iamned.com Blog

I am going to let readers in on a very easy way to make money online in just a week and with a small investment. Obviously, to make money online you need traffic, but getting a lot of traffic without paying a lot for advertising tends to be difficult. This writeup will show you have to avoid having to spend money on ads while still making money.

The easiest niche to monetize by far is Myspace. All you need is a content generator and ads such as adsense, paypopup, etc to get started. Why is myspace such a good niche? Very easy to rank. You can get thousands of visitors a day with google by targeting 3-5 keyword myspace terms, where as other niches such as pharma, legal, healthcare, etc are much more difficult. As soon as you get traffic you make money. Pretty simple.

Here are the steps:

Step one: Generate a keyword list of myspace related terms. Traffic equalizer had both a content genrator and a keyword gnerator, but there a dozens of keyword generator programs out there.

Step two: Get a content generator that creates automated php database pages from those myspace keywords. I highly recommend traffic equalizer. Using traffic equalizer here is my keyword list and automatically generated pages:

(copy these URLs into your blrowser to see what I mean)

http://iamned.com/myspace4/1/index.html

http://iamned.com/myspace4/

Each of these links is a sitemap that links to individual pages.

Make sure that your landing page is somewhat userfriendly and looks legit instead of spam.
Step 3: Register a throwaway domain, get shared hosting (a single hosting account that allows multiple sites such as http://www.hostgator.com/shared.shtml), and generate 1000’s of pages using your content generator and keyword list.

Step 4: Point links to the sitemap pages. Getting links is easy. Stick links in your forum signature, buy a high PR link. A PR5 or better links will quikly get your site indexed.

Step 5: Sit back and make money. Within a week or so your pages will be indexed and hits and ad revenue will start rolling in.

On the down side, your domain will probably be banned from google withi na month, but you can always just register a new one and repeat the process. Using this method you can make between $20-50 a day per site and the more sites you have running at once the more money you make.

The costs are very low. The domain costs between $2-10. Hosting is $10 a month. Traffic equalizer costs $150, but it can be used unlimited number of times. If your good at programing you can build the content generator yourself.

The most important aspect of this summary is the niche. Myspace is the best niche because getting heaps of search engine traffic is easy. The downside is that the CPM is low, but you are making money and having a low CPM is better than a high CPM and no traffic and money.
Hope this helps.

Yesterday I wrote an article about why blogs fail, and last week I outlined some of the best and worst ways of promoting your blog. In continuing with my blogging theme, I present a list of some of these worst SEO/internet blogs. These are blogs that in one way or another, failed. By dissecting why these blogs, many which had a lot of potential, failed bloggers can learn not to make the same mistakes.

#1 BluehatSEO.com

I have been a long time critic of bluehatSEO, and in spite of getting a lot of criticism, It looks like I have been vindicated. Bluehatseo hasn’t been undated in over a month. The last post was made on October 17. It’s as if the blog has been completely abandoned. Even if Eli does return it is probably too late because most of his readers have probably deserted him. Although I disagreed with nearly everything written, Bluehatseo had a lot of potential, but by now the damage is irreparable.

#2 tattooedmarketer.com

Laucnhed about six month ago by Wickedfire moderator, SEOmike, the blog hasn’t been updated since October 3rd. The problem with the blog is that it wasn’t sufficiently promoted and most likely in frustration and boredom SEOMike stopped updating it.

#3 Seo-blackhat.com

Written by an anonymous blogger and wickedfire member, seo-blackhat tired to gain noteriety by claiming that shoemoney faked auction ads stats and later by finding a blogrush explioit. Both attemppts at linkbait failed to build any momentum. The blog hasn’t been updated since October 23rd. Another problem besides lack of updates is that the blog doesn’t load properly in firefox. The comments section is misaligned and pushed to the very bottom of the blog.

The success or failure of a blog ultimately falls on the blogger. Many times I have noticed that a blog that at one point had a lot of potential ‘die’ due to the negligence of the blogger. Traffic and comments steady declines and updates become increasingly infrequent. The most common causes for blog failure are as follows:

1. Failure to update the blog frequently and consistently

This is one of the leading causes of blog failure. If you don’t update your blog on a consistent basis readers will grow impatient and bored and eventually forget about your blog altogether. In order to RETAIN readership it is imperative that you update frequently and consistently. I simply can’t stress this enough. If you are too time constrained to write content yourself hire a content writer to fill in. While a paid writer won’t be able precisely duplicate your writing style, it is better than not writing anything.

 2. Boring, regurgitated content

Ideally a blog should be a platform to cover less mainstream topics that ‘traditional media’ overlooks. Quality, unique content stirs discussion and debate. It’s the job of the blogger to engage the reader, and writing compelling, thought provoking content is crucial to retaining and building readership. Copying stories from AP and pasting them in to your blog or scraping content while appending ‘+ digg + furl+ add to facebook’ buttons at the bottom is a surefire way to bore readers, as is writing content-less 2-4 sentence posts. Instead, offer readers an original perspective and make sure your posts have substance.

3. Failure to deliver on promises

If you make a promise to unveil a ‘killer app’ or a groundbreaking tutorial, but fail to deliver readers will probably get irked. While you will probably be forgiven if you offer an apology, over time failing to live up to expectations and commitments can be very detrimental.

4. Over monetization

While is is understandable that bloggers want to make money for their efforts, a line must be drawn where advertising becomes excess and intrusive. For example, running auctions ads, three adsense ad blocks, and a dozen text links ads ‘blocks’ would probably be excessive. By overdoing advertising you dilute the CPM value of your individual ads while muddling your blog. Instead of coating your blog with ads, charge more money for only a few ads so you make the same amount of money, but with less intrusion.

5. Censoring comments, disabling comments

Censoring comments or disabling comments all together defeats the purpose of of a blog, because blogs thrive on active engaged readership. If you have a fragile ego and are sensitive to criticism blogging probably isn’t for you. Inevitably someone will flame you, drop spam, but you have to take it in stride.

An IPO (initial public offering) can be a lucerative way for companies to rise a lot of money, as well provide an ‘exit’ plan for the founders and early employees. IPOs also allow individual retail investors like you and me to partake in the company success (or possible failure) by purchasing ‘overnership’ of the company in the form of shares. If the company does well, the shares should rise and you, the investor, make money. In the 90’s stock market boom dotcoms strived to go public. Now with the rise of web 2.0 and social networking we’re in a second internet boom, but there are no web 2.0 IPOs. Not a single one.

There are many reasons why there havn’t been any web 2.0 IPOs. During the last dotcom boom retail investors and venture capitalists lost billions of dollars from investing dotcoms. Mopt of the dot coms that went public between 1997-and 2000 lacked a sustainbale business model and were hemorrhaging money. Even successfull IPOs such as amazon.com and yahoo.com drained investors when the dotcom bubble burst. In addtion, the SEC has imposed various new regulations since 2000 such as Sarbox Oxley which makes it more difficult for companies to go public, as well as requires more stringent financial statement reporting in the wake of the Enron and Worldcom scandals.

But if you look beyond the negatives IPOs offer a lot of benefits, and now may be the best time for web 2.0 companies to go public. Unlike the previous internet boom, the majority of web 2.0 companies are profitable and are experiencing rapid growth. The potential is abolutely huge, especially considering the enourmous hype surrounding web 2.0 companies.

If facebook went public it could easily attain a market capitalization of 30 billion or more within a month, exceeding that of Yahoo.com. Infact, I would buy as many shares as possible of facebook if it public without even giving it a second thought because the potential is so great. Sure, this may seem like financial suicide, but actually it isn’t as I will explain.

But what about excess hype and bubble valautions? Internet companies have always traded at a premium valuation. While the mean PE (price to earnings ratio) of companies on the S&P 500 is around 17, internet companies have an average PE of around 30-50 because those comanies are growing at a more rapid rate than offline comanies and thus usually trade at a premium. While this may increase the risk, it also substantially increases the potential upside for investors who are less risk averse.

For example, in 2005 bidu.com, a chinese internet portal, went public at $27 a share but closed the day at a whopping $120 a share with a PE ratio of around 1,500. By any metric this stock was greatly overvalued. So there should have been a huge collapse if history is any indicator because this company was so overvalued. While bidu.com did selloff  in the following months, by late 2006 it began to rebound as investors gave bidu.com a second look, as it’s revenue and growth was staggering. By mid 2007 the stock traded above $200 and now trades above $310 with a PE ratio of just over 150. While the stocked nearly trippled from its IPO closing price its PE ratio fell by 90%. In the span of nearly three years bidu.com earnings increased by a mind blowing 2,500 percent or 26 fold. There was NO bubble, no huge selloff, no implosion. Why? because bidu’s business is rock solid unlike many of the companies in the 2000 dot com bubble. Thisis also why a facebook IPO would be a goldmine for investors.

If facebook, twitter, digg.com or any other successful web 2.0 company went public it could reap the same windfall as bidu.com.  Had bidu decided not to go public due to ‘bubble’ fears it wouldn’t be valued at $10 billion dollars as it is today. Had google not gone public the company woudn’t be worth $270 billion dollars, nor would google have had the resouces as it has now by raising capital by selling selling shares. By going public companies can ’sell’ shares to public to finance acquisitions and reseach.

Instead of succumbing to irrational post dot com bubble fears, companies need to let the marketplace decide the value of their companies. Since we’re in a second internet boom and given the staggering growth in online advertising and internet usage there from a financial standpoint is almost no excuse not to.

From personal expeirence and common sense here are the best and worst ways to get traffic and promote your new blog. While most lists include only the methods that work, I have decided to include those that aren’t as effective you will be able to avoid them.

In order from most effective to least effective:

1. Forum signature link. This is by far one of the most effective ways to get traffic to your new blog. As an added bonus a forum signature link can help your blog get spidered by the search engines. Nearly any forum will allow signature links and sometimes you can add multiple links. A good signature link should be written to capture someones attention. Since signatures are short, your words must be descriptive and suspenseful. A good title would be “Why does your website suck?” A mediocre one would be “How to make your website better”. The first headline is more likely to grab the reader’s attention because people tend to be more receptive to negatives than positives.

2. Link exchanges to related blogs A link exchange with a blog similar theme as yours can provide a steady stream of traffic and search engine spidering with little work. After you have written several quality pages of blog content, send an email asking for a link exchange. Put his link on your blogroll first before sending the email to increase the odds of success.

3. Write an article for a forum Join a forum become a productive contributing member. (Don’t forget to add your signature link!) After making a week’s worth of constuctive posts and establishing yourself as semi-knowledgeable member create a separate thread promoting your blog, but do so in a subtle manner. Begin by creating headline like “Dell releases new gizmo!” Then in your own words write a paragraph about the gizmo, and at the very end of the post include a link to your blog which has a complete summary of the new gizmo. This method will drive a lot of traffic if done properly.

4. Contribute to other blogs This method isn’t very effective most of time since most blogs don’t have many readers and the blogs that have a lot of readers your link may be overlooked. Some bloggers may not allow live link in comments, but a lot of bloggers will alow you to hyperlink your username to your website in every post. Most readers don’t read all the comments and of those, few if any will click your username.

5. Traffic schemes Recently there have been a surge in various blog traffic exchange programs such as Blogrush, Blog Explosion, and many other traffic generating schemes. I don’t recommend any of them. The problem with these systems is that they tend to operate though pyramid scheme where in order to move higher up the list you must recruit other people to join. While these programs my send a lot of traffic, in order to benefit you must be high on the list, which excludes 99% of people who join. The blogs that are most likely to benefit are the largest blogs, but if you’re blog doesn’t have many readers you won’t get much if any traffic.

6. Blog search engines. There are dozens of blog search engines and aggregators and I have found that none of them generate any appreciable traffic. The probalem is that the number of blogs indexed in these search engines VASTLY exceeds the number of readers. The blogs that are likely to benefit the most from blog search engines are large blogs since they will be ranked higher, while smaller blogs are buried in the fray.

7. Search engines. Unless your blog is established, getting search engines traffic is exceedingly difficult. Iamned.com has dozens of pages of original content, yet generates a meager quantity of search engine traffic.
While this list is far from comprehensive, it will provide a good starting place for anyone who wants to promote their blog.

We are in a new era. An era of hyper capitalism, spendism, smartism, consumerism, monetizationsism, materialism, paymentism, and verificationism. Never before in the history of industrialized society has there been such rapid technological and social change. People are spending more, saving less, technological breakthroughs are being made every day, millions of people from all over the world pour onto the web. We’re in a high tech web 2.0 boom. A global economic boom unlike any ever soon before. Brazil, India and Chinese economies rapidly developing. Emerging market now lead the way, where as in the 90’s the United States was the premiere center of growth.

Millions of Americans are on anti depressants and that figure shows no sign of slowing. Unable to cope with the rapid social and economic changes affecting their environment citizens of industrialized nations seek escapism in the forms of vices and self medication-alcohol, tobacco, drug use, pornography.

To be continued…

Recently, there has been a lot of speculation and debate on many webmaster forums and conferences regarding the valuations of web 2.0 social networking sites, mainly facebook. I have speculated that facebook could be worth one trillion, and while that figure may seem very absurd, few people are willing to accept that facebook could be worth just $15 billion. That number seems so outlandish to most people of the tech industry who still have vivid memories of the 2000 dotocm bubble, and therefore regard these recent valautions to be the manifestations of a second bubble.

However, facebook’s 15 billion dollar valaution is not excessive, and we’re not in a web 2.0 bubble. Instead, we’re in a web 2.0 continuum. The valuations for the top web 2.0 social networking sites will only grow in the coming years, with 2008 being a stellar year.

Also, a lot of naysayers seem to forget that facebook, myspace, youtube have MILLIONS of users, MILLIONS in ad revenue, are very profitable and can be treated as full fledged media companies like CNN or News Corp which have audiences of similar size.
The web 2.0 continuum will begin with google, yahoo or microsoft aquiring another piece of facebook in early 2008. Maybe 2-10% stake will be aquired for billion of dollars. This will make huge headlines and further bolster the valuations of these web 2.0 companies.

I have written how the top websites aren’t at risk for being displaced. What this means is that facebook, myspace, twitter, photobucket, google, youtube and other popular sites WON’T be superceded by newer sites. Why is this important? Because it further gives justification for the ‘high’ valuations of social networking sites. Since these social networking sites aren’t at risk of being displaced they will only continue to thrive.

I have written a few weeks ago how it is no longer viable to create a web 2.0 site due to market saturization. Since nearly all new web 2.0 websites are slated for failure according to my arguments, that will further enable the current web 2.0 leaders to keep growing and apreciating. My post “Why making money online generally sucks” also elaborates on this point.

Overall, the web 2.0 bubble doomsayers will be wrong in 2007-just like they were wrong in 2007, 2006, and 2005. When Fox aquired Myspace for $560 million it was considered to be indicitive of a bubble, but now myspace is worth $10-16 billion and revenue has exploded in that time.

I am sometimes asked “Ned why are you so negative?” My reply is that I have every reason to because I am constantly inundated with hype and crap in the world of internet marketing and unless you are critical and discerning it is easy to get mislead, wasting a lot of time and money in the process.
Once you pass a certain threshold of knowledge you become very good at detecting hype and flimflam, but a lot of noobs aren’t and they are mislead into buying worthless ebooks, having illusions of grandeur, and so on.

One of the goals of this blog is to dispell a lot of the hype circulating around the web 2.0 and internet marketing world.

I tend to view things from an analytic and economic standpoint preferring objectiveness over subjectiveness.

Fro example, remember when link farms were all the rage? They don’t work any more. If it wern’t for ‘negative’ people dispelling link farms people would still be mislead into joining link farms.

For some reason that eludes there has been a disproportionate attention and focus on viral marketing. In the news you read about how youtube videos and myspace pages can allow companies and organizations to promote their services for free through viral marketing. Once you ‘get the ball rolling’ the growth should be exponential as more an more people virally spread the message of your product.

Sounds like a good marketing strategy? Maybe, if you’re one of the lucky few who’s message does go viral. Otherwise viral marketing doesn’t work and is a waste of time.

There are countless videos on youtube and myspace with the intent of creating a viral reaction, yet only a tiny, tiny percentage of them ignite any viral response. The remaining videos simply fade away in the ever growing archive of internet crap.

These videos are usually created by experts as well, and in failing to have their video go viral they lose money in the process because the directors are unable to recoup the costs. Not a very good deal.

The same not only applies to internet videos but internet meme’s, social networking sites, and other forms of online media intended to generate a viral response. It just doesn’t work and is a waste of time, as is the case with 99.9% of things.

Here is the lowdown: don’t bother with viral marketing. It doesn’t work. You will just be wasting your time and money. Internet users are INUNDATED with media attempting to generate a viral response. The odds of YOUR video or website capturing their attention, let alone going viral, is slim. Thousands of viral videos uploaded on youtube and myspace a day. There are Tons of new viral websites being created every week, each vying for an infinitesimal sliver of your attention. Obama parody pages, dancing cats, deodorant commercials, enough is enough.

Google is at an important junture in its history. It is poised to conquer online and offline media but it can’t afford to make any blunders, and one such blunder would be to not aquire facebook for $30 billion dollars or more.

While $30 billion may seen obscene for Facebook, a socialnetworking site that only makes $150 million a year in revenue, it isnt. For one, google’s stock has been soaring for the past two months, rising from just $550 to $740 without any sign of slowing. A $30 billion dollar investment would be just 8% of its market cap. And if google rises another 10% its already paid for, all $30 billion of it. So even if facebook somehow falters the loss will be negligible.
Google decision to buyout youtube for 1.6 billion in October 2006 was brilliant. Youtube is easily worth 10 billion now, and has catapulted google in the forefront of online media. back then all the overpaid, dinosaur pundits were calling it a bubble and pverpriced, but in hindsight it wasn’t. And neither is purchasing facebook for 30 billion.

If Google fails to buyout facebook, it is very much possible facebook could supercede google in the next decade. I illustrate such a case in my blog post Facebook worth one trillion?

Facebook could easily develop its own ad delivery service for publishers and advertisers to compete with Adsense and Adwords. Also, the sheer multitude of facebook apps and other widgets will cajole internet users to spend less time surfing the web and clicking ads and spend more time on facebook interacting with the widgets instead. Insead of doing a google search a widget could deliver relevant websites to a facebook user without ever having to leave facebook. The possibilities are endless. Of any company in existance, Facebook poses the most emminant threat to google’s future. Much more so than Yahoo or Microsoft.

In conslusion, it is imperitive that google buyout the remaining 98% or so remaning stake of facebook NOW before the valuation of facebook goes up any more. If google waits another six months it may be too late. Facebook now is like paypal in 2000 or youtube in 2006 or Myspace in 2005. Google has no choice, and it would be a phenomenal business move.