Red Wagon Designs

Internet Businesses

Mark Knowles — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 07:37:01 +0000

Many Internet businesses will fail in the first year of operation, and at least 50% of them will have failed withing 5 years. Which – if you think about it is not much different to the real world. At least on the surface – how many Internet marketing operations/ businesses or whatever you want to call it go completely unregistered? I would like to bet it is a substantial amount, because it is almost completely un-necessary to register a business like this unless it is making a decent income – in which case, the IRS will make certain to help you register.

So – I draw the conclusion that most (hard to put a definite number on it) internet marketers and firms will fail within 2-5 years. Why such a high failure rate? Simple really – lack of research and poor motivators. If your sole reason for setting up an internet business is to make money online, you will be faced with several challenges. One – it is soul destroying to sit in front of a computer all day and discover that you earned 3 cents an hour because you failed to properly research your market and two, the competition is becoming stiffer every day. Whatever your market, you are probably going to discover that the competition has noticeably increased between researching and launching. This is definitely something I take into consideration beafore advising a client on probable rewards and time frames.

You are not alone on the Internet, and something a competitor does or does not do can have a drastic effect on your business. One way of coping with these issues is to get involved in a business you have a genuine passion for. I think the best internet businesses come from doing this and recommend taking a long hard look at your motivations before starting anything. There are plenty of internet marketing tools available to properly research almost any subject as well.

More Free Blogs and Web 2.0 Sites

Mark Knowles — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 07:25:57 +0000

Some time ago, I compiled a list of free blogs to use either as a stand alone blogging platform, or as promotional tools. I am not a big fan of just dumping poor content on these sites, but they certainly have their uses as far as promoting your website is concerned. No matter how you make a living online; whether you are writing blog posts to make money online or some other fashion – one key to being successful is to generate traffic to your webpages, and one component of doing that is getting links to those pages.

The best links are those links that grow organically – i.e. some one else finds and likes your content and links to it. But – getting people to find your content in the first place probably means “cheating,” and creating a few links of your own. Most Internet marketers (myself included) have several blogs which they use to post links at. I keep a number for my clients to use, and there are any number of free blogs and sites that are available. I realized I had built a list of free sites and this is that list.

Do not simply dump garbled content on these sites. If you treat them with respect and add value to their site by adding decent content – they will treat you with respect by not deleting your account. I have also added a few article directories – the same applies – treat them with respect and do not dump spam links. Enjoy.

A selection of the top article directories:

Internet Marketing – How To Get An Education

Mark Knowles — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 10:47:11 +0000

The Internet marketing field has become something akin to a grocery store aisle with too many options. Too often – we make a decision based on criteria that has absolutely nothing to do with the product in the box, and everything to do with an outside influence. Or there are so many choices we get fed up looking and take the one with the best packaging.

Too many choices

Educating one’s self as to what works or does not work in Internet marketing can be a costly affair, and often times the most attractive strategy is the apparently easiest one. I see many, many “Internet gurus” selling strategies that will no longer work, and they are selling them based on the fact that they were sold that idea that it works, and they have not actually tried and tested the method – they just want the commission on the product/software/ebook download/whatever.

My own thinking has always been to start with quality product or content and go from there. I also believe in working ethically – and this is self serving – because eventually the search engines discover a “black hat “ technique and when they do – it stops working. If you have approached your Internet marketing using ethical techniques – it will always work. If you paid an Internet marketing company in India to dump millions of comments on blogs – that may have worked the first few million times it was done – but you are asking to have your hosting account shut down if you try it today.

So – where to go to educate yourself? You can always use the tried and tested “suck it and see” method, but many end up sucking so many approaches that they are broke before they find the magic bullet. The fact is – there is no magic bullet. Why would Internet marketing be any different to any other field? An ethical and honest internet marketing entrepreneur will always be ion a position of strength over the long term when compared to a spammer. It also helps to have clearly defined goals – and this is where I see a lot of failures. If you do not know what you want – how can you go out and get it?

Here are a few places where you can educate yourself for free, and a couple of resources that will always be at the forefront of ethical SEO. And they are taken straight from the horses’ mouth so to speak.

Matt Cutts Blog
Matt Cutts is the head of Google’s Webspam team and works on search quality at Google. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Ebay Partner Network BlogThe Ebay blog talks about best practices for driving traffic to ebay, but is applicable to any market.
Offical google blogSome of the comment sections are enlightening, if only to see what people complain about when Big Daddy G makes a change to their search algorithm.
Microsoft adcenter blog for publishersInteresting blog – with perhaps too much information at times, but worth taking a look at occasionally.

These are all advertising networks or search engines. They spell it out clearly what is going on in Internet marketing, and are a great place to get a feel for the industry and what works. And – yes – there is a feel to doing this. Combine what you learn from these blogs with well written code – and my personal favorite to build any website is to use semiologic wordpress – and you will be laying a good ground work for your success.

Further reading that may be of interest:

How to make money onlineThis is an article I wrote some time ago, and the models I describe here still work today.
How to make money blogging.
Another article I wrote some time ago, but also applicable.

Good luck out there.

Bad Internet Marketing and Due Dilligence

Mark Knowles — Fri, 28 May 2010 09:50:49 +0000

Having spent a few years online now, slowly my email inbox has begun to fill up with unsolicited emails from a number of companies, and the latest trend seems to be sending unsolicited emails to owners of newly set up sites – if there is a contact option.

I am always setting up new sites – either for myself, as potential niche sites for sale at a later date when they have “aged” or for clients. So – I get a lot of these emails.

If it is not some Russian spammer with 200 links in the text it will invariably be from an “SEO expert” offering their services and will usually read something like this:

Name: Milton Lake

Email: miltonlake22@gmail.com

Website: http://www.yahoo.com

We are interested to increase traffic to your website, please get back to us in order to discuss the possibility in further detail.

Time: Thursday May 13, 2010 at 7:51 pm

IP Address: 122.162.178.27

Are you kidding me? Now – this is not just bad Internet marketing – this is horrible. Why on earth would I consider using an internet marketing company that does not have a web presence and uses disposable email addresses? Do I seriously think some one like this can increase my web traffic ?

I would not touch this person – not in a million years. But - I can only assume – judging from just how many of these I get when I set up a new site – there are people who do use them. In which case – I will say this – If you use an ” SEO expert ” such as this – You are going to be ripped off and it is all your own fault. Seriously – avoid these people like the plague and do some due diligence before signing up and spending money with any online marketing “expert.”

Whether you choose to use me or some one else – check them out before hand. Check me out before hand. Look me up on the Internet – see what my reputation is. What sort of work do I do? Is it ethical or not? If you cannot find me – what does that tell you? Would you use an Internet marketing company that you could not find with an internet search? Exactly.

Can you contact me? Do I respond in a timely manner? Am I using disposable email addresses? These questions apply to me as well as any would-be SEO expert.

Then – and only then - if you are satisfied I am what I say I am and my reputation is good – use my services.

Free blogs

Mark Knowles — Sun, 09 May 2010 20:53:56 +0000

Wanna free blog?

Have I got something for you – the biggest, baddest list of free blogs in the known universe. These are the best free blogging sites currently.

For some reason, there seems a fascination with getting a free blog and the amount of free blog sites has mushroomed along with the blogging phenomenon. Free blogs are appearing left right and center. But – beware – some of them do not stay free, some of them offer revenue sharing that mysteriously stops with your account closed and some of them will be gone tomorrow or the day after. There is a danger of losing your work should you choose to use a free blogging platform instead of your own hosted blog, but – they also serve another purpose. You can use them to create links back to your own sites and if you set up accounts at multiple free blogging sites, this means links from multiple, geographically varied sites, which is crucial if you are making money blogging.

So, after much wandering around the internet, setting up accounts at dozens of free blog sites, I have decided to compile a list of free blog sites that I consider to be trustworthy and likely to be around for a while. I will not be including article writing sites such as Squidoo or Hubpages – this is for blogs only, and may well turn into the biggest, baddest list of free blogs in the known universe. Or – I might get bored half way through because there is a lot of them. Just kidding – this is the definitive (until next Wednesday) list of free blog sites. The criteria I have used to compile this list is that each site needs to:

Have an intuitive interface
Be search-engine optimized
Have good page rank
Cost no money
Give the impression they are here to stay

Of course – I could be wrong and some of these will go broke taking your hard work with them – but I personally would not put anything on a free blog that I could not afford to lose. You have been warned. I am not affiliated with any of these blogs and I see them solely as a means of networking and building links back to my personal sites. Some of them have a specific focus, others not. Some of them offer revenue sharing, some of them do not, but none of them will cost you a penny unless you upgrade to a premium service. You can also open multiple accounts at them, although I recommend using several different email addresses if you are using them solely to promote another site.

Blog.com @ http://blog.com/

Blog.com sell themselves as “the choice for almost two million bloggers. Join the fray, and observe the world, from the smallest details to life-changing events.” Entertainingly, thay also say “A blog is your best bet for a voice among the online crowd.” Which – if you think about it – is utter bullshit. 2 million blogs and you can be a voice heard amongst the 2 million? Not a hope in hell. Still – it s free, easy to use and they make their money by placing advertising on your blog. Like many of these platforms, it is filling up with millions of short promotional posts which link back to another site. If you want to pay $30 a year – they will remove the ads.

Blogger @ http://www.blogger.com

This is google’s free blog platform. As such – they are unlikely to be going anywhere, and I would suggest that this is as good as it gets. There are some limitations, but you are free to monetize these using google adsense and have recently integrated Amazon affiliates. Easy to use, simple interface and very search engine friendly.

Bloghi @ http://bloghi.com

Bloghi make money by running google adsense of your pages, although you can disable that by paying. They do have an attempt at making it possible to find your blog in their directory, but with this many blogs you are often lost in the morass of promotional posts.

BloggersBase @ http://www.bloggersbase.com/

This one is interesting. Not only is it a free blog site, but there is a community aspect, including a job board which charges people to advertise. As I have mentioned in previous articles – beware certain so-called jobs. Throwaway email address + wants a free sample = lying sack of shit looking for free content. Never, ever send a free sample to a disposable mail address. Personal experience…….

Bravenet @ http://www.bravejournal.com/

Another community with free blogs, competitions, plus website hosting and drag and drop site builder if you want. The idea is interesting and they call their free blogs, “journals,” as do a few other sites. You can get quite complex here, and combine a blog with a website.

Doodlekit @ http://doodlekit.com/home

I rather like this setup – free web hosting with a blog. Pretty easy to use and you can build out quite a substantial web property. Once again they make money advertising on your website, but if you choose a paid option, the ads go away. I must be a sucker for a cute cartoon.

Easyjournal @ http://www.easyjournal.com/

Nothing outstanding here, although they have a pretty good Alexa and google page ranking. They have been around since 2004, so are in no danger of vanishing, although I do not see how they make money> The only obvious income I see is the shop that sells easyjournal T shirts and other stuff, so who knows?…..

GoogleSites @ http://sites.google.com/

Not just a blog, this is google’s site builder that works in similar fashion. You are free to build as many sites with as many links as you like, although most of the “SEO” names are loooong gone. What you end up with is http://sites.google/site/yoursitename/ . Very intuitive, lots of free templates and really easy to use.

InsaneJournal @ http://www.insanejournal.com

I rather like these guys because they appear to actually be insane, calling their blogs ” asylums” . The main thing here is they dare to be different. Although I am a big fan of wordpress, it is good to see something else. Insane Journal is built on open source software from Danga Interactive.

LiveJournal @ http://www.livejournal.com/

One of the original free blogs, LiveJournal has 25 million blogs and communities. Sometimes I wonder how anything gets found on the internet – ever. 25 million blogs just on one site? Phew!

WordPess @ http://wordpress.com/

Speaking of OMG how the Fuck does anything get found on the internet ever? And now I know why google has all the money – wordpress are claiming 288,644 bloggers, 257,636 new posts, 382,086 comments, & 58,323,268 words today on WordPress.com. Today………..Good grief! Seriously though – Wordpress is awesome. They monetize themselves with horrible pop up boxes and selling space to store photos and videos. Free basic member ship and after using them for a while, you will want a blog all of your own. Love ‘em.

Zimbio @ http://www.zimbio.com/

These guys call themselves an “interactive magazine,” and you can set up a blog under them. Heavily celebrity oriented, and a pretty stunning Alexa ranking of 386. Guess people must like looking at photos of celebrities. Goodness knows why.

How To Improve Your Search Engine Ranking

Mark Knowles — Sun, 09 May 2010 20:33:22 +0000

How To Improve Your Search Engine Ranking By Building a Link Wheel Using Automatic Software

Most people attempting to market a product or service on the Internet are faced with an issue. A big issue – generating search engine traffic to their web pages through search engine rankings.

My most favorite way – which is often ignored by the Internet marketing and make money online brigade – is to write decent content in the first place. I am slowly learning why this is often ignored, but the writer in me feels obliged to turn out decent content when putting metaphorical pen to paper. Combine this with a large amount of incoming links and you are well on your way to success.

Link Wheels

Link wheels are one of the most effective ways of building backlinks to your webpages, but they can be extremely time consuming. I am going to assume a level of knowledge on your part in this article and take is as read that you already know how to create incoming links, you have researched and know the anchor text you are targeting and are familiar with both a computer and the Internet.

When I promote a webpage, I want multiple pages ranking on the first page of the search results for multiple related terms on multiple search engines and I am going to show you how to do that using a pretty complex, automated link wheel building system. Go ahead and tell me it is overkill – I don’t care. If you want multiple pages ranked for multiple terms on the first page of the results on multiple search engines – follow these instructions. Or pay me to do it for you using my link building services. This will improve your search engine rankings and increase your organic search traffic.

First of all – what is a link wheel?

This is a graphical representation of a link wheel

Basic Link Wheel

What you have is your money site in the middle of the wheel, and as you move out from the money site, there are quality sites pointing at your site which also link to each other. We are going to go a number of steps further than this with more sites pointing at those sites and everything interlinking. But – at the centre of the wheel – and the ultimate goal – is your money site.

This is how to go about building a wheel similar to this one with as much automation as possible. It is not possible to completely automate the process, and – sorry to say – you are going to have to do some work. But, these are a few tools that will cut the workload down to a reasonable level.

Step One

Build at least five “Web 2.0” sites linking to your site. I hate the term “web 2.0” as it is just marketing bullshit, but – for want of a better term, this will suffice. Hubpages would be included as a “web2.0” property, and any number of the free blogging platforms such as blogger or wordpress.com would also count. Basically, any shared site where a lot of other people come and post content would count. Build them using quality content that adds some value. Do not simply dump copied content.

This is a brief list of five, and there are no shortage of these sites around – there is a list with more here – free blogs.

I recommend varying the sites you choose to do this step for as much as possible to avoid leaving an obvious footprint. I also recommend setting up a new account with a different user name and email address each time. That will not be so practical at hubpages and a few other sites, but you can do this at most of the free blogging sites.I will discuss leaving a footprint in more detail further in.

So – you now have your money site and 5, “web 2.0” pages linking to your money site. Use anchor text in the links to your money site based on the keywords you are targeting. You can – if you wish – build more than 5 of these sites, but I suggest starting with 5 and if the keywords you have targeted are highly competitive, you may need to come around and do a second pass, repeating the steps here.

First Tool – Article Spinner

Using an article spinner to create unique content on these sites is the easiest way to begin. You will need one, 400 – 500 word article that is 100% unique. You can either write it yourself – or buy an article form any number of freelance writers. Now – buy this tool – The Best Spinner. You will then be able to produce a vast amount of similar, but unique articles – five of which you will use at these web 2.0 sites.

Google have accidentally created an entire business around this subject. Article spinning – some of which produces horrendous garbage – is the bane of any article marketers existence. Many a time I will find an article I have written that has been put through a spinner or multiple translations through several languages – all to produce unique content to use for link building.

What a pain in the ass this is – I hate it – absolutely detest it. But – I need to create incoming links and this is the most time and cost-effective way of producing the content – so – go buy an article spinner. If not this one then another. You are never going to be able to produce several hundred unique articles fast enough any other way. And you are going to need a lot.

Either way – this is absolutely the best I have found so far. $7 up front as a trial and the $77 per year make this thing absolutely the best value article spinner on the web. It is learning all the time, and every time you – or any one else – adds a synonym to the database, it grows.

Buy it here – The Best Spinner

Building the Web 2.0 Pages

So – now you have several hundred versions of your original article, use five of them to create pages at five of the sites you have decided on. I will use the five I listed as an example. Hubpages is extremely good as a first line of link building and you can also link these five sites together.

So – let’s say you start by using hubpages, and add a link back to your money site. Now – add a another article to blogger with a link to your money site and the hubpages article. Now add a page at wordpress.com with a link to the hubpage and your money site; now a page at Squidoo with a link to your money site and the wordpress page, now an article at ezine articles with a link to your money page and the Squidoo lens.

So – you are getting the picture. All the sites link to your money site, and interlink with each other. I suggest – and I will go into this in more detail – that if you are using adsense to monetize your main site – you do NOT sign up and use the revenue sharing possibilities with adsense at any of these secondary sites.

Step Two – Create multiple links to your money site and these web 2.0 pages using OneWay Links

OneWay Links is a blog network that allows you to post multiple instances of spun articles (The Best Spinner will produce them for you) to create more links to your sites. I suggest a link to your main site along with random links to you web 2.0 pages – all using the anchor text you are targeting. What you need to do is give them access to a self hosted wordpress blog of your own, and they will add posts with outgoing links.

Simple, almost completely automated once you have created the articles and will generate hundreds of links to your money site and secondary pages. It is not practical to try linking these together, but – that does not matter. They are all on widely diverse IP addresses spread all over the world. Link them all to your money site using the same anchor text.

People keep telling me that it is vital to mix the anchor text up. Do not worry about this, because you will naturally generate some organic links and accidental links that will do this for you; you will naturally find secondary keywords that you want to rank for; and another piece of software in this list will take care of this issue for you anyway. Regardless, 1WayLinks is absolutely worth the money – $47 per month.

Buy it here – OneWay Links

Step Three – Create another three or more levels of links using BRUTE FORCE SEO

This is perhaps the most powerful SEO tool I have ever used. On it’s own it is stunningly powerful, but we are going to use it to promote, not only our money site, using the anchor text we are after, but the web 2.0 properties as well. EVO II is going to do the following with very little work on your part.

The BRUTE FORCE SEO Link wheel

Create websites using article content provided by you, or sourced by the software at the same time providing powerful links in these websites pointing back to your money site.
Promote your articles to the top Article Directories on the Internet.
Provide links on the top social bookmarking websites on the Internet.
Submit your RSS feeds and your new sites RSS feeds to the top RSS Aggregators on the Internet while at the same time, mashing your new URL’s and existing RSS feeds
Promote these new feeds to the top RSS aggregators on the Internet.
Promote your links on the top Video Directories on the Internet.
Put your links on extremely powerful High Page Ranked Websites on the Internet, while at the same time, blending these high page rank account URL into new RSS feeds and
Promote these new RSS feeds to the top RSS Aggregators, providing your money site powerful 1 2 and 3, one way links

First – use EVO II to add links to your money site. EVO II will give you a list of links it has created. Keep them for a later stage. Then use it to promote your second tier web 2.0 properties and keep the list it produces. This will have then built three or more layers of links all separate and unrelated to the previous layers. I love this thing and it has paid for its – rather high – cost over and over. $157 a month and worth every penny

Buy here – BRUTE FORCE SEO

Step Four – Create thousand of links from social bookmarking sites using Bookmarking Demon

Bookmarking Demon is an automated way of setting up and adding links to a massive array of social bookmarking sites. You can set up dozens of user accounts at literally hundreds of social bookmarking sites, and them automatically add links to your own pages. Once you have created multiple accounts at multiple sites, start submitting all of your links into Bookmarking demon. Add the following links in to disguise what you are doing:

Your money site – all pages
Your web 2.0 pages
All OneWayLinks blog posts that link to your money site and web 2.0 pages
All Links and RSS feeds that EVOII has created.

Bookmarking Demon will now submit all of these randomly to any number of social bookmarking sites. Last step – Ping all the bookmarks that bookmarking Demon has created.

I am not going to feed you a line – this is an absolute bastard to learn how to use. But – once you have mastered it, you can create thousands of links. The trick is to not add too many links to the same domain using the same text. But – this is not an issue – you now have hundreds, if not thousands, of different domains to link to – all of which lead – eventually – back to your money site. It is inexpensive – a one off payment of $147 with free updates for life. It is slowly becoming easier to use, and this is the closest step to spammer behaviour in the process because it generates thousands of links – but they are well disguised. Once again – worth the money.

Buy here – Book Marking Demon

Dominating a search term

If you want to dominate a search term, or attack a keyword that has high levels of competition – this is the way to do it. I have been using this technique successfully for some time now and have hands on experience with all this software.

The only one that has caused me any issues is Bookmarking demon because it is so complex, but it is worth taking the time and trouble to learn how to use. This software can be largely left to its own devices once you have set it up. BRUTE FORCE SEO is absolutely the best piece of software here and will actually work all on its own if your niche is not so competitive. 1WayLinks is inexpensive and of course Bookmarking Demon can also be used on it’s own, but I have found combining them to be very, very effective.

What you are creating here is a three to seven-level link wheel to your money site, a three to six-level link wheel to all your web 2.0 pages and mini link wheels around everything. Very powerful.

Leaving a footprint.

The advantage of combining these pieces of software is they all come from different places, all use different approaches and none of them leave a footprint. A lot of the links you are generating are to sites that you have absolutely no connection with. This approach will generate a large amount of safe, relevant backlinks with minimal effort.

If you are using google adsense as your monetization method on your main money site, I recommend not using google adsense on any of the revenue sharing sites you may have chosen as your first line of attack. This is an obvious footprint and the small amount of revenue lost will be made up – hopefully – with increased revenue on your main site.

Conclusion and further reading

I have read an awful lot of stuff over the last few years about generating links. Some people think it is un-necessary; some say it is a waste of time; some people do it and some do not there are plenty of pother pieces of software being touted and they all promise fantastic results, many of which are total garbage and will do absolutely nothing for your rankings or search engine traffic. I am not going to bother listing the stuff I have tried that did not work. But – take it from me – not all links and software are the same.

There is more than one way to skin a cat, and I promise you – this works. It also takes time, effort and money and it also requires that you have done some homework and are reasonably certain you can recoup the expenditure. The reason it works is because you are taking the trouble to make sure that all the incoming links to your money site have some value, by building links to them and pinging the links in the farthest edges of the wheels. You are also giving value to all the sites in the wheel and are actively helping to build the web 2.0 sites and other blog’s authority.

Depending on the level of competition for the niche you are trying to rank for – you may need to create another batch of web 2.0 pages, do another pass targeting a different keyword or redo these steps.

As far as I am concerned – I have given you all the ammunition you need to get the search engine rankings and traffic you need right here in this article. And if you think this is too much money to spend ranking for your search terms – you are targeting the wrong terms. 8-) And for those of you familiar with my work – yes – this was published at hubpages originally, but triggered their “overly promotional” filter and was unpublished. After consideration and discussion – I decided to publish it here instead, despite the fact that it did not break their TOS – but – if it is that close to breaking their rules, I don’t want to mess with their mojo.

I am also available for hire and will build a link wheel for you – using this or other techniques – contact me here for details – Mark Knowles

Link Building Software

Mark Knowles — Fri, 07 May 2010 16:03:30 +0000

Article Web Sewers and Blog Spam

Mark Knowles — Wed, 05 May 2010 22:01:30 +0000