Josh Spaulding EZ-OnlineMoney.com/blog/ This is a FREE report offered through http://www.mmonicheexposed.com/ If you have purchased this report or obtained it through any other means, the transaction was unlawful and a refund should be requested immediately! Furthermore, if you purchased this report, please report the incident to joshspaulding1 [at] gmail.com. You may be entitled to a reward if sufficient proof can be obtained. Although all information contained within this report is intended to be as accurate and helpful as possible, there is no guarantees! This report is for information purposes only and should not be taken on as fact. Neither Josh Spaulding, nor the Company he represents, accept any responsibility for the actions you take as a result of reading this report! 1
Table of Contents Purpose...3 How I Got There...4 Who Searches for Make Money Online...6 Best Monetization?...7 Was John Chow Right?...8 Is It Worth It?...10 Some Random Stats...11 About the Author...13 2
Purpose Ranking on the front page of Google for Make Money Online is the goal of thousands of online entrepreneurs. It's like the Holy Grail of Internet Marketing. People are constantly talking about the MMO niche, how tough it is to rank for and how profitable it is once you're there. I've been there: So I wrote this report to tell you all about my findings after holding a top 10 ranking for this ever-so-popular phrase for over 10 months and a top 20 ranking for over a year and counting. If you target this niche, or plan to in the future, this report is for you. 3
How I Got There The meat of this report, and true value, isn't in how I got there, but what I learned while I was there. However, I realize for many the how is often more interesting than anything else, so I'll give you a basic run down and if you're interested in more details you can take a look at my other Free report, The Easy SEO Report. There is always a hard way and an easy way to do just about anything, right? Well, I took the hard way, although it really wasn't all that HARD in my opinion, just time consuming. The Hard Way (manually building links) This is how I've done it, but it's a constant struggle. The techniques I used were no secret: 1. Link exchanges I just found related sites and asked them if they wanted to exchange links. However, I didn't want loads of outgoing links on the site because I was targeting a competitive niche and wanted to maintain as much authority as possible. If the site was full of outgoing links I'd be sending away authority that could have been recirculated back into my own pages. So I would find related sites and contact them. I'd offer them a link on one of my various other sites if they would link to my make money site. Many people declined, but some accepted. 2. Article marketing I submitted loads of articles to article directories using my unique article submission strategy. 3. Linked my own sites I'm not sure what kind of impact this had on the ranking if any at all, but I have multiple c-class IP's on my server, so many of my related sites are hosted on separate c-class's. I pointed homepage links from many of my sites to the make money site with the obvious anchor text. Some people don't have many of their own sites to do this with, but this is how I did it, so I'm letting it be known. 4. Bought links I no longer do this, as there are some gray areas with Google in understanding exactly how they are treating sites which buy and sell links, but I did purchase some links at one point. However, I don't believe these links had a drastic impact on the rankings. The Easy Way (naturally building links) This is how the most authoritative sites on the Internet get their rankings and how I recommend we all do it. They provide value!!! My site wasn't/isn't TRASH content, but to be quite honest it isn't ground breaking information and 4
parts of it do need updated, so it doesn't get any natural linking. A high-quality site will be linked to naturally. Owners of these sites don't have to worry about any kind of linking campaigns! The blog directory for instance at http://ez-onlinemoney.com/blog/ gets natural incoming links on a daily basis because I constantly provide value. However, I'm targeting a totally different niche with the blog and other than the link pointing to the root, it isn't helping the main directory rank for make money online. If you want to conquer this niche, or any niche for that matter, with the least amount of effort, go with the easy way...build content that is so good that people link to it naturally! If I would have done that from the beginning, there is no doubt in my mind that I would be sitting at #1 without any SEO effort on my part! 5
Who Searches for Make Money Online The most important aspect of this niche is actually the most misunderstood and that is, who is the target audience? If you do an exact phrase match for Make Money Online in Google, you'll see that over half of the competing sites are targeting moderate to advanced Internet Marketers! However, the legitimate searches (those who aren't competing for the phrase themselves) for the phrase are made by people who have no idea what Internet Marketing is! The make money online niche is a completely different market than the internet marketing niche!! This means that all of those advanced Internet Marketing blogs, PLR sites etc. that are competing for this phrase are receiving highly untargeted traffic! I would almost guarantee that these guys are very disappointed in the quality of traffic they are receiving, as they probably expected much more after hearing the great deal of hype that surrounds this niche. It's not a Buyers Market Uh, yeah, it is, for the same reason credit repair and debt consolidation are buyers markets. People WANT money and they'll spend money to get money; it's as simple as that! People tell you it's not a buyers market because they are targeting moderate to advanced Internet marketers to a crowd of people who know nothing about Internet Marketing! 6
Best Monetization? The way I see it, those targeting this niche have 3 monetization options. Obviously there are more, but these are the best options, in order of effectiveness, as I see it: 1. Obtaining Leads (email marketing) For the majority of the time I held a top-10 spot, I didn't concentrate much on building a list from this traffic. I was collecting leads, but I wasn't very proactive and didn't have the subscription form in an optimal spot. I had collected a few thousand leads, but the list wasn't responsive, as I didn't take it seriously. Now, at the time of writing, my site is sitting on page two and I'm taking the list more seriously. It's converting much better and I'm making several affiliate sales per week with the list and site combined. If I would have put more value into this list from the beginning and concentrated more on building that list, I'd imagine the overall ROI would have been MUCH greater from the ranking in general! 2. Promoting Affiliate Products If you're obtaining leads then you're probably promoting affiliate products to those leads, if not you should be. But, if list building just isn't your thing (not the best technique for a marketer to ignore) you could position your affiliate products correctly and do well with this niche. Throughout the time I held the top 10 ranking I didn't do nearly enough testing monetization wise. I SHOULD have replaced the big adsense advert directly underneath the title with a well-converting affiliate banner. The banners I did display were not in prominent spots and still brought in sales every ClickBank pay period (2 weeks.) 3. Google Adsense Unfortunately, this is what brought in a good majority of the sites income because I failed to take the two most profitable (above) seriously. When I held the highest ranking, which was sitting around the #4 spot, the site was generating approximately $30/day through Adsense. I have a strong feeling it would have been much more if I had been collecting leads and promoting good, well-researched affiliate offers! Obviously if you're targeting the MMO niche for some kind of an in-house program, you'll have your own monetization model, but if you're running an information site, the above should be seriously considered! 7
Was John Chow Right? In June of 2007, after making it to the top of Google for make money online, John Chow was slapped and his blog was removed from the MMO SERPS. Incidentally, his blog wasn't even ranking for his name and still isn't to this day. When he announced this on his blog, he claimed: The make money online search term was sending me about 150 visitors per day Many people thought he was full of it when he said that, including myself! Why would so many people be constantly talking about, and trying to conquer, this niche if a #1 ranking with Google only yielded 150 visitors a day? Well, looking at my own, his figure was a little low, but it wasn't far off. That's a screenshot of my Google Analytics site profile for ez-onlinemoney from March 1, 2008 to March 31, 2008. This is the month in which I held a steady ranking somewhere around #4 most of the month. If you divide 3,889 by 31 you get about 125 daily visitors who arrived via SE's for the query make money online. However, the traffic difference between a #1 ranking and a #4 ranking is known to be drastically different! I haven't held a #1 ranking for this term, but judging by the results of other terms I've held #1 rankings for and what I know to be true about the #4 spot, I'd guess that the #1 spot receives 8
somewhere around 300 daily uniques. Of course, with the rapid growth of the Internet and users wanting to make money online, that figure is probably slowly rising month by month, so that's something to keep in mind! John did say one thing that's true for sure I do not depend on Google for my traffic and neither should you. Search engines are a nice, free traffic generator, but you should never ever ever ever rely on them for traffic! Their algorithms are always changing and the top 10 results of today will most likely not be the top 10 results of a month from now! 9
Is It Worth It? Yes! There are 3 reasons why I say it is definitely worth it to target this niche: 1. Credibility Whether the niche drives loads of traffic or not is irrelevant when you consider the level of credibility it brings with it. People are CONSTANTLY talking about this niche and those who are on top get a lot of positive publicity. It serves as social proof that you can rank for competitive terms and it's an EXCELLENT leveraging tool! Why did you download this report? ;) 2. First Impression As the Internet grows, and it still is, at a very rapid pace, ranking highly for this phrase allows YOU to be the first person to interact with people looking to get into this industry! If you do it correctly and retain them (mailing list) you have the opportunity to become their mentor and offer that ever-so-important first impression! 3. Income Potential Although the exact phrase make money online only drove around 125 daily visitors to my site, I was able to build a list of several thousand and at the same time bring in on average $30/day via Adsense when my site was at its highest ranking. I was also bringing in a few affiliate sales directly through that site per week. It all comes down to your business model! This niche can be profitable, but if you do the same thing as 95% of the others targeting this niche, you'll be wasting your time! Understand your target market, build a high-quality site with targeted monetization and there is no doubt in my mind that this single ranking could bring in $100+/day for you too. 10
Some Random Stats Below are some random stats from the period of March 1, 2008 March 31, 2008 (the month I held the highest rankings for the niche.) A few things to consider!! These stats are for the entire ez-onlinemoney.com domain. That means they were collected from the blog directory as well! Social media affects statistics! Take them for what they're worth: 11
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About the Author Josh Spaulding started marketing online in November, 2004 while serving in the U.S. Army. During this time he has authored a number of popular products, services and Websites including, but not limited to: Josh's Blog http://ez-onlinemoney.com/blog/ Josh's Private Coaching Forum http://www.coachingwithjosh.com/ Article Marketing Domination http://www.articlemarketingdomination.com/ The Easy SEO Report http://www.theeasyseoreport.com/ The $5 Mini-Site Formula http://www.5dollarformula.com/ The Hot Niche Machine http://www.hotnichemachine.com/ 13