Niche Internet Marketing Blog

Keyword Elite: Don't Buy It, It's Broken

2009-07-23T18:37:00.013-04:00

As you know, one of the most integral parts of niche marketing, or for that matter, any sort of internet marketing is keyword research. My tool of choice in the past has been Brad Callen's Keyword Elite. For those not familiar with this keyword research tool, Keyword Elite allows you to find high paying keywords that you can center your niche blogs, Hubpages, and Squidoo pages around.

It was an invaluable tool that honestly has paid for itself many times over. However, within the past couple of months Keyword Elite has not maintained its full functionality. What am I bitching about? Specifically the AdWords Traffic Estimator, the login fails every time. This means to get any information about estimated CTR or CPC, I have to point my web browser over to the AdWords Traffic estimator and keyword tool pages. It's not that I'm too lazy to do these things but rather I'm a bit pissed that I paid for a tool that promised to integrate both within an interface that would save me time. Time=dollars.

Now I understand that this 'bug' is because of something Goog has done to thwart our efforts at keyword goodness but the customer support response to this, not to mention the very infrequent updates to KW Elite and SEO Elite, have made the last couple of months very frustrating.

The only place to get information on the AdWords TE problem is over at Brad Callen's official forum, a forum that edits posts that are critical of Keyword Elite. From the forum, all I got after going through the threads is that the programmer is on vacation and that it cannot be fixed at this time. Pleasure before business? Take notes guys, this is not how you want to run your business.

On top of that, Bing support won't be implemented in Keyword Elite 1.0 until Keyword Elite 2.0 comes out. Yea that's right, the same KW Elite 2 that users of the current edition will have to pay for. What happened to free updates Mr. Callen? I suppose promises are your secondary concern, right behind leeching your customers for every penny.

The reality is that all of us Keyword Elite and SEO Elite users are getting the shaft right now. I guess this is how Brad Callen likes to treat his paying customers. He gives us infrequent updates, no fixes for broken features, and horrible tyrannical tech support. Callen acts as if giving a substantial discount on Keyword Elite 2.0 will solve all of this ill will. Guess what though, Brad? It won't. Why would I pay for the privilege to be be treated like this all over again?

With the emergence of Market Samurai (which I will buy once my free trial is over--and no that's not an aff link!) you're no longer the only kid on the block. From what I've seen Market Samurai does the job much better and the developers know how to interact with their customers. So with this I goodbye Brad Callen and wish others who decide to stay with KW Elite good luck with your niche marketing efforts.

Is anybody else as frustrated as me with the Keyword Elite situation?

New Internet Marketing iPhone Game

2009-04-02T03:14:00.017-04:00

What's a great way to take a break from all that link building and article writing you've been doing? The answer is, play the new internet marketing iPhone game called iNetMania. Wait, what? Yep, mixing business and pleasure has never been easier and its available for purchase at the tap of the screen. :)

iNetMania looks basically like a Monopoly clone but with web domains instead of brick and mortar properties. There are also in game cameos from some very high profile internet marketers. I'm not sure how I feel about that last 'feature'. No offense but the last thing I think I want is John Chow yapping at me from inside my phone.

From the iTunes App Store description:

TechPad Productions is proud to present its first game for the Apple App Store, iNetMania! iNetMania is based heavily upon TechPad's popular and award-winning board game, ServerMania.Compete with up to three other players (either human with hot-seat multiplayer or computer controlled AI) to create the most successful website with the highest amount of visitors. The game takes the player from the start-up phase all the way to the finish, line, with plenty of highs and lows (or Spikes and Slumps) along the way. Increase web traffic, as visitors translate into money -- the player with the largest pile of cash at the end of the game wins!

FEATURES

-Great graphics, featuring dynamic animations with fluid, openGL animations
-Quick-play option lets you get into the game quickly and easil
-Keep track of your progress and prowess by creating up to 30 profiles and unlocking special gameply achievements
-Play with up to three other competitors, either your real-life friends or a tough computer AI!
-Gameplay is saved if you quit or have to take a call
-Three un-lockable player game pieces - collect them all!
-Use the Accelerometer to shake the die in a 3D, virtual cup with real-world physics (a first for the iPhone!)

Languages:
English

REQUIREMENTS:
compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch
Requires iPhone 2.0 Software Update

If you're into niche marketing the description makes it sound like a pretty entertaining game and for the special limited promotional price of $2.99 you can download it and not feel too cheated if you don't like it.

Here's to hopin' you don't get de-indexed in game or out.

Site Build It Reviews: Power To The People

2009-03-23T00:52:00.020-04:00

I just recently finished reading a review post by Lissie, about the affiliate website building system known as Site Build It. As you may or not know, there are a ton of build it yourself website building services online charging exorbitant amounts of money for marketing services and tools that can be had for only a fraction of the price. Some people see these affiliate marketing pitches as scams, some just as very poor bargains.

Its a common misconception to affiliate marketing newbies, that you need to spend a lot of money to start a website or an online business. This is a complete falsehood, and one that Ken Evoy and his ilk like to perpetuate so as to make money online from people that don't yet know any better.

While I don't think that Site Build It's $300/year fee is a scam, I believe it to be an extremely bad return on investment. You can do everything that SBI promises to do for you by yourself and for nearly free. An added bonus is the satisfaction of learning an entirely new set of skills that are required to make money with internet marketing...and without all the hand holding.

The system is touted as being a product for people without any computer skills and that's the problem with Site Build It. I urge anyone without any computer skills whatsoever to do some research before attempting a career in affiliate marketing. At the very least you need to know basic html skills, what web hosting is, and how to buy a domain. But even before buying a domain or choosing hosting, I would highly recommend using a free blogging platform, such as Blogger.com or Wordpress.com so you can learn the ins and outs of how a blog 'works' first before committing to owning your own of piece of internet property.

This post isn't meant to be a how to guide for beginning affiliate marketers so I'll end this here and get on to what I really want to talk about which is the culture of affiliate marketing itself and it's remarkable attempts at selling the same old shit to noobs over and over again.

You see this all the time in the SERPS with any sort of affiliate product in the internet marketing niche. Its the same old reworked message, played over and over again. There is little diversity in the SERPs with IM affiliate products, other than the few contrary opinions that Google sees fit to push up rankings. However, we've gotten to the point that even the contrarian opinions are the same old rehashed sales pitches attempting to lure noobies into buying their garbage systems or tools. How can anyone, trying to learn how to make money online get an objective opinion when nearly no one is willing to offer it to them?

I think a lot of internet marketers are tired of this song and dance. I really must praise Griz for supporting Lissie with his post, Site Build It - Don't Buy It ...it, I believe, being the product and the message of subordination that SBI sends. As Griz pointed out in the comments on his Make Money With Grizzly blog, he's supporting Lissie not only because he agrees with her but for the fact that he believes she is entitled to have her opinion heard in the SERPs just as much as the Site Built It people do with their affiliate sales pitches.

Many people have followed Griz's lead and have supported Lissie by linking to her or have written their own Site Build It Reviews, which you can see at Vic's site, BloggerUnleashed. The fact of the matter is that there are a lot more people that think Site Build It is a scam and now their voice will be heard.

What I find comical is the fact that the people from Site Build It are bringing all of this bad PR, and soon to be pain in the SERPs, on themselves. Usually unfavorable independent reviews are either met with a vein of indifference or a very polite comment from the proprietor of the bullshit product (Brad Callen?), knowing that the product brand is very nicely represented in the first three pages of the SERPs by glowing affiliate reviews and the higher commission the more glowing the reviews.

However, Site Build It affiliates aren't your usual bunch. Smelling the opportunity to drop their affiliate link onto any website mentioning SBI, their army of failed 'webmasters' decided to descend upon Lissie's post like a pack of hungry lemmings, attacking her credibility. The tactic backfired though as many seasoned internet marketers like Griz and Vic pretty much debunked every argument given as to why anyone would want to subscribe to Site Build It.

Fast forward to today. In my data center, Lissie is sitting at #1 for the term 'Site Build It Scam' and 'Site Build It Scam Review' only in a few days. Now, if SBI's affiliate program rankings are so easily overcome, what does that tell you about their program? Probably all you need to know because I guarantee that their legion of SBI affiliates is far greater in numbers than all of Lissie, Griz, and Vic's friends.

Would Lissie have been able to rise in the rankings without the help of Griz et al.? Eventually, but with all the free content that her opposition provided her with and the help of friends it happened nearly immediately and with more people joining in, the SERPs are about to have a new look.

I think a lot of times, we feel as if we are powerless to change certain things within our environment. What we often don't realize is, is that collectively we have the ability to wield an enormous amount of influence. Knowledge is also power, in this case SEO power. Add numbers and knowledge together and you get a potent mixture.

Given the times we live in, I feel like its very important that everyone learn this lesson. Together we can all push back, one way or another, against the injustices and misdeeds that go on in our world. If not to seek justice for those that are taken advantage of, then to shed light on dark places that would rather remain unexposed. Now I'm not equating Site Build It with the banking industry's commandeering and wholesale ripoff of the world economy but its as good a place as any to start shining that light.

RSS Feeds For Build A Niche Store

2008-05-14T22:26:00.028-04:00

Today, I'm going to show you how I created RSS feeds for my Build A Niche Store. I originally got the idea from Vic, who teaches how tomake money online over at Bloggerunleashed.com.

Why RSS Feeds For Build A Niche Store?

I decided to create an RSS feed for my BANS site so that I could promote it on Wordpress blogs that have the CommentLuv plugin installed. If you leave a comment on a blog that has this plugin enabled, it will try and pull the latest post from your RSS feed, using the title of that post as an anchored link in the comment area. So not only do you will you receive an anchored link for your name but one for your post title as well.

Out of the box, BANS doesn't come equipped with an RSS feed so I needed to come up with a way to create one myself. The feed I created is essentially a list of all of my BANS' store pages with my keywords as the titles of the 'posts' and short contextual descriptions of each page.

Creating An RSS Feed For Your Build A Niche Store

I know there are several RSS creator programs for sale on the market but I'm writing this specifically for those who don't have the money to spend on new blogging software or anyone that wants to save a few bucks. I have to say though, for all intensive purposes the method I'm going to show you is just as easy and effective as paid software and only utilizes one extra step for similar results.

I realize that some people are not as experienced as others when it comes to some things so if you're feeling lost I've provided instructions below.

* Head on over to WebDevTips to take advantage of their free RSS creation tool.

* Choose the number of headlines you'd like to have appear in your RSS feed. This number will correspond to the number of store pages on your BANS site.

* Enter Your Site Title - This will be the title of your feed as it appears in a reader. I just used the title of my BANS store. If you have an & in your site title be sure to use the html code (&) instead of just typing the &.

* Enter Your Site URL – This is the address of your BANS store. Ex: yourstore.com

* Enter Your Site Description – Describe your site in a few sentences. Although this doesn't help us with the comment luv plugin in, it will come in handy later when we submit our feed to RSS aggregator sites (more on this later).

* Enter Your Language - Self explanatory

* Enter The DOCTYPE – Default-RSS

* Enter Your Headline 1 Title – Now this is important. This will be the anchored link that you will be planting when you are commenting. The CommentLuv plugin will pull the “latest post” from your feed and since this link will sit atop of your feed it is considered the most recent. So if you're working 'inexpensive inkball weapons' enter that in this box.

* Enter Your Headline 1 URL – This is the URL that your anchored link above will be pointing to. You can enter your homepage or one of your store pages.

* Enter Your Headline 1 Description : Write a short blurb that is related to your anchored link. Some feed aggregators will display teaser text so it might be helpful to write a few sentences here. In the end, if you feel like this won't make a difference then skip it, personally I chose to go the extra mile. Rinse and repeat for all of your store pages.

* When you've completed all of your store pages hit the 'make the code' button and your code will automagically appear in the box below it. Copy the code in the box and place in the text editor of your choice (I just used good ole' notepad). This is the extra step that I mentioned earlier that the paid software does for you.

* Go to File->Save As->save your file as “feed.rss” without the quotes. You should have a file with the .rss extension now that is ready to be uploaded to your server. I'd suggest keeping a copy of your RSS file on your home computer, it'll come in handy later when you want to edit it.

* Fire up Filezilla or your favorite FTP program and upload the feed.rss file into our public_html folder or wherever your BANS files are located.

* Now that your file is on your server you're going to want to modify the header.php text to allow your rss feed to be served. Login to your BANS store click Template->header.php. Insert this code with your store information, directly beneath the head element.



<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Your Store Name RSS Feed"
href="http://yourstore.com/feed.rss" />

Click Save.

Congratulations you now have an RSS feed for your BANS store! If you're using Firefox you can click on the RSS symbol in the address bar of your site to test out your feed, or just type in yourstore.com/feed.rss into your address bar.

Keep in mind that WebDevTips' tool creates an RSS 0.91 feed which is technically deprecated and considered obsolete which means your feed won't be validated if you test it. I'm not an RSS expert but from what I know you're only missing out on some of the functionality of the newer RSS 2.0 standard, which for these uses isn't really required.

I tested my new feed out in a few modern readers like Google Reader and Feed Demon and didn't have any problems obtaining or viewing it.

Modifying Your Build A Niche Store RSS Feed

Okay, you now have your new feed which will place your chosen anchored text in the comment area. So what if you want to do some deep linking for other pages on our BANS sites? All you have to do now is manually change the order of our pages in your feed.rss file. You'll see entries in your file that begin with the item tag and end with the closed /item tag.

Just cut and paste the entry that corresponds to the anchored link that you want to comment with and move it to the top of the list. Save the file and you're done. Now, upload the file to your hosting server and overwrite the existing file. Voila, your feed has been modified and you can go on another comment run with your new anchored text.

Submit Your Build A Niche Store RSS Feed

Now that you have an RSS feed, you can submit your feed to a wide array of feed aggregators that will display your anchored links on their websites. Here's a list of 45 sites to submit your RSS feed.

I was successfully in submitting my RSS feed to all of the sites which didn't require an email but haven't gotten around to submitting to the other sites nor have I tried to claim “my blog” at Technorati, MyBlogLog, or Bumpzee. I will eventually make time for this as well as utilize the RSS feed in Squidoo pages and HubPages. There are lots of websites, many more than the 45 listed, that display RSS feeds and with a little research you'll get lots of links!

Again, thanks to Vic for recommending this strategy... great advice, as always! I hope you found this post on how to create RSS feeds for BANS helpful and if so pass it on to others to show them how to get a few extra links.

Privacy Policy

2008-05-13T15:04:00.001-04:00

Privacy Policy

I take great care in keeping your privacy safe while you are here at Niche Affiliate Marketing. The following is a disclosure statement about how I treat your personal information for this blog.

Statistics and Log Files

I use statistic tracking software to monitor all traffic coming to my website. This software stores information such as IP address, ISP information,and referring website information, as well as user movement across this website. These statistics are not tied to any personally identifiable information.

RSS Feeds and Email Subscriptions

When signing up for RSS and/or email updates via Feedburner, I ask for for personal contact information. In this case, name and email information. You may opt out of these updates at any time. I will never disclose your personal information to a third-party entity. I despise spam as much as you do.

Cookies

A cookies is a piece of data stored in the user's internet browser. This site does not employ the use of cookies although some of my business partners use cookies are their sites. I cannot control or access these cookies once my partners have placed them.

Outbound Links

This website contains outbound links to other websites. Please note that I am in no way responsible for the privacy policies of these sites. I would advise users that are concerned about their personal information to view the privacy policies of all websites that they visit.

Contact Information

Questions, concerns, and all other queries can be directed to bloganiche at email dot com