So, what is the stink with Site Build It! (SBI) that is going on now?

Well, Lis has posted a Site Build It Scam Review that has brought out the owner of the company and many of his site “owners” to defend their position of why they charge $300 per year per site to help you learn about how to make money online.

Is this SBI for you? It depends. Many people when first learning or exploring how to earn an income online get curious and start searching, chances are they don’t know that much, if anything, about search engine optimization techniques. The also probably don’t know much about how to set up a hosting account, wordpress or html coding (and some php).

This isn’t bad, but it can open one up to being scammed pretty easily. Now, before I go on, let me say that I am not promoting nor putting down SBI. I don’t own any SBI sites, but I did research them and look into it when I first got started in the internet marketing and make money online sites.

So, is SBI really a scam? From what I can see, the answer depends on how you look at it. Alot of it depends on your comfort level of creating your own sites by hand (hosting, wordpress, etc.) or if you want more of a plug-n-play approach. SBI seems to offer more of a one stop shop with tools, website templates, and more that you can use once you set up a domain name.

But, do you really need to shell out $300 per year per site to make money on the internet? I would argue that you don’t and here is why.

You can get a good and reliable hosting account with HostMonster or HostGator for around $5 to $10 per month. This will allow you unlimited websites to be hosted on this account. So, if you pay for a year in advance, you have spent at least $60 for one year of hosting.

With domain names, you would need to purchase them anyways whether you get them for your own hosted domains or an SBI account, so the price is awash in my eyes.

What else does SBI bring to the table? Well from reading some of the comments on the Site Build It Scam Review that Lis wrote, it brings a forum for support. However some of the people that left comments on her site seem less than friendly. Maybe if you are on “their side” they would be willing to help.

I found it funny that when Griz wrote a post to back up Lis about Site Build It – Don’t Buy It! that he was also targeted with the SBI! crowd and had to close off his comments.

It’s a hard decision for anyone to determine what the best method is for themselves to get started when trying to learn how to make money online but from what I can see, you can definitely do it cheaper and have more control over your options if you take a few minutes, research completely your options and learn some of the basics.

If you don’t want to spend $300 per year, per SITE then here are some of the resources that I highly recommend you read and follow:

• Griz’s Make Money Online
• Make Money Online with Griz
• How to Make Money Online with Court Tuttle
• Make Money with Keywords
• Make Money with Adsense
• Make Money Blogging

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment or contact me and I will help you out!

In a previous article I wrote about used domain tips I talked about how to be sure to check in Google Webmaster Tools for any issues or problems related to your recently purchased, aged domain name.

While you can sometimes get a good keyword focused domain name for your niche site that is new, this lends itself to a whole set of potential problems when dealing with the search engines. If your site becomes popular or starts doing too well in the search engine results, Google can and often times will sandbox your site.

While there is a great debate about whether the sandbox exists, I can tell you it does. One of my sites was a new domain name that I started in the fall of 2007. It was ranking on the first page of Google for several months for about 3 different keywords related to iPods. I was seeing about 30 to 75 unique visits a day and was pretty happy with it.

All of a sudden in December, my traffic died. And I mean died. No hits, or visits until about April. Then, all of a sudden, it was back in the results and I’m starting to see an even higher number of uniques now.

The Google sandbox is a method by Google to help put “spammer” sites in control somewhat. It does catch honest sites, but each site probably goes through it at some point.

What does that have to do with preowned domain names?

When you buy a preowned domain name, you are buying the trust of Google and the other search engines. Generally these sites, anything over 1 or 2 years, have been around and have already gone through the sandbox process. They have “aged” like fine wine and are trustworthy in Google’s eyes.

However, some of these older domain names have already been abused by their previous owner(s) and used as spam sites, often times deindexed or banned by Google. This might sound like a potential problem, and it can be. But it can easily be overcome with a reinclusion request.

How does a reinclusion request for an aged domain work?

Once you have purchased a preowned domain name, what I usually do is go to Google Webmaster Tools and “verify” ownership of this site. This is a critical step to begin the process of letting Google know that it is under “new management”. You should also set the prefered domain at this time, either with the www or without.

Before you go an ask for reinclusion, you really need to add some good content to the site. I usually start off with about 5 articles as a minimum. This will show Google that you are a serious owner and are going to be putting good and legitimate content on the site. I wouldn’t just throw 5 PLR or junk articles on it, as this will throw out the duplicate content penalty and look like a spam site.

Give it a week or so and build some links back to the site. Submit the articles to a few social bookmark sites. Check and see if you are getting any traffic to it. I use StatCounter (free) and for wordpress I also use a plugin called Slimstat.

If you check your site with “site:www.yourURL.com” and see results that are with your current content, then you are good to go. If you don’t see anything, then chances are you need to take the next step.

Go back to your Google Webmaster Tools and file the reinclusion request for your domain name. What you need to put in it is basically something to the effect that you are the new owner of the site and you think it was previously used by a spammer. Let Google know that you are going to use the site for legitimate content and would like a visual reinspection and reinclusion into the search engine results for the site.

One recent site I purchased worked just fine this way. I have no doubt that it was a spam site. There were over 200,000 backlinks pointing to it in Yahoo, but nothing in Google. RED FLAG!

I put about 6 articles on it, nice, long and legit content, and asked for a visual inspection and reinclusion, and within two weeks, it was in the Google serps getting traffic.

Preowned domains that have age on them are nice. The best part is that you could take a preowned domain name that dealt a topic and as long as your niche is closely related to what the previous owner used it for, you will rank pretty good for it.

This doesn’t mean that you should bypass an 8 or 9 year old domain name because it is not in the niche area you are targeting. These are sometimes the best domains to buy. Especially if you find an aged domain name with someones name in it.

If you are looking for a way to help with backlinks, this is critical. You can purchase a preowned domain name with someones name and use it as a general blog. Create a new persona in someone elses name and now you can blog about your own money sites and give great backlinks to your own sites. Not a bad idea, eh?

Preowned domain names are a great way to build your portfolio. However, you should still build a mix of new and old domain names as necessary. The dot info domain names are good for BANS sites, but Google knows that since they are so cheap, spammers use them. You will probably get your .info sites deindexed, but don’t worry, just keep building back links and it will come back. Google will eventually realize it as a legitimate site.

As with anything, if you are just starting out, don’t buy more than you can afford. Also, don’t buy just two or three of them and sit and wait for something to happen.

You won’t make money with Blogger Unleashed, and I can prove it!

If you think you know how to make money online by reading the other make money online bloggers, you are right. They have it all figured out. I can see how they make their money online, hell, even John Chow promotes it in his title “I Make Money Online by Telling People How Much Money I Make Online“.

See? Hell if it’s that easy, then I’m gonna start showing you all my affiliate payouts, adsense checks and my bank account to prove how much money I make from blogging.

Vic doesn’t know shit about making money online. Neither does Grizz or Court. These guys are clueless when it comes to making money online. Trust me, I know.

I’ve been reading these guys for sometime now and I haven’t made money online, so I’m dumping this blog and going back to Shoemoney, Chow and company.

Oh, one more thing…

Vic, Court and Grizz don’t know how to make money online….

They know how to make a shit-load of money online the right way.

If you don’t listen to them, and quit following the other “make money online” crap bloggers that only want to sell you their ad network or their affiliate product that tells you how to make money online, then go for it.

As for me, I’m seeing an increase in my sales and clicks from following what Grizz and Court and Vic are telling me to do by reading THEIR FREE BLOGS THAT THEY DON’T PUSH ANY CRAP ON YOU TO BUY!

So, you won’t make money online with Blogger Unleashed, or Grizz’s Make Money for Beginner’s blogger blog, or even Court’s Internet Marketing School.

You’ll make a shit-load.

No more excuses! Stop reading stats! Stop Checking emails! Stop wasting time! Just do IT!

Court, Grizz, Vic – I love you guys and am so thankful that I have found you. You all truly opened my eyes to what it means to make money online!

One more thing, if you zoom this, please leave me a nasty comment! I don’t want people to think that I am joking!

I have been reinvesting some money into domain names using GoDaddy’s domain name auction system. I have found a few gems on there recently, but it takes all day wading through the left over junk to find them. I’m not talking about the expensive domain names, or closeouts, but the cheap ass $5 domain names.

One problem that I have seen by researching quite a few of them is a lot of them appear to have been banned by Google. I have mentioned it before, but if you aren’t using the SEOQuake toolbar, you are missing out on a valuable piece of research that can save you a ton of time.

How can you tell if a domain name is likely to be banned? It has no PR, 0 indexed and 0 links. Now this isn’t only on Google, but across the board too. If you are in doubt, you should also check the tool section at iWebtools and use their Google banned domain checker. It’s free, and there are tons more out there.

One recent domain I bought I knew was banned, flat out, no questions asked. Just from the domain name I had a gut feeling. Not to worry however, just ask for a reconsideration with Google. I did and within one week the site was back in the SERPS and indexed again. The biggest thing that I did when I asked for reconsideration for this domain name is to not put ads on it yet, wrote 3 or 4 good content articles, and told Google that I was pretty sure it was banned and that I was the new owner.

I guess it worked! Now, to get some traffic back to it…

If your niche is a health niche topic and you can’t find a forum for it, try broadening out your search. Let’s say you are working a niche that deals with “why your toes turn purple after taking xyz medicine”. Now, this is not a real niche (at least that I know of) but I hope you can see the point. If you niche is so focused down to a specific topic, there might not be a forum exclusive to that niche.

So, broaden out that niche to a more general related area. In our previous example, dealing with toes, you might want to look for forums dealing with feet problems or the “xyz” medicine in question.

Trust me, most of the forums you will find for your specific niche’s do follow comments and links in the forum posts!

Plus, this brings about another topic that I will post about in a couple of days, so stay tuned for a great niche promoting idea!

This is really a neat way to look at how anchor text works, because in an effort to get the Scientology website to rank first on Google for those terms, you have to use anchor text. What do I mean?

<a href="http://www.scientology.org">dangerous cult</a>

It’s just that simple. If you take enough back links with that anchor text, you could rank any site for just about anything. Now, while I don’t condone the actions of anyone trying to do this, it does make you think about the power of the anchor text in your links.

This is why if you are linking to someone else’s site, you should always try to use the title of their article, or the title of their site. It gives that much more power to the anchor text you are using.

So, instead of typing “click here”, you really should use the proper anchor text to show the relevance of what you are linking to. I wrote an article entitled “Click here for SEO benefits” on my other site, stop by and give it a read so I don’t have to repeat it here. (see how easy it was to anchor that text?)

If you would like to read more about this, head over to the WebProNews article.

And as I remember, Vic seems to have a certain passion for not letting people mess with him, so this will get real interesting to see what happens to the “hackers” that have taken down BZ and BU.

Read more from Court’s site and stay tuned.

One of the comments that I read with great interest on Vic’s latest post Make $25k in 2008 I Challenge You! was from Tuppy that was wondering what he should do since he lives in an area that doesn’t have a large english speaking population. I won’t give away his location as a courtesy to him.

It made me think of some ideas that I feel can work tremendously if you are looking for ways to make your local niche blog work.

The local niche Tuppy was talking about was for a country that didn’t have a large english speaking population. He was wondering how he could make it work being an english speaker in his country.

Well, it is pretty easy for any “foreign” blog owner to make money with a niche blog, I would assume, as if you are living in the area, you know alot about it. Just think of it like this.

If I was a tourist wanting to visit another country, where would I turn for some information about tourism in that country? What about if I was a local and was looking for references for the best restaurant or real estate agent? I could always go down to the local bookstore, which is a possibility. But, most people turn to Google or the other search engines.

Now, lets narrow it down even more as searching by country name is a pretty big search. So, let’s take the name of the town(s) we are going to. As a tourist or visitor, I would probably want to find information dealing with what is the best restaurants to eat in, what is the weather like during the time I will be there, is there something fun or interesting to do?

These are things that can easily be blogged about on your local niche site.

Now, here is the way to make some money off of the site. Sell ads to these places you are writing about. Let them buy a post on your site. Set up pages for different topics that people can find out more information about what they are looking for.

Plus, you can always use Adsense or other monetization techniques too!

Maybe I am just rambling, but these are the things that I am going to be working on my new local niche site. I live in the Cincinnati area and have picked a targeted area. I plan on selling ad space to various people such as realtors, restaurants, etc, etc.

If you don’t think you can make money with a local niche site, you might be right. But if you don’t try it out, how will you ever know?

Come back tomorrow as I will show you an example of how all of this works by using a country that I have always wanted to visit, and let’s see what we can find, and some real ideas on how to make this work.

What other ideas would you have about local niche sites?

The best way to find keywords for your niche subject is to use a keyword software program and type in the word that is the subject of your niche. You can visit our Niche Tools page for more information about niche marketing tools. This will generate a list of keywords or phrases that contain your niche and will also show you approximately how many people search for each word or phrase. Some software programs may also tell you how many sites are out there to compete with for each word or phrase (this will help you know if those sites are worth competing with for the number of searches out there). You then decide which of these would be most profitable by determining which have the least amount of competitors, so that you have a chance at making it to the first or second page of search engine results, but that also have a decent amount of people looking for that keyword or phrase each month. These will be the keywords or phrases that you will base the pages of your niche site on.

If there are a number of topics that you like, pick the one that you feel would be easiest to start with and then, once that site is built and generating some revenue, you can start another site. The most profitable website marketers, who use their talent of finding niches and combining that with good site content and a handful of affiliate links, have a good amount and variety of niche sites that they have started. You are never limited in what you can do with niche website marketing, unless you find out that you do not have the marketing skills or the needed funding to make it happen. Otherwise, the sky is the limit!

In ecology, a niche refers to the place or position occupied by an organism or a population within an ecological community called the ecosystem. It is the term which defines the role the organism or the population plays in the general scheme of things. The niche an organism or a population holds is the one responsible for dictating the ability of the species to survive. It is the one which spells whether an organism or a population will perish or thrive.

In marketing, a niche refers to a service or a product that occupies a special area of demand. It is that small corner in the market that accounts for a certain kind of specialty concerning an unmet customer need. To be able to attract a strong, solid market, the choice of a niche product should ultimately complement the website one owns. It is through this scheme that he is able to generate a specific market for the niche product he is trying to sell.

Niches are involved in niche marketing, the process of finding market segments that are small but potentially profitable nonetheless. To maintain a profitable quantity of sales, this marketing strategy relies on increasing the loyalty of customers so that their corporate objectives will be met or surpassed. Illustrative of this is the fact that the quality of the product or service sold will generate customer satisfaction and, consequently, customer loyalty. The result is profitability garnered through a solid market base that trusts in the ability of the product or service to really deliver.

One of the great things about niche marketing is that it encourages those who indulge in it to be unique and one-of-a-kind. Here one is not forced into the lion’s den and made to compete against established marketers. He is made to occupy a strong and secure position that ultimately wins him a real place in the market. Niche marketing differs from other online marketing strategies because this particular quality allows it to operate almost autonomously and without having to contend with corporate sharks that tear each other to pieces.

One of the most important things that should be thought over by those involved in this type of business is the niche business that is going to be involved in the process. It is important to consider the type of business that one is going to work on to be able to ensure himself of the success that he hopes to have. It is also important for him to know everything about the niche business at hand. Learning the tricks of the trade in is one of the things that one could do to make a niche business prosper tremendously.

Being able to reach the niche market is another consideration to make. In doing so, one should know the exact phrases that people are searching for. The use of tools can help a lot in knowing the type of keywords that should be used to make the business profitable. Targeting the right keywords does a lot in making this type of business soar.

Those who engage in niche marketing know that determining the potential of a niche before doing everything else is a must if one wants to save all the time and effort that might be wasted if he plunges into everything head on. Building a niche marketing site that proves to be profitable should be done after an unsatisfied customer demand is identified, and marketing the site appropriately by reaching out to customers the best possible way is what niche marketers should consider if they want their business to reach skyrocketing success.

Is niche marketing needed in a world teeming with a hundred like systems designed for people to make money online? Those who know how the system works will answer in the affirmative, because niche marketing is the only system capable of filling up a gaping hole in the market by catering to the unsatisfied needs of customers – needs that are usually not given notice by those in the big league. Though niche marketing, one is able to gain a foothold in the market by being a needle in a haystack. Small and inconspicuous it may be, but its ability to sting someone so madly once it is found will render him more than surprised.