I know it’s been awhile since I made a post or even managed the affiliate forums, but I have been extremely busy building my affiliate network of sites.  With the recent downturn in the global economy I’ve been working twice as hard to keep my income from also going in the same direction as the economy.

The Valued Affiliates blog and forums will continue to stay online even though it might not be updated as much since my priorities lie with my money making sites.  I’m at the point where I think I have so much work I need to look at outsourcing more of it.  The only reason I haven’t is because it is hard to find an outsourced employee that can do quality work and stick too it in the long run.  Most of the work is repititious and boring work;  work no one wants to do!  So if anyone knows of a reputable outsourcing company or employee feel free drop me a line.

I just thought I’d drop by the blog and do a quick update of my current situation since the blog hasn’t been updated since April of last year (in case readers were wondering what was going on).  In my next post I think I’ll talk about what affiliate niches work well during a down economy so stay tuned!

Popularity: 48% [?]

Over the last year or two I’ve been tracking the top Google search engine results pages (SERPs) for a number of industries, and I have to admit there has been a disturbing trend that I’ve been noticing in Google’s SERPs.   It seems Google is favoring the following type of websites more and more: government and state sites, community driven sites, free sites, it’s own sites (like Youtube), and sites with an already well-known branding.

Of course I have no evidence, just like any other person who doesn’t work for Google, that Google is manually manipulating its SERPs to favor these sites, but from experience it definitely looks like this is what is occuring.  On the other hand, you can also argue that the type of sites listed above should be listed at the top because by nature they attract natural links all on their own, therefore ranking highest in the SERPs.  I’ll leave it up to you to decide which argument you believe while I make an argument for the former statement in this post.

If you look at the type of sites I listed above you’ll see all these sites have one thing in common - there is no interest for these sites to ever purchase Google AdWords advertising.  When have you ever seen a government or state site do AdWords advertising, or a free site like Wikipedia, or Myspace, or a newspaper?  Maybe in rare cases it does happen, but the majority of the time these sites never advertise through AdWords.  Well, these are the type of sites that are populating Google’s first and now second page SERPs more and more, while also knocking down regular webmaster sites in the SERPs.

Again the next statement is all speculation and I have no solid proof, but the reason I think Google is doing this is the search engine is trying to make it harder for regular webmasters to get traffic organically through the SERPs.  Advanced SEOs and webmasters already know a large percentage of search engine traffic goes to listings in the first page of the SERPs, and for high traffic terms possibly even the second page of the SERPs.  If Google populates these pages with the sites listed above then the only way “Joe Schmoe” webmaster can get some of that valuable search engine traffic is to bid for keywords through Google AdWords.  The result of this, of course, is inflated CPC keywords since there are more advertisers competing for keywords, and more profit for Google.

In addition, a secondary effect this causes is the stifling of the buying and selling of text links, which Google has been diligently trying and unable to stop to this day.  Buying and selling of text links has grown into a huge business that cuts into Google AdWords profits because instead of funneling their money into AdWords, many webmasters choose to buy text links to rank in organic SERPs.  Google knows this and sees the text link market as a competitor and enemy to its business model; which is why for the last few years, and more aggressively within the last year, Google has been going after sites that either buy or sell text links.  Populating the first and second page SERPs with the sites mentioned in the first paragraph, and making it nearly impossible for regular webmasters to outrank them for organic search engine traffic will stifle the text link market because if webmasters can’t turn a profit through organic SE traffic by ranking in the top spots they won’t buy text links anymore.  Any smart webmaster wouldn’t pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for text links to get mediocre rankings which receive barely any traffic through the search engines.  All that money which was going into text links for SEO will certainly be used for AdWords advertising after all things are said and done, and Google will be smiling its way to bigger profits.

So you can see that Google benefits in every single way by favoring the aforementioned sites in its SERPs;  benefiting specifically by forcing regular webmasters to use Google AdWords if they want any type of traffic from Google’s search engine. It’s Google’s monopolistic way of forcing webmasters to use AdWords, and increase its profit if you ask me.

Popularity: 95% [?]

I know the first SEO Lab was promised awhile back, but with all the other things I have going, including the new design of the site and just getting the site up to par, I have been very busy. While writing SEO Lab #1, I decided it would be a better idea to give some basic instructions first, and information on what should be expected from these SEO Lab posts before taking a dive into things. This lab post will be used as a primer to give a basic understanding of the SEO Labs:

1) Give a brief overview of the SEO Lab concept
2) How all future labs will be structured
3) How readers can make the most out of these labs

1) Brief Overview of the SEO Lab Concept
I came up with the idea of setting up an SEO Lab section on the blog to provide our readers with valuable, concrete evidence about how the search engines and their algorithms work through actual real world tests. There is so much misinformation on the web it becomes extremely difficult to separate false SEO information from SEO fact. Like I mentioned in my first SEO Lab post, I have been doing small tests in the past to learn how the search engines work, so I decided why not just take it to a much larger scale by documenting my research and sharing the results with other people. So this is the beginning of the idea you see here.

The SEO Labs are meant to be in chronological order so the most simplistic algorithm tests are completed first. The higher the SEO Lab numbers go the more difficult/advanced the algorithm tests become, therefore it is suggested that all visitors interested in the SEO Labs read the labs from the very beginning first, and then follow through to the present. This will provide a more complete, understandable picture of the whole process.

2) Structure of SEO Labs
All future SEO Labs will have the following structure:
-Opening Remarks
-Testing Information
-Questions
-Closing Remarks
-Results

3) How Readers Can Make the Most Out Of The SEO Labs
An open dialogue is probably the most important factor I want to accomplish through these SEO Labs. I do not claim to be the all-knowing, end all and be all source for SEO. I am only human and know I too can make mistakes (even though it’s hard to believe), so if readers notice any inconsistencies or errors in the SEO Lab posts by all means bring them to my attention and the readers attention by posting a comment.

In addition, if you have a question which is similar or relates too an SEO Lab which you would like answered I more than welcome you to post a comment with your question, and if your question is relevant I will add it to the SEO Lab.

Finally, again I suggest that new readers to the SEO Lab read all posts chronologically from beginning to present as each lab builds upon all previous labs.

Popularity: 93% [?]

After several weeks of issues with a designer I hired to integrate the website template into a valid xHTML/CSS Wordpress template it is finally completed!  I actually had to hire another designer to complete the Wordpress theme integration because of issues with the first designer.  I am extremely pleased with the new design and layout of the blog, but it is far from complete.  Now comes the optimization portion of the overall process where I will be installing various plugins for better navigation and functionality, social marketing, and search engine optimization.

Once I have completed installing all the plugins and optimizing the blog, I will make a detailed post on what plugins I installed, as well as how I optimized the blog.  I hope our readers enjoy the new layout and design!

Popularity: 100% [?]

If you’ve been a regular reader of this blog you probably have seen me use the term “money niches” in a few of my posts and have wondered what exactly do I mean when I use the term.

Money niches are affiliate marketing niches, which if promoted successfully, can bring in a tremendous amount of income for the affiliate marketer. These affiliate niches are usually extremely easy to convert traffic into sales, or provide high payouts for each lead or qualified sale. Money niches do have a drawback - they are usually highly competitive making it very difficult to become successful for someone just getting into the affiliate marketing industry. Examples of money niches include travel, ringtones, pharmaceuticals, and insurance leads. All these niches have at least one of the two characteristics of money niches that I just mentioned.  Many affiliate marketers chase after these niches because there is a lot of money at the end of the rainbow, so to speak, if they are successful in their efforts.

It took me about a year before I really felt comfortable with affiliate marketing and decided to take a dive into money niches, but because I was already generating a fairly steady income online I wasn’t too worried if it took awhile to generate any income through these niches or even if my efforts failed completely. Once your a seasoned affiliate marketer and have a good steady income being generated from your affiliate sites, by all means go ahead and take a dive into the money niches to get your piece of the pie!

Popularity: 91% [?]