I love to make myself redundant. Thats why I always look to automate before I outsource.

On my journey to Ditch my Dayjob, I am now making some good progress. Adsense, SEO, PPC and PoF revenue streams are in place.

So Whats Next…

…PPV (Pay Per View) or also known as CPV (Cost Per View).

In PPC its all about finding the keywords that convert. On PoF its about the Demographics. In PPV it seems….URL’s and Keywords are key.

So I am creating my own URL scraper.

“Not another scraper!!”

I know that many already exist, but most of them are limited.

They are limited to just scraping google, bing and yahoo for the main keyword.

I want to go beyond that and build something that finds the unique profitable URLs that no one else is targetting.

Phase 1

As a first component to this new scraper I want to be able to give a theme keyword, and get a list of related terms. I have build it in Yahoo Pipes and Dapper, and currently gets related keywords from Google, Bing, and Search.com.

Example: Make Money

Below are the first 20ish related terms for the keyword “make money”:

Here is the Yahoo Pipe for the scraper.

Phase 2: Get URLs

The next phase will be to use the related keywords and grab a bunch of URLs for these. It will do the expected (Google, Bing, Yahoo) but I also want it to do the unexpected

Phase 3: Turn it into an online tool

Following phase 2, no doubt you want access to it. So I will build a quick web front end that will spit out a nice table of URLs and a downloadable CSV file.

What would you like to see me implement in this tool?

In the post earlier this week I shared with you that I had found a security hole. I am glad I made the right decision and today I notified the company responsible for the website.

I am sure they will have the hole plugged by the end of the day.

You probably want to know which site, but I am not going to share that information.

If your an internet marketer you will know how sacred your top performing keywords, ads, and landing pages are.

This is the only competitive advantage you really have…

…and this was the data I managed to get access to.

Are you looking for easy short term cut & paste routes to riches with minimal effort? You will be disappointed and probably hate me for not sharing this information.

Trust me though – I am doing you a favour. I recommend you do it yourself. Try, test, track and scale.

No doubt this saga has not finished, but the hole is plugged tight, and the data secure.

Now back to building my business with blood sweat and tears! I know I will succeed and this way I know it was me who achieved it.

Ta

Blue or Red

We all, every single day, come across opportunities – good and bad!

Some of these opportunities tempt you to ignore your values, ignore what you stand for and believe in, and join the dark side.

An age old dilema….

Do you go for fortune & riches? Or do you do the right thing?

Yesterday, for some bizarre reason, I stumbled upon such a dilema.

And I mean stumble.

I am not a big hacker. I am not a big web 3.0 wizard, that knows lots of stuff about XML, Ajax, Javascript and other such strange names.

And I am certainly not the latest and greatest internet marketing guru that is looking to pitch his latest product.

I am just an average bloke (where have we heard that before…honest I am not working up to a big Launch)…

…doing my utmost best to learn as much as possible so that I can one day achieve my dream, which is to actually have a life!

So should I cheat to Achieve my Goals?

Thats the question…

…And deciding took me an hour or so! Not long, I know.

It was actually an easy decision to make in the end.

Would I be able to sleep and live with myself if I took the shortcut? No

Would using this information make my life easier? Certainly

But with a sour taste in my mouth.

So….

You want to know what the opportunity is?

I wont go into detail and I will inform the company involved, but basically found a security hole in one of the worlds top 250 websites.

I guess its not so much a security hole, and certainly didnt involve any illegal hacking.

But it does…

…give me access to very interesting data people would pay big $$$ for to see

What am I going to do about it?

I guess I will do the right thing. Which is to:

• Confirm that I am not going mad and validate the data
• Notify the company involved of the security hole
• Blog about the experience

So make sure you come back to check the next installment of what possibly could be a fascinating story…

Let me know in the comments what you would do!

I’ve been slogging away finishing off my Adsense System with which you can easily Double, even * Tripple * Your Adsense Profits.

Just need to think of a catchy name? –> Comment below if you have any suggestions!

To give you a flavour of what it can do, here are some stats from 1 of my sites last year:

It took me about 5 weeks to achieve this, with an hour a week in effort

$416 profit per hour work

But How!!

The Law of Compounding

Paul Lemberg explained it well:

We call it the Law of Compounding and use it to describe how a business can grow dramatically by making a series of incremental changes to various elements of that business. This magic works reliably as long as the various elements are interrelated.

Whats Compounding got to do with Adsense…?

You will probably think about compound interest. But whats this got to do with adsense? Lots…

Adsense Revenue = Visitors * Page Views * Click Through * Google Revenue Share% * Cost Per Click

So a small improvement at each step will result in BIG improvements at the end.

Rule of 72

To know the %improvement needed in each step to double your profits, use the Rule of 72. All you need is to divide 72 by the number of interrelated steps.

I’ll ignore the Google Revenue Share at the moment as I dont think you can influence this unless your a HUGE publisher.

72 / 4 Steps = 18% Improvement

Here’s an example

Say your website has the following stats:

121 visitors per day, each view on average 3.4 pages. Your adsense click through rate is 1.4% and the average return per click* is $1.21.

-> What would you need to do to double your Adsense Profits?

• 21 extra visitors
• For every 10 visitors, get 6 to view an additional page
• 2 extra clicks on ads for every 1000 page views
• Use keywords that bring in an additional 0.21 per click

So there are 4 simple steps…

Step 1: Improve Your Search Engine Rankings

Most sites rank number 1 in the search engines for a couple of key phrases. They rank in the top 20 for many others. The simplest way to dramatically INCREASE your visitors is to focus on your top keywords for which you dont rank on number 1.

So what do you need to do?

• Take your list of keywords that drive traffic (i use google analytics), ranked by most visitors per day.
• For each keyword check your Search Engine rankings, drop all number 1 rankings from your list
• Using your favorite keyword tool also check the remaining keywords for target traffic
• Identify the ones with the biggest gap, where you are ranked between 6 and 10

Getting to the top 5 ranks, and moving up 1 spot will have a huge change on the number of visitors:

What this means is that moving from 5th rank to 4th rank on a keyword will increase your traffic for that keyword by 27%. Moving from 4th to 3rd will increase it by 42%.

The big jump though comes from moving from 2 to 1: 240% increase!!

So its easy to find an additional 21 visitors…

Just:

• Get more backlinks using your target keyword phrases identified above
• Make sure you bookmark (delicious, stumpleupon) the pages you create the bank links on (that way google will index them)
• See if you can include your target keyword phrase in the page title, description, and headings.

Step 2: Increase the Stickyness of your site

The key here is to improve the average pages viewed by each visitor.

Many ways to do this, here is just one way I have used…

In Google Analytics, run the report which shows you the pages with most traffic and their bounce rates. Identify your average, and then spot the pages that are a lot worse than the average.

Look at these pages or posts, and do some of the following:

• Include a clear link back to your home page or blog that a visitor cant miss
• Include at the bottom of the page links to related articles or posts
• Ask for comments (I use Disqus)

By reducing your bouncerate on those pages (say in half), you will easily achieve a 18% improvement in average pages per visitor.

Step 3: Improve Click through

Without people actually clicking on the ads, getting more visitors is pointless.

But…

NEVER CLICK ON YOUR OWN ADS OR ASK PEOPLE TO CLICK!

Here are some simple tips that will help to increase clickthroughs:

• Make sure your adsense ads blend with the content background. So when you have a white background on your site, set the adsense background and border colour to white.
• Set the Adsense Link colour to the same colour as all other links on your site
• Make sure it uses the same font (you can now specify your adsense fonts)
• Set the Adsense Display URL colour to the colour of the text
• Set Adsense text colour to a slightly darker version of your main content. For example, on a white background set your main text colour to: #111, and set your Adsense text colour and display url to #000
• Try out image ads and pure text ads and see whether this improves CTR and CPC.

Using the above simple steps, I increased my CTR by 127%:

So how difficult would it be to get only an 18% improvement? Easy!

Step 4: Get more Money Per Click

This is my Super Secret. I am not yet ready to share this, but I will give you some background and hints.

If your clever – you will probably figure it out yourself

Google decides which ads to show on a page based on the theme keywords identified by the advertiser and how well this relates to your page / content.

There is a way of finding out what google thinks your page is about.

All you then need to do is check the related keywords, spot the ones with a higher CPC, and include some content on your page with those keywords. You should also build some backlinks to your page with those keywords.

I did this on my site and my Profit per Ad went up from $0.12 to $0.15 on average -> a 25% increase!

So whats next…

Have a go at the above steps and share your results in the comments section below.

Also keep an eye out for further tips, tricks and secrets by:

Subscribing to this Blog | Following me on Twitter

Also - If you like this article, share it on twitter

Launch Your Adsense Blog For Free And Start Earning Daily Adsense Profits In Less Than 10 Minutes

When Steve and Tim (Commission & Niche Blueprint) published their Going Oldschool November 2009 training at The Im Advantage, I could not wait and create this on Blogger. A couple of days before, after extensive research, they recommend you use Blogger instead of Squidoo or Hub Pages.

Why?

So I Set To Work….

Now that I’ve got the templates ready, Its time to share with you Adsense Addicts out there.

You might think…

“I Thought You Could Not Make Any Money With Adsense? WRONG”

So wrong in actual fact. Just look at Google’s Financial Results. 30% of their revenue is generated through Adsense (ie Google Network).

Day 2 of the Thirty Day Challenge teaches you how to find out the keyword phrases for your micro niche. Today was a big video day, with loads of good stuff. Best of all – the tool – Market Samurai.

As usual, here is the mind map:

Todays lesson covered:

• Why we need to look for the “Phrase that Pays”
• What is a market and what are the criteria for markets we should focus on?
• How to use Market Samurai to identify your target Keyword Phrases
• Phrase vs Broad Match
• Embracing change

Why do you need the Phrase that Pays?

• A page on the internet does not really exist without a “Phrase”
• Visitors will only find your site if it targets the right Phrase
• Not all Keyword Phrases are the same – some are good, some are not
• Day 2 is therefore about finding the Phrase that Pays

What is a market?

A target market consists of:

1. a group of people with a common need or desire
2. that have the ability/capacity to pay
3. that are motivated to buy
4. with acceptable competition

Markets come in different sizes and shapes. The diagram below explains the difference between a market and a micro niche.

Using Market Samurai to identify your Target Keyword Phrases

During the 30dc we are targeting Keyword Phrases with the following criteria:

• SEOT >= 80 (Broad Match)
• SEOC <= 30,000
• PBR > 15%

The steps to identify your Theme Keyword for your micro niche are:

• Select market from your 30dc Day 1 action
• Create a new project for this market
• Enter high level, primary keyword, like Weight Loss, Dating, Guitar, etc
• Generate keywords (Google Synonym Tool ticked, Include additional, Google Search Keyword not ticket)
• Select a keyword that interests you
• Drill down (click the key symbol) & again generate keywords
• Filter keyword list as per the above criteria
• Review list & select theme keyword

Once you have identified your theme keyword, its important to generate at least three or four related category keywords with the same criteria (SEOT >=80. SEOC<=30k, PBT>15%).

Your website will need to contain additional pages for the category keywords. If there are less then three category keywords that meet the criteria, move on to a different market.

• Generate Keywords based on theme keyword (This time make sure Google Search Keywords is ticket)
• Analyze keywords
• Set filters
• Ensure you have at least 3 category keywords

Phrase vs Broad Match

Best to watch the video for this one. In summary, Brent outlines why SEOC is based on Phrase Match, whilst for SEOT we should be looking for Broad Match. This ensures we maximize traffic, and minimize competition.

Embracing Change

The only constant is change -> So get on with it!

Additional Tips & Resources

Some helpful sites / links:

• Market Samurai Videos -> for later – resist the urge to watch
• Google Adwords Keyword Tool
• Google Search Keyword Tool
• When using the above two online, always check the country setting as its set to your current country by default, where as Market Samurai by default is set to global.

Tips

• I have a “brainstorming” project setup in Market Samurai. In this I have created a master tab, called “Good Ideas Bucket” and I copy into this tab any keywords that look interesting so I can easily recall them in future. This way I can dig into a specific keyword, and then close the tabs once I found the keyword and moved it to the “Bucket”

• Check what Google think’s your site is about by entering your site URL in the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, Website Content. Also great for checking competitor sites.

• Keyword with High SEOT but very low PBR? Set Google Synonym to Ignore Additional, and tick Google Search Keyword. Generate Keywords, and then click Add Permutations before Analyzing Keywords. 9 out of 10 times I find the right keyword order with high PBR.

• Use the “More filters” setting in Google Search Keyword Tool to find more targeted keywords in each category. Here is an example of the Health category, showing most searched for keywords, with Cost Per Click > $1 and High Adwords Competition. Useful for Adsense sites.

The Thirty Day Challenge kicked off today. I will be keeping track of daily summaries of the key points for each day on this blog. This is kind of like my online notebook. Here’s my Thirty Day Challenge Day 1 Mindmap:

Content of day 1:

• 4 Critical parts to an online business
• How to overcome procrastination
• Brainstorming your micro niche

4 Critical parts to an online business

Or as Ed referred to it – Magnificent Symphony in Four Parts

• Market research
  • 95% of mistakes are made by choosing the wrong market
  • Many people start with the product. Wrong! Start by identifying the market
  • Qualify your market by asking: 1) Is there a market? 2) Is the market interested in buying?
• Traffic
  • 30dc will focus on 3 ways of generating traffic, 2 free ones, 1 paid for [no further info provided today]
• Conversion
  • Conversion = get a visitor to take a action you want (ie buy product, download report, register email, etc)
  • Ed’s performance –> 1 sale every 200 visits
• Product
  • Once you have tested the market, and visitors are converting, develop a product
  • Use the market to tell you what they want

How to overcome procrastination

Why do we procrastinate?

• Fear of failure
• Fear of success
• Fear of what others might think

How do you stop procrastinating?

• Break through the fear. Look at why you are afraid and let go of it
• Stop feeling sorry for yourself
• Break large jobs up into small manageable parts
• Ask yourself – If not now, When?
• Only focus on those things that are important. Forget about the unimportant.
• Make time to focus on creating, reviewing & actioning your todo list
  

Brainstorming your micro niche

This is about generating ideas, without worrying about how viable they are.

• Get a real notebook, and always write your ideas down as soon as they come to you.
• Start with topics that you are passionate about and that interest you.
• Dont just focus on the online/web world – look out into the real world. For examples, look at real magazines & papers
• Look at what people are selling through the magazines. Look at the adverts.
• For the 30dc, focus on a micro niche (niche in a niche), for example:
  • mega market > shopping
  • market > fashion
  • market segment > designer fashion
  • niche > alexander mcqueen [ie designer]
  • micro niche > alexander mcqueen skarfs
• Use the list of sites provided as part of day1 to get ideas, for example
• The magazine section on amazon:
  • Browse through the different topics
  • Look at number of magazines per topic to get a feel for “market size”
  • Scan through the magazine titles
  • Extrapolate for there, brainstorm related topics, write them down in your notebook
• The ehow website.
  • Select a category
  • Look at the How To’s that are shown
  • Spark other ideas from this > Brainstorm like with Amazon
• Springwise
  • Lists ideas for new innovative products & shows trends
  • Check daily for a couple of minutes

My additional tips, suggestions and resources

Procrastination

• Dedicate time to specific actions & use an egg timer to ensure you focus on the task at hand
• If needed, schedule activities in 15 – 30 min slots
• Switch off twitter, email, instant messenger
• Resist using the internet -> you will get distracted

Identifying your passion & interests

• Check your delicious / digg / stubleupon bookmarks, and identify the “tags” you have used most often
• What do you like reading? Look at the tv programs do you watch and why?
• In Google Reader, select the Trends view. Look at the tags you use most (tag cloud in bottom right corner). Also look at your “Trends”, in particular which rss feeds you have starred most in the last 30 days.
• Look at Amazon’s Best Selling Magazines
• On eHow, also look at the Top 10 eHow’s (bottom left sidebar on homepage), Popular Categories (bottom right on homepage), and the Top Requested Articles page.
• On Springwise, check the Top 5 Most Read (left hand sidebar, homepage, in the middle), or this great Top 10 for each Industry post
• Subscribe to the Sprintwise RSS feed in Google Reader

Hello world.

This is my first blogpost. Mainly just to help me test my theme and wordpress setup. Once its done, the real stuff will start.

What is it about?

• Track my 30dc progress
• Post stuff I think about & want to share
• Internet Marketing Scrapbook

What can you expect? Got a couple of draft posts lined up:

• 7 dum excuses why it took me 10 years to start blogging
• How to make the great Market Samurai even better? 10 ideas from a keyword junkie.
• How do you discover the leaders in your market?

Hope you enjoy it, and please leave comments & suggestions for improvement!