You Can Get Dofollow Backlinks With Squidoo!

Last Updated 10/11/2014

As of early Fall 2014 Squidoo no longer exists. Consequently any statements made in this original article about Squidoo are now antiquated and not applicable any longer. Furthermore the concept of link building as it was originally written about in the Fall of 2009 is vastly different. Simply linking to yourself all over the net is not exactly helpful... unless you are doing it in a more "interesting" way.

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As an ongoing theme here this past week I’m going to continue discussing the concept of obtaining dofollow anchored backlinks to help serp rankings for your money making articles and blogs. In my first post in this short series I discussed predominantly the concept of the anchored backlink and why it is important. My last post was on the topic of building anchored backlinks with content websites and in it I discussed how content sites can provide quality backlinks which point to your money making articles. In that past I referenced an ongoing experiment of increasing SERP rank for a friend’s eHow article. What I didn’t say however was that those backlinks aren't going to do any good if Google and the other search engines don’t know about them.

What Good Are Anchored Backlinks...

Let’s say I’m trying to build residual income. That is the whole point after all. If you are reading this you should be in this frame of mind as well. You are no going to significantly build residual income unless your money-making articles and blogs get to the top of the SERPs. To do this we need to send dofollow backlinks at them which are properly anchored with the proper keywords. Tying this all together however those backlinks won’t help our money makers rank better unless the backlinks are indexed.

In my last post I mentioned Squidoo. This is a “content website” where you can make webpages (lenses) which are on any topic you choose. You can code links into the text which link out to your money-makers. The links are dofollow backlinks and therefore they are quite valuable. Now some will say that Squidoo can be used for making money; and yes this is true, but for my purposes the backlinks are the real gems because they can make anything a money maker… especially sites and pages in which you do not have to profit share with a middle man. Adsense revenue does not get split if your money-makers are personal blogs, and if Adsense revenue is not split then your potential for residual income is much greater.

...If They're Not Indexed?

Trying to stay on track here. In my last post my friend's Squidoo Lens pointed back to her eHow article (yes this is still a profit sharing system – just disregard that aspect – pretend the Lens is pointing to a personal blog if you need too). The eHow article is was already generating traffic and with the lens giving her a dofollow backlink, her money-making article will rank higher in the SERPs… but only if the lens and the link to her article is indexed. That is why it is important to support your backlinks with more backlinks. You’ll notice I did this for my friend in my last post by linking to her Squidoo Lens from this blog. Because this blog is indexed by Google the link in her Lens will be indexed and her SERP rank for the money-making article will improve in time.

Backlinking Strategies

This is why it is important to have at least two blogs. This why many people writing online for residual income have large networks of blogs. They strategically send dofollow backlinks to each other and to the various related content sites and online articles to pass indexing and PR (page rank) to the money-makers. The blogs sending dofollow backlinks may or may not have much PR but with them being indexed already the whole process speeds up. In some cases action of some kind is the only way to get content articles indexed.

I’ve discussed on numerous occasions already here on this blog that I have another flagship blog on health and longevity. To some extent this site supports that longevity blog by sending anchored dofollow backlinks to it from the occasional page. This blog also sends backlinks to some of my old eHow articles... as well as to friends who I am supporting and various other online content pages that are relevant to learning how to earn residual income online. This blog also serves the purpose of helping my content articles with indexing.

Squidoo Lens Experiment

I recently setup three lenses on Squidoo for the purpose of building dofollow backlinks to my longevity blog. The lenses are in place and published with optimized backlinks but none of the the lenses are indexed by Google yet. Interestingly a couple of the lenses were initially indexed but then fell out of the index a couple days later. With these lenses not indexed the dofollow backlinks contained in them aren't working very hard for my cause.

My first Lens at Squidoo titled Health, Longevity, and Aging, actually backlinks in to my Goarticles article (check it out) but the Lens hasn't been viewed yet because it still isn't indexed in Google after eight days. The backlinks in the article are dofollow but Google can’t follow them yet because it doesn't know they exist.

Supporting my Squidoo Lenses (above) and various content articles such as Live A Longer Life posted over at the article directory SelfGrowth, with a backlink from an indexed blog (like this one) will get these pages indexed and get those backlinks working for me, building my residual income streams one backlink at a time.

Stacking Dofollow Backlinks

This is just another illustration as to how to use dofollow backlink strategies in your favor. This blog has directly supported my main longevity blog with backlinks and now it has supported my content website writings on Squidoo and SelfGrowth which indirectly support my main flagship blog (i.e. the money maker).

Last night as an experiment I even posted another Squidoo lens on FSBO MLS Listings to see if this hastily crafted lens could help my SERP rank for my two eHow articles on MLS Listings. The lens is not yet indexed nor is it fully published but with a link from this post the process will likely be much quicker.  The irony is that this blog in posts past has already linked directly to both of my MLS related eHow articles. This blog it seems is a workhorse as it is supporting so many things on the web; including my readers needs as well as my friend's.

Update 10/29/09: My FSBO MLS Squidoo Lens (link above) is now indexed in Google; it took less than a day.

Internet Marketing

So how do you build dofollow backlinks to your money-makers? Make a Squidoo lens or anything else online that offers dofollow backlinks and link into it; and then support that dofollow backlink with indexed backlinks from other sources. That's pretty much it.  Rinse and repeat.

How is my friend’s indexing for her lens which I linked to two days ago? It’s indexed. See screenshot.

If it links to her eHow article (the money-maker) it will help bunches.

Start yourself up an account with Squidoo and use it to backlink to your money-makers and then support those dofollow backlinks, lenses, and articles with indexing from another supporting blog (i.e. non-money-maker) or other previously indexed articles.  Go do it; I've been doing it every day recently.

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Building Anchored Backlinks With Content Websites And Article Directories

In my last post on building residual income with anchored backlinks I discussed my plans for increasing search traffic for my main human longevity blog by mixing up and increasing the incoming links to the main page. I want to get my search ranking for the term “longer life” higher so that my overall blog traffic and resulting residual income to increase over time.

In that post I briefly discussed how I get some of those backlinks and I wanted to further develop the topic in a stand alone post as I follow up on another older post titled Increase SERP Rank on eHow where I analyzed the profitability of a friend’s eHow article. In that post I suggested that her article could make a decent sum of money if it was able to climb the SERP ranks for it’s main keyword phrase. I suggested that after a few on-page tweaks were made that a few backlinks would help it out.

As it now stands that eHow article on hosting a honeymoon shower (article was removed) has been firmly stuck in the 10th position in Google for it’s main keyword term despite a few backlinks being built. As far as I can tell the article now has at least about 5 anchored nofollow backlinks pointing to it with the most recent only going live over the weekend and today when the author of the article got busy supporting it with some additional dofollow backlinks of her own.

Content Websites & Article Directories

This is how things are done in the world of getting dofollow backlinks for a beginning internet marketer. Only so many people will find your article or blog post and only a miniature fraction of those people will backlink to it unless you have a ton of friends online reading your stuff already.  You have to start marketing your work yourself. Internet marketing is something that every content writer online needs to do if they want to make money and writing articles for a content website is a great way to do just that.

The thing is that SERP ranking will rank you higher for your main terms when other related sites link to you using optimal anchored text. Most websites don’t have this and because of this if you do have them you will automatically be a cut above the rest and will be much more likely to be near the top of the rankings.

In my last post I mentioned that I was starting to drum up backlinks to my longevity blog by writing articles with backlinks to my longevity blog embedded in them.  I then submit them to dofollow article directories and wait. I also mentioned writing articles containing dofollow backlinks embedded in them and submitting them to content websites such as Squidoo as a means of getting backlinks and this is exactly what my friend has started to do.

A Backlink Campaign

In addition to linking to her eHow article from her own writers blog (another dofollow backlink) she went out and crafted a lengthy and all encompassing Squidoo lens on Hosting a Honeymoon Shower (article was removed) and linked it to the eHow article. Squidoo is a content website where you write articles, share in their ad profits, and also can promote your other online writings as the site offers dofollow backlinks if you choose to code them into the articles you post there. Furthermore, because Squidoo has a high page rank (PR) in the eyes of Google, the links there are valued substantially higher than they might be in other places around the web.

The beauty of content sites is that you can write as many as you like and as long as they point back to your main money making article (wherever it may be on the web) the more backlinks you build the better your search ranking will be. If you were to write four Squidoo lenses, four Examiner articles, four Ezine articles, and four SelfGrowth articles all linking back to the money making article (in this case posted on eHow) then you would have 16 optimized backlinks, probably more than enough to jump up to the top of the SERPs.

Sure, this may seem like overkill but if the money-making article has enough potential then it may well be worth it. I speculated in my previous analysis that the honeymoon shower article on eHow could get potentially in the $6-$7 range every month if it ranked high enough in the SERPs. Is 16 backlinks from content websites and article directories worth it for $6.50 monthly? It may be for some people and it might not be for others. Maybe it won’t take 16 to get to the top of the SERPs, maybe it will only take 6. That might be worth it.

The Value of Internet Marketing

I can guarantee you though that if I found an article which could potentially bring in $50 per month that 16 backlinks would be worth my time… maybe even 26. Sure it takes time but building residual income like that is work; if it wasn't work than everybody would do it.

How profitable then is my friends honeymoon shower article now that we've been building anchored backlinks with content websites in addition to blogging backlinks?  The jury is still out. Actually; the article is not mine so I frankly have no idea how well it is doing but I do know that we have not yet climbed the SERPs for the main keyword phrase as of yet. We still are on page one of Google in the 10th spot. Hopefully this new Squidoo Lens and this post, which juices the lens, will help out some more.

What I do know however is that 1st place in Google is very possible using this backlinking strategy. How do I know? I know because we've already hit the top spot in Yahoo Search for the term “honeymoon shower”. See pic:

Yahoo tends to recognize inbound links less judiciously than Google but once Google starts accepting these inbound links into its search algorithm, up the article will go in their search results page too. If we can get this article to number one in Google as well as Yahoo we will defiantly know that this article is starting to earn it’s full potential and at that point we can start focusing on other money making articles to market and increase profitability on as well.

Build Residual Income

This is after all what sets apart content writers from residual income builders. Building residual income is not always just about writing content, it’s about optimizing content for max profit and then marketing that work so that it achieves it potential.

Should you write one money making article and make a buck off of it every month with no marketing or should you write one money-making article and write ten articles sending anchored backlinks to it resulting in $20 of profit every month? This internet marketing route increases your overall earning by roughly 100 percent. Seems like a no brainer to me. Just set yourself up an account with some of the dofollow content writers sites such as Squidoo and HubPages as well as with some of the dofollow article directories such as GoArticles, Ezine articles, and SelfGrowth and increase your earnings. Market your informational products and do the work necessary to build many significant and lasting residual income streams online.

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Build Residual Income with Anchored Backlinks

In my last post I discussed how I wanted to build residual income producing content on the web. I referred to three things in particular in that post which I'm involved in: content websites (eHow), flagship blogs (my longevity blog and this blog), and niche blogs (unnamed). Each of these types of online content centers are really only built for one reason: to build residual income. In this post I want to zero in on how to take this online real estate and build residual income by increasing SERP rank with anchored backlinks and a defined backlink strategy.

Build Residual Income

For this post I’m going to be zeroing in on my first and most established blog and discuss what I have been doing wrong from day 1 and what I am doing today to fix my errors.

From day one I named my blog and have been sending backlinks to the blog using the entire name, How To Live A Longer Life. This is really good in as much as it gives my site authority keyword ranking in the SERPs for the entire anchor link that is used, in this case the anchor text used for most every link to my main blog was “how to live a longer life”. This has been beneficial to my site in climbing the SERPs for this search term. In fact right now, five months after its inception, the site 2nd in the SERPs for it’s main keyword phrase. The problem however is that few people search for this entire phrase and I have rarely used the entire phrase in my 200 plus blog posts. If I used the entire phrase more often I might have an outside shot at number one; which is currently held by WikiHow. See graphic:

Use The Right Keywords

To remedy this I am continuing my link building campaign to the site relatively unchanged (blog carnivals mostly thus far) but will be going into older posts and trying to add the entire keyword phrase into a few more posts. When appropriate I’ll take these freshly added keyword phrases and link them to my home page to further help tie the site together under the main keyword phrase. This process is not that big of a deal however since I rank number two for it and I not many people search for the entire phrase. According to Adwords’ Keyword Tool, only 46 searches for this term occur every month.

Another major problem with my original setup with this blog is that the main keyword phrase only has a CPC rate of about $0.05 per. This is terrible and something I didn’t consider back in May when I started the site. To narrow the term slightly I have ~170 people monthly searching for “live a longer life” which I also rank second for (another $0.05 phrase) and lastly I have ~720 people searching every month for the term “a longer life” which I rank 8th for. Again this is only a $0.05 CPC phrase. What I need to do is start focusing on phrases that have a better advertisers value. The only phrase that breaks out of my original long-tail phrase that remains is the term “longer life” which gets ~14,800 searches and costs advertisers a CPC rate of ~$1.10.

This is much better and could me much more lucrative for me to rank on the first page for and I should have been optimizing my backlinks for this… maybe not from the beginning but once my main phrase hit page 1, which was months ago.

Currently I rank for the term “longer life” in Google SERPs at number 22.

Last week I was at 25 so I’m almost to page two. If I can get to page one I can start claiming a decent chunk of those ~14,000 monthly searchers. To this goal I started optimizing inbound links where I could to my site to use the term “longer life” as the anchor text. As far as I know until I started this goal I didn’t have any anchored backlinks with this variation of my main keyword phrase. I figure that by building up backlinks with this anchor text I should be able to break into page two and then page one in time.

Keyword Profitability Analysis

On my post a few days back on increasing SERP rank for eHow I identified a hypothetical formula that would identify an approximation of potential profits for a given keyword phrase. (Go back and read it if you missed it; I’ll wait.) Using the same formula but adjusting for the lack of a middle man between me and Adsense, a number one ranking for the term “longer life” should translate to monthly Adsense earnings of ~$34.65 per month for this one keyword phrase. That of course is assuming I’m sitting in the number one position. The rank where I currently stand (page 3) gets me nothing because nobody goes three pages deep in the SERPs. Rank 11 (first on page two) might get me about a dollar if I’m lucky; the goal, however, is page one.

Climbing the SERPs

How have I started my assault on page one for the term “longer life”? I removed some text on my page that wasn’t relevant to anything related to my main term or focused term. I edited my blog description to include the term “longer life” and I added two more references to the term on the main page. I also added a few related terms to living long on the page that would reinforce the idea of living long such as the term “human longevity” and “life expectancy”. Now, if you analyze the main page it doesn’t look much different than it did befre but it does have a better keyword density.

Anchored backlinks

This was all the small stuff however. The main action is in getting anchored backlinks to the site using my preferred term “longer life”. To do this I wrote a long post called “How to Live a Longer Life” which encapsulated the entirety of the blog in summary. I then split the post up into parts in Word and submitted these parts to two different article directories (one on GoArticles and one on SelfGrowth) both of which don’t add the “nofollow” tag to outbound links. These two articles contain links to my main blog page and the post page using the shorter version of my main keyword phrase as the anchor text. The links in the articles fall once in the opening paragraphs and once in the closing paragraphs as well as in the bio lines. This means that when sites scrape my article for syndication they will include links back to my blog and post with my predefined optimized anchor text.

I further went out and started a Squidoo Lens (Squidoo also passes “dofollow” links) on Longevity and Aging which links into my article posted on GoArticles to help give it some PR and keyword authority which in turn helps people find it and syndicate it. I have yet to create a Lens doing the same to my SelfGrowth article but will do this in short order.

Article Syndication

The point here is to use the “dofollow” article directories as bait to other bloggers and content providers into syndicating my material on their own sites. Because my optimized backlinks are embedded in the articles when a few people start syndicating them then I should have a number of optimized “dofollow” backlinks from a wide smattering of sites. That’s the goal at least.

Like I said I only started this plan less than two weeks ago and my climbing of the SERPs for “longer life” has already begun. I started on the 10th of October at number 25 and I currently stand at 22. I figure with a few more article submissions, Squidoo Lenses, and maybe a few more Blog carnivals I should be able to climb the SERPs into page two in short order and then start working towards page one. As I said before page one is where the money is and I want to do everything I can to get there in order to actually build residual income online. I will of course discuss my progress in future posts. Thanks for checking in and reading this far.

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Building A Residual Income Empire & An Anniversary

Last Updated 10/11/2014

I wanted to put up a quick note this evening on the blog mostly to commemorate my two-month posting anniversary on eHow. I published my first article over there two months ago today and I now have built an article arsenal of 61 residual income generating articles in total. I started writing in a flurry and have slowed considerably as of late… mostly due to new projects I’ve taken on. This is planned and these projects should be lucrative so I’m fine with the trade-off.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that with my last post on increasing SERP rank I got a handful of compliments (not in the comments section) so for those I am appreciative. I hope to be able to help out others similarly in the future and I plan on posting similar case studies periodically; I’m currently working on an in depth case study for another friend on eHow as well as on my article, How to Lower LDL Cholesterol Levels With Better Nutrition (article removed by ehow), which was posted nearly two months ago targeting a few different keywords.

I also wanted to say that my experiences so far with eHow have made me feel that eHow is an excellent way to build income (though not large) early in a freelance online writer’s career. eHow, in two months time, is my biggest source of income but I suspect that in six months or so it will not be so anymore. I suspect that focusing on only one medium is too limited in scope regardless of the initial success it provides.

Because of this I have continued to work on my human longevity blog and have decided that I need to both promote it better as well as continue to provide quality content on it. That blog is really going to slowly become a flagship blog for me as is this residual income blog too, I hope. In addition to these two main blogs and my eHow writings I’m starting to put together a niche blog for the sole purpose of trying to make money at home more efficiently. I will go into details in an upcoming post and describe exactly how I plan on monetizing that blog right away.

The niche blog will be an experiment to see if I can make more money with it having only a handful of blog posts than I can on similar sized handful of quality eHow articles. Everything should go live around the same time. I will definitely update when results start coming in.

And to clarify what I mean by niche blog: I'm creating a site that draws visitors but doesn't answer their questions. The point is to get them to find the blog; tickle their curiosity on a very specific subject but provide few answers to their questions in hopes that the ads on the page do just that. :) We'll see how it goes. Check back for updates on that in the coming weeks and months.

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Increase SERP Rank on eHow

Last Updated 10/11/14

It’s time again for another eHow case study on increasing an article's SERP rank and an articles earnings.

A friend on mine came to me with an article that was recently posted on eHow: How To Host a Honeymoon Shower (article removed) and asked for some critical suggestions. Having looked over the article and given permission to make a public case study I thought I would share with you as an illustration on what to do to maximize your eHow earnings.

First of all the article should be written well; and it is. There are no grammatical errors or misspellings. Everything reads fine. Check. Now lets look at potential monetization.

What Makes A Profitable eHow Article?

I looked the article’s main keyword phrase “honeymoon shower” on Adwords Keyword Tool and see that it gets ~2,400 searches per month with a CPC rate of $0.71 per click. Click graphic for full size:

At a reasonable click through rate (CTR) of 1.5% this keyword should cost the combined advertisers approximately $10.65 per 1,000 page views on this page… of course not all of that gets paid to the author. Some of the revenue is skimmed off the top by Google and then more is skimmed off the top by eHow. Lets guess you could get around a quarter (I don’t know the actual cut ratios so this is a guess based on a 50% skim for Google and then a 50% skim from eHow) of that total.

That would mean if all 2,400 searches per month hit your page you could possibly get up to $6.39 for this article per month every month. That’s not going to happen but you could potentially get most of the 2,400 monthly searches. The trick is getting into the top spot on the search engines for your main keyword. If your not there then you’re only going to get a small fraction of those 2,400 searches and a small fraction of that potential $6.39.

Looking at your current SERP results for the keywords “honeymoon shower” I’m actually fairly surprised to see this article doing so well being that it is such a new article having only been published September 18th. It currently ranks:
• 1st in Google for “How To Host A Honeymoon Shower”

• 1st for “Host A Honeymoon Shower”

• 7th for “A honeymoon shower”

• 9th for “honeymoon shower”

Not bad at all but being 9th for the full keyword will still only get you a small fraction of the 2,400 searches for “honeymoon shower” (BTW: I’m purposefully omitting long-tail keywords from this analysis) so let see how we can get this page higher.

eHow's On-Page SEO

The on-page SEO is pretty good. The keyword “honeymoon shower” is in the Title and the URL, in the content 8 times plus 1 more time in the picture’s caption which is good though could be better. There is only a keyword density saturation of 1.6 percent which is on the low side.

Also it could be better if the picture’s file name had the keyword in it which it currently doesn’t. To do this the you would have to change the file name for the picture on your computer to something along the lines of “honeymoon-shower-invitations” (all words get a hyphen between them) and then re-upload the picture to the article. If you go ahead and change the caption to read “honeymoon shower invitations” instead you will start chasing long-tail and related searches as well such as “shower invitations”. You can sprinkle a couple references to “shower invitations” in the article to support this.

I would also take the opportunity to upload a new picture to the intro section with the file name “host-a-honeymoon-shower” with the caption “Host A Honeymoon Shower”. This would give you two pictures optimized for search plus you gain an extra keyword rich caption.

Lastly I would try to sprinkle in a few adjectives into the content which describe things as “shower XXXXs” like “shower invitations” mentioned above. For instance, the Keyword Tool shows that people search for the term “shower gifts”, “shower ideas”, “shower invitations”, “shower games”, etc. As the article currently stands it doesn’t described anything as a shower anything. This might not make a huge difference to alternate searches but should help out marginally.

Backlinks Increase SERP Rank

The ultimate goal with this eHow article is to get the search term “honeymoon shower” to the top of Google page 1. It is currently 9th. I would imagine a few of these tweaks could get it up a couple more spots but to get to number one will take a few backlinks like the one provided in this analysis here on Earn Residual Income Online; so that should help.

If I were the author of this article I would also try to get at least another keyword anchored backlink to it from my blog (post page only) or from someone else’s blog (also in a post page). If you’re really into it you could promote it further but that’s another topic altogether.

This article already has got one backlink now, so with a little more optimization let’s see how high this article can get in a few weeks.

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An eHow Blogger Template SEO Series

Last Updated 10/11/14

It’s no secret that I have no problem with recommending Blogger blogs as my blogging platform of choice. All of my main blogs at this point are hosted on Blogger and I’m very happy with them. I love the simplicity and the robust backend where I can manipulate the templates. Not only that but it keeps my overhead costs way down as I don’t have to host anything myself, everything’s on Google’s servers. I like to keep it frugal.

Sure, I would like to diversify a bit and try my hand at some Wordpress self-hosted blogs but that is a future project that I will put on hold for now. So, in the spirit of working with Blogger, I’ve actually started writing a few articles on eHow on optimizing Blogger’s backend to be more SEO friendly.

I could post these articles here on this blog as a series but I feel eHow is a logical place for them. Maybe in the future if my library of Blogger how-to’s grows substantial enough I’ll craft a little starter guide and make it available here for free on Chezfat.com. For now check out the articles if you are interested in following along.

Blogger Template SEO Series on eHow

• How To Backup Your Blogger Blog Template (article removed by ehow)
• How to Edit Blogger Blog Header Tags For Better SEO (article removed by ehow)
• How To Increase Blog Income With Onsite SEO Tips (article removed by ehow) and
• How to Make Your Google Blogger Blog Look More Professional (article removed by ehow)

I’ll update this post in the future as new articles go live so check back in frequently or bookmark this post for future reference.

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Want To Earn Residual Income Online? Yeah, Me Too!

What Is Residual Income

I’ve done a lot of learning recently about earning residual income online. In fact, that is the topic of this blog and my overarching goal but it occurred to me (as it may have to many of you) that earning residual income is different from earning passive income in that residual income is income based off of a sale or business activity that is paid out over and over indefinitely. Passive income is essentially the same thing except the term implies that the person (myself) is no longer active in generating new business activity and is thus experiencing passive income, income that is generated despite having no current activity in business.

Of course I thought about naming this blog earn passive income online but that seems to contradict my business activity in that I am actively seeking new business and attempting to grow my income stream. I am seeking residual income while I experience passive income which I’ve already created. Does that make sense?

The purpose of this blog among other things is to chronicle my learning in this area of generating residual income from all available sources. In addition to highlighting what I have learned on earning residual income I will teach you to do exactly what I am doing so that you can have the same opportunities to succeed that I did without having to read so much and work so hard.

It’s important to note that I am not an expert in earning residual income; I am merely a well educated beginner. I have read more information on online residual income than you could believe. That’s why it’s high time I develop a rich resume on the topic of generating residual income online and back up what I’ve learned with real results. I kind of feel like I am like a college graduate stepping out into the job market for the first time. I’ve learned so much and now I’m ready to start working.

Residual Income - Where to start?

There’s so many options. There’s your standard investments: stock, bonds, real estate, etc. Income derived from these investments are definitely residual income in nature but they require up front capital and carry some risk as easily noted by the economic recession of the past two years. Virtually all markets are down over the last two years ending by a considerable sum. Real Estate markets are even worse too because investors here are typically highly leveraged at an average rate of between 3:1 and 20:1, meaning investors in real estate can gain or lose $3-20 per every dollar they invested depending on their leverage rate. For me this is something I’m interested in but only when I can afford the risk.

I am still a young man and I have a young wife and we both have considerable student debt. Sure there are no kids but you never know when they’ll come around. Risk is something I need to avoid at this time and that leaves me to find residual income investment sources that carry no risk… or I should say no financial risk. Internet marketing and informational products are the logical product to generate this residual income while time becomes my main investment vehicle rather than cash. By turning to internet marketing I can safely assume no financial risk and invest only my time and energy into building a catalog of residual income bearing projects that will provide passive income over the long haul.

My Residual Income Journey as it Now Stands

Currently I invest a significant amount of my energy to a number of online ventures where I only risk the loss of my time. To date I have been active in this pursuit for approximately five months and I have already begun building a solid base for long term residual income. In fact I have started tracking this base and sharing basic numbers with you my reader on my earnings and goals page. As the days go by I will be posting specific information on what I’m doing to build more residual income and I will share how you can do the same. I will do specific case studies on tactics and I will link to or show actual examples of residual income pieces as applicable. I will provide to you all the information you need to learn from my efforts and duplicate my successes.

Am I successful now? I think so, considering the duration of my residual income resume and I feel that my success is growing every day. If you want to be a part of this growth process I’d encourage you to stop by this site, Chezfat.com whenever you have the chance and join me on this quest for ever increasing residual income.

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Diversify Your Residual Income: It Pays To Be Safe

Last Updated 10/11/14

This blog really started as an eHow blog as I wanted to chronicle my exploits writing fascinating and riveting articles such as how to get a real estate license in Missouri and how to find a FSBO MLS listing online (article doesn't' exist any longer) but after some time I realized that this focus was too limiting. For instance what would I do if eHow were to close down? My earnings would be gone and this blog would be dead. Also, what about all my other freelance writing exploits online such as my longevity blog or any number of other projects I might take on? (I've got some in the works.)

A Goal: Multiple Residual Income Sources

Well, that’s why I did the major rebranding early while still in this blog’s infancy. I want to be able to discuss the many residual income projects I’m working on here as my goal as previously stated in my post: Income Diversification, is to diversify my income streams, my writing subjects, and my functional use platforms.

Diversify Functional Use Platform Use

What do I mean by this? I mean, right now my prime sources of residual income are via Adsense, Amazon Affiliates, and eHow earnings (which are largely driven by Adsense). If Adsense were to disappear most all earnings would go with it. Currently all of my blogging occurs on Google Blogger. This is another platform issue because I am 100 percent reliant on Blogger remaining operational and free. If something’s changes I've only got eHow to fall back on.

I don’t even have a hosting account anywhere thus everything is hosted on Google’s servers such as Picasa and Blogger. I should have a backup plan. I should experiment a little worth Wordpress as a way of diversifying. I should work on setting up static websites as a way of diversifying out of blogs. I should sell actual product somewhere to diversify out of contextual advertisements. I should do many things to safeguard my residual income.

Rebranding For Diversification

Rebranding this blog is a step in that direction and I hope to follow up on this post in the future with actual steps I’m taking to do accomplish better diversification. For now I’ll say that I’ve dipped my toe in the water of diversification by setting up an affiliate sales relationship with Cyn Vella. I’ve got an ad for her eBook on increasing your eHow earnings (ebook is not applicable any longer) on my sidebar. If anyone is writing for eHow it is in their best interest to make sure to maximize their earnings; this book will show you haw Cyn got to be one of the best paid eHow writers.

Additionally I’m in the planning and collaboration stages of a couple projects which should help me diversify my residual income. I will however bring these projects up in more detail when the time is right. Thanks for following along!

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eHow Earnings Report - September 2009

Happy news today: I received my first ever payment from eHow for my earnings from the months of August and September. The money is in my personal account and I couldn’t be happier. Apparently, according to the forums a lot of the details revolving around the payment system has been changing a bit this month and even veteran members who have been receiving payments like clockwork for over a year were worried that something was wrong. Regardless, this is my first payment and thus the details of delivery are all I know. I wasn’t worried and I am happy.

My eHow Earnings Report Philosophy

I know a lot of eHow bloggers give monthly income reports on their blogs and I, up until now, have resisted the urge to give specific earnings information on this blog or to people in general. I have talked a bit about goals and $/thousand page views but I’ve resisted the urge to give specific about which articles are my best earners, how many page views I have, and home many earnings I have. I think I will continue this trend to maintain my privacy but I do want to provide some form of an earnings update monthly. It only seems fitting.

For now I will stick to publishing a dollars-per-thousand-page-view ratio as my public measure of earnings. I think it’s a valid measurement that people can get a grasp of yet it doesn’t reveal too much because nobody really knows what my page views are except for me. I did reveal my first month page views on the eHow forums last month but going forward I expect to keep this info under wraps with little deviation. Maybe on an article by article basis but I’ll leave that for when the time comes to reconsider my self-imposed rule.

First Month On eHow - How Much Can You Earn?

A lot of people ask the question: How much can I (did you) earn in your first month and this of course is a difficult question to answer because you can consider many things your first month. I will consider my first month to be the calendar month of August even though I only joined eHow on August 16th. That gave me 16 days to earn in my first month and only 15 days of that did I have articles live. In those 15 days I published 36 articles and did not make payout. The money I did make however I felt was good considering my short time with eHow and my low overall page view total. I made exactly $8.84/1000 page views… better than my regular earning ratio from my blogs. That alone was fuel to keep writing for eHow.

September of course saw a better maturation of my original articles and thus better search engine ranking. My ratio improved to $9.76/1000 PVs for the month. During September I also added an additional 19 articles to my library (yes, my pace slowed considerably). At this point I see that the earning potential is quite good here. :)

September eHow Earnings Statistics
55 published articles earned at a combined rate of $9.76 / 1,000 PV
80 percent of my earnings came from 25 percent of my articles
20 percent of my earnings came from 37 percent of my articles
38 percent of my articles had no earnings at all

Also, as stated in my goals post I want to duplicate my day job income by earning residual income online. Here is my progress thus far without giving out actual numbers:



In the coming months I’d like to improve on these numbers. I’d like to my current 80/25 ratio to improve to say… 80/40 and of course I’d like my $0 earners to decrease in percentage as low as possible. We’ll have to see what natural article maturation does however, because as of yet, none of my articles have even aged two months yet.

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Got A Keyword Formula? Know What You’re Missing?

Recently I was introduced to an interesting formula for identifying profitable keywords to target in article writing and blog posting. The formula -as it was told to me- is (CPC)*(global monthly count of searches)*.005. The result, I was told should be greater than 50 to be a “good” keyword to focus on. As previously stated I thought this was fairly interesting but I also feel it’s a bit anal and lacking in scope. Mainly because it doesn’t take into account which keywords you can actually rank high for, nor does it account for keywords that result in web searchers actually clicking on ads.

I’m sure many people use formulas such as this one and probably many others to size up their target words and I’m many of these people make good money but let me tell you what I think about this one in particular based on a case study of one of my articles that ranks light years higher than 50 in this but will likely not perform up to such a lofty standard.

Based solely on income derived, my highest earning article on eHow to date (which hasn’t even been live for two months) works out to 287.55 on the formula and it get’s approximately $16.79 per thousand pave views (PV). The formula has at least correctly identified my winner but as I previously stated the formula lacks the foresight to know whether or not you can feasibly rank in the first page for your keyword. In my case I can. I am currently 7th and 10th on Google for two variations of my keyword phrase. Hopefully with a little strategic plugging I can get these to fall higher on the page and increase my net page views and earnings. The point is however if I can’t get on the front page then no matter the result of this formula I won’t get the visitors to get me good income.

My highest earner that got the 287.55 through the formula is up against roughly 70,600 pages where as my highest potential earner based on the formula based on this formula comes out to 11,352.8, but it's hardly my best earner because it's up against other pages (only about 4,000) that also rank very well for my keyword (I can't get close to the front page... yet). This article’s earnings are good but no where near my best. It has the potential though, it's earned so far $23.57 per thousand PVs so far, which is better than my number one article. The problem with it though is it doesn't get to the front of Google easily so my page views are down and thus, the overall dollars in my pocket is lower than you might think.

All this is to say that it's easy to figure out which articles have potential but this must be compared against which can actually be achieved in search results. I know everyone says that the secret algorithm for earnings in eHow is mysterious but from a blogger's perspective it's just based on ad clicks... and maybe a little bit on views. It can’t be much different with eHow. The more eyes show up to pages that show expensive ads, the more money you will make.

My longevity blog has one page, Leading Causes of Death in the US, that gets a third of the site’s overall traffic... unfortunately it is a page where the ads pay very little. Thus even though it gets most of my traffic it is not in the top ten for earnings on my blog. You have to get high CPC keywords to make good money and then you have to get eyes on those articles. If you can only get one or none of those two elements you might have good article or post but also a poorly earning article or post.

One such eHow article I have that fits this profile (good article - poor earnings) is the very first article ever written titled How To Purchase Fine Wine for Under Ten Dollars (article was deleted by eHow). This was published before I knew to do keyword phrase research and thus it has been live for nearly two months but has only gotten 37 PVs and no earnings. I decided to experiment a bit today by editing some of the text to include a few more keyword mentions.  I added a SEO proper picture with a keyworded caption, and I have just linked to it with good anchor link text here on this post. We’ll see how this article does over the next 45 days or so now that I gave it some love. Unfortunately I can’t change the title but hey; it was my first article, I have to accept it for what it is.

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An eHow Article SEO Case Study

This is a case study on the keyword situation on a friend’s eHow article titled How to Make a Scrapbook in Photoshop:

Looking at one of your most recent articles titled: How to Make a Scrapbook in Photoshop, I see that it basically has two keywords (keyword phrases) in it:

• Scrapbook (2.2 million searches @ $1.07 CPC) &
• Photo shop (37.2 million searches @ $1.03 CPC)

Both of these keywords bring in millions of searches per month globally at fair CPC rates unfortunately the terms are too broad to have much chance getting to the front of Google.

If you used "digital scrapbook" as your keyword-phrase you would have a more manageable 110,000 searches @ $2.00 CPC or "digital scrapbook pages" with 3,600 searches @ $3.26 CPC. Both of these are more focused and more likely to reach page one of Google.

Now this isn't a tutorial on eHow SEO; it's just the way I think about it at this moment in time. My thoughts and philosophies are libel to change but I feel that articles will make more money if they get onto Google's front page in search results rather than if they get more searches but fall many pages below the first page in Google. You're more likely to hit the first page with longer keyword phrases that still get thousands of searches per month.

If you search for your keyword phrase in quotations you'll see how many pages turn in that exact group of words. Searching for "digital scrapbook pages" in quotes finds 45,900 possible results in Google. If you can keep this under 50,000-100,000 you'll be doing pretty good. For comparison’s sake the term “scrapbook” gets 2.5 million possible results and “photo shop” gets 2.9 million results; neither of which seem to indicate you can hit page one very easily. The further down this number gets the more likely you'll be on the first page. This is sometimes hard to get low without completely eroding your searches-per-month statistic, which is why the threshold of 50-100k is appropriate even though it still seems somewhat high. It’s also why I like having 2-3 different keyword phrases in each of my articles on eHow, more chances to get to the first page.

For your article you're on the first page of search results for the term: "how to make a scrapbook in photo shop" (not enough people search for this phrase for keyword tools to pick it up). You're on the first page for "make a scrapbook in photo shop" (again not enough searches to register). You're on the first page for "a scrapbook in photo shop" (28 searches monthly for this term). You are on the second page of Google for "scrapbook in photo shop" (this search has 320 monthly searchers at $0.05 CPC). Writing a similar article with the keyword phrase “digital scrapbook pages” would likely be more financially rewarding from an analyst’s perspective.

This analysis was meant to teach better optimization of articles. I was told it helped my friend and I thought it might help casual readers of this blog. In future posts I’ll do similar analyses of my own specific posts and articles and possibly of others’. Thanks for reading.

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My Thoughts on Keyword Research and Global Search Count

In my previous post on the Importance of Keyword Research I said this:

"Hypertension is too short to use as I will never rank well for the one word, high blood pressure is longer but it too is difficult to rank for but arterial hypertension is much easier to rank for; it still gets lots of searches per month and it has the highest CPC rate of them all.  I quantify it with a couple extra (secondary keywords) and this should be a good earner." 

To that I received the following question from an eHow friend:

What search numbers do you look for in choosing your keywords? And do you use the local or global column numbers [in Google Adwords Keyword Tools]?  For example, would you consider 100,000 global searches too competitive, and shoot for 1,000? 100? I have read to look for around 100, but that seems awfully low to me.


Another question: [A friend] mentioned to me that she adds her keyword phrase at the bottom of her article to help ensure it gets crawled all the way through by the search engine bots. Do you do this?

My answer:

I look at the global search volume only... unless I write a location specific article.  I've only written one of those however: How To Get A Real Estate License in Missouri (article removed by ehow).  Lately I've been shooting for a range of 2,000-20,000 for my first phrase and 1,000-10,000 for my second or third phrases.  All CPC rates I shoot for are higher than $1.00 with my first phrase being the highest usually.


I know this sounds like a lot of moving parts but it's not tough.  It takes about 5 minutes of research - tops.  The article I just wrote on arterial hypertension (article removed by ehow) was centered on three phrases:

• "Arterial Hypertension" with 14,800 searches at a rate of $7.34, 
• "Better Nutrition" with 6,600 searches at a rate of $2.70, 
• and "Lifestyle Choices" with 5,400 searches at $1.08.  

This gives me a good mix of phrases to repeat periodically throughout the article which should all should make money and make the article flow a bit better.  I shoot for 1-2 of any of these phrases per paragraph though I don't have any firm rules on this.  Oh, and I don't count words.  I also make sure the main phrase is in the opening paragraph... maybe twice if it is long, and I virtually duplicate my title (minus the "How To") as the caption of my picture and for the file name of my picture.

This seems to be working so far as my as my 6 weeks at eHow has given me good earnings at just shy of $10 per thousand page views (this was consistent in both August & September).  That's three times the eCPM rate of my longevity blog.  I figure in 2 months when my eHow articles mature their rate of earnings will probably be a little above $10 per thousand page views.

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My Take On The Importance of Keyword Research

I was recently discussing writing methods for eHow with some friends the other day and the question came up as to how best you should spend your time: researching the best posts to write or just writing. These are my thoughts on the topic:

I think it's best to find a quick method of doing research and only doing this one system routinely. In other words pick an easy method for you and don't mess around with too many other forms of research. The more you do your one thing the quicker and easier it becomes.

I do feel minimal research is an absolute must. Taking five minutes to check Google's Keyword Tool will show me which variation of keywords to use. For instance; my most recent eHow article How To Control Arterial Hypertension (article removed by ehow)... is very specific to the keyword tool. The word “hypertension” is too short to use as I will never rank well for the one word, “high blood pressure” is longer but it too is difficult to rank for but arterial hypertension is much easier to rank for; it still gets lots of searches per month and it has the highest CPC rate of them all. I quantify it with a couple extra (secondary keywords) and this should be a good earner. We'll see though; I only posted it last night.

The point is though that I had a topic I wanted to write on (hypertension) and so I spent five minutes decide how to optimize the title and keywords. It’s not like I based my decision to write the article on the keywords; I optimized the keywords I used based on the topic I had already chosen. I think this five minutes of extra research will prove very worthwhile time spent as opposed to writing five minutes of another article. After all, each of my articles takes me 45-60 min to write. I think the extra five min of research could easily double earnings on an otherwise un-researched article.

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