I’m back! I haven’t posted in awhile because I’ve been researching a few new ideas and trying to decide what to do next. I started peddling ringtones a little while ago, something that most people don’t want to get into because it’s ultra competitive and there’s literally no way to rank for it unless you have a million dollar budget, which makes all your SEO knowledge useless and leaves you to just PPC and social networks. But at the same time, a lot of advertisers don’t like social network traffic (read: “Myspace”) so that leaves you with just PPC. And with millions of other people PPC’ing the same ringtone offers as you, it doesn’t seem very appealing. So I knew I didn’t want to drop six figures into a PPC campaign for something I had no experience with, but I wanted to try it anyway and see how I’d fair.

I picked a couple offers from different networks and started running basic ads, including a few different artist and song names and targeting those keywords rather than just “ringtones” or “hiphop ringtones” in general, which would have been way too expensive. That’s about it really, I redirected them through a domain I had sitting around, didn’t even buy a new one or create a landing page or anything. And while I’m not gonna be able to buy a new Benz after doing this, it’s surprisingly easy to pull in an extra $50-100 a day for literally ten minutes of work. I’d say that’s definitely worth it.

But ringtones aren’t the only thing I’ve been doing. I was checking out DN Scoop a couple weeks ago and saw a Myspace layout site going for $600,000. Yeah, you read that right. If I had been drinking milk it would have shot out of my nose, so I decided to do a little research and see exactly how the fuck this site was worth the price of a new house. Apparently the guy who owns it is an 18 year old CS addict making $30k a month because of the sheer volume of traffic he receives and the huge number of ads slapped up in the most blatantly ridiculous places. So I thought, “Hey, I’m the motherfucking king of Myspace marketing, maybe I should look into starting a Myspace layout site … LOL!” I started talking to a few people who ran layout sites and learned a lot about how to start one and how they generate traffic, and THAT’S when I decided I wanted to do it. Why? Because the huge majority of these guys have no idea what SEO is. They barely understand link building. And shit, I know my SEO, I know my social network marketing, I should be able to rape these fuckers and rank in no time.

Most of these sites buy a script that basically generates the site for them and all they have to do is upload layouts into a folder on their server and it displays them on the site (like uploading themes to Wordpress). My first idea was to scrap that idea and customize a Wordpress theme to look like a layout site, since we all know Wordpress is the king of SEO’ing itself (grammar? lol). I could also have an RSS feed where people can subscribe to be notified of new layouts. It would also be pretty easy to buy some bullshit links on DP as well as network with other Myspace layout sites, since there are just SO MANY of them. Most of them don’t understand the concept of anchor text and they just link to each other using whatever the fuck they feel like, such as “Joe Blow’s Site!” And yeah that helps if you have a shitload of links but if he had just added the word “layout” in there it would have taken an extra half a second to type and generated a lot more traffic. It actually seems pretty easy, and the costs are extremely low (I could set up the entire thing and have thousands of layouts on there for less than $1000), so I’m pretty sure I’m gonna go ahead and do it. If anyone has any ideas (or sites somewhat related to Myspace / layouts and you want to trade links), let me know!

If you’ve ever tried one of those sites that pays you to take surveys, you know they’re always insanely long and they only pay you a few cents for each one, so it’s essentially a huge waste of time. I recently decided to start my own paid surveys site, with a twist. You visit the site, you fill out five surveys, you receive a confirmation email for each one and you click the link in the email, and you’re done. In return, you are entered into a raffle for a Lamborghini LP640 Roadster (the badass version of the Murcielago) as well as a side raffle for a number of iPod Touches that will be given away every single week until the raffle for the Lambo ends. Each survey takes about a minute, and five minutes of your time in return for a $350,000 car and a brand new iPod doesn’t sound like such a bad deal, does it? Click here to check out the site.

How do you know this is real and not a scam? I’ve already been asked this a few times so I even decided to put a little section on the actual site about it. It’s not a “scam” because you never have to enter a credit card number or a Paypal account, and you never have to spend ANY money. The most you have to lose is five minutes of your time. Everyone has an equal chance of winning all of the prizes and you might even win more than one, your odds never go down. Plus, look at how professional that landing page looks . Here are some more questions I’ve been asked, incase you were wondering the same things:

• How are you making money with this? The site is sponsored by a few companies who have provided the surveys for you to fill out. To enter the raffle, you must fill out all five surveys, and I get paid based on how many total surveys have been filled out. I’m gambling on the assumption that I’ll be able to market the site on a large enough scale that the number of people who sign up will generate enough revenue to outweigh the cost of the prizes. And hey, $350,000 ain’t nothin’ to a baller like me (actually it is, I just wanted to say that )
• Can I fill out each survey a hundred times so I have a hundred chances of winning? You’re not allowed to, but honestly there’s no way I would know if you did. I’m not sure if the sponsors will check IP addresses though, so you might want to think about it. You will also receive a confirmation email for each survey and you will need to click the link in this email, so obviously you will have to use real email addresses.
• What are my chances of winning? About 1 in 40,000 for the Lambo and 1 in 1500 for an iPod. Compare that to the odds of winning the lottery which is about 1 in 191,000,000. Plus, this contest is free to enter. How much better could it possibly get?

I’m also thinking about having a contest where you can win one of the iPods as well as a few hundred raffle tickets. It would work like a regular blog contest and it would require you to link to the site with the supplied anchor text. What do you all think, would you be interested in something like that?

LAMBOSWEEPSTAKES.COM

I’m very good at getting people to work for me for free. I’m also very good at convincing people that I’m always right, even if I’m not. Being able to do things like this is by far one of the best business skills you can acquire, and while you obviously shouldn’t try to “manipulate” your friends (because that’s basically what it is), use these tips in business settings to make your work a lot easier:

Using emotion: If you want to change someone’s mind, you always want to appeal to emotion, not logic. You can literally PROVE someone wrong using logic and they still won’t change their opinion, because often the thing you’re arguing about won’t be exactly cut and dry, and let’s face it, people don’t like admitting when they’re wrong. It can also make them resent you and have the opposite effect from what you were trying to do.
• Establish credibility: Why would people listen to you if they don’t know who you are? If some random person I met at a party tried giving me business advice, I’d listen, but if it didn’t sound that great I’d just blow them off. If that same person pulled up in an Aston with $100,000 cufflinks, I’d listen, and no matter how absurd they sounded, I’d still try out some of their tips. Don’t be scared to show off accomplishments and successes to establish credibility - it can make or break a deal.
• Repetition: Sometimes if you repeat something enough, even if it’s not true, people will begin to think it is. It sounds stupid, but it works. Being constantly exposed to only one side of an argument also makes you a lot more prone to accept that side.
• The bandwagon effect: This has been psychologically proven and it does work. If you’re in a room with five people and Continue Reading »

I’ve been an active member of DP (a blogging / affiliate marketing / marketing / etc) forum for awhile, and I’ve noticed that people love buying ebooks, especially blackhat “step by step guides to make money” ebooks, so a couple days ago I decided to write one and see how it would sell. It was called “Blackhat Social Marketing: Twitter, Stumbleupon, Digg, Myspace, and Facebook” and it took me just over thirty minutes to write because it was stuff I already knew how to do, so I didn’t have to do any research. The beauty of selling this book is that it’s information I’ve already touched on in this blog and stuff that I’ll be expanding on in the future, so if I’m going to be writing it anyway, why not make some extra money in return for the five extra minutes it takes to save it as a PDF and upload it?

I started a new thread on the forum with a brief description and told people they could easily bring in tens of thousands of additional visitors if they implemented all the methods in the book (which is actually true). Within ten minutes I had given out three review copies (you ALWAYS want to give away review copies of products to get some good testimonials) and within thirty minutes of those reviews being posted, I had sold five copies of the book for a total of $75. I asked each person who purchased it to review it and let me know if they liked it, and they all posted good reviews in the thread which led to a lot more sales. So far I’ve pulled in a couple hundred bucks, which is great considering I didn’t really do any extra work.

If you’d like to buy “Blackhat Social Marketing,” click [BUY LINK REMOVED, IF YOU'D LIKE TO PURCHASE THE BOOK PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT ON THE LATEST BLOG ENTRY AND I'LL EMAIL YOU THE INFORMATION]. It is split up into five chapters and each one covers a different social network and how to exploit it to generate massive amounts of traffic to your site. It also outlines how to be “sneaky” about it to avoid getting caught. I’ve already described some of the book’s tactics in previous posts and I’ll be covering more in future posts, but if you want to get a head start, you should definitely give it a read. Hit the “continue reading” link to see some customer reviews. Continue Reading »

Hopefully my affiliate networks don’t see this and ban me for it (just kidding Clickbank, I haven’t done this with you, I’ve only done it with random sites that offer affiliate programs, LOL). There is a really easy way to trick people into signing up for PPL (pay per lead) offers and it involves very little work. If you’re unfamiliar with PPL, it means you get paid by referring people to sign up for free things, such as registering for a forum, a mailing list, or entering their zip code for shit like ringtones and scholarships. It’s very similar to CPA except it’s always free simple bullshit, which makes it very easy to game. The basic idea is you refer someone to a site, they sign up for free, and you get paid. So how would we exploit this system?

PPL offers can be as low converting as selling products if done from a purely whitehat standpoint, as people still need to be interested enough to click the link, read the sales page, and want to sign up. This is why you need to be a little evil with your marketing. I’ve actually seen some jerkoffs selling this as “The Craigslist Method,” but it’s really just common sense when you think about it, so I’ll give it to you for free. Let’s say you’re promoting a web design forum that pays you $1 for every user you refer. You go to Craigslist and post from an unregistered account (it’s very important that you don’t register an account because if they catch one of your ads from a registered account, they’ll delete all of them) a job listing that you are looking for either (a) forum posters, or (b) forum moderators (you can post ads for each, or combine them into a single ad, it doesn’t matter). If people are interested, tell them to email you their information and you’ll be in touch. A sample ad would look something like this:

I am starting a web design forum and am in need of a few moderators. Web design knowledge is preferred but not required. You will be paid $15 a day. If you are interested, please email me at ilike@sex.com

You now need to set up an email to receive all the inquiries, and trust me, there will be a lot. DP is always flooded with threads asking how to make a hundred dollars a month with Adsense, so $15 a day sounds very lucrative to a lot of people Continue Reading »