Today I’m going to share with you how I get one of my old websites back to top 10 in Google, spending very little time and money.

But before I tell you what I did, let me give you a brief background about this particular website.

I have a niche website that I created back in 2004 and it has been in the top 10 in Google for a competitive keyword for years.

To give you some idea, that ’single word’ keyword gives 6,900,000 results in Google, i.e. more than 6 million websites are fighting for that keyword.

A few months back, I realized that the sales from the website dropped. I suspected that my ranking in Google had probably dropped. Indeed, it dropped out of the first page into the second page. The exact ranking was 12th position. Just missed the top 10 by 2 positions.

To regain my top position, I needed to get lots of backlinks fast.

Thus, about 2 months back, I engaged a freelancer to submit the website to 1000 link directories for less than $30. That’s all I did.

A few days ago, I realized that sales from the website increased. I went to Google and checked. Indeed, I’m back to the top 10. I’m now in the 7th position.

From this experience, I once again prove that directory submission is still a viable promotion method.

Some Advice In Website Creation

When I first started creating niche websites to profit from Adsense and affiliate sales, I followed the advice of the ‘experts’ - follow your interest.

I wrote very good articles and each website took me one month of intensive effort!

Soon, very soon in fact, I ran out of interested topics and I had nothing to write. It took me a while before I decided to create websites using Private Label Articles.

I’m glad that I made that decision.

The traffic and earnings from some of the websites created using Private Label Articles outperform those ’sweat and toil’ websites I’ve created.

For example, one of the websites I’ve created using Private Label Articles is now consistently generating more than $500 a month from Adsense. The highest record was $700 in one month. It took me only a few hours to create the website and a few hours to promote it.

I’ve tried at least 4 different Private Label Article services in the market and there is only 1 that worth my time and investment. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), that website will be closed on 30th June 2008, i.e. it will stop accepting new members after 30th June 2008 (but existing members will still continue to receive new articles). When it reopens, probably after 3-4 months time, the same service will cost you double.

If you are just starting out but are committed to build some passive income online, I suggest you grab this PLR service that I use before it’s closed to the public and ‘naively’ follow the instructions laid out by them, especially their 90-day challenge as well as my step by step guide. If you can just do that, you will thank me one year from now.

“My Google Adsense account is disabled. What should I do?” This is an email I recently received from one of the members in my Adsense membership program.

Frankly, this email is a wake up call to me. I’ve heard of people’s account got disabled, but I haven’t had any close friend whose account has been disabled.

The reason why her account is disabled is unknown. She didn’t click her own ads. The only possibility, she confessed, is that one of her neglected blogs posted junk info. But the site receives practically no traffic and zero click through. Does that justify an account suspension?

Ignorance can cause your Adsense account disabled

We know the general rule of Adsense. Basically, an Adsense website should be content rich and provide values to the visitors. This is the rule that I’ve been playing with all this while and I believe I’m pretty safe.

But after hearing this sad news, I start to think if there is anything else I need to be cautious about. It is possible that your ignorance (or should I say negligence) may cause your Adsense account disabled.

Here are some of the issues I can think of:

1) Do you have a ‘forgotten’ junk site with your Adsense ad in it?

It could be a Blogger blog that you created years ago. You probably followed the advice of some “black hat” marketers to auto-post junk info into the blog and profit from Adsense. This is a time bomb. Make sure that you remove those ads now.

2) Have you been sabotaged?

Google says that you can’t click your own ad or ask other people to click on your ad. This means if you offended me, I can sabotage you by going to your Adsense website and mass-click your ads until your Adsense account is suspended!

Is it possible? One word, yes!

This is stupid, I know, but it can happen. Here’s what Google say about how to prevent sabotage.

As you can see, the answer they give is just a diplomatic answer. It just tell you one thing, that is, you can be sabotaged.

If you have hundreds of websites, how on earth are you going to monitor each of the traffic log for suspicious activity?

If your website is suspended due to fraudulent clicks, do you think Google will believe you that someone actually sabotage you? Or they will think you actually get someone to inflate the clicks so as to help you earn more money?

I have yet to have a solution to this problem. All I can say is if you ever experience the following scenarios, report to Google immediately. If you file a report with them before they catch you, you are in a better position to prove to them that you’ve been sabotaged.

The scenarios include:

- You experience an extremely high CTR.

If you have a CTR of 500%, it means for every page loaded from your website, a visitor actually clicks 5 ads. This is an obvious sign that you’ve been sabotaged.

- You experience a sudden surge in your Adsense income on a particular website.

There is no absolute amount for the surge. If your website has been earning $1 a day and suddenly it increases to $10 and you didn’t do anything special, you probably want to check out the traffic log and report to Google if necessary.

3) Is your advertising media reliable?

If you advertise your Adsense website, be sure that you know the source of the traffic and that the advertising media is reliable.

For example, you may go to a forum or Ebay to buy 100000 visitors and you drive the traffic to your Adsense website. Many of these cheap traffic services actually use pop-under technology and if Google happens to know it, you are in deep soup.

Talking about advertising media, please do not advertise your Adsense websites on LeadsLeap.com. It’s for your own good. Although LeadsLeap is not a click-exchange program, it does have some elements of click-exchange. Click-exchange traffic is forbidden for Adsense. To play safe, I wouldn’t advertise my Adsense website via LeadsLeap. Frankly, you won’t get much click-through anyway. Instead, those ad will make your ad look unprofessional. I never put Adsense ads in my squeeze page or sales page.

4) Are you keeping up-to-date with Google policy?

Google may change their Adsense policy from time to time. Things that you do today may be violating their rules tomorrow.

For example, in 2006, all the gurus asked you to put a picture beside your Adsense ad to boost click through. But in 2007, Google added to its policy that images are not allowed alongside Adsense ads.

If you have any website built in 2006 with images beside the ads, be sure that you’ve removed those images by now.

5) Do you have other self-feeding ads on your website?

Besides Adsense ads, you may insert other advertising feeds such as those that automatically generate a list of items sold at Amazon or Ebay, or you may sell text links on your website. This is usually not much of a problem if the program that you use is reliable. But some advertising or link selling programs allow adult contents and if you are not careful, you may end up having porn ads on your website!

What should I do if my account is disabled?

If your account is already disabled, you can’t register another Adsense account using your name. However, there are 2 alternatives I can think of:

1) Open another account under a business entity.

You can set up a business entity and register another Adsense account. The advantage is you are still in full control of your Adsense account. The disadvantage is you will have to open a business account with your local bank in order to bank in the money. Depending on the bank, a substantial minimum deposit may be necessary. In Singapore, it’s $10k.

2) Use your relative’s account.

You can open another account under your spouse’s name or someone you trust. The disadvantage is the cheque will be issued to another person’s name and you have to treat that person well or…..

In both options, the best is to use a different mailing address. If it’s under the same mailing address, Google will pay special attention to the activity in that account.

Actually, not all are lost.

Once you have another account, you can put the id back to your existing sites. Your account may have been banned, but your site has not. But this time, make sure you do things right. Also, make sure that you do not put it on sites that violate Google policy or you’ll risk your account being banned again.

Some final words……

Last but not least, I want to say that I still love Google Adsense. The income is 100% passive. There is no need to handle any customer support or do any updating work for changes in affiliate programs. As long as you keep your hat ‘white’ and don’t make ignorant mistakes like those I’ve suggested above, you shouldn’t worry too much about having your Google Adsense account disabled.

Today I’m going to share with you how to increase your odds in online success. It’s simpler than what you think, really!

First of all, do you know that 9 out of 10 entrepreneurs will give their lifeblood and fail?

When it comes to online, I believe the same odds applies.

So, how do you ensure that you are the 1 out of 10 online entrepreneurs who succeed?

Simple. All you have to do is to be an online entrepreneur 10 times!

Mathematically, if 1 out of 10 will succeed, it means if you do it 10 times, there will be 1 time when you succeed!

Make sense?

Some of you may think this is nonsense, but it’s not.

Many people quit too early. In fact, many people quit even without trying!

I didn’t succeed in my first online business. I have registered at least 5 domain names that I hardly do anything with. I also have at least 2 ‘BIG’ websites that I’ve spent at least 2 months preparing but they are now sitting somewhere in the web, collecting virtual dust.

But so what?

I don’t need all my websites to be successful.

Even if you talk about Adsense websites (I have about 70 of them now), the highest earner can make me $500 a month and there are some that are just earning $5 a month.

Again, so what?

All I know is the more websites I have, the more money I make.

Am I disappointed with those websites that fail to perform?

I am. But that only motivates me to continue looking for other ways to bring traffic and make money online.

How about promoting affiliate products through PPC advertising? There is no guarantee that your first campaign will be a success. What if your 4th campaign is going to be a great success but you quit at the 3rd?

The good thing about being an online entrepreneur compared to being an offline entrepreneur is that you can hardly lose your shirt.

I lost $50,000 in 6 months in my first offline business. Question is how many $50,000 can you afford to lose before you hit the jackpot?

But when it comes to online, if you invest $500 on an online business, which is already considered a lot, 10 businesses will only cost you $5000. 1 successful business can easily recover all your losses.

So, if you are thinking of quitting, why not think about what your next project is going to be?

If you persists and keep improving, success is inevitable.

Many new marketers fail to start because they are not sure how to promote a new website.

So today I’m going to show you step by step what I normally do when I start a new website.

Before listing down the step by step instructions, I need to clarify that what I’m doing is to promote 15 to 40 pages Adsense website or product review website. It can be a static site or a blog.

“Why is it important to clarify on this?” You may ask.

This is because you can start many kinds of websites. Adsense or product review website is just one easy way to make ’small’ money online, but when you have 100s of these little sites, it’s more than enough to quit your job!

Other forms of website you can start include a squeeze page to build list, a mega service site like LeadsLeap, your own product site such as your own Clickbank product etc. The strategies required for these kinds of website is different from promoting Adsense or product review website.

For one, you can’t do any form of joint venture for Adsense or product review sites. You can do advertising, provided you know what you are doing. But search engine optimization is a surefire free traffic source that you can rely on and once you get such traffic, it’s going to serve you for years!

So in this article, when I say promoting a new website, I’m really talking about promoting it to get search engine traffic.

I’m not going to talk about on-page search engine optimization here. You can read it somewhere else or if you post a request below, I’ll probably discuss it in my next blog post.

Today, what I’m going to share with you is off-page optimization, which is all about building link juice to your website.

Ok, I hope by now you get the whole picture and are ready to see the simple steps that I use for all my little sites that are enough to earn me a full time income.

Step 1 - Bookmark 1 page of your website at Digg and Propeller

This is the first thing you should do once your website is ready. Just choose any 1 page and bookmark it at Digg and Propeller. This will get your website indexed by Google, usually in less than 3 days.

Warning: Don’t bookmark more than 1 page and if you have tons of websites that look similar, make sure you open different accounts to bookmark or your account may be suspended. I have my account suspended twice! Technically speaking, you shouldn’t bookmark your own website. But if you do it under the radar, it is the fastest way to get your website indexed.

Step 2 - Write 5 articles and post to as many article directories as possible

Some of the directories you must “hand” submit to are Ezinearticles, ArticleDashBoard, Buzzle, GoArticles.

Next, take up a lifetime membership here and submit all your articles there. From my experience, 5 article submissions will give you 100-200 backlinks.

Step 3 - Submit your website to link directories

There is an argument on whether submitting to link directories is still effective as a form of link building. I’ve been doing it since 2006 as an integral part of the whole process and frankly I’m not sure what would happen if I stop doing it. Maybe one day I should try!

However, one thing for sure is the links count. If you do a link search for some high PR sites, you’ll see that many links come from link directories. If you believe that every link to your website will help you in your search engine ranking, submitting your website to link directories is a great way to get tons of one way link.

You can either do it yourself, which was what I did when I first started, or if you have the budget, get a freelancer to submit for you. You can get some cheap bargain here.

Step 4 - Set up 3 way link exchange

You probably are familiar with 3 way link. Yes, it’s one of my favorite tools too. If you are new, 3 way link is a little too ‘expensive’ for you. The price is $47 a month. Get it when you have 10-20 websites.

That’s all I do whenever I launch a new Adsense or product review site. Even without step 4, just by doing step 1 to 3 will get your website to PR 2-3.

What can you do with a PR 2-3 website?

Well, besides making money from Adsense and affiliate sales, you can sell link and make another $20 a month from each website you own. You can read about selling text links in this post.

What if I tell you there is a surefire way to get things right in making money online, even if it is your first time in internet marketing?

I guess I’ve got your attention by now, but let me tell you the truth. Such way doesn’t exists. But something else does……

There is no surefire way to get things right in internet marketing, but there is a surefire way to succeed in internet marketing. The way is to “Stop Trying To Get Things Right And Start To Get Things Going!”

Let me give you an example:

2 years ago when I decided to build Adsense websites using articles from plrpro, I was not sure if I was doing the right things when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. As you know, Search Engine Optimization is very important in such model. Without traffic from the search engine, you aren’t going to make money.

The first 6 months was the toughest months because I wasn’t making much money and I was doubting if I was doing the right things. But one thing I did right was I “Kept Going”.

Today, my Adsense income is nearing 3k a month and there is no sign that this income will stop increasing!

Did I get it right the first time? I didn’t. But I succeeded, in a small way, because I kept learning and kept building more Adsense websites.

What is the best way to make money online?

If you have not started making money, DON’T ASK THIS QUESTION!

Do you know that most internet marketing newbies fail because they haven’t even started?

They are looking for the ‘prefect’ way to make money online and they are forever looking!

Is Adsense the perfect way to make money online? I doubt so, but I don’t care as long as it’s making me money.

I tried to teach other people to make money from Adsense but those who gave up said that it’s too tedious. Some went into affiliate marketing, thinking that they can easily make money by posting some PPC ads but ended up losing more money.

There are always better ways to make money online. I do agree that you should always be on a look out for better ways to make money online.

But if you have not even earned a cent, you should just take an opportunity that is within your capability and make that opportunity work for you before trying other ways.

Remember, you don’t have to get it right the first time. You just have to get it going by keeping on learning and doing.

Success is doing the ‘boring’ things again and again

I may be stretching this topic a little too far but I need you to understand this principle in order for you to have the complete picture.

Do you know that even if you found the right way to make money online, you are still not likely to succeed online?

Any ‘right way’ to make money online will still require you to do one or more of the followings:

Build websites
Write articles
Post advertisements
Write sales letters
Deliver products
Find suppliers

If you look into any of these activities, only one word can describe them - “boring”!

That’s why I said success is doing the ‘boring’ things again and again. If you are not determined to keep doing the boring things again and again, you are not likely to succeed.

Can you now see why it is not so important to get things right? If you are determined to just get things going and going, regardless of how tedious and how boring they are, success will be evitable for you!