Warning: If you don't understand sarcasm and satire, you might as well leave right now.

Get Rich Quick Someday

 

Sign-up below to get a free copy of my The One Secret The Gurus Don't Want You To Know ebook!

 

Subscribe and Get Updates

rss subscribe button

Subscribe to get updates whenever this blog is updated!

small rss button Via RSS

email envelope Via Email

* You'll only get emails when new content is posted. No spam here.

How To Market On Yahoo Answers And Get Tons of Traffic, FREE!

Want to get tons of quality visitors from Yahoo Answers without spending a dime? If so, you’ve come to the right place.

Last month I mentioned the $97 Answer Sniper software, along with why I’m not buying it. (Be sure to read that post and the comments, some idiot stopped by and left like 5 dumb, yet amusing, comments.)

Anyway, since people are totally missing the point I was trying to make, I’m writing another post specifically about how you can market on Yahoo Answers legitimately and easily, without spending a dime. (BTW, the whole point is that you don’t need to buy $97 software to do this.)

(Step 0 - register for a free Yahoo Answers account and/or link your Yahoo email address to a Y! Answers account.)

Step 1: Pick a topic.

yahoo answers categories

First, decide where you should market. You’ll want to pick the topics you know about, i.e. ones that relate to your site. If you were John Chow, you might pick the “Dining Out” category. (Categories and subcategories are listed in the menu on the left side of the page.)

Step 2: Get the RSS feeds.

yahoo answers rss

Now that you have chosen a good category or subcategory, scroll down below the category listings and look for the “Save to My Web” box. At the bottom right of that box, you’ll see a green RSS icon.

Click that RSS link and subscribe to the feed using a free feed reader such as Google Reader. This will allow you to keep abreast of all the new questions in your chosen category, in one place.

You can also find RSS feeds for keywords. Just search for the term, scroll to the bottom of the results, and click the RSS button down there.

(Be sure to repeat this step for each topic you want to monitor.)

Step 3: Read the feed.

yahoo answers feed reader

In just two steps you have set-up a free monitoring system for Yahoo Answers. Now you just need to open your feed reader each day and look for questions that suit you.

When you see a good question that you can answer, simply click the title and the page will open in your browser window.

Step 4: Answer the question.

yahoo answers question

This is simple - Click the blue “Answer this Question” button.

The trick is to be first and provide a great answer. Being first is usually pretty hard, as there are so many people logged-in at all hours. (Not even Answer Sniper software can change that.)

So be sure to provide a quality answer each time. That way, even if you’re not first, you’re still the best.

Step 5: Promote.

yahoo answers answering

Here’s the trick… throwing in some self-promotion without spamming.

If you are answering something in a category you know about, your answer probably relates to a page on your site. If it does, list that page URL in the “Source” box below your answer. Then people who liked your answer will probably click through to learn more.

Step 6: Check your stats.

yahoo answers traffic

After you have posted some answers, wait a few days and then check your stats to see if you’re getting any visitors. I use Google Analytics and it shows that Yahoo Answers traffic comes in frequently and stays a while. Woo-hoo!

There you have it, a simple guide to getting free traffic from Yahoo Answers. And you didn’t have to spend a dime.

Adsense Cracking Down Yet Again

The latest news from Google Adsense is that you should NOT be aggressively blending your ads.

They give you a couple examples, and it goes without saying that some Adsense placements I’ve shown you before fall under these restrictions! ;)

But as long as you aren’t using these tactics, you should be fine.

[Via WhyDoWork]

P.S. Make sure your Privacy Policy is updated, too.

I totally forgot to mention this crap that if you run Adsense, you have to add a long Privacy Policy to your site or else you’ll be breaking Google’s TOS. Instead of complying with these new terms, I decided to remove Adsense from quite a few of my sites…

But if you want to keep Adsense and be in compliance, here are a few good links:

www.jensense.com/2008/02/26/tracked…adsense/

www.jensense.com/2008/03/05/adsense…use/

http://techtites.com/2008/03/08/privacy-policy/

http://www.techspikes.com/privacy-policy/

If It Doesn’t Look Like Spam, Is It Still Spam?

If it looks like spam and tastes like spam, it’s probably spam.

But what if it looks like ham and tastes like ham, could it be spam? Good question…

blog commentator

Apparently, if this “revolutionary” Blog Commentator software is any guide, spam that looks real is just fine and dandy.

This genius named Jason Thompson (whoops, maybe he’s a guru) has released some new blog commenting software that uses some screen-reading technology to actually “read” blog posts and leave thoughtful, relevant comments. Apparently it’s the same principle as contextual ad networks like Adsense.

Hey, what good would one of these sales letter be without outrageous claims?! ;)

I’ll have to rank this right up there in quality with the BuyBlogComments service.

No one is going to buy this. I don’t care if they’re “limiting this launch to the first 300 people” and the slots will most likely “fill up in 30 minutes.” I can’t even tell you how many ebooks I’ve seen where they “sold out” the first day, only to [big surprise] find an extra 1000 copies in the supply room the next day.

And that even happens when they’re selling ebooks, which don’t take up all that much space in the supply room! ;)

Answer Sniper - Bringing Even More Spam to Yahoo Answers

Another one of my favorite gurus is at it again! Duncan Carver, creator of the useful (and free) Comment Sniper software, has released a brand new piece of software called Answer Sniper.

If you couldn’t guess, it’s aimed at Yahoo Answers, which happens to be a good way to drive traffic to your site if you contribute useful answers. (Basically you answer people’s questions in your field of expertise and leave a link back to your site if applicable.)

But bringing this software for automating your answering into the internet marketing realm is just asking for spam…

answer sniper spammer

And there you have it, a great example of the spam increase! Thank you Duncan Carver for bringing a ton of extra spam to Yahoo Answers. I can see it already - generic answers posted on every question, with the obligatory self-promotional link.

One jackass (seen above) comes to Yahoo Answers, and in response to a dieting question, leaves an idiotic response. I simply reported it and it was removed immediately… (which put a smile on my face, knowing that someone bought $97 spamming software and isn’t getting their money’s worth :D )

But as easy as that was, I’d prefer not to have so much spam…

Sure, you can use the software for legitimate uses, but the people doing that (i.e. answering Yahoo Answers questions legitimately) probably just use the RSS feeds Yahoo Answers provides for each topic, for free. If you do that, there’s no need for this software.

Again, another example of expensive software that makes things harder than the available free methods!

Although with such a long sales letter with small font, very few spammers will bother reading it. I sure wouldn’t. Would you?

Is This Another Social News Web 2.0 Gimmick Website?

newstin screenshot

What you see above is not a screenshot of a Beta version of Digg or Newsvine. And believe it or not, it’s not a crappy knock-off script either. It’s actually a site called Newstin, and now, as usual, I’d like to make fun of the website talk about how useful it is and how we can make money with it.

OK, I can’t resist… What’s with the design? Is a mix of light, medium, and dark gray supposed to be appealing? Or am I colorblind after being subjected to so many grotesque internet marketing sales letters?

What is this thing?

Newstin seems to be yet another type of news site. The thing is, it could be pretty advanced. The home page offers customization of the top stories, quick translations into various languages, and some Java Applet for formatting a navigation web/map/tree thing.

Could I get any of it to work? Nope. At least not to my liking. And if I wasn’t a sleazy internet marketer looking to exploit sites for personal profit, I’d leave now. (Since I can get the latest news I want and set things up perfectly on my iGoogle homepage without any learning curve.)

Back to basics.

Let’s take a break from making money and just get the latest news on the Presidential race… I click on Elections and get a list of news stories ranging from “Presidential race moves to Ohio, Texas” to “Thousands protest over Armenia election result.” You see the problem?

See, Newstin is based in the Czech Republic. They probably care about international headlines. But I’m an ignorant American who has never heard of the town “Ohio, Texas,” let alone Armenia. I want to read about how Bush is very successfully implementing foreign policies so I can feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

On to the money.

There are three ways to make money here.

1) Find all the breaking news stories. For this I suggest the Advertising and PR and Marketing categories. Watch these categories for good stories and then announce the news on your blog and hopefully capture some of the people looking for the original story.

It’s pretty easy since there are RSS feeds for each topic, and feeds include aggregated stories from Google News, Yahoo News, and others. The drawback is the fact that some stories come from places like EzineArticles, meaning there are useless spam stories in there too.

[It’s funny if you think about it - you’re trying to repost news from other sites (i.e. spamming) and you’re finding a bunch of self-promotion articles (i.e. other people’s spam.)] ;)

2) The Ever Popular Autoblog. Instead of monitoring the RSS stories, just use them to popular your autoblog with a wider variety of ripped-off content and watch your black hat SEO fantasies come true.

3) Spam the community. Now I don’t see member profiles yet, but a site like this with any sort of Web 2.0 functions is bound to start a community of users sooner or later. (Note to anyone from Newstin that might see this - build in some anti-spam features!)

Anything else?

I think so. White I haven’t found the site to be a shining example of usability for the general public, there is something there. Whatever they’re doing to categorize news by topic and manipulate the data could be extremely useful for a big business looking to stay on top of the industry, for a well-funded startup analyzing trends, or perhaps for a PR firm.

It’s worth checking back later to see if they have started Web 3.0. (Or at least Web 2.1) ;)

My Landing Page Is Not a Turn Off

thumbs up man

I know that my ebook is so good that I don’t need a sales letter to convince me, but others won’t know just how good it is. That’s why I had to use this landing page to explain just why you need it.

And it has worked handsomely! I’ve sold as many copies as I’ve had printed! That means my ebook sells out! I can’t even keep the shelves stocked! (I have printed a grand total of 0 copies, and I might not even have an ebook, or shelves - but you can’t argue with those stats!!)

But Skellie obviously didn’t consider my success in this landing page advice.

My bright red and blue text, with plenty of capital letters, exclamation points, and quotation marks thrown in, is the cornerstone of my ebook sales. It’s closely followed by repeating the same hype over and over.

And my testimonials bring it home. Sure, I made them up, but what good internet marketer doesn’t?

Photo Credit: soundfromwayout

Alexa Redirects Are Gone - How Do We Exploit Alexa Now?!

Have you noticed that Alexa redirect links don’t work anymore?

A few days ago I launched a new niche site and, not liking the ~8 million Alexa rank, decided to hit it with an Alexa redirect (http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?http://www.manipulatealexarank.com) a few times. Normally that would have been enough to get the site to a more hospitable 1 or 2 million rank, but in this case it just gave me a 404 error!

Yes, the coveted Alexa redirect, commonly used to lower your Alexa rank, is no longer available. It won’t make much of a difference for me, but think about the people that based their internal navigation menus on Alexa redirect links! Their entire site navigation would have gone to shit!

I think the lesson here is not to be stupid and try tricks like that to manipulate something useless.

Next Page »

Close
E-mail It