The Wealth Gang

WordPress Goldmine… yet another money making program created by the Average Joe (in this case Mark Thompson) who is silently making money from his home office. I like to buy these products and review them pretty regularly. Usually there some small nugget of information that will make the entire purchase worth it, but WordPress Goldmine is different.

Why?

Most of these programs have a big eBook with a “video program” that just recites the eBook back to you — which to me is completely useless. I get it though… the author creates the videos to increase the value of the product and make it more attractive.

What makes WordPress Goldmine different is two things…

1. It’s chalk full of incredibly valuable information that will walk you through the exact strategy to turn a brand new website into a profit producing behemoth. That alone makes it worth every penny since you not only make your money back with these strategies, but it’s a complete business model that can make you money for a long time.
2. It doesn’t focus just on building websites to promote a product. It shows you from step-by-step how to build a real business. From picking a domain name that will rank high in Google all the way through the money making strategies that will work best for you.

Since Mark Thompson’s WordPress Goldmine looks at all the various types of niches and website you can build, it can help you pull more profits out of your existing site or show you how to start from scratch. It’s not just advice and tips… it’s a complete system.

That’s where the videos are really helpful. It’s one thing to talk about how to make money online, but the videos show live examples of various websites and how they’re making money. Thompson pulls the curtain back so you can see who’s making money and exactly how.

Here’s the main breakdown of the entire system:

1. Building a WordPress Blog: From buying the right domain, to installing your free website, setting up a theme, and installing the best plugins
2. Filling Your Blog With Content: This part covers all the ways to fill your blog up with valuable content… from doing it the hard way by writing blog posts yourself, to finding PLR content that you can quickly change to make it completely your own. There’s some good ideas on how to automate the process with good, original content completely for free
3. Making Money: The crown jewel of this system is found here and is the bulk of the program. This is where Mark covers all the ways to monetize your WordPress blog to make the most money. My favorite is the one blog post that made him $15,000 — he shows you exactly how this was done and can be replicated.
4. Traffic Generation: What’s the point of a blog if it’s not getting traffic? It can be pretty and perfectly optimized to make the most amount of money, but if nobody’s visiting than you’re not making money. I learned some great tips on how to increase traffic to my sites. The diagrams here are very well done, which I ended up printing out and hung above my computer. His Direct Traffic Generating System gave me a lot of new ideas that I started to implement right away.
5. Beating Your Competition: The point of this section is that once your WordPress site starts making money, it can plateau. That’s because there’s only so much you can do before your competition places a glass ceiling over your head. This part shows you how to cream your competition so you can take your profits to the next level.

If you have been marketing online for a while, you’ll probably skip right over the fist section of this system. I did learn about some great plugins that I didn’t know existed, so don’t skip over that part. Otherwise, for the person that has never built a website before, this will show you step-by-step how to get off the ground running.

WordPress Goldmine is about 110 pages of goodness, which I think contains very solid, easy-to-follow advice for those who are ready to break into Internet marketing. For those just starting out, this should be your bible to making money online. The parts on effectively monetizing your site and traffic generation alone are killer.

More About WordPress Goldmine

When it comes to your website, are you keeping your visitors in mind, or just your profits? By being conscious about using the best website colors, navigation, easy of use, and the overall quality of your content, you can dramatically increase your profits.

The first rule of Internet marketing is to create valuable content and websites for users first, and Google second. In the end, Google will reward you for the valuable website you created for your visitors.

That being said… it’s a good idea to test. Test you colors, layout, AdSense placement, etc. I’ve noticed a 50% increase in profits just by changing themes. But for the most part, you want to stick to the basics.

• White backgrounds with dark text is always best. Don’t use contrasting colors that strain the eyes
• Keep the reader in mind. Keep paragraph length to a minimum, use bullets and numbers
• Keep your content clear and concise
• Make the navigation of your site easy to find the most valuable content

A lot of people ask me to review their websites, and to be honest… a lot of them are just hideous. I’m by no means an artist myself, but I don’t know why people choose the ugly Blogger themes that are either too bright or too dark. Clean and easy, to read and navigate is always better than trying to make something pretty.

Some of these websites have such great, valuable content… all it needs is a change in style and design to make it easy for the visitors. Don’t worry about what you like, think about what your visitors like. More importantly, think about what they respond to.

So how do you figure out what works best?

1. Test It
2. Look at Crappy Sites and Note the Reason Why

Here are some examples for you…

• Just plan ugly: http://www.alternativetransportservices.co.uk
• Not even sure what I’m supposed to read: http://www.scopesys.com

Compared to clean, easy to follow, guides your eyes exactly to the right places…

• http://lifehacker.com
• http://engadget.com

Take notes, adjust where necessary and try out different themes colors and navigation styles until you get it right. One thing I’ve learned is that what I think is great is not usually what other people find user friendly. So ask a friend to look at your site and give their feedback. A peer review can be very valuable.

There’s nothing better than free traffic, and Google can send loads of it to your website. But without being in the top 3 positions for high volume keywords, you’re only getting trickles of traffic. Depending on the topic area of your website, it could be incredible easy to improve search engine ranking, and get even a brand new site listed on the top of Google in a matter of minutes.

Realize that savvy Internet marketers and search engine optimization experts control the most competitive niches, but there are always opportunities available that you can take advantage of.

So how do you get your website listed on Google really fast and improve search engine ranking?

The Google algorithm is always changing, and that formula is a well-kept secret. What we do know, however, is that Google rewards websites with:

1. Original Content
2. Authority

So first, make sure that the content on your website is not just a reproduction of other websites and content out there. Take the time to do it right.

The way Google currently values the authority of your website is by analyzing the incoming links to your website. If the Wall Street Journal links to your website, Google is going to say, “Hey, the WSJ is a very reputable website. If they’re linking to this guys website, then it too must be important.”

In other words, you don’t only need a lot of links pointing to your website… you need high quality links from a wide variety of sites.

For now, Google claims that it doesn’t consider the visitor behavior of your website, but I would be willing to bet that they will eventually. In other words, Google can see how many new visitors versus returning users come to your site (indicating that returning users find your site useful), how long they stay on your website, and if they are visiting other pages on your site or just leaving it all together.

Now, that all being said (and just a very brief overview), Google uses automated methods to review and list your website. If you want to get it listed, all you need to do is link back to your website from another website that already has presence and that Google visits regularly. For instance…

Social bookmarking sites.

When your new site is up and running, use StumbleUpon, Digg and some of the other popular social bookmarking sites to link back to your new website. It could take Google overnight to get to it, but I’ve had sites listed in under 10 minutes before by doing this.

By doing this, not only do you tell Google, “Hey, look at me… I exist on the Internet,” but depending on your niche, you can get your site listed right at the top of Google search results.

By the way, this goes for improving search engine ranking for new blog posts as well. But I don’t advise overdoing it.

Also, don’t expect to stay on the top for very long. This is just an initial bump that you’ll experience. But keep building backlinks to your website, and you’ll earn the right and authority to stay in that number one spot.

Should I Submit My Site to Improve Search Engine Ranking?

There are some arguments about submitting your site to search engine directories. Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines give you the option to submit your site to their directory to let them know about your existance. There are also services that will do this for you.

My opinion, which is based on experience…

Don’t do it!

First, unless you are hiring a professional SEO consultant with a lot of experience and really knows what they are doing, never hire a service that promises to provide thousands of links and submissions to search engines. Google can figure out that something is fishy with a brand new website that suddenly has thousands of links and search engine submissions, and they will penalize you for that — which is no good at all, because I’ve been there too.

My highest ranking websites were never submitted to search engine directories. I just built valuable content that people naturally linked back to, and did a little link building on my own. These websites had no trouble getting lited and earning top rankings fast. Those that I submitted had a delay, and I suspect Google likes finding sites naturally rather than being told that it should list your site.

Quick Rant:

In my opinion, Google is smart and their number one goal is to list websites that provide real value. That means their number one mission is to filter out spammy sites. So while tools and blackhat strategies exist to create auto-blogs, that is not a long term strategy that you can count on making you money for the rest of your life.

Spend the time to do it right, and you’ll build a serious business that can produce cash for you day after day, as long as that website exists.