Everett Sizemore made me want to blog a little more, so I thought I would give this to you.

If you’ve never used Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), you’re missing out. MTurk lets you pay people for specific tasks. These tasks could be things like writing short articles, but anyone can write a short article. MTurk does let you do a few other things that can make you a lot of money. I’m still making money using MTurk so I can’t divulge ALL of my secrets, I can give you some tips and let you adopt them into your marketing plan.

1. Content Generation – Would 100 real reviews make your product review site stand out? I have paid about $.10 per review. Works great with a WordPress review plugin.
2. Legit Comments – Want to make your site appear well trafficked but get sick of posting comments to yourself?
3. Social Bookmarking – I’ve moved into more automated methods of social bookmarking, but if you’re still doing it yourself, this is a great way to outsource it cheaply.
The following are likely against the terms of service for at least one of the sites, so use at your own risk.
4. Digg Votes – Want to get a site to the front page? Would 100 votes from unique IP’s and unique Digg accounts help? Make sure you’re sending traffic to the page, not directly to Digg.
5. StumbleUpon - I hate SU traffic, it’s pretty much useless. They don’t buy anything, they don’t click ads so to me, they’re a waste of time. If you can monetize this traffic, use it the same way as you would Digg.
6. Arbitrage – DEFINITELY against the TOS…Pay $.25 per signup to a CPA offer that doesn’t require a CC. NeverBlue has some good email offers.

Keep in mind, these are only suggestions to help you think outside of the box. I personally don’t suggest that you violate the terms of use of any of the sites listed, including MTurk. MTurk is a little trigger happy to ban your account…Trust me on that.

Typically webmasters start out with Adsense as their revenue stream. While it’s easiest and definitely quick to use, Adsense is not always the best performer if you’re looking to earn money online from your websites. With Adsense you’ll always run into a couple problems.

1. You can’t presell. With an affiliate link, you can talk about the product so your visitor knows what to expect when they get to the advertisers page. You can give them the price and details, and if they still click, they’re likely to buy since they already know everything. If that isn’t the product they’re looking for, they’ll continue browsing your site. You’ll make a sale, or keep a visitor. With Adsense you don’t get the chance to do either.

2. You’ll earn less. While I can’t say that every single one of my sites that has affiliate links makes more with those affiliate links, a majority do.

3. All your eggs in one basket. If all of your income is coming from one source and something happens to that source, your revenue drops to $0.

4. Unknown revenue share. This has always been the biggest issue with me. Google doesn’t tell you how much you’re going to earn. In fact, they tell you how much they will give you per click, after you send them the clicks. It’s totally backwards but until they have a reason to give you that info, they never will.

Moving away from Adsense is tough, and I wouldn’t suggest dumping it all together. Start slow, remove the ads from one page and replace it with affiliate links. Test it for a month and see what the revenue is like when compared to Adsense.

I couldn’t really figure out a way to title this post without using the word “spamming” in the title, but here you go.

This morning I experimented with a grey hat method of getting links and traffic. The basic premise is changing your referrer to always show a link you want instead of the page you’re actually coming from.

Then when a website owner views their logs/stats, they see your link. Generally you want this link to be something important like your site or a money making site.

Here is my secret tip. Set up your referrer that targets a specific demographic, then start browsing those sites. Click all the links in the comments, the blogroll, the in-post links, etc.

I don’t know how well it will work, but I set up a specific test page and will keep you posted! If it works, I’ll give you the exact method I used and the tools to make it work.

I don’t normally tell you about ideas that I don’t do myself, but I do see a huge opportunity for the right graphic and vector art designers. There are a handful of great companies that play the middle man in finding buyers for photography and vector creations.

My favorite is iStockPhoto.com. I’ve been buying stock photography for over 4 years from iStockPhoto and am a huge fan.

In the last year there has been a shift from traditional photography towards vector art. Take a look at this search for “trees”. Out of the 32 pictures for sale on the first page, 15 of them are vector. That’s almost 50% of the top pictures of trees are not real trees, they’re digital art.

If you are talented, browse the popular files, or just do a search like I did and you’ll find people selling stuff that you can make at home that will earn you money. Each time you sell something, iStockPhoto.com will pay you a royalty on that picture or graphic. The more you sell, the more you earn. The more you design, the more you sell. Design one or two each day and you’ll be earning a lot of money online in no time!

In 2005 nobody would have argued that having the most relevant keywords stuffed into your domain name was worth more that just about anything when working the SERPS.  You could buy thousands of dollars worth of links and never achieve the same results that domain name keyword stuffing would do.

Today that is different.  If you take a look through the SERPS for most keywords, you’ll find about one third of the domains have keywords.  Compare that with 2005 and I would imagine that 75% of the domains in the top 10 had keywords stuffed into them.

So does the domain name really matter?  Not to me.  I still own a lot of domains that are stuffed that I purchased over the last few years, but I’m finding that they rank just as well as domain names without any keywords (or words).

So if you have the choice between a brandable keyword domain such as Flickr, Google, or Technorati, choose that over a keyword stuffed domain.

Yesterday I talked about whether or not you should work on pages that are already making money.  That is a decision that you must make on your own.  When you start building additional links and marketing those pages, there is a chance that you might upset the delicate balance that put you in the top 20 in the first place.

But, if you’re willing to take that risk, here are a few tips that I’ve found to help move you up a few spots in a competitive niche.

1. Add a blog.

If your site is currently a static html site, try adding a blog either in a subdomain or in a folder off the root.  blog.example.com or example.com/blog will both work.  In that blog, make a lot of semantically related posts.  If your site is about making money online, your posts should be related to “money”, but not always “making money online”.  Example posts could be, “Your Money and the Dollar”, “How Inflation Changes Your Money”, “How to Make Money in a Slow Economy”, etc.  If you notice, you’re using your keywords, just not your exact key phrase.  Whenever you make those posts, make sure and link back to your money pages with appropriate keywords.

Those links should always have varied anchor text and the anchor text should be relevant to the post, not to the money page.

2. Add content.

This one might be a little controversial as many people don’t like to touch a page that is already starting to rank.  I feel a little differently and my feelings are based on actual tests.  I have had a few pages ranking for a variety of keywords and have added content including additional adsense blocks, links, pictures and more text without losing my rankings.  I have never tried to make that page rank for additional keywords, but sometimes that happens naturally.

3. Buy some links.

If you have the skills to buy links without being detected, this is a great time to buy them.  If you do buy links, make sure and vary your anchor text heavily, and think like a newb.  When rookie webmasters want to link to a cool site, they don’t always use good anchor text.  That will keep you from looking like you’re buying links and make it look like those people just like your site.

Those are a few things that I’ve done with pages that are already ranking decently to make them rank really well for their keywords.  Keep in mind that these are also great places to start with a site that isn’t ranking for anything yet.

Many times you’ll have a website with 50 unique content pages, some decent top level domain links and maybe a few internal links.  All pages are decently interlinked and monetized.

Then out of nowhere a single page starts getting a ton of traffic because it starts ranking for a keyword.  When this happens you have two options.  Leave it alone and hope it keeps getting traffic, or work that page and try to increase traffic.

The pessimist in me tries to stick to the first option, just leave it.  It’s already making money, so leave it and move on.

The optimist in me sees that I’m not ranked #1 for the big money keywords, but I am ranked in the top 10 for decent keywords.

This usually looks like this:

Widgets – Ranked #20

Blue widgets – Ranked #4

So instead of just being content with your #4 ranking for that decent keyword, do you go after that big dollar keyword?

For me it really depends on how much money that #4 ranking is making.  If it is making enough for me to just leave it alone, I do that.  If it is less than $30 a day, I will usually try to either focus on moving that keyword to the #1 spot, or working on that high dollar keyword.

Tomorrow I’ll give you a few hints on how to move your keywords from top 20 to top 10 rankings!

Writing 3 Years Ago…

When I first started to make money online a few years ago, I wrote solely for search engines.  My pages were stuff with keywords and variations of those keywords.  I could write 10 pages of content in an hour and it was perfect search engine food.

Now my writing still has changed, and I’m still making money online with my writing.  I’ve discussed different ways that writing can make you money online such as with Associated Content.  If you’re writing for something like Associated Content, obviously your writing needs to be better than if you’re just writing for a niche site.

Writing Today…

What do you do when your website is for search engines and people?  3 years ago I would have told you to forget the people and write for the search engines.  Today that is different.  While I still get a lot of traffic from search engines, my biggest winners have been socially focused site.  That is, sites that people want to tell their friends about.

When focusing on writing great content, you will always capture the reader, and if you still use a keyword occasionally, you’ll be able to target search engines as well.  Keep in mind, people don’t want to read a keyword stuffed article so make sure they writing is good, and focus on your visitors.

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?

Word of mouth is a guerrilla marketing method that involves personal recommendations of services, products or businesses. Word of mouth marketing has generated a tremendous amount of buzz with affiliate marketing, mostly due to the effectiveness of this promotional technique.

According to research on consumer behavior, receiving a personal recommendation from a customer is one of the best ways to achieve as successful sale. Why? Product and service suggestions appear as more genuine, honest and trustworthy than standard advertisements.

If you want to increase your online visibility, sell more products or get more subscribers, word of mouth is a strategy you need to consider for affiliate marketing. By enlisting the help of past customers, you can dramatically increase the size of your “sales team” and draw an abundance of new customers.

Getting Started With Word Of Mouth Marketing

The first step in using word of mouth in affiliate marketing is to handpick a number of proven guerrilla marketing strategies. While you may later opt to expand into other areas using fresh ideas and techniques, focus on the tried and tested methods during the initial phases of your word of mouth marketing campaign.

No. 1 — Target Influential Customers

The best way to spread the word about your affiliate marketing offers is to get influential people to start talking about them. Spend some time exploring the web to find websites, blogs and communities devoted to your topic.

Select some target individuals and send them information designed to grab their interest. This might involve simply describing what your website does, or producing promotions that are specifically aimed at these individuals. But remember that these people probably get a lot of similar product promotions. So spend some extra time making yours appealing and personal, it will pay off in the long run. When done correctly, these influential customers can become one of your biggest sales allies. By mentioning your products in their websites, blogs and discussion boards, you can reach out to an even broader audience.

No. 2 — Give People A Reason To Talk About You

According to marketing guru Seth Godin, it is essential to give people a reason to talk about your business. “Provide something of value. The first step is recognizing that marketing is asking for someone else’s time and attention. You need to provide something worthy…when you educate or entertain other people, they’ll pay attention. If you bore them, they won’t,” Godin explains.

Consider the strengths of your affiliate marketing business, then build upon them to create outstanding word of mouth. If your site offers lots of valuable information, make sure that this content is prominent on all major pages of your site. If your affiliate offers are the best in the business, make a point of explaining exactly what makes your products or services so much better than the competition. If you have the possibility, try to exemplifying it with graphs and pictures, to make it stand out from the millions of “best deals” that are out there. By offering something of value, your customers will provide word of mouth testimonials in return.

No. 3 — Enlist The Help Of Satisfied Customers

After every completed sale, always strive to maintain contact with your customers. As part of the purchasing process, include an option for customers to receive further email offers, newsletters and promotions. Then, periodically remind your past customers about your business offerings. By staying fresh in the mind’s of your core audience, they will be more likely to promote your affiliate marketing offers to friends, family and online communities.

Some possible ways to stay in contact with past customers include creating informative email newsletters, offering special promotions or simply informing people about your latest products and offers. The key to success is to make these contacts useful and meaningful.

Always ensure that your emails display content specifically targeted to the needs of the customers. Offer something of real value in the form of information or access to affiliate offers.

No. 4 — Make It Easy for Customer To Rave

On every page of your website, include links that allow customers to email information about your affiliate marketing business to friends. This is a great way to quickly capitalize on the enthusiasm of your viewers.

Social bookmarking is another successful word of mouth tool in guerrilla marketing. Websites such as Digg, del.icio.us and StumbleUpon allow users to share their favorite sites with like-minded web viewers. By including social bookmarking links on your website, your customers can help promote your site to an even wider online audience.

No. 5 — Monitor Your Word Of Mouth Results

Finally, always try to monitor the success of your word of mouth campaigns. Start by noticing important numbers such as website traffic and affiliate sales before launching any type of new marketing strategy. Then, collect records periodically on these numbers in order to determine if your word of mouth efforts have had any impact on your affiliate marketing results.