Can’t Get Rich

Wow, now that’s one long ass title, but quite fitting nonetheless.  I always see people talking about what the best keyword tool is, and you’ll always get the typical responses:  the sheep who just spout out what they already heard elsewhere without using anything themselves; the affiliates of one product vs. another product trying to either make a quick buck or justify their promos for the tool; and the drowned out voices of those who are giving an honest opinion.

Since Keyword Elite and Micro Niche Finder turned down my offer of saying their tools are the best keyword tools in exchange for a measly $2,000,000, I’m going to take the route of giving you my honest opinion. 

Now, having said that, I already see some people assuming that I’m against Keyword Elite 2 and Micro Niche Finder — that’s completely not the case.  Both are pretty cool tools, but I’m going to focus on the free keyword tools for now as many draw from the same sources …. it’s just in how they display the results and what features they have that make all the difference.

So now, back to my honest review.

There are two main free keyword generation tools out there:

1.  Market Samurai

and

2.  Google’s Keyword Generator

Having said that, Market Samurai essentially pulls its results from Google’s keyword generator anyway, and Google won’t try to sell you other stuff.

Google’s keyword tool is pretty nifty, and if you enter in a few relevant keywords, especially more long tail keywords, you can get some very relevant results that will show you how many searches they get a month, how competitive it is to advertise there, etc..

I love this tool and use it all the time, especially because it’s web-based and very easy to access.

The only major downside to it is that they don’t really allow you to sort the results easily.  It’s still easy to see mostly what keywords are good and what ones are bad, but it’d be nice to offer more filtering features.

That’s where Market Samurai comes into play.  The interface I don’t like nearly as much as Google’s own keyword tool, but they do a nice job of allowing you to sort through the results, rank the results by order of traffic or competition level, etc..

Since the keyword tool on Market Samurai is free anyway, I say use it if you’re going through HUGE keyword lists.  They have some nifty filtering features that make it worthwhile.

However, since it’s desktop based, if you’re looking for a quick search and aren’t wanting to sift through hundreds of results, Google’s own keyword tool is just fine and easier.

Now, having said that, here’s my personal tip for finding awesome keywords:  focus on keywords that get AT LEAST 1,000 searches per month and have at least a little Adwords competition (meaning that at least someone finds value in that keyword).  Then see if domain names that are .com, .net, or .org are available with the keyword phrase in them (like [keyword phrase].com).  If they are available, grab one (ideally .com, then .net, and then .org in order of preference).

Then make the keyword phrase your page title (what appears at the very top of the browser on any webpage), and you should have a decent chance of getting ranked well doing just that.  Your chances will go up even more if most of the search results in Google don’t have the keyword phrase in their page title — to find out, do a search with the phrase in quotes on Google and check out how many sites have the keyword phrase within the page title (the blue link).  If not many do, you have an awesome keyword to go after.

Comments / opinions — please leave them below. 

My next two reviews will deal with traffic and leads, and both of those will have some awesome tips to get rich online … or at least make a little extra dough….

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And you all thought that forced continuity was just an online thing…

For those of you out of the know, forced continuity is where you sign up for something (usually a free newsletter or a free plus shipping product) and then automatically get billed on a monthly basis after that with no upfront option of opting out (you have to call in after the fact).

Well, for those of you in the super know, you’ve probably heard that a lot of major internet marketers had their merchant accounts shut down in the past couple weeks because Visa and Mastercard were trying to lay down the hammer on deceptive forced continuity ….. where the customers didn’t really know they were signing up for such a thing.

So you can probably understand (and if you can’t, f*ck you!) how pissed I was to recently have Best Buy (the offline store — not their website) outright lie to me and tricked me into a forced continuity …. followed by making it almost impossible to cancel.

Here’s the story:

I go to a local Best Buy store here to buy a new laptop.

I was told by a salesman that for $100 more, I can get one pre-setup with 6 months free of an anti-virus software.

Not wanting to deal with the hassle of setting up the laptop, I pay the extra $100.

The salesman tells me that for the 6 months free for the anti-virus, he needs to scan it in and I need to swipe my card — he reassures me that I WILL NOT BE CHARGED for the anti-virus.  I asked if there were any charges whatsoever for it, and he says “no, the only reason you swipe your card is so we can acknowledge that you got the free software — I’ll immediately deduct the cost so it’s free, and then in 6 months, you’ll get an e-mail asking you if you want to pay for anything past that,” and I again ask “so it won’t ever charge the card?” and he says “no, it’s free — this is just to verify that you got it.”

Okay, cool, whatever…

But then, after I do that, I realize that the credit card monitor says that I’m agreeing to AUTO-REBILLING of my credit card.  I immediately bring this up and said that I don’t want to be rebilled, and he says “oh … [with some dumbass look on his face] you can cancel anytime you want.” and I say “okay, great, cancel me now.” and he says “we can’t do it here — you need to call 1-888-Best Buy — you can do that first thing tomorrow.”

I then ask if that number is written down on the receipt or anything, and he says no.  So now I’m thinking, how the f*ck would I know how to cancel if I didn’t ask that right then and there on the spot????  And more so, how the f*ck would the majority of the people even know that they agreed to the auto-rebill when this dude was bluntly saying over and over again that there were NO CHARGES and the only reason for the credit card swipe was to verify that we got it.  That’s an outright LIE!

But wait, it gets better!!!

So first thing right afterwards, I call up the 1-888-Best Buy number, explain the situation, and ask to be taken off the auto-rebill.  And guess what they say???  They said “sorry, you can only cancel at this number AFTER 30 days — you can call up your local Best Buy to try to have them cancel it there sooner.”

I’m seriously like ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!! ….. that Best Buy told me that the ONLY way I can cancel is to call up the 1-888 number, and that I can do it the very next day immediately (another lie).  Then that number says “nope, you can only cancel after 30 days.”

That basically means that they’re A) making it ridiculously deceptive that they’re even auto-billing you at all, B) they’re making it impossible to know how to cancel (if I hadn’t asked, I would have no information and no clue how to do so), and C) they’re purposely making rules that are aimed at making it difficult to nearly impossible to cancel.

On top of outright lying, they’re basically saying “call this number and hope that they’ll cancel you …. although they’ll probably tell you to go back to us and we’ll have you go in a never ending circle ….. unless you cancel after 30 days but before 6 months excluding Jewish holidays and Kwanza …. but you can’t cancel between the hours of 5 am and 1 am, unless your name is Bubba, in which case you can at 2:01 pm but not 2:02 pm, excluding every day except Sundays …. only if your first born son was born on that Sunday, and if not, f*ck you.”

This is ridiculous, and it’s making me PMSing over how they allowed this to happen.  This is worse than ANY internet forced continuity I’ve ever seen.  We’ll keep you updated….  Hopefully they’ll be smart about it and just make it easy for me to cancel.  Otherwise, they’ll have sh*t to pay for.  :)

Be warned….

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So if you’ve been reading anything on my blog for the last couple weeks, you know that I started giving out different online money making ideas.  I plan to continue that indefinitely with at least one new method a week or so …. unless I get lazy …. then it might take longer than one a week …. but hopefully I won’t get lazy.  :)

I have a BOATLOAD of methods that I’ve tried, and I have a smaller boatload of methods that actually worked for me (still in the dozens).  However, rather than have all of the ideas come from me, I thought it’d be fun to get all of my readers involved in it ….. and non-readers too — I’ll spread the love …. as long as there’s no crabs or anything like that coming with it…..

So here’s the deal:

Submit any / all of your money making ideas to me at cantgetrich [at] gmail.com.

By doing so, you’ll be giving me permission to use and talk about that money making method.

If I post the method and it’s actually good, I’ll Paypal you $10 and post a link to you for credit (if you want a link / credit).  If it’s not that good of a method … well … I probably won’t be posting it anyway so that doesn’t matter.

(But wait, there’s more! ….. including more money in it for you!)

Please have the methods be at least somewhat unique and not standard stuff — if you say “write a review of a Clickbank product with your affiliate link” and don’t provide any other tips or information or specifics on that, don’t be expecting me to post that (although you certainly could provide more details or tips on how to do a CB review and get it posted).

And to top it off…

The best one that I receive the first week will get a $100 Paypal prize.

So there you have it — not only will I enter you into a contest for a $100 Paypal price, but I’ll also PAY YOU if you have a good enough money making method that makes this blog AND you’ll get a link to your site.  I’m pretty f-ing awesome, aren’t I?

Two Random Announcements …… well, one is more like a rant:

First, the rant…. I know this is off topic, but it’s my blog so I get to be off topic when I want (dammit!).  I don’t know about you, but I’m getting sick and tired of reviews of products that are either worthlessly just trying to get an affiliate commission or just whining or bashing the product (that’s right folks, it goes both ways) … often times never even using the product or giving it a fair chance.

This past week, I’ve seen worthless products getting praised up the wazzoo, as well as awesome products get bashed.

Pretty soon I’m going to start writing product reviews and summaries WITHOUT an affiliate link and WITH awesome advice on how to use them (or at least how I use the products) with the good, the bad, and the f-ing ugly.

Announcement #2: This blog will be undergoing some minor maintenance sometime in the next day or two, so it might temporarily be down for several hours.  If that happens, don’t panic, take a paxil, and chill until I get back.

Oh, and e-mail me for this contest….

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On my last post, I talked about how you can buy up sites for cheap at one place and sell them for more at another place.  One commenter left a comment saying that this method may have worked a few years ago but not any more — I beg to differ, as I do this myself to this day, as do dozens of others.  However, he / she would be right in that it might not be deadbeat easy your first time, but once you get the hang of it, it’s a very easy way to make a couple hundred dollars whenever you want.

However, this next method IS deadbeat easy and can be done on a smaller scale or a super large scale with ease.  It’s also related to the Easy Make Money Online Method #1, but I much prefer this one and it can be a great source of recurring income.

Here’s what you do:

1. Do one (or more) of the following:

A)  Search for a worker who performs a web-related service (or post an ad) on a site like Craigslist (or any other such site).  Doesn’t matter if it’s a U.S. worker or Filipino or whatever (Filipino workers can be found searching the Philippine section of these sites).

B) Find an existing service package from a worker on a forum or classified site like above, but make sure that the package price is reasonable / cheap.

2. Then either raise the price of the package or add a few more tasks to the service to increase the perceived value (without increasing the price much).  What’s that you say???  You want some examples???  You bet!  Example numero uno — find an article writer who writes articles and instead of just charging more per article, sell a combined package of a bunch of articles, submission to article directories, keyword optimization, and so forth (you can keep going and make it a larger and larger package).  You can even combine it with simple stuff like blog commenting, forum posting, etc..  Example numero dos — find a backlink builder or commenter and put a large package together with xxx amount of links or comments.

Then not only can you charge a lot more than what your raw labor costs are, but you can take this to the next level and turn it into a monthly service to charge a monthly fee for both examples.  There are literally hundreds of different ways you could make money here with this, but these are just two easy examples.

3. Now that you have your team or service put together and profits figured out, it’s time to get more people to buy your service.  To do this, I recommend doing the following:

A)  Post in the services section on sites like Craigslist.

B)  Post your service on forums that offer free or cheap advertising (like the Warrior Forum) — there are tons of these.  This can be one of the easiest ways to get tons of sales.

C)  Search the web and the above places for people that might be interested in buying your service and let them know about it.

D)  Mail your list (if you have one) with the offer (it’s easy enough to whip up a simple sales page for it or hire a designer for $100 to do so), or start to approach potential joint venture partners with your new service — you can even offer to brand it in their name so they can either take a cut of the profits or just sell it for more than you.

E)  If it’s a good enough offer that converts, after you have a webpage for it (note that you don’t need one for most of these methods), you can do paid advertising like banner ads, PPC, etc. to test out the conversions there, but I only suggest this method after doing the above and having luck with those, as you definitely don’t have to spend a dime to make mucho money here.

Once you do this well, there’s awesome tools out there (more on that later) to do this 100x faster, but they’re not needed to start making money here.

And that’s it!  Easy enough, right?  I thought so…  :)

Stay tuned, as in addition to some more cool money making methods of my own, I’m going to spice up the next post a bit and offer everyone here a contest to win some $$$$$.

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For those of you still struggling to make a few bucks online, which was the same boat I was in years ago, I’m going to release a few methods that worked for me that I thin ANYONE can do.  And no, you don’t have to pay me a dime, nor will these posts lead up to some huge product to buy (just in case there are any cynical readers amongst us — haha!).

Here’s a method that should make you anywhere from $100 to a couple hundred dollars each time you do it.  It only takes an hour or so of work, and it can be repeated almost as often as you’d like … to a point.  And you might even get lucky and land some profits even higher than a couple hundred dollars, but I’m just trying to be as realistic as possible for someone starting out.

Here’s the method:

1. Go to a forum / website that has a “websites for sale” section.  One of my favorites for this is Digital Point … mostly because they’re full of cheap bastards and low price point stuff.  The Warrior Forum also has a comparable section … but they’re kind of the opposite of DP — they’re often full of bastards who think they’re work is worth 10x what it should be.  So in this case, focus on the undervalued, cheap bastards.  :)

2. Once you find the sub-forums selling websites, locate the super cheap ones.  By super cheap, I mean $100 or less.  You’ll find more of these on DP than most other sites.  If you can get the price to $60 or less, you have almost a guaranteed winner.  Just make sure that the site looks at least semi-okay.  It doesn’t have to be awesome, but it can’t be absolute crap.

3. Steal underwear.

4. Buy up the cheaper sites that seem like they’re at least of okay quality … ideally with unique content (not autoblogs although you can make a few exceptions).

5. Go to a “higher class” forum or website selling place and list the website for sale.  Flippa.com is a great place for this, but there certainly are other places out there.  Do a 3 day or 7 day auction and have the starting bid at twice what you paid, and then have a buy it now for about $100 more than that.  Note that in some cases, you can triple, quadruple, etc. the price if the site appears to be worth it.  Make sure you ask the original seller to delete their old post / thread listing the site for sale.  :)

6. Watch and profit.

7. Rinse and repeat (except step #3, that’s optional).

Note that you don’t have to do this just for cheap sites — you can make even more money finding higher valued under-priced sites where there’s a lot more profit to be made, but obviously more of a risk to you, which is why I suggest that you start out as a cheap bastard (no offense Digital Point posters).  :)

Stay tuned next time for another online money making tip that will allow you to make several times more money than this tip with even less effort … but still give this a shot, as once you learn this for low price point stuff, you can make a ton applying it to the higher price points.

See?  And who said it wasn’t impossible to make money online … oh, that’s right, I once said that.  Oops.  :)

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