But first, let’s quickly talk about how you currently get people to click on your affiliate links.  The most common way is to use anchor text on your site that links to a retailer’s site using your affiliate ID.  Everyone does this, I do it, you do it, we all do it.  And it works… to a certain degree.  But you want to take it a step further.  You know there are some people who just don’t like clicking on links.  Some people are scared of getting a virus on their computer.  Other people know about affiliate commissions and they don’t want you to earn anything.  And about 15 other reasons why people won’t click on your link.  But here’s a tip on how to significantly bump up that clickthrough rate and start earning yourself some more moneyyyyyyyy…

Use an image, either of the product or an image of a video.  Huh?  Ok, let’s explain briefly because I’m a busy guy and you lose your focus after reading 200 words.  Let’s say I’m promoting a Kindle and I’m doing so with my Amazon.com affiliate partner account.  What would get people to click on my link instead of just wandering over to Amazon.com themselves and looking up the Kindle?  An image.  There are two types of images I use, they both work very well.  First method:

1.  Take a picture of the Kindle that you found on Amazon or online or whatever.  Add some text to that image that says something enticing, something that will get people to click that image.  Be creative, some basic examples are “See more pictures” or “View the lowest price” or whatever you want.  Basically you are going to entice people to click on the image, and you will have that linked to your affiliate link, so they will get directed to the Kindle page on Amazon.com through your affiliate link.  This works pretty good, but there is something that works even better.

2.  A lot of products (especially electronics) have video reviews on Amazon.com or instructional videos or videos of some type.  People love watching a video of an expensive product before they buy it.  They want to see firsthand what they are getting and see it in action.  Take a screenshot of the video player with the video shown.  Crop that page screenshot so you get just an image of the video and link that image to the Amazon.com review page using your affiliate link.  Still confused?  Ok, look at this example below.

So now you get what I’m saying.  The person goes to ‘watch’ the review and they click through your affiliate link and land on the Amazon site.  They still get to watch the review so they are happy.  You just increased your chances of making some money so you’re happy.  Everyone wins.  If you like the post then drop a link to it on some other sites you visit.  I’m not doing any backlinking to Anticareer myself (no time) so I need you scallywagers to do it for me.  Now get to earning that cash!

Google’s Penguin update was meant to punish those people who do lazy SEO work in an attempt to climb the SERPS by tricking the big G.  There are a few things that come into play here…

1.  Onsite SEO.  If you are using your main keyword a lot: on the page title, in the H1 tag, in your meta keywords, on your sidebar, etc… then Google is now going to consider this the new keyword stuffing and you will get penalized.  Google wants everything to be natural, so naturally people would not be using a main keyword seven places till Sunday on their site.  You need to undo some of your unsite SEO (pretty messed up, huh).  Yup, Google is now going to dictate to you how you should build your site if you want to rank in their search engine.  They hold all the cards so everyone has to play by their rules.  Bing and Yahoo don’t care about your onsite keyword maximization so if you wanted to drop Google (which isn’t a smart move for your future traffic considerations) you can leave everything alone and try to rank solely on Yahoo and Bing.

2.  Anchor text of your backlinks.  OH NO!  Everyone always said (and did) anchor text for the backlinks.  If you were trying to rank for a few keywords you’d always use them in your anchor text.  Whoops, Google now checks your anchor text distribution.  This sucks for everyone who worked hard on their offsite SEO because Google now asks you to remove those unnatural backlinks (SAY WHAT?!).  Yeah, if you have your site in Google Webmaster tools and Google detects a funky anchor text distribution they’ll send you a message saying that your backlinks seem unnatural and to fix that.  Here’s the issue, natural backlinks would not always have an anchor text, a lot of them would have http://www.yoursite.com .  The anchor text would also be vastly different if the backlinks were natural, some people might link using your keyword, or your site name, or “Click here”, or “Go there now”, etc…  Yup, you tried to outsmart Google and they caught up with the SEO’ers on this one.  Lots of people are saying lots of things about what is the best way to backlink now.  I say trust none of them.  If anyone really had a secret formula they sure aren’t going to share it with you, they would use it to dominate the SERPS by themselves.  Now you have to do a lot of testing and see what you think works and doesn’t work.

So how can you beat the Google Penguin?  Like I just said no one is going to share the exact formula (if they came up with it) with you.  Here’s what I would recommend on a high level.  Don’t try to remove your old backlinks.  That could takes years.  Instead build new backlinks following what Google is looking for in relation to the backlink distribution.  Ideally, if you build enough they will start to even out your uneven distribution and your backlink profile will begin to look natural to Google.  Again, that is my recommendation, it is not proven, and I’m not the smartest guy to walk the planet (that would be Einstein) so take my advice if you wish.  Whatever you do, good luck in your attempt to beat back that cute little black and white creature from Antarctica and start making that money again.

Incoming search terms:

• google penguin
• how to beat google penguin
• google penguin effects
• how to beat penguin update

You’ve heard about viral videos on Youtube, videos like “Charlie bit my finger”.  This cute little video has gotten serious views (447 million as of right now).  Do you know that the guy who posted this video has pulled in six figures?  Six figures from simply posting the video.  He didn’t have to do any work.  He didn’t have to do any SEO, no social marketing, no youtube view boosters, nothing.  Youtube has an advertising partner program.  The catch is that you can’t just waltz in and sign up to it, you need to post original videos that generate enough views to get you invited to the Youtube partner program.  How many views?  Well that isn’t exactly known.  I’ve heard if you have a video that hits 100,000 views in a week or less there’s a good chance you’ll get invited to the program.

There are people who do this for a living.  They make videos, post them on Youtube, attract a following, and participate in the revenue share program.  The Top Earners in this are pulling in seven figures a year… yes, that is millions of dollars.  Now don’t think you can make a video of yourself because you think you’re funny, or you’re hot, or whatever and become a millionaire.  A single viral video can pull in six figures for the video’s owner, but if you want to make a consistent living off this you need to put in some work.  First, you need to make videos that will appeal to the masses.  The more people that view the videos the greater the chance that they click on the ads or see the ads embedded within your video.  Coming up with a niche to create videos in can be difficult.  Funny videos are the best because it is the funny video that will go viral before all else.  If you are an expert in something you could produce video tutorials.  If you are an Einstein on cars you could create video tutorials on tons of different car issues that people have.  If you have crazy Microsoft excel skills you could do some tutorials on that.  You really need to put in some time and effort to find a niche that has enough interest in it to have a chance of success.

Now, if you take someone else’s video and post it you won’t be getting invited to the Youtube advertising revenue share program.  You need to create your own content to be invited.

So buy yourself a Flip or some kind of mini video camera and make a video.  Upload it to Youtube and see what happens.  What’s the worst that can happen?  You look like a fool and next thing you know the entire neighborhood has seen you making an ass of yourself online… but, in the event that your video takes off you can be laughing all the way to the bank.

Incoming search terms:

• wikipedia logo gif
• do backlink networks work for seo? 2012
• do people make funny videos an post them to make money
• make money on youtube

The two types of blog backlink networks are as follows:

1.  A network that is run by an entity that provides all the blogs.  These networks could run from a few hundred to thousands of blogs.  But they are all owned by the same entity.

2.  A network where the network owner is a facilitator.  People contribute their blog to the network and let people place links on their blog and in return they get to place their backlink on other people’s blogs.

In theory this would seem like getting some high quality Pagerank backlinks to your site, and it sounds great, until Google lowered the banhammer on a bunch of the high profile blog backlink networks.  I’ve been reading forum posts, blog posts, and other tidbits and here is what I’ve arrived at.  Google has caught on through identifying footprints within the blog backlink networks AND also through participating in some of the blog backlink networks to find out which blog sites were placing paid links on them.  Now this is based on what I’ve read but it makes sense to me.  Google went pretty hardcore to shut these networks down and website owners are paying the price.  I’ve read that people who participated in the #2 type of blog backlink network had their sites DEINDEXED from Google.  Not just a decrease in rankings or temp penalty but a deindexing.  This has to hurt if you worked your tail off to build a high quality site and got it deindexed.

Now I’m not going to out which networks got the boom lowered on them, but there was no less than five of the top players that I’ve heard about.

The moral of the blog backlink network story…  sooner or later Google will catch on and you could pay the ultimate price with your site.  If you were considering joining a blog backlink network I would strongly advise against it as I’m sure some people are still trying to find customers to pay into their product which has fallen apart.

Incoming search terms:

• backlink
• google backlink
• avoid blog network
• seo blog network boom

So now a bunch of states have decided to screw affiliates by telling retailers that they will charge them tax if they operate in their state, California, New York, Connecticut, Illinois are a few of the states who have done this.  The result is that if you were  a member of the Amazon.com affiliate program you would have received an email from Amazon telling you that they would be closing your affiliate account.  If you were making good money through Amazon’s affiliate program, or if you want to get started with it you need to get an account, but if you put your mailing address as being within a state that Amazon has banned from their affiliate program they will not allow you in.  And if you put a fake mailing address within another state you won’t get the verification letter they send in the mail that has a code that you need to verify in order to activate your account.  So what can you do?

If you happen to know someone who lives in another state that Amazon allows to be a part of the affiliate program then you can use their address and ask them to do you a favor and open the verification letter when it comes.  But if you don’t happen to know someone you can rent a mailbox in another state.  There are multiple sites that you can do this through, MailLinkPlus.com is one and it costs $10 per month which is nothing if you are going to rake in the affiliate commissions.  I have not used MailLinkPlus so I’m not recommending them or saying I’ve done business with them, they are just an example site I found through Google.

So if you’ve been down and out because you could no longer be a part of the Amazon affiliate program why don’t you jump back up and rent a mailbox and get back in the game!

Incoming search terms:

• amazone com
• amazon affiliate program illinois
• amazon
• connecticut amazon affiliates

I want to get into internet marketing but I only have $100 to use.  What is my best use of my money to get started?  -Rob

What I would say is first find out what area of internet marketing you want to get into.  You should do this by reading… A LOT.  Are you interested in whitehat or blackhat methods?  Do you want to monetize with Adsense or CPA or rev share or CPM, etc…   Are you to build your own site or are you going to use free blogging platforms like Blogger or are you going to use posts (i.e. posting on Craigslist or blogs or forums)?  When you start out people tend to have information overload so read a lot, find one specific thing that you want to run with, and then read as much as you can about that topic.

It is hard to know the best way to spend your money without knowing what exactly you are going to try to do.  If I had $100 to start out with I would buy two domain names and hosting.  My favorite hosting company is Godaddy.  I like GoDaddy for a few reasons.  First, they are affordable, a lot of the smaller domain registrars and hosting companies charge a lot more.  Because GoDaddy is so big and has scales of economy they can afford to charge less then the smaller guys.  Second, I use WordPress on most of my sites and installing WordPress through GoDaddy is literally a few clicks of the button.  It is very simple and it is automated.  And finally, GoDaddy customer service is pretty good and they are always open.  I’ve spoken to them tons of times and almost always I walk away with my questions answered correctly. 

How can I start making money today online?  -Tim

Tim, this is everyone’s favorite question and there really is no magic bullet for you to start raking in millions today.  There are methods that you can do to start making money today, but the only thing with these methods is that once you stop doing them you will not receive any passive income from them in the future, so as long as you are OK with this then here’s one thing you can do…

Post on classified ad sites.  Sites like Craigslist, Backpage, etc…  You will need to find a CPA offer that will help people in some way, create a post, and when they reply to you concerning the post you send them to your CPA offer.  One example is a car insurance offer that offers to help people lower their car insurance by $500.  Create an ad concerning this and your target market will reply to you.  Send them to your offer and when they complete whatever action is needed you will be earning some revenue.  But remember, when you stop making those posts and replying to their emails you will stop earning money.

What is the best tip you can give to someone starting out in internet marketing?  -Gina

Hey Gina, the piece of advice that I would give to anyone starting out is to stay focused on one project and watch out for information overload.  There are many great methods, niches, monetization methods, etc… and people can become overloaded with all this information.  They want to try to start 20 different projects at once and the projects get done half assed or not completed at all.  I’d recommend doing a lot of reading and finding the one thing that interests you the most and just focusing on that.  Become an expert in it, do your project with 100% focus and dedication, and only when your project is on autopilot and you’re generating income that you are happy with should you consider branching out to another area.

Thanks for the questions guys and gal.  If anyone has a question you can hit the “Submit to Mailbag” in the top navigation bar and send me a question.  I’ll answer it, though it may not be right away, but I will eventually answer it in a post on the site here.

Incoming search terms:

• anti-career
• advertise car insurance cpa offer
• website mailbag

There are people out there who have established Wikipedia accounts who (for a fee) will edit an entry to get your link in there.  An established account should be at least a year old and have at least 1,000 successful edits so if you’re going to pay someone you should check on those two stats.  People who have established accounts have a much easier time editing Wikipedia entries because the reviewers are busy moderating all the revisions from noobs and tend to let the established account edits slide by without a ton of oversight. If you are going to pay a fair rate would be anywhere from $25-100 depending on how hard the Wikipedia page is to get a link on, and if the seller is offering a refund if the link does not stick for at least 30 days.

So however you want to try to get a backlink on Wikipedia that is up to you.  The value of that link is something that a lot of people debate and I’ll give my own opinion which is that I think a link on a relevant Wikipedia page is worth a TON for your site’s SEO.  The links are no-follow which is not ideal for SEO.  But my belief is that Wikipedia passes a ton of rank trust.  A link on Wikipedia is telling Google that your site is an authority on the topic and I believe Google listens.  I see lots of people paying for mass produced backlinks that are crap.  Forum profiles, xrumer forum post blasts, blog comments, etc…   I think these mass produced backlinks are good to point to a second level in a link pyramid, but not to your money site.

Spend your time and/or money getting high quality backlinks to your money site and start with Wikipedia.  A link on Wikipedia is priceless and I think if you are successful you will see movement in the SERPS for your site very soon to follow.

Incoming search terms:

• wikipédia
• wikipedia logo
• logo wikipedia
• wikipedia logo jpg

I can look back on Craigslist posting software and think of at least 7 different softwares that people created that each made a killing.  Craigslist kept adapting and implementing new features to try to weed out automated posting and as a posting software fell behind because of the Craigslist changes someone would create a new software and release it and everyone would upgrade to the new software.  Now of course you need to be a skilled programmer or have funds to hire one, but depending on what type of software you are developing it does not have to cost an arm and a leg.

If you want to look at some recent softwares that have killed it check out SENuke, Market Samuri, Scrapebox, CladGenius, among many others.  Once you have a software product to sell you need to distribute it as widely as possible.  A good idea would be to join a site like Clickbank where others can promote your product for a commission.  This way instead of just you promoting the product you can have hundreds or thousands of others promoting it through their sites which are already established and have viewers.

If creating a software product is something that sounds interesting but you have no idea what to try to create one approach you can take is to go to a forum that is filled with online marketers.  Read through some threads and see what problems/complaints they have that a software can solve, or simply post a thread asking them what type of software they wish was out that they would buy.

Incoming search terms:

• software
• image of software
• how to get rich quick online
• software product

So years ago I was looking into hosting commissions niche.  Commissions for a hosting plan were anywhere from $50 to $150 so driving sales could become very profitable very quickly.  I wanted to see who the top dogs in Google were so I searched for “hosting plan comparison” and analyzed the top few sites and their backlinks.  The top ranking site back then had tons of backlinks (no surprise) but I was surprised at how he got them.  He was building templates; WordPress templates, css templates, etc… and distributing them for free.  In the footer of each template was an anchor text link back to his hosting review site.  And he used some coding so that if you tried to remove his link it would screw up the footer so the average noob could not remove his link.  He had tens of thousands of quality unique diversified backlinks as a result.

The strategy is very effective.  If you can code templates, themes, etc… you could design unique ones and distribute on a variety of places.  You could hire an outsourced worker to build them for you if you’re not a coder.  Or you can find free ones out there in cyberspace that allow you to edit and redistribute them.  And what you’ll find is that people will redistribute your distribution.  They find it one place, they take it, and post it somewhere else to share with others.  You’ll have people be doing a chunk of the distribution work for you for free.  And if you create a theme or template that is kickass that tons of people use you could get your site to literally go from a Pagerank0 to a Pagerank5 very quickly.

So if you’re looking for some backlink diversity, and you’re looking for unique backlinks, and you want to move up in the SERPS fast then you should consider this method because this has worked like a charm for a lot of my sites.

Incoming search terms:

• seo strategy template
• backlinks
• seo backlinks
• backlinks seo

site:yourURL.com

If nothing appears with your URL in the results than you got a problem. Ok, but that is not the sandbox, that is delisting. So let’s get back to the Google sandbox. This is a lesser punishment handed down where you went from ranking for a keyword or phrase one day to the next day being nowhere to be found. Your site is still indexed in Google (which you can verify using the test above) but in the results you cannot find yourself. You have been sandboxed. In a nutshell, you have done something to upset Google, usually in terms of SEO and backlinking, and they are punishing you for a while by moving your site so far down in the rankings that you’ll get no traffic. Don’t jump off a bridge, this punishment is not permanent but it can last anywhere from a week to a few months.

Now that we all understand what the Google sandbox is let’s talk about how to avoid the sandbox. The most prevalent reason why sites are placed into the sandbox is that either they built a ton of backlinks in a short amount of time that looked very unnatural to Google, or you built spammy backlinks of garbage quality. Backlink diversity is very important. If you are only trying to build quanitity and so you go the route of creating a million backlinks via a tool like XRumer or Scrapebox you are temping the sandbox to come calling for your site. If your domain is aged you have a better chance of avoiding the sandbox but if you have a new site and you’re building a ton of backlinks that are not well diversified then there is a good chance your site will get sandboxed. Why is this? Think about it like this, let’s say a new site gets launched to a media buzz and everyone is talking about it. Maybe in its first week of launching there are 2 million backlinks created through the web to this new site. Now this site has no age, it has had a tremendous amount of backlinks built to it in a short time, but it is no sandboxed… because those 2 million backlinks are sure to be from a variety of places. Forums, articles, blog posts, comments, news releases, etc… Google will see that those backlinks are naturally generated and this hot new site will not be sandboxed. But now you come along. You made a site, you want to monetize the ads you put on it, but you need to get it ranked in the search engines. So you blast out 2 million backlinks. Bammmmm! Your site gets the penalty. Google is very smart, and attempting to trick Google with a no effort lazy man’s approach is not going to work. You are sandboxed. And there is more to consider. Remember those 2 million backlinks that the hot new site earned naturally, well there will be link Pagerank diversity in there. This is another good indicator to Google that the backlinks are natural. When you go out there and blast away to create backlinks, most of the backlinks that stick will be PR0 or PR1. If your site gets a ton of backlinks and they are all low quality Pagerank backlinks this sticks out like a sore thumb to Google. You need to diversify multiple ways when you build your backlinks.

You can avoid the Google sandbox by diversification of backlinks, by building backlinks slowly over time instead of trying to rush and get as many as possible in as short as possible, or you can focus on only building a few backlinks but which are found on very high pagerank pages. While Yahoo and Bing still really like to see a high number of backlinks, Google has begun to give more weight to the Pagerank of a site the backlink is found on more than how many backlinks in total your site has.

When you get out there and start to work your SEO game and generate backlinks make sure you understand what will sandbox your site and avoid doing it, or you could find your site a months in no man’s land.

Incoming search terms:

• google delist website
• google sandbox 2012
• google delisted website
• how to tell if your site is sandboxed