The Scourge of Web 2.0

Do you want to make money online?

Then quit being sheep. I just finished looking over a couple of dozen blogs this past week and if I see another post about how to increase your RRS subscribers or how to make your blog "more" reader friendly or how to use "this" plug in or how to get "more" entrecarders to drop a card or "how" to run a contest I will scream!

Stop the madness folks. None of that crap has anything to do with making money online. People are so wrapped up in Web 2.0 that they have never once considered what the results will be if they "do" everything they think they're supposed to do. Guess what - you may or may not get a bunch of bloggers to read your posts.

Apparently this is a goal worth achieving but not once have I seen a post on why anyone would want a bunch of bloggers reading their posts. Never.

The assumption seems to be that this will lead to "success". Even the term success doesn't seem to have a yardstick. When I ask people how any of this "success" produces income I usually get some kind of bullshit answer like "success isn't just measured in dollars" or "success is knowing you have given your readers something valuable" or "success is having a thousand RSS subscribers".

What horseshit.

What a bunch of total noobs.

The fact is everyone of these wannabees "Think" that somehow getting 1000 readers is going to make them money in the long run. Yeah advertisers will line up to spend big bucks on your site because you have 1000 readers. Sure they will - and when none of your readers spend a single dollar they will stop lining up. Oh right, your readers don't spend money on your site but they will suddenly spend money on the advertisers - the same ads they have seen on all the other sites they have subscribed to. Oh what a joke this is.

You know what really pisses me off? I haven't found more than a handful of real "make money online" blogs out there and yet there are thousands of blogs claiming to be in this niche. They think that blogging about blogging is somehow related to making money online. It isn't.

Pay attention!

Quit trying to get readers!

Start optimizing your blogs for search engines.

Pick a niche other than Blogging, Making Money or Personal Diaries.

Spend 10% of your time writing content.

Spend 90% of your time getting keyword targeted backlinks.

I have just told you all you really need to know to make money online.

Yes I have - don't argue with me.

Some of you still want to be famous though - well guess what? I probably have more RSS subscribers than you and I don't try and get them. I don't stumble, digg, zoom, sphinn or run contests or spend a lot of time commenting on other blogs. I don't have a pretty blog nor want one. I also don't spend money on hosting or waste time programing or pissing around with plug ins. I don't do guest posting and I don't have to spend my days socializing with the exception of answering questions related to this one blog.

Here's a little tip - write good useful content and help people when they ask for it and you may find yourself with a few readers.

Have I got my point across yet?

I write articles about things people want answers for, I post them on a blog optimized for the niche people are searching for answers in and then I get a bunch of backlinks to each and every post. This tells Google I am the site with the answers and they send me traffic. None of the traffic consists of bloggers or internet marketers. I funnel the traffic towards an affiliate product or Adsense. They buy something or click an Ad. I make money. Period. I can go months between posts and the traffic and money keeps coming in, day after day, while I work on my putting and short game.

Now I want to show you all a goldmine that hasn't been mined yet.

PopCritics Review

Check out Mike and Jason's "movie review" site called Pop Critics. This site has tons of content, it's updated regularly, it's all original stuff and best of all it's about stuff that people search for. I call it a movie review blog but it has more to offer than just movie reviews. The point I am making is that these two fellows do everything right but are missing one important ingredient - they don't get search traffic. The reason is simple - they haven't got targeted backlinks. If you have an existing blog with lots of content then pay attention because what I am going to tell Mike and Jason applies to your site as well - regardless of the niche.

If I owned PopCritics I would do the following,

Add "Movies|Televison|Books|Music Reviews" to the Blog Title. As it stands right now the search engines will list "PopCritics...reviewing pop culture so you don't have to" in the serp blurb. This will not tell searchers what the blog is about specifically. My addition will.

I would then proceed to use my blog network to send backlinks to the homepage. If I send 100 links to the home page, 10 would use the term "movie reviews" in the anchor text, 10 would use the term "Television Reviews" in the anchor text and so on until I have links for all the main keywords. This will tell Google what the blog is about. Sending links using the term "PopCritics" will only get that term ranked high and no one will search for that keyword. 77,000 people used the search term "Movie Reviews" last month.

Next I would keep each post title to a bare minimum. Right now they use titles that are reader friendly but not search engine friendly. The latest post is called - "Alternate 'I Am Legend' ending hits the web, is it better?".

This should read "I Am Legend - Movie|Book Review".

I would then round up a dozen backlinks targeting the phrase above and point it at the page url of the review. I guarantee that it would rank top 10 quickly on Google .

I would then re-edit every single post on their blog so that the main keyword is used in the post titles (with as few extra words as possible) and dropped into a few H tags in each article. The reader friendly titles currently used can be utilized as sub headers. Then I would round up backlinks for every page on the blog optimized for each pages main keyword.

Now I will put up or shut up.

If Mike and Jason make the changes to the "I Am Legend" post I will get them the backlinks they need and have them on page 1 lickety split.

Here is the current Top 10 listings on Google for "I Am Legend Movie Review".

(click to enlarge)



I have no idea of how many searches are being done for this term but that is not the point - I simply want to show them how to get ranked in the serp's for all their posts and more importantly to get ranked for terms that do get searched - ie. "movie reviews" etc.

Now if some of you have an existing niche I will give you a hand as well but only the first 5 that leave me a comment. (I'd do more but have limited time) Pick one page, edit the post as I described using the main keyword in the post title and a couple of times in your H tags and leave me your page url and keyword in the comments.

It's time for you all to understand that proper backlinks are the key to this whole business - they get you ranked and this is what gets you "real" traffic.

Note: Do not use spam sites - no blogging sites - no make money sites. Real niches with quality content only.

Let's get to it...