Some time ago, I blogged about the pros and cons of blog networks, and I went into some detail about blog networks in general. Authority Link Network (aka “ALN”) is basically a blog network, but it is unlike any other one I’ve ever used. The main thing that sets ALN apart from the other ones I’ve tried in the past is that along with the paid option you would expect, there is also a “free” option.

Yes, the quotation marks around the word “free” imply that there is a catch. However, it’s a pretty dang neat catch. If you want to get access to ALN without paying, you simply have to add a blog or two of your own to the network. This pretty brilliant system makes it so that fresh, quality blogs are constantly being added to the network. Naturally, there are some guidelines for sites that are submitted to be accepted.

Criteria
- You can only submit sites that are built on the WordPress CMS, version 2.6 or newer. If you are running older versions than 2.6, finding a good blog network is probably the least of your problems.

- The “Hello World” default WordPress post must be removed. No brainer.

- The default blogroll must also be removed. Sorry, I know you like linking to WordPress Planet whenever possible.

- XML-RPC must be enabled. If you don’t know what this is, it doesn’t matter. Just go to the “Writing” section under the “Settings” tab in your WordPress backend area and click the box to enable it.

- The blog can’t exist in a subdomain or a subdirectory. It needs to be on the root of the site.

- You must use any theme OTHER than the default WordPress theme on the site. Don’t be lazy.

- Have multiple categories (every post shouldn’t be posted under “uncategorized”).

- The site MUST be PR1 or higher. PR0 sites are not accepted. Also, if you are submitting a site with a TLD other than any of the following: .com .net .org .info .co .ca .me .us .biz .co.uk .com.au .net.au .ws and .t, it will basically count as only half of a regular submission.

If it seems like they are a bit picky, that’s because they are. The strict guidelines help ensure that the network isn’t clogged up with a bunch of junk sites. There are some other obvious rules (you can’t remove articles/links that have been posted to your sites) and a few not-so obvious rules. You’ll have to read through their FAQ for detailed info.

If you don’t want to bother with adding your own sites to the network, there is always the paid option. The cheapest plan (called the “Basic” plan) currently costs $14.95/mo. Considering the quality of the sites on this network versus most of the networks I’ve seen/used, I think that’s an extremely reasonable price.

Click here to get started with ALN.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to show up until about 2am Sunday night (Monday morning), so I missed all of the awesome festivities that night. I did however do some gamblin’.

On Monday, I met lots of interesting folks in the exhibit hall and saw some familiar faces. Among some of the coolest peeps that I can remember were the awesome possums from W4 and Audi from Convert2Media who kept the Blue Moon flowing. Here is the one and only photo I took in the exhibit hall, which I feel captures the essence of what was going on at the C2M booth:

Blue Moon!

The Affiliate Ball

Monday night was the night of the Affiliate Ball at the Crown Theater in the Rio. It would be my very first Affiliate Ball. For whatever reason, in past years I have found myself at other events while Affiliate Balls were going on. As the Affiliate Ball conflicted with the party at the Spearmint Rhino hosted by Ads4Dough this time, I was torn. Ultimately, my desire to relive my youth prevailed, and we headed to the Affiliate Ball eager to see the headlining act…none other than Nelly himself.

Darren, the man behind the event, was kind enough to give VIP bands to myself and mah woman. These bands gave you access to the VIP area that had free booze and a little more breathing room.

There were a couple openers, including Wickedfire’s own RobHustle. He did a bang up job. We took a photo together after at some point. I hope he posts it, and I hope my hair looks good.

I didn’t even notice when Nelly had taken the stage. At some point I looked up from my drink and was like, whoa, Nelly is on stage. He performed just about every song you can remember of his and then some. This was surprising as many were speculating that he would only do like one or two songs. The crowd, however, did not seem particularly impressed. While there were some very psyched people at the base of the stage, I got a vibe from the rest of the place that they were just not that excited. I guess internet nerds are too cool for Nelly. Whatever. I thought it was awesome.

Here are some pictures taken in there. Quality isn’t the best, as I still insist on pretending that my Blackberry is a real camera:

Me and mah woman

Josh Ziering aka Enigmabomb & me

Nelly on stage

From there, the lady and I gambled a bit at the Rio. As soon as we got two fresh drinks, we headed to the car, where she was in charge of making sure they didn’t spill while I drove us back to the Mirage.  At the Mirage, more gambling and much more drinking occurred. Also, sandwiches.

Unfortunately I didn’t even make it back to the conference the next day. It’s no fun when you have a 4 hour drive ahead of you. Maybe one of these years I’ll fly.

So, yeah, that’s about it. Affiliate Summit was fun as ever. I only wish I would have got there earlier.

Oh, almost forgot, one more pic:

Told you it would come out in the dark, bro

Just yesterday I returned home from a pretty dang fun New Year’s (and then some) trip to London and surrounding areas. It was quite wild, if I do say so myself. I was in the company of a dear friend of mine who actually has a nifty travel blog. His adventures are generally much more exciting than mine, so if you’re into that sort of thing, you should check it out.

Here are some choice photos from my journey (taken with my high-tech Blackberry Bold 9900):

Me in Picadilly Circus

Happy New Year

The hustle and bustle of Cardiff, Wales on a weeknight

Goin' home (business class cause I'm a srs businessman)

Now I only have a couple days to rest before I must drive out to Las Vegas to do further irreversible damage to my body. This will be my fourth consecutive Affiliate Summit West. Crazy how time flies! Seeing as how I didn’t book my hotel until last night, I’ll be at the Mirage. Room number available upon request (send nudes first, plz).

See you there!

I went to a Friday session that basically turned out to be an introduction to WordPress. Unfortunately, I got there late, so I had to sit in the very front. By the time the horror of the reality of the session sunk in, it was already too late. I was already firmly planted front and center. I waited as long as I possibly could before I rudely evacuated. The time in between was spent on Skype.

Saturday I attended two sessions about video. Although I don’t think I’ve ever talked about it on this blog, I co-run a YouTube partner account that has seen some pretty significant success in the past couple years. We just recently started getting heavily back into producing content for YouTube, so I hoped to get some good info out of these sessions. Or at the very least, leave the room super motivated to create more videos.

YouTube Partner Success Panel

This was the first session I attended. Hosted by Paul Colligan, the panel consisted of Mike Rotman, Ed Dale, and Don McAllister. All of the above have been very successful using YouTube as a promotion vehicle for their respective businesses. Unfortunately for me, they all focus on using YouTube as a tool to promote their business, and not actually using YouTube to produce a passive income (via partnership/revenue share). Although I definitely understand the value in what they are doing, I was still disappointed. I was hoping for more specific YouTube talk rather than general online business promotion. If you understood the nature of my partner account, you would understand why building an outside business off of it would be rather difficult (and sort of silly).

How to Promote Your Video

I thoroughly enjoyed this session. This one was run by Michael Terpin, founder and CEO of Social Radius. Michael and his company have been responsible for the viralization of many prominent videos such as Jennifer Aniston Goes Viral and Scarface School Play (one of my personal favorites).

One thing Terpin stressed was the importance of sound quality in a video. Amazing sound quality won’t make a video go viral, but shitty sound quality will most definitely prevent it from doing so. It’s something a lot of people new to online video overlook. The guy filming the session recommended this type of mic for capturing the best audio (not that exact model, necessarily).

—

Blog World is a very different animal from the conferences I’m used to, such as Affiliate Summit. Instead of small to mid size ad networks shoving free booze and strippers in your face, you get companies like Blogger and Stickam giving you glossy little info cards. I know that sounds boring, but it’s not so bad. And there are about 745% more female attendees than any affiliate summit. A lot of fashion bloggers and that sort of thing.

One impressive company in particular was the Ebay Partner Network. Great people, all around. The new head of the North America program, Julia Barrett, is pretty dang awesome. She’s also hilarious. I never thought I’d be openly advocating EPN on this site, but really, any doubts I had about the program or the people running it have been dissolved. I’ll probably build another handful of eBay sites before Christmas. I suggest you do the same. If you’re having trouble getting accepted by EPN (and you have quality web sites), contact me for help.

For those of you who managed to arrive at this blog without any prior knowledge of Drip Feed Blasts (DFB), check out this post about its first incarnation. Otherwise, continue getting your read on.

I was one of the few fortunate enough to invited to alphatest DFB 2.0. Eagerly, I accepted. The enhancements I discovered blew my mind.

In the past, when you thought of DFB, you thought of a user-friendly, convenient and professional Xrumer blasting solution. Somehow, between the span of 1.0 and 2.0, it became so much dang more. Two new major features include:

Social Bookmarking
That’s right. You can now schedule social bookmarking blasts. 100 bookmarks per day, per link unit. I’ll talk more about link units later.

This feature almost made me wet my pants. Never before has it been so easy to give sites/pages a quick bookmarking boost. What’s even better is that DFB 2.0 allows you to input spintax in every type of link blast. That means I can generate UNIQUE bookmarks, time and time again. Holy moly. Titles as well as descriptions can be spun to your heart’s content. Upon viewing my reports, the links were all good. All of them.

Directory Submissions
With the same ease as social bookmarks, you can use DFB 2.0 to schedule directory submission blasts. Yes, you may also use spintax. Due to the nature of most directories, you’re obviously not going to get immediate results like you do with profile links or social bookmarks, but as long as you make your titles and descriptions not look like poo, they will most likely get approved eventually (if not automatically).

And of course, DFB is still the #1 profile link building (xrumer) solution. I wouldn’t leave it to anyone else.

Poor India. First PayPal screws them over, now this. Of course, there are still some worthwhile SEO services offered by the best of the best (Amit aka Red_Virus comes to mind), but for rudimentary SEO work, DFB 2.0 just made everything a whole hell of a lot easier.

How I Use it
Most of the e-mails I get are from novice to intermediate SEOers who are looking for more specificity in how I go about optimizing my sites, particularly in the off-site department. It used to be a long winded, complicated response (which I was often too lazy to provide). Nowadays, it’s somewhat simpler.

First of all, you’re not going to get rich by using DFB alone. Get that delusion right out of your head. However, I will say that it is the ONLY subscription based SEO service that I currently use.

The formula is simple:

1. Good, exclusive backlinks.
2. Support system of DFB backlinks
3. Decent website/niche
4. PROFIT$$$$

Notice the lack of question marks.

Number 1 is of course the more difficult part. That is where your own creativity and social engineering come into play.

Number 2 is only a matter of signing up for DFB.

Number 3 is your problem, bro.

Calendar Scheduling
DFB 2.0 features calendar scheduling as well as regular daily scheduling. Daily scheduling is now referred to as the “loop.” Blasts in the loop will continue running daily. However, if a blast is scheduled on the calendar, it will take priority over the loop. Once the calendar blast(s) is/are completed, the loop will resume.

Oh yeah, link units…

Previously, DFB power users had to manage multiple accounts, which meant logging in and out, multiple usernames + passwords, etc. Those dog days are over. DFB 2.0 incorporates “link units.” A link unit basically serves the same purpose as a separate account on the old system. Each link unit is worth either 1k profile links, 100 social bookmarks, or 150 directory submissions per day. Since there is not an infinite pool of pligg sites or web directories, each social bookmarking blast can only be run 3 times (per URL) and each directory submission blast can be run 4 (per domain).

Also, I would like to add that the new interface is fantastic. Campaign management is about as easy as it gets. I would like to take partial credit for that, as an alphatester. Even though I probably didn’t help that much.

Results
If a service doesn’t provide results, I do not continue using it. That’s pretty elementary. I have been a DFB subscriber for over a year now. I am particularly fond of the new social bookmark system. Every time I schedule a blast a see at least some positive movement for that particular URL within a week or so. Sometimes very significant movement. I typically do two days at a time. Obviously there are a ton of factors and my results are very specific to my own sites, but for whatever reason people always want to hear stuff like that…so there you go.

One last thing: I was not commissioned to write this post/review. I just appreciate a quality SEO service when I find one (which is not often). You are now excused to check out the new DFB for yourself.

True, the conference has pretty much absolutely nothing to do with internet marketing. But…it’s got a lot to do with internet! It would be prudent of all of us to stay up to date with the latest news in cyber security, seeing as how we are all flourishing in this space, right? So, I made the 3hr and 50min drive out to Vegas (got up to 122mph near stateline) and checked it out.

Things that I Liked

Caesar’s Palace
Not the greatest spot on the strip, sure, but it’s up there.The convention area is top-notch. A friend of mine who also attended opened up a tab at the little round bar by the casino one night and we all went nuts. Thanks, buddy. Sometimes you have to make your own open bars.

The Exhibit Hall
My only real basis for comparison is Affiliate Summit. Well, in contrast, the Black Hat exhibit hall is much smaller, maybe a quarter or even a fifth of the size. Unlike Affiliate Summit, there was no beer to be found. Why is this listed under things I like? Well, the people from the various security companies were actually incredibly friendly. Also, the conference issued these little stamp booklets to black hatters which you could use to go to participating booths and get them stamped (in exchange for them scanning your badge). Completed booklets would be eligible for prize drawings. Seemed like a really smart incentive to get people visiting and interacting with more booths. It also seemed kind of fun, since you had to hunt down the booths you needed.

Blackberry Security
You guys were awesome. Even though you couldn’t help me charge my phone, you were still the best booth in the room. I will cherish my flashlight keychain forever.

Lisa @ Lunch
Lunch was provided in one of the conference rooms, banquet style. It was okay. Nothing to write home about. However, a young woman named Lisa that was serving us was phenomenal. She was extremely friendly and helpful. We requested coffee, and even though it was provided already in the hallway (unbeknownst to us), she managed to dig up a pot and some cups for us in the back. The coffee was actually incredible. Someone should give Lisa a promotion. Lisa might actually be my favorite thing about Black Hat.

Things that I Did Not Like

The Dude that Checked me in
…was a dick. Actually he didn’t even check me in, he said I had to come back after 4pm, but he was a dick about it.

Dell/Qualys Party at The Bank @ Bellagio (aka The Absolut Cloud Party)
Their invite system was pretty cool. You had to visit each respective booth (Dell and Qualys) and get a stamp on your little party card, then when you had both stamps, they would give you a wristband. However, the party itself was not so cool. A couple of friends and myself did our darndest to accurately calculate the male to female ratio. Our best guess, and I am being totally honest and not trying to exaggerate in the slightest bit, was about 20:1. That is including club employees. To make matters worse, the bar was only sort of “open.” I first ordered a Tanqueray 10 martini, and was quickly informed that 1) Tanqueray 10 was not on the menu, and 2) Martinis were not on the menu. So, I drank Tanqueray + tonics all night. Still, not the worst drink the world.

I’m not trying to complain about the quality of the free booze. Well, I guess I am. Perhaps I am just spoiled by the excess of Affiliate Summit parties. Maybe that is not a fair basis of comparison…but that’s all I’ve really got! Plus, this thing was in Vegas. How can you expect me to not be confused?

The Badges
They were pretty dumb looking. That is an area that could really use some improvement.

—-

I didn’t stick around for DefCon. From what I hear, it was way better than Black Hat, but I really have no idea.

All in all, it was worth the visit. I can’t say I learned a whole lot about cyber security, but I did win like $850 bucks on craps at the Bellagio. I’d call it a successful trip. I’m sure that those who were spending all day at the trainings/briefings must have been getting something out of it as well.

When I first heard about “social engineering” it was in the context of phishing passwords on MySpace. Not very glamorous. However, it recently occurred to me that a lot of my SEO efforts can actually be classified as social engineering. More specifically, methods such as this or this. Those are just two examples of methods I use that I have detailed on this site. It really only scratches the surface as far as what you can do when you really put your mind to acquiring links by thinking outside of the box. Especially if you don’t mind being a little sneaky about it.

Am I saying that I go around creating fake online personalities and use them to gain access to websites that I will somehow exploit? No. I’m also not saying that I don’t!

The same software engineer I mentioned earlier recently explained to me that a lot of cases you hear about in the media relating to big companies having their security compromised are actually due to social engineering. It is more likely that someone somehow found a vulnerability on the inside (such as a clueless secretary with too much access) than a white van full of hackers in black jumpsuits plugging mysterious boxes into the back of the building.

You are always going to have competitors that are buying rankings. They will buy directory submissions, social bookmarks, regular old paid links, all that good stuff. Stuff that most of us do. By applying and creating social engineering link building methods (and succeeding) in addition to those standard methods, your competition doesn’t have a chance. Unless they evolve to that level, they simply have no access to the type of valuable links that are available. Then they go and make excuses to their clients (probably something about domain age or page loading speeds).

Perhaps you’re hoping I’m going to get a little bit more specific? Well, I think that would sort of defeat the purpose of what I’m saying here. This is a public blog, after all. I’m talking about using that big old brain of yours to come up with social engineering methods to acquire links that no one else can get. Just focus on whatever website it might be that you want to get a backlink on, and figure it out. Granted, some feats would be dang near impossible. If you can get a footer link on Google’s home page, then I will assume blackmail or something highly illegal was involved. But there are vulnerabilities everywhere. Don’t get discouraged, get excited.

In conclusion: Knowing how to use automated/paid links properly is still a very powerful weapon in your arsenal. However, without getting those few precious authority links that the other, inferior SEOs cannot access, it’s going to be a long and unexciting ride trying to make a buck, if you’re playing in anything remotely competitive.

Of course, you could always create incredible original content and optimize user experience to the point where people just can’t help but link to your site…but who has the time for that?

First off, I know there are still some of you that don’t understand the value of Wikipedia links. I’m not even going to try to convince you otherwise. You’re better off just changing your mind right now and going with it. Yes, they will bear the “nofollow” attribute. If you don’t believe in the power of nofollow links (especially from an authority page), then you may return to digital point and go about your business.

Also, let’s not forget that in many cases, a well-placed Wikipedia place will result in targeted referral traffic.

Okay, so here are the simplified steps:

1) Find a recent, relevant news publication. I prefer interviews, because you can include a quote from the interview in the Wikipedia page you’re targeting.

2) Post this story on your site. A re-written copy will have a better chance of success, but I’ve also had links to stories I just copy + pasted stick for months and months (with no end in sight).

3) Do not put any ads/affiliate links on this page.

4) Place your link using proper formatting as a reference. If you don’t know how to properly format a Wikipedia link, see their documentation on this subject.

5) Do not do this repeatedly from the same IP within a short period of time.

After the dust has settled (perhaps a month or so), you may want to get a little ballsy and put ads/affiliate links on the page. Or, if you want to be more conservative about it, just enjoy the visitors you receive and the SE credibility of having sticky inbound links from Wikipedia.

Yes, Wikipedia does have editors. Some of them take more pleasure than others in being hall monitors and looking for links to delete. Also, pages related to certain high-competition niches are monitored a bit closer than others, since they are frequent spam targets. Try to find creative ways to fly under the radar. There are currently nearly 76 million Wikipedia pages indexed on Google, so, they can’t find everything. And even if they do, if you have followed the steps above, your link has the best chance of not being cock-blocked.

Oh, and one more tip…internal linking on Wikipedia is obviously very important and powerful. It’s also a lot easier to get away with dropping a link to another Wikipedia page than it is to an external site. So, if you don’t have any luck getting a link to stick on the high-profile page you’re originally targeting, you might want to consider dropping the link on a related but less desirable/less monitored page. That should be easier to stick, and once it does, you can work on building backlinks to the page from other, more authoritative Wikipedia pages to enhance the power of your link.

Okay. That’s all. More beer now.

To save myself some time, I decided to use their auto-install. Anyone who has ever used Fantastico! or any similar script to install software on their sites knows it is usually quick and painless. Well, apparently this simple job is a 10 man operation over at GoDaddy that takes several days to complete.

I will now post a screenshot of my correspondence with a couple different GoDaddy representatives on Twitter. I had to do a little copy + pasting to get them in the correct order and everything, but I assure you these have not been altered in any way.

I have several different hosting accounts with many providers, and I can honestly say this is the worst and most incompetent support I have ever received. Even foreign hosts that oversell their boxes and don’t even offer phone support would be able to take care of something as simple as this with a ticket submission.

And another thing that sucks about their support – the hold music. Yeah, Cherry Poppin’ Daddies were cool for like a week in like 1998 or something. Yes, there is an option to hold without music, but guess what? Their support never has any idea how to resolve your problem, so they put you on hold again. WITH MUSIC.

Anyway, for domains there is Namecheap. For hosting, there are more options than you could ever possibly sift through. If you are that 1% of my readers who don’t already avoid them, this post is for you. Stay away from GoDaddy. And feel free to link to this post with some GoDaddy hosting type anchor text so that my few days of frustration will not have been in vein.

Just in case you were wondering, GoDaddy never made any attempt to offer any sort of service solution. Too bad. I was hoping for a .CO registration coupon code for 3% off.

Okay, for those of you that make a living selling SEO services to businesses, I apologize. If it’s any consolation, the odds of you pitching a business owner who has read this blog post will be slim to none!

Recently, I was chatting with a middle-aged DUI attorney in a hot tub up in Mammoth. As we all know, hot tubs are where all the most important networking happens. Naturally, we got to talking about our respective lines of work. As it turned out, he was about as interested in the world of SEO as I was in the details of how to get out of a DUI. An enthusiastic, drunken conversation followed.

Real quick, for those of you wondering, his advice to anyone that gets pulled over while intoxicated is to refuse the breathalyzer, refuse the field sobriety test, and let them take you to the station and blood test you. This may be common knowledge to some of you, but it was golden info to me! Basically following that procedure makes it infinitely easier for your attorney to get you out of the dang thing. Not that I think any of you are irresponsible enough to drink and drive…I digress.

He Spends a Shitload on SEO with Minimal Results

Like many other business owners, he figured this was just the nature of the SEO beast. I’m sure his SEO company reinforced this notion whenever he voiced any concern.

So, here is what I told Bob:

Bob, if your SEO company has the skill set to rank you or anyone for competitive attorney-related keywords, then why are they spending so much time and energy looking for people like you willing to pay them to do it, even though they can’t guarantee results? Fundamentally, doesn’t make much sense. If you can efficiently rank semi-competitive terms on the Googlez, you can make more money than the monthly fee you would charge an attorney.

Bob’s response: ahhhhhhh.

To be fair, there is a lot of money to be made in selling SEO services. After all, it is a seller’s market. It is also very scalable. But that doesn’t mean it is going to benefit business owners in a significant way. So, what can business owners do?

Business Owners are Best Suited to SEO Themselves

Like I told Bob, and like most of you know, it’s all about inbound links. Sure there are dozens of other important factors, but nothing can touch the significance of quality inbound links. For you business owners that may be confused, inbound links = links to your website on other websites. No time to get into the reason and rhyme behind it. Just accept it.

Let’s say you hire me to improve your company’s ranking for “nail polish remover.” What am I gonna do? I’m going to outsource generic link-building all over the place and charge you a huge premium for it. Will your rankings improve? Probably a bit. Will you experience the sort of results I led you to dream about when I was pitching my service? Probably not. The reason for this is that the links I will be acquiring for you will be cheap, weak links that anyone with a lot of time or $ on their hands can gather in large quantities. But these types of links generally won’t create big, sustainable ranking improvements.

I Can Has Good Links?

Yes, most likely, you can has. Especially if you’ve been in your current business for a while. Why? Because chances are, you’ve already made valuable contacts and have opportunities to get links that no one else could grab. Think about the other companies you routinely do business with. How many of them have established websites? How is your relationship with them? Would they be willing to link to your site with the anchor text “nail polish remover?”

These links are infinitely more valuable. In most cases they are from very relevant, often aged sites with minimal outbound links. And they definitely aren’t linking to random skin care, get rich quick, or get a bigger dick sites.

Sure, if you have a really good SEO company, they will work with you to attempt to get these links, but most won’t. And even the ones that do are most likely going to charge you an arm and a leg to do it.

My advice if you’re hellbent on enlisting outside SEO services: go ahead and hire whichever SEO company has the shiniest graphics on their site, and let them do the supplemental link building, ALONG with shaking down your friends and colleagues with websites to give you those precious exclusive links.

Quick SEO Checklist for Business Owners:

• •Get those dang links.
• •Optimize your site title with whatever term you’re trying to rank for. In other words, the title of the home page in the top of your browser should be “nail polish remover.” Not “home”!
• •The text used to link to your site, aka “anchor text”, is important. You want it to be a healthy combination of the term you’re trying to rank for and variatons of that term. For example, “nail polish remover”, “buy nail polish remover”, “ethyl acetate”, etc.
• •Send me 60% of quarterly profits.

Oh, by the way, Bob, here is the whole concept of this post put into action: Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer. Heh!