Does Size Matter?

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OK, you can get your mind out of the gutter now, because this article focuses on the size of your website and what actually constitutes an authority site. What did you think I meant :)

Now that we got that out of the way, there’s been a lot of people freaking out lately because of the recent changes to Google’s algorithm. They have de-indexed many sites again due to low quality or thin sites that are MFA – made for Adsense. They even did a major slap to JC Penny, the giant retailer who tried to game the system with their unlimited budget. So watch out and heed my warnings.

You see, here’s the problem with people trying to game the system and use Adsense. Google knows all about you because you have placed your personal Adsense code on your site. You can certainly use this form of monetization, but, you need to do it the right way. In other words, stop being a dumb ass and stop cutting corners. The days of having a 1 page or 5 page site, then slapping on some Adsense and expecting to make a killing are gone. Sooner or later, you will be caught and when you do, all that work you did to rank that site will be a big waste of time.

Examples of People Getting G Slapped

Let’s explore with a couple of examples of what I am talking about to give you a better picture and how you can actually develop an authority site to Google proof your site and all the work that you have or will invest in the future.

Dan over at Linkvanareviews, who discusses at length, various Link Building Services, recently experienced a Google slap to say the least. He has quite a few websites, some small and some have tons of content. Basically, he was up to earning $300/day with Adsense. About a day later according to Dan, he lost 80% of his rankings back to page 5 to 7. He has not been able to recover since then or bring those sites back to page 1. Given what’s happened to him, I personally doubt they can recover. He still makes some money with Yahoo and Bing, but that’s only 20%. He lost $7200 a month in earnings.

Do you want that to happen to you? Of course you don’t.

Let’s look at another example with Ben over at Make Money Online With Seo who had a similar issue last year just before he was heading off for a 2 month vacation. He was at around $100/day and moving up nicely with his Adsense. Then bam, out of the blue, he got bitch slapped too and his income went down to essentially zero. Now the big difference between Bens story and Dan’s above, about 100 sites that Ben owned were all de-indexed, which is far worse. You can’t make money on sites that won’t rank. They didn’t delete his Adsense account either, but do you think he will ever use that account again? Not in a million years. That would be like putting a big red X on his website properties.

So what is the moral to these examples and how does that fit in with the title, does size matter?

The main point and something that I meant to write about some time ago, the days are numbered for useless crap sites that offer no real value to your readers and potential customers. Google has been raked through the media lately about their lack of quality search results being returned and according to Matt Cutts are out in full force making sure they do what they can to clean up the results.

It’s interesting as this all plays out to sit back and watch from the side lines for awhile and how some people have reacted, including myself. I have sites that have lost trust lately too, but they have been around for awhile. So, my first observations and comments to my buddy, Jim Eberle over at Mind Power Energy Creations, why is Google picking on me?

You see, Jim and I have been having some great conversations lately about what are the search engines really looking for? It seems obvious, but sometimes it doesn’t. Why I am using Jim’s website as an example? Its because he is starting to build out his site and offer valuable and insightful content around mind power, energy, personal development etc. He only believes in natural back links obtained when people link to his site. Heck, even though he only has a handful of articles, he still has something like 40 back links and those are from people volunteering to link back to his site like me.

He does believe as the search engines get better with search results, the sites that offer valuable content and have trust with Google as one example, will rise to the top. Jim also goes on at length about making sure you have your content optimized first and foremost.

My buddy goes on to say, that Google and the other search engines are not out to get you like many people seem to think. In fact, they want your site to rank number 1 if you have the trust, quality content and other factors that they expect to see. More importantly, its what the online community expects and wants.

Does that mean that the Micro Site Method is Officially Over?

Let me put it this way. If you choose to go the micro niche way and only put out dozens or hundreds of small sites like 1, 5 or 10 page sites narrowly focused around a specific niche, then yes your days are numbered based on what I am seeing across the board from multiple people in the industry and their personal experiences over the past year. I didn’t say you can’t do it, but you are better off going the route of building an authority site first.

Its time to get serious if you want to make money for the long term and simply give the search engines and the online community what they expect and want. Good quality information.

What constitutes an Authority Site?

Well, this is where it gets a little bit trickier because what constitutes an authority site has many possible answers. Generally, people think of these types of sits like Ezine Articles, About.com, Consumer Research etc that have tens of thousands of pages of content and more. The interesting thing point that I want to make is that size in my opinion doesn’t mean you are the authority.

What the hell am I talking about then?

The biggest problem that people need to wrap their heads around is that the size of your particular authority site might only be 20 or 40 pages in total because you are focused in a small niche. That means when people look at that niche, you have most of the answers or all of them that they are looking for. In other words, you become the authority in the eyes of your online community.

The reality is this. Some authority sites might only be 5 pages, but that is more rare than the norm.

The bottom line and based on my research, the general consensus is that the bigger your site with Quality Content, the better protected you are in the long run. For example, my site is about internet marketing as you can probably tell. I only have a handful of articles in the scope of the niche of internet marketing. However, the 12 to 14 pages of content probably exceeds 25,000 words of content too.

Literally over the next several years, I could easily have several hundred pages of content if I choose to do so. I probably won’t as I like to write once a week for this site now and write big ass that usually require a minimum of 2 cups of coffee or beer if that is what you prefer :)

What do you do now and how do your protect yourself?

First, you just need to accept that online marketing is constantly in flux. Meaning that the shit is constantly changing and you need to adapt. I don’t really mind the change as this is a chance to clean out a lot of the junk online and start to get back to getting the types of search results that will make people happy.

Second, yes building an authority site out properly with quality content and actually standing out from the crowd takes a hell of a lot longer, but oh man its worth it in the long run. Once your site establishes that level of trust with the search engines, just think about how much less work you need to do to rank. I see this time and time again with Wikipedia and About.com.

Ask yourself some important questions as you build out your site.

What makes you different from the other websites?
How do you actually stand out in the crowd?
What are you doing to become the go to or expect in your field?
Are you participating in forums and other places to get noticed?
Do you give or offer free and valuable information, without any expectation in return? Hint: if not, you need to be doing that.

When they add an article, they are usually ranking on the first page the same day or within a few days it seems. The cool part is once you reach that level of trust, your page or post will rise to the first page 1000 times faster than anyone else too.

Third, when you are starting out, you really need to sit down and evaluate your competition, your own knowledge of that industry, how much time you can invest and if you are willing to stay in it for the long term. Meaning the next 3 to 5 years. If making money were easy, then everyone would be rich online. The facts are, most are broke and will always be broke because they take short cuts and don’t want to face facts and adapt to the changes.

Take my site for example. I can literally branch out for hundreds or thousands of different keywords over time. For instance, internet marketing tools, internet marketing, internet marketing strategies, internet marketing tips etc. I hope you get the point here that its virtually unlimited for many of the niche areas or fields that you want to get involved with.

Fourth, once you decide to go down a certain niche, invest the time to learning about it. Don’t just rehash PLR articles and think that is sufficient because its not in the long run. Spend a week or two reading all you can about the subject matter. In time, you will become an actual authority and people will seek you out first because of that.

If you not sure on how to write about a certain area and you have some money, I would invest in finding a virtual assistant that has expertise in that area. Some great places to find talent are oDesk. If you have never outsourced, I would go with someone from the Philippines.

The reason being is there cost of living is much lower and as a result, you can usually hire someone full time starting at around $300 UDS per month. That might not seem like a lot here in North America, but over there its a full time income. They also speak American English which is a real asset.

Fifth, say you want to put Adsense on your site, many people are simply not sure at what point they should be even doing it. My suggestion and this is only a rule of thumb to go by. I would have at least 40 or 50 pages of rock solid quality content before doing so. You don’t have to be ranking for all your terms. But consider putting it on after you have an established website.

Personally, I would avoid Adsense as I believe there are better options out there like Commission Junction, Clickbank and Amazon are just some examples. I didn’t say don’t put it on if that is the model you want to have. But, these other companies pay out more than Google. The other thing to keep in mind too, make sure you have other forms of advertising. Nothing smells of a MFA with only a few pages of low quality information and just Google ads.

Sixth, when deciding on how to set up your website, many people are not sure if they should structure their site with pages or posts. I like to keep this simple. Posts are when you just want to chat and discuss something. Whereas, a page is typically much more focused on a particular area within your niche. Try and include your keyword in your pages and for posts – whatever your fancy is that day.

Seventh, roll up your sleeves and get to work. The hardest part to this whole online business and being successful is the level of effort you put in. When you are first starting out, the reality is this. You will likely not have much money for tools and because of that, you will have to do most of the work yourself. My method of ranking on the top of the search engines is with my 3 step approach that you can find over here >> internet marketing tools.

The reason many people fail is they have a get rich quick mentality and you really need to just shut that out of your mind. Yes, you can make money in 3 to 6 months, but you need someone to show you the ropes in a clear and concise manner. You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars like I did and waste your money. If you spend some time learning the basics, which are provided on this site, you are good to go.

If you are not sure where to start, remember, keyword research, quality content and optimization and some back linking (don’t overdue it though).

Well its been another monster post for me and I hope you got some value for it.

My Internet Marketing Story – Hard Lessons Learned

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This is a long beast of a post. Grad some coffee, have a read and learn from my mistakes.

When I first got my start in this online jungle, now approaching 5 years, I was green as green could be. I knew how to surf the net and find information. Other than that, I knew nothing about Internet Marketing and all the other fun stuff we have to know that goes along with this IM game.

Social Networking – My Internet Marketing Journey Starts

You see, I kind of came at this from a round about way. I bought Max Steingarts course that focused on building relationships using MySpace and just being a friend to people. Well, his concepts that he talked about back in the late 90′s and into 2000 still apply today. The amazing thing I have seen, like most IM people is that social networking is bigger today than at anyone point in time. Thanks in part to Facebook, now boosting over 500 million users and growing.

OK, so I started using MySpace and it was the big Kahuna in social networking and still is a good place. I met some great people online and what was interesting to me at the time, I met a fellow that introduced me into a complete internet marketing system. He didn’t vomit all over me to try and get me involved. He followed Max’s advice and build up a rapport and helped me whenever I needed help.

That is the key to being successful online, no matter what you do. Helping people and offering good information will always be the better way to go. Don’t try and scam people out for a quick buck. If you want long term success, then you need to have that mindset from the beginning.

The key thing about the buzz around social networking if you listened to so called guru’s, they all have the secret formula on how you can tap into this huge potential group of people. I will make this as simple as I can. While technology has certainly changed big time in the past 10 years, being social is essentially the same as it always has been.

Sure, you might need a couple of tutorials on how to set up a Facebook page and all the associated aspects, but you can easily find that for free from people like Chris Farrell – who sends out all kinds of goodies each week showing the newbie how to add a video, how to set up the basics of Facebook etc. He has a membership site and I think its one of the more legit ones out there. I think you can look at his membership back office for like $5 for 7 days. After that its around $33 per month or around that price.

Here is a link Chris Farrell (affiliate link by the way).

He has all kinds of cool information, but the one thing with Chris is that, he has structure to his program. If you are new to this wonderful world of IM and not sure where to get started, but want a step by step program, then I can say his would be an ideal place to start. It doesn’t mean you have to stay with his program for the next year. But, if you do decide to join his program, you will learn some valuable information on all the basics to the advanced. He breaks it down into bit size junks of information.

Social Networking Secrets Revealed

Just be a helpful friend and the rest will take care of itself. Don’t try and sell people anything. If you participate and offer advice when you can, people will eventually look at your information and will in time, buy what you have.

Internet Marketing Systems – Choose Wisely

I eventually signed up into a system called Veretekk based on my friend’s recommendation at the time from MySpace. I thought at first, I can’t learn all this complicated stuff on how to register a website, how to build one and then how to rank it for keyword terms on the top of the search engines.

I studied for hours on all the various aspects and went to numerous trainings by Veretekk trainers and thought, here are a group of people out to help me become successful. Finally, a place where there was a common goal to share the insider information to us newbie internet marketers.

I did learn various aspects of internet marketing that I needed to learn. So, is Veretekk right for you? If you are looking for an all in one system and place, then its definitely one viable option for your internet marketing needs. Here’s my affiliate link – Veretekk – click here

My advice to you when you are just getting started or even if you have been online for awhile without success, ask lots of questions and check people out online. Its OK to do that.

Short Term Pain vs. Long Term Gain

I personally believe that where most people are going wrong is they look at the internet differently from a regular brick and mortar business. They think or believe that because someone else made tons of money online and brags about how easy it was, that they can do the same. The problem is, most of the times when someone tells you its easy, they are likely telling you a lie. Its not easy and I am being honest.

Part of the other issue for me, many people take advantage of newbie’s online because they really don’t know where to start their online business. They have so many people giving them all kinds of information, they simply don’t know who to believe anymore.

The other issue with the internet, is some people actually believe you can make a full time income with a part time effort. I will tell you here and now. If you believe that, then stop reading this website now and leave. You are simply naive and will never get it. I really want you to understand that yes you can make money online, but there is always a learning curve involved and the big part is actually putting in the effort.

Here’s an inspiring story: Something that I would encourage my readers to have a gander at some time, but only after they have done some actual work for the day on their internet business.

Dave, over at make money on the internet, talks about his story when he first got started just over 2 years ago. Here’s a guy, who along with his wife were essentially broke, scraping by on rice and beans looking for change in their home. Dave tells us, that during a 3 month period when his wife went back to work in the UK, he sat down and wanted to figure out this internet marketing stuff. He fumbled around for about 6 months and then found a guy named Griz who talked openly about the internet game and sticking to the basics.

You see, this is where most people get lost in the forest. They think it has to be really complicated to make tons of money. When in reality, they just need to keep things simple.

So, getting back to Dave’s story. He and his wife got to work. I mean the kind of work that most people won’t even do in their full time paid jobs. They only had 1 old computer, lived in Spain in the mountains. He or his wife would get up at 6 AM and write keyword rich posts for their websites around the terms they were ranking for. Then they would spend most of their time back linking to their website. They each took turns and worked from 6 AM until 6 PM 5 and 6 days a week.

So why am I telling you this story?

Dave and his wife, he calls her wifey is one of the best IM stories I have read of late. Due to sheer determination, getting really serious and most importantly, willing to put the effort into their business, they are now making a full time income and much more. It was not some secret underground system they were using, but one of pure work. They did this day in and day out until they started to make a couple of thousand dollars. From there, they went further and kept going.

My Approach – Keeping it Real and Simple

So, many people want to know how I make money online and what do I specifically do. Well, like I have mentioned on many other pages here at this website. I like to keep things simple. Some people like to baffle others with complicated systems, making it seem like, oh that must be the answer to their problems. The less complicated you make it online, the easier it will be in time for you to make money. Sounds contradictory doesn’t it?

I focus on 3 areas when building a website. There are thousands of ways to make money online and you can learn those as you gain some knowledge and experience.

Who’s Ultimately Responsible For Your Success?

You…

At the end of the day, you are solely responsible for your life and success online. Sure, everyone needs help and that is fine. But, you really can’t keep blaming other people for your lack of success.

Some important questions to ask yourself as you journey through the online world.

What have you done today to move your business in the right direction?

How many hours do you read forums and responding to questions? Hint – If you are spending more than 1 hour max per day, you are really are wasting valuable time on your own business.

In straight talk – stop screwing around and start getting serious about your business. Treat it like a business and work it consistently every week. It doesn’t mean you have to put in 30 hours each week to have success.

What’s Next and Some Suggestions

I am currently working on a number of projects, but I have also cut down on the number of websites I tried to work on in the past few years. In fact, I recently got rid of about 20 websites because I knew more was not better. Oh sure, you will here people talking about micro sites etc and building 100 of them. I will tell you this and hopefully you don’t do this. Build up large authority sites that offer real value to people looking for whatever it is you are going after.

Some people want a number when it comes to an authority site and there really isn’t a set number that makes you an authority. You can have a 5 page site that is an authority in your particular niche because other people say so.

Some people will tell you an authority site has hundreds of pages and this can also be true.

So here’s a plan for you to make some money.

1. Start with learning the basics – that includes how to register a domain name, how to install wordpress and set it up. There are tons of free information online for wordpress.

2. Once you know the basics, its time to get busy and productive. Decide on the general niche you are going to focus your time and energy into. I don’t mean learn a few things and call yourself an expert. I mean, read about that area for a few days to learn all that you can. Once you feel comfortable, then get busy with writing some keyword rich posts and that  offers real quality information. The internet is plagued with lots of junk content. You really don’t need to add more to it.

3. Keep adding and building up your site and think long term here. Too many people are trying to cut this important step out and eventually it will bite you in the ass IMHO.

4. Start sending some back links to your site, but not so many when you first get it live. Some people will argue that it doesn’t matter and I partially agree. But, why chance it. Start building up back links to your site and make sure you deep link. That means you send links to your inner pages and not just the home page.

5. Do this every day until you feel like vomiting. Then rinse and repeat.

6. Some suggested areas to focus on is Amazon. I think its a great way to diversify your income stream. Hey don’t  forget about affiliate marketing too. The main suggestion here is not to put your eggs into one basket.

7. If you plan on doing Adsense, then make sure you have only quality information on your site. I personally don’t use adsense right now and I am not sure I ever will again. Its like putting a big red circle on your site. If you start making serious money per day, like the 100 dollars per day, then you can be sure, the people from Google will visit your site. If they deem your site as spam, you get the boot. Plain and simple. It happens all the time.

It doesn’t mean Google is some evil entity because they are not. But, from their perspective, they want to rank the best information for their readers. If you have it, over time you can rank for your terms if you keep things simple.

8. Keep it simple, focus on the tasks that need to be done today and most importantly – do the actual work. In time, you too can have success, but only if you truly want it bad enough.

Cheers everyone and have a great day.