Looking back at the last few posts it seems i've been a bit Negative and "Preachy " so to get some balance here is a list of 5 really great tools which will help you get your sites to the next level. The great thing about them is that they are free.  These aren't listed in any particular order just whichever order I think of them!

1. Ponyfish  www.ponyfish.com

This is a great tool for creating rss feeds from sites that don't have RSS feeds. Obviuosly if you are using wordpress then you won't need it (you are distributing your wordpress feeds aren't you??)  However on some of my sites I've added a Html page where I can do comparrision reviews. On these pages I use Ponyfish to create an rss feed and then distribute that.

2. Link Diagnosis  www.linkdiagnosis.com

I love this site, give it a url and it will tell you what back links there are, what anchor text they are using and even which links are no follow/do follow via a nice pie chart. I can't emphasis just how useful this is if you want to boost your rankings. You can use it on your own site or those of your competitors.

3. Bubbl.  www.bubbl.us I've mentioned this before but it really is a great tool so deserves to be mentioned again. Since i've started to use Bubbl to track my daily tasks , create plans for sites and track site promotion I have increased the income from the sites i've used it on significantly.

4.  Tracking Guru  www.trackingguru.com

This is a great tool to use alongside LinkDiagnosis and Bubbl. It tracks the location of your sites ranking in various search engines for keywords . Allowing you to focus on the poorly performing ones.

For example One of my best performing sites targets 3 keywords  1 is ranked in google at #1 another ranks at #4 and the 3rd ranks at #7.  I can take this information from Tracking Guru, create a plan in Bubble on how to improve the ranking of the 2nd 2 keywords and then monitor the progress of the links and anchor text in Link diagnosis.. And it won't cost a single penny.

Obviously you can also use it on competitors sites to see how they are ranking for the keywords link diagnosis found (anchor text)

5.  Ok i am going to cheat here I have a few ideas for tools that could go here but I want to hear from you, what are your favorite free tools? Use the comment link below to give me your suggestions and I'll feature the best tools.

I've been recieving emails about Google Nemesis since yesterday and too be honest It looks like a good product. It's by the team behind Day Job Killer and Google Assassin. In the past there have been some very good tips come out of these products and you can still see thwm being used today, so they must work.

The product seems to be a bit of software that automates and simplifies PPC campaigns and Indicate profitable campaigns. As I said It sounds excellent.

As I was going to buy it I decided to check up on the affiliate tools that they provide with it because if it's good and works I'll happily promote it.

It is while checking the Affiliate tools that i found something that concerned me…

Now it may just be that The DJK team are realists and know more about how customers think that I do or it might just be that I am completly naive and think that providing long term value is the way I should do business. Now remembe that the product is a piece of software ..

This is what it said..

Average pay-out: I expect each sale to make you a little over $100 based on our retention stats for Google Assassin. That's assuming average buyer staying signed up for only 2 months (3-4 months is more likely, but let's be conservative), and assuming the up-sell converts at 40%. As I say, these figures are very conservative, but you are looking at a very, very substantial recurring income from this.

Am I reading that right they expect the average buyer to stay signed up for only 2 months?? I am fully aware that most people don't take enough action but If you paid for a tool that does what Google Nemisis promises wouldn't you stay a member for much longer?

Even if the numbers are conservative surly you should be building software that people will want to use month after month?  As I said previously it may just be that I am completly misunderstanding this and The DJK team are just tring to not hype to potential affiliates but as a prospective buyer It really does make me wary.

What do you think??

Contrary to popular belief this isn't some new tool by Matt or Brad Callen, It's much closer to home than that in fact it's sat right between your ears. Yes it's your brain. For some reason people seem to think that it's easier to buy the latest tool than to use what they've already got.  I will agree that some tools are excellent and deserve all the accolades that they get but even then it seems some people can't resist placing their brain in the deep freeze while working .

Lets take article rewritng tools as an example, honestly which is easier? looking at a sentance and rewriting it yourself or using a tool to add various synonyms..well lets find out.

Lets grab an original sentance from this post

"For some reason people seem to think that it's easier to buy the latest tool than to use what they've already got."

Ok lets fire up Brain Mk1 for a few seconds and see what it comes up with.. (not bad for an old tool like mine!)

"I don't know why but some internet marketers actually think that it's much easier to spend money on new marketing tools rather than to use a tool that they possess already"

Ok Lets use a nice shiny article re-writer

"As a few basis folks seem to imagine that it's lighter to acquire the preceding device than to reason anything they've previously found."

..Thats what you get by using artificial intellegence it's a bit of software it can change the words but it doesn't know what you or the author is trying to say.

I was going to use another synonym replacement tool but to be honest after 5 minutes I'd  only got to the 4th word and found 37 variations to choose for the word "people"  Try this test yourself grab a random sentance from one of your sites and rewrite it  , then try a paragraph  you'll soon find that you can do a whole article in about 8 minutes  I know this because I just timed my wife rewriting one of my articles.

Even when it comes to really great tools people just seem to stop thinking. I use Micro Niche Finder to do keyword research as it pulls the best selection of long tail keywords I've ever seen. For example last night I found 2 keywords that had over 20000 searches a month and less than 10 competing sites. In our line of business this is gold dust.

The only problem with Micro Niche Finder is that it pulls some of it's stats from google and if you do too much at once google will block you for a few hours . If you know this then you can work around it. Right?

You get rid of the keywords you obviously don't want and you lose the ones with only a few searches a month so from 100 initial keywords you can get down to maybe 20 or so then you grab the google stats. To me this seems logical. I wish I had $10 for all the times I hear people saying that the tool is useless because goolge blocks them everytime they use it.

So come on start to use your brain a bit more and stop relying on tools all the time the more you use it the sharper it gets. The sharper it gets the more money you'll make!

Over the past week the temperature has been in the 90's /30's so I thought to myself  yesterday  I'll try this Internet Lifestyle thing I've been reading about , a few hours work in the morning and then sit by the pool and chill out.

So yesterday morning I did the bare minimum of work, loaded my iPod up with some Eban Pagan/Yanik Silver Mp3's I wanted to listen to and dragged myself from the windowless cave that is my office and went and sat by the pool for a couple of hours with a few cold beers…Man was that nice….

…until I realised that I was sunburnt yesterday evening…

When I say sunburnt,I mean really burnt , redder than the reddest lobster that you ever saw.  That resultled in absolutly no sleep last night. So next time someone tells you about the internet lifestyle tell them they can keep it..

I'm now back in the cave and I'll come out in september!

Over the past 10 days I have been reviewing all my old sites old tools and e-books i've bought. I try to do this once or twice a year and it always suprises me how valuable this excecise is. I'll freely admit I make the same mistake that many people make, I get a great idea for a site then go ahead and build it but before i've got it as profitable as possible  I'll have another idea and move on to another project.

These 2 to 3 weeks session where I review everything allows me to focus on the sites and get them profitable again. 2 sites I spent a day working on last week have already made me over $120 in the past 3 days .One of them was a domain I bought placed wordpress on and promptly forgot about it.

One week later it's getting almost 40 visitors a day the sales alone would now make this site worth around $500 if I was to sell it. But whats even better is that I've built it in such a way that I can sell adverts in the form of review spots which rotate on the front page so as the traffic increases I can increase the charges for these. Without doing this review I would probably have left this site to expire.

What makes this whole process much easier is a free tool i've discovered called Bubbl.us this allows you to create a visual representation of your workload  . You can use it to plan sites or even use it to plan your work for the day.  I've been using it to plot the promotion I've been doing on each site. I was using whiteboards and spreadsheets for this but I usually forgot to put something on there.

I really do urge you to check it out and I've got a nice Gift for the best suggestion for using it so please post your comments below.

A few final notes today. Firstly if you are doing affiliate marketing how would you like to own a site that made over $5000 in the first 2 months? Or a site that makes $142 from 34 visitors before lunch? Chris Rempel the author of Confessions Of a Lazy Super Affiliate  has released a new VIP guide called The Conduit Method. The guide consists of 13 pages and a video there is no fluff and I'll guarantee that you'll get more information from it than most 100 page guides written by so called guru's . It only costs $14.95 and is well worth the cost. You can read more about it by clicking the following link: The Conduit Method

Finally it's my Birthday on July 1st and so to celebrate I'd though I'd open up another One to One mentoring Program. I usually only do this once every year as it takes up a lot of my time. Unlike other mentoring programs I am available to you via email or skype every day and there is no time limit on the mentoring. I still talk regularly with people I mentored 18 months ago! If you need a way to get motivated and really kick your earning up a gear then this is for you. As Ever I strive to keep the costs down so the cost will be $167 and will include various useful resources. Places are very limited as I find 5-10 people is the most that I can handle. If you are interested you can email at admin [at] income-academy.com  It would be helpful if you use the Subject mentoring . I'll then send you more details

Until next time..stay lucky

Mark

Grab a  Coffee a pen and some paper and write down what your Strategy is.

Have you done that yet??  I'm serious…I am about to try to change your life so the least you can do is to humor me for a few minutes, Ok forget the coffee.. Just get the pen and paper.

At the top of the piece of paper write the following..  "My Strategy is…………………"

Right so what have you written down? I bet you had to think about it for a while and i am sure a good percentage of you haven't even got a strategy. Not to worry lets remedy that now.

Do you know what a strategy is?  I asked a well known marketer what his strategy was and he replied "To create useful products that people need"  Wrong Answer… Thats a tactic.

So what is a strategy? A strategy is the WHERE YOU WANT TO GO. What do you want to get at the end of the road? What do you want the results to be? Small strategies produce small results. Big strategies produce big results.

What is a tactic? A tactic is an ACTION STEP that helps you to accomplish your strategy. A tactic enables your destination. Tactics are like a car. The car is useless if you don't know where you're going. Good, positive, massive, powerful tactics give you good results. Weak, small, irrelevant tactics give you small results.

Your Strategy will drive your tactics get yourself a BIG Stategy and then apply BIG Tactics To get your there.

For an example your strategy could be to be financially sufficient with no debt by June 2009. Now to achieve that you are going to need a BIG Tactic . Building a few adsense sites every week isn't going to get your there.

Grab that bit of Paper Turn it over and write down a couple of idea for a project. Use things you know about for example If you work In a car dealership write down Create a Book on "How to Get Big Discounts On Cars" If you work in an office how about "Using Office Politics To Get To The Top" If you are a Nurse or work for a doctor How about " 15 Things You Should Ask your Doctor"

Everyone reading this has an area of expertise that someone else would like information on. If you can write it or even do a draft and hire someone to write for it or create a video about it then attract JV partners. then you can create an income. 

Suppose you placed the book on clickbank and sold a few hundred copies, Take some of that money and get the Book printed up for you, take it to local outlets and ask them If they'll sell it for you. Send copies to Local radio, TV and newspapers ..Do interviews.

Using sites Like LuLu  place the books on Amazon.

Think big why stop at clickbank and paydotcom.  If your book is good enough to sell to 10 people it's good enough to sell to 100 People , If it's good enough to sell to 100 people then it's good enough to sell to 1000 people.  if it's….etc etc

Think BIG Strategies, THink BIG Tactics, Think Positive

I don't often write posts promoting my sites but I am especially excited about Super Affiliate ToolBox as I don't think that there is anything else like it available.

The site is the first joint venture i've entered into with one of my members over at The Income Academy and it's been a great experience being able to bounce Idea's off another person.

On the surface it may look just like another dime a dozen PLR site. But it is so much more than that.

The key points are:

• 10 articles delivered weekly targeting a specific niche
• 3 versions of each of those articles  (Ideal if you use Unique Article Wizard or Article Helper Pro)
• Thousands of Variations of the articles to help you avoid any duplicate content penalty

But it doesn't stop there..

• Free access to what we call The "Super Affiliate Toolbox System"
• Help and guidance on how best to monetize the niches
• Exclusive Members Forum
• Only 50 members in each group.
• Group A will only cost you $27 per month

If you'd like to read more you'll find more information at www.superaffiliate-toolbox.com

Recently I've been noticing more and more Wordpress Sites that contain nothing more than Adsense Adverts,and RSS Feeds and then maybe an Ebay or Amazon Store.  There is no content and absolutly nothing of value on these sites.  Now the crux of the matter is that these are sites that are sold like this, so who in their right mind would actually buy something like this?

As you will know If you've been reading this blog for a while I think wordpress is an excellent tool and the foremost platform for internet marketers. Build a site using wordpress and you have a piece of virtual real estate capable of earning you an good income for years to come. So what do you need to make a profitable site.

• Good content
• Carefully chosen monetization
• Good promotion
• A site that looks good and gives value

All that is pretty simple and straight forward, The sites that I've been seeing have no proper content just loads of lists of rss feeds and way too much monetization, looking at the site 80% is taken up with ads of 1 sort of another.  I seriously doubt that any promotion is being done apart from spamming a few social bookmarking sites.  All in all they are a complete waste of time and money.

I even found one that targets The  keyword Phrase "best west palm beach lawyer"in the domain name but Goolge tells me "No results found for "best west palm beach lawyer" What a complete waste of time!  (wonder If I'll be ranking there tomorrow!! )

Do the people who buy these really think that Google is going to keep a site consisting of rss feeds and adverts in the rankings for long? They all seem to come with a couple of huge fingerprints that makes it incedibly easy to track them down.

 Finally before I work myself into a rabid lather… these sites have a translation plugin that supposedly translates the content into 8 different languages, have you ever tried google translate or bablefish on a piece of foreign language? The results are often unfathonable ..this is what foreign visitors will also get.

The sooner that Google removes adsense from these sites the better.

Sorry it's been a week or so since I last Posted but I have been upto my neck in a new launch.

Everyone knows that Article Market can be very profitable, the problem is it takes so long to get your articles ready. Niche research, Keyword Research , Article research then finally writing a few articles and you suddenly discover the morning has gone.

Of course you can buy PLR articles, but you have no way of knowing how many times they have been used by other people so you need to rewrite them, once again 4 or 5 rewrites and you've lost another chunk of your day.

After I wrote Wordpress Goldmine most of the emails I had were about where to source Unique articles or how to write articles quickly. This got me to thinking about exactly what article marketers need.

They don't actually need lots of unique articles they just need articles that won't be caught out by any duplicate content filters that the search engine might have. They need articles that target keywords that people use and that don't have lots of competition. The need articles that target a Niche and a variety of products. Once i got that far i needed a step by step list to help me work out how to deliver what marketers need at a price they can afford.

I often find the best way to compile a list like this is to imagine I have and office full of staff and I need to hand out out tasks to get a project created. (try it ..it works!!)

First I need someone to research a niche

Next I need someone to find the best keywords to target

After that Someone is going to need to research the content for the articles

Then I need someone to write it.

Ok after all that I have 1 article that targets 1 keyword. Not bad but no one is going to want to pay $10 for 1 article so I got to thinking a bit more ..time to hire more staff!

Right lets add 2 People to rewrite that article twice.

So lets get another person in to grab all the paragraphs in each article and create new articles out of them.. see where we are going yet??

Eureka… Now we don't have 1 article , we don't have the 3 unique articles we have thousands of articles all different from the others.

Now at last we have a product that people need..

Each week we target 10 Keywords in a niche

Send out 3 articles on each keyword (if you use UAW you will probably have just wet yourself!)

Give you access to thousands of variation of those articles

Give you guides reports and videos so you know how to best use the Videos

Then throw in a private members forum

Finally Limit it to 50 people per set of articles….

Sounds good doesn't it and when you find out the price you won't believe it!

If you would like to know more the Visit www.SuperAffiliate-toolbox.com

Following on from my recent post about the 5 mistakes that people make when they try to make money online, I thought I’d expand this a little bit further. Two of the points I covered were failing to plan and also buying too many tools. I’ve actually spoken to people who have told me that they have bought Product X Y and Z but they don’t know how to use them!

At this point I usually ask why the hell they bought them then. Invariably the reply is “because X recommended it”. Let’s just assume that people only recommend tools and products that work for them. (come on go with me on this!!) That doesn’t actually mean that they will work for someone else. I can pretty much guarantee it if someone recommends a tool that genuinely works for them then they have a plan in place about how they use it and more importantly they have experience.

Do you remember back when you first started to ride a bike? Did your parents go out and buy you a Lance Armstrong replica race bike or did they buy you a small bike with training wheels?? Now why do you think that was? Obviously they knew you’d never learn to handle the race bike until you had the basic riding skills in place.

Internet marketing is the same! Learn the basics first then when you have mastered those then you can start to buy tools.

Right now that I’ve identified the problems what can I do to help you?

Since the post last week I’ve been trying to think of a way that will help people master the basics without making all the common mistakes and spending too much money . Obviously It would be really hypocritical of me to say "Don’t buy all the rubbish products on the market buy mine” So I’ve decided to take a gamble…

Up to yesterday I was selling a book called the “Commonsense Guide to Profitable Websites” I am now going to give this away for free. But that’s not all, the book is a basic primer for creating profitable websites but there is so much more to learn that I couldn’t fit into it’s 40 pages. I am going to produce a collection of free guides, videos and e-books which I will send out on a regular basis (probably every 10 days to 2 weeks)

If you are interested in this and would like to know more then please go over to Profitable Website Guides and sign up