Quick Update - We are alive and kicking it
Hi Everyone,
Long time no updates. Jason and I have buried ourselves in our niche markets for the last several months to really push on with our online business and to reach our goals we set last year.
Well things have been hectic to say the least, we have get much more organised and got systems and people in place that are truly amazing.
Our number of websites keep expanding, all aging and at different stages of promotion. The one thing that is constant is the number of visitors and income keeps growing.
We have exciting things to share with you very very soon.
To your success
Seminar with Niche Ninja Nick
Jason and I have just had the pleasure of a weekend at Oxford University, with 10 other internet marketers and Nick Maddison – The ninja affiliate.
After a mad dash up the motorway we arrived promptly for the 9.30 start. The introductions alone were enjoyable, hearing other people’s backgrounds, achievements and desires! It was truly an international event.
And for Pat, who said she didn’t like public speaking, well let’s say we all think that’s a big fat porkie pie!
The morning soon disappeared with Nick covering the fundamentals of his business model, explaining his thought process and revealing new opportunities he is facing and details how this can be achieved.
It was a very inspiring first day.
The discussions went on till way into the evening over a fantastic curry and several beers, where dodgy domains and even confessions of failed black hat methods. Our thanks go to Dave for keeping us company into the early hours 
The second day brought even more focus, from the details of Nick’s hosting plans, tools of the trade, extreme link building methods and his amazing in house software that he developed to manage his sites performance.
We are extremely excited about helping Nick to develop this software as the potential is huge.
The two days was very intense and we could have stayed a week.
Good luck to all the attendees, they all made a serious commitment to succeed in this business and they deserve success. I hope they will drop by and leave some comments to this mini review.
If you are considering making it in the niche markets, then using Nick’s methods will help you immensely to understand the important factors and can even give you a blueprint to success.
Within 24 hours we have reviewed and changed some our strategic plans from the advice gained from Nick and made three very important changes
1 – Hosting, we knew our hosting situation was poor, but we have expanded so fast over the last 6 months it seemed easier to continue. But we made the decision and went for it. Changes will now make it easier to outsource, better seo and seeing the bigger picture.
2 – We already outsource a large chunk of our work and invest heavily in time saving tools. We have also been outsourcing manual link building tasks but now we want to structure and measure tasks, outputs and results and so once again are in the market for a full time VA, but we now have a more structured and measurable plan of what they will be doing for us - I am not even sure if one will be enough.
3 – link building – we have our own link building strategy which is working well, but with the new ideas presented we will add to our own plan and we are now completely confident we can rank for pretty much everything we go after. If you use Micro Niche finder, don’t just go for the green, anything under 750 is pretty achievable with a system.
4 – Niche opportunities on mass!! – We will still concentrate on our main niches, but now have more proven ideas and systems than ever from short to long term projects.
Exciting times!!!
All the best
Jason & Jason
Ps. Julie – we will be checking the rankings of the site to make sure you are taking some action !!!!!!!!!!
The power of backlinks and where to get them
Hi everyone,
as you know if you have a website then SEO (search engine optimisation) can seem a little scary. So called gurus will charge an arm and a leg for their techniques, tips and tricks to help you rank better for your keywords.
Experts will talk about on page and off page, fresh content, algorithms etc. But, the most powerful and what you should spend your time on is getting a varity of backlinks.
On page SEO has minimal effect and if you get the basics right you can do no more, such as getting your keyword in the title and spread about the content naturally. Also using the H1 tags with your keyword in is about as much as you need. Meta tags are pretty much useless nowadays in Google for any SEO benefit.
SEO is a long term game, however, if you are in a race then there are certain things you need to do different! With normal SEO you will end up creating new pages with content and links around the web but this can take a long time to go through the indexing system, nothing really happens that fast in SEO So, if you are in a hurry you need to get your links on a page that is already indexed and prefereably that has some PageRank.
Lets just say you need as many links from different sources, types of site and different IPs as possible. Variety is the spice of life!
Where to get your backlinks?
Directories - these are basic listings and should be targeted towards your top few keywords. Not so strong as they once were but still give you some credit. These will not be quick in being indexed but will give you a good solid base to build upon. We use a service that will get you 500 links for about $30 at Social Marker, they also do a social bookmarking service.
Blogs - Blogs are an easy place to get a link back to your site. There are many great blogs out there with very high page rank pages and you can get a link back by making a comment. A couple of things about blogs - DO NOT SPAM. Check what the owner allows as comments, one will be happy with a “great post” but any really good blog you need to be more creative and contribute. Check the blog is a “do follow” so the link actually counts. You can do this by installing the SEO for Firefox plugin.
Great tip - search for blogs that run the keywordLuv pluggin. This is usually provided by bloggers who understand SEO and allow users to make a comment and put in whatever keyword you like - bad credit, acne, Alex Jeffreys - whatever you want
Forums -Forum posting is aslo a great way to get backlinks. Put your links in your signature and you can get easy links. Also, forums like The Warrior Forum also allows you to set up your own blog in your profile so you can use that aswell. Think outside the box and you will find a vast amount of forums to use to your benefit and put a link back to your site in your profile.
Leverage what you have
Take advantage and use resources available to you. Use your existing sites, friends sites or any free resources available . Add your link in the footer of these sites so not obtrusive or get much attention and you could gain lots of links
tip - Dont try to hide these links in the footer by changng the font to the background colour. This is an old spammers trick which google will eventually frown upon and is specifically written in their guidance. Like I said nothing happens fast in SEO.
Article Marketing
We love articles! A few articles will go a long long way. Using the power of directories like Ezinearticles or Goarticles with give your site an seo boost plus you will get some traffic. You can also put in your keywords (anchor text is very very important) within the content (which is more powerful than say a blogroll link). There is also software and memberships that can distribute your articles around the web spinning the text, titles and resource box. You will not get much traffic from these sites but backlinks galore will certainly help
The programs we use are Article Post Robot which you have control on how many you submit to, how to spin and when to post. It takes a while to get used to it but once you do can be very powerful because you can submit to differeent sites each time and hide any footprints. Another powerful program we just used is Unique Article Wizard that will slowly submit your articles to around 1300 sites. You can submit three articles on the same subject and in the same format and the software will mix and match the article crating a slow and steady increase in backlinks.
Weapons of Mass SEO Power
These are our secret weapons in our battle against all the other marketers out there and why our niche sites rank well for our chosen keywords.
Bookmarking demon - this is a social bookmarking tool that you can use and leverage the power of Web 2.0. Its just fantastic if you have a lot of pages to index and get backlinks to.
Linkvana - probably the most effective and powerful system to generate one way backlinks, using your keywords as anchor text, in context blog posts posted on a huge network of different class C Ip’s. Its quite expensive but when you see the benefits of getting a high ranking in the big G you soon realise its money well INVESTED.
So there you have it, powerful backlinks with the right anchor text from different sources, media types etc is enough to get anyone started building backlinks and getting your site ranked for their chosen keyword.
Notice i said invested earlier, well thats because once you start to gain lots of good solid backlinks you will see a return in traffic and sales.
To your success
Jason
ps - I havent even mentioned video, podcasts, screensavers, applications, squidoo, hubpages, free blogs, free hosting, templates for links.
pps - should also mention deep linking, this is getting links to individual pages rather than all to your homepage. having hundreds or thousands of links to your homepage and not any internal pages will look unnatural.
ppps - OK I forgot to mention ping everything and anywhere that you leave your link on. Also a lot of places with have their own RSS feed. Promote that aswell and as you give them a vote it increases the vote back to you.
