Did you know Google celebrates Valentine’s Day? I didn’t have a clue until I received a Valentine’s Day card in the mail. Yes, Google sent me a Valentine’s card!

I have no doubt I wasn’t the only one to get a card like this. Maybe you did, too?

As a Google Adsense Publisher, I usually get two or three mailings from Google each year promoting Google Adwords. Funny thing is that I’m also a Google Adwords user (or at least used to be). I haven’t ran any campaigns in over a year, so maybe that’s why they keep sending me these offers.

Basically, they send me promotions to give Adwords a try and offer a $100 coupon voucher. Now, since I already have an account which is several years old, none of the coupon codes they send me have ever worked for my account. Supposedly these offers are only for newer accounts.

However, the Valentine’s card I received a couple of weeks ago contained a coupon code that actually worked! I was literally stunned in amazement.

Google loves me!

LOL… at least that’s what I was thinking at the time. All other redemption codes had failed, but when I entered the this code into my account, it went through without a hitch.

I now have $100 in free Google Adwords advertising to play with.

I haven’t yet had a chance to test any campaigns, but you can bet your bottom I’ll be running at least one campaign.

I’ve made some money in the past with Adwords, but have sunk a lot of money as well. It’s a tough game if you’re not real good at it. Not to mention all of their new rules and regulations. It’ll be a while before I attempt it again, but I’ll keep you posted when I do.

Afterall, Google just gave me $100 in free, virtual money. I’d be stupid not to at least try.

Thank you, Google! It’s nice to know that you really do love me.

LOL…

Anyone else receive a Valentine’s card from Google? Did your redemption code work? What’s your experience with Adwords? Share your thoughts below…

After reading the title you’re probably thinking there’s no way that keyword research can be easy, let alone free. I think that too many people make keyword research a lot harder than it has to be. And, while paid tools are great when researching keywords, I think that for the majority of people they’re not needed.

What IS needed though is knowing how to do some basic keyword research when you’re looking to rank your articles, blog posts, and web pages on the first page of Google.

Keyword research is essential, and it’s a lot easier than you might think. I put together a video explaining how you can use a free tool to find “golden nuggets” that are going to provide the traffic you need. Follow that up with a little research on your competition, and you’ll be well on your way to getting a top 10 listing.

Once you find the keywords you want to use, remember to include those keywords when building backlinks to that article, blog post or web page. That’s how you’re going to build up your rankings in the search engines.

And, speaking of backlinks, the two methods of backlink building I recommend to get the fastest results is using Angela and Paul’s backlink building services. They are worth every penny and can produce massive results.

I hope with this little tip you’ll be able to bring in more traffic and sales for your online business.

You may recall a previous post I wrote the end of last month about Angela Edward’s backlink service. Well, as it turns out, there’s a guy by the name of Paul Johnson who also provides a similar service.

Paul’s service is almost identical to Angela’s. The only difference is that Paul provides 50 High PR one way backlinks every month, opposed to Angela’s 30. Another difference is that Paul’s backlinks  come from PR 4 and 5 sites, as well as higher PR sites. The lowest PR that Angela provides is 6, up to PR 9.

I highly recommend both services for website owners that are looking to increase their search engine ranking for their chosen keywords. With each site you’ll be able to create a backlink that links back to your site. The more one-way backlinks pointing to your site from high PR sites, the higher your website will rank in Google for that keyword phrase.

Getting quality, high PR one way backlinks to your website is critical, and Angela and Paul have provided a way for us to do just that for a very nominal fee. They’ve done the hard work in finding these sites. All we have to do is go create our links and watch our rankings increase. It really is that easy.

Get High PR Backlinks Now:

Angela’s Backlink Service

Paul’s Backlink Service

Both services combined give you 80 high PR one way backlinks every month.  That’s a huge steal.

Remember, you need high PR backlinks to your site. If you don’t jump on this opportunity to increase your search engine rankings, your competitors will. I personally use both with very positive results for all of my websites.

I’ve been running Google Adsense ads on my website for well over a year now. I’ve made a decent amount of money from it so far, but not enough to get overly excited about. I know many who make a living from Adsense alone, but there are those who would rather use an Adsense alternative.

If you’re currently using Google Adsense, or perhaps Google banned your account (read this post by Peter Lee to find out how to prevent it from happening to you), and you’re looking for an alternative to Adsense, you may be interested in Yarie.com.

Yarie doesn’t automatically generate content related ads like Google Adsense, but instead, the ad categories are pre-chosen for you based on the niche of your website. For example, my site is geared towards the work from home and make money online niche. The categories that they choose would revolve around the niche, sort of like a sub-niche, if you will.

The best example of this would be on this site. If you go to my Replace Your Salary home page, look at the top right sidebar, and you’ll notice the heading “Real Online Jobs.” Below the heading are online job categories, which are the ads.

There’s not as much customization available to you as there is with Google Adsense ads, but so far I’ve seen good results. I’ve been running these ads from Yarie for two months now, which have actually made me more money than my Adsense ads.

Check out the screenshot below of my earnings for the past two months of using Yarie:

It’s not a whole lot, but consider the fact that this is completely automated, and I do nothing extra.

Setup is easy as well, although a little more complicated than with Adsense. You’ll have a piece of code to place anywhere on your site that you want the ads to show up, just like with Adsense. The difference is that you’ll also have to create another web page and upload it to your server. Details will be given to you and are easy to follow.

Once you’re setup, you’ll want to place the ads as close to the top of your page as possible. The closer to the top, the better the click-through-rate you’re going to get.

Right now I only have Yarie ads on my home page, and as I said, they’re performing better than my Adsense ads that I have on many different pages. I believe Yarie is a very good Google Adsense alternative, and I will continue to use them.

**UPDATE**

Moments after writing this review, I got a check in the mail in the amount of $43.20 for July’s earnings. See scan below:

Are you looking for an Adsense alternative? What do you think about Yarie from reading this post? Leave your comments below…

If you own a website then I’m sure you know the importance of obtaining backlinks from high PR sites. If you’re not aware of this, then listen up. It’s important to get as much free organic traffic from the search engines as possible. One indirect way to do this is through free directory submission.

There are literally thousands of web directories available for you to submit your site to. Some are obviously better than others, and you’ll want to focus on the high PR directories. Getting backlinks from high PR directories will not only increase your PR (Page Rank), but also increase your search engine rankings.

This means more traffic to your site. I’m always searching for ways to get more traffic from the search engines. It’s the lifeblood of any website or internet based business. As I was searching I came across a site with a huge list of high PR web directories to submit my site to. Some I have heard of and already have my site listed there, and others I haven’t.

I’ve been going through this list the last couple of days and making use of the free directory submission. Some directories require a payment, and others require a reciprocal link. I’ll settle for a reciprocal if I have to, but I opt not to when possible. I also don’t pay to be listed. There’s plenty of free directories to go around.

You can view this list by going to High PR Directory List. Now the point here is not to get traffic from the directories, although you might get some. The point here is to build backlinks to your site from high PR sites. When it comes to traffic and ranking well in the search engines, especially Google, it’s all about the backlinks. The more the better.

So do your website a favor and make good use of free directory submissions. Once approved, you’ll have built more high PR backlinks to your site and should see your site slowly moving up in the search engines. Remember to use your keywords in the Title of your submissions.

Was this article helpful? Leave your comments below…

Last week I made a post titled I Hate Thieves! Blogger Steals My Content! and ranted about a blogger who took one of my articles and deleted my links. I sent the owner of the blog an email via the contact page and hadn’t heard back.

Well today I received an email from the owner after two weeks of having sent the email. Here is what the blog owner said…

Thank you for your check my blog, I have already put your website link in my article with keyword “work from home online business” in my webpage http://www.getcashonline.org/work-from-home-online

Now obviously the owner doesn’t speak very good English, but you get the idea. This came as a bit of a surprise to me. Of course, I actually went to the page and made sure that he really did add my link. It’s there, along with the other million links he added of his own.

I need to correct him, though. He stated that he placed my link in “his article.” The fact is that he placed my link in MY ARTICLE. My link deserved to be there all along from the beginning when he decided to use my article.

This problem has been around forever, and it’s impossible to fight it completely. Most scraper blogs (blogs that scrape content from other sources, usually through RSS) steal content all the time with no recognition or link back to the source. I don’t think this is a scraper blog, but if you’re deleting links intentionally, then it might as well be one.

If you market your work from home business using article marketing then I’m sure you’ve been faced with this issue before. It’s not something you should get real worried about as it doesn’t happen too often, but it’s something you should be aware of. Not everyone is going to be honest. That’s just how it is.

There’s some rare cases, such as this one, where you can actually contact the owner and try to resolve the issue. This is the best case of action you can take. It really isn’t worth your time to pursue content thieves. Like I said, they’re the minority, not the majority.

Writing content for the web and marketing your online business comes with this risk. I just want you to be aware of it and realize that it’s going to happen. Fortunately for me I was able to revert this issue. If you want to eliminate this risk and get a much better reach for your articles then be sure to check out the Free Traffic System.

This also brings up another point and one I push quite heavily. If you haven’t heard of Google Alerts or don’t use it, you’re doing a disservice to you and your online business. It’s important to keep track of who’s talking about you and who’s linking to your websites. There’s no better way to do this than by setting up Alerts for your name and website domains. It’s fast and easy to do.

I hope my experiences here can help some of you. Don’t let this discourage you from writing content for marketing your work from home business. It’s an excellent way to get your name and business out there. Be sure to check out my Article Marketing Works video to see how its been helping me.

I’m a big fan of article marketing, and anyone who knows me will agree. I wouldn’t have created a whole article marketing proof video if I wasn’t 100% positive that it helps build your business for the long term. In fact, here’s my video below…

So what’s this whole Free Traffic System all about? Free Traffic System is the new age of article marketing: it has its advantages and does not have any disadvantages.

The advantages of both article marketing and Free Traffic System are obvious – Google and other search engines welcome and will always welcome the creation of new, useful, non-duplicate content and that is why search engines look favorably upon the backlinks generated this way.

Due to this “benevolent attitude” from search engines towards links built via article marketing, thousands of people have been successfully using article marketing for years to improve their positions in search engines for their targeted keywords.

BUT, unfortunately article marketing has some serious disadvantages – let’s have a look at them:

- when others republish your article they can delete your backlinks from the article

This is a huge problem! And my previous post was exactly about this topic. The owner of GetCashOnline.org decided to use one of my articles on his blog and remove MY links from MY article and insert his own self-serving links. I hate thieves!

After you have submitted your article to one of the major article directories – you lose control over your articles. Today, lots of people are using different automatic tools to “harvest” these directories for content and republish the articles on their sites. Now, probably 95% of the people that republish these articles are honest and will keep your links, but there’s always the other 5%.

The problem is that more and more people are starting to steal your content from article directories and automatically DELETE your backlinks from the resource box. OR, they steal just a tiny portion of your content (1st paragraph of your article, for example) and give a backlink to the article directory. This is great for the article directory, but not for you! This happens quite a lot to me, and I have to be honest… it PISSES me off!

With Free Traffic System you are guaranteed that pages where your content is republished will remain with YOUR backlinks. Those blogs who break this rule and touch your links (modify them/make them invisible/delete them) will be deleted from the Free Traffic System and lose access to quality content.

- duplicate content problems

You see, when one and the same article is republished, Google quickly “understands” this is duplicate content and “sees” that a big portion of your backlinks are built from duplicate content pages. This is not dangerous and Google will not punish you for doing that, but it is rumored that Google seriously lowers the SEO value of backlinks built from duplicate content pages, or just ignores them all together.

The other problem with this is that your duplicate articles will be competing against each other, and most likely Google and other search engines will just choose only one of your articles to show up in search results.

With Free Traffic System you have all the tools necessary to make each of your articles be non-duplicate, even if the article is republished on 20, 40, 100 or even more blogs. With the help of simple procedures – that will take you only an extra 5 minutes per article – you will create dozens or even hundreds of READABLE and CONCISE versions of article titles and bodies that won’t be considered duplicate. It is all in your hands: if you decide to spend 5 minutes and use the diversification tools provided by Free Traffic System, then each of the articles republished will be unique for Google and other search engines. And this will instantly increase the value of your backlinks.

Look at the comparison table to see Free Traffic System compared vs traditional article marketing.

Now I understand there are some tools available that do the same thing for your articles, like Unique Article Wizard. I also believe Submit Your Article will let you spin different versions of your article as well.

BUT… these are quite expensive, ranging from $30 – $70 per month!

Explore these advantages of building one way links with the new level of article marketing for FREE with the Free Traffic System.

Okay, this post is pretty personal, but there is a lesson here if you’re a marketer online.

Basically what happened is that one of my articles ended up on another blog. Thanks to Google Alerts I found out about. I highly recommend using Google Alerts to keep track of your name and domain name.

Anyway, what this blogger did was take my article from one of the article directories that it’s posted on and put it up on his blog. No biggie, right? Well at first I thought… “awesome, someone likes my article and wants to share it with their readers.”

Well after investigating, I find that, while the person aknowledges that I’m the author, he completely removed my resource box from the article. If you’re familiar with article marketing, you’ll know this is in violation of the author’s copyright.

This guy went even further by not only removing my links, but adding his own throughout the entire article. When I saw this I was quite irked to say the least, and still am.

Luckily (or maybe not) for me he has contact information on his site, so I emailed the owner and asked him to include a link to my site since he blatantly had removed it. Of course, I have yet to get a response. I also told him I would take further action if he didn’t comply (which seems impossible now).

I then went to Whois.com and looked up the contact information and web host for this domain. After finding out the host, it turns out you can’t contact them unless you have an account with them. How convenient, right?

I then decided to leave a comment on the page that my article is on. Well, I found out that the owner had conveniently deleted it. What’s the point of allowing comments if you’re just going to delete them anyway!

My last resort is to post about it here. People like this make me mad. They can’t come up with their own content, so they steal other people’s content and don’t give credit back by at least keeping their links. Yes, my name is there, but that’s just not enough, and it violates the terms of the article directories and the author.

You can view my article as well as check out the blogger who stole my content at http://www.getcashonline.org/work-from-home-online.

I absolutely hate thieves and hope this guy gets what he deserves. I know this problem is everywhere and can’t be avoided. It’s people like this that give the honest people a bad name.

What’s your experience with this? How did you handle it?

A while ago I had posted a question on the Warrior Forum about how to find a profitable niche. That question received some great responses, and I thought I’d share with you some ways you can find a profitable niche, even during the recession.

One thing I would just like to add is that it’s important to get into something that you have a personal interest in. There’s no point in creating a website in hopes of selling something if you have absolutely no interest in the products or idea.

For instance, I have an interest in video games. I have quite a few different gaming consoles, and I’ll every now and then take some time to play. Because of that, I decided to start a website related to the Nintendo video games niche.

I used some of the responses to my question to gauge exactly what niche I should go into. Here is some feedback (in my own words) of how to go about finding a profitable niche. And keep in mind… you want to make a profit here, otherwise it’s not worth it.

First, you want to find a “hungry” market. In other words, you want to find buyers for whatever it is you’re thinking of selling.

Once you find a hungry market, or niche, you need to gauge how much competition there is for that market. High competition isn’t always bad. That means there is money to be made. Too low of competition could mean there’s not a hungry market. But, that could also mean you have the chance to make some serious money due to the low competition and the need within that market. It requires some research, but more often than not, go after niches WITH competition.

So this brings the question… how do you go about finding a niche and also determining the amount of competition?

Here’s some strategies to find a hungry niche:

1. Search the term in Google, if there are a lot of advertisers at the right column of the results page, it’s likely a good one. These are ads that people are paying for.
2. Search on CBEngine.com. See what products are hot right now and what niche they’re in.
3. Search on Amazon.com. Check if there are books, CDs, etc. that sells to that niche.
4. If you’re looking to sell software, check Download.com, etc.
5. See if there are at least 3 forums in the niche you’re looking to get into.
6. Use Google Trends, eBay Pulse and Yahoo’s Top Searched to find out what people want.

Here’s some advice that would be very relevant to today’s economy. Find a lower priced niche that targets towards people’s needs more directly rather than expensive isolated niches.

How to determine the amount of competition…

I recommend reading How To: Evaluating Competition For New Site Niches as Dennis Edell posted an article by Donna Fontenot that provides some great insight on this very topic.

Also, use tools such as Google Keyword Tool and SpyFu to find out how many competitors you could be dealing with. If you’re focusing on specific keywords, do a simple search in Google and see how many websites show up for that keyword phrase.

Another tool I highly recommend is Detecting Online Commercial Intention: Audience Intelligence: adCenter Labs. This is to see if your particular keywords are profitability-oriented (example: people searching for “acne” want info. People searching for “acne cure” want a solution/product).

There’s a lot more I could share with you, but that should give you a pretty good start in finding a profitable niche you can use to make money on the internet.

If you want to fast-track your learning curve in finding a profitable niche and have all the hard work done for you, I recommend you check out the Niche Power Group.

Did you learn anything from this article? Is there anything you would like to add? I’d love to hear your feedback.

Firstly, we all want to know How to Make Money Online, and one of the best ways I have found is by creating blogs. In this article I intend to show you how you too can learn How to Make Money Blogging by telling you how combining the techniques I have gathered from across the web helps to make me $$$ every day. Secondly, I am not trying to sell you my latest “Get Rich Quick” scheme because I don’t have one. Each eBook you read will have a wealth of information within them which will, without a doubt, help you to discover the secrets of How to Make Money Online. I am only going to tell you which ones out of the 100’s available you SHOULD read if you too want to make lots of money.

I use a 10 step guide to setting up and starting all of my blogs.

I will give you a list of the top 10 resources later that I use and recommend to everyone who is serious about making lots of money online. One of the vital aspects people seem to miss out when they first get into blogging is the fact that their blog must contain information that people want to read.

Many bloggers are looking through closed eyes in this regard and if you browse through 50 blogs you will notice that most will tell you they know How to Make Money with Blogs when really all they tell you is where they went on their vacation or how many cars they have.

Are you ready to learn How to Make Money Blogging?

If the answer is YES then read on and start to make money with your blog. I am not here to tell you how to write your blog, that’s up to you, but what I am about to tell you is the 10 things I use to make money on the internet. You can choose to use these techniques or not, that’s your prerogative.

Step 1 – Finding a Topic

Turn off your computer, grab a pen and some paper and sit somewhere you can relax but also stay focused (if you are just starting out this step can be a pain because we all want to know How to Make Money Online and we want to know how to make it NOW). Think of a topic you are interested in and write it down (this helps because you will be more committed to trying instead of giving up in a day or two) and also make sure it is something other people are interested in too. A couple of ways I use to think of a topic is by using MetaSpy to find out what people are searching for, Ask IQ to find what’s popular and VRE Toolbar to find out how many people search for the topic (this is also useful later on to get traffic). Write down your top five keywords, you will want to use them later in your blog.

Step 2 – Create Your Blog

Find and create your blog online. I like to use Wordpress for it’s SEO benefits but there’s also Blogger and Movable Type. You can find all the help in the program you use to get information when setting up the blog. Create your content, make it original, and make it informative. This is one of the main keys to learn How to Make Money with Blogs. You need to include the keywords you wrote down in Step 1 in the content of your blog. Try not to overuse these as it sends out bad signals to the search engines, and this is 100% not what you want.

Step 3 – Go Google

Sign up for Google Adsense and insert the code in the margin of your blog. You can customize your ads in many ways, such as including text links or image links. I prefer the text links only, as they are easier to blend in with your blog and don’t take the focus away from the information. Google Adsense will probably not make you a millionaire but it is an instant way of generating a small amount of money.

If you want to track where your visitors are coming from with regards to direct hits or from search engine results then I would suggest you use Google Analytics and again you can get all the help you need setting that up from within the program.

You will also want to add your URL to Google’s index.

Step 4 – Find Something to Sell

If you don’t want to sell anything and are happy with the income Google Adsense is bringing in then you can skip this step. If you want to maximize your income and truly learn How to Make Money with Blogs you will want to find an affiliate program to join. A couple of affiliate programs I would suggest are ClickBank and Commission Junction. You can sell anything from office furniture, pet supplies, movies and clothing to PC games, Dieting tips and Audio software.

Whatever program you join will give you help inserting the code you will need to insert into your blog, but be sure you do this correctly or you WILL NOT earn money from your visitors. If you do not know how to edit HTML, W3Schools HTML tutorial is a great place to start.

Step 5 – Social Bookmarking

There is no better advertising than word of mouth, but the next best thing is social bookmarking. You will want to make things easier for people to do this. Social bookmarking sites I use and recommend are OnlyWire and SocialMarker and they are used for people to share their bookmarks or websites that they have liked with other people in their online community.

I would not suggest you add your own links to these services, but provide visitors to your website the ability to do so.

Step 6 – Write an Article

Whether your blog is about a specific product, for example a certain MP3 Player you are promoting, or just about giving people information, I would suggest you to write an article or a review of it. Most article directories require articles of 500 words and over so I would use this as a rule when writing to ensure your article is published.

Submit your article to any of the 100’s which are out there. I personally use a few of the Top Article directories such as EzineArticles, Article Dashboard, Amazines.com, isnare and SearchWarp. I also use a nifty piece of software called Article Submitter which will submit your articles to over 600 article directories, which saves you lots of time and leaves you to focus on writing your blogs.

Step 7 – Ping The Hell Out Of It

Every time you add new information to your blog, you want to let the blog directories know about it, this is known as pinging. Some Blog providers automatically send out pings when you update, but to be on the safe side you will want to do this manually too. Wordpress already does this for you. Add any pinging services to the list already provided. Word of note – ONLY PING WHEN YOU UPDATE.

There are a couple of Ping sites I use which will send a ping to multiple blog directories at the same time. PingMyBlog would be my first port of call and then if for some reason that site is down I would use Ping-o-matic. Remember, to only ping when you update or you could get blacklisted, and that is bad.

Step 8 – Yahoo! Answers and Forums

One of the easiest ways to get targeted visitors to your blog is to make use of the people you want to target. I would suggest you sign up to at LEAST one forum in the topic you are writing about, and don’t just go straight in there and start posting comments for people to look at your blog, they won’t.

The secret is to add the link to your blog in your signature and actively become a member of the forum, posting relevant topics and starting debates within them. The more you post, the more your link will show, and if you provide someone with good info the chances are higher they will click your link.

Yahoo! Answers is along the same lines as forums but the beauty of this is it’s viewed by thousands of visitors each day. If you don’t already have a Yahoo! account get one and then login and search for questions relating to the topic of your blog and answer them well. You can then insert the link to your blog and as with the forums, if you answer well you may have not only earned yourself a point or two on Yahoo!, but also earned a visitor to your blog.

Step 9 – Update Your Blog

This can be by several means, one is to add new reviews or content to your blog, and if you are going to do this I suggest updating every couple of days. This helps to keep the search engines happy as they love to see new and original content.

Another way of updating your blog and keeping the content fresh is to add RSS feeds to it. Make sure the feeds are relevant to your blog and provide visitors with helpful information. Visitors to a World of Warcraft blog don’t want to read feeds about knitting, or do they?

Step 10 – More, More, More

Repeat steps 1 – 10, this is the only way How to Make Money Blogging.

Step 11 – A Bonus Step

If you have your own product or newsletter, give your visitors an easy way to sign up to receive updates or information. This helps you to contact the visitor again with more great info or products you wish to sell.

How to Make Money Online is easy if you follow the above steps.

Some important things to remember so you don’t get disheartened with your blog is the fact that you will not become a millionaire overnight, it takes hard work and a lot of effort. If you are really serious about learning How to Make Money with Blogs then stick with it and eventually you will have an Ah-Ha moment. This is when things start to work and you think to yourself Ah-Ha, that’s how they do it! Your moment could be sooner than you think.

My Top 10 resources I use and recommend are:

1. Rob Benwell’s Blogging to The Bank 2.0
2. Wordpress Goldmine
3. Rob Atherton’s Building A Blog Empire For Profit
4. The Blog Challenge
5. Hinge Marketing Magic
6. Blogging For Riches – Complete Video Tutorial
7. Social Bookmarking Demon
8. Adsense Inbox
9. Wordpress SEO Sniper
10. RSS, Blogs and Syndication…

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Amy Waterman

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