Getting Mullered By Your Own Referrals
I’ve been successfully referring people to Bet365 for quite a few years now. Over that time I’ve made some nice pocket change, and on occasion a little bit more. As with anything though that relies on how other people are performing sports gambling referrals can be very hit and miss. Bet 365 operate a 30% profit share, so if I refer you and you gamble and lose I make money, if you gamble and win then I lose money. I never have to pay back Bet365, it just means that I need more people to lose before I get payment. Just my luck then to refer a couple of people who know what they’re doing! Just to show what I mean here is what I “made” last month, sort of explodes the myth that everybody loses at the bookies doesn’t it?
So if you really want to make my life even more difficult you know what to do!
Don’t Invest In The Stock Market, Invest In Yourself
I can’t believe how many people (i.e. MMO bloggers) are still insisting that now is the PERFECT time to buy shares! Buy low sell high, the price can’t get any lower can it? Well of course it can you tits! I’ve got plenty of real life examples of people in the last 3 months who chucked large amounts of money at shares in the hope of a “long term” investment who chances are will not see any sort of a decent return (outperforming interest rates at least). Perhaps most personal to me is my brother. Works very high up for a big bank, was offered a share issue on the basis that “they couldn’t get any lower”. Spent a six figure sum of money and within 3 days has seen his investment cut in half. Not only that but no dividends and the reality that he’ll probably be a long time dead before the global economy lets things get as out of control as they were when the shit hit the fan this time. Remember that this is a once in a 100 year event (the ridiculous boom followed by the thundering crash). There is a fair chance of nationalisation in which case he will never ever get a return on that money. Sweet. He’s not the only one, I could run of a long list of examples. Buying shares is not guaranteed to make you money, IT IS GAMBLING.
Investing in stock is investing in other people. You are betting that the company in question is going to start performing better. The current price reflects everything that is currently known about that company. You have no influence over that. It’s no different than picking a horse and putting money on that. This is what surprises me so much about the big MMO bloggers who think stock is great. So many of them boast about how they can turn a $10,000 investment into $50,000 via PPC or whatever in a few days. They appear to have huge confidence in THEIR OWN ABILITIES. Spend a little make a lot, you know the idea. If they are so cock sure why are they investing money in somebody else then and not their own ventures? Why buy stock which may double in value in 5 years time (back when times were good) when they could put that money into their own ventures and see enormous returns. Is it maybe cos a lot of the time it’s all bullshit?
My solution to the current economic crisis* is to just carry on what I’m doing, putting my money back in to what I’m doing and slowly but surely scaling everything that makes me money. I’ve got reserves and I could buy stock but I won’t. I’d rather use it to buy traffic, test a PPC campaign or whatever else I think will make me more money. Essentially I’m investing my money in myself at the moment because I believe that I have at least as much chance (if not a damn sight more in some cases) of performing better in the current situation then many publicly floated companies. And if it all goes wrong I don’t get to blame anybody else, it’s all down to me.
*I don’t feel any sort of crisis, sure I’ve seen eCPM figures drop but I’m still way above what I need to live on.
My HomePages Friends Proof Of Payment
Stop your grinning and drop your linnen! My HomePages Friends is very real and here is the proof of payment that confirms it!
I have always said that it doesn’t matter what you do online to make money, NOTHING is ever real until you’ve got the money in the bank and you can spend it. My HomePages Friends have proved that they do deliver and so from this point forwards I can happily use and promote them without worry. There are many products online that promise a “perceived” value (you know the sort of thing - we’ll deliver traffic worth thousands of dollars to you each month, hmmmm) but I’m kind of old fashioned, I prefer nice simple things that work as they say they will and deliver cold hard cash. My payment isn’t a huge amount but it’ll do for now, besides I can pick up 3-4 xbox games in the sales.
I guess the question now is - is it worth using My HomePages Friends. From my point of view I’d say yes. That money has come from nothing more than doing the daily web searches that I’ve always done. I’m not doing anything special, it’s just that now I’m being paid to do it. Is it worth siging up to try and cheat the system? I wouldn’t bother, you’ll be found out in about a day and booted so why bother. For those of you with a marketers head the real value in all this is scaling it. Referring people. You’re going to be paid for 3 levels deep so it has ENORMOUS potential if you can get enough people onboard. This should be a dream for anybody who got caught up with the whole Agloco thing. Agloco promised the world and delivered diddly squat, My HomePages Friends (Previously My Search Funds)has for the most part slipped under the radar yet delivers! A service that adds value, is 100% functional and most importantly for all of us, pays!
Why Don’t I Get Many Comments?
I was asked this recently in a comment (ironic, maybe?) and as always where I think anything requires more than a few words to answer I prefer to post it instead, so here goes.
The Reasons I Don’t Get Many Comments
1. My traffic sources. Most of my traffic comes from the search engines, they are looking for specific information related to their search and they either get it or don’t and move on. That interaction doesn’t require a comment.
2. My lack of a community. To be fair I’ve never really tried much to build a community around this blog. I tend to be quite to the point about most of the things I write, each post it’s own little entity. Not so much a series as more a sequence.
3. My slipping page rank. Most people comment for their own gain. They want a link. There is still some sort of delusion that Page Rank is significant and so as my page rank has deceased (it should go up a bit next time) so has the number of comments.
4. I’m not a people person. There isn’t much on here that isn’t about the subject at hand. How could I when I’ve plonked it on a a domain called themakemoneyonline.net? Apart from the odd bit about my wife and daughter there isn’t much that will make people relate to me. You’ll not be finding out what I had for my dinner last night or what I think about the US elections. I do have a personal blog, this isn’t it. The highest commented blogs in every niche pamper to their audience, I just write about what I know.
5. I’m harsh with approvals. Most comments are shit. No, they really are! Utter crap that adds nothing at all, only written for the simple purpose of getting a link. I’ve tried being totally slack and letting everything through to the extreme of only letting comments over a certain length through. I’m in a sort of middle ground at the moment and have no plans of changing that to increase my comment count. If I approved every comment that has been left by somebody who has done a search including “top commentator” in the query then I’d be right up there!
There are probably a few other reasons as well like the fact I don’t post much these days (people need something to comment on) and there is also the small matter of I don’t actually have posts on the home page anymore. My comment profile is simple to work out, I get a few regulars who find something/anything to comment on early on in the month to get their followed link from the side and that’s about it.
The Traffic Kahuna Rant
I was looking at some stats yesterday to see exactly what benefits I got from being a member of Traffic Kahuna. My plan was to write about my experiences some time late this week when I had the time to get my thoughts together BUT those raw figures have been enough to get me very angry. I had an awkward nights sleep last night so without further a do, my real thoughts on Traffic Kahuna in rant form.
Inputs and Ouputs
FOUR months and nearly $600. The monetary cost of Traffic Kahuna. At least 40 hours. The time I spent preparing and changing content for this “automated” system. Around 550. The number of visits I received from being part of Traffic Kahuna. 2. The number of sites where I threw away my page rank.
What Is Traffic Kahuna
Traffic Kahuna is an automated system designed to deliver traffic. It is comprised of a number of tools, an article exchange, a blog feeder, a social community, a few sites to create new blogs on and a 3 way link exchange. The article exchange requires you to host articles on your site in exchange for your article being posted on others. The social community “swaps” stumbles, diggs etc amongst other members. You earn points which can then be redeemed by assigning jobs for other members. There is a blog network that allows you to create and post to blogs on subdomains of Traffic Kahuna owed domains. It’s an easy backlink. The last of the traffic tools is the 3 way link exchange which is exactly the same as any other 3 way link exchange you’ve ever heard off. You link to some sites, other sites link to you. There are a few other things but this is what is at the core of Traffic Kahuna. It’s a given that they use some basic IP checks to try and make all this linking look as natural as possible.
What They Don’t Tell You!
This is most attractive to lazy content producers. People who can’t write content that gains links and traffic naturally will be drawn to Traffic Kahuna like flies to shit So why should you be surprised when what you find is a community of crap content and crap blogs? The Blog Feeder system works by having other members making their blogs available for posts. I did this. Here is one of the posts (picked at random) that passed Traffic Kahuna’s strict quality controls and ended up live on one of my sites. I challenge you to see if you can read it to the end:-
Instead of the traditional needles and threads, on women’s hands nowadays are joysticks and keypads of the latest games. No, this is not a protest over the domestic roles they normally hold, but due to a number of reasons. Here is the list on why more women are playing video games.
Really all I use my computer for is my stock market software, but my wife likes to play games to that lead me to my question. First of them is the growing interest and involvement in technology. More women are into learning new fields whereas in the old days, only household chores are to be expected from them. When we say technology, not only washing machines, vacuum cleaners and microwave ovens are the things that women are involved with. The graphics and sound effects that the video games have are cool and girls seem to be as attracted to them as men are. They are not afraid to tinker with the buttons or make mistakes, so long as they are learning.
A big factor is financial stability. As they hold paying jobs, they can afford to purchase gadgets and be able to indulge spending a few hours into accomplishing the missions of the video games. That being said one can be sure that there are times when the natural thoughts will kick in along with a preference for more essential items before indulging in tech. This is a major reason why more girls are playing xBox as it is one of the negatives of achievement.
The third major reason is that game development has focused a lot more on women than it used to. A lot of games revolve around action and adventure, most common of which are set in the war field. There are a lot of women in the world (ha ha yeah 52%) so game developers are starting to see this large potential market, and so more games are being created for them. More games today are targeted at the female demographic with softer graphics and story-lines, even tho these games are also popular with many males.
Fourth reason is for entertainment, same as everybody else’s. Cross stitching, baking and cooking are not the only activities that a woman’s hobby is limited to as it has expanded along with the advancement of technology. Don’t be surprised to find a woman with a gaming console during her free time. One good game for women is buy the phantom hourglass.
Fifth reason why more women are playing video games is to be in a competition against the men. Although this is a friendly match, they do participate in the thrill of the game and at times would be heralded as the winners.
The way that society thinks has changed. Forgotten are the times when men didn’t like women to do things besides take care of the house and family. Indeed, when more women are playing video games, there is a new common point of interest that can be shared between the two genders, including competition. Video games give women one more topic for girls to discuss with men on dates alongside of sports, movies, politics, and other ventures that men and women can share. Apart from social benefits of women being able to play video games, the enjoyment probably outweighs any benefit by giving women a good avenue of expression and a place to vent their frustration. For christmas this year it looks like I’ll have to cheap legend of zelda.
The Blog Feeder instructional video shows you how easy it is to produce content for the system. No need to write content just copy and paste a few paragraphs from other articles and then setup alternative words so that each article is unique. Reads well doesn’t it? If you go to the bother of following the links from the 3 way link exchange as I spent a morning doing what you’ll actually find is that more than 90% of the websites are MFA. Whether it’s Adsense or Affiliates you’re linking to sites that are for the most part awesomely bad! It’s clear that it has been marketed to people with the idea that they build a junk page, point the “full power” of Traffic Kahuna at it and wait for the money to roll in. My traffic stats suggest otherwise.
The social community will probably work. As long as you are happy stumbling/digging pages that you just know are going to get buried in a matter of seconds. These communities love half arsed English and tonnes of ads right?! How long until your account gets associated with voting for junk? The article feeder system doesn’t have enough members to publish the articles that are already in the system. Again this relies on other members participating. The core of the whole system has to be the Blog Feeder network. It’s how they market it.
I handled Traffic Kahuna badly. I was writing or paying to have written unique, quality content and pouring it into the system. In return I was getting junk. Whether it be junk content posted to my blogs or junk links that had almost no referral traffic (none in most cases) and made little if any impact on the search engines, certainly not Google. My 550 visitors is what I worked out to be the approximate difference between the traffic my sites were getting before Traffic Kahuna and afterwards. Where a site was created after I joined Traffic Kahuna I counted all the traffic. I ignored the natural growth my sites were experiencing before Traffic Kahuna but even so 550 visits in 4 months is not a lot. It’s not a deluge by any stretch of the imagination!
Perhaps most alarmingly during my time with Traffic Kahuna was the example of one blog. For 2 years it held decent page rank, within 2 weeks of joining the 3 way link exchange and submitting it to have content posted onto it all page rank had gone. Coincidence maybe? I don’t know for sure, what I do know is that one of their own sites where they allowed you to create blogs as sub-domains also got penalized. They had to stop members from using it and offer an alternative instead.
Then there is the crux of the “system”. You are being asked to both host somebody else’s content on your sites and to have your content published on other peoples. So if you’re not good at creating content you are being sold on the idea of having auto “quality” (cough) content posted. On the other hand if you have a basic grasp of the English language you’re being sold on the idea of having your content syndicated across THOUSANDS of blogs (In reality 20-30 at most per post) Traffic Kahuna isn’t actually doing anything other than matching both elements together. $147 a month is a lot of money for that! YOU have to create the blogs, YOU have to create the content. YOU are paying for that pleasure. They know this, they need new members to provide more blogs for existing members to post on and new members to create content for existing members blogs. This limited number membership can never really be limited. They ran a competition where members were asked to create more blogs. They started a new free “get content service” called Content Kahuna where if you submitted your blog you’d get “fresh” content. In the time I was a member they opened up Traffic Kahuna 2 more times. Not only that but they took the core of the system (The Blog Feeder), packaged it up and have re-sold it as another service - Syndicate Kahuna
Important –> If you already are a TrafficKahuna or PortalFeeder member, then you already have access to this, so do not sign up again
It’s clever marketing. Keep on reducing the price point until you find a service that people will pay for. Portal Feeder for the mugs with way too much money, Traffic Kahuna for those in the middle ground who don’t mind spending a bit of money and then Syndicate Kahuna to pick up the new credit crunch marketers. Behind all of these the real part that has any potential is the Blog Feeder system. As a webmaster it is certainly the part that you’d believe “could” work.
Why I wouldn’t Bother With Traffic Kahuna
There is no doubt that the people behind Traffic Kahuna are very clever. They were clever enough to make a fairly serious investment in the MMO blogosphere by buying JohnCow, creating some great content to build a following before using it almost solely to push their Kahuna products. It was enough to convince me and probably many others to give it a go. All is fair in love, war and online marketing but for my money Traffic Kahuna is quite high up their on the list of bullshit things I’ve tried. You want back links and traffic? I had a lot more traffic in 4 months from 2 articles posted through e-zine articles than I did using Traffic Kahuna. It cost me nothing.
Paul Barlow - Over 18 years writing software combined with extensive SEO experience has meant that I've been able to make a good living online for many years! This blog covers the money making schemes
I have and still use.
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