GoDaddy hosting is just plain horrible – and I’m glad that I user Hostgator – and more recently Bluehost as well.

But in my side work as a website freelancer, I’ve come across customers that already have hosting plans, and unfortunately they’ve chosen GoDaddy. I cringe when I find out this information – and it has gotten so bad lately that I’m thinking of just declining jobs all together, rather than deal with GoDaddy and their slow servers and clunky interface.

Reasons That GoDaddy Hosting Sucks

1. Horrible Control Panel Interface – Every good hosting company that I have worked with in the past: Hostgator, Lunar Pages, Bluehost, AHosting, etc. – all use the standard cPanel hosting interface to manage and configure the server settings.  The simple graphical interface is easy to use and fast.  Although every isntance of cPanel is slightly different, they are all common enough that it is easy to add new domain, add/edit a database with myPHPadmin, add a new email forwarder, etc.  It’s very easy and intuitive to use.

   GoDaddy on the other hand has their own clunky web interface.  The thing is horrible, slow, and confusing as all hell to figure out.

2. Really Slow Shared Hosting – I’ve witnessed the slowness of GoDaddy hosting in several different manners.  In one instance, I created a simple WordPress website for a customer.  The site had a handful of plugins, but nothing out of the ordinary – plugins that are pretty commonly used on other WordPress sites.   Well after a a day or so of the site running, the customer began experiencing timeouts when trying to connect to their site.  Godaddy supported said that it had to be a WordPress issue and something was wrong with the site.  Just to prove my point, I exported the entire site and ran it on my Hostgator server, and the site ran fine.

   In a a few other cases I’ve had terrible success trying to upload files through FTP.  I’m connecting using my own FTP client (Filezilla) – but I’m spending literally 3 hours trying to upload around 300 small files.  This has happened to me twice in the last 2 days with different customers – both hosting with GoDaddy.  It has also happened on 2 different machines, so I know the issue isn’t related to my internet connection.  I could upload the same 300 files to my Hostgator server in less than a minute.

3. Database / Addon Domain / WordPress Installations are not Immediate – Ever want to create a new database or add on a new domain or install WordPress on your Hostgator account?  You simple go through the install steps and press ‘Create’ and like magic, the item is created within seconds.

   Well with GoDaddy, the item goes into pending mode.  At that point you are left to sit and wait.  It can take a few minutes, up to a few hours to install.  What the hell is that all about?

The above items are enough for me personally. I would never use GoDaddy for hosting based on just the interface alone.  Every time I look at it, I get a little sick to my stomach.

But don’t take my word for it.  Someone has even created a website called www.godaddyhostingsucks.com.  Many of their reasons are the same, with a few other minor ones sprinkled in.  And of course they are also touting Hostgator as being the best – which I would tend to agree with, although I do like Bluehost now that I’ve started using them for some of my other websites.

Ps. Although their hosting is bad, I still suggest using GoDaddy to buy domain names. Their prices are still usually the best, although I need to investigate Namecheap because I hear a lot about them on other sites.

Related posts:

1. Hostgator Black Friday Hosting Sale

I’m sure many internet marketers get a sick feeling when tax season rolls around – especially if you haven’t kept good numbers or if you haven’t been paying your taxes quarterly.

Keeping Good Records is Your #1 Defense Against Getting Audited

I found the following video via twitter today and it is brought to you courtesy of Sean Ogle at Location 180.

If you run a home based online business, then I urge you to watch this video interview. Lots of great tips on how to get setup and keep yourself organized when it comes to doing your taxes. If you plan things out beforehand, you’ll save yourself a lot of headaches in the end.

One interesting stat from the video mentioned that people that make over a million dollars a year are much less likely to have to pay penalties and fees when being audited, when compared to people making less than $200K. The reasoning being is that they have to money to pay someone to properly keep their books.

If you follow the steps in this video, you might be able to avoid making mistakes on your taxes.

If you don’t have time to watch the interview, I’ll mention that Kyle Durand is the subject of the interview. He is a tax attorney and tax accountant – and also the brains behind taxreceipts.com. The site has a ton of free info that will help you prepare your taxes for your online home based business. Check it out if you have any questions regarding what you can and cannot deduct as a business expenses on your taxes.

Related posts:

1. Online Marketing and Your Taxes
2. The Importance of Keeping Track of Your Online Expenses
3. Pennsylvania Affiliate Tax Law Update: What You Can Do To Help

But for real, don’t call it a comeback. I’m probably not really back for good, but I did feel the urge to write a little bit.

Tt’s the end of March and taxes are due in a couple of weeks. Back in the day when life was simpler, I filed the “EZ” tax form. It truly was easy to fill out, so I would usually get it done as soon as possible.

Now that I’ve grown, things have become more complicated, so I usually end up putting my taxes off until the last possible moment. Between owning my house, owning a rental property, trading stocks, and my online business – there is a lot more paperwork than there was when I was fresh of out college.

Tracking Online Business Expenses
Over the last few years, my online income has steadily grown. In 2010 for example, I probably earned around $7K total in online income. My expenses mainly consisted of buying and renewing domain names through GoDaddy and paying for a couple of hosting plans with HostGator and LunarPages.

I never kept great numbers and I often overlooked other “minor” expenses such as software purchases and other little things that I do to help increase my profits.

When it came time to do my taxes last year, my tax guy asked me what kind of expenses I had that he could write off. I told him that I had about $200 in hosting (true) and probably a couple hundred dollars in domain fees (I was estimating).

Like I said, I didn’t really give him any specific numbers, because it seemed like such a minimal amount. He told me that I should really try to keep better track and find everything possible, to try to deflect all of the extra income that I was bringing in. I said I would do better next year – and the I didn’t.

When I ended up making a little over $13,000 this year, he asked me again where my expenses were. I told him again that it was probably just another few hundred dollars – just as the previous year. He said “ok” – but I was obviously going to end up owing a lot more this year because of my increased revenue. He told me to go back and double check what my expenses were and email him the final numbers.

Sitting Down and Crunching the Numbers
So that’s what I did. Thankfully I pay for 99% of my online purchases using PayPal, so it was fairly easy for me to browse through and filter all of my expenditures from the last year.

Let’s just say that I was SHOCKED how much I spent last year.

GoDaddy was the big winner. I spent over $800 alone in fees to GoDaddy! I guess all of those $7-$8 domain names really add up. Where they really hit you is with the automatic renewals. At some point I need to sit down and figure out what domains are really earning me money and which ones I need to cut ties with – rather than continue to pay for multiple renewals for sites that might only be earning me pennies a year.

The next big expense was paying for writing. Between Elance and iWriter – I spent a total of almost $600 on content. Now content is content, and they say content is king, so I consider this money well spent. The content on my niche sites is what helps bring visitors and the content adds value to my sites, so I have no problem with this expense.

Having said that, I can see that I spent a lot of money in some areas that will probably not be needed in 2012. For example, I briefly experimented with creating Facebook ads and Microsoft Adcenter ads. Although these gave me some brief traffic boosts, they didn’t not do much to increase my revenue. Therefore, that was about $400 down the train – but at the same time, a lesson learned.

I also dabbled with the whole blogging network thing. As most of you know, the Build My Rank blog network was recently deindexed by Google and that hit a lot of people hard. I briefly experimented with the ABC network – Automatic Backlink Creator. Although it did help me gain some backlinks, I did not see much change in any of the niche sites that I used within this network. So that ended up being a nice little chunk of change down the drains.

Other expenses were much more useful, many of them being essential niche site tools: I purchased the Best Spinner, Market Samurai, Comparipress, and an Elegant Themes subscription. And of course, my hosting accounts are a yearly required expense.

Oh, and if you were wondering, as I don’t think I mentioned it above – I spent a total of just under $3,000 last year.

Moral of the Story
I don’t really know what the moral of the story is, other than pay attention to your purchases and make sure you are spending money on products and services that are going to help increase your bottom line.

I know I’m going to sit down and analyze this list and these numbers and hopefully trim some of the fat this year. In the years to come I hope to better figure out what works and what doesn’t work, so that I can hopefully spend my money more wisely.

Although I was shocked that I spent almost $3K – when I thought I was only spending a few hundred dollars – I’m still happy with the overall final results.

No related posts.

But for the last several months, the blog has basically turned into just my monthly income reports. And although somewhat popular, they aren’t of much value or help – other than maybe some motivation. If you want some real motivation, check out the top 10 leader board over at Monthly Income Report.

The “make money online / passive income” blogging world is over saturated and the competition is pretty tough. Coming up with useful, original content on a weekly – or even monthly basis is challenging and time consuming – time that I need to spend on actually making money.

So I’m going to shut the doors on the blog for now.

If and when I can come up with some innovative or useful content in the future, I might be back. If I decide to quit my job and do this full time, then I’ll definitely be back… but for now – this is the end.

Good luck to all! Feel free to follow or stay in touch on twitter.

And if you are in need of web design work or help with WordPress, contact me via my online web portfolio.

If you are new to the site, I apologize for leaving you so soon. Check out my start page and my resources. They should both help you get started.

No related posts.

I don’t know how this affects my status with merchants that have already terminated their association with me, such as Backcountry.com, but for now this hopefully means that other merchants will hold off on terminating affiliates.

On a side note, I recently received an email from an affiliate manager at AvantLink and one at Backcountry stating that they wanted to set up a special pay per click program to work with affiliates in states such as Pennsylvania. Here is an excerpt from the email:

Recently, AvantLink created the capability for Merchants such as Backcountry.com, to work with Affiliates on a Cost per Click basis. Ideally, they would work with you on a Rev/Share Model, but are restricted by the recent affiliate tax legislation that has been passed in your state and others. As a result, large Online Retailers including Backcountry.com, had to sever ties with Affiliates in these states. Luckily, Backcountry.com is now able to work with Affiliates outside a Rev/Share Model and would like to start working with you on a CPC Model. Through AvantLink, Backcountry.com is able to send you an agreed upon CPC rate – all tracking, payments, reports, etc. are the same as if you were a traditional Affiliate of Backcountry.com.

Sounds like a decent alternative, depending on what the CPC ends up being. It would basically make some of the my Avantlink ads the equivalent of Adsense or EPN – except that the CPC would be fixed.

However, I’m still waiting on the call from Backcountry, which was supposed to come earlier this past week. Perhaps the delay by the state of PA has changed the plans. Or maybe he just forgot to call. It would be nice to get back to promoting their products through my outdoor gear deal site – but either way, the site is starting to do quite well with other merchants that I’ve plugged in place of Backcountry.

And here is a copy of the press release from the state Department of Revenue:

HARRISBURG, Pa., Jan. 27, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Department of Revenue today extended the deadline by which remote sellers with physical presence in Pennsylvania must become licensed and begin collecting sales tax. These steps now must be completed by Sept. 1.

“We heard from a number of e-commerce businesses that companies are willing to comply with their Pennsylvania sales tax obligations, but our original Feb. 1 compliance deadline is impractical from operational and technical standpoints,” said Revenue Secretary Dan Meuser. “In the interest of being reasonable and respecting the difficulty of tailoring sales tax software to Pennsylvania’s complicated sales tax rules, we believe extending the compliance deadline is the fair thing to do.”

Meuser noted the Sept. 1 compliance deadline comes well before the next holiday sales season, reflecting an effort to enforce uniform sales tax collection and foster fair competition among e-commerce and brick-and-mortar businesses in advance of the busiest retail season of the year.

“This is the only deadline extension that will be offered,” Meuser clarified. “Businesses with Pennsylvania nexus that do not become registered and begin collecting Pennsylvania sales tax by Sept. 1 will face a variety of escalating enforcement options over time, including assessment, audit, lien or referral to a collection agency or the Office of Attorney General.

“It’s simply a matter of fairness under the existing law, and it’s essential that both e-commerce retailers with nexus and brick-and-mortar stores in Pennsylvania, many of which are small businesses employing thousands of Pennsylvanians with retail jobs, are treated equally.”

This deadline extension follows a Tax Bulletin issued Dec. 1, 2011, which explains existing sales tax nexus law for remote sellers, clarifying the law and the department’s authority to require e-commerce and other out-of-state sellers with physical presence in Pennsylvania to collect sales tax.

Sales and Use Tax Bulletin 2011-01 relies on in-state activity to establish nexus, as required by the U.S. Constitution, and provides examples of in-state activity sufficient to require sales tax registration and collection.

In cases where companies with nexus blatantly disregard the Tax Bulletin and their obligations to begin collecting sales tax, the department has the statutory authority to look back at least three years for audit and assessment purposes.

Companies with legal questions regarding establishment of nexus are encouraged to contact the department’s Office of Chief Counsel at RA-nexus@pa.gov or 717-787-1382.

Companies with questions regarding sales tax registration, collection and reporting requirements are encouraged to call the business tax Taxpayer Service and Information Center at 717-787-1064.

Media contact: Elizabeth Brassell, 717-787-6960

Related posts:

1. Pennsylvania Affiliate Marketers Just Got Screwed
2. Pennsylvania Affiliate Tax Law Update: What You Can Do To Help
3. Income Report November 2011 and the PA Affiliate Tax Law

Well I made it through another year of earning online passive affiliate income AND my blog is just over one year old (my first post was on Jan 13th of 2011)!

Although the year started out slow, it really picked up over the summer, but things kind of fizzled out around the middle of October. Since then, it has been a downward spiral – which is part of the reason that it has taken me so long to get around to writing this post. I was also out of town from Dec 28 to Jan 5, as I was visiting my Dad in Montreal, so I did not really have access to a computer while I was gone.

When I returned from my vacation, it took me quite awhile to get back into the groove. I actually enjoyed my time away from the computer, so it was kind of a slow process to get back into the swing of things and re-motivate myself to start working again.

As you’ve probably guessed, my December numbers were pretty bad and continued the downward trend that started in October. Let’s take a look, and then I’ll talk about the numbers and try to summarize my entire year, as well as look forward to 2012.

What’s Going On?

Without looking back at every month, I’m pretty sure this was my worst month of the year. I’ve mentioned in previous months that I need to diversify my income. Unfortunately that has not yet totally happened and the majority of my Adsense money is still earned from one site. That one site was Panda slapped in the middle of October (ok, I don’t know if it was Panda or not, but something bad happened) – and traffic has been declining ever since. January is shaping up to be even worse, so at this point I’m just waiting for a bottom, so that I can start my climb back up.

If you look at the Adsense income for my #1 site: In September of 2011 the site alone earned $597.66. In December of 2011, it earned a measly $172.61. That pretty much tells the story right there. I’m doing my best to throw some more links at the site and hopefully get it back onto the front page of google for my main keywords, as well as continue working on new sites.

Accomplishments in 2011

Despite the crappy news, I did spend a lot of time on my computer (just ask my girlfriend) so I did accomplish a lot in 2011, which will hopefully lead to some profits in 2012.

Started the Blog and Created an Ebook – Around this time last year I started this blog and I’m proud to say that I stuck with it for over a year. It has been a struggle at times and I have had some lapses, but I’m glad that I made it through at least one year. I’d previously attempted a blog about this same topic (nichestorenow.com) but I stuck with it for about a month before I blew it up.

In addition to writing the blog and attempting to track my own progress, I also wrote a short ebook which I give away for free on the site. The book is nothing ground breaking, but it still gives a nice incentive for people to sign up for my mailing list.

Created an Authority Niche Website – Following in the footsteps of Pat Flynn’s “nice site duel”, I created my own authority niche website, which has seen mixed success. I’ve reached the front page of google a few times for certain keywords and even #1, and then dropped back out and off of the front page. I’ve had some really good spikes in traffic and Adsense income, but nothing consistent. Regardless, I think it was a good learning experience, and something different from my other affiliate websites and smaller niche websites.

Created Several Deal of the Day Websites Using Avantlink – I’m big into outdoor sports – running, skiing, and surfing – so when I found the Avantlink affiliate website in 2011, I was happy to see that they featured many merchants that I’ve actually bought products from in the past (Backcountry.com, Whiskey Militia, SteepAndCheap.com, etc.) Once I dug a little deeper I found out that I really enjoyed working with Avantlink and all of the cool affiliate tools and resources that they have to offer. My favorite tool of all was the “deal of the day” feeds. This inspired me to create several daily deal type affiliate sites which have been moderately successful thus far. Despite the fact that Pennsylvania’s sales tax laws have caused some merchants to terminate their relationship with me, the sites are still up and running for the time being – as I was able to still find merchants to work with.

Created 5 new Adsense niche websites using Market Samurai – I’ve created many small niche website over the last 3 or 4 years, but I’ve never had as great as success as I would ultimately like to have. I decided to try to improve my keyword research skills, so I’ve been following some keyword strategies provided by the guys at Adsense Flippers to try to improve my Adsense income. You can read more about my efforts and the five sites that I’ve recently created here. I hope to have an update on these sites soon. They are coming along more slowly than I had hoped for.

Created an Authority Blog / Travel Guide About Pittsburgh – This was kind of a spur of the moment thing.  I got the idea after reading the Nerdy Nomad blog, which I found via the awesome income report leader board.  Kirsty earns a good income by creating local travel guides for various cities that she had lived in and then selling advertising spots and links throughout her site.  I decided to attempt the same thing by creating StuckinPittsburgh.com.  The site is a work in progress.  Thus far I only have Adsense adverts and some random Amazon links, but I’m having fun writing about different places to visit, drink, and eat in the Burgh.  If you ever plan to visit, check out my blog for some tips and ideas.  I actually have another Pittsburgh site in the works which I have not yet gone public with.

Goals for 2012

• I’d still like to earn $2000 per month and do it consistently.   I was steadily increasing for most of 2011 and came close, but I hit a downward spiral that I have yet to recover from.  I need to turn it around in 2012.
• Quit my day job.  This is the ultimate goal.  $2000 a month probably isn’t enough to live on for me, so I would need to meet and exceed goal #1.  But in order to meet the first goal, I might have to take a risk and first achieve goal #2.  Dive in head first kind of like Tom from Leaving Work Behind just did.
• Totally unrelated to online income, but I’d like to lose 15-20lbs and get in better physical shape.  I’m not over weight by any means and I keep in pretty good shape by playing sports.  But I’d like to start 2012 by getting into the best shape of my life.  At 6 ft, I think I should be around 180lb, rather than flirting with 200lbs.  It’d be different if I were covered in 200lbs of muscle, but I’m not.  So I’ve started the slow carb diet from Tim Ferriss’ book The 4 Hour Body AND I’ve started doing the Insanity workout DVDs with my girlfriend.  If all goes well, maybe I will do a followup post with my progress.  If you don’t hear from me, then I probably failed and I am sitting on the couch eating donuts and drinking beer.  Let’s hope that will not be the case

I think that wraps it up.  It was a fun year with some ups and downs.  Here’s hoping that 2012 will be just as exciting, with more ups than downs.  Good luck to you all.

Related posts:

1. Income Report January 2011
2. Income Report July 2011
3. Income Report June 2011

To clarify a bit from my previous post, this is not a new law, rather a new interpretation on an existing law. The state sent a bulletin telling all merchants that they have until the start of Feb 2012 to register to collect sales tax on all sales made by PA affiliates – which in turn has caused many merchants to terminate their association with PA affiliates. This has devastated many small online business and will most likely put some people out of business completely.

Personally, the only merchant that has dropped me to date is Backcountry.com and some other stores which are owned by Backcountry. This has affected sales on one of my “daily deal” sites, but only to a small degree because that site is still not getting much traffic yet. So far Ebay and Amazon have not taken any action, and I don’t think this law has any affect on pay per click advertisers such as Adsense (at least not yet).

If you are a PA affiliate, I urge you to follow the steps listed at the Performance Marketing Association website. You can also join this google group with more discussion on the topic.

In other vaguely related news, I started a new local blog about living in Pittsburgh. Check it out if you are from the area or thinking about visiting in the future.

Merry Christmas!

Related posts:

1. Income Report November 2011 and the PA Affiliate Tax Law
2. Pennsylvania Affiliate Marketers Just Got Screwed
3. Clickbank Update

I’ll start off by stating that I have achieved my original first goal! I’ve reached #1 in Google for the original keywords that I chose: “become private investigator” (I actually own the top 4 spots).

Edit: I took this screen shot on 12/2/2011, which is when I initially started writing this post.  I still do seem to own the top 4 spots, though it looks like some of my links have jumped around a bit.

I’m also currently #8 for “become a private investigator” (exact match search). Edit: I’m now up to #7.

If you remove the quotes and do a broad phrase search, I am still #1 for become private investigator and #6 for become a private investigator (not sure why I am #7 for the exact phrase and #6 for the broad search, but I’ll take it.)

My Mistake

However, if you read part 3 of my niche series, I realized that my original keywords were not as good as I thought and actually receive a very low exact phrase search volume per month. Incidentally, the broad phrase search does much better, so reaching #1 for that is still a pretty good achievement.

Revised Keyword Goals

The new search phrase that I am now going to target is “private investigator training”.  I am currently #6 for that phrase at the time of this writing (for both the exact phrase and broad phrase search).

Plugging this search phrase into Market Samurai gives us these numbers:

This phrase gets double the number of searches that the phrase “become a private investigator” gets. Since the Adwords CPC is half the amount, the doubled search traffic compensates for it and thus the monthly search engine value is about the same.

Finding and Writing Content

For a general reference on how to find good content for your niche website, start by checking out my article How to You Can Find Quality Content for Your Niche Website.

For this specific niche website I used various sources and methods to find and write my content. Similar to Pat Flynn’s security guard website, private investigators also have different training and licensing requirements per state, so this immediately gave me 50 article topics to write about. Ehow.com was a great research resource for this task, as I was able to find information on the requirements for all 50 states. I then rewrote the articles in my own words or in some cases I used the Best Spinner to help spin the articles so that they were unique.

Using Amazon Books to Get Ideas
One great method for finding topics for your articles is to search popular books on Amazon. In my case I found the book “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Private Investigating” for this example. Note that not all books will have this feature, but you should look for the text “Look Inside!” above the book’s thumbnail image.

This gives you a look inside at a select few pages of the book, including the table of contents. Actually in this case, it looks like you can read the entire book! But assuming you could only view the table of contents, this can be a great resource for finding ideas for new articles. Some chapters from this book that would make great articles for the website include: “Techniques of Interview and Interrogation”, “Moving Surveillance”, “Conducting Your Own Crime Scene Investigation”, and “Clues to Infidelity”.

In most cases you are probably not an expert on your particular niche site, so writing unique and informative content off of the top of your head is probably not an option. Therefore Google is a great tool for finding articles related to the chapter topics that you may have found in your Amazon books. Once you’ve found the articles, it’s then up to you to rewrite the content that you find or use a tool such as the Best Spinner to make the content unique. Two important things to keep in mind when finding and rewriting other people’s content:

1. Make sure you actually rewrite it! Copying the content word for word will be seen by Google as duplicate content and can potentially penalize your site.
2. If you do decide to spin the content, make sure that the spun content is still readable and makes sense! It is important that the actual content on your site is quality content and spinning software can spit out some real crap, if you don’t pay attention to detail and make sure it reads correctly.

Paying for Content
Some time ago, I wrote about using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to have content written. While this is a great way to find cheap articles, it is not usually the best quality of writing, so I would not suggest using it for your niche website (especially for a larger authority niche site). This type of cheap content is better used for article and blog marketing while building backlinks for your niche site, which I’ll discuss more in depth in the next part of this series.

The best place that I have found to pay for top quality content is without a doubt Elance. Many of the top writers on Elance make their living by writing as a full time job. You will definitely pay a premium for the articles that you find on Elance, but you will be assured to get well written, proofread, keyword rich content that will get the attention of your readers. Additionally, Elance is a great source to have a short report or eBook written, which can then be given away for free as an incentive to have users join your email list. (I’m currently tossing around the idea of having a short report written for BecomePrivateInvestigator.com so that I can begin compiling an email list.)

And finally, a site that I’ve just recently begun to use is iwriter.com. This is a newer site but I’ve found the quality of writing to be above average and the costs are reasonable.

But be warned.. Writers are rated on a scale of 1 to 5. When you post a job, you have the option of submitting to all writers, submitting to writers rated 4 or above, or submitting only to the top article writers (rated 4.8 or above). The price per keyword increases depending which group of writers you decide to submit to. You can pay as little as $3 per 500 words, up to $8 per 500 words if you choose the top writers. You also have the option to raise the price and tip writers, which will most likely get you the most attention for you article and probably the best quality writing. Also be prepared to reject some really poorly written / spun articles when you choose the minimum $3 articles. But once you have found a few good writers, you can post your jobs to those specific writers, and things move along pretty smoothly after that. The interface is very simple to use and you can fund your account quickly and easily with PayPal.

Summary

To date I’ve posted roughly 75 pages of content for my private investigator training website using all of the methods I’ve mentioned above. The majority of content was written by me, but I did pay for some of it toward the end in order to speed up the process.

Although it took a bit longer than expected, I did reach #1 in Google for my original keywords, so I am happy that was able to accomplish that goal. I am well on my way to reach #1 for my next set of keywords, and many of my long tail keywords are also beginning to rank very well.

In the next part of this series I plan to talk about the various methods that I’ve used to market my site and create backlinks to achieve the search engine rankings that I currently hold. Hopefully my findings will be helpful to you and will also carry over and help me with my next set of niche sites moving forward.

If I don’t write again in the next 2 weeks, have a Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays – whatever the case may be. I’ll be heading to Montreal from Dec 28th to Jan 4th, so you might not hear from my until after the New Year.

Related posts:

1. Can I Niche Duel Like Pat Flynn? – Part 3
2. Can I Niche Duel Like Pat Flynn? – Part 2
3. Can I Niche Duel Like Pat Flynn? – Part 1

Lately I’ve come across a few new blogs which have helped motivate me to start working harder once again. Plus these are all well written and interesting in one way or another. So with that said, here some of the blogs that I’ve been following of late.

Adsense Flippers

These are the guys you want to follow if you really want to focus on Adsense and learn how to grow an Adsense empire. I think I came across them from a recommended link on Twitter. Reading their blog has really gotten me back on track with trying to make more Adsense income.

Justin and Joe’s basic business model is that they do extensive keyword research and then whittle down that list to a manageable list of potentially profitable keywords. Then they get to work creating niche Adsense websites – keeping the ones that do really well and building them up to make even more money. The other sites that aren’t doing quite as well, they sell on Flippa or on their own website. Best of all, they share all of their methods for free. They’ve gone from making $30 in December of 2010 to $10,000 – $15,000 a month present day.

Favorite Post: Our Keyword Research Strategy
BONUS: Adam at Monthly Income Report (another cool new website) recently bought one of their niche sites and reviewed the entire process.

Tyler Cruz

I saw Twiends.com mentioned somewhere recently as a good source of finding new Twitter followers. I checked it out and somehow I ended up following Tyler Cruz (Ironically he recently wrote a post about gaining 10,000 twitter followers with the help of Twiends). After reading a few tweets, I ended up on his blog.

Tyler seems to be a jack of all trades. He makes money from his blog, as well as making money from other affiliate websites that he owns and from flipping some of his more successful sites. I like his stories because he is a risk taker. And to make a lot of money online, sometimes you have to spend some money and take some risks.

Favorite Post: Grasping Opportunities #2: How I Turned $2.3K Into $16.5K

Adem

I found Adem when he became a somewhat regular commenter on my blog.. Or maybe I commented on his blog first, I don’t really remember. I like Adem’s blog because I feel like we are pretty much in the same boat. We both work 9-5 full time jobs and just do the online income as a side gig for the time being.

However, unlike myself, Adem has only been doing this since May of 2011 (I started in 2008). He has already seen some relatively good success after only the first 3 months – and he has also experienced the roller coaster ride that is the world of Internet Marketing – as evidenced by his recent income report. While its always fun to follow the big, established guys that are making 5 figures a month, it’s also nice to get a fresh perspective from some of the newer guys on the scene.

Favorite Post: What I’ve learned after getting punished by Google

Niche Pursuits

It’s funny that when I started following other “make money online” blogs, I got so caught up in Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income blog, that I never really looked too far beyond it.

I found Spencer after following a link that was posted on Twitter from Adem above, and after reading through some income reports, I realized that Spencer is killing it almost as much as Pat. In fact, he’s currently #2 on the Monthly Income Report leader board.

Spencer actually quit his job in March and does IM full time. Similar to my recent post about my 5 new Adsense websites, he recently started a round of 20 new websites in August, so it has been fun to follow the progress of those.

Favorite Post: 5 Simple Adsense Layout Examples for Increasing Click Through Rates

So when I’m not working on my own niche websites, these are some of the blogs that I read to help keep me on top of my game. Did I miss any of your favorite blogs? Give me some ideas for my next post.

No related posts.

The concept isn’t new, but the process of making it work can be somewhat complicated if you aren’t a coder. There are several tutorials out there that explain how to do it, but to my knowledge I’ve never seen a WordPress plugin that makes it so simple.

I’ve been given the opportunity to check out a review copy of the new Facebook Viral Plugin, and that is exactly what this plugin was designed to do. Specifically you can easily hide content and then allow your readers to reveal the content by using 3 different facebook methods:

• They can simply “like” a link.
• The user can post a message (customizable by you) to their facebook wall.
• The user can send a facebook message to another user.

Each of those actions can be setup to reveal the hidden content and the method for revealing the content is totally up to you.  The plugin allows you to customize the link that is shared, customize the text on the reveal button, and also customize the hidden content that is revealed (I’ll show an example at the end of this post).

Setting up the Plugin

Installing the plugin is as simple as installing any other WordPress plugin.  If you are familiar with WordPress then installing it should be no problem.

Configuration is handled via a simple tabbed interface.  Just follow the progression of the tabs by entering your facebook app ID and then entering the various “shareable” information, such as the link, custom icon, custom text, etc.

You can then modify the colors of the button used to hide the content.

If anything doesn’t make sense or you have trouble, there is also youtube video provided on the plugin page which gives a step by step explanation of how to setup each piece of the plugin and then an example of placing the hidden content into your blog post.

Speaking of adding the content to your post…  That part is also easy thanks to 3 icons that have been integrated into the WYSIWYG editor.

Highlight the text that you want to hide and click one of the above icons to force the user to message, post, or like to see the content.

In Conclusion

There’s not much I can say bad about this plugin.  It is well designed.  It is simple to use.  And it does what it is intended to do.

My only suggestion would be to add Twitter integration.  And perhaps Google+ integration.  I know it is called the Facebook Viral Plugin, so perhaps new plugins for each system would be required, but if all 3 systems could be integrated into one plugin, that would be optimal.

So if you are looking for an easy way to start a viral marketing campaign via Facebook, give the FVP plugin a look.

The FVP Plugin in Action

As promised, here is an example of the plugin in action. Click the Like button to get my eBook “Up and Running with Niche Sites for Beginners” for free. No need to signup for my newsletter. Press Like and the download link will be revealed:

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2. Google, Twitter, Facebook, Bieber, and Obama
3. Are You Sure You Wish to Proceed?