Earn Money Online with Brandon Hopkins » About Me

Are .com Domains Equal to .net and .org?

Brandon — Tue, 03 May 2011 19:01:19 +0000

If you subscribe to the FeedFront Magazine, there is an article in this months issue (April, 2011) from Morgan Linton about using exact match domains (EMDs) to rank quickly and easily. I’m a huge believer in that exact approach and about 250 of my 350 domains are EMDs. However, he and I have a difference of opinion about the value of .net and .org domains. He’s only a few hours away from me, so maybe on day we’ll get together to discuss domains when I’m in the LA area!

Morgan says, “the SEO benefit of an exact-match domain is the same regardless of TLD. This means that the owner of BuyCar.net has the exact same chance of ranking {as} well as the owner of BuyCar.com, based on the exact-match bonus, since Google and Bing will ignore the TLD.”

With Google’s autocorrect and automatically showing the suggested result, type-in traffic is a very tiny factor even for the biggest exact searches. Every domainer knows that developing a great domain is where the money lies.

As I said, Martin and I differ on our assumptions of the value of .net and .org TLD’s. I think Martin might be assuming that .com’s rank just as well without having actually tested it. I have evidence (partially anecdotal), and would be willing to prove what I already know as fact, especially if there were a compelling reason. Domains ending in .com rank better than .net and .org.

I just finished building 77 new exact match one-page sites. 61 of them are .com and the rest are .net and .org. A single domain is .info. The domains all went live about a week ago. Out of those 77 sites, 38 are on the front page for their exact match keyword. Out of those 38, 37 are .com. 1 domain on the first page is a .net domain. I haven’t done any link building, pinging, or anything like that.

If you’re new to domains and are trying to find some exact match domains, most of the good ones are taken, but you can still find some long tail domains that are unregistered. My favorite way to buy long tail domains is by using the Market Samurai Domains module. Just click Domains, then put in a list of keywords.

Exact match domains rank well! Exact match .com domains rank even better.

Keyword Stuffing and Domain Names – Does it Matter?

Site Review: PictureFrameGuys.com

Brandon — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 23:17:18 +0000

It’s been a while since I’ve done a site review so I thought I would dust off my site review worksheet and give the Picture Frame Guys some things to think about.

First Impressions

Without a doubt the first thing you notice about this picture frames website is the beautiful design. Most sites I review need a complete redesign, but if the PictureFrameGuys.com were my client, I wouldn’t change anything about the design. I love the layered look of the picture frames behind the flash header. I also like the mouseover effect on the 5 main sections below the header. Below that is some great search engine content.

Usability and Functionality

In my website design business, one of the most important thing for almost all of my customers is ease of use. They want their website visitors to be able to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. This website has a variety of methods for accomplishing this goal. The first and most obvious are the 5 easy links below the flash header.

As you can see, these links make finding what you’re looking for very easy. Wood picture frames and metal picture frames are obviously the most commonly used and that’s why they’re featured on the left. As a design side note, the most important information should always be on the left. The English language reads from left to right so our eyes naturally start on the left side of the page. I am not even in the market for a picture frame right now, but I couldn’t help visiting the picture frame tips page. I love “Tips and Tricks” no matter what they’re about. I would probably read anything for 15 minutes if it was in a list or top 10 format. Keep that in mind when you’re designing a page to attract a variety of people. Short and sweet sells.

SEO Suggestions

It doesn’t matter how beautiful your website is if nobody knows about it. This is partially the case with PictureFrameGuys.com from a search engine standpoint. I did some research to see where PictureFrameGuys.com ranks for about 150 picture frame related keywords. Out of those keywords, PictureFrameGuys.com did not have any first page rankings, and only a couple top 30 rankings. Unfortunately this is totally unacceptable for a business of this caliber. The number of potential customers being missed is huge! The worst part about these poor rankings is that, like most businesses, they don’t know how far behind they are. They’re probably working on getting a few links from Facebook, friends, personal blogs, etc., but in reality that isn’t enough, and never will be enough. After analyzing some of their links, it looks like they might have hired a company to put a few links on some blogs, but that will never be enough (as indicated by the poor rankings). Take a look at the rankings in the picture below (click for full size).

Fortunately this is an easy problem to remedy. With a customized link building campaign I could have PictureFrameGuys.com (or your website!) in the top 10 for just about every major keyword and hundreds of minor keywords. The keyword “picture frames” has some very stiff competition, but nothing that couldn’t be beaten with some time and money.

What’s the next step?
After doing a review of the aesthetics, usability, and ranking factors of the PictureFrameGuys.com, I would say they are well on their way to having a profitable business no matter what the economy looks like. As you could guess, the one suggestion I have is to run to your phone and give me a call about search engine marketing, there are thousands (61,280 daily searches according to Market Samurai) of people every day searching for picture frame related keywords that you could be reaching. If you only reached 10% of those, you would have 6,000 new website visitors, convert 10% of those and you would have 600 additional sales per day. Even if you only converted 1%, could you use an extra 60 sales per day?

As I mentioned, I do provide a full range of SEO services including link building. Email me or call me (559-871-1613) anytime to discuss your needs.

The Importance of Dreaming

Brandon — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:39:24 +0000

Where would you like to be in 5 years? It sounds like a dumb interview question, but it’s relevant in internet marketing (IM) as well as making money online. If your 5 year goal is to make $100 a month, set your sites higher.

The future you see is the future you get. – Robert Allen

What does your future look like in your mind?

Take a break from what you’re doing and consider these questions.

If you were given $1 million per year for the rest of your life, what would you do?
If you had everything in life paid for, what would you do?
If you lived in a monastery and didn’t have access to the internet, what would you spend your time doing?
What is one thing you could never live without?

For me, those types of questions really make you reflect on what is important. Is money important, sure. Is it the most important thing? Definitely not.

“Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.” – Will Smith

What is the goal of you making an income online? Is it to buy a Hummer to impress people you don’t know? Is it to move into a neighborhood so people want to come to your house? If you think about it long term, are those things that are important to you?

“When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.” – Oscar Wilde

When you lie on your death bed looking back at your life, will you wish you had spent more time making money? Will you check your bank statements and be happy that your life’s total sum is a dollar figure?

When my life is through, I want to look at my children and grand children and see them smiling. I want my wife to know that I loved her with all of my heart. I want God to say, “Well done, good and faithful servant”. To me, the chief end of man is to glorify God in everything I do.

What do you want to see when you look back on your life? Are you current actions taking you there?

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Site Review: Ezilon.com

Brandon — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:49:09 +0000

Ezilon.com contacted me recently about a site review for their directory. Initially I didn’t want to do it because general web directories are overrated and boring. They sent me a link to their regional web directory and I checked it out. It is unique! Yes, a unique web directory.

What makes Ezilon Unique

Since Ezilon is a unique web directory I thought I would start with that. What initially makes Ezilon unique is the design. It isn’t just about template based directory script with a million crappy sites and DMOZ listings. It is a web directory that is designed to be used as a directory. Ezilon is ideal for finding a local business since the first way you’re presented with is a clickable world map that takes you to regional based directory listings. I was able to quickly and easily find backup providers in the US.

Submitting Your Site

Ezilon is a paid web directory. Generally I don’t pay for web directories, but this one made me give it a second thought. The reason is the high authority and high PR inner pages. For example if you sell baseball gear, here is a page with 4 outgoing links that is a PR3 and a steady PR 3….not a spammed quickly fading PR 3.

Baseball gear isn’t the only high deep linked PR page. Here are a couple others I found with only a couple outbound links.

osCommerce

Preschool Programs

Dating

Projector

Those type links are not only hard to find with strong PR and limited outbound links, but this site is loved by Google. I don’t know their stats, but I would imagine they get nearly 100k Google referred visitors per month. I see over 260,000 indexed pages, most of them cached. Did I mention the homepage is a PR6?

Subdomain Crazy!

One of the first things I noticed about Ezilon.com was their prolific use of subdomains. I counted about 20 subdomains ranging from country listings to an answer service like Yahoo Answers. Unless you’re site is really large, you shouldn’t need 20 subdomains, one situation in which you could use subdomains is for different languages like Ezilon.com does. Google often treats subdomains as different websites so a subdomain that is for a different language is truly a different website targeting different people.

Ideas and Suggestions

After spending considerable time browsing all aspects of Ezilon.com (and the various subdomains), I noticed a considerable lack of advertising. While this is definitely not a bad thing, it isn’t the best business practice, unless you’re running a pro-bono site. The advertising that I did see was mainly Adsense ads. When you have good page rank and good page views, you should have no trouble selling advertising.

I would suggest targeting specific markets and selling advertising on those pages of the site. Ezilon could sell Miami Beach real estate listings and web directory listings to that market. They could create a process and duplicate their process across the US and the entire world. With Ezilon there are a million different possibilities for upselling and cross selling including homepage advertising and featured category listings.

In addition to the different types of direct selling, they could promote their paid web directory and give out coupons to specific target markets they want to break into. When you give out a coupon to “Company A”, and they sign up, it’s easier to sell the product or service to “Company B”. The sales call would be easy, “I wanted to let you know that Company A is advertising on our website. If you’re interested in advertising as well, I can list you as a featured site and you’re website will display above theirs!” Fear and competition can sell advertising. Company B thinks that if Company A has paid for advertising, I should to. I can be featured above them? Great!

Ezilon has so many PR 6 and PR 5 links, they could easily be selling $2-5,000 worth of text links per month. On this Help Desk page alone (PR6), they could sell a link to any number of help desk companies looking to increase their rankings.

I would suggest starting with an inventory of assets. These assets are mainly high trafficked pages and high PR pages. Once the list is created, start selling!

In addition to the high value assets, there are a lot of other medium quality assets that can be monetized including the Article Submission section. Article Submission services are a great source of passive income.

Another medium value section is the Job Board. It’s a PR 3 with only one untargeted banner advertisement. Even just an affiliate program from Monster or Snag A Job would be better than no monetization.

Now You See…

Ezilon isn’t just another basic web directory with a bunch of junk listings. Their site provides value in a variety of ways and has huge untapped potential! Check out Ezilon Regional Web Directory today!

SEO and SEM Online Degrees

Brandon — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 02:22:42 +0000

I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention, but SEO degrees have been flooding the market. Unfortunately for the people attending these seo classes whether online or offline, they’re not learning nearly as much as they can through blogs and forums, and they’re paying too much money to get a piece of paper that anyone hiring should laugh at.

If someone applies for a SEO job and lists a degree as qualification, you should laugh and move on. Some people were born to sell cars, they don’t need degrees because their performance speaks for itself.

It’s the same for SEO (and especially SEM), your past performance is what should set you apart from the people who have wasted their time getting a search engine optimization degree. After all, isn’t SEO dead yet? Who really cares about on page SEO? Google surely doesn’t, neither does Digg or Delicious. Your Twitter followers don’t care if you’ve optimized your meta tags or what your keyword density is.

Quit living in the past, you don’t need a degree. This business is still the wild west, there are no rules you should follow, you should do whatever it takes to get your site ranked #1.

This week I’ll have a review of a unique directory I found online, don’t miss it. Yes, you read that right, a unique directory.

Great Outsourcing Post

Brandon — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:53:55 +0000

I outsource a variety of my daily tasks, simple and complex stuff. I tend to outsource the tedious (writing) and the stuff I’m not great at (PSD to PHP/HTML conversion). If you’ve never outsourced, take a look at this guest post at Shoemoney.com. It can change the way you do business.

Typically I find my workers/employees through forums like DigitalPoint, but the Craigslist Philippines is a great idea, one that I had never thought of. Give it a go and let me know how outsourcing works for you.

By the way, I’m always looking for talented people, send me a message if you’re one of them!

Earn Money Online Vs. Make Money Online

Brandon — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 20:30:52 +0000

There is a lot of talk about people who try to “make money online”. Those keywords in particular. The funniest thing to me is that the great majority of people who are writing about making money, don’t actually make any money online. They just think that the making money niche is profitable, which I assure you it isn’t. Of course, there are superstars who post pictures about their earnings and detail how much they made with their make money online blog, but 99% of the blogs in this niche find out the money isn’t there.

So with that said I’m going to be shifting my focus away from “making money” to “earning money”. I still do everything the same, but with a focus on what kind of work you need to put in to get the desired results.

Earning money though web based ventures isn’t for everyone. I have a family member who told me that he had extra time and wanted to try to turn that time into money with the internet. I spent hours with him explaining what he needed to do, we bought a domain, got hosting set up, installed WordPress and wrote him a sample post. I detailed everything he would need to do over the next month in order to make it a successful month.

At the end of the month I went back to his site and guess how many posts he had…1, and it was the post I made for him.

I called him and asked what the problem was and he said, “I don’t think this is for me, it’s a lot more work than I thought it would be.”

Therein lies the truth. Making money online is not easy, but earning money online is possible. You’re not going to get rich overnight. That PPC campaign will not take off, your website will never rank number for for “laptops” and you will never be paid $50,000 to speak at a conference. However, you can make a very good earning online.

You’ll need to be prepared to work hard for little return in the beginning and trust that one day down the line it will pay off. That’s what I’ve been doing since 2004 and I can tell you that it has truly paid off!

I Give Up…

Brandon — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:50:08 +0000

After a long and hard fought losing battle I give up. I will start using Twitter. As I said in my first tweet (tweet still sounds stupid to me) I don’t see the value in giving content to a 3rd party site with no financial return but I’ll see if maybe I can find some. You can follow me if you want to know what I do every day to make money online.

I hang my head in shame.

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Free Web Hosting – 22 Gigs

Brandon — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 20:45:47 +0000

I’m launching a new service that most of you will appreciate, free web hosting. You can host as many sites

as you would like. You can use sub domains or your own domain.

This is great for building links, just like you do when you create wordpress.com and blogger accounts. Currently I’m taking signups and the free web hosting site will launch November 1st, 2008.

If you’re interested in nearly unlimited free website hosting check out 22Gigs.com

: Free Website Hosting with 22 Gigs

Where To Buy Clean Links

Brandon — Mon, 05 May 2008 05:47:41 +0000

Buying links has long been debated, especially when Google slapped so many blogs in the last year. Personally I haven’t had many issues with Google, but many people had. With that disclaimer, be careful where you buy your links. Most places that sell links have a “footprint”, or an easy way to track which websites are selling links. For example of a footprint, search for “powered by WordPress” in Google. It’s an easy way to find a lot of blogs that are running WordPress. That’s just a simple footprint, but there is a footprint to just about everything.

One place that I’ve found that sells quality links and doesn’t leave a trail is LinkWorth. If you haven’t bought many links then this won’t matter to you, but if you’re in the game to make money, links are vitally important. LinkWorth has some really big blogs on their network for driving traffic, then they have a lot of 2nd and 3rd tier blogs that are great for just snagging a link.

Personally, I like to get one link and go. I think a single link on one domain is just as beneficial as a site-wide link, and possibly even better. Depending on the quality of where the link is posted, you can see beneficial traffic from links that you’ve earned naturally or purchased.

Either way, LinkWorth doesn’t seem to leave any footprints which means it is nearly impossible to find out if the links are natural or paid.