Build My Rank Review - An In Depth Three Month Report - Part 2

So, you may have been wondering why I waited a full month to post my BMR results. Unfortunately, right when I had posted part one of this review, Build My Rank had decided to temporarily not allow any new sign-ups until their blog network is improved. Then, to my ultimate astonishment, Google de-indexed all of BMR's sites as of March 19th!! What an incredible shame!!  I'm very disappointed.

However, with that news I'll talk a bit as to why blog networks are a bit 'gray-hat' in nature but that you could mimic BMR in a more personal way (just that it will take you much more time and effort) to earn more online. Anyway, let's look first at my results.

Build My Rank Results

I'm not going to put a lot of effort into this post considering BMR's status at this point. But, let's see just how well it worked (you can find descriptions of these sites in the previous post).

Build My Rank Review - An In Depth Three Month Report

Part of what I do with The Agile Marketer is to evaluate products and services that help you extend your options so that you can learn how to make money online. Over the summer I was very intrigued by many reports about the service, Build My Rank (or BMR for short), that from others seems to be an excellent page rank building option.

Build My Rank is bascially a network of content blogs designed to give you increased page rank as their blogs naturally improve their own page ranking by subscribers posting content within their system. To use it you must first subscribe to their montly plan that then allows you to write and post articles within their network.

I knew that the only way to really test this service was to truly devote an extended period of time to testing the waters with some different sites of my own to see just how much my sites would improve in page rank. Knowing that Google takes weeks to alter rankings this test would have to span at least two months.

My hope going in was that I would gain enough back in revenue from passive income (such as ads and affiliate products) that the monthly fee ($59/month at time of this writing) would be easily offset.

Build My Rank Test Cases

I decided to use three specific test cases that would represent different levels of site age, varying traffic levels and specific keyword strategies (note - all rankings are from Google search results):

Underground Traffic Secrets - Review

What if you could get as many of your favorite internet marketers into the same room to discuss their opinions on what they would do if they could go back in time with the knowledge they have now?
Phill Turner (yes, with 2 Ls) of Underground Traffic Secrets has done just that with his packaged collection of interviews with a variety of successful online experts and asked them "If you were starting again today and you had absolutely no traffic, which traffic strategy would you use to make $1000 in profit after 30 days?"

Being experienced in internet traffic myself I just about skipped over this gem - but saw the names in the list and the price and decided to purchase a copy. I've got to tell you I was pleasantly surprised to find this to be an incredible deal and wealth of information. When you get to hear experienced marketers talk candidly about their strategies to drive traffic, you'll find that they tend to give away much more information than they would in a written ebook or article.

One on one interviews work so well since the interviewee typically doesn't have time to filter their thoughts and they're so excited to help others.  What is so revealing in these audio reports is that they cover so many different traffic strategies which is so important for any type of online site - plus, they really demonstrate how to make money online. Most of Phill's interviews are about 20 to 30 minutes long making this offer an even better value.  With that single question offered up - the responses stay very focused on traffic with what I think were some deep, hidden slips of the tongue by these guys.

Here's a brief list of the interviews (my ratings) and some of the topics discussed:


1. Dean Hunt (very good) - an expert in buzz marketing, he focused on becoming an authority much in the same way as a talk show host or interview might do it. If you focus on learning a topic at no cost and associate your name with experts you can build a level of respect. Lots of good details on how to build out this method.

2. Kim Roach (amazing) - is one of the most successful female marketers online, she is best known for her products Traffic Dashboard, Instant Affiliate Payday and Super Affiliate Club.  She focused on the very basics of marketing online - but manages to lay it out in simple terms of traffic, offer and conversion. Using solo ads, newsletters, WSOs and more, she provides an amazing wealth of information in 30 minutes.

IM101 Step 3: Ten Easy Power Methods to Promote Your Site Early

Someone recently asked me why you would ever want to promote a site before finishing it? If you happened to read my article Get Listed in the Search Engines Early you would have some of that answer. However, would I promote a site before it is started? No, I wouldn't - but I would as soon as I had the very basic structure and content ready.

One thing to remember is that promotion does not have to be a direct link - it can be indirect such as an author account, profile or configuration setting that points back to your site. This has become even more important with Web 2.0 sites because of their high popularity and page rank.

So, where would you begin with something like this? First and foremost you must have a Yahoo ID. Yahoo is important because there are some very highly ranked tools within Yahoo you can use as indirect ( and some direct ) promotion. Other than that you'll need to use individual IDs for the other sites (be sure to read my previous entry on the proper use of IDs before you begin).

Here we go - the ten power methods:

1. Twitter - I hope everyone has figured out the power of Twitter. But, if you haven't be sure to sign up and start tweeting! You can set a backlink in your profile as well as talk about what you're doing on your site. Start very early with this - you can tweet about your site, news, ideas, etc! Don't worry, someone will start following you.

2. StumbleUpon - This is a powerful way to track interesting websites either randomly or related to your marketing topic. Better yet, you can follow others picks, start groups and link back with your profile. Again, this is one you can start very early with a profile and links similar to your site - just be sure not to add your own site for stumbling too soon.

3. YouTube - If you're adept at creating videos this is an extremely powerful way to get backlinks to your site. However, you don't even have to do that - just create your own YouTube group with a backlink to your site. Then, add videos to that group of quality, related content. Over time people will join your group if you pick your videos well!

4. Zoho and Zoho Planner - Zoho is a provided of online productivity software - spreadsheet, word processor, database, etc. One very easy idea is to use Zoho Planning while your building your project. Why? Planner allows you to publish your plan publicly as you go - which you can use to track your own progress, create backlinks, and even stir up some ideas going forward. I use it just as a simple tracking mechanism.

5. Digg - Most of you are probably pretty familiar with this. Much like StumbleUpon you can track and vote for you favorite articles that tie to your site concept. You can enter your site in the profile.

6. Propeller - very much the same as StumbleUpon or Digg you can use Propeller to find and rate similar articles to your own.

7. MyBlogLog - this is a blog tracking and rating site (uses a Yahoo ID). Many blogs place a MyBlogLog widget on their site showing who has visited. This will show what users have stopped by - which you can map back to your Yahoo ID.

8. Flickr - most of you already know what this is (uses a Yahoo ID). However, you should seriously consider using it to indirectly or directly promote your site depending on the topic. For example, in my last article I mentioned the sample Travel Photo Tips site. Well, of course you would want to have photos on Flickr. But, if your site is informational only - you can get creative and find themes that fit your market!

9. Yahoo Answers - since you are promoting something that you love you should be able to answer questions about it. At some point your own site can become a reference to those answers - just be careful not to spam your site, that is, use answers to only try to get a link back. Be honest to those looking for answers and include many different references

10. Spicypage - finally, use this community site ranking tool to add your own site, rate others and collaborate with other, similar users.

There you have it! Ten simple power methods to boost your own site early. Just be consistent to work with two or three of each every day so you can build your successful ranking early to make money online.

The Power of Press Releases for SEO Page Rank

One of the best and easiest ways to improve your page rank is to create a press release announcing any new ideas, releases, changes or websites. I'm constantly confused as to why people don't use this avenue much more often. As I mentioned in my last email, writing and publishing releases is very easy to do and has huge benefits for search optimization and ranking.

The primary goal of any press release is to announce some type of exciting event for your business. Extending this model to your website, online press releases provide a means to delivering that information to as many news subscribers as possible. What that means to your own business is one-way links back to your site and subsequent increased traffic. The long term benefit is a good jump in both Google and Yahoo's search rankings which directly affects your bottom line - to make money online.

Let's take a look at my latest release. You simply need a catchy title such as 'Dedicated to Successful Internet Marketing, The Agile Marketer Launches New Site'. You will also need a high level description - mine, for example, is 'Internet strategist, Don James, releases his on line success secrets in the newly launched Agile Marketer website.' The rest is three to four simple paragraphs describing what you key announcement will be. Remember, this can be for any type of new or changed business concept from your sites.

So where do you submit press releases? Some of my favorite press release sites are:

PRWeb.com - a great place to submit releases. It has a page rank of 7 and can really boost your own rankings. The cost varies depending on how much exposure you want. You can go as low as free up to $360 per release. Each level gives you greater distribution and visibility. I typically pay $10 per release just for simple link backs.

Free Press Release - this has a page rank of 5 and is either free or $1 per release (with a minimum funding of $5) for Premiere releases.

I-Newswire - another pr site with a page rank of 7 and has both a free submission and $25 optimized submission.

You can basically name your price for the amount of exposure you need. Whatever you do to increase your site's page rank be sure to always consider using press releases.

Get Listed in Search Engines Early

One thing you must constantly remind yourself about is that successful monetization of any site is directly proportional to the amount of traffic you are receiving. Although this concept may seem simplistic to you it is tremendously important.

There are many ways to drive hits back to your site that I won't go into here. but I really want to focus on starting early. Many people don't realize that you don't have to finish your website in order to start the process of submitting it to search engines and directories. Doing this can work against your sensibilities because you want a finished product first.

The key is to fight your own impulse to perfect everything. I know personally that I have worked many hours on a site and finally have it perfected only to wait 2 months to see it start to appear in search engines, directories and articles. If you submit your site early you'll be that much closer to the immediate benefit.

It typically takes 4-8 weeks to get your site noticed, indexed and listed. My advice is that you submit your site to as many search engines as possible once you have your domain and landing page ready. You must have some original content on your page - I recommend at least 4 pages; a landing page, 2 detailed pages and 1 site map. This becomes even easier if you are using a blogging engine. Simply create 4 entries with the first dated blog entry or the sidebar as your site map.

Another good strategy is to use free articles to prepopulate your first pages or blog entries and then change them later. That way the crawlers will 'see' the content and your site will be properly indexed. Don't worry, you can always change this later without too much impact. Just don't wait too long and try to keep the title and subject the same.

Driving Online Business Growth

It is amazing to see the plethora of internet marketing, work at home, wealth online and similar guides out there. Once you start seeing all of the possibilities your mind tends to swim with ideas. Someone is making millions on AdSense, another is selling ebooks like crazy, others are using anti-marketing to drive curiosity seekers, and so on. Where do you start?

The biggest problem that 95% of those trying to break into online marketing is sustaining productive growth. By this I mean defining daily time to your project and business to drive revenue. Sounds easy, doesn't it? Well, it's not.

The greatest secret that online marketers rely on is the fact that most buyers have huge dreams but very little productive drive. Most online products are purchased but never used or used only inconsistently. The chore of working on something day to day is too difficult for many - they're always looking for automated wealth.

In order to drive traffic to your site and build your business you must sustain a certain amount of productive work every day. What is productive work? That is work that directly affects your revenue. Unfortunately, reading this right now is not productive work for you - it will be in the future. Building your sites, adding content, writing ebooks and articles, etc. is productive. If you are like me you enjoy finding new products and learning the trade - but many times it is overwhelming and your head starts spinning.

Here's my advice: focus on a single project, build it daily, add content, add links, add rss feeds, get your list started - it will take some time. Try to curb you tendencies toward reading blogs, getting excited over the next new product, and reading forums. I'm not saying you shouldn't educate yourself - just don't forget that education does not directly drive revenue - it only gives you more potential to drive revenue.