Whilst he employs 80 people, he also has a team of 200+ website creation, content development, link building and social media specialists to call upon (native English speakers).

If you can avoid doing all the work yourself, either with automation or outsourcing it is more scalable.

Keyword Titan

Just over a week ago, Todd Hogan the founder of Keyword Titan approached me to see if I would be interested in taking a look at their new Keyword research automation tools.

Trust me, I have spent thousands on various keyword research tools in the past, some of them even still get updated by the authors despite changes in the way data can be pulled from the search engines, many of the services are still in business and even booming, and in many ways I am quite happy with what I already have available.

That being said, time is one of my most valuable commodities (though I tend to not use the resource to it’s full potential)

Another problem is grouping

It is fairly easy to group keywords if you are generating them from various root keywords.

{specialty} {profession} {location}

Annulment Attorney in Los Angeles

It is far harder, or at least more time consuming on researched keyword lists.

Keyword Titan Ultimate Challenge

I was already starting to prepare a monetization list to offer as an opt-in bonus, as a companion to Howie’s 36 Niche report. I knew he was covering keyword research in his training, along with monetization, but I wanted to help accelerate the success of anyone taking part in his competition, and continuing that into the future.

If you help people achieve results, good things happen.

The amount of time involved to research 36 niches, highlight 100s of core topics to focus on, and drill down into traffic data, grouping etc using conventional tools would have been astronomic.

2 hours per niche wouldn’t be unreasonable for a shoddy job x 36 niches = 72 hours

2 weeks work, maybe one if you are a machine

It would be less if all you were doing is generating the keywords using some kind of spinning technique, but you would still have to identify the root keyword lists, and then think about negative keywords, grouping etc.

So I challenged Todd to create me 36 keyword lists that I could give away, highlighting the best opportunities for competition and traffic, suitable for both SEO techniques and PPC.

Due to timezones, national holidays in the US, long weekends and various discussions on objectives etc, from start to finish it has taken 8 days to prepare these lists.

I asked Todd how much time it took to prepare all 36 keyword lists.

I couldn’t even contemplate that with any of the tools I own, or have seen. The closest were products like Keyword Bible, but on a broad topic such as Howie provided an initial cross referenced search would have been grinding away on my PC for 30 minutes or more, without any thought to whether the keywords were
actually useful, grouping etc.

These days such poorly defined keyword lists for Google PPC would be a liability.

36 “Opportunity” Keyword Lists Free

What we have prepared are what I would term “core opportunity” keyword sets, the kind ideal for small niche sites, social media promotion tactics etc.

These lists were prepared in exactly the same way as the demonstration video on the Keyword Titan website.

Each list is approximately 150 keywords highlighting the cream for traffic and commercial intent.

1 Complete List for Acne Niche

One complete keyword list for Acne, a $15 value yours free

Acne Keyword Research list is provided free of charge on http://nicheexposed.com

You can also get another free list covering the auto industry just for signing up for a free Keyword Titan account

Full Lists For Other Niche’s

Keyword Titan has 2 primary monetization models

The first is a monthly subscription which is ideal for power users. During discussions with Todd I discovered that their primary target market is specialist SEO & PPC agencies working with lots of clients, or large corporate account holder, not smaller internet marketers.

I believe however there is a huge untapped market (for Todd) within the internet marketing field, especially power users leveraging outsourcing or mass site generation.

From a single complete list, or even from the condensed lists we are providing for free, it would be easy to create 50 or more websites, or a few larger authority sites.

Thus for many a subscription would be overkill, and they should concentrate on owning one niche at a time.

The second monetization model is pre-built and custom lists purchased individually. The pre-built lists are a very affordable $15, and $30 for a custom list based on your own selection of primary keywords.

I believe all of the pre-built lists are available free to people who purchase a monthly subscription.

The 36 Niches Are Now Available as Pre-built lists

Other niches are also available as prebuilt lists

All the sample lists are now available for immediate access, including the complete keyword research list for Acne.

Get them here (Free)

Http://nicheexposed.com

Who is Keyword Titan ideal for?

• SEO & PPC agencies (time is money)

• Large corporate SEO & PPC managers – potentially less specialized skills and less time to manage 1000s of keywords

• Mega sites dealing with multiple verticals

• Mass automation niche marketers who would like some of what they throw against the wall to actually stick

• Niche Marketers looking to dominate single vertical markets (the single reports)

• Anyone who values their time

I haven’t played with the interface extensively, but the results speak for themselves.

Thanks to Todd for offering to help with these keyword lists

It is also traditionally when new life is brought into the world, so it is an ideal time to clean up some niche websites and turn some ideas into revenue streams and to experiment a little.

I am frequently asked by email all kinds of beginners questions

• How to choose a niche?
• How to go about keyword research?
• How to promote niche websites?

I am going to steal some quotes from Franck

Taking about John Reese and Blogrush

1. Release crap (improve later, but start making money with your crap)
2. Test everything (Jay Abraham’s style)

These advice makes me a lot of money, and it was actually my starting point online. I made my first affiliate commission ever with a “crappy crap” forex website.

About what he learned from the Get Altitude CDs

I learned 3 important words from Eben Pagan. When you know these 3 words you will say like “Hmm, is this extraordinary?”. (I said this when I heard Eben tell this).

But I guarantee that it’s important for your business and it produce tremendous results…

Here are these three words… Speed of implementation.

I also have a number of tools I want to test out so this will also involve some rapid learning along with the rapid development and content generation.

These Are Going To Be Rough

That doesn’t mean junk

Diamonds start off in an uncut state that isn’t very dazzling, and many have imperfections that make them only good for industrial use.

In our case we might end up with 31 sites that just pull in a few dollars per month, but most of them will be very low maintenance.

Some of the sites exist and will be revamped, so have existed in the past, and others will be born fresh

Tools

A lot of the tools I have are no longer sold, and a few were quite expensive.

Most of the sites I am going to work on this month will be using free and affordable tools, but if you want me to include one of your products, make sure I have a copy to play with as early as possible.

Product Placement and Niches

If you want to suggest broad niches to have a play around with, or a specific product to promote let me know

I am going to try to have all the sites “worth being in the index” and I certainly won’t be breaking any laws.

Hmm… guidelines… we’ll see ;)

At its core, my first impression of SocialRank niche websites was that it was little more than a WordPress splog scraping my content based upon keywords used and giving some kind of relevant or irrelevant ranking based upon some internal algorithm.

It is still my content appearing on a 3rd party site, in the same way as one of the millions of kubrik themed sites that just grab keyword based feeds from Technorati.

As I have said in the past, I license my content as GPL, so am quite happy for people to repurpose it, and hopefully if they provide a link a little traffic finds it’s way back to my site.

There is however one thing I absolutely detest

Don’t Use Pingback / Trackback When Syndicating / Splogging My Content

If you site contains no original content, if you are not entering the “blogging conversation”, I don’t want you to spam the hell out of me with trackbacks and pingbacks.
I sent an email to SocialRank to switch off the pinging, the pinging continued with my email box full of ping notifications. All I received in response to my email was an invite to their beta.

Would you join the beta of a company effectively hiting you with trackback/pingback spam?

I don’t see them anymore, I have told Spam Karma to blacklist them just like any of the other splogs.

On the other hand I read today an interview Ben did with SocialRank.

This seems similar to the Quechup debacle at the beginning of last month where an over enthusiastic viral referral system effectively destroyed the social network before it gained any traction. The first page of results in Google only mention negative things about Quechup – I assume they rebranded.

I never accepted an invite to Quechup, but I assume within the terms and conditions somewhere they gave some notification that when you provide your friend’s details, they would automatically send email invites. Thus the emails probably weren’t spam, and looking back through the few emails I received, were not to my knowledge in any way illegal, with a clear opt-out option, company details, a nice link through to a company privacy policy etc. In fact iDate who own Quechup issued a press release 2 weeks ago explaining the changes made to the feature to stop people making mistakes when inviting people.

I think the problem comes with people so used to how Facebook and LinkedIn have implemented these in my opinion quite dangerous address book sharing features, they assume every site works the same way, even if the other site actually had a similar but different feature well before LinkedIn and Facebook. The iDate press release mentions having this feature since 2005.

With SocialRank it is different. They are the ones filling my email box with pingback after pingback proclaiming that they scraped my content.

I don’t regard them as a stinking splog, they are still linking back to the original source with a followable link, but currently they are more annoying than Quechup invites just 1 month ago.

If spending $97 on an ebook is a major financial commitment, don’t read any further

Ok, for the rest of you lets get on with the review…

• There is no hype in the sales letter
• There is no hype in the ebook
• There is no hype in this review

Another Web 2.0 Social Media Ebook?

After you read the sales letter that is probably the impression you will have, and in fact you will still have that impression shortly after you start reading the ebook.

Here are some interesting facts for you

Pages 56 (+bonus guide on video, crib sheets and tables)

In fact those few references that were included were mainly in facts and figures like usage data.

So What is this Ebook Talking About?

Traffic Secrets

Whilst many people don’t appreciate the value of ebooks, claiming that the information is out there if you look for it, or join and participate in various forums, that isn’t strictly true.
We live in an age of information overload. Quite often different ideas and new ideas take a long time to rise to the surface, or never make it, not because the ideas are not valuable, or supported by hard evidence.

I often see “specialists” in SMO (Social Media Optimization) and SMM (Social Media Marketing) claim that their methods and expensive services can work in virtually any market place.
I am not going to dispute those claims, but that very statement tends to drown out other methods that could be equally effective for traffic generation that might be equally, or potentially more suitable for certain markets.

Traffic Strategy

The fundamental value from this ebook is that it challenges you to examine your social media marketing strategy, and optimize it for best effect.
This is nothing to do with writing better headlines, or coercing top users at Digg, Reddit or Netscape to add you as a friend and to plug your content.

Whilst Laura’s intention was to target the ebook to beginners in social media marketing, in many ways consultants in social media marketing should read it because it will place a new perspective on information and strategies you think you already know.

Professional Writing

Laura has written a lot of ebooks as a ghost writer, and this isn’t her first outing in publishing an ebook in her own name. This ebook oozes quality production with footnotes on almost every page and links to resources that back up the data and strategies she proposes.

The professional tone may also be one of its shortcomings – The Stampede Secret isn’t a light refreshing read, or suitable for people who prefer information in short 400 word chunks.

To get the most benefit you really will have to read through the ebook a couple of times taking notes – in some ways it reminds me of some of the more serious marketing reports you might receive from Marketing Sherpa.

Recommended Audience

Ideal

You are already making money, and probably think you know everything there is about SMM. You might even skim read the ebook once and think there is nothing new, but if you take the time to sit down and read it slowly a couple of times, you will pick up a new perspective.

• Marketing consultants
• Blogging consultants
• Business owners in niche markets
• Owners of Virtual Real Estate in Niche markets including blogging networks
• VCs and Angel Investors
• Researchers
• Journalists

Possible

Beginners who have tried SMM for their niche websites and blogs with little success, and who have money to invest to accelerate their learning process.

Don’t Buy It

This isn’t an ebook showing you the secret route to success and instant wealth. This isn’t something you should spend your last meal ticket on for that one chance of financial independence.

If the price of the ebook is more than you would spend on a night out, think again.

It will probably take you 3 hours to read this ebook unless you have been studying various fast reading techniques – if 3 hours of your time is worth less than $97, this ebook probably isn’t ideal.

You Can Find This Information Elsewhere

I honestly haven’t gone searching for all this information elsewhere, but I am sure somewhere among the millions of pages of content that are created on the internet every day, you would find at least 90% of this information. The value is in the way it is collated and presented.

Just as an example some of what is discussed in the ebook you could find on my blog, and potentially in more depth, especially in regards to things like tagging. Laura even quoted from one of my articles and linked through, highlighting that people should read the article, and the valuable discussion afterwards.

Unique Information

Analysis of one of Laura’s niche sites in a very competitive market (Acne Treatment) with real proof of traffic numbers from Quantcast – not just screenshots.
This isn’t a high traffic site, it is very much a simple niche website, running on WordPress that anyone could create and generate some income – I wouldn’t expect Laura to expose her most profitable sites.

Discussion of traffic strategy – some social media consultants charge $5000 per day to help you formulate a social media marketing action plan. Most of the consultants concentrate on the search engine optimization benefits, and not how to participate in social networks to find real customers.

How to Write an Ebook – whilst this isn’t one of the lessons taught, the production quality and style is something to learn from.

I am going to finish off with a few select quotes from the ebook that don’t give too much away, but at the same time highlight how much different the overall perspective of the information is.

If anything is going to hold you back in being a fore-runner in the new web, the need to measure and record every click or movement to and on your site would be the culprit. The internet is changing at such a rapid rate that controlling and metering every change you make has the potential to stall your success.

Uptight control and playing it safe is seldom the stance of a pioneer. It is the pioneer who wins in profits, fame and visitor traffic – not the followers and whiners. I am not guaranteeing success by any means, nor am I advising you to risk your life savings on some promising new start up, but I am saying that the occasional ‘play your cards or go home’ attitude is one of the keys to success.

Web 2.0 is a very creative, innovative and fluid environment. Most Web 2.0 sites cannot be put in a box and measured in any consistent and reliable fashion – they are simply too young. There is a level of intuition at launch, an element of change and growth throughout the life of the web property, and yet another level of intuition used for assessment when determining a reasonable sale value.

Conclusion

No hype, no bonus, though if I do see enough interest and sales I might write up a supplement to the ebook going into some of the topics in more depth, especially on the benefits of tagging.
I would probably make that available free to all Laura’s customers.
I may even go into some of the topics that Laura has missed – Web 2.0 grows at an alarming rate, and there is a limit to how fast you can research strategies enough to be able to offer conclusive proof.

Disclaimers are unheard of in most ebooks, but Laura takes this to a new professional level, this is just part of it.

Information within this report may be speculation and are therefore within the meaning of the securities litigation reform act of 1995 and contain verbiage such as ‘expected’, ‘anticipated’, ‘estimated’, projected’, ‘believed’ or variations of those.

I have actually been chucking a few emails backwards and forwards to Laura over the last couple of days, and I thought I would include one small excerpt.

You know you really rock! You don’t even ‘know’ me and you’ve given me so
much of your time. It’s a dying art in our world.

I am not going to include my exact reply, because it mentioned names of people that if internet marketers were actively using LinkedIn, would certainly appear between myself and Laura as shared contacts, and over the last 2 years I have certainly dropped by her blog a number of times.

This comment also shows the benefit of “paying it forward” and the value of providing information for free to eventually reach your goals.

There are quite a few expert marketers who normally charge their clients a great deal of money who I correspond with on a regular basis, simply because they have gained value from what I have offered for free.

One of the bonuses that Laura provides is some very specific email support – she states that she will answer 2 emails from her customers, and highlights the importance formulating those questions to receive maximum benefit. She is not going to exclude pleas for help, and win / win relationships can develop to extend the level of help provided.

I have always been happy to answer emails regarding the products I review both before someone makes a buying decision and afterwards, or you can just ask here in the comments.

I gained a great deal of value from Stampede Secrets. I might not realise that value immediately because I already employ many of the strategies and techniques discussed, and it is hard to quantify the effect any changes might have on my income.
Reading the ebook has certainly helped me highlight the action I should be taking to revitalise some of the niche websites I have had for a long time and hardly ever modify, because each is bringing in a small trickle of income.
Laura has helped me realise that it is possible to employ a few extra traffic strategies for these niche websites that could turn the flow of traffic into a gushing fountain.

Disclaimer:- I am one of the few people who received a free review copy of this ebook, possibly because I offered to take a look before publishing, that Laura reads my blog, and because she quoted me in the ebook. To be honest I might not have purchased the ebook just based upon the sales page. That is the value of affiliate marketing in pre-selling, or explaining the benefits of a product in an ethical manner

Like good webmasters, you might be inclined to register your sites with Google Webmaster Central.

pub-1234567890123456

Why do I have to include this (ok that one is fake) junk in my Adsense adverts.

Google doesn’t need it, they know who I am.

It is useful for sites that in some way, with specific permission, are rotating adverts based on who generated the content, but for a niche website owner it offers a footprint that Google doesn’t really need, and is potentially bad for both the site owner and Google.

• Clickfraud – If someone doesn’t like you for whatever reason, they can find all your sites using Adsense
• Revealing Niches – do you really want your competitors to know about all your most lucrative niche websites?

It is not as easy to find publisher IDs as it once was, most of the search engines no longer give results for searches that are for Google Adsense publisher IDs, but not every web crawler plays by the rules. I checked Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask for my own personal ID, they no longer give results, though they do for fake ones.

Surely for those sites that have been registered in Webmaster Central, or possibly uniquely registered in the Google Adsense administration panel in a similar manner, publisher IDs could be made a thing of the past.

That should actually be true for all monetization services, not just Google.

It is fairly well documented that if you move a website, you should use 301 redirects to retain your old link equity.
This isn’t possible with blogspot hosted blogs, and it was thought that meta refresh might transfer visitors, but not link equity.

Wrong?

My old site used to rank fairly well for terms such as “niche website” and “niche websites”

Before Christmas, it was still being ranked well in the SERPs, and then disappeared. I wasn’t losing a lot of search traffic, but I certainly was losing some.

It is true that all the previous articles are on this domain, but that doesn’t account for the backlink equity in those search terms from article marketing and various other linking strategies.

Today I noticed that andybeard.eu is ranking near the top on the first page of Google SERPs for the same terms, “niche website” and “niche websites“.

It seems Google are now handling Meta Refresh correctly for passing on link equity to domains that have moved. I have no idea how universal this is, or whether a manual review is required for this to happen.
It is something that is open to abuse, so I actually hope Google have some kind of manual process to check to see how content on the 2 sites relate.

It is definately worth taking the time to setup redirects from your old blogspot domain correctly.

The press and “A” list bloggers have been constantly touting the use of Google Reader over the past few weeks. Overall it is a useful piece of software, and might even become my permanent rss reader in the future.

But the Google reader has major flaws, which noone is really talking about. In fact I have noticed a growing tendancy for reporting thee flaws as a cool feature, without any emphasis on the negative aspects of using these “features”.

Google Reader Flaw 1

The Google Reader doesn’t currently send readership data to services like Feedburner. If you notice your blog readership go down, it is because you have been touting Google Reader too much.

Google Reader Flaw 2

There has been a few mentions of “Linkblogs”, especially by Robert Scoble on his Scobleizer blog most recently here, but also here here and here.

Sharing a link blog privately with a few people, maybe inside a company isn’t going to have a major consequence.

But if 1000s of people subscribe to Robert Scobles linkblog this will have 2 major effects.

1. For Robert himself, his readership could go down, because people will read the main original story, not his commentary. It would be much better to refeed your linkblog somewhere, to at least monitor subscribers, and maybe monetize the feed.
2. For the original publishers, they don’t get subscribers, but they do maybe get more readers if Robert et al decide their posts are significant. You could potentially have 10000 people reading your content (full post content), and have zero subscribers to your own feed.

Google Reader Flaw 3

Link blogs again but in this case link blog abuse and splogs.

Google have taken some precautions with their linkblogs, unlike many services that offer something similar.

A search in Google for Roberts Link Blog will not find it.

Google isn’t even indexing links to Link Blogs

MSN seem to be in the same ballpark, obviously Google had a chat with them

But Google forgot to have a nice chat with Yahoo

Yahoo don’t list any information relating to the contents of the link blogs, which shows they are obeying some directive not to index the pages, such as robots.txt, though more likely something in .htaccess

Thus the shared pages in Google are not in themselves the same as other splogs that have been causing uproar recently, where websites have been taking full feeds, without permission, and monetizing them with adsense. (I don’t worry if people do that with my feeds, as long as the backlinks don’t contain “no follow”)
The major problem is that quite often thse are full content feeds, that publishers wanted read by their subscribers. Many publishers are currently trying to fight sploggers by installing plugins to their blogs, such as the Antileech plugin for wordpress.

The problem is that Antileech is now useless.

No blogger in their right mind is going to block Google from picking up their feeds to serve Google Reader users.

Each Feed can be assigned a tag automatically. The method to do it is not obvious within the interface, but it is possible.

That automatically grabbed feed quite often will have the full contents, and a plugin like Antileech isn’t going to do anything to stop it.

Once you have a feed available, preferably with full contents, it is very easy for someone to use that content on another site, sometimes without permission. There is nothing legally or ethically wrong with the tools used for this. There are plenty of reasons to use such tools ethically, and quite often the professional, designed for the purpose “splogging tools” actually do a more professional job of using and attributing your content than the simple free tools available.

One example of a simple tool is WP-Autoblog . More sophisticated tools can take a series of excerpts, automatically tag the contents based on keywords, substitute links with “deep linking” affiliate links (and yes that is ethical, because the blog ownes wants you to promote his blog and products). An example of such a tool is Blog Auto Publisher(aff). BAP isn’t a fancy tool, but it is hellish effective and can be used ethically.

Conclusions

Google Reader in itself isn’t evil. The features could quite reasonably for an ethical purpose.

I could quite easily grab all of Robert Scobles linkblog, automatically retag it all, and then feed it to a private blog for my own use, to better be able to find information on tech related subjects from a trusted source.

Something like that on a corporation intranet would be a valuable and possibly ethical use.

But in most such uses, the original author is not going to have subscribers to their feed, and is not going to know that their work is even being read.

My strongest advice is to avoid abusing this feature, and not publish the location of your linkfeed, especially on a high traffic blog.

To ensure I stay on topic, it should be noted that Google Reader is a very powerful tool for the creation of niche websites. I admit to using various tools to reuse and mix 3rd party content, including Blog Auto Publisher, but the content I use is with permission and where necessary with attribution.

Update: Some Supplementary Information

The sharing feature within Google Reader isn’t new. The big point is that until now, very few people have been sharing their feeds with others. It was introduced March 21st 2006 on the Google Reader blog.

Here is a very good technical overview of how feeds can be shared with Google Reader

Here is a nice list of tools that can be used to create splogs, but they can be used to create unique content as well, that has value to the readers of the content. We can add Google Reader to the list.