Keyword Crash Course Review

If you'd like to learm how to make money building niche blogs you might be interested to know that I started a Keyword Crash Course review blog. Since cancelling my membership at the Niche Blogger I wanted to setup a different website for the Keyword Academy because I didn't want to confuse people about which program I was currently working on.

I don't want to come across like the Niche Blogger is a complete waste of time and money--but it just wasn't the program for me. The two programs are made for different types of people. Deciding which program is right for you depends on where exactly you are in the learning process. The Niche Blogger is geared more for beginners while the Keyword Crash Course is targeting marketers who have a bit more experience.

The one problem I had with the Niche Blogger is that in the beginning I don't think Amy does a great job of teaching students how to choose profitable niches and keywords. An emphasis is placed on choosing a topic that you are semi-interested in and might not be too competitive. Her method for evaluating the strength of your competition also isn't something I would recommend teaching others as it doesn't work based on my experience with keywords.

However, if you're lucky enough to pick a good set of keywords in the beginning of the course there's no doubt her method will make you money as long as you stick with it. In fact, some of what she teaches about building links to your site is similar to what Mark and Court teach at the Keyword Academy. Unfortunately though, my first niche didn't hit a home run out of the park. So I quickly became frustrated and decided to move on.

Backlinks Are King--Not More Blogs

Wow, reading back through just a few posts on this blog it's apparent I've learned a lot in just a short amount of time.

The thing is, a lot of people (including me 2-3 months ago) think that in order to make money on the Internet you just have to keep building more blogs. While having multitudes of blogs does make a difference you really need to work on creating backlinks for the websites you've already invested your time and money into. Why bother putting the site together in the first place if you don't make the effort to get it ranked #1 in Google? Isn't that the purpose of registering the domain name in the first place? These things just don't happen on their own! What good are 25, 50, 100 blogs if none of them rank for their keywords?

Some people buy a domain name, write some posts, submit a couple of articles, do a little social bookmarking and expect a miracle. When their website doesn't appear on the first page of Google they say, "Well that didn't work. I need to try another keyword." And then they start the vicious cycle all over again with a different website. No wonder 95% of people who try to make money online give up!

Of course 25, 50, or 100 blogs would be worth a lot of money if they all ranked #1 for their respected keywords and the only way to do that is with backlinks. So, I guess backlinks are the key point in the equation aren't they? For some reason it took the grey matter in my brain a long time to fully grasp this concept. Hopefully your brain is not as stubborn as mine.

I just wanted to emphasize the importance of backlinks in case you didn't already know. :-)

Google Adsense Milestone

Well, today I had a really good day and thought I would write a quick post about it. That way, when I have a not-so-good-day I can come back here and read about it. :-) Who knows, that not-so-good-day could even be tomorrow--but I hope not!

Since I last posted I've been really busy building small niche blogs. Garry Conn originally got me moving in the right direction and now I'm getting a lot of great advice from Mark and Court over at the Keyword Academy. If you really want to learn how to make money online you should take the time to read every post and comment on their website. It might take a little time, but unlike the time you might waste lurking around in forums or on other websites it will be wisely spent. In fact, I recently took their challenge to break my information addiction and I must say it's been working out great. I'm finally getting things accomplished! If this post doesn't get you motivated, nothing will: 7 Brutally Straightforward Tips For Making Money On The Internet

I built 10 blogs following exactly the process they outline in their Keyword Crash Course ebook. It's been a little over 30 days since I registered the domain names. I filled them all up with content and now I'm working on building my backlinks. It's taking a lot of work but for once I finally feel like I'm making progress instead of spinning my wheels. I'm also keeping the editors over at EzineArticles pretty busy as I currently have 19 articles waiting to be reviewed. That doesn't even count the ones that have already been submitted and accepted. :-) Lordy--I never thought I was capable of writing so many articles! But recently something strange came over me and now writing 3-5 articles per day is pretty much routine.

Anyway, my whole reason for writing this post was because I just logged into my Google Adsense account and saw I'd made more today than what I did during the whole month of February. Pretty cool. Granted, most of the traffic came from one article I published on Ezinearticles and that will probably die off pretty quickly. But at least I know I'm headed in the right direction. As long as I slowly keep building backlinks my sites will move up higher in the SERPs and continue to make money even when the newness of Ezinearticles fades away. Sooooo, I only have a few more articles to write and then I'll be moving onto the second stage of linkbuilding.

Stay tuned!

Niche Blogging Plans for 2009

I've been getting a lot of emails and messages asking if I'm still doing "the Niche Blogger." And the answer is: kinda sorta! After five months I decided to cancel my membership. I think Amy offers A LOT of valuable info. However, most of that value I found to be in the first 2-3 months. I certainly don't think I wasted my money and I learned a lot from Amy.

That being said, I'm still continuing to build niche blogs. And I still use a lot of what I learned in Amy's course. This weekend I completed my first blog based on some advice I gathered reading Grizzly and Garry Conn's blogs. I'm not exactly sure what Griz and Garry think of each other but I'm certainly learning a lot from both of these guys. And yes this blog is FINSIHED-COMPLETE-DONE. I didn't just register the domain name and say, "I'll get to that later." The posts are written, scheduled, and waiting to be indexed in Google. And while that's happening I'll be working on blog number two . . .

Something I've learned the past couple months is that the Internet is filled with many different types of blogs. There's so-called "flagship" blogs and "Adsense" blogs. Each one requires a different approach in terms of acquiring readership and generating revenue. You definitely want to take these different characteristics into account when you build your blogs!

Are you building your blog to attract readers? Or clicks? When it comes to blogging you sometimes can't have your cake and eat it too.

So the big question: How much am I up to? From the blog I put together during my stint at the Niche Blogger I made a few dollars in Adsense and $11.09 in Clickbank sales. However, that blog now has about 25 posts and a pagerank of 1. I've since taken off the Adsense and am tweaking the theme a little. I used to get about 35-40 unique visitors per day, but now 20 seems to be the norm.

This "virgin" blog has been my little guinea pig for sure! Originally this was supposed to be a "set it and forget it" type of thing but thanks to my perfectionist nature I'm not ready to let it go yet. But like I said, I did complete my first blog "Garry Conn" style this weekend and I'm going to be tracking it closely. It got indexed in around 48 hours and I can't wait to see when it starts ranking for some keywords. So I think this "officially" will be my first blog.

Let's keep track shall we? Here's my progress report for today:

1. Blog #1 indexed in Google
2. Writing content for Blog #2--goal is to finish writing all blog posts by January 24th

Total Adsense earnings today: $0.00

I know this is probably a bit confusing but I guess you can say that I'm starting 2009 with a total clean slate. Lots of lessons were learned in 2008 to make the blogs of 2009 even better than the ones we built before!