Blogger FTP Migration - Success!

Whew! I have to tell you that I really sweated this one out.  I wasn't sure that this migration from my own hosting center back to Blogger / Google hosting was really going to work with the upcoming FTP shutdown occurring on May 1st.  The Agile Marketer has been around for about 4 years now - slowly climbing the SEO organic ladder (yes, I remember being one of the first guys to post on John Chow's site when he started it) nearing the top 10 list.  I've been using this site for my personal opinions and learnings on how to make money online -  making this site's Google ranking very, very important to me.

What I wasn't sure about was that the ranking would drop and/or the migration would fail miserably.  So, let's go through what I learned along the way and how easy or difficult this migration turned out to be.

Let me backup a bit and describe my particular migration problem. The Agile Marketer site consists of a Blogger blog posts as the default landing pages with some ASP.NET scripts as side pages (for dynamic content such as the Free Affiliate Link Cloaker).  In this case Blogger FTP's all of the files to the root path of the domain (www.agilemarketer.com).  Most people have a site blog that they publish to such as (www.agilemarketer.com/blog/) - but that was not my case.

My plan was straightforward - create a subdomain (such as apps.agilemarketer.com) on my hosting center and then point my root domain to Google and the new subdomain to the hosting center like so:

Here are the steps I followed:


Step 1: Backup! Before I did anything, I FTP'd into my website at my hosting center and backed up all of my files. This is critical to do first - you don't want to lose any data if you make any mistakes.

Step 2: Subdomain Creation: I had to go out to my hosting account and request a subdomain (apps.agilemarketer.com) to be created.  Fortunately, I have full control so I had to eat one of my domains and created a new one with my control panel.


Step 3: Copy Files: this is important! I then copied all of my site files from my root domain (www.agilemarketer.com) to the new subdomain (apps.agilemarketer.com) using a FTP tool.  The key on this step is to have all of the files running successfully (PHP and ASP.NET scripts) on the subdomain.

Step 4: Blogger FTP Migration: I then went into Blogger and clicked the Settings/Publishing tabs to turn off FTP publishing and turn on migration like so:

As you can see I also set the missing files host to apps.agilemarketer.com so that any FTP'd images in my blog posts would show up correctly.

Now at this point nothing has really happened except any new posts on Blogger will not show up on my hosted site.  I now have to point my DNS away from my hosting center to Google.

Step 5: Godaddy DNS: this was a bit tricky but I figured it out finally.  The main step here is to switch your Nameservers that point to your hosting center back to GoDaddy and use their Total DNS (this is not mandatory - you could use your hosting center's DNS).  But, GoDaddy Total DNS is easier to work with than my hosting provider.


Step 6: Setup DNS 'A Records': I finally had to change the GoDaddy Total DNS A Records to point to Google's IP addresses for (www.agilemarketer.com - or, using the default @ sign in DNS) and my hosting center for (apps.agilemarketer.com) like so:

And.......voila!!!  It WORKED!!!  Both domains are now working and I don't believe I lost any Google rankings in the process (I hope).  All part of the education of trying to make a living online!  Hope this helps anyone with the same situation.
YQAUXVCGMSUM

Click here to continue...

Just When You're Making Money Online - Google Cancels Blogger FTP

Ugh! Yes it is tax time and Blogger time. You've probably noticed over the last few years that The Agile Marketer is a Blogger blog - something I've enjoyed using for a number of years for my core site (this one) and many other profitable affiliate and AdSense sites.

The bad news is that on May 1st Google is pulling the plug on posting your Blogger blog on an externally hosted website. This is tough news for those of us who have many blogs - and, if you haven't guessed, something I've been working on for the last four weeks.

What really bothers me, however, is the fact that The Agile Marketer has reached #26 in Google for the exact search term 'Learn How to Make Money Online ' and #52 for the unquoted term - a very, very competitive keyword phrase (125M results).  This site has been slowly and surely moving up the Google ladder over the last 2 years with a significant amount of effort.

The rub now is that moving this site back to being Google hosted is going to cause a number of problems:

1. The core domain www.agilemarketer.com will have to change IPs and point to Google servers instead of my hosting provider.
2. I'm going to have to split this site into a new sub-domain such as www.agilemarketer.com and apps.agilemarketer.com so that the pages I wrote such as the Affiliate Link Cloaker will have to live on the hosting provider since they run scripts (something you cannot do in Blogger).
3. I'll probably lose my ranking due to the changes.

We'll see what will happen - this is my most complex case. I had other sites with blogs as sub-directories that have migrated pretty well.

So, get ready - this site will probably have some broken back links and image problems for a while.  Time will tell.  I guess the good news is that I have some serious profits coming in on my affiliate sites again - which, I think, is a great sign that the economy is improving.

Click here to continue...

Learn How to Make Money Online - Affiliate Marketing Success Story

Success sometimes comes slowly. About a year ago I was posting step by step guidelines to easily build a free, yet effective affiliate marketing website. You can go back and find the series called IM101: here - Start Internet Marketing with EPIC Steps and here - Finding Your First Product to Market. (Go back and read all seven of the articles if you want more information).

So you may have wondered why I haven't written about this example in about 1 full year. The reason is pure patience. My example was a very low key, simple content driven site focused specifically on a Clickbank dieting product that I personally purchased, read, and endorse. I spent about 8 to 16 hours total last January and just left the site pretty much alone except for publishing a few more articles that I thought were good material and pertinent to the product.

Well, as you probably know, content sites do take some time to rise up the search engine ranks especially if you haven't focused on building out the site daily. Nevertheless, if you are really intent to learn how to make money online keep on reading.

Patience pays off! Last December something happened. This affiliate site landed at #4 in Yahoo for the keyword search phrases I noted in the series. By the end of this January I had pulled in hundreds of dollars in about 6 weeks. And, the best part is, the marketing was absolutely free - I did not pay a penny to build it out (I only spent the money to buy the product myself - something I think good affiliates should do).

Let's go back and analyze specifically the steps I went through to build out a free, and simple affiliate web site.

1. Finding the Product - I used both Clickbank.com and CBEngine.com to find a product that I personally wanted to market. I specifically focused on newer products that may start to grow rather than older, existing products that would have significant affiliate competition. You don't want to work with a fading product - focus on rising products.

2. Keyword Analysis - I then analyzed my product and associated keywords and defined the three to four long-tail keyword phrases I wanted the search engines to discover. This is essential and should stay fixed once your research is done.

3. Marketing Blog - I created the Blogger name and description with my main keyword phrase as a holding point until I had enough content to publish. Blogger is free, simple and an excellent choice for affiliate work.

4. Author Interview - I contacted the ebook author introducing myself and asking if I may send her an email interview question list. (Most ebook authors will jump at the chance especially if their product is fairly new). This is a fantastic source of original, free content that you don't even have to write.

5. Product Review - I then wrote my first content article which was a personal review of the the ebook.

Ok, at this point let's review what I had in hand - a sellable product, four keyword phrases selected, a blog with the names reserved, and two key content articles (an interview and a review). Let's keep going:

6. Adding Content - I decided to write two more 500-600 word articles and then collected some more from the author (some will provide affiliate content for you - granted it is not original since others may share it - but, you can still use some of it)

7. Site Design - This is always the time consuming part. I spent a few hours tweaking the Blogger site design to my liking.

8. Publishing the Content - I published the two original articles, one new article and two of the article provided by the author to my new affiliate blog. I left one article for publishing to an external article directory (Ezinearticles.com)

9. Email List - Using some of the content provided by the author I then created a small set of emails for my list going forward.

The site was now ready. You can see that getting the basic building blocks together provided a basis going forward to build off of. Over the year (in this case 2009) I added 4 or 5 articles and really just let the site sit. Once the search engines let me out of their sandbox, the site was good to go!

And, after about 12 months - a winner with very low effort. Image now that you had ten of these sites (yes, I do have more) - how much would you be pulling in a day?

Click here to continue...

Taxes, Spending and Earning More Money Online

There's nothing like starting a post with the word taxes to drive you away from reading this faster than a rattlesnake right by your foot. Nonetheless, I had to start this post with something that came to mind as I was preparing my taxes this week (well, not really preparing - just hunting and gathering for the tax guy).

If you're like me you've probably found yourself spread across multiple marketing fronts online - from products, articles, affiliate work, blogs, seo, etc. As much fun as this can be (plus some work) you may have either forgotten or abandoned some of your work done in the past. This can get pretty easy when you get focused making money online with a new endeavor while giving in to some others that really didn't pan out.

What this comes down to in many ways is that you are probably spending too much money and could tighten you belt a little in 2010. Let's look at some of the core expenses and see where you might be able increase your profits with just a little effort.

1. Domains - ok, admit it - how many domains do you own? How many are actually realized with profits coming in? How many are old, fading and not doing anything more for you? In my case I currently have between 15-20 domains registered (over a 7 year time span). Now, not all are used - some have been parked for the future while others are old, and, pretty stale now. This is costing me about $275 / year in domain registration fees - of which I would say 4 or 5 are something I can part with. A simple savings of $50-60 a year - not to mention some future potential profits form domains that could be put up for sale due to their long history.

2. Hosting - I've mentioned this before but I'll say it again - hosting centers will eventually become a thing of the past with Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Amazon building out their processing clouds. However, I do still use some hosting centers (which I will be talking about in my next article) for my more complex sites. Typically, hosting costs you anywhere from $4 to $40 a month depending on so many different factors primarily due to the options you need. In the past I had been using 3 different hosting centers and consolidated down to 2 a couple of years ago. Given that there are a couple of options available - a) find cheaper hosting plans or b) consolidate down to a single hosting company. Either way that could be a savings of about $100 a year.

3. Email List and Article Management - Always an arsenal for any internet marketer, email and article management typically costs about $150 to $250 a year. Usually, when people sign up they feel a bit tentative about the service and pick a monthly plan for about $15-$20/month. But, if they had picked the yearly plan they would have saved about 20% - or a savings around $40 a year. Doing both can net you about $80 extra a year.

So, let's add up the saving - $50/yr domains + $100/yr hosting plans + $80/yr for email and article marketing = $230 per year savings.

Like any budget sometimes just going back to your expense sheet is the best way to learn how to make money online. Saving can be earning too - don't forget that.

Click here to continue...

Making Money Online with Daily Work

Continuing from yesterday I wanted to talk more about how the site, 'Make Money Online' was able to dominate that very same keyword phrase. If you felt the urge to examine Alan's site in detail you might have noticed one interesting feature - virtually daily posts centered around his core keyword phrases. What's even more amazing is that he used completely free methods to reach his goal! Astonishing!

Let's do some simple math on what he might be making right now from that site. Twelve medium ad spaces for $120 a month = $1440, two large banners for $300 a month, and text link for $180 a month = $1920 / month just in advertising alone. Using those numbers alone you can see that day to day focus can really pay off in a high performing niche. Plus, it shows that you don't have to have an expensive, fancy site to do this.

Also, you have to remember to keep your core keyword phrase stable across all back link channels you use - from articles to simple forum posts. If you examine his backlinks you'll see most post back to the keyword phrase 'make money online'. Who knows what specific product or service he used to get those links - but they all show the same thing. This is a key learning for you - but sure to keep the core keywords stable over time so you get rewarded by the search engines.

Let's face it- we all want to learn how to make money online with little effort - you know, that one strategy sold as the secret model to success that anyone can implement. The real secret here is that with daily work, good content, and valuable information you can make a very good living online.

Click here to continue...

Build it Right to Learn How to Make Money Online

Ok, listen, don't make the same mistake that I did not that long ago. I built a fairly successful site a couple of years ago that was moving up in the Google rankings - I can't say it was one of my more carefully thought out sites, but, had a fair amount of content nonetheless.

You see, about a year ago I started to get very excited about keyword optimization by focusing more on my blog titles, headers and highlighted information. Thinking that I was helping my other site, I went in and altered all of the headers, meta tags, main page title, etc. Guess what? Google dropped my site like a rock out of their top listings. Ouch - that's one tough way to learn how to make money online!

After sitting back and pondering this a bit I realized that I had shot myself in the foot by over optimizing (and, really over thinking) the problem at hand. Google got it as well - my site had changed too much - thus the search king had to re-index it. Lesson learned (or, as the oddly say in England 'lesson learnt').

Today's web marketing lesson is all about building it right the first time - why keyword optimization must be a priority when you plan and prototype. Yes, you can change core keyword phrases along the way but, you must do it very gradually. That's really beside the point here.

What I want to stress to you is the need to start with good keyword research first - targeting your core keyword phrase and then all relevant variations on it. Let's take a great example that, I think, will show you how to approach this problem with some powerful ammunition for your own work.

If you've done some research online for sites devoted to earning money online - you may have noticed a site appear about 1-2 years ago for the search term 'make money online'. Go ahead and type it into Google without the quotes.

The #1 site is Alan Liew's Blogger site (yes, a Blogger site!) - here's a screenshot:



Now, if you pay special attention to his site you'll see that the keyword phrase 'make money online' is the predominate term on his site - from the main page and throughout his post titles and links. What's not quite so apparent is that all inbound links to his site are also titled 'Make Money Online' from forum posts to articles.

What Alan did right was focus immediately on the keyword phrase he desired to dominate and did it in about two years! Kudos to him and his perseverance - his example is a complete success in a massively competitive market (157,000,000 results).

This shows that staying the course with your keyword phrase is one of the most important steps to building your site. Be sure to use one of the keyword tools out there to find a phrase you want to market to and stick to it! If you keep diligent - you will succeed.

Click here to continue...

You're Not Making Any Money Online without Authority

Made you wonder, didn't I?? If you read my post from a couple of days ago you saw that I assigned you to do some research by typing in an example keyword phrase 'How to Make Money Online'. If you did what I asked you, you probably wondered what you should really be looking for that defines their site's success in the search engines. I bet you felt that slight pang of jealousy that your website isn't in that top 10 list (heck, I know I did).

Many of you have probably dropped some real dollars on some ebooks and read a thing or two about search engine optimization to guess that these sites have high quality backlinks from other sites that also rank well in the search engines. And, as we all know TRAFFIC = MONEY - so, everyone's goal is to get traffic. However, (and this is a BIG however) that is not necessarily the answer to getting top rankings in Google or Yahoo (and most recently - Bing). Bada Bing! Read that last line again.

Ok, hold all of your preconceptions about SEO because you're probably submitting articles, adding entries to link directories, creating profiles in social sites, etc. etc. - i.e. - wasting valuable time! There is one secret I'm going to spill - and that is your site's authority!

By authority I mean that the content you've provided in your site or blog has relevant meaning and important to human eyes based on your key topic. Guess what? Google is trying to view your site the same way with human glasses - and, guess what - they're not rose colored.

What you might be thinking is that Google is judging your site based on the number and popularity of sites linking back to you. True, somewhat - but, there are a boatload of PhDs at Google trying to make it read your site like a human - yes, a human. That means reading from top to bottom, left to right, scanning and determining if the content has relevance (remember that term - it is important) and authority to the topic at hand - that is, your web page.

So what does that really mean? If you think about this it is about the perception the search engines have of your content demonstrating that you have the appropriate knowledge of the topic or niche. That is why you'll see sites with a significant amount of detailed content focused on specific keywords ranking high.

Recently, however, I have discovered sites that rank in page 1 of Google that do not have many backlinks, and, those backlinks are not highly ranked. I was literally floored when I found this. Why would these sites get high rank for the search term?

In one example I found a site ranked #4 of 1.4M results that had 6 pages with 717, 755, 519, 211, 373 and 12 words in each page respectively. The pages spoke directly to the main topic (page 1) and associated topics in pages 2-5 with page 6 being a contact page. It had 28 backlinks with all being simple web directories, whois and alexa rank. Pretty simple - but, it was authoritative. It reads well, has the main topic as the page title and subtopics / subheadings with content.

What this demonstrates is that getting ranked high in Google may not be as hard as you think - just as long as you build your pages in a human readable, authoritative manner. Want a great example? Just take a look at how Wikipedia is structured and you'll get a clue on what you need to do (more on this later). There's no telling how long it will take Google to get you to a high position - be patient - you should be able to build niche sites that capitalize on this and make money easier than before.

Click here to continue...