware and software industry for 15+ years and have worked for four successful companies during that time.  I’ve never been unemployed, never been laid off, I only switch jobs when I know for sure that a new company is up to my standards and offers more growth than the last one.

So that is reason #3.  Until any internet marketing business matches the stability of my current job and start to provide the same amount of satisfaction, I’m not jumping ship.

So what?

For me, slow and steady wins the race.  I’ve only been at this for a little over 3 years putting in 5-20 hours a week part time, and I’m doing way better than most people who attempt to do this full time.

The only way to overcome #2 and #3 is by continuing with Rule #1:  quality content is the way to go.  Even if search algorithms change or one social media network rises above another, good quality unique content will always be valuable.  You might have to work at getting people to click “Like” or “Share” or “+1″ or whatever, but quality will always survive and have value.

Stay tuned!  I just signed up for an SEO hosting account with 60 unique Class C IP addresses to start my own private link network to start helping my sites even more.

Why Do I Still Have A Job? is a post from: ElectronPlumber

A comment came in the other day on my article on Why Your Amazon Affiliate Site is Failing Miserably regarding the value of a certain Amazon affiliate website called Thisiswhyimbroke.com.   I’m a big fan of the site for the most part (wish I’d thought of it first!), having come across an ad for it on reddit.com a few weeks before Adam from the site commented on here.

The comment from Margus was:

Hmmm not sure why you say thisiswhyIambroke does it right. Unless you have some great knowledge about the commission and sales they do, it seems the site is way too thin on content to pull in any real long tail traffic from google. The descriptions of each products are like 100 words long, it has like 100 affiliate links right on front page, makes me question really.

From my personal experience a site is able to pull in good traffic from google only if it has a clearly defined niche (like lets say black boots) and then it has separate pages on every possible types, shades, sizes makes etc. on the black boots. This site seems to be way all over the place for Google to actually understand what the site is about (other than it is obviously affiliate site with little content and lots of outgoing links).
So in order for it to get traffic to its site, it would need to build a lot of back links to each product page, and even then it is a bit questionable…

Only thing that is intriguing for me about it has things on there that are quite expensive ($17 000 dollar table??? WOW) So I guess if you manage to make a commission on that just once, you would be happy….

Margus, I have some experience with general Affiliate sites.  One  of my biggest sites is very general.  From your example above, my site would be about all kinds of footwear rather than just a specific niche like black boots.  You can do quite well by being general then drilling down for specific categories and products.  It’s like casting a wide net and seeing what you catch vs trying to harpoon a whale on your first fishing trip.

My number one rule with a broad affiliate site, use rapid fire and see what you hit.   Make a site and keep posting on topics in a broad niche.  Check your traffic reports and see if you naturally hit any keywords, then backlink for those.

So, let’s take a look at Thisiswhyimbroke.com and break them down a little.  Adam, I’m going to be a little critical here, but you’ve done EXTREMELY well getting that site to a point where it could reach critical mass just in time for the 2011 holiday season.

First off, here is an example of a page from Thisiswhyimbroke.com about an airsoft minigun.

Why’d I pick that page?  Because you are already naturally ranking #14 in Google for that search term which gets around 1600 searches a month, and I think a couple links like that one will help you get on page 1 for that term.  With no outside backlinks to speak of that page is already ranking in the top 20.  A little link love should drive it onto Page 1.

Thisiswhyimbroke Traffic Report

As of right now, Thisiswhyimbroke.com has an 3-month Alexa rank of 40,000 and a 1-month rank of 25,000.  That means they are trending upward, which is great.  Compete.com puts their monthly traffic at 50,000 visitors also trending upward.

(Note – heard from Adam after publishing this that the 50,000 visitor estimate on Compete.com is “very, very, far low” and frankly I believe him.  You don’t get 30,000 likes on Facebook without at least 50-100 times that in visitors – El Plumber)

From my experience a targeted product site can turn 1 visitor into $0.10-$0.25 in affiliate commissions during a normal month and $0.25 to $1.00 during the holiday blitz.   This is assuming people already have a buying intention when they visit your site.  For example, someone searching in Google for “blue widgets coupon” or “best blue widgets” has a buying intention.   I can imagine that tiwib.com is pulling WELL below that since most of their traffic is “cool site” traffic from places like Reddit and Facebook and not people with a buying intention.  Cool site traffic typically converts fairly poorly and needs a ton of traffic to make up for it.

Add ~30,000+ Facebook “likes” and there are potentially thousands of clicks every time they post a new product to their Facebook page.  Again, non-targeted traffic is really tough to gauge and convert.

Are they hitting $.04 a visitor and making more than $2000 a month yet?  Hard to guess with non-targeted non-buying traffic.  Only Adam can say for sure.

The great thing about Amazon affiliate traffic is that during the peak online holiday season (Black Friday through December 15th) conversions jump about 5X their usual rates.

So what would I do with Thisiswhyimbroke.com if it were my site?

Taking It to the Next Level with SEO

It would take way too long to get into all the minor SEO  issues your site has right now.  But I’m going to touch the top three as I see them:

1. Too many links on your home page.  You have some amazing viral link love going on with your site, but you have so many links on your home page you are diluting pretty badly.  Thin the herd!  Sort through your traffic stats and see which products get the most click throughs.  Grab a month with Clicktale and record some visitor movements to see how far 75% of the people get on your homepage, then cut it off there.
2. Focus your linklove!  Use SemRush (love that tool) to see what valuable keywords you are currently slightly ranking for, then put a focus on those links on your home page.
3. Longer unique descriptions of products.  Take anything you are ranking for in #2 above and write more content. Shoot for 300+ words for maximum SEO effect.

Advertising with Adwords

I’ve noticed via SemRush that you tried your hand at a little Adwords advertising.  However, as you probably quickly found out, people who search for things like “cool gifts” and “cool stuff to buy” don’t actually convert well.

Want to know a little secret of mine for finding good converting keywords to use with Adwords?  Use SemRush to find and steal competing sites best keywords!  For example, plug Thinkgeek in and check out what they are advertising in Adwords.  While I’ve never heard of a drink called “bawls” apparently it must convert to sales as Thinkgeek is paying for that keyword in Adwords.

It’s an awesome way to find what products tend to be other sites most lucrative.  But be careful!  They might be advertising not because it converts but because they bought a truckload of “bawls” and are just trying to offload it quickly.

Go through the full list of keywords they advertise for and you’re sure to find some awesome gems.

Be More Social

You can’t comment on any of the products!  That’s half the fun of a site like this and developing a community atmosphere can only help your traffic and profits.   Drop the Facebook Comments for WordPress plugin on there (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/facebook-comments-for-wordpress/) and let people go to town!

Stop Leaving Money On The Table

The biggest biggest issue I see on your site is that you don’t have affiliate links for your highest value items!?!!?1!!11   Hammacher-Schlemmer has a 8% affiliate program.  If you think no one  is going to buy that robotic jet ski through your site, then you haven’t been paying attention to the Occupy WallStreet protests closely enough.  Somewhere there is a high flying financier who spends his days counting his piles of cash and surfing the internet from his beach house in the Hamptons who needs that thing!  And hell, that’s a $1360 commission!

If that isn’t enough to convince you, the magic holiday season is approaching fast!  People click stuff on your site, which sets an affiliate cookie which lasts for 30 days on Hammacher-Schlemmer.  Then 20 days from now they come back on Black Friday and actually buy stuff and you get credit for it.

Want to really optimize your clickthrough and cookie dropping?  DON’T SHOW THE PRICE.  Make a cute little graphic for “Price too outrageously high to fit in this text box, click to see it!” and stuff like that to encourage people to click through.

Did This Help?

Adam, hopefully you see this and don’t get offended by the criticism.  You have a great site that has viral money potential and you are so very very close to breaking through this holiday season.  I hope you guys make it.  I’m rooting for you!

And hey if you want to take my advice, feel free to add The Electron Plumber to your Staff section.  I’d like my title to be “Awesomeness Consultant”.

Affiliate Site Analysis – Thisiswhyimbroke.com is a post from: ElectronPlumber

It’s always nice to see that my stuff is actually being read by people.  I frequently look at my traffic statistics to see how people are arriving here at the Electron Plumber and where they came from, but other than that I can’t actually tell *who* was here.

I’ve always wondered if any of the more well known Internet Marketing personalities ever make it to my little site here.  Unless they comment it’s impossible to tell.

Except when they buy something through one of my affiliate links:

Thanks for stopping by Potpiegirl!  Love your stuff by the way.  As a fellow “ethical” Affiliate Marketer I’ve been following you since I got started back in late 2008 when you weren’t killing it quite like you are these days.

Keep up the good work!

Hey, Potpiegirl was Here! Affiliate Cookies Are Great. is a post from: ElectronPlumber

As part of my link building service experiment I chose four services with the thought that I would write the content for each service.

It worked fine for a few months.  I would write 8 short articles with unique content for Build My Rank, then spin those articles to create the articles for UAW and 1WayLinks.  Link Aloha doesn’t need content, so that was no effort at all.

But I got sick of write 150 word posts over and over again and quickly realized that it wasn’t a good use of my time at all. 

In the hour or two it took to write those 8 articles that were only useful as backlink fodder I could have cranked out some real useful content for one of my sites instead and expanded my money making sites.

So I set out to find a freelancer to write them for me.  Luckily for me, with the global economy being what it is it’s not hard to find someone willing to do the work at a very low price.  See my article on why it’s hard to make decent money online for an analysis of why there aren’t really many online work at home job opportunities.

However, the global economy works both ways and in this case it’s to your benefit.  There are many sites out there where you can find and hire a freelancer.  My absolute favorite for this sort of thing is Freelancer.com.  My goal?  Get 100 BMR articles written for $1 each.

Make An Exact Set Of Requirements

First, spell out EXACTLY what you want the freelancer to do.  In this case, I wanted 100 BMR articles of minimum 150 words each.  Make a list and post it.  For example, mine said things like:

Must pass Copyscape and be accepted into BMR.  Needs to be understandable and readable English, does not need to be a work of art.  I give you 10 keywords, you write 10 articles on each keyword.  Must provide at least 10 articles a day until all 100 are complete, No links or BMR submission skills necessary, since I like to do my own.  Must be in CSV format, etc. 

Make it a nice long list of requirements and put everything you are worried about in there.

The Hidden M&M Technique

You ever hear about singers and bands who demand extraordinary and bizarre items, such as a bowl of M&M’s backstage but with no Red ones?  Are they crazy?  Do they do it just because they can?

No.  They do it to test their concert venue management.  In this case, they have to trust that the show organizer who runs the stadium or concert hall pays attention to details.

A typical concert requires hundreds of different items to be exactly right.  From the power requirements, to the weight of the lights, to the stage construction.  Skimp on the details and the show might be over from lack of power to drive the amps.  Really skimp on the details and people could get seriously hurt or worse.

So many bands and singers hide little odd details in their contract.  They might have a list of food to be available backstage in one section that includes M&Ms, but in the middle of the section about the power requirements would sneak in a rule saying no Red M&Ms are allowed backstage.

That way the singer or band manager knows that if they see any Red M&M’s in the bowl in the dressing room, they need to review EVERYTHING on the list to make sure they didn’t also forget or miss five other items that could literally bring the house down.

So how can you use this?  Hide a specific instruction in the middle asking anyone who applies for your job to do a specific task.  In my case I hid this in the middle of my requirements “Send me a private message stating ‘I understand these requirements’ exactly”

And you know what?  I received over 50 replies to my simple $100 Freelancer.com posting.  And only 5 of them sent me the required private message.  And of those three of them had fairly good grammar in their replies.  So I chose two of the three and gave them both the assignment.

And now for around $200 plus some small fees I had 200 Build My Rank articles that were all accepted on the first try.  Sure, they weren’t going to win any Pulitzer Prizes for literature, but they got the job done in the end.

Remember, put your effort where you can add value and outsource the rest!

How To Hire A Good Freelancer is a post from: ElectronPlumber

It’s time for the Month 5 update!  I think my “week” count has gotten off somewhere, since the experiment was officially started back in Feb.   I’ve allowed the sites to sit and absorb the latest article posting push that I made in June and haven’t posted any new articles or links since that last push.  I’m planning one last article push before the end of this six month experiment and the start of my big duplicate content experiment.

As you probably already read, two of the sites in the experiment were put in the so called Google sandbox after link building a bunch of similar keyword links in June.

You can read how I managed to pull the BMR site out of the sandbox.  After that, bam, it was back in the rankings right where it was before.

But I waited for the LinkAloha site.  I gave it a full month to see if it was a fluke when I nudged the BMR site out of the sandbox.  And there it sat, at the very bottom of the search results for a full four weeks.  Until a few weeks ago.  I changed my LinkAloha daily link building settings to include similar generic keywords and full URLs just like I had the BMR site.

And guess what!  Lo and behold I check two days later and there it is, right were it was when it disappeared.

Definitive proof?  A sample size of two sites certainly isn’t going to pass any statistics tests, but heck if I’m not convinced.  The 1WayLinks site is also in the same boat right now, but I’m going to sit and wait on it for a while, maybe a month or two before trying the same technique to unsandbox it just as a final data point.

Some good movement this past month. The UAW site is now on page 1 at position #9.   The BMR site has now sitting at #2 for my main keyword and had a corresponding 50% increase in traffic and is on track for it’s second $100+ month from Amazon commissions.   Considering my past experience with 10x monthly profit over the holiday season, this is on track to be a $2500+ a year site for me after only 5 months.  Which makes me wonder what the heck I am doing here writing this article when I should be building another site.  But I started this experiment with you guys in mind, and I’m certainly going to finish it!

And now for the official numbers:

UniqueArticleWizard Site (.org)

• Main 3 Word Keyword Google Rank: 9  (+10)
• Harder 2 Word Keyword:  200+
• Sub Page 3 Word Keyword #2: 49
• Sub Page 3 Word Keyword #3: 78
• Pages Indexed: 9
• Yahoo reported Backlinks: 19 (+16)
• PR: 0

Since coming back from a VERY slow start the UniqueArticleWizard site continues to climb in the rankings.  It was certainly the slowest starter in the experiment, but is now in a very respectable second place with it’s entry onto page 1 for my main keyword.  Note that it’s one of the only sites with no Page Rank, yet still outranks most of the others for my main keyword.

———————————-

1WayLinks Site (.net):

• Main 3 Word Keyword Google Rank: 200+ (SANDBOXED)
• Harder 2 Word Keyword Google Rank:  200+
• Sub Page 3 Word Keyword #2: 160
• Sub Page 3 Word Keyword #3: 88
• Pages Indexed: 9
• Yahoo reported Backlinks: 70 (+17)
• PR: 2

1WayLinks is sitting in the sandbox right now, having dropped there about two weeks into the latest article submission.  It puts links out at 10-20 a day, so it can take some time do to a larger 300-400 article submission.  Note that it has the highest PR of all the sites, so I expect it to come out of the sandbox with some good movement up in the rankings.

———————————-

LinkAloha Site (.com):

• Google Rank: 31 (+5)
• Harder 2 Word Keyword Google Rank:  not in the top 200.
• Sub Page 3 Word Keyword #2: 76
• Sub Page 3 Word Keyword #3: 96
• Pages Indexed: 9
• Yahoo reported Backlinks: 19 (+10)
• PR: 1

The LinkAloha site continues to hang in there.  LinkAloha just updated their link offering this month that I haven’t taken advantage of yet.  They’ve added 3 other types of links that you can take advantage of each month.  Right now I can add 20 Article Directory links, 30 Social Bookmarking links, and 20 Private Blognetwork links to the 500 Forum profile links I’m getting each month.  They said that it’s free for current subscribers and they plan to raise prices for new  subscribers once the testing period is done, so if you’ve been thinking of trying out LinkAloha, now is the time!

———————————-

BuildMyRank Site (.org):

• Main 3 Word Keyword Google Rank: 2 (+1)
• Harder 2 Word Keyword Google Rank:  36
• Sub Page 3 Word Keyword #2: 29
• Sub Page 3 Word Keyword #3: 17
• Pages Indexed: 8
• Yahoo reported Backlinks: 21 (+19)
• PR: 1

BMR continues to dominate and received a nice spike across the board since the last 30 article push.  If you are worried about not getting your “money’s worth” by not posting 300 articles a month to BMR, you can officially stop worring!  I’ve only posted 70 articles total with links pointing at to the BMR site over the last 5 months and the results have been great.  I don’t think more would really have helped, except maybe the sub-pages.  I’m going to focus on those next and see if I can rank all of them on Page 1 in the coming months and really drive the revenue from this site into the $5000 a year range.

There is still at least one month of official data still to come, as well as long term followups.  Click Here to subscribe to The Electron Plumber so you don’t miss any updates!

Great Link Building Service Experiement of 2011 – Update Weeks 13-20 is a post from: ElectronPlumber

I have to tell you guys, I’ve learned so much by performing this link building service experiment that I’ve about 10 posts lined up about all the cool secrets, hints, and tricks that I’ve discovered.  I’ve even started outsourcing the BMR article writing and will have some advice and suggestions on outsourcing for you guys soon.

Honestly, shutting down the link building on these sites has taught me quite a bit.  By putting advertising on the sites with no link building going on, I’ve seen how these can affect a sites performance.  It’s also becoming clear which links are super powerful and which might be less effective.

So, the summary.  The BMR site is still holding strong at #3.  The 1WayLinks site had a huge jump to #11, and the UAW site jumped to #19.  LinkAloha is down to page 4.  All with NO link building for 2 months.

I can now safely say the ignoring has ended!   Over the past few days I’ve started submitting a spun article to 600 1WayLinks, an article to UAW for 350 links,  15 links a day to LinkAloha, and another 10 unique articles to BMR.  All of these are now targeting my second keyword target on a sub-page of the main site.

From now on, as I build new links I’m going to split them between my homepage main keyword and my sub-page sub keywords about 50/50.

Week 10/11/12 Update

My own manual SEO efforts (.net)

• Google Rank: None in top 200
• Pages Indexed: 9
• Yahoo reported Backlinks: 6

I’ve given up on my own SEO site.  I’ve decided to keep this site as a sort of scientific control site and make no links to it.  It shows that the other services are working and it’s not just on page optimization that is causing them to rise in the rankings.  I’m considering doing a sort of uber rush at the end of week 24 and point all 4 services at this one site and see if it gets slapped or jumps over all the rest.

———————————-

UniqueArticleWizard Site (.org)

• Main 3 Word Keyword Google Rank: 19  (+6)
• Harder 2 Word Keyword:  200+
• Sub Page 3 Word Keyword #2: 65
• Sub Page 3 Word Keyword #3: 131
• Pages Indexed: 7
• Yahoo reported Backlinks: 3 (-1)

Since coming back from a slow start the UniqueArticleWizard site is still doing well, despite only ever having ONE article distributed on the UAW network for a total of about 250 sites.  I’m very interested to see how this next article set affects the rankings.

———————————-

1WayLinks Site (.net):

• Main 3 Word Keyword Google Rank: 11 (+19)
• Harder 2 Word Keyword Google Rank:  80
• Sub Page 3 Word Keyword #2: 149
• Sub Page 3 Word Keyword #3: 94
• Pages Indexed: 8
• Yahoo reported Backlinks: 53 (-23)

1WayLinks had a really nice ranking jump these past few weeks.  I had completely forgotten that I had never finished implementing a little 1WayLinks magic trick that a friend who uses 1WayLinks exclusively told me about.  Note that it’s nothing outside the scope of this experiment.   It only uses the 650 1WayLink articles I’d already submitted and a little tweak on the 1WayLinks specific site.  I’ll probably save this little tidbit for the special report at the end of the experiment.

———————————-

LinkAloha Site (.com):

• Google Rank: 37 (+5)
• Harder 2 Word Keyword Google Rank:  not in the top 200.
• Sub Page 3 Word Keyword #2: 168
• Sub Page 3 Word Keyword #3: 122
• Pages Indexed: 9
• Yahoo reported Backlinks: 9 (-21)

The LinkAloha site continues to hang in there.  For me, this officially answers the question about low quality profile links once and for all.  Yes, they do work!.  But no, they aren’t as powerful as content links.  And spun unlinked content isn’t as powerful as unique linked content.  Honestly this should come as no surprise to anyone.

———————————-

BuildMyRank Site (.org):

• Main 3 Word Keyword Google Rank: 3 (+1)
• Harder 2 Word Keyword Google Rank:  67
• Sub Page 3 Word Keyword #2: 38
• Sub Page 3 Word Keyword #3: 68
• Pages Indexed: 9
• Yahoo reported Backlinks: 2 (-11)

BMR continues to dominate, even eight weeks later with no new links made.   It’s even making a respectable showing with the other three keywords despite having no external links for them.  I can’t wait to see if the sub pages pop into the top 10 with some more articles.  One of the things holding me back with this experiment so far is the lack of my own time to write BMR articles.  Each has to be unique and can ‘t be spun or duplicated.  I’ve decided to start outsourcing these to a freelancer, so I should be able to crank up the backlink volume here on the BMR site.

There are months of data still to come here that you don’t want to miss.  If you haven’t subscribed to The Electron Plumber feed yet, click here!

Click Here to see the Week 13-20 Update!

Week 10-12 Great Link Building Service Experiment 2011 – The Ignoring Ends! is a post from: ElectronPlumber

<– Back to Amazon Affiliate Lesson #2

That’s right folks, you demanded it.  It’s time for Amazon Affiliate lesson #3!

Targeting Your Traffic

This is probably the easiest of all the lessons, but is also the most important.  You need to make sure that your content, your readers, and the Amazon links you are getting them to click on actually match up!  For example, click on the following link to Amazon:

Click HERE for this awesome thing!

Ok, now what did you think?  Did that item interest you?  No?   Well no surprise really, I was pretty sure you wouldn’t like that.

How did I know?  Because this site is about cutting through the BS to earning money online and you are reading an article about making money with Amazon.  I can see what keywords bring people here through search engines and I know what forums and sites send me the most visitors.  None of them are related to that product at all.  I can look at Alexa.com data and Quantcast.com data and see that my largest demographic is largely males aged 25-45 who finished college yet make less than $50k a year.  Followed a close second by males aged 25-45 who didn’t finish college and make over $100k a year.  Odd mix, but I think it’s people looking to make more money in the first case, and already successful internet marketers in the second case.  I’m guessing at least 80% of you aren’t interested in that product.

Now try this one on for size:

Click HERE for this awesome thing that I think you’ll actually like!

See?  That is far more targeted product to you, the reader of this article.  It doesn’t even have to be an Amazon product, as long as it’s what you are looking for.   Don’t be afraid to target other products from other vendors other than Amazon if it’s better targeted to your audience.

You can take this one step further with Geo targeting by IP address.  If I knew what country you were coming from, I could show you something different, maybe from Amazon.co.uk, or Amazon.ca.

It seems obvious when you think about it, but if you don’t show people something they are interested in chances are they won’t buy anything!

But I Think I’m Targeting Already!  Why Don’t People Buy?

Now here is the biggest issue with both of those items.  YOU, the person that is currently being targeted by this article, are likely not in a buying mood.  How do I know you aren’t in a buying mood?  This site doesn’t really target any keywords that would indicate you sat down at the computer intending to buy stuff.  I suspect you are trying to MAKE money, not spend it.

You need to catch people shopping to get the biggest bang for the buck out of your Amazon sales.  That way even if they don’t buy the item you are targeting, they might buy something else and you still get credit.

An example?  Here is a short list of “buying” keywords:

• buy
• cheap
• discount
• sale
• coupon
• where to buy online
• best place to buy
• shop
• review

There are many others, but that’s the general idea.  So if you are building a site about sewing machines, you would want to create single pages targeting a buying keyword and your targeted keyword together.  Buy sewing machines, sewing machine sale, where to buy singer sewing machines, sewing machine discount, etc.

With proper targeting and buying keywords tied together, you can get people at your website that are in a mood to buy something already and are looking for information on exactly what to buy.

Make sure you Subscribe so you don’t miss Amazon Affiliate Lesson #4 coming soon -  Targeting Your Images.

Amazon Affiliate Lesson #3 – Targeting Your Traffic is a post from: ElectronPlumber

I received this comment the other day from Jeremy looking for advice on his Amazon affiliate site.

Wondering what you think of this site clothdiapersexpert.com

Do not spare my feelings (as I’m sure you won’t!). I started this site with google adsense in mind, basically by targeting keywords, going for longtail related keywords, and backlinking like crazy. I decided to switch to Amazon Associates b/c I felt like the adsense ads popping up were a bit off (example: a disposable diaper ad). I read what I thought was a decent post on creating an affiliate site.

I have made a few dollars, but nothing substantial. Last month I had a conversion rate of 1.55% (258 clicks and 4 items shipped). Clearly, I need the site to age to compete in google (most of my traffic is coming from the sites I have guestposted for backlinks).

I feel like the issues have to do with my layout and call to action (if any). I wonder if I need to just change it up…make more review pages with stronger push toward products, rather than just information articles.

Also, I wonder if I should consider a niche site that has higher end products, so that when clicks do convert, I make more money.

Thoughts?

First off Jeremy, you are 100% on the right track here.  You’ve created an attractive site with original content around a single subject.  That’s good!

You have picked a somewhat hard niche.  There is a decent amount of competition for what is likely not a ton of sales.  I wouldn’t recommend that niche to someone starting out, but don’t let that stop you!  That site is about 5 months old as far as I can tell, which is a good start and the traffic you get is pretty good for a five month old site.   Some minor targeting fixes and your search traffic will grow.

Too Many Misdirected Links On Your Homepage

First off, you have too many junk links on your homepage.  That’s bad.  Lose those widgets that are just a list of links to Amazon pages.  You are giving up too much of your link power for very little return.   Lose the tags widget, same problem.  You want to LASER target the links off your home page to your best articles.  Make a “Most Popular Links” widget instead with your 5 articles that get the most search traffic.

Figure out how to get rid those tag links and Comparison links that are under each article stub on your homepage.  Same as above, you are wasting your home page link power by linking to tag pages and the like that Google won’t even index.  It’s probably a setting in your theme.  Consider switching themes if you can’t figure out how to remove them.

Lose all the categories and that Compensation Disclosure link at the top!  Those are the first thing Google sees about your homepage, and that’s what it thinks your pages are about.

Target Your Homepage

You need to make a 200-300 word sticky post at the top of your front page about cloth diapers that Google can then latch onto.  Do a search for “cloth diapers” in Google, then look down the left hand side of the results.  You should see some selections there for “Wonder Wheel” and/or “Related Searches” to find what other terms Google thinks are most closely related to your search terms.  Try to naturally fit as many of those into your 200-300 word article as possible without it sounding unnatural.

Misleading Call To Action

Your call to action at the top is misleading.  You don’t sell diapers!  Either get rid of it, or replace it with something more honest that grabs your interest.  “Click here to see the best rated cloth diaper on the planet!”

Link Your Post Images To Amazon

You have images in your posts sometimes that don’t link anywhere.  Make those images smaller and link them to the Amazon page for that product with your affiliate tag in it!  People will click on it to make the image bigger and be brought to the Amazon page (which will have the image bigger).

Better Article Targeting

I went to the Google Adwords Keyword tool and looked up Exact match searches for “cloth diapers” and sorted by relevance, I picked these out of the top 50:
[cloth diaper covers]
[cloth diaper service]
[cloth diapering]
[cloth diapers reviews]
[all in one cloth diapers]
[cloth diapers free shipping]
[cleaning cloth diapers]
[baby cloth diapers]
[discount cloth diapers]
[prefold cloth diapers]
[cloth diaper packages]
[cloth diaper reviews]
[cloth diaper sale]
[cloth diaper liners]
[how to use cloth diapers]
[washing cloth diapers]
[best cloth diapers]
[cloth diaper pail]
[how to make cloth diapers]
[cloth diapers vs disposables]
[making cloth diapers]
[using cloth diapers]
[cloth diaper package]
[cloth diaper wholesale]
[where to buy cloth diapers]
[velcro cloth diapers]
[newborn cloth diapers]
[cheap cloth diapers]

Write one article about each of those, using THOSE KEYWORDS IN THE TITLE!  You can throw one or two other words in there to make it sound more natural without really killing your keyword targeting.   So write “Cloth Diapering 101″, and “All In One Cloth Diapers”, and “Cloth Diapers With Free Shipping”.  Then make sure you sprinkle some of the other keywords into each article, since Google sees them as relevant to each other.

Better Calls To Action In Your Articles

Your whole goal with your article is to provide them with the answer they were looking for.  Tell them what the “best cloth diapers” are and why they should buy these over the others, then convince them to click through your link however you can.  Start with the simple “Click Here for more details on the best cloth diapers”, and see what works.

In addition to regular calls to action, I always sprinkle a few juicy tidbit links in my articles like:

CLICK HERE To See The Most Expensive Diaper Bag On The Planet

Seriously, that is one expensive diaper bag.   See, you want to click on it don’t you?  Your main goal here is to CATCH PEOPLE SHOPPING,  then get them to click through to Amazon though your link however you can.  I’d say that only 25% of my Amazon commissions come from stuff I directly link to.  The other 75% are from people buying other stuff once they’re already on Amazon.

Target Your Ads To Your Traffic

You’ve picked a niche where you’ll get two types of traffic.  People looking to BUY cloth diapers, and people looking to save money by learning how to make or clean their own.  Selectively advertise on each post based on what you think of the keyword you are targeting.  So for the “where to buy cloth diapers” keyphrase above, put calls to action for Amazon on that post.  For the “using cloth diapers” or “making cloth diapers”, put Adsense blocks on those instead.

Keep At It!

I know, the above steps sounds like a lot of work.  But I promise you, if you take all these steps and start creating backlinks with anchor text targeting those keyphrases you targeted in your articles, you WILL start getting traffic from Google.  Start now, and you could be looking at making some nice money this Christmas season.  I find that my Amazon and Adsense earnings more than triple over the holidays from inflated click prices and people just buying random stuff at Amazon after they clicked through one of my links.

Eventually you will get bored with that site, or move on to other sites with bigger products.  Get this one right first, and your next one will be MUCH easier to rank and make money with.  But in your next site, don’t put the word “expert” after a plural!  There once was a site called Experts Exchange at expertsexchange.com.  The problem is, besides the human readability issue, how should Google know that the site is about experts exchanging information and not about how to get an expert sex change.  Your site isn’t quite that bad (cloth diaper sex pert), but Rule 34 applies here and Google might look a little funny at your site.

Do you have a question or what your site reviewed?  Use the comment form below!

Ask The Plumber – Clothdiapersexpert.com Site Analysis is a post from: ElectronPlumber

Question:

How do I know if my Affiliate earnings are being stolen?

---

I started a blog in October that promotes affiliate products. I promoted products from 3 affiliate networks and to date I have not made a sale from one in particular. Buy.com is the biggest product line I promote and the latest totals read: Impressions 3436, Clicks 660 with a resulting Click Through Rate of 19.21, yet not even one sale. I suspect that my affiliate earnings are being ‘hijacked’, but how do I know for sure?

Answer:

Here is how you can identify potential affiliate commission problems

Clicks But No Buys? How To Tell If Your Affiliate Program Is Cheating You is a post from: ElectronPlumber