I'm a long time lurker, kinda first time poster here....
Let me do a short intro... Been developing web sites since 94, mostly for others, though I did/do a few of my own. I always had a full time gig doing IT work. I am going alone with my own sites and company next week ( hurray ). I have a ton of experience in HTML / CSS / JavaScript / PHP / Perl / MySQL / SQlite and Internet marketing. For the past 6 years I have been employed full time as a Internet marketing director.
I have always considered myself a gray hat marketer myself, but I do work for a lot of white hat type clients. I see a lot of problems with BH advice on this forum and others, not that it is the wrong type of advice, but I think a few things should be cleared up for newbies.
What I am about to say are lessons I learned myself, the hard way.. through wasted time and lost revenue, which I think is the best teacher of all.
The biggest thing I see wrong is that I come across a lot of advice that boils down to 'building lots of sites/pages in niches quickly'. Trust me, this is not what is seems. I have just about every ebook, SEO and gen software made, and memberships to all kinds of forums and I see this message played out everywhere. I spend about 1/2 of my day conducting first hand research and trial and error projects and this advice ( 'building lots of sites/pages in niches quickly' ) is somewhat true and somewhat false.
I see tons of people using gens like YACG, MyGen, RSS2Blog, etc and I have used them too in experiments. These programs are great, but using them the wrong way with the above advice is what I see the biggest problem.
Here is the thing, if you buy a new domain or even get a aged domain and you set up something like YACG and build 900+ new pages of content on it in a week, Google knows something is fucked up. Same thing with putting these programs on tons of subdomains. Natural sites just do not build like that. Not unless you are Digg or some large site with a history already.
Building something quickly is not the way and I expect this is why many new to BH fail and give up.
Also building a site and then going out and using a program like Xrumer or a blog comment poster and posting 1000 new links over the weekend is a red flag too. Natural sites do not gain 1000 new links in 2 days time.. plus when you do this shit, Google expects that if these links are valid, you should get 1000 new links next week, and then 1500 new links the week after, etc.... like a blooming flower sort of. You can't just blast out 10,000 links one weekend and then stop, or get 1000 directory links and then stop. Any site that is getting those kind of links naturally are high popular sites that will continue to gain new links every day, more and more over time.
Same thing with building myspace profiles, blogger blogs, squidoo lens, etc... Google knows that it is not natural for 10,000 squidoo lens to pop up over a day about 'Florida dental exams' all linking to your site.
I think this is where clarity needs to come into play with BH advice. If you build a new site and have 900 pages built in a day, you won't get banned or blacklisted.. but most of your pages will be supplemental for a long time in most of my research, even if you have links to all those pages.
People, just be smart about it. I have used one method that always works for me.. and I think it will for others below:
1. Don't worry so much about niches.. seriously. First off, most of the big guys are already finding the best ones. I am sure you can find one too.. but don't waste your time and money trying to find one hot niche, it's not worth it. The time it takes you to find one hot niche, is the same amount of time it takes me to build 10 new sites and be earning some money on them already in general niches. No joke. I use to spend time on this, but not anymore. And by the way, your 'hot' niche is really not that hot at all if your using paid software to find them. I would almost guess I make more in general niches than you would in one hot niche.
2. Don't worry so much about how much you are making per click or sale. I use to spend time comparing how much adsense would pay me per click on a site and niche, and how popular that niche was compared to its payout.. it's a serious time killer for most people starting out. Don't worry about it for now. If I can make just $1 a day off one site, my goal is to build 1000 sites like it.. with that in mind, I am not spending time trying to squeeze 50 more cents a click on each site, I'll just build 1000 more sites if I need money.
3. Just build the fucking site already. I no longer worry about colors, layout, or even ad positioning. I don't worry about content or even indexing so much either. Build the damn site, and then build 10 more afterward.. each day, every day. At some time, the site will get indexed and you will make money. Just keep building you bastard.
4. Sometimes it pays to split test your ads, but for real.. if you do this enough you should have 1000's of sites and you will not have time to split test each ad and site.. just keep building more sites. Also, read #3 again.
5. This is a key element. Even though your building lots of sites and not caring what niche you are in or what these sites look like or have on them, remember to make it look natural. This may sound crazy because I said to build a lot of sites, but I never said to build lots of 900+ page sites. Get your head out of your ass for a moment and listen to what I am saying, not just reading. Lets start with 10 sites today.. they could be blogger blogs, squidoo lens, or real domains you own. Get a template for each one, find your content for the site and build 900 pages now today, but dont put all the 900 pages on the site today, just have them ready. Each day, add one page to the site and only one. There are lots of ways to automate this with something like cron.
6. I know you think I am crazy now, but listen...
Day 1, I can build 10 one page sites
Day 2, I add a second page to my 10 sites so now all 10 sites have 2 pages plus I build 10 new sites with one page
Day 3, I add a third page to my first 10 sites, a second page to the second batch and build 10 new one page sites today.
All this CAN BE AUTOMATED!
7. By the end of 30 days, you can have over 300 sites and lots of pages. But dont stop there! each day I also build one new myspace profile, one new squidoo lens, one new blogger blog, etc..... All this can be automated too.
8. If your smart, you can interlink these and use them to your advantage within a niche and still not be caught spamming.
9. When I start to link outside my sites from forums, blog and directories.. I do it smart. I do only 10 links the first month, 20 links the second month, 30 the third.. etc. This give me a good rank profile within Google that looks natually. You dont have to do just 10 or 20.. the key is to do more links each following month than the last month. This can all be automated too.
By 3 months time, I would have 900 sites... a ton of pages that are getting indexed, links coming in to the sites that look natural and are building up steam, and at least 90 squidoo lens, 90 blogger blogs, 90 myspace profiles, etc.. to use at my disposal.
I know those number of sites/pages are small compared to what some of you guys have, but this is something that generally does not get tagged and banned like those people who try to start off in BH with 10k blogs in their network.
Some of you may wonder about content and what I use.. I use scrapped content and I do not markov it. I do run it through some programs to swap out some keywords, rearrange the paragraphs and add some elements to the content, but that is all.. and these sites have stayed in SERP's for over 12 months now.
I am not the first place listing in Google for my sites/terms, but who cares? I am generally on the first or second page and that is enough traffic to make me about $1 dollar a day per site. When you have 900 sites, thats about $900 dollars a day for an easy 3 months of initial work that has lasted over 12 months now. Do I always make $1 a day per site.. NO. I range from some sites that make 0 dollars a day, some that do 50 cents, and some that do about $2 a day. Its all over. Do I have more than one adsense account, hosting account, domain registration, etc... hmmm, well I can tell you my eggs are not in one basket.
Im not rich, and plenty of people make more than me for sure. I'd rather not make more because most of my money is from adsense and I do not want to make enough to get noticed by adsense for my sites. I have actually moved adsense off many of my sites and went to other programs to mix it up.
You got to learn to automate your stuff, not worry about what others tell you, and focus on the cash. Be smart and keep it natural and you BH sites will stay in SERPs longer. Dont get greedy and try to build 1000s of sites with 1000s of pages and 1000s of links over a weekend.
Let me do a short intro... Been developing web sites since 94, mostly for others, though I did/do a few of my own. I always had a full time gig doing IT work. I am going alone with my own sites and company next week ( hurray ). I have a ton of experience in HTML / CSS / JavaScript / PHP / Perl / MySQL / SQlite and Internet marketing. For the past 6 years I have been employed full time as a Internet marketing director.
I have always considered myself a gray hat marketer myself, but I do work for a lot of white hat type clients. I see a lot of problems with BH advice on this forum and others, not that it is the wrong type of advice, but I think a few things should be cleared up for newbies.
What I am about to say are lessons I learned myself, the hard way.. through wasted time and lost revenue, which I think is the best teacher of all.
The biggest thing I see wrong is that I come across a lot of advice that boils down to 'building lots of sites/pages in niches quickly'. Trust me, this is not what is seems. I have just about every ebook, SEO and gen software made, and memberships to all kinds of forums and I see this message played out everywhere. I spend about 1/2 of my day conducting first hand research and trial and error projects and this advice ( 'building lots of sites/pages in niches quickly' ) is somewhat true and somewhat false.
I see tons of people using gens like YACG, MyGen, RSS2Blog, etc and I have used them too in experiments. These programs are great, but using them the wrong way with the above advice is what I see the biggest problem.
Here is the thing, if you buy a new domain or even get a aged domain and you set up something like YACG and build 900+ new pages of content on it in a week, Google knows something is fucked up. Same thing with putting these programs on tons of subdomains. Natural sites just do not build like that. Not unless you are Digg or some large site with a history already.
Building something quickly is not the way and I expect this is why many new to BH fail and give up.
Also building a site and then going out and using a program like Xrumer or a blog comment poster and posting 1000 new links over the weekend is a red flag too. Natural sites do not gain 1000 new links in 2 days time.. plus when you do this shit, Google expects that if these links are valid, you should get 1000 new links next week, and then 1500 new links the week after, etc.... like a blooming flower sort of. You can't just blast out 10,000 links one weekend and then stop, or get 1000 directory links and then stop. Any site that is getting those kind of links naturally are high popular sites that will continue to gain new links every day, more and more over time.
Same thing with building myspace profiles, blogger blogs, squidoo lens, etc... Google knows that it is not natural for 10,000 squidoo lens to pop up over a day about 'Florida dental exams' all linking to your site.
I think this is where clarity needs to come into play with BH advice. If you build a new site and have 900 pages built in a day, you won't get banned or blacklisted.. but most of your pages will be supplemental for a long time in most of my research, even if you have links to all those pages.
People, just be smart about it. I have used one method that always works for me.. and I think it will for others below:
1. Don't worry so much about niches.. seriously. First off, most of the big guys are already finding the best ones. I am sure you can find one too.. but don't waste your time and money trying to find one hot niche, it's not worth it. The time it takes you to find one hot niche, is the same amount of time it takes me to build 10 new sites and be earning some money on them already in general niches. No joke. I use to spend time on this, but not anymore. And by the way, your 'hot' niche is really not that hot at all if your using paid software to find them. I would almost guess I make more in general niches than you would in one hot niche.
2. Don't worry so much about how much you are making per click or sale. I use to spend time comparing how much adsense would pay me per click on a site and niche, and how popular that niche was compared to its payout.. it's a serious time killer for most people starting out. Don't worry about it for now. If I can make just $1 a day off one site, my goal is to build 1000 sites like it.. with that in mind, I am not spending time trying to squeeze 50 more cents a click on each site, I'll just build 1000 more sites if I need money.
3. Just build the fucking site already. I no longer worry about colors, layout, or even ad positioning. I don't worry about content or even indexing so much either. Build the damn site, and then build 10 more afterward.. each day, every day. At some time, the site will get indexed and you will make money. Just keep building you bastard.
4. Sometimes it pays to split test your ads, but for real.. if you do this enough you should have 1000's of sites and you will not have time to split test each ad and site.. just keep building more sites. Also, read #3 again.
5. This is a key element. Even though your building lots of sites and not caring what niche you are in or what these sites look like or have on them, remember to make it look natural. This may sound crazy because I said to build a lot of sites, but I never said to build lots of 900+ page sites. Get your head out of your ass for a moment and listen to what I am saying, not just reading. Lets start with 10 sites today.. they could be blogger blogs, squidoo lens, or real domains you own. Get a template for each one, find your content for the site and build 900 pages now today, but dont put all the 900 pages on the site today, just have them ready. Each day, add one page to the site and only one. There are lots of ways to automate this with something like cron.
6. I know you think I am crazy now, but listen...
Day 1, I can build 10 one page sites
Day 2, I add a second page to my 10 sites so now all 10 sites have 2 pages plus I build 10 new sites with one page
Day 3, I add a third page to my first 10 sites, a second page to the second batch and build 10 new one page sites today.
All this CAN BE AUTOMATED!
7. By the end of 30 days, you can have over 300 sites and lots of pages. But dont stop there! each day I also build one new myspace profile, one new squidoo lens, one new blogger blog, etc..... All this can be automated too.
8. If your smart, you can interlink these and use them to your advantage within a niche and still not be caught spamming.
9. When I start to link outside my sites from forums, blog and directories.. I do it smart. I do only 10 links the first month, 20 links the second month, 30 the third.. etc. This give me a good rank profile within Google that looks natually. You dont have to do just 10 or 20.. the key is to do more links each following month than the last month. This can all be automated too.
By 3 months time, I would have 900 sites... a ton of pages that are getting indexed, links coming in to the sites that look natural and are building up steam, and at least 90 squidoo lens, 90 blogger blogs, 90 myspace profiles, etc.. to use at my disposal.
I know those number of sites/pages are small compared to what some of you guys have, but this is something that generally does not get tagged and banned like those people who try to start off in BH with 10k blogs in their network.
Some of you may wonder about content and what I use.. I use scrapped content and I do not markov it. I do run it through some programs to swap out some keywords, rearrange the paragraphs and add some elements to the content, but that is all.. and these sites have stayed in SERP's for over 12 months now.
I am not the first place listing in Google for my sites/terms, but who cares? I am generally on the first or second page and that is enough traffic to make me about $1 dollar a day per site. When you have 900 sites, thats about $900 dollars a day for an easy 3 months of initial work that has lasted over 12 months now. Do I always make $1 a day per site.. NO. I range from some sites that make 0 dollars a day, some that do 50 cents, and some that do about $2 a day. Its all over. Do I have more than one adsense account, hosting account, domain registration, etc... hmmm, well I can tell you my eggs are not in one basket.
Im not rich, and plenty of people make more than me for sure. I'd rather not make more because most of my money is from adsense and I do not want to make enough to get noticed by adsense for my sites. I have actually moved adsense off many of my sites and went to other programs to mix it up.
You got to learn to automate your stuff, not worry about what others tell you, and focus on the cash. Be smart and keep it natural and you BH sites will stay in SERPs longer. Dont get greedy and try to build 1000s of sites with 1000s of pages and 1000s of links over a weekend.
