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OK,  I have been on a tear since Google bombed so many small time bloggers taking their published PR down to a zero.  Now some may think I am bitter because Google torched this blog so hard.  The truth is I have done many very risky things with this blog, this is one of my push the envelope mediums, I knew it would come some day.  I expected it, I have no personal problem with it but I do have an issue with the hundreds of single moms, disabled individuals and hard working folks that were just stating to make some extra money being put down so hard due to Google greed and their belief that they get to tell the free market what to do. Neo Socialism at its finest!

So this article is going to tell a paid blogger or anyone selling links for that matter how to avoid at least "automated detection" and remove the ease of follow up attacks on your other internet properties.  Make no mistake about this, this is a WAR.  Google is out to put small time people out of business and it isn't right.  So long as Google PR is seen as the Gold Standard of a sites "value" and so long as there is not really good alternative to value a site for links, then PR is a PUBLIC STATEMENT about your blog with the power to slander it and damage you financially.

So what do you do to confront the new world of Paid Blogging

First - If you got Nuked to a PR0 by Google 

OK first DO NOT believe PayPerPost when they try to tell you "Real Rank" is the answer.  If it works out fine (and I hope it does) but you can't ignore Google PR long term if you want to continue to get paid.  Remember there are other options for Paid Blogging too, ReviewMe, Loud Launch, Blogvertise, to name a few off the top of my head.

If your Blog is now a PR0 do not abandon it, however, you need to take action and build a second blog.  I will be telling new people how to start a Blog fast below so I won't restate it here nor will I go into how to protect it yet BUT understand for your long term earnings you need a new blog and you need it fast.  You then need to do the protection steps below as well to be sure you don't loose this one.

Do not expect Google to forgive your sins, don't expect them to not hunt down your other sites!  Go into protection mode now and get busy building.

Second - Starting a Blog or a New Blog

Ok there is going to be some acceleration of things here that some services may consider "unethical" but to me this is bull shit.  Advertisers want blogs with Link Power, the look of activity and well written content about themselves and others on it.  They want blogs that are visited by real people and they want to see a result.  These steps will just make you able to provide this to them FASTER.

The first thing you need is a domain name, if you were or are on Blogspot.com, Wordpress.com, Xanga.com, Myspace.com, get off of that crap now.  If you are lucky you have some other domains with some stuff on them, perhaps one is old enough to be a project you never did the right way and it has some PR.  If so convert this domain into your new blog, you will keep the PR and get out of the gate fast.

If you don't, like most small bloggers, just have a random domain with some PR on it you need to go hunting for someone who does.  Go to a few webmaster/marketing forums and say you are looking for a PR3 or higher domain and are willing to pay 50 bucks for it or so and you MIGHT find a good one.  Don't fret the words in the domain that much as the ranking effect won't be that big a deal for most small time players anyway.

The better way is simple there are MILLIONS of domains out there that people that are very uneducated about PR, marketing, etc put sites on that suck.  These sites have never made a dime!  Search for terms that describe your blogs niche, go to like Page 10 of the Google results, may be page 25, 60, 100 you get the idea.  You WILL NEED TO HUNT and find a few of them.  Look for crappy sites that clearly suck but have PR, find the owner by email, phone, hook or crook and offer them 50 bucks for their website.  Find 6 or so and 2-3 will sell out and be happy about it.  Now take these domains and put your blogs on them.  If you build two or three (which I advise) get cheap servers and put them all on different servers.  Hosting has gotten really cheap!

Getting and Building PR Fast 

OK next you need to go back to hunting in the SERPS or in blog communities, etc.  Go find yourself a few sites with a PR of 3 or higher and start emailing people.  Ask to buy a link on their sites for 20 bucks or so, buy at least 5 links, spend the 100 dollars it is more then worth it.  Don't use TextLink Broker or any other service.  Look for old and shitty sites, always say you would either like to say pay 15 dollars for a link or 50 for the site if it has PR, I will tell you why later.  Just know if you can buy 4-5 domains that have PR on them for 300 dollars or less you are GOLDEN and your investment is a very smart one.  Call me I will probably buy them all off you for twice what you paid if you change your mind!

Now since you are a blogger get you butt on several "article directory sites" and draft a half dozen articles or so, put links in them GOOD ONES with anchors if allowed.  Do a free press release on PRLeap about your new blog, no one will care so what you get a link.  Go to squidoo and create two or three profiles and make a lens or two about a topic common to your blog.  You get the idea put some links out there anywhere you can for free.  Then build a few links from "other places" to those one off links. 

This is the formula to gain PR.  Find any place you can in your niche topic with PR and beg borrow and steal links to your blog or to pages that link to your blog.  Push some links to individual posts, don't do everyone to your home page.  I have to cut this off now, PR and link building is a topic you could do a book on hopefully you get the idea.

Protecting Your Blog and Your Other Sites

Ok now this is the main stuff I felt obligated to tell people today.  If you are making a new blog or if your blog was lucky and did not get smacked down or if you are just starting Paid Blogging you need to do these things now.

One - Stop or don't blog under your proper name.  Create an online identity, a "handle" something that is not related to or connected to your proper name.  Brand the heck out of it, but do not tell people you are John Smith in Alabama, do that on some personal blog if you like but not on a money blog.  It opens you to attack in more then one location.

Two - Go to your domain register and set up your domain with a "secure whois" this will mean no one can find out who owns your domain.  Be anonymous, if you get caught you don't want it to end in a which hunt where Google torches any of your other blogs.  They might, it has happened to others. 

Three - Google wants you to use re="nofollow" if you don't know what that is learn.  Google it! Just DON'T use it the way Google intends!  What google wants is for you to put nofollow on any link you sell on your site.  Now how does google know what is sold or not?  They don't unless you are stupid enough to tell them.  So go ahead and create a set of links on your home page to some random large companies as "recommend resources" something like that.  Then nofollow them, who cares about them being nofollowed, you don't and the companies can't complain they did not pay for the links. 

Occasionally when you blog and link to something that is not important or what have you put a nofollow on things here and there.  See how this works, you show google how you are a good little stooge!  How you play the game as the obedient serf they believe you to be.  So if and when they make algos to look for sites or specifically blogs that never use nofollow they never find you.

Four -  Never again use the words "PayPerPost", "Paid blogging", "Blogvertise", "sponsored links" or anything close to this in your blogging.  I mean never.  Part of the filter google used to find PPP blogers was just looking for things like that, so DON'T do it.  I mean ever.

Five - ******This is Really Important****** - I think it would be best if you can get away with it to not have a "disclosure policy" on your blog.  PayPerPost requires it, some other services may soon and hell the Federal Government may do so at some point as a point of law.  Yet there is a way to "disclose" with out broadcasting to googles spiders that you are doing so.  Here is how you do it, first write up your policy and then convert it into an image.  Now create a page on your blog and call it some BS domain like, randompost or something like that and then post your policy on there as an image, google can't read an image. 

Next take and make an image of the words "Disclosure Policy" and use those as the link point from your blog to your pollicy. Now NOFOLLOW the image link.  Be smart call the image file name something  stupid, 4khoavjlejoaiyt.jpg or something random that means NOTHING TO ANYONE.  Now put the command content="noindex,nofollow" on the page with the policy image.  This says to google spiders do not look at or index this page.  They want nofollow give it to em just use it to your advantage.

Six -  Never again put something like "this is a sponsored post" or "thank you to our sponsor xyz" etc after a post.  If you must say that you are doing a sponsored post turn again to images.  Create an image, remember to give it a random file name that says whatever you want it to say.  Make it the same font as your blog text and very simple so it looks typed not like an image and put it like below your tags etc to make it less obvious what is going on.  I would tell you the best way is not to do this at all, it would be better to say stuff like "I was asked to take a look at", "I was contacted about", etc as your way to ID a sponsored post.

Realize that some of this still makes you open to a manual hunt down and attack but you are flying well below the radar.  If you are smart you build 3-4 blogs to mitigate your risk if you get caught you don't get burned too hard. 

Getting Traffic - Focus On This More Then Ever 

OK I am not fond of real rank as it is today but one thing PayPerPost is spot on about is that Traffic Matters.  If more people read and visit your blog you have more value.  First more people will read your sponsored posts, however, traffic is also valuable because you get links from the people that visit your blog.  You don't just want links that you manipulate you want natural links and people do not link to what they never see. 

Additionally people and advertisers do value things like Alexa Rank and in time Real Rank will probably get some traction.  Hence blogs with traffic will have more opportunity in the Paid Blog World then those with little to none.  Here are some traffic basics, PayPerPost may feel some of these are unethical and there are some true unethical sources of traffic or "perceived traffic" none of these though qualify in my opinion for that. They are real traffic because real humans come to and see your blog.

Again this is basic I could do hours and hours just on Paid Search, Organic Search, Content Links, Traffic Exchanges, etc.  I just want to get most bloggers thinking a bit differently about the VALUE of traffic.  Pay for some, if you make 500 a month blogging take 10-20% and put it back into your own advertising.  Buy traffic it is an INVESTMENT NOT AN EXPENSE.  So here are the top cheap ways to get some decent quality traffic to your website.

First Traffic Source -  Second Tier Search Engines.  This include sites like 7Search, Findology, etc.  These are great tools and you can easily get a ton of every day traffic for about 2-7 cents a click,  call it 4 cents average and you can get 500 extra visits a month for 20 bucks.  Many small blogs never even get 500 visits a month.  If you are really slick and mine out enough terms and phrases you can push your click average to like 2-3 cents on 7 search.  Your not selling so conversion is a moderate concern you just want real human visitors.  Make the most of your low cost PPC traffic when you find a term that is specific link it to your best fitting post, don't send all traffic to your home page.

Second Traffic Source - Traffic Exchanges.  -  These are some times called "surfing programs" and they work this way.  You sign up and then you get a specific page to visit or a thing to put in your browser or some way to view other peoples websites.  Then say for every 10 sites you visit you get one visit in return at no real cost. 

Let me tell you though that is the suckers way to do use these programs! 

What do you think the owners do with all the traffic that they have as a surplus? They sell it and since they have no cost they sell it CHEAP.  This is not super high quality traffic but it is real people.  They are generally people trying to learn how to make money online and that is actually good because your blog should stand out from all the auto generated crap and "squeeze pages" in them.  Don't surf, don't waste your time buy a nice chunk of monthly traffic for dirt cheap and let it run.  It will bring real people to your blog and help things like Alexa and Real Rank at the same time.

Third Traffic Source -  Content networks.  Go to the source of the evil "Google" set up a PPC account and do up a bunch of ads on the "content network".  This is not the stuff on Google it is all those sites with adSense all over them, you can bid a penny on hundreds of terms and really stretch another 20-40 bucks with this.  You will have to dig and take a few months to figure out how to get enough cheap clicks that work for your blog and actually spend that much if you stay really cheap but it can be done.  Additionally you can do the same with Yahoo's content network or go to second tier providers like Kontera and others.  Again I can't go into the real "how" here but this can and will produce a lot of great traffic for pennies.

Fourth Traffic Source -  Organic Search.  This is another thing I can't go very specific on but let me just say if you do the link building I mention then this will happen to some degree on its own.  Some simple things you can do include using Googles Keyword Tool to find terms to work into your post titles.  Doing so will help a lot.  If you use WordPress as a blog platform hosted on your own server (which I recommend) there are many good free plugins to help.  These include a tool that creates XML sitemaps and pings google for you, a meta tag plug in and plenty more.  Just the act of thinking about your titles and getting specific phrases into your copy is a start.  Learn a bit more about very basic SEO and you should be able to produce an additional 500 visits a month to any blog even if you are not very good at it.

Fifth Traffic Source - Social Networks Etc.  This is something many bloggers do but the problem is most rely on them alone and don't do the others listed above.  Alone unless you have a really awesome blog and live in these communities day and night the social stuff is not going to make it happen for you all by itself.  Combined with the other techniques though social sites can give you a nice boost.  Join all of them, put the do dads you are required to on your blog somewhere and take what comes.  Pick about two or three and really get involved in them, pick ones you LIKE they are all ok and participation will make the most of them.  Do the others too because you can feed in your blog feed, add a widget and get some results so take the time in the beginning and harvest the traffic long term.  Now remember you have a new identity online.  You are not Joe Smith now you are "That Blog Dude", "One Cool Chick" or what ever, join all social networks this way never again tie your proper name to your monetized blog.

Initially you might need a few hundred bucks to short cut your way to a blog with PR and links but once that is done you can run a little of each of the above for say 50-100 dollars a month.  The difference can be a blog you make 500 dollars with becoming a blog that makes you 1500 dollars a month or more.  Again this is an investment not an expenditure.  Many blogger will struggle with this concept but the day you made a dime with your blog you went "into business" so treat it that way.

Building a Subscriber Base - The Most Important Thing You Can Do

Honestly I really mean it when I say this is the most important thing you can do.  If you push traffic to your blog every day but don't build a real base of readers you are just treading water.  You have to keep doing everything just to stay level, your traffic hits a plateau and stays there.  When you build a real subscriber list you change the rules.  The above system will bring you say 10,000-20,000 visits or more and while many are crappy some are really targeted but even with a total opt in rate of 1% you are looking at 100 subscribers a month on the very low end.  Create a GOOD REASON for people to opt in and you can do much better then 1%, I have systems generating from 8-15% even with relatively low end traffic as opt ins.

Build an Opt In Email List - The key is the GOOD REASON I mentioned.  Let me be clear your cheerful blogging and snarky remarks are seldom enough to push subscribers past 1%, hell most of the time a plain blog gets .25% or lower to opt in.  Not good!   What you need to do is have a free report, a free ebook, a free ecourse, a something that entices visitors to opt in to an email list.  Sure you want RSS subscribers but adoption is still very low especially among low tech typical web surfers.

So what you do is simple create or pay someone to create a unique item to give away and put a form for email opt ins on your blog.  Yet you MUST DO MORE then that.  Now create a page on your blog and SELL the free report.  Write sales copy as though you were going to charge 49 dollars for it, make people want it.  Promise in your copy not to spam your readers, that you will ONLY notify them of blog posts and nothing more.  Hell you can then do what ever you want in your postings anyway.  

I use Aweber for this and I love it, you can even point your blogs rss feed at your list and your list gets emailed automatically each time you post.  I love this feature and it works well, they have great support and you can build a list of up to 10,000 people for only 19 bucks a month.  There is also a service called Zoodka from IZEA/PayPerPost and it can be used by any blogger for free or with paid upgrades if you want them.  It looks pretty good but I found it a bit clunky to manage when I tried it, that was a while ago and you may want to give it a shot now that they have worked on it more.  As something you can start with for free it is worth a look for most people I imagine. 

The key again though is make your "Free Item" very visible on your blog and make it good quality.  It can be 10 Keys to what ever your blog focuses on or an eBook about getting the best deals on electronics it can be anything that is of interest to your visitors.  It should fit your blog well and you have to again SELL IT.  Put a value on it, say I plan to sell this item after the fist 1000 are given away free for 47.99 and that one addition will sometimes double your opt in rate.  

When you build a subscriber base you change the rules on Google and all the other engines.  In time you can build a list of 20,000 or more and then you can vary well tell search engines to go to hell.  You must do this and you should do this BEFORE you start buying traffic etc.  Let me be clear without putting lead capture on your blog pushing traffic to it is like putting gas into a car with no tires.  Totally pointless!  Don't feel bad if you have tried this, many giant corporations are spending millions and making the same mistake right now, I know, some of them have been my clients.

Make sure to start with all your connections

I mean your human connections.  Ask mom, dad, your brother, sister, friends, aunts, uncles, friends of friends, anyone with a pulse you know to agree to be on your blog email list.  You probably know lots and lots of non techies that still think blogging is really complicated and something for only brilliant computer people.  Just tell these people that anytime you post to your blog they will get a quick email and they can read what they like and ignore the rest. 

Most of your contacts will be fine with this.  Set a goal to get 100 people this way, you can do it and it is easy.  Once a person is on a while send them an email about a funny or quirky post.  Post about a Darwin Awards winner or something and ask your personal contacts to forward your posting and tell their friends to read your blog.  Let your opt in sales page do the rest for you.  Just reaching out to those you know and throwing in some funny, viral, etc stuff from time to time you can add thousands to your subscriber base.

Now is the time for action

Remember what I said this absolutely is a war.  Google is out to put small time bloggers who have been earning a decent wage out of business.  Their goal is to dictate to the free market how we are to conduct ourselves and because of their emense power they can by and large do so with most site owners.  You do not have to take it lying down though, they are taking food directly off your families plates here so do something, respond.

If your blog got torched either use another domain you have with some PR, hide your ownership of it and get busy with the things I have outlined above.  If you don't have a domain go find one with a bit of PR and cut a deal to buy it.  You may spend 5 hours to find some that fit, a day or two tracking down and negotiating the transfer and getting a new blog installed on your new domain and server takes some work but do it.  Take this personally because Google did it that way. You were targeted and the value of your blog was slandered, perhaps we should all sue them but for now adjust and get going, make more money then ever before, blog your ass off and take opportunities from every blog service that will have you.

If you got by and did not get torched then don't think you're safe.  They are coming for you too, make the adjustments I suggest here.  Get the names of these services off of your blogs, do it NOW.  If you have a disclosure policy get it turned into an image or get rid of it if your services don't require you to have it.  Do not put any advertising for these services on your money making blogs and be smart about the way you title, word and structure things.  Put some no follow links on your blog to places that are big names and you are happy to recommend and bury a nofollow into a post once in a while.

Set up good lead capture and start pushing traffic to your blogs and control your destiny.  I want you to seriously consider running two if not three blogs.  Do separate IDs for each one and make none something you blog under your proper name with.  If you need help with content get over to eLance or RentaCoder and hire some copywriters for 2-4 cents  word or have one write reports and ebooks for you. 

In short do not be passive in this attack!  Defend what you have or build back what was taken from you.  The internet is to big to let anyone even Google dictate your future or steal from your family.

Again I wrote this and gave away all this information because I feel that people deserve to know what is really happening and how to fix it.  I will indeed build a video course if the interest is there so opt in to my notice list and leave a comment to the same if you would pay 19-29 dollars for such a course.  If I get say 40ish people that want it I will put my staff on getting it done.

I want to say to every blogger that has been hurt by this or soon will be, I understand where you are and I want to help.  I don't "need" money any more and I don't really need to blog for a few bucks extra a week but I remember what it was like to really need money.  I used to work in a warehouse just 15 years ago and was paid 6 dollars an hour and at that time I could barely cover my rent each month.  I know how wrong this Google attack was and that is why I have been so vocal about all of it.

Live Free!  Blog On!

~ Jack Spirko 

 

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