Self Employed or Bust

Scams? Google Called! They Want to Make Me Rich!

December 29, 2008 – 1:51 am

Hold on a second, Sparky. Let’s talk. Grab a chair. This’ll be a long one.

Remember the first rule of just about anything… if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Those are the words that should have sprung immediately to mind when I received the same call just last week. But I’m a trusting soul (up front), prone to actually listening to the sales pitch rather than walking away at the first sign of oddity. In retrospect, I’m glad I did hear the guy out. Not because the pitch was legit but because it’s given me some juicy material and, if we’re lucky, it just might save you some time, grief and money in the process.

On the road to self employment there are a number of valuable tools available to us. The number of excellent resources, applications, guides, books and programs are impressive only until you measure them against the number of useless, time-wasting scams which simply dwarf them. It was in the process of exploring some potential work-from-home options that I ran into this recent “scam” and I’d like to tell you how you might find yourself in the same boat. Side note - “scam” is in quotes because there is some (and that’s generous) validity to the get-rich scheme we’ll be discussing here. In the same sense that the moon is a valid vacation destination if you happen to have trillions to invest in the infrastructure and equipment required to fly there and build an air-tight hotel.

So here’s how it works. You sign up for one of these blog tool kits or Google tool kits. In my case it was the Google tool kit. You’re provided a free trial period during which you can decide if the product is for you or not. If you don’t cancel within the allotted time (careful here, folks… some of them consider Saturday a business day) you will find yourself strapped with a monthly membership fee until you do cancel. In my case, the fee would have been $40.00 had I not canceled).

Ordinarily I’d leave these things alone. None have anything to teach me about blogging I haven’t already learned myself or under the mentorship of the true blogging geniuses out there. I signed up for this blog tool kit because doing so gained me free access to what I was really interested in which was a technique known as Incentivized Freebie Websites or IFWs. More on that in a future post.

Now, so far everything is ok. We’re not to the scam yet. As stated, I only signed up for this blog kit to get the IFW information and had every intention of canceling. Then things got interesting. On a Friday evening, my wife answered the phone. I could tell by the hesitancy in her voice that she felt it was a sales call. She asked the caller who they were and then handed me the phone. “It’s Jeremy, with Google.”

Well I’m certainly not going to turn down a call from Google! Sure enough, the fellow on the other end introduced himself to me as Jeremy with Google and asked if I’d recently signed up for a Google tool kit. I advised him I had. Jeremy went on to explain that before a company can attach Google’s name to any product, they have to meet certain licensing agreements not the least of which is that a Google representative be given the opportunity to speak with the prospective clients prior to any membership fees coming due to ensure legitimate interest in the product and full awareness of pending membership fees.

I advised Jeremy that I was aware and simply hadn’t had the time since registering for the product to review the materials and that, as such, I’d be canceling prior to the expiration of the free trial period. He was extraordinarily helpful here. He told me a bit about the program, provided me with a cancellation number and deadline and advised that I should consider asking for an extension just for giggles when I call them. In passing, as casual as can be, he also mentioned a program offered specifically by Google’s Success Team.

Now I’m going to pause in the telling a bit here to emphasize just how masterfully that Google Success Team reference was thrown in. It wasn’t pushed. It wasn’t emphasized. It was dangled out there as unobtrusively as can be in just such a way as to entice without seeming to. You, (or in this case, me) the dupe, don’t even see this coming. You are glad Google is so vigilant about the integrity of their name. You are really pleased that Google is nice enough to call you to ensure you’re getting a good product associated with their name or have time to opt out and, finally, you’re intrigued by the mention of a program internal to Google which focuses on the success of a handful of clients.

Tell me more, said I. And so, almost grudgingly, Jeremy shared a little bit about the “Google Success Team.” Here it is in a nutshell - The Google Success Team is a small team of Google consultants focused on building success stories to the tune of a minimum guaranteed $3000-$5000/month earnings within the first 60 to 90 days. In return, Google receives the right to promote your story in print and television media. Of course, there are rigid requirements. “Don’t want to get your hopes up,” Jeremy warned, “you probably won’t qualify. If you’re interested, though, we’ll go through a preliminary pre-screening and, if that goes well, set up a full vetting for a later call.”

So Jeremy and I wrapped up our conversation on the blog toolkit and turned to the Google Success Team. He asked a few questions that are custom tailored to find out how serious I was about starting a successful home business and whether or not I’d even qualify for a real interview. Do my wife and have the time to commit to it, are we upstanding, law-abiding folks who will reflect positively on Google’s image? Do we have any debt issues or concerns, etc? Any business skill or acumen we can apply or any online business experience? I honestly felt I was in the process of a preliminary job interview, one of several to come, for a team I’d be privileged to be a part of. And wasn’t I lucky, because I passed with flying colors and qualified for the real interview which we scheduled for the following Monday. “Allow for at least 45 minutes, Jeremy warned, and if you both intend to work with the Google Success Team, you’ll both want to be on the call. Oh, and here’s my number and extension just in case you need to cancel.”

I hung up with Jeremy and my wife and I went over the call together. When you get right down to it, it sounded too good to be true, but the guy was from Google, for God’s sake. They can’t lie about something like that, can they? My wife suggested we call the number Jeremy provided just to ensure they really were who they said they were. The receptionist answered “Corporate Office.” My wife asked what company they were and the lady responded “Google.” Well, test passed, right? Well, we’re not that easy so we decided to do a little more research. Naturally, we Googled “Google Success Team” and came up largely empty. In fact, not one of the listings on the first page had anything to do with a “Google Success Team.” There were Google success stories and web success teams but nothing specifically for Google Success Team. Odd.

But Jeremy had warned they were a very select unit of Google consultants working with only a dozen or so clients a year. Google’s closely guarded secret, he seemed to imply. Well there wasn’t much more to do until Monday anyway so, with a mixture of interest and mistrust, we waited for our Monday date with Jeremy of Google to roll around.

Monday would turn out to be full of revelations, not the least of which being that Jeremy wasn’t really with Google but, if you want to know what happened next and how to ensure you don’t fall for this little trap yourself, you’ll have to check back soon for the continuation of this story. Three typed pages is where I begin to realize I’ve gone on too long and it’s time to convert things into a multi-part series. I don’t know that the story or my writing style will be all you hope but I do know that being self employed demands a bit of smarts. If you can learn something from my experience it will be worth your time to come back.

Update: The second entry is now up and is titled Scams? Thrive Learning Institute Called! THEY Want To Make Me Rich

Update: The third and final entry is now up and is titled Scams? Thrive Learning Institute Called! They Want Me to Make THEM Rich!

Posted in Blogs and Websites, Scams | 2 Comments »

Where Can I Find Good Keywords

November 3, 2008 – 7:00 am

In my previous post – The Importance of Picking Your  Keywords – I tried to make the point that finding a niche keyword worth targeting should be your first step. This is your starter pistol – the bang that will get your blog moving and dictate everything else in the near term. I discussed the “optimized” element of optimized niche blogging as it relates to keywords and emphasized that you want to narrow your focus rather than going too broad and facing insurmountable competition. A friend, also on the road to self employment, who reviewed what I wrote had an immediate question, though, so I’m going to expand on that post. The question was, “how do you come up with keywords.”

 

 

 

It’s a darn good question and it’s with that question in mind that you should decide up front what you want to accomplish with your blog. Unfortunately, the answer requires more than just pointing you at the nearest source of inspiration. If your objective is minimal work and growth over time, you’re going to take one approach. If you want to put your all into a single blog, you’re going to take another approach. Since we’re focusing on optimized niche blogging, we’re going to focus on the former but I’ll touch on the latter a bit to help you make the distinction.

 

 

 

With optimized niche blogging, your focus is on volume. You want many blogs covering many precise topics which cater to a very specific clientele. Drop the word “optimized” and you’re left with a niche blog. Rather than spending your time building many blogs targeting very specific keywords, you will invest your time becoming an expert in one or two fields and writing a lot of very good content. Either way, your objective is to offer value to your visitors but, with a niche blog, you’re offering it virtually to the exclusion of all else.

 

 

 

You may be able to apply some of the concepts you learn here to niche blogging but that’s not my objective. Again, we want to optimize our time, our effort, our potential and our niche blog in an effort to minimize the effort over the long term. So why was all that information about non-optimized blogs important ? Because, if you are going for optimized niche rather than just niche, it helps to think of the visitors you want to target.

 

 

 

If you are writing a regular niche blog, your objective is to be a subject matter expert. You want to provide the best information out there on your particular niche. In doing so, you will garner the best traffic for that subject and place high on search. Months or years later, when you do decide to monetize the site, you may or may not do well. Again, you’re giving away the cow with the milk as far as subject matter information is concerned. Still, sponsors will be willing to pay you to show their ads based, if nothing else, on the high volume of traffic you bring to the table. That’s important.

Sponsors are not Adsense. Sponsors may be perfectly content with paying you CPM – for every thousand views, you get a little money (potentially a LOT of money). Adsense pays per click (on the ads). If you’re getting thousands of visitors everyday on a non-optimized Adsense site, you might very well not manage to convert those visits into clicks because, again, all the information your visitor needs is right there on the site (unless it’s about a product they might want to purchase.)

 

 

Now with an optimized niche site, your focus is on introducing visitors to ads relevant to their needs. You need them to click on those Adsense ads or you aren’t getting paid. They are looking for very specific information. Your blog provides information on the topic in which they’re interested but also provides ads which are very well suited to their needs. The visitor clicks the ad, sees the perfect solution to their need and buys from your advertiser. Everybody comes away a winner. Which brings us to the important question – who clicks on ads?

 

 

 

As you analyze the keywords you want to target, keep your audience in mind. High tech terms don’t convert well. Neither do blogs focused on keywords like this blog you’re reading now. The more tech-immersed your readership, the less likely you are to convert readers into clicks and money. Why? Well these are people who likely spend hours of their week online. They are so internet-saturated that they effectively become ad-blind.

 

 

 

Having seen thousands of sites just like yours and owing to the fact that they are familiar with page layouts, their eyes naturally skim over what they consider to be non-relevant (even though an ad may be exactly what they need) and they just peruse the true content of your blog. Not finding exactly what they needed, they move on. Or, worse, click a link in one of your posts to another site better suited to their needs (ouch). Now consider the alternatives. Who do you think might not be as web-savvy? Who do you think might be just as happy with the content of an ad targeted at the information or products they are searching for as the information on your page?

 

 

 

I read somewhere that the best keywords target the young and the old. Though true, I think that approach omits a large potential audience. Yes, grandparents looking for good information on a toy or product for their grandchildren are more likely to click on an ad than, say, the father of those children who works in the tech industry. But the farmer shopping for parts for his combine might be inclined to click ads too. The elementary school teacher is also inclined to click ads. The sweet lady working in the craft store down the street might be a clicker. Your uncle Charlie, the fisherman, he might be a clicker. There are plenty people out there who are not so jaded to online advertising that you can focus your optimized niche blog on. No need to just target the very old and very young.

 

 

 

So at this point you’re probably thinking I’ve gone completely off topic. Wasn’t this supposed to be a post about finding keywords? Yes it was and no I haven’t. I had to take you through those considerations because without that information you might have used what’s next to go out and hunt for what you thought were great keywords but which, in fact, cater to audiences unlikely to click your ads. Now that you have the information you need to begin your hunt, let’s talk about inspiration.

 

 

 

When I first started optimized niche blogging as a vehicle to self employment, I really struggled with where to find ideas. I thought there was some formula, some font of inspiration that could help me. Now that I’ve been at it a while, I find there are, indeed, great sources. In fact, in researching one keyword of interest, I often find several completely unrelated ideas. I can’t describe to you how I got to that point other than to say that time and familiarity with the process make it easier and easier. But you need a jumping off point and I’m going to give you several.

 

 

 

First, look around your room. What do you see? I’m looking at an IPT phone, my Blackberry, several computers, the speakers for my computers, my aquarium, several cans of Mountain Dew, a flash drive, my Climbing magazine (and right there’s another source of potential ideas), some quarters on my desk, some decorative pottery, a VPN concentrator, my guitars, and on and on. From that alone I can find several ideas to start with. Acoustic guitar strings, for example, or rock climbing shoes. Saltwater aquarium fish might be an idea as might antique gold coins. Now I’m not saying those are good keywords. There’s research still to be done to determine if that’s the case, but I hope I’m showing you how everything in your world can serve to inspire ideas if you just open your eyes.

 

 

Get in the habit of looking at the world differently. Whether at home, watching TV, driving to work, at lunch with a colleague, just take in the world around you and look for things people might search for online.

 

 

 

Second – Ebay. Go to Ebay now and look at the long list of categories. From there, browse into one of the categories and dig a little deeper. For example, we might click on Crafts. From there we might click on Airbrushing and find ourselves subsequently inspired to create an optimized niche blog on airbrush compressors or airbrush spray guns.

 

 

 

Third – Amazon. Go to Amazon and check out their offerings. They don’t just sell books, folks, but if books are your interest, fine. Rather than just “books,” for which you’ll never rank above someplace like Amazon, dig deeper. Books could become books on forts and fortresses. Maybe you’d want to focus further on Ancient Roman Fortifications. Look at some of their sporting equipment. Maybe there’s some inspiration there. Heck, look at anything and everything.

 

 

 

So to summarize, in the optimized niche blogging element of evolving into a self employed life, targeting an optimized keyword is critical but so, too, is considering your audience. Avoid catering to an audience unlikely to visit your advertisers. Think moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas, teens, farmers, dock workers, car nuts, hobbies, collectors, etc. Think of people who don’t live with a broadband connection practically wired into their skulls. Find your inspiration surrounding you every day as you work and live. Finally, write out a list of 10 keywords you think you’d like to start with and come back soon. We’ll be covering how to research those words to see if they’re worth pursuing in our next post.

Posted in Blogs and Websites, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

The Importance of Picking Your Keywords

November 1, 2008 – 8:26 am

 

Assuming you’ve decided to start an optimized niche blog or any other website, for that matter, you’d be wise to pick a keyword to target. On first starting out, when the idea of being self employed was a vague dream rather than an honest pursuit, my wife and I each wanted to setup websites around our hobbies and interests. I’m an outdoor adventure nut. She’s an animal rescue fanatic. With no clue about keywords and even less clue about setting up websites, we invested countless hours and tons of blood, sweat and tears into our first sites. And we made several unfortunate mistakes; not the least of which were absolutely no efforts to target specific keywords.

 

After months of building our two websites, we wondered why the traffic didn’t flow. Why weren’t we millionaires? Why weren’t more people showing up? The amount of work put in wasn’t translating to money or visitors. More than a year later, I’m much more informed and much wiser and no why. We weren’t optimized. We didn’t target keywords. So what’s a keyword?

 

First, the term ‘keyword’ is a bit misleading. A keyword may, in fact, be a single word. It may also be a series of words. Really, though, it’s what you’re looking for when you head to Google or Yahoo. Whatever you type in to find what you’re looking for is a keyword some savvy internet entrepreneur could be targeting to attract you. The main keyword for this blog, for example, is ’self employed.’ I am slowly building this blog around that word and will gradually gain page rank on Google as the months and years go by. Why not faster? Because this isn’t the blog on which I hope to make money. It’s the blog I write in hopes of helping others make money.

 

I’m also going to mention long tail keywords. A long tail keyword is simply a longer, more targeted term for which people might search. For example, red tail hawk migration patterns. If you’re looking for that, you’re looking for some extremely specific information.

 

As you’re thinking about setting up your first blog, jot down your high level keyword. Let’s say you like cars. The word ‘cars’ is our starting point. Now, how many sites out there do you think there are about cars? Do you think that’s a smart word to start with? Do you think you could quickly move up the rankings in Google and take page one if you’re targeting that keyword? Maybe you could… but only after beating out the 694,000,000 (as of this writing) competing sites. Not likely. You can see how much you’ll be competing against by typing your keyword in the Google search field in quotes, by the way. For this search I typed in “cars”.

 

With ‘cars’ as our starting point, let’s narrow the focus. You could immediately narrow the focus a bit if you limited yourself to a particular type of car. Being a bit of a speed demon and a motor-head, you decide you’d like your first blog to focus on sports cars. Our first filtering now and we’re focused on ’sports cars.’ Hey, look at that. Already we’re down to 6,010,000 competing pages. That’s quite an improvement but still a lot of competition. We might be able to rank against that eventually but, unless you have years to kill, it’s still not a good starting point. Let’s narrow the focus even further.

 

The next keyword combination I’m going to try is “Italian sports cars.” And, bam! Just like that I’ve found a keyword that might actually be worth targeting. At 20,800 competing pages, I might actually be able to rank up there. I know 20K competing sites sounds daunting but, remember statements I’ve made in previous posts. The internet is littered with the decaying corpses of failed, unwanted, never-updated sites and blogs. Many of those 20,800 sites will fall in that category or will be poorly optimized and beatable.

 

It’s that narrowing of focus to a long tail keyword that makes optimized niche building what it is. Had you begun with just “cars” as your target, you’d spend years of link building and content writing and probably never get anywhere. By narrowing your focus, you dramatically increase the likelihood that you’ll make it to the top of Google’s first page for that term. Think of your own search habits through Google? Isn’t your inclination to hit the first item that shows up in your search? How often do you go beyond page 1, 2 or 3? See how important it is to rank well for a keyword?

 

Does that mean you can’t ever go for that broader term? No it does not. Over time, assuming you continue to grow your blog, you very likely will target other keywords. Also remember that every time Italian Sports Cars appears in your blog you are actually building some juice for each of those 3 words and every possible combination of them (Italian, Sports, Cars, Italian Sports, Italian Cars, Sports Cars). As you write about them, you’ll also find search traffic hitting your site for word combinations you never even thought about.

 

Now, don’t start jumping for joy and planning your retirement yet. On the road to self employment through optimized niche blogging, there’s a lot more to it than just picking a keyword. Heck we still have to determine if that keyword is worth targeting from an earnings perspective. At this stage, we’ve just surmised that it may be possible to rank well for. There are other variables to consider and we’ll move along with those in our next post as well as introduce you to some free tools. See you again soon.

Posted in Blogs and Websites | 1 Comment »

What Happened to Keyword Sniping?

October 7, 2008 – 12:02 am

Some of you may have visited Court’s Internet Marketing School and noticed that keyword sniping is no longer explained. The reason for this is that Court suffered a penalty not because there’s something unscrupulous in the technique but because the technique was abused by others. In an effort to get his site reindexed and his reputation with Google restored, Court has removed content specific to keyword sniping.

It’s almost a taboo keyword (keyword sniping) which people are avoiding. I won’t hide from Google and erase my earlier content because I’m simply reporting on a technique described by somebody else. In the interest of fairness to you, Google and Courtney Tuttle, I’m leaving the few posts I’ve put up on sniping but emphasizing honest use rather than abuse. Why? Because I respect Court and because I want you to learn about methods which might help you realize your dreams of self employment.

That said, there have been some changes and will be future changes coming, so read on. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Blogs and Websites, Lessons from the Legends | 2 Comments »