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Day 15 - Flat on my back, Sicker than a dog

admin — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:11:06 +0000

As you can probably guess from the title I didn’t get much done today. Well, you’d be wrong - I didn’t actually get ANYTHING done today.

If the multi-submit bug in ArticleBot would get fixed I could have done some article submissions but I just didn’t have the patience, brain power or energy to do individual submissions today.

But, it’s 5 am and I’m feeling better so I have high hopes for tomorrow.

I also just realized (because it’s going off) that my alarm on my watch is still set from when I had to catch the bus in Guatemala. Guess I should turn that off. It’s a miracle I’ve not been waking up every morning at 5!

Day 14 - Finally, Productivity!

admin — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:16:59 +0000

While I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a procrastinator at heart (which makes this challenge REALLY challenging) I was actually productive today.

The biggest thing is that I created 6 new pages for site #4. This site has about 1001 and keywords that can be used and it should be interesting to see how these pages rank.

I did the usual for a new page/site launch which is ping each page to help get them indexed (4 of the 6 were indexed within an hour) I then submitted 10 articles for the site. Each article included 2 rotating footers that each contained 2 backlinks to 2 different pages. So, theoretically there are now about 2k backlinks floating around for this site - just have to wait for the search engines to find them.

I also continued working with Bookmarking Demon to get it where I want to be with accounts. I have added over 400 bookmarking sites to the list and I’m trying to get as many of them set up with log-ins as possible before I start bookmarking. I figure better this than multiple sites with multiple log-ins.

Day 13 - Best Laid Plans

admin — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:14:46 +0000

I should never utter the words “tomorrow I’m going to…” because that pretty much guarantees that I won’t do whatever I wanted to do.

Today was supposed to be ultra productive but it wasn’t. I got some basic research done for some new content on exsisting and new sites. I also submitted 6 articles. But then life got in the way and pretty much blew the rest of the day out of the water.

Hoping to have better luck tomorrow. I think I’m going to go get an egg timer. I tend to have a really short attention span and skip from task to task which makes getting things done challenging.

However, I read an article that said using an egg timer can help with that. You can set it for X minutes and for that time you work on a specific task. Then, when the egg timer goes off you move on to the next task.

I have a feeling this will help me. Now I just have to find an egg timer.

Day 12 - Ramping Back Up

admin — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:10:52 +0000

After being away from the process for a while it took a bit to get back into the swing of things.

The first thing I did was clean out my in-box. I’d submitted a few articles while I was on pause so I had to go in and ping those. Then I upgraded some of my software. Both ArticleBot and Bookmarking Demon released upgrades last week.

ArticleBot’s upgrade, while a bit buggy, is going to rock when the kinks are worked out of it. One of the biggest bummers about it was how long it took to submit articles. The new version offers threading though which means multiple articles are being submitted at one time. This makes it go SO much faster! The biggest problem I’m having is that I get an error any time I try to set up more than one article to submit at a time. It’s kind of inconvenient beccause it would be nice to just load up a bunch and let it run rather than having to do them individually but hopefully that will be solved soon.

I’ve also noticed that I’m getting many more errors with the new software than I was before. I’m not sure if this is a software issue or an issue with my internet connection but whatever the reason, the update is still more than worth it because if I can submit 4x as many articles in the same amount of time, even if they don’t all go through, in the long run, that’s more article out there.

Bookmarking Demon also has improvements. It’s also offering threading now to make things go faster and the interface is MUCH better. I’ve not bookmarked anything with it yet because I’m still working on getting my accounts set up but I’ll report back when I do.

One new feature I know I like is that you can set up projects. Since I’ll be bookmarking all of the articles that I’m submitting, I can set up a project for each directory and load the articles right from there. I can also ping directly through BMD now so I don’t have to ping each page individually. The only thing that’s kind of a pain is that you have to import your account list into each project but oh well…

So, I spent a lot of time playing with those two programs today, particularly getting new accounts set up and locating my profile and RSS feeds so I can submit them for bookmarking and RSS syndication (I’ll talk about this more when I do it).

But, in addition to that I also submitted 11 articles and did some more keyword research. I purchased two more domain names that I’m going to get launched in the next few days.

It’s good to be back on track!

I’m Baaaccckkkk!

admin — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:35:26 +0000

I want to thank you all for your patience and support. It’s been a pretty stressful week (or so) but things should be getting back on track now. Tomorrow I will start posting daily summaries again but today I wanted to post a status update for my sites.

Since I’ve been gone I haven’t done too much in the way of promotion (just a few article submissions) but I did launch one new site in the work at home niche.

Here is the current status for my 5 sites:

key:

K = Keyword (M=main, 1, 2, etc.)
Date = Date launched
I = Indexed (Google, Yahoo, Bing)
R = SERP Rank for broad search (p = exact phrase)
B = # of Backlinks
V = Visitors since the site launched
$ = Income from site
S = Searches
C = Competition (broad search)
SOC = SOC

K	Date	I	R	B	V	$	S	C	SOC
Site 1 = Home
M	21-Sep	G / Y	329 (p)	3	10	0	1,900	719k	2,330
1	21-Sep	G	-	0	-	-	320	901k	19
2	21-Sep	G	-	0	-	-	7,300	213k	32
3	21-Sep	G	-	0	-	-	4,600	497k	49
4	21-Sep	no	-	0	-	-	880	71k	5
Site 2 = Financial
M	24-Sep	G/Y	75	13	18	20.68	6,600	26k	19
Site 3 = Financial
M	24-Sep	G/Y	0	11	9	0	9,900	19.4 mil	31
Site 4 = Pets
M	26-Sep	G	109	4	3	0.35	9,900	385k	29
Site 5 = Work from Home
M	7-Oct	no	-	0	0	0	8,100	1.9 mil	29
1	7-Oct	G	324	0	-	-	6,600	387k	26
2	7-Oct	G	-	0	-	-	1,000	1.36 mil	12

NOTE: I updated the competition numbers. I realized that I’d put for exact phrase not broad search.

Site 1 - I kind of screwed up on this one. I initially launched it with Dreamweaver and then switched to XSitePro. When I switched it changed the URLs for keywords 1-4 so I was backlinking to the wrong pages. The original pages have 3 backlinks each but the new pages (I only discovered this yesterday) have none. I’ve set up redirects for the old pages to the new but backlinking is starting from scratch.

Site 2 - On this one I also used affiliate links and that’s where the $20 has come from. I’m also ranking ok for a few random other phrases but they don’t get much search action.

Site 3 - I knew this one would be a challenge and I’m not in the top 1000 yet for my main keyword. However, I am on page 1 for 2 other keywords but they don’t get many searches so won’t do me much good.

Site 4 - I haven’t done too much to promote this one so it’s not surprising that it’s not ranking better though really, I can’t complain considering how little I’ve done. I also have several more pages to add to this site content.

Site 5 - I’ve done hardly anything for this site so I’m just glad to see it’s in the top 1000. Once I get the existing keywords to a higher spot there are additional keywords that I’ll start targeting that get good searches but have a LOT of competition.

TIP: I was using the channels function on XSitePro to track my adsense but I found it wasn’t really working so I switched to the URL channels on the adsense site itself and I’ve found that it works much better so if you aren’t doing that, you should consider switching.

Day 11 - On Pause

admin — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:40:07 +0000

One of the challenges of working from the road is getting interrupted. As I was in the middle of posting the summary for this day my internet went out. This was 3 days ago. In the mean time I’ve had to be traveling because of an emergency. This is the first chance I’ve had to be online.

Because of this emergency, the Challenge is being put on pause for at least a week while some things get straightened out. Sorry for anyone who is following this but I’ll be back in a week, hopefully with great news!

Good luck to everyone.

60 Days to 30 Sites - an Internet Marketing Challenge

Day 10 - Enjoying the Fruit

admin — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:06:04 +0000

It’s great when you start to see the fruits of your labors. This morning I was notified that 29 articles had been approved to various directories. This doesn’t count the ones that auto-approve so likely the number is higher. But either way backlinks are accumulating which is the goal

Of course, after receiving notification of approval I went through and did a ping for each one to let the search engines know they exist.

Today is just more of the same. Create more pages, submit more articles. Build more backlinks. It’s not difficult but it’s repetitive.

Going forward I’m not going to be talking much about my processes so ask if you have questions. I’ll just be reporting my activities for the day and the stats for the day. I’ve decided to go this route because I’m pretty much doing the same thing each day, just in different niches. But if you wonder why or how I’m doing something I will write about it more if you leave a comment with a question.

Day 9 - Just Pinging Around

admin — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:45:06 +0000

I feel like I’ve done a lot of pinging today. I had 8 article submissions approved so I did a ping on each of those. I also did a ping on each of the profile pages from Angela’s Backlinks just in case they’d not been indexed yet.

Speaking of indexing:

Site #4 has not been indexed yet.

Site # 3 has still not been re-indexed.

Site #2 however has been re-indexed and is sitting at spot 80.

Today was productive which seems like a change. :) Here’s what I got done today:

I submitted 7 articles using AB. This took FOREVER. I think that from now on I’m going to switch my accounts into two lists. One that required captcha and one that doesn’t. Then, I can just load up the one that doesn’t and run it when I go to bed. It’ll be done by the time I wake up in the morning and I can do the Captcha ones while I’m awake.
I bookmarked 3 pages using Bookmarking Demon.
I submitted site #4 to Google Webmaster Tools and uploaded a sitemap.
I did 10 more of Angela’s Backlinks for site #3.

BTW - for those who don’t know what Pinging is or who do it manually, read this thread to learn what it is and a *really* quick way to ping any page. It saves me heaps of time!

Day 8 - Doing a Little Dance

admin — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:39:59 +0000

I spent much of today participating in the SideWiki debate which was less than thrilling. This new “tool” is a nightmare and I hope it goes away or someone develops a blocker quickly. But that’s neither here nor there. On to the Challenge!

I’ve heard about the Google Dance and now I’ve got my shoes on. I checked today just to see how my sites are doing and the index results were interesting.

Site 1 now has 9 pages (all but one page) indexed.

Site 2 & 3 have been de-indexed.

I’m happy about site 1, less than thrilled about sites 2 & 3 but I’m not freaking out. Apparently this is common and when you come back it’s usually stronger than before. So, patience grasshopper is my mantra of the day.

I also did a keyword ranking search for site #1 and two of my keywords are ranking. One is at spot 205 and the other is at 340. That’s very encouraging!

Here are the MNF stats for those words:

Keyword 1

Google placement: 205
Local Searches: 880
Phrase Count: 108,000
SOC: 5
Spyfu: $0.88 - $3.93

Keyword 2

Google placement: 340 (1 backlink)
Local Searches: 3,600
Phrase Count: 61,700
SOC: 49 (this is the highest for this site)
Spyfu: $0.98 - $5.09

No traffic or earnings yet obviously since I’m sitting 20+ pages back but hopefully as more of the articles get approved I’ll start moving up in the rankings.

Today was both a content creation and an article submission day. I wrote and uploaded the first page of site #4 which is in the pet niche and I submitted three more articles using ArticleBot.

I also went back and did a ping on every one of my articles that I got an approval notification form the one page from site #1 that hasn’t been indexed and the first page of site #4. I wanted to make sure the search engines knew that there was new info there to take a look at.

Finally, I bookmarked 2 pages using Bookmarking Demon.

Day 7 - Articles, Articles, Articles!

admin — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:51:57 +0000

As you may have guessed from the title, the focus today is on creating and submitting articles. You may think it’s pretty cut and dry but there are as many theories about article marketing as there are internet marketers. Here are a few:

the article directory vs. blog debate. Some people swear you should publish first on one, then on the other to get the best results. Others believe the opposite.
the duplicate content debate. There are people who would swear on their grannies that duplicate content will get you the google smack down. On the flip side there are those who submit the exact same articles to hundreds of directories with no problems.
the manual vs. automatic debate. Some people believe you have to do manual submissions in order to really get attention. Others believe that you should save your time and put it on autopilot.
the relevant vs. irrelevant debate. Some people insist that the links in your signature must be relevant to the article to get the best juice others say a link is a link is a link and quantity counts.

There are tons more that I could list but those seem to be the top four. If you’re thinking about doing article marketing seriously I’d strongly suggest heading to the Warrior Forum and spending a couple days reading. Read the different theories, the debates, the results and make your own mind up.

In general, I think that your opinions on the four points above depends on your goal. If your goal is traffic then you want the best, most unique articles that are very relevent to your site/product. If your goal is backlinks, you just want as many articles out there as you can get. My goal is backlinks.

My process:

I said yesterday that I’m cheating and it’s true. In the course John does manual submissions to just GoArticles and EzineArticles and has great results. To be frank, I don’t have the patience for manual submission so I’m going (mostly) automated.

I recently purchased ArticleBot based on the reviews at the WF. With a 50% discount (code: AWESOME) it only cost me about $13. I then purchased an $8 WSO to have my account profiles set up at lots of directories. The WSO guaranteed I’d get at least 150 accounts and I received almost 600 accounts so I’d say it was well worth $8 because even if ArticleBot helps to automate the process it’ll still take a while just to fill in the information and confirm the accounts.

In addition to my ArticleBot submissions I’ll still submit manually to EzineArticles. the reason for this is that they’re much more picky than anyone else so even though it takes longer, having an article on the most powerful directory is a good thing.

I submitted 3 articles today to both EZA and through ArrticleBot. The EZA ones were fine, just had to get the info in there and now wait a few weeks to get them approved.

Submitting through ArticleBot was ok. I got a lot of errors on my first submission. They all had to do with a specific directory script and nothing to do with ArticleBot so there’s not much I can do.

One thing I like about ArticleBot is that you can submit multiple resource boxes for each article and it will rotate through them as the article submits. I created a two-link resource box containing a combo for every link pair so I had @ 20 resource boxes to alternate. The only thing I really don’t like is that you can’t save your resource box(es) so you have to re-do them each time which can be a pain. I created a text file with the link pairs to copy and paste from.

The process of submitting with AB is easy. Just fill out the form and press submit. It takes a while and if you used any sites with Captcha you want to make sure you’re near your computer to enter it when asked.

There’s a report at the end that tells you which sites were ok and which had errors and you can go in and see the error message for each one so you can fix the problem.

Each article was submitted to about 200 directories so even if only half of them approve the article that’s still pretty good. Doing that manually would have been a nightmare.

All-in-all I strongly recommend AB to automate your submissions and I’m happy with how the article submissions went. I just have to work on my process a bit more until I get it perfected.