Black Hat - White Hat

Complete Facebook Applications (TURN KEY)

admin — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 03:21:01 +0000

Facebook Applications are hot and when they are made right they advertise for you once you get the ball rolling!

Do you have a system in place to create fun applications for Facebook that people will use?

Do you have a system in place to promote on a growing network of Facebook Applications?

Bet you don’t — but I also bet you would like to!

Here is how this works. (I’ll keep it easy on you).

We make you a facebook application (either just one, or one every month). Your application will be unique to you. However, your application won’t be an island all by itself. My applications and your applications will all be “integrated” together promoting one another. Here is an example:

We made Joe an application that was a series of video games that all post to the players walls. Underneath Joe’s application there other recommended applications. Guess who’s? Yours. Now Joe’s application was a few flash games, but the application we made for you is completely different. It’s a quiz about love and relationships, or a phrase generator, or a “get farmville friends” application.

However there is a catch. Joe’s application shows the advertising banners that Joe selected. Yours shows yours. (Wait – that’s not a catch). In other words – you make money off your applications, Joe makes money off of his, and both of you help promote the other.

Imagine how powerful that will be when there are hundreds or thousands of applications in the same circle.

You get the drift – there are hundreds of types of applications. With a large group of them promoting each other they can become very powerful.

Want to be a part of it?

Well I figure we’ve got room for about 10 monthly subscribers (only 10) at this rate, and about 5 one time participants this month. It would be easier on me to have just the same people involved so I’ve made it cheaper for those that take the monthly option.

Just to be clear what you will be getting so there is no confusion:

A Unique Facebook Application Every Month (literal value $300 on up). It will have some kind of viral aspect to keep it growing. Please note that you won’t have your application right away. These take TIME to make, and some creativity. I can’t farm this out. I do guarantee one new application for you every month.

A Unique Domain name that we will host for free for 3 months (unless your application explodes with traffic). If you have your own server space we will help you move it faster. We don’t want to host your site forever. Plus we will push the domain to your namecheap account free.

You’ll have full access to the files on your domain. Including a single file that you can edit to add in your own banner ads or advertisements.

Your application will be part of our promotional network. I DO promote the network, but you should help get your application kicked off.

You will need to create and verify a Facebook Developer account and then follow some directions so I can push ownership of the application to you.

If you aren’t happy at any point I’ll buy back your applications in the first 6 months.

All communication will be in a protected project area. We’ll both be able to keep track of things. I’ll manually create your account and send you log in details with in about 12 hours.

Bluntly – you will own a Facebook application that’s part of a growing network of other applications. You absolutely can’t find a deal like this anywhere else. Don’t believe me? Just head over to any freelance site and look at the bids for simple “quiz” facebook applications for example. $500 and up is very common!

Autoblogging? Better protect yourself.

admin — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 20:15:04 +0000

I’ll keep this short.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/dmca-righthaven-loophole/

If you are auto blogging, users can post content to your site, etc… you better read this article and read up on Righthaven.

Some little things to do to change your life (and money).

admin — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 03:24:54 +0000

(feel free to ignore the personal story and scroll down to the rest of the post)

My son is going on 7 years old and that means I’ve been doing this “marketing” thing full time for 7 years and part time for about 15. For those of you who know me I was a plumber for 10 years before I quit. First I lived in a bigger city and as an independent contractor I made really good money. When I met my wife she had two kids from a previous marriage. We decided to move to a more rural area – I figured my income would go down but not as much as it did. I went from 60k to 90k a year to 15 dollars an hour after the company I worked for went out of business. I didn’t give up though – I figured if I worked hard I’d make the new company more money and it would result in me making more money as well — I mean after all that’s how it worked when I was an independent contractor.

At 17 dollars an hour I was the highest paid guy in the shop… and I was told that I wasn’t getting anymore raises no matter how much I made them. I started their commercial division which was making about 3 million a year with me and two helpers. Love that 17 an hour

My family was still small though, and I had been teaching myself to make webpages and program to make a little extra “bank” for years. I just ramped up some of the things I was doing, worked some overtime (O.K. A LOT) and we made it through everything we needed to do.

Suddenly my wife was preggers At 7 months pregnant she lost her job, and no one was going to hire her when she could just roll into the building.

Flash forward to a few months later while she is recuperating from shoving the bowling ball through her crotch and my shop wouldn’t leave me a lone to take care of the newborn. I was getting calls from new guys for advice, the bosses for advice, and calls from clients. I’d been in the hospital for 2 days and home for 2 days and things were already falling apart.

I went in after about a week of being home and sat the bosses down to talk some turkey. I was tired of killing myself working all these hours and being totally broke.

It didn’t go well and I decided right then It was time to do something different.

I literally worked 15 hour days and came home and worked more on-line. I got clients to buy websites, I made my own sites, I did everything I knew to do. After a week I realized that I was making as much per hour at home as I was at “WORK”. I’d barely seen my newborn in 2 weeks and hadn’t given him a bath or put him to bed since I’d gone back to work.

I gave my notice.

I just knew I was going to be fine since I was making good money. I started working from home about 2 days later because let’s just say things didn’t go well after I gave them my notice. For the first few days everything went well. My sites were selling, my sites were making money, and life was good.

Took a day off and it’s like the stars re-aligned or something. Couldn’t sell a site, couldn’t make a sale, etc… Sure it happened sometimes when this was just a hobby, but now it was my income…. and things were going from bad to worse.

It was a tough 6 months or so, but eventually I discovered the ‘real’ secret to making money on-line. It’s 10 things I think I live by. It’s not just ways to make money but a way of thinking about it. Some of these things are from looking back after 10 years.

I put a lot of thought into this – actually much more than I did writing the post, so I hope it helps you.

O.K. Shut Up Ed – Get to the rest of it!

Don’t forget the important stuff!

1.) As an active member of my family with 4 kids I don’t always have the luxury of working 20 hours a day. In fact sometimes it seems like I struggle to get 10 uninterrupted minutes. Getting angry has never helped but making the most out of that 10 minutes does. My family is happier when I’m not boiling, and so is my blood pressure. Since programming is hard to do piece meal I do that when they are asleep. The rest – well it can break up a bit. In fact I’ve walked away from the P.C. about 5 times since I started this and I’m about to go watch a movie. I’ll finish when I get back.

(just watched Despicable Me – funny)

Don’t do “work” all the time!

2.) Leave work at work. It’s harder when you work at home, or try and make a second income. For a long time I drove my wife nuts – “Internet” is all I thought of, talked of, etc… It took a long time to find a balance somehow. Save yourself some headache and force yourself to have that balance.

Love Your Family – and listen to them!

3.) The “significant other” doesn’t care how much HTML/PHP/Python you have to do to finish a project. She/he just knows you are ignoring them for the interwebs again. It helps when they see some money coming in, but you should see rule number 4 before you push the issue. Actually chances are even when you do make money it won’t go away because you don’t have a ‘real’ job.

Watch your time!

4.) 80 percent of the crap you do isn’t going to make you money…. reading e-mail, checking forums, thinking, picking your nose, writing posts like this in your blog, etc… Of the 20 percent of the time you actually spend working 80 percent of that WILL NOT make you money either. SO you are left with some percentage that I’m not paid enough to figure out as revenue. That’s probably why number 3 is such a big issue around your house.

Keep reading to find out how to fix the money…. and watch the time with your family (or friends) be more enjoyable. You’ll find that 1,2, and 3 become easier when you have it

Money, Money, Money (everything beyond this point deals with money in some way.)

Money Management and Start Up Costs

5.) You need an emergency fund and a business account. I can’t count how many times I’ve spent to much on PPC, or estimated (WRONGLY) how much I’d make on a venture, or something. Shit happens – if it’s not cutting into your living expenses, or taking food off the table who cares.

For those of you with a family keep this slush fund separate and your business account in just your control. I don’t mean ‘hide’ things from your family, but your business expenses shouldn’t be coming out of the family bank account. I tend to do things bigger these days like buy 5 dedicated servers at once. I might even be doing that when we have expenses like braces to pay for. If the wife can’t see it, she can’t spend it or complain. It might take me 5 months of paying out 1200 a month for servers until that project makes a profit. That’s my problem and what I do for a living though – not a concern for the wife who still uses AOL The same rules apply on a small scale. If you need 50 bucks for content that you don’t want to write, you shouldn’t have to justify it. See number 5.5.

5.2.) That does mean that the funds that start your business is good with your family and not putting them at risk in anyway. If you don’t have the money for hosting, domain names, content, graphics, etc… well you are just going to have to earn it somehow. Chances are you are going to lose it the first few times around anyway

5.6.) Your Wife or Husband or Anyone will never really appreciate the fine art of buying an e-book and wasting your money like you do! It’s true. I mean those guru’s told you that you needed a college level education that you buy piece meal from them so you’ve got to buy coaching, ebooks, guides, wso’s, etc… Right?

Right?

No, not right!

You don’t need to buy anything other than Google, and any tools and services you need. I’m sure by now you’ve noticed that I don’t peddle, sell, or create e-books (well not in many years) and never a bullsh^t secret. I sell scripts, tools, and services. That’s what I do for my “right now income”….. *see number 6*. You’ve got to decide what your “right now” income is, and not jump from thing to thing. It helps not to jump around by only buying the things you need when you need them.

Spend that money on domains, hosting, links, etc… I’m telling you everything you need to know is on this blog, blackhatdigest.com, and in the other98percent.com

(sell real stuff – not information – do your keyword research – make your own networks for linking to yourself – and be creative in your link building, that will be $999 please)

Now and Later

6.) Long term income is important…. so is right now income. There isn’t much reason you can’t do both. Here is an example. I still build sites every day just to sell them. I make sure they include articles I’ve written and links to my related sites. It’s really nice to make money, and of course to have someone else promoting my links. Nothing wrong with that – they know there are articles with resource boxes in the site they bought. What they don’t know is chances are I built myself a couple sites in the same niche at the same time. What they really don’t know is that they are helping me promote those sites.

Remember up there in rule number 4 we talked about watching your time. Consolidating projects is the easiest way I’ve found of doing that.

My right now income is from selling the tools I make, the sites I make from them, and selling my services as a SEO. I stop working that angle my income goes poof. Sucks – but it pays the bills all the time with out fighting the google dance to support my family. I make enough to pay myself a good wage, pay my full time assistant, and at times I’ve had a staff of up to 25. I’ve found that I get stressed at that point though – to many people to worry about and it kept draining my long term income sites resources. (Yes – that means I’ve failed at something – more than once).

My long term income is using those tools and scripts to make sites. I’ve got quite a large library if sites. I’m actually embarrassed to say how many. Let’s just say my seo clients don’t have to worry about links. Each site EVENTUALLY pays it’s own way or I sell it. No room for sentimentality here. You can do things however you would like, but all the revenue generated by my “long term” income has been going back into building more sites for several years now. Every single penny. I’ve made huge mistakes, big successes, and because I kept things contained it never makes a bit of difference.

(for example we won’t talk about my Day Trading fiasco, or the time I spent 5k on a site that got erased before I could back it up properly, the time an entire server was wiped out because I had a crappy host with a bullsh^t back up service, or the… well you get the point. Let’s just say that Day Trading is not for all of us.)

Those long term sites eventually will become my right now money, my buy an established brick and mortar business money, my retirement money, my kids college money, etc… They could also be paying my bills right now I so chose. Instead they are paying for more content, more links, more promotions, etc… If I got in a bind I can pull from that point as well.

That’s all Folks…..

As you can see I’m not Tony Robbins – and I’m not pushing some time management e-book (or anything else) on you. There isn’t as much content on this blog to ‘help’ you as there is over at blackhatdigest.com so you should probably get over there. If you need ideas or inspiration, there are over 300 posts at blackhatdigest.com that can give you ideas.

FaceBook Page with out coding

admin — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 01:13:41 +0000

I’ve got a series of Facebook tutorials on the way, but I know a lot of people do not like programming anything

I found a pretty easy solution for those of you wanting to make some easy fanpages. Unlike doing it yourself it isn’t free, but you don’t have to be a technical wizard.

Make Easy Fan Pages

For those of you who want more power, more options, more everything – hang tight and I’ll explain the mysteries of the facebook

But Daddy… I did ping my rss feed!

admin — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 16:35:47 +0000

So you woke up this morning and ‘pinged’ your rss feed to 10 zillion places and this evening you didn’t get the results you expected.
Why?

Well unless you are submitting that feed (or pinging) to the rss directories alone those pings are probably going into the ether. Most pinging services want to see sites that are updated, not some random feed you’ve cobbled together. So they don’t even want a rss feed ‘pinged’ to them and they ignore it.

(Disclaimer: Not all ping services, but more and more are like this).

So how can you get around this? Build a static or dynamic page that lists those feeds and ping that page. It’s even better if it’s on the root of a domain.

That’s why we made a index page that shows your feeds in magic rss linker for example. When you use the internal pinging tool you aren’t pinging those feeds, you are pinging the index page so the update services find the feeds on it.

Places to sell websites

admin — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 17:50:17 +0000

Flippa

Flippa is probably the ‘leading’ place to sell a site. It’s what the sitepoint forums evolved into. It’s a little expensive and there are a lot of people selling crap in there which can make a good site not get the exposure you would like.

Pricing

Listing Fee: $19
Success Fee: 5%
Maximum Success Fee: $498
Minimum Success Fee: $5

What drives me crazy about flippa is that with the auction based system you can lose your shirt. Some of the places that follow can take longer for a site to sell but can be worth it.

Buy Sell Website

This site has been around for a long time, and I’ve personally sold dozens of sites here. It’s one of the few places where high prices seem to be the norm. Just browsing through and it seems like there is more ‘junk’ than normal so some extra effort to stand out will make a bit of difference as you try and sell your website.

Webmaster Talk Forum

Webmaster went the “marketplace route” as well, it’s actually a confusing mess as near as I can tell. To much ‘scammy’ mixed in there to make it worth my while. Feel free to leave a comment to help others.

Quiet Light

Serious sites with serious income (or potential). If you don’t have a solid site with income, proven stuff, don’t bother. However, if your site or business is to much for a site like flippa this is something to look into.

I Merge Advisors

This was reported to me by a reader when I requested more places to sell. I have no experience with them or knowledge before today. Speak up and share any experience you’ve had with them.

BizSale.co.uk

This site is focused just on the UK. However, there are some nice listings usually.

Website Properties

This site is one of the ones where you can list your site for a flat fee and your site appears in the listings for 60 days.

Website For Sale Ads

Overpriced turnkey sites, and when I checked up on it to get pricing the option to order wasn’t there today . It might come back and it’s cheap to list here so I’ve left it included in my list.

Businesses for Sale.com

There are a mix of crap and good sites here (seems to be the norm when you think about it). Listings are expensive but results can be had.

Website Broker.com

This site has been around and seo’ed long enough that it’s great for showing up in the serps when you are selling. However the prices can be nuts for buyers, but they do have brokers there that will contact you to help you sell.

Digital Point Forums

DP has gone through a huge decline in the last couple years. What used to be the “webmaster” forum has become a third world forum with broken english posts, spam, and bunches of silly crap. You get banned for asking serious questions and have to jump through posting hoops to just post your site for sale. Your reward? You get to be listed with auto blog spam hell. Enjoy – and good luck if this is the route you go for any established business or website.

BizBuySell

I’ve never sold a site here, but I do enjoy reading through some of the listings to see what’s up in my area. It sorta feels like reading Entrepreneur Magazine If you’ve got stock you sell through your website or office space you use this is where I would start.

Business Mart

Another one submitted by others – prices seem out of whack, but that can be a good thing for sellers!

Webmasters Marketplace.com

Great place to list for free. Upgrades are optional but do cost a few bucks. With it being free this probably isn’t the place to sell a valued website of course – but it’s a step up from DP.

Global BX

Another FREE place to list your sites for sale. A lot of traffic, but as always with the free places there is a lot of crap.

The Warrior Forum

If you appeal to the make money on the internet crowd you can do well here. Big $$ sites won’t sell often, but content sells here.

Website Slate

This is mostly starter sites, with a couple of better quality listings. Don’t be alarmed if your site doesn’t sell – but don’t depend on this marketplace to sell your site fast.

Namepros Forum

I love namepros. Seriously, I’ve been selling here for years. The marketplace has changed drastically, but low value ‘turnkey’ sites being sold for a fair price fly off the shelves for me here.

Ebay

There is so much crap on Ebay that I’m not sure if it’s worth it selling on here anymore. I stopped years ago. However, I suppose you can still make money giving away sites and forcing them to buy hosting

That’s my list, don’t have anymore to add off the top of my head or in my bookmarks. If you know of a good place leave a comment and I’ll update/show your comment. Enjoy!

Magic Keyword Plugin (readers invite)

admin — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 17:39:09 +0000

The Magic Keyword Plugin takes your keywords and creates posts containing:

Articles
Ebay Items
Commission Junction Items
Amazon Items
Youtube
Yahoo Answers
Twitter Results
OR any mix of the above in any order you specify.

Watch the video to see how easy it is: Watch Operation Video

You should know by now I’m all about automation. This plugin pretty much solves most of any content generation issues you might have. Take a product list, a keyword list, or any phrases and make unique posts – fast, automated, and easy.

This script will be added to Codebank shortly, but I wanted to make sure that our readers got a chance to grab a copy if Codebank was out of their reach. Every 5 orders brings the price up (hurry it’s an awesome deal at 200 bucks – while it’s under 20 you can’t miss)

Warning: This plugin was made for hosts running PHP5+ (which is most of them these days). No support for versions of PHP prior to 5.0.

*********** READER INVITE OVER ************ SCRIPT WILL BE AVAILABLE AT MAGICKEYWORDPLUGIN.COM SHORTLY

How to get Dreamweaver CS 4 For almost Free!

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 23:21:36 +0000

O.K. unless you are made of money you probably don’t own dreamweaver…. legally at least.

I can’t imagine NOT having DW in my arsenal. It’s always open, I’m always using it – plain and simple.

Buying it costs about 300 bucks these days even though it isn’t the current version of Dreamweaver.

Now I don’t normally recommend 1 and 1 for hosting because they aren’t the right hosting company for most of my readers. If you’ve got a static site, don’t need to use mod_rewrite beyond wordpress, and/or are just looking for a cheap way to extend where some of your sites are hosted AND get DW CS4 included it’s hard to pass up.

Here is the link:

Limited Time Offer! Your First 6 Months 50% Off for Home Hosting Package!

Now I don’t know how long it will last etc…. but while it’s there if you need Dreamweaver there you go!

Ebay Monster 2 Source Code

admin — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 19:54:29 +0000

I’ve had a ton of requests for the Ebay Monster source code, and I figured why not.

In fact, I cleaned it up, made it easier to customize, etc…

See it in action here: Ebay Monster 2

Get it instantly through e-junkie here:

Local SEO – set up

admin — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 02:11:15 +0000

No Big Ideas Here – Just some more tips to save money and make it work for you.

1.) Establish Yourself (or fake it till you make it)

You know deep down in your gut you aren’t a seo firm. So what Set up a domain name, get a business license, get insurance (don’t put this off if you can avoid it). Set your site up with google local. Make sure you rank for something that a client would search for.

2.) Establish your own marketplace.

This can be on your seo site, or even an entirely separate site. Make it look nice – and you will have a place to put all those sites you don’t sell…. or to just keep churning out sites “made by” your firm. Sell them on flippa, or wherever. Or just keep them. List whatever site you want to sell on the marketplace at really crazy rates — when your customers google it they will think you are giving them the deal of a lifetime.

3.) Get your proposals in order (this is a make or break thing)

There are a ton of “seo proposals” on-line. I hate them all . I’ve been using Proposable lately. Let’s me “SEE” what they are doing with my proposal. However, you will have the occasional client with out access to the internet for whatever reason. You’ll have to break out the paper then.

4.) Use contracts.

Never promise that your clients will achieve (or keep) top x rankings. Be careful promising exclusivity – ie you can’t keep yourself afloat only doing one restaurant, one contractor, etc…

5.) Don’t over do it.

If you are busy with 5 clients don’t take on 30. But make sure you have some padding. I like to keep a bunch of little clients and a few big ones to make sure that if I lose one it isn’t the end of the world.

6.) Set up systems.

When you tackle a new market keep all your content, images, etc… It will help you break into a new market. There isn’t a reason why you couldn’t sell roofing websites all over the country. If you are smart you will use tokens and store in databases to really churn out fast sites. (hmm maybe I’ll let you use my system if you ask nicely)

7.) Where the real money is

The real money isn’t selling the website. It’s maintaining it. Setting up systems for lead collection, marketing, keeping in touch with their customers, etc… Don’t forget hosting. If I sell you a site for $1000 dollars but charge you 29.99 a month to host it – I make 1300 bucks in one year. If they agree for us to maintain twitter, facebook, etc… it’s another 250 every other month or so. If they pay us to help with on-line marketing it’s more, to do seo it’s even more…

Get the picture?

8.) Be a pro.

Even if you don’t feel like a pro – you know more then they do. Don’t assume just because you are a first time “seo firm” that you aren’t good at this. I work for a number of “seo firms” that don’t know how to do anything. They hire me to create forms, build systems, and my favorite — install wordpress sites. They are just salesmen that know links are needed – but not any creative ways to get them. I work for others who are technical wizzes but just now how to do things – not how to rank, or really wow their customers.

9.) Don’t forget video.

I still remember the day I told one of my plumbing contractors that I was going to follow him around for the day and get him to explain what he was doing. He flipped – then let me talk him into it. I told him I wouldn’t charge him at all if it didn’t work.. in fact I’d only charge him 100 dollars a client. I put my time and effort where my mouth was…….. and then I:

Broke it down into a dozen how to videos that show him being an expert, clean, professional, and polite with his customers. Put it up on it’s own site and youtube channel.

He’s driven (and been paid handsomely) hundreds of miles because people were willing to pay HIM more – since they “knew” him from the videos. After paying about 1500 dollars he bought the site for 4k (his idea).

10.) If they are local you are the photographer as well.

Go take shots of their office, the people, etc… a good camera is about 200 bucks. I guarantee that once you do this you won’t just be the “nameless” website guy anymore — in fact everyone in that office will be telling their friends, and other businesses about this amazing web firm they just hired.

11.) Be creative – and be their marketing wiz at the same time.

Just about anything you can do locally gives you an edge and makes your next client easier. Just prove it – show it – sell it – maintain it. Then show them how they can increase their customers other ways. Show them how to collect leads, how to e-mail market, how to go web 2.0, etc…. it’s all more money in your pocket.

I have a local auto repair shop handing out ice cream coupons and the ice cream shop handing out almost free oil changes. Both are happy as well – both pay for the printing – and both pay me every month to keep their sites up.

Just help them make money and you are the hero.

12.) Get some cards

Last and not least – get business cards. Set up a referral system, etc… don’t forget to market yourself.

That’s all folks.

I know I didn’t sell you a $997 info product on how to do this. But I’ve been doing it for years – and it’s a way to support your family if nothing else. I also find it fun and it’s cool to be the “hero”. I’ll see if I can’t come up with some ways to make it easier on you if I get some requests.