Why did this take so long and so many people being scammed for the celebrities to take a stand? Who knows, but at least they’re finally taking action to shut that stuff down.

Key takeaway: Don’t mess with Oprah. Add value to the Internet and don’t scam people. You’ll end up making more money in the end, and you’ll never have to worry about super-rich people fighting you in court, the FTC doing everything in their power to shut down your “business model”, or any other nonsense like this.

If you are looking for templates or blog themes for your websites, and you’re sick of paying $40+ for generic templates you have to tweak to no end (with very little assistance from the creator), there’s only one site you need:

ThemeForest.net

I love the Envato marketplace in general, but ThemeForest is by far the coolest website template gallery I’ve ever found. I’ve gotten a couple people asking me about the design of this blog in fact, and guess what…I paid $12 for it on Theme Forest and spent a couple hours tweaking some things (with TONS of help from Sara, the designer).

The only thing I don’t like is that you have to deposit fixed amounts of cash to your account, and you will inevetibly have some dough left over (which only encourages you to get more templates, of course). Overall, ThemeForest.net is a great site, and I highly recommend it.

However, it’s far too easy to get wrapped up in staying up with the fast-paced and exciting release of breaking news and the next best business model, software program or cool service. This morning I started thinking about what percentage of my (”working”) time I spend on actually adding more value to the Internet and building something worth linking to, compared to the amount of time I spend going through the motions to “increase conversions” and “build links”.

So, after a little soul searching, I realized that SEO boils down to being 3 very simple things; none of which have anything to do with Search Engines:

1. Sensational
2. Efficient
3. Organized

While it’s awesome to try to be more efficient by automating certain processes with software or outsourcing mundane tasks, it’s all useless without the first step: making something Sensational. So, start by doing something better (even just a little bit) than the other guys. Whether it’s simply writing in a more interesting way, packaging your content in more convenient ways for your visitors to absorb it, doing more in-depth research, or finding related resources for them to continue learning more, the right people will remember you and come back for more (which means you can eventually stop relying on Search Engines completely).

Once you’ve built something great, you’ll acquire more demand for what you offer. Sounds cool at first, but demand can be, well, demanding. The key to scaling anything in business is to remain Efficient. In order to get top 5 positions for dozens, or even 100’s, of relevant keywords, you’re going to have a tough time doing everything manually yourself. Train some people, setup software to handle “non-human” tasks, etc.

Once you’ve built something fantastic, demand increases, and you’ve increased your efficiency to handle the demand in a reasonable fashion, you’re going to get confused. There will be problems, and the less Organized you are, the more difficult it will be to handle problems…not to mention there will naturally be more of them.

In order to keep track of all of your SEO efforts on a daily basis, handle all the techniques you’re implementing across multiple keywords, with software programs and other people taking care of some of the easier tasks, it’s crucial that you stay organized. The more methods, the more keywords, the more software programs, the more people involved, the more complex things will get. Stay organized, or lose the game. It’s that simple.

But how can we keep track of dozens of terms we’re working with, all the newest websites we can utilize to increase exposure and rankings, and continue to keep our employees on the right track?

I think I’ve finally found a solution, but more on that in a sec…

So, to recap, here’s what SEO really stands for:

1. Build something Sensational
2. Setup an Efficient system to handle demand
3. Stay Organized to keep focused and gradually improve results

After literally years of cranking out (and updating) detailed checklists for outsourcing and training employees to scale my SEO efforts, I found one simple, cheap solution: Lotus Jump.

It’s a web-based service that I ignored for quite some time, due to claims such as “SEO Made Easy” and “Boost rankings in 10 minutes a day!”. I thought it was BS, to be honest, but after being referred to it by one of my favorite SEM bloggers multiple times, I decided to give it a shot to train a friend quickly.

Here’s what it does:

• You pick your core keywords, and enter them into the system (along with your domain name)
• It scours the Internet daily for link building opportunities relevant to each keyword
• You gradually follow the recommendations you’re interested in to build backlinks

The service analyzes backlinks from the top 10 results in Google for each of your terms to find “Competitive Backlinks” they have in common, and shows you how to acquire them as well. It looks for article directories & Web 2.0 sites that have pages ranked for your terms, and recommends you make better pages on the same (and other) services to beat them. All this research is done steadily, but I was surprised to see 210 tasks that needed completed for the first site I entered (10 core keywords) by the end of the first day, and 330 by the end of day 2!

(And this was on a site that already ranks well for quite a few terms, and has 100’s of backlinks!)

The reason I decided to give this a shot was the sheer fact that I could delegate these mundane tasks to employees, without having to train them or constantly send them new work. It might sound lazy, but when you’re running a handful of large Affiliate websites, it gets extremely difficult to manage multiple people’s tasks on a daily basis.

But, with Lotus Jump, I can explain the link building process in general, and just about anybody can follow the simple instructions for each task to build high-quality, manual links to my websites, on a consistent and natural basis.

I’m going to pay a flat rate per month to have 2 people take care of all these tasks consistently, and with Lotus Jump I don’t even have to email them, let alone do the research to tell them what to do next. I can just login and see their progress on my websites’ link building.

If you want to stay organized with your SEO efforts, and be as efficient as possible along the way, Lotus Jump will save you a TON of time for less than the cost of 5 or 10 outsourced articles.

So if these negative emotions are to be expected when involved in business ventures, what’s the key to getting the most out of them?

Or better yet, is it possible that some of us are simply better at this whole business thing than others? If you aren’t seeing any solid results from your business, does that make you just flat out bad at business, or is there something getting in the way?

Here’s my opinion:

The vast majority of entrepreneurs have a good head on their shoulders, and they know what they want out of life. However, an even larger majority see far less success than their potential for one simple reason: “Business ADD” (Business Attention Deficit Disorder).

The fact that there are so many opportunities distractions in the business World make it VERY difficult to stay focused, and let’s face it: no matter how bad you truly are at something, if you focus on itlong enough you’ll see some degree of success. Your potential might not be as high as someone who has more talent, more skills or more connections, but you can still succeed nonetheless.

So it’s obvious what we need to do, right? We all need to take some random prescription drugs to get us to focus on our core business model…

Alright, maybe not, but here’s what I recommend we all do to stay focused and avoid Business ADD:

1. Do some in-depth soul searching and research to determine the best core business model for you (your personality, skills and goals)
2. Learn from the masters of the chosen model(s) – Seek out the pros, buy their courses, and surround yourself with positive influences
3. Carve out your own unique niche within the business model you’ve entered
4. Get to work…Build something that adds value and stays true to your strategy
5. Here’s where most of us fail: Keep yourself focused for months, preferably even years!

Though this can be difficult to accomplish, it’s the only way anyone succeeds…with anything they choose to do in life.

It’s also important to note that having multiple Business Models can be fine, as long as they all stay true to your core business philosophy and you can manage them without being too spread thin.

Don’t be BADD; take the right path and crush those tendencies to get distracted with what could be. Pick your path, and stay on it until you can afford not to.

“Water continually dropping will wear hard rocks hollow.” – Plutarch

The key here, with regards to building a business online, is that trying to accomplish a task or reach a goal that by it’s very nature takes a long time, in a short time, is a bad idea. Some things just take time and perseverance, and maybe a little bit of luck along the way.

In the end, starting your own business is a massive undertaking, even if you’re a veteran entrepreneur, so take your time and slowly wear away the barriers between you and what you want.

While most affiliate marketers are just interested in cranking out dozens of small sites that make $100/month (or promoting trashy CPA offers for a quick buck), this technique has helped tons of affiliates get high rankings for super-targeted terms that significantly boost their income.

I’ve seen quite a few cases where simply posting a comment on a blog that a merchant writes regularly on can boost my rankings for “product name review” from page 3 to top 3 on page 1, which is pretty sweet!

Now, it’s important to note that PageRank is NOT what it’s all about. Many times the relevancy of a website (theme) to your own can play a factor, and it can also have to do with the specific nature of the site linking to you. This is why PageRank and Authority are different, with regards to backlinks.

The key takeaway with this concept is that focusing on Quality THEN Quantity with backlinks, will help boost your rankings with less work.

For example, would it be easier to write 5 simple articles and submit them to 5 directories each, or to contact a website owner and do one value-added guest post on their blog with a link back to your site? To be honest, it seems much easier to take the first route, and it sounds like you’ll get a lot more backlinks, but the Quality is so much lower that your rankings will most likely not get the increase you’re hoping for.

BUT, and this is essential, it’s not just about getting a small boost in rankings! Sometimes the fact that your link is coming from an authority’s website can mean huge traffic & sales directly from the post, and the networking can help you get more exposure and better rankings in the longterm because of the relationship you can build with the site owner.

In the end, Google & Yahoo! want us to stick with useful, relevant content and natural links to and from our pages (that help their visitor), so the people searching will continue to search and click ads. However, by networking with authorities in your niche(s), you can “Google-proof” your business by simply playing by the rules and worrying less about rankings than adding value.

It sounds tough at first, but start with less projects, do them all the right way, and you’ll make WAY more money in the longrun.

Lately I’ve found myself questioning the credibility of affiliate marketers, so I decided to start blogging to spread the word about adding legitimate value as an affiliate.

I have also been thinking a lot about how adding value is actually REALLY easy for us (Affiliates: People who love the Internet, and know every service/website you can imagine, for absolutely any purpose…all the time).

It’s easy for people like us to provide a service, in many ways:

1. Save the visitor money by pointing them to a cheaper alternative
2. Save the customer time by doing the research for them
3. Telling them about a service that solves their problem, that they didn’t already know about

In the end, the industry we work in is based on commission percentage, CPA, search volume/demand, and competition.

While those things are all essential to our business model, and we simply don’t have the time or energy to crank out content and do all the things we do everyday without promoting affiliate programs, there is an easier way!

Here are my Business Models:

• Affiliate Marketing, with a HUGE focus on providing a value-added service
• SEM Consulting (Search Engine Marketing) for local businesses

Both of these models allow me to stay focused on the same group of tasks, but also branch out to help people in my community and keep more stable income.

How do I do this?

I help local business owners get more value out of their websites as a consultant.

At first I was worried about being too spread thin building my own business while helping others, especially because I wasn’t sure how to bring in a steady flow of clients that provide a stable flow of cash.

After some tweaks to my strategy it dawned on me:

I can use my Affiliate Marketing skills for local business websites, dominating low-competition terms in the SE’s, and they’ll pay me every month!

Think about it: would you rather try to get ranked for “piano lessons for beginners” or “piano lessons charleston sc”? I know I know…the search volume is lower, but the key here is that business owners love to see themselves ranked in Google, and their conversions tend to be higher since their terms are geo-targeted.

It’s not always the case, but I’ve found that by charging a flat rate for some services, an hourly rate for design & site optimization, and a monthly fee to manage PPC & SEO campaigns, companies are happy to see their results improve on autopilot over time (which means we’re happy with a steady $500, $1,000 or more every month just for crushing it with some insanely-easy keywords)!

Point being:

Don’t hold yourself back by sticking with only one model like so many claim is the key. Instead find a way to strike a balance between your passions & talents and what puts food on the table.

There are countless ways to incorporate your favorite elements of one business model into another to earn more money, and as long as you’re not spread too thin, it’ll be more than worth it.

Check out the free Affiliate Tools page!

Oh yeah, and please let me know if you have any ideas for more tools I could add.

Have fun,
Kyle

I want to start this off by saying that I LOVE affiliate marketing, and I’ve decided to make it my full-time job. I just finished college with an Engineering degree, and I have been marketing products online as an affiliate since July, 2006.

It’s my goal with this blog to help other affiliates with the one crucial thing that helped me become a full-time affiliate:

To build an empire online by adding as much value as possible, and asking for nothing in return.

What? I can hear it now: “How in the World will that make me any money?” Well, you might be surprised…To sum up my story, I tried TONS of methods for making money online. But, nothing worked the way I wanted it to, until I realized one very simple thing:

Making money online and building a lasting business are two VERY different things!

Once I started treating it like a real business, it became much easier to increase my residual income. Then, things started to snowball, and before I knew it I was making enough to support myself working from home, on my terms!

So, now that I’m doing this full-time (and I’ve finally figured out what truly works as an affiliate), I want to share my passion for this fantastic way to earn a living, with you. I hope to make friends, learn something new every day, and help others reach their goals with their businesses.

It’s going to be fun talking about the coolest “game” I’ve ever played: Affiliate Marketing!