Make Money Online with Brandon Hopkins

Jason McGovern wrote:
Hi Brandon -First off, I love your blog. Second, I was reading your link building in 2007 post, and wanted to request an expanded post on article submission. I would love to get your thoughts and ideas on this when you get a chance!

Thanks for the email Jason! Articles. One thing I always wish I had more time for. However, also something I can’t ever justify outsourcing.

For me, article marketing plays a crucial role in two ways. Whenever I decide to try out something new like Build a Niche Store or ClickBank ideas I always start with articles to test the waters.

When starting a new site in a niche, articles are one of the first parts of my marketing plan. The reason behind this is that you can get a few easy links and some easy traffic. Once those articles are spread to the thousands of crappy article sites, the value of the link degrades, but you’ll still see some traffic every month in my experience.

When I write articles, I try not to target a flooded market, or the main keyword.  I like to write my articles with a focus on a long tail keyword.  Once you can lock in a good position with a long tail keyword, it’s easier to build traffic and a following.  Think of it like a snowball rolling down a hill, all you need is a little push (article) and you collect more snow (rankings) on the way down!

In addition to building links and testing the waters, articles can actually convert to sales. I used to have a Squidoo lens and 99% of my marketing for that lens was with articles. Consistently I sold about one ClickBank ebook per month. The net revenue was not much, but neither was the time commitment.

All in all I still like articles as much today as I did 2 years ago. I do however avoid owning article directories. Too much work without enough reward.

Thanks again for the question!

13 comments

A few days ago Chris Garrett made a post titled Why I Don’t Check Rankings. Ironically enough, the post is ranked 6 for the term “check rankings”.

Unlike Garrett I check my rankings, at least daily. Why? I’m in this game to make money. There is no other reason I spend a great portion of my day writing and publishing content. As much as I like my readers, I have offline friends and don’t really need online friends. Like you, I’m here to make money, plain and simple.

I don’t care to be famous, I respond to interview questions because I want the links and traffic that come. More links, better rankings. Better rankings, more money. See where I’m going?

Garrett says, “My approach is to write for audiences. I usually have my main audience and also an overlapping audience that I hope to attract with my most recent article.” That is something I understand. My audience is a search engine. I don’t care which search engine it is, I just want them to come to my site, and love it. If they love it and I rank #1 for a niche keyword, then beautiful.

If I can get 30,000 uniques per month in my niche, but can’t make $300 I’m either wasting my time, or building something bigger. Most of the time when I exploit a particular niche and it explodes with social traffic, that traffic is completely a waste. It doesn’t convert, and social visitors don’t click ads.  Traffic isn’t my goal, my goal is where that traffic goes.  Did they click and ad?  Buy a product?  Or did they hit the back button and continue surfing?

Before I go too much further, it’s important to note that Garrett and I obviously have different plans when it comes to building a profitable online presence. I’m not even sure that is his goal, so I don’t want to criticize his methods because his goal may not be the same as mine.  Maybe he blogs for the love of blogging. I blog to give you something to read, with the hope that eventually you’ll convert to an affiliate program, buy something, or at some point become valuable through RSS subscriptions or total readership. To date, that has happened pretty well. I have a full list of ads sold, a few links here and there and a few posts that have earned me some money.

So why do I track my rankings? I want to make money. If I’m ranked #5 for a decent keyword, with some effort I can probably move that ranking up to #1 depending on the quality of the niche. If you have any #1 rankings, you know that the difference in net profit between #1 and #5 is INSANE!

In conclusion, let me tell you a story from about 3 years ago. I was ranked number 10 for a high volume keyword on MSN. Keep in mind, MSN traffic is very low compared to Google. After about 30 days I moved from #10 to #1.

At #10 position I was making about $5 per day. When I went to the #1 position, I was making over $150 a day (with MSN alone) with that one site. If I wasn’t tracking my keywords (like Chris Garrett), I never would have known that I was within striking distance. When I found out I was ranking in the #10 position for my keyword I immediately went to work and made great money.

So why do I take the time to track my sites? To make some money of course!

Do you take the time to track your keyword rankings?

6 comments

For a long time I have been using this method and I think it’s about time to divulge one of my favorite little secrets.  Keep in mind, this is one facet of a successful marketing plan, not an entire marketing plan.  Use this in conjunction with link building, using trackbacks for traffic, and even linkbait.

The goal of using Google Alerts to build links and increase traffic is to know where the Google bot has been, and follow behind it tracking your keywords.

I assume you have a Google account.  If you use Adsense, AdWords, Gmail or any other Google service, you have a Google account.  So head to the Google Alerts page.

Set up an alert for each of your keywords, but set the “type” to blogs.  Once a day is plenty.  Now, set up keyword alerts for other keywords you use.  If you’re selling widgets, you could use “buy widgets”, “widgets for sale”, etc.

You can use parenthesis for keywords like you do with Google search.

Every day you will get an email from every site that Google has spidered that has your keywords.  Click the links, post a comment and move on.  Works in conjunction with Drive By Linking.

I have about 15 alerts set up for various niche’s that I participate in.  Every morning I will post about 10-30 comments on blogs that I’ve never seen before.  Depending on the size of the niche I usually see about 25 uniques for each niche.  This compounds each day.  For example, day one you get 25 uniques, day two you’ll see 30, day 3 you get 40, etc.

While it may not revolutionize the way you build links, it certainly helps to know where the blog action is!

11 comments