Self Employed or Bust

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.

Instead of keyword sniping, we’ll focus on Optimized Niche Blogging or ONB. The difference between Optimized Niche Blogging and regular niche blogging will be explained in a detailed subsequent post.

Next, I’ve edited my previous posts on keyword sniping slightly to emphasize a point I tried to make but didn’t make clearly – INTEGRITY is paramount. I refuse to pass on anything blackhat or even greyhat I may learn in my studies, nor will I use such techniques myself. When it comes to optimized niche blogging, we will focus on methods to expedite the process, but not by throwing away our scruples. Court tried to make that clear to folks but there were still people who abused his technique and cost him dearly.

If you want to learn shady ways to make a living online, move along please. I’m not smart enough, crooked enough or wicked enough to take the time to learn that stuff. In my post Goals and Objectives for the Self Employed I stated “100% legitimate. I do not want to engage in scams, shady dealings or any other activity that isn’t completely up front. Integrity with my clients and adherence to all local and federal laws is of paramount importance to me. I never want to feel guilty about a single penny earned nor do I want to ever jeopardize my long term livelihood for short-term gains.” That goal remains unchanged.

Finally, since Court no longer provides his methods, I’m going to try to reinvent the wheel as well as introduce you to some additional people out there I consider the real pros in this business. You’ll have to judge for yourself if their methods are suited for you but I will be borrowing a little bit from each of them so you’d be well served to study them in detail yourself.

As a brief preview to what Optimized Niche Blogging will cover, I’ll describe from step one how to select a keyword, buy an expired domain name dirt cheap, set up your hosting, install your blog software, write enough valuable content to begin drawing traffic, develop good link building habits and then rinse and repeat.

Over the course of your blog’s life, you will not invest every day writing content for that blog. Your objective will be to let it stew for a while, then add a bit to it. Eventually you’ll monetize the blog (which I’ll also explain) and then move on again to work on the other blogs you’ve developed.

You will experience slow growth in income over time but you’ll be surprised at how much fun it is to watch that income grow from pennies into a few dollars into a legitimate income you can be proud of with only a few hours a week invested. It ain’t a get rich quick gimmick, folks. It is work and you won’t reap rewards immediately, but you will eventually.

In the meantime I want to emphasize this… Courtney Tuttle’s Internet Marketing School is invaluable with or without his keyword sniping posts. I fully endorse him, his personality and his techniques and hope you’ll continue to visit him often. His videos alone should go a long way to getting you started on this element of your self employment strategy.

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