Unfortunately, I had so many spam comments that I just deleted them all. My apologies to the legitimate comments in the past year that got deleted, too. With the new version of Wordpress I should be able to keep up with moderating comments now.

If you find links not working, do let me know. It’s hard to tell what plugins might not be working, and it’ll be slow going for me to double check each.

In other news, the ebook that I’d written long ago and intended to sell, will shortly be given away for free. I’ll post it here when I do, as a reward for the people who keep checking back here even after so long a time of inactivity.

On an SEO note, the search engine traffic to the blog has not dropped off due to my lack of updating the site. So while new sites do need regular updating to keep their rankings, established sites (mine had about a year and a half of regular posting) apparently do not. Something to keep in mind.

3 Comments

• At November 23, 2009, Josh wrote:

  Jay, I am glad to see you get back into the groove of things. It's been nearly a year since your last post but who cares! Maybe just set a goal to post once a week or maybe even once a month. Either way, welcome back! :-)

• At November 23, 2009, Jay wrote:

  Thanks Josh! I'm not sure how often the updates will be, but I'll put something up now and then.

• At March 6, 2010, Photoshop CS4 Training Online wrote:

  Thanks Jay for the SEO nugget you just share with us. I just started a new blog integrated to my existing website and I am trying to keep up with posting regularly. I have also noticed awhile back that another blog of mine has dropped in Google PageRank when I did not updated it for about 3 months. Then when I started posting again within 2 weeks the PR went back to its previous value.

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Phase One of the blog was the initial phase, where the focus was on regular posting and education. This was a year long phase, and most of what I was sharing was what I was learning as I was going, although a portion was the typical “Here’s a new program” sort of post.

Phase Two also focused on regular posting, although not quite so often, but more on mentoring. That phase focused more on posts from my actual experiences, designed to be helpful to those just starting out. I also started an official mentoring program over at The Advisory Panel, but that didn’t do well. It’s apparently tough to find people actually willing to put effort into being mentored.

Phase Three has come upon me as a bit of a surprise, because of other (non IM related) projects I’ve gotten involved in. I haven’t had the time for regular posts for a couple of weeks now, so I’m going to make it official. From now on, every post on this blog will be directly related to IM projects I am working. There will be no more of the “Here’s a new program” type of posts, unless I have tried and seen value in the program.

Frankly, I expect the irregular posting to kill my search engine rankings. I’ve made some good money in the last year and a half from Google sending people my way (and continue to do so, through residual income), but I’d rather increase the quality of the posts than keep them coming at regular intervals.

So, what can you expect as an RSS subscriber? Less frequent posts, so don’t delete the blog from your RSS reader. The posts will all directly apply to either a project I’m working on, or a technique or service that I have personally tried (whether I’ve seen positive or negative results from it).

I hope you all stick around for Phase Three, and enjoy the posts!

3 Comments

• At September 12, 2008, Gaje Master wrote:

  Well, this should be interesting. At least I will know about a program in advance. Thanks for the hard work and dedication.

• At September 16, 2008, Ruby Web wrote:

  But it's hard to tell for sure if an online opprtunity is legit or not. There are so many fake schemes out there.

• At October 14, 2008, BobNikonson wrote:

  [quote comment=""]But it's hard to tell for sure if an online opprtunity is legit or not. There are so many fake schemes out there.[/quote]

  All "fake schemes" are well-known in online and are old as a world.

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This one’s an ebook, but rather than a general information ebook like Link Cloaking 101, this one is going to be a down and dirty, nuts and bolts, how-to for creating your own neglected niche sites.

I’ve posted now and then about my neglected niche sites, and how they’ve done surprisingly well, given how little work they require. In the new ebook I walk you through creating and promoting such a site, using one of my latest as an example. The site I use as an example is currently on page 1 of Google and in the #1 spot on MSN for its keyword, so you’ll be able to verify that the techniques work.

The ebook itself is ready, but I’m determined to do this one right, so I’m setting up Rapid Action Profits to handle the distribution of the ebook.

I’ll let you know when it’s ready for download.

6 Comments

• At September 3, 2008, Christmas wrote:

  Don't forget to let us know. I think your ebook will be worth reading indeed

• At September 4, 2008, pearl wrote:

  [quote comment=""]Don't forget to let us know. I think your ebook will be worth reading indeed[/quote]

  looking forward to the ebook Jay.. about "I am determined to do this one right" Is there another one too?

• At September 4, 2008, Jay wrote:

  Hi Pearl! The Link Cloaking 101 ebook was the first one...about the only thing about the whole distribution process for that I did right was requiring an opt-in to get it. Beyond that there wasn't any process for following up, providing needed tools at a commission, etc. I'm realizing it all has to be laid out in advance to expect to have much benefit from giving away valuable information.

• At September 14, 2008, Michelle wrote:

  i`m also looking forward into this...

• At September 16, 2008, Ruby Web wrote:

  Great! I'm looking forward to it. It sounds like a very to the point book. I like that. Well you could just leave a link here on this website for us when it's ready.

  Thank you,

• At September 16, 2008, Jay wrote:

  [quote comment=""]Great! I'm looking forward to it. It sounds like a very to the point book. I like that. Well you could just leave a link here on this website for us when it's ready.[/quote]

  I'll definitely let you all know about it when it's ready. There should be an opportunity to earn something from referring others to it, so I'll announce it here well before advertising it elsewhere, so readers can benefit first.

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SezWho is a commenting service that will combine with EntreCard to earn you EntreCard credits for commenting on SezWho enabled blogs. I’m a bit skeptical about the whole thing, because the quality of EntreCard traffic is pretty bad already, this may just lead to a deluge of junk comments. Supposedly, you can rate down junk comments and the person who left them won’t receive EntreCard credits for it.

Personally, I want to test the integration between SezWho and the Wordpress comment moderation system. Wordpress does well at allowing me to not publish junk comments, so if SezWho plays nicely with Wordpress, I shouldn’t have to worry too much about more spam.

I’m excited about some of the features of SezWho, including the ability to follow a specific individual’s comments across all SezWho enabled blogs. If someone leaves an especially good comment here, I can see what they’ve left elsewhere, too, and subscribe to their comments no matter where they leave them. It’s a bit like subscribing to a blog, but with comments instead.

SezWho has a lot of potential to create a sense of blogging community, but we’ll see how it goes. I’ve just enabled the plugin on this blog, so the theme integration may be a bit off until I get a chance to work with it more.

What do you think about SezWho?

4 Comments

• At July 18, 2008, Nicole Price wrote:

  Sez Who sounds interesting, thanks for the review. This is something that you install on your blog? I dont use Entre card so I am not so clear how this works.

• At July 18, 2008, Jay wrote:

  Hi Nicole, it's installed as of yesterday. Basically, SezWho just tracks comments you make at any SezWho enabled blog. The Entrecard tie in is an extra benefit for those users.

  The "Who Am I?" link next to your name in the comments was added by SezWho, and will show all the comments you've made on this blog (and others, I think, if you're a SezWho user).

• At July 20, 2008, Connie wrote:

  I didn't try it out because it seemed that everyone's blog that had this plugin was loading so slowly. Now it seems to be loading fine. I may give it a go seeing this change.

• At July 21, 2008, Jay wrote:

  Hi Connie! I haven't experienced any problems, so maybe it was a temporary server issue on their end.

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There are lots of good reasons for this, including spending more time with my daughter. What’s really driven me to do it, though, is the fact that we’ll be taking two weeks during June for vacations. I’ll be out of Internet contact for those two weeks, and am facing the prospect of writing enough posts ahead to cover the time.

When you start to think about writing that many posts ahead of time, you start to realize that most of what you write won’t be good quality. It’ll be filler, because you’re forcing yourself to write a lot of posts in a short time frame, rather than wait for the post ideas to arise naturally over the course of doing business online.

So by cutting back on my posting, I hope to keep the quality of the posts up even during the time when I’m not online. Rather than having five posts a week, one every weekday, during the summer I’ll post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

I hope everyone out there has some fun plans for the summer, and takes the time to enjoy them!

4 Comments

• At June 5, 2008, Eric Go wrote:

  Good Luck on your summer. And I do look forward to reading quality articles, though lesser. :-)

• At June 6, 2008, Make Online Money wrote:

  Summer-time puts a crunch on all of our schedules. But you could always write a few extra posts ahead of time and have them ready to go on days when you're too busy! :)

• At June 6, 2008, Jay wrote:

  I guess my real problem is that I'm writing for too many sites! I have managed to schedule enough posts for all the sites to cover next week's vacation, but only just.

• At June 11, 2008, Nicole Price wrote:

  I generally do three to four posts a week, and i find that that is an optimum number for me, frequent enough to keep me in the groove and not so frequent that i run out of ideas :)

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Unfortunately, I have had little time to even get anything up to test! I do have one banner up right now, that will appear above the post title on the index and single post pages. For now I’m going to stick with CPA banners, the ones that pay me for a visitor clicking through and taking some action (signing up, typically). Eventually I’ll add a few more and they’ll rotate.

I’ll try that for about a month, and then switch to a PPC model for a month to see how that goes. I’ll report the results back here, of course, when I’m through with a test period. The results should apply well to any blog in the same niche.

4 Comments

• At May 30, 2008, Caroline wrote:

  If your looking for ways to monetise your blog then textadsearch.com lists and reviews lots of methods to do this.

  Testing is the best way to figure what works best, some sites work better with one type of monetisation whilst another site may work better with some other method.

• At May 30, 2008, Jay wrote:

  Hi Caroline, you're absolutely right, and I think that's one of the things that convinces many people there's no money to be made online. They want a recipe, and there just isn't one other than try, test, and try again.

• At May 31, 2008, Money Ideas wrote:

  Sponsored reviews is a very good way to monetize your blog.

  I would also suggest you try Adsense and Bidvertiser.

• At May 31, 2008, Jay wrote:

  I do plan on testing Adsense and Bidvertiser, although I probably won't do sponsored reviews. I get a lot of requests to do them through my contact form, but the whole purpose of the blog is unbiased reviews. I don't feel that a sponsored review can be unbiased.

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Part of the prize was a month of banner exposure on this blog. You can see the banner over at the top of the right sidebar. That was the easiest place to put a banner, since I haven’t quite had time to work out adding banners to other spots on the blog yet. The banner will run for at least a month (a month plus however long it takes me to find time to replace it).

The idea behind the blog promotion package is to provide some new traffic to an existing blog from a variety of sources. In addition to the banner here, I’ll be writing some articles and submitting them to EzineArticles.com, and I’ll be paying for a bit of banner promotion over at Project Wonderful. With any luck the combined effort will give Connie’s blog a traffic boost.

While you’re reading this anyway, head on over to Brain Foggles and see what Connie has to offer!

4 Comments

• At May 14, 2008, Caroline wrote:

  I haven't been following but will take a look. I see Mr Rowse of ProBlogger has recently stopped by, I do hope you offered him some tea and cake.

• At May 14, 2008, Harmony wrote:

  What is BrainFoggles direct URL?

• At May 14, 2008, Jay wrote:

  It's http://shawnsbidness.com/blog/

• At May 14, 2008, Jay wrote:

  [quote post="563"]I see Mr Rowse of ProBlogger has recently stopped by, I do hope you offered him some tea and cake.[/quote]

  We have virtual refreshments set out for all our visitors. Enjoy!

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The blog has come a long way since that first post. My original thought with the blog, to chronicle my experiences in Internet Marketing, so that others can learn from them, is still my guiding mission. The level of sophistication in the tips and techniques has risen quite a bit, though, as I advance through the learning curve.

Most blogs don’t last six months of daily posting, because of the huge pressure to create posts. I’ve survived only because my posts are drawn, generally, from my experiences in Internet Marketing. That’s key…I’m actually doing what I talk about, and so always have ideas for new posts (generally from problems I’ve solved lately, or screwups I’ve made).

What does the next year hold for the blog and for me? Here is some of what I see in store:

Mentoring

I see so many people approaching Internet Marketing the wrong way, promoting the latest system or product launch using the same tired techniques that other people who don’t know what they’re doing tell them to use. I’ve tried creating targeted email courses to help people learn more effective techniques, but people sign up for the courses and then you never hear whether they learned anything or not.

This year my focus will be on personal mentoring. I certainly don’t know it all yet, but I’m far enough advanced on the learning curve to save newbies a lot of time and money, perhaps keeping them on the curve instead of having them quit in disgust, several thousand dollars poorer.

My mentoring will be available to Advisory Panel members only. It’s a free forum, so there’s no risk to joining to take advantage of the mentoring.

While I regularly help out Advisory Panel members with keyword research help, and we have regular contests for participation, the level of help my mentoring students get will be a cut above that. I’ll create a private forum area for each mentoring student where we can discuss what they’re doing and how to improve it, and measure progress.

Mentoring will be free, but there will be a limited number of slots (I only have so much time!) To qualify for mentoring, you must:

1. Be an Advisory Panel member
2. Be willing to take advice that might contradict what you’re hearing on “guru” lists
3. Be motivated to do the work!
4. Be prepared to be in it for the long-term

Read more about this offer and how to apply in the Announcements section, the thread titled Mentoring Available.

More Guest Posting Opportunities

This week’s guest posting binge was the first time that someone else’s writing was featured on the blog. For the next year, I want to provide other bloggers in the niche with a regular opportunity to get their writing posted here. They benefit because of the extra exposure, traffic, and backlinks, and I benefit because that’s one day I don’t need to write a post.

Guest posting will be limited to a maximum of once a week. Posts must be high quality (generally higher quality than my “one off posts”), and should link to non-spammy sites. Educational types of posts are the rule, although if you want to review something, go ahead and submit the idea. If I have no interest in reviewing the product, and think it would be useful to my readers, I may give you the go ahead.

To apply for the next available guest posting slot, use the contact form on the blog.

Monetization

Yes, this blog will become monetized this year, in some way.

Right now, the only monetization on the blog is from affiliate links to products I have reviewed. I stick an affiliate link even into negative reviews, figuring that if you buy it even after I’ve told you it isn’t worth it, I might as well benefit.

The affiliate links on the blog actually earn very little. By the time I review any particular product, the chances are good that every “guru” has not only sent a ringing endorsement out to their list (said endorsement usually written for them by the product owner), but they’ve also offered tons of free bonuses for you to buy through their link. Affiliate marketing works better in other niches, where you don’t have the same culture of gurus and bonuses.

For the amount of time I invest into the blog, I’ve decided it needs to pay for itself. I’m not sure yet what method of monetizing I’ll use, but I still want to make sure that nobody mistakes an advertisement for something I endorse, as happened on John Chow dot com (somebody used Adsense site placement to place a graphic ad that said, “John Chow Recommends This”).

I will likely test various monetization options over the spring and summer, giving each two or three weeks to see what works best. I plan on using the Who Sees Ads plugin to make most ads not show to regular readers, but you’ll still see them until the plugin decides that you’re a regular (however it makes that decision).

Mostly Same Old, Same Old

I might cut back on the number of posts each week if I think that I can produce higher quality posts that way, but right now I don’t have any plans to do that.

Otherwise, you can expect the quality of content on the blog to remain the same, and for the sophistication of it all to increase as I continue to learn.

Thanks for being a reader!

6 Comments

• At April 20, 2008, Wade wrote:

  Nice site. Happy birthday to it as well. A bit of a long post, but the site deserves some extra attention on its birthday.

• At April 21, 2008, Connie wrote:

  Congrats on your blog's anniversary! That's a big milestone for sure. I understand when you say that you can can post regularly here because your blog is based on your own experiences. That makes a blog an enjoyable read. It also makes you feel trusting of the information provided.

• At April 21, 2008, Azlan Hussain wrote:

  Happy birthday and thanks for sharing.. will come back for more of your interesting post. :)

  cheers,

• At April 21, 2008, Jay wrote:

  Thanks, everyone!

• At April 22, 2008, Tom Lindstrom wrote:

  Congratulations! This is a great blog, hopefully there will be many many years still to come!

• At May 5, 2008, Pol Wealth wrote:

  [quote comment=""]Congratulations! This is a great blog, hopefully there will be many many years still to come![/quote]

  Indeed we have to find a good way to monetize your blog or website. I have found a way that i use myself.

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For anyone who didn’t catch the first announcement, I’ll be doing a guest posting marathon just before the one-year anniversary of this blog. I’ll do the actual anniversary post on April 18th, but the days leading up to that will be guest posts by readers, to give their writing and their sites exposure to a new audience.

Posts must be educational in nature, and not an opportunity review.

So far the line up includes a great tutorial that will be of interest to anyone using Wordpress, a post about getting the most out of guest blogging, and a post that gives great advice on doing network marketing over the Internet. There’s a lot of ground that could still be covered, though, so if you have an idea for an educational post that you think readers would like, contact me and ask about being one of the guest bloggers.

We have only about a week before I’ll start running the posts, though, so don’t delay too long!

2 Comments

• At April 5, 2008, Zack wrote:

  I'm not a common reader. Is this still ongoing, because if it is I'd love to contribute.

• At April 5, 2008, Jay wrote:

  Hi Zack, yes this is still ongoing. Submit an idea for a post topic via the contact form, and I'll let you know if it sounds reasonable, then you can do a first draft.

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Looking ahead to the one-year anniversary of Online Opportunity, I’m interested in doing something different than I’ve done before. The anniversary, measured by the date of my “Welcome” post, will be April 18th, just a bit over three weeks away. I’d like to take a little time off daily blogging during that time, and give readers who want some more exposure for their writing an opportunity to guest blog here.

So if you think you want to give guest blogging a try here, contact me and let me know what topic you’d want to write a post on, and give me a couple of links to posts or articles you’re especially proud of. If your post idea sounds on topic, I’ll ask for a first draft. If that looks good, you can finish the post and be featured here in a few weeks.

Some ground rules:

1) Posts must be of the educational variety. You can post a tutorial about something, you can explain something that is widely misunderstood, or whatever. But no posts that simply advertise the latest opportunity, and no opportunity reviews.

2) Posts should contain an “About the Author” section at the end where you say who you are and have two or three links to sites of your own. I reserve the right to disallow links that are to spammy sites, since in Google’s eyes it’ll be my blog recommending that site.

3) Inside the post, link appropriately to sites you recommend. An affiliate link is okay, as long as it adds value to the post’s topic. Again, no links to spammy sites, unless they’re an example of how to not do what you’re teaching.

I’m willing to take a fairly large number of guest bloggers for this, assuming the quality of the posts are suitable. And one person can do more than one guest post if you want, although I’ll give preference to showcasing as many different authors as possible.

I’m looking forward to driving some traffic your way!

10 Comments

• At March 26, 2008, Guest Bloggers Wanted - Bloggeries Blog Forum wrote:

  [...] Online Opportunity, for the one-year anniversary of the blog. You can read the full details here: * Guest Bloggers Wanted*by*Online Opportunity The short version is that posts must be educational in nature, and in keeping with the Internet [...]

• At March 26, 2008, LSKcrochet wrote:

  This seems like a great idea. I'm still trying to think of a topic. I think most of my site would be a little spammy because it links people to other web stores. I sometimes give opinions and promote handmade products. If you see anything that I can elaborate on let me know!

  http://lskcrochet.blogspot.com/

• At March 26, 2008, Jay wrote:

  I think your site is fine. The type of sites I'd avoid are the ones that are simply promoting an opportunity, or clearly made-for-Adsense sites.

  I get most of my ideas for posts based on problems I'm solving in my own marketing efforts at the time, so think in terms of what you've learned lately that really helped you. Especially Blogger related techniques, since a lot of people use Blogger.

• At March 28, 2008, Zero and Up wrote:

  I'm thinking about writing a guest post for you. If I have enough time to write two posts in one day over the next few days, I'll try and drop the extra one by you and see what you think.

• At March 28, 2008, Jay wrote:

  I'll look forward to seeing your post!

• At March 28, 2008, Jean Ann wrote:

  Hi Jay,

  I would love to guest, but I am unclear about the parameters for the post...could you give me a bit more? For example, would it be about blogs, about my blog, my blog's topic, etc...

• At March 28, 2008, Jay wrote:

  Hi Jean Ann! The post has to teach the reader how to do something related to making money online, getting quality traffic, working with Blogger, etc. Think about the things that you've learned since you started your blog that you really wished someone had written about.

• At March 31, 2008, Zero and Up wrote:

  I submitted a guest post, but it may have removed HTML formatting when I submitted it - I usually bold the titles of each paragraph and I had the last couple of sentences in italics.

  Hope you like the post I sent in :)

• At April 1, 2008, Jay wrote:

  Your post looks like a good one to lead out the anniversary week.

  The contact form did remove the HTML. I'll get you some feedback via email on the post, and when you give me a final draft try sending it as an attachment via email. That should keep the HTML intact.

• At July 14, 2008, 52 Blogs that Accept Guest Posts | PiggyBankPie wrote:

  [...] Online Opportunity - Submit a guest post Topics: How to make money online PageRank: 4 Alexa Rank: [...]

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