Today we’ve got a question about long tail keyword research from Kelvin Tan. Here’s his question:

“I would like to ask some question about selection of long tail keyword. In PLRPRO video, it’s mentioned that when selecting long tail keyword, we should look out for keyword with 100-1000 search per month and competition around 500,000. Does that mean we have to look for 40 long tail keyword for each of the 40 articles? Please advise.

Is there a guideline for selecting long tail keyword? can you explain a bit in details on how to do it. I know we can see the search via google keyword research tool . Am I correct to say that for example, we select a phrase with 1000 searches. Then I will take the phase and search in google search engine. If the number of website is less than 500,000, I will take this as one of my 40 long tail keyword for my 40 articles?” - Kelvin Tan

I will answer this question in two parts. In part 1, I’ll show you how to conduct long tail keyword research in general. In part 2, I will discuss about long tail keyword research in relation to PLRPRO.

Essential tools for long tail keyword research

Before I begin, I need to introduce to you 2 essential tools for keyword research.

1) Firefox

Firefox is an alternative to Internet Explorer. You need Firefox so that you can use Tool #2.

2) SEO For Firefox Plugin

With this plugin, you can conduct long tail keyword research and analyze websites easily. I’ll show you how.

How to conduct long tail keyword research - step by step

1) Start with a general keyword

If your niche is about “back pain”, type in back pain in Google search. Assuming you are using Firefox with SEO For Firefox Plugin, you will see something similar to the screenshot below:

2) Expand your search to long tail keywords

Click on KW Research link and you’ll get a list of keywords derived from the general keyword. The list includes long tail keywords, which are phrases with 3 to 4 keywords. See the screenshot below:

The objective is not to find long tail keywords. The objective is to find keywords with enough demand and low competition, so that you can get top rank and traffic easily. Due to increasing competition, such keywords happen to be the longer tail keywords. That’s why the focus is on long tail keywords.

Another free tool that you can use to expand your keyword selection is Google Keyword Tool. Just type in your general keyword and it will return a list of keyword suggestions with monthly search demand.

3) Check the competitiveness of the keywords

From the above screenshot from KW Research, you now have a list of keywords arranged in order of the daily search estimate. This data takes care of the ‘demand’ for the keywords.

Your job now is to check the ‘competition’ of the keywords.

Starting from the keyword phrase with the highest demand, you now have to type the keyword phrase one by one into Google search and check the number of results it returns.

Here’s a checklist that I use to check the competitiveness of any keyword phrase.
i) Search result should be less than 500,000.
ii) Some of the webpages in the top 10 results should have a PR less than 3.
iii) Some of the webpages in the top 10 results are internal pages of Squidoo.com, Hubpages.com, Blogger.com, Ezinearticles.com and/or Buzzle.com.

For example, if I do a search for “lower back pain”, at the time of writing, I get 17,600,000 search results. The phrase is not a good keyword because with 17,600,000 other websites competing for the keyword, it’s going to take a lot of time and effort to list in the top 10.

Going down the list, I found “lower left back pain”. This keyword phrase returns 446,000 search results. Not bad. With SEO For Firefox, you can see that the top 10 websites mostly have PR 1 and 2. This seems to be an easy keyword to target.

Another keyword I tried is “exercises for back pain”. This keyword phrase returns 408,000 search results. It’s less than 500,000 results. But the top 10 websites mostly have PR 4 and 5. This means although there aren’t that many websites to compete with, it’s not easy to get the top 10 ranking because the top 10 are already conquered by authority sites.

That’s about all in long tail keyword research. Not too complicated isn’t it?

Long tail keyword research for PLRPRO users

All PLRPRO niches come with complete keyword research in an excel spreadsheet. Frankly, I seldom conduct keyword research for websites built using PLRPRO. In most cases, I simply use the keywords used in the PLR articles.

Some of the keywords may be competitive. But I don’t really care. Most of the keywords are long tail keywords anyway. I am very lazy when it comes to making money from Google Adsense.

So, if you want to conduct your own keyword research for all the 40 articles, by all means, go ahead. You should get better returns. For me, I didn’t do it.

Final note about long tail keyword research

Long tail keyword research is important. But besides the long tail keywords that you ‘intentionally’ optimize for, you will also get traffic from other long tail keywords that you never think of. While such traffic is not significant, the sum of these ‘insignificant’ traffic can add up to a few hundred traffic to your website.

“My question is about how to make websites work in different languages. As I operate my business with customers throughout Europe I need to present my website in several languages. How does this work? Once I have the text translated, do I have to make separate sub domains for each version or is there some software that magically changes it when visitors click on the appropriate flag?” - Gaynor

Hi Gaynor, there is a software that can magically change your website content into 34 languages when visitors click on the appropriate flag. You can check out the product here.

Two years ago, translating websites into different languages was touted as a way to increase your website traffic from the search engines.

This is because of the lower search engine competition in other languages as compared to English.

This may still be true today. (I have not tried playing with different languages, so I can’t speak from experience.) But thanks to your reminder, I’ve just purchased a copy of the translator. I will apply it to my websites to see if it can really increase my web traffic. I’ll report the result in the blog once I get some results.

There are 3 scenarios I can think of when considering the possible website translation solutions:

1. For more search engine traffic

If your objective is to get more search engine traffic to your website, I think the paid translator is worth considering.

All the translated pages will be indexed in the search engines and you can potentially get search engine traffic from those translated pages.

2. For better visitors’ experience

If your objective is solely to enhance visitors’ experience, there is no need to waste money. You can use the free Google translation tool.

Your translated pages will not be indexed by the search engines. So you won’t get any extra traffic from the translated pages. But existing visitors to your website will be able to view your website in other languages.

To add Google translation tool to your website, you can either use javascript or PHP script.

For javascript solution, you can refer to

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/11/add-google-translation-flags-to-your.html

For PHP solution, you can refer to

http://www.donutey.com/translation.php

3. For more sales

If your intention is to provide different versions of your salescopy to visitors from different countries, I think it’s better to manually translate the English salescopy into different languages. This is the most tedious alternative, but it’s the best option for sales conversion.

There is no need to arrange the translated pages into different subdomains, unless you are translating the entire website. If you are only manually translating a few important pages, you can simply keep all the pages at the root domain level.

Today I’m going to do something I’ve never done in LeadsLeap blog.

I’m going to share with you two videos that have nothing to do with internet
marketing.

My wife recently sent me these two videos and I almost laughed off my chair when
I watched it.

Christmas is round the corner. Let’s take a break and have fun watching these
videos

Introducing…. the Chinese Backstreet Boys

And this is my personal favorite. (It’s a Chinese song, but it’s dead funny!)

Merry Christmas to all of you!!

Today we are going to discuss real ways to make money online. This is a question posted by our member. Here’s his question:

“I have been working on the internet for 4 years now, seriously, trying to find something that really makes money and as of yet I haven’t made but $1. I’ve read books and more books about internet marketing and MLM and Google and on and on but no matter how many ads I place on over 20 sites, either I get no response or I get someone wanting to sell me something. What should I do?” - Ken Drake

Ken, you said that you are seriously trying to find something that really makes money online. But based on what I read from what you’ve written, you are seriously trying to find ‘quick’ ways to make money, not real ways to make money online.

Sorry for being blatant. I arrive at this conclusion because your experience tells me that all you know is about placing ads trying to make money. That sounds like the common ‘get rich quick’ idea - “Just Signup And Advertise, And Your Will Be Rich”.

It’s not your fault. Most people are like you. They want to make fast money online.

Can you make money with this method? Yes you can. Many of my clients make money that way. But you need to spend money to test which salescopy works, which product works, etc.

Many people don’t do enough testing and they quit too soon. Moreover, if you are on low budget, you may run out of money before you find a gold mine.

I can’t say it’s not a real way to make money online. This method of making money online simply require more skills than simply posting an ad.

Personally, I feel that your #1 mistake is that you are not building an online business.

Take my advice, stop thinking of making money and start thinking of building a business.

I spend money to develop the “Mind Your Own Business” list builder script and give it free to our members because I want our members to start building a real online business. Have you seriously given it a look?

I’m not saying the list builder script is the only real way to make money online. But it’s the way I recommend. Build your own list, run your own affiliate program and sell your own product. You can use your initial sales to fund your future advertising campaign. With your own list, you can also sell other people’s products.

Making money through this method is not without challenge. The main challenge is that you have to think of a good business idea. A poor idea will give you mediocre results, but an good idea can make you very rich in a short time.

If you are someone who aren’t too creative and not interested to think too much, a simpler way to make money online is Google Adsense. You don’t have to know how to write effective sales letter. You don’t have to do any form of customer support. It’s by far the simplest and truly autopilot way to make money online.

Click here to see how I started making money with Google Adsense. No creativity needed. Just keep working and result is almost guaranteed.

When I feel uncreative, bored and tired, I usually simply ‘waste’ my time away building Adsense sites. I don’t have to think too much. Just work - like a robot.

Last but not least, you mentioned that you’ve read many books on internet marketing. If you do, trust me, you already know the real ways to make money online. The real ways to make money online are the ways that you are most reluctant to follow. If you don’t believe, make a list of all the ways to make money online and arrange them in order of preference. Take your least preferred method and start working hard on it. You’ll be surprised that is when you start making real money online!

Learning how to make money with Google Adsense is probably the easiest way to make money online.

In this article, I will show you what it takes to make money with Google Adsense and more importantly, how I got started making money with Google Adsense.

Get ready for some interesting screenshots……

How Much Money Can You Make With Google Adsense?

The sky is the limit, frankly.

But one thing about Google Adsense is that you are not likely to earn a lot of money right from the beginning.

Seriously ask yourself this question:

Would you like to be paid $4k a month? Or being paid $0 in the first month but getting a pay rise of $100 every month thereafter?

If your answer is the former, Google Adsense may not be for you.

But if your answer is the latter, that’s the kind of money Google Adsense can give you - at the minimum!

What It Takes To Make Money With Google Adsense

I’ll keep my answer short. You need to:

Step 1) Conduct keyword research
Step 2) Churn out good articles based on the right keywords
Step 3) Build SEO friendly websites
Step 4) Build links (to boost your search engine rankings)

If you are new to internet marketing, every one of these 4 steps can be a challenge to you. But trust me, each of these 4 steps are simple skills that you can learn and master. Once you’ve mastered these 4 steps, you simply have to repeat the 4 steps again and again.

How I Started Making Money With Google Adsense

To tell you the truth, I had been making pennies from Google Adsense since 2004. But I started making ’significant’ income from Google Adsense after I made a major decision in September 2006.

The major decision was to subscribe to PLRPRO, a premium membership site that gives you 440 unique articles a month in 11 different niches.

One thing I like about PLRPRO is that the founder has done all the keyword research. That saves my work in doing Step 1.

Churning out good articles in Step 2 is also easy, since I already have 440 articles to choose from.

Back in 2006, the only things I needed to focus on was Step 3 and 4. (Today, PLRPRO has grown so much that even Step 3 and Step 4 are semi-automated. With the latest PLRPRO that is launched today, the whole process has been simplified tremendously.)

Before you jump into building your Adsense empire, let me give you a preview of what you can expect.

As I mentioned, I subscribed to PLRPRO in September 2006. In that month, I only built two websites out of the 11 niches given to me. Apparently I wasn’t one of the hardworking members in PLRPRO.

Here’s my Adsense earning from the two websites in October 2006 - $17.57. Nothing impressive. (I purposely blur part of the website url so that you can look at the change in income for each website.)

In November 2006, I made $64.45 with Google Adsense from just two websites. No new website was added in that month.

In December 2006, I added 3 more websites. My monthly Adsense earning was $76.23.

The 3 new websites got established fast and in January 2007, I achieved my first three figure a month Adsense income. In January, I also added 2 new websites.

Things were starting to look promising, weren’t they?

In February 2007, my total websites increased to 9 and my Adsense income for that month was $349.19.

It’s worth noting that out of the 9 websites, 2 of them made me more than $100 a month!

Sidetrack: Take a look at my February stats again and look at my new website that start with www.rom….. I’m very fortunate to have built a website on this niche.

Why?

Because…… Look at what this website is making me now!

$626.54 a month from Google Adsense from just one website! I may be lucky on this niche. So far, it’s my best performing Adsense site.

Ok, let’s go back to my progress……

After 1 year, in September 2007, my Adsense income was $1099.62.

After 2 years, in September 2008, I made $2725.28 from Google Adsense.

Can you see how the income grow exponentially?

All the earnings I’ve shown above are from websites built using articles from PLRPRO, excluding my Adsense income from other sources. This gives you a better assessment of the potential of PLRPRO.

Final Remarks

In my opinion, Adsense is the easiest way to make money online. As long as you are willing to work, you will surely make money. There is no need to know how to write good sales letters or presell affiliate products.

Moreover, in the process of making money from Google Adsense, you will master the skill of generating traffic from the Search Engines. With this skill, you can easily diversify into other ways of making money online, such as affiliate marketing.

Finding free MLM leads or business opportunity leads remains one of the challenges among internet marketers. And LeadsLeap is set out to help you on that.

For those who don’t know, LeadsLeap is a free leads generation system that allows you to build leads and advertise for free in our network.

If you are a LeadsLeap member, have you ever wondered, who is clicking your ad?

In our blog discussion today, I’m going to bring you to our back-office and show you some statistic of the leads that we send to you.

We did a similar study back in July but over the past 5 months, we’ve grown and it’s time to revisit the stats again.

What you are seeing above is a screenshot of one of the tables in our database. This table records the number of clicks received from a particular userid and IP address.

Of course, this screenshot doesn’t show all the records. I just want to give you an idea of how I gather my stats.

For rows with a userid, it means the click is either by a LeadsLeap member or someone referred by the member. For rows without a userid, it means the click is from a non-member.

When I sum up the results over 24 hours, this is what I get:

Members Referred Clicks = 3074
Non-members Clicks = 7368

Total number of clicks received = 10442

From this study, we can make the following conclusion:

1) LeadsLeap generates about 10,000 leads for our members everyday.
2) 70% of the leads are non-members from different IP addresses.

Compared to our statistic in July, the number of non-member clicks have jumped by 300%!!

If you are a LeadsLeap member, this is a good news to you because you get to share the leads that we bring to you.

If you are not a LeadsLeap member yet, and are looking for free MLM leads or business opportunity leads, join us now and start posting your ad in our network today!

Working with freelancers is one of the best form of leverage you can get in internet marketing. You leverage on two resources: time and skill.

The disadvantage is you are now in a position to manage people, and people management can be problematic, sometimes.

This is what one of our members, Gerald Lum, is facing.

Read his full question to me:

———————————————
Hi Kenneth,

I’m facing some problem with my online business. Its not as easy as it seems to be. Being an affiliate is easier than become the creator of the site. One of the problem that I faced is finding the right freelancer for my website development. I also have problem with designer. I usually outsource my website programming and design separately as my own experience tells me that most programmers have no good design senses.

My lst project I got ripped off $1k without getting my website till now. My currently new website designer cannot be contacted for a month. I have not gotten my design for my new website project and hence its delay. My programmer does give me a cheap prices. This could be the reason of the bad services. But I have budget and I really have to try my luck.

There is so many freelancer websites like elancer.com, getafreelancer.com. But how can we really find a good freelancer with budget prices? I have wasted a lot of time waiting for them to deliver my project. How do you find a reliable and with cheap services??

Thank you so much!

Gerald Lum
———————————————

Let me reorganize his challenge into 4 separate questions and answer them one by one:

1) How to stop yourself from being ripped off?

The golden rule is: Never pay your freelancers in advance, regardless of how good your freelancer “sweet talk”!

I had an experience where a freelancer, who had worked with me on several projects, requested that I pay him some money in advance because he had some financial problems. Considering our past working experience, I agreed. He then went missing for a couple of months.

If your freelancer insists that you pay him first before he can start work, the best you can do is to transfer the money to an escrow account. It is a third party account where your money is held by the freelancing website and will only be released to the freelancer when the project is completed to your satisfaction. Escrow protects both you and the freelancer.

You should never be ripped off if you insists on paying after project completion or using an escrow service.

2) How to prevent your freelancer from going missing in action?

You can’t stop this problem from happening, but you can prevent it.

And you prevent it right at the beginning……

Before you award a freelancer with the job, you should always PM (private message) the freelancer. You can PM a few preferred freelancers and see who can respond fast and well. Those who don’t even bother to reply a PM will never get a job from me.

Through PM, you can tell whether they are serious and competent in the project. Sometimes, you can also tell if they are professional or simply a student trying to make some quick bucks.

Also check if they use Skype, Yahoo or MSN Messenger. I will not engage a freelancer who is not ready to chat online.

When the project begins, always make it a habit to ask the freelancer for a dateline in everything he does. Be friendly and not being pushy. You can ask something like “When do you think this part can be done?”. Let him suggest a date to you.

Frankly, I don’t expect freelancers to meet the datelines. Having a dateline is just a way to make them commit, to give them a clear target to aim for and an excuse for me to press them for results.

In the event if you feel that the freelancer is not progressing, you can always use the dateline as the REAL dateline for the project. If the freelancer failed to deliver by the dateline, you can cancel the project and get another freelancer. In my entire online career, I’ve only done it once. In my case, the freelancer went the extreme of not answering all my emails after committing to the project. Thus I cancel the project after the first dateline.

Lastly, make it an effort to email your freelancer every few days and ask them if there is any update for you. This will further reduce the chance of them going missing in action.

3) How to ensure that your job can be completed on time?

If you need something to be done in a hurry, you must let the freelancer know the urgency before you award him with the job. Or else, you should understand that “most freelancers cannot complete their project on time!”

Sounds like a joke but this is the truth.

Once you understand this fact, all you have to do is to give enough buffer for your real dateline.

Let’s say a freelancer says he can get the project done in 7 days, you can expect the project to be completed in 3 to 5 weeks!

I’m not exaggerating.

This is especially true for programming type of job, where there are testing and debugging to be done.

If you expect the completion date to be 3 to 5 times longer than the suggested dateline, you will be happy that most of your projects are done “on time”.

4) How to find good freelancer at budget prices?

The key is this: The more you know, the less you pay and the better freelancer you can get.

For a $1000 project, I can have freelancers bidding from $250 to $1000. The question is, do you dare to choose the low-bidder.

You can try your luck, but ‘luck’ is not always reliable.

Alternatively, you can ask.

During the bidding phase, you can PM a few low-bidders, check if they understand your requirement fully and understand how they intend to deliver the project.

Some low-bidders will not reply your PM. Ignore them. Some may tell you that they’ve under priced. Ask them to re-quote. But there are some who really understand your requirement well and are willing to provide you with their solutions for the price that they offer.

If the proposed solution sounds, you can go ahead award the project to that freelancer.

However, this is only possible if you know exactly what you want. That’s why I said “The more you know, the less you pay and the better freelancer you can get.”

In some cases, you may not know exactly what you want. In such cases, you may have to add a bit of premium to the project and get a freelancer with good reviews, which usually will mean a higher price.