I discovered a lucky secret the hard way about thirty years ago: you can outlast the other guys if you try. If you stick at stuff that bores them, it accrues. Drip, drip, drip you win.

No one likes to write content for their BANS sites. Every category? Really? Do I have too? What If I just promote the hell out of it on Twitter or Squidoo? Nope. You need good content. You need to keep people coming back.

Seth continues:

It still takes ten years to become a success, web or no web. The frustrating part is that you see your tactics fail right away. The good news is that over time, you get the satisfaction of watching those tactics succeed right away.

This is why 90% of bloggers fail. This is why people will buy BANS software, setup a couple sites, and give up shortly thereafter. Seth continues on with a similar premise:

The trap: Show up at a new social network, invest two hours, be really aggressive with people, make some noise and then leave in disgust.

The trap: Use all your money to build a fancy website and leave no money or patience for the hundred revisions you’ll need to do.

The trap: read the tech blogs and fall in love with the bleeding-edge hip sites and lose focus on the long-term players that deliver real value.

The trap: sprint all day and run out of energy before the marathon even starts.

There are overnight success stories. There are guys that accidentally stumbled upon something great and now work just a few hours a week for a six figure income. But those guys are the exception. Not the rule. Chances are, if you are convinced you are one of those “exceptions”, you’re not.

Seth:

The media wants overnight successes (so they have someone to tear down). Ignore them. Ignore the early adopter critics that never have enough to play with. Ignore your investors that want proven tactics and predictable instant results. Listen instead to your real customers, to your vision and make something for the long haul. Because that’s how long it’s going to take, guys.

Amen. Seth, I want to have your baby.

One of the keys to getting traffic via good organic search engine rankings is external links to your site. I wrote a couple of articles and submitted them to article directories. I wasn’t looking forward to writing articles that weren’t going to be featured on my site, but I actually got pretty good at it.

Because I had such fun with the external articles, I launched the $5 article project last week. I’ve written about 20 “external” articles for other bloggers that turned out really well!

I also posted some links back to my site on some link indexes. I also wrote about 10 articles on the keyword that I “sniped” and posted them on my sniping site as well.

Today I hopped onto one site and voila! I have a Google PageRank of 2 and my targeted search term is on the second page of Google. Great! My three year old songwriting blog is still languishing at PageRank of 2 after three years! What’s the deal?

Courtney recommends at least 10 good articles on the keyword you are sniping, and that is the only site to date where I have the 10 articles - so I have learned good, relevant content is definitely key. I was also able to learn through my new search results ranking what seemed to be working and what wasn’t.

My plan over the next week is to implement those things that “worked” across a couple other promising sniping sites and get those up in the rankings as well.

I’m a little excited and I might have rambled a bit in this post. If you have any questions about the random phrases I was throwing around, feel free to ask for clarification below.

Who Are You?
My name is Don Makoviney and I run the #1 Songwriting Blog on the web, Blogging Muses. I have also written for Internet Marketing sites like ClickZ. I have also written for ASP Alliance, PayPerClickAnalyst, and a few others.

I currently have been writing tons of external articles for my own BANS sites, affiliate sites, and of course, Blogging Muses.

The Benefit of Original Content
Any SEO person (Search Engine Optimization) will tell you the BEST thing you can do to get your site higher visibility is having inbound links to your website or e-commerce store. Even better is if the links are embedded in original content. Most online marketers and bloggers are feeling the crunch of getting external articles out there and this is one way to help the problem.

So I’ll write you some articles and …

The Articles Are Yours to Keep
Even though I write the article, the author is you. You own full rights to the content. Once an article is handed off to you it is 100% yours. You can continue to edit it yourself, add photos or multimedia, add in your own keyword-related or affiliate links, and then post it wherever you like. While I try to write the article in your voice, most clients do a little rewriting anyways to make sure it sounds like “them”. That’s not because the article sucks, it’s just a good editing practice.

Why Are You Doing This?
In short, I want to challenge myself and push my writing skills to the limits. I have been writing a ton of articles for my BANS sites and have developed a good rhythm for writing articles quickly. I want to practice writing extemporaneous yet authentic articles. I figured why not provide some value to the blogging community as well?

How It Works

1. Use the form at the end of this post to submit your 3-4 sentence article summary, proposed title, and up to 3 target keywords or phrases.
2. Submit form and payment via PayPal.
3. I will begin working on the article immediately. I will NOT process your payment until I am ready to sit down and work on your article. From that point, you will have a complete 500-word article in 48 hours delivered to your email address in an HTML formatted attachment.

Topic Ideas:

Product reviews or summaries
Technology
Web 2.0
Gadgets
Arts and Music
History
Photography
… and any others you might need.

What If You Don’t Like Your Article?
I will always give 100% to the writing of your article, but they are $5 each. It is my hope that even if the article isn’t “exactly” the way you would like it you can spend a few minutes editing it yourself. Remember, the article is 100% yours when it is handed over to you. You can add photos, embed youtube clips, completely remove or add paragraphs on your own.

Best case scenario is you are 100% satisfied with the finished product.

Worst case scenario - you might want to rewrite a few sentences to make it sound like your “voice” and perhaps add some additional details.

Remember, this article is 100% unique content, which means no duplicate content penalties from Google. The article is also 100% yours. Put your name in the byline. Submit it to article directories. Do what you like!

Want a longer article? I can write a 1000 word article for $10, and on up the line.

Give It A Try!

Article Order Form

Put in a proposed title, 3-4 sentence summary, and any targeted keywords and let’s get started.

Proposed Article Title and Description
Targeted Keywords or Additional Information

Laundry list of new features and fixes. I’m  not a Wordpress programmer so my wording may not be exact. This is my translation:

• Integration of Google Gears. When available to speedup and cache static files that are loaded every time you visit your WordPress admin panel.
• Config file moved from root.
• XML-RPC not enabled by default for external applications. You will need to explicitly give external apps permission.
• Content directory can be moved. This means you can have shorter image URLS. Nice!
• Customizable avatars.
• Lots of javascript upgrades to WYSIWYG windows and such.
• Enhanced theme previews.
• Activate multiple plugins at one time or delete several (as in physically remove from server) at once.
• Tumblr-like functionality
• Post revisioning. Keeps track of all post revisions so you can go back and track changes. It’s becoming more a full-fledged CMS every version!

It seemed a natural fit.

I talk about products.

So why not point people to relevant product links on eBay?

I did this at the beginning of my 90 day internet marketing plan and voila, five days later I got a commission for $5.56 from eBay.

For those not familiar, BANS is a really cool tool that is under $100 and gives you an unlimited license to create eBay affiliate stores.

There are many uses for a BANS site that make it a wise investment.

Here’s a couple ideas for you:

BANS Use #1: Parked Domains:

Usually if you buy a domain and just let it sit on a typical GoDaddy parked page it looks something like this:

GoDaddy and other domain registrars do this when you don’t point a domain name to your own hosting company. It usually happens by default.

But it sucks.

Why?

Because (1) You’re not making any money with it, and (2) GoDaddy is making money by serving their own advertisements, getting backlinks to their domain registrar services, and building their own traffic.

On your dime!

Forget that. Build your own folks. You can do it in less than an hour. If you have done some keyword research, you will undoubtedly have a couple of domain names that you want to use but simply don’t have the time now. Instead, use your BANS software to create YOUR OWN parked page and deep six the GoDaddy one.

Here’s an example of a parked page I built:

lapsteel.org

What you see there (July 2008) is the DEFAULT installation of BANS software. It literally took me all of about 20 minutes to set it up. Coincidentally, this is also the site from which I received my $5 commission.

Once I add the promotional copy on the homepage and the subsequent category pages (BANS lets you customize EACH category page) I will have a keyword rich, useful site for people interested in lap steel guitars. (I’m a musician so music-related keywords is a niche I am always interested in learning.)

BANS Use #2: eBay Affiliate Store

This is how many people use BANS and it is what it is ideally suited. You can build a complete turnkey affiliate store simply by plugging in your eBay affiliate ID.

I have a sheet music site that I am slowly working on, and you can see it evolve now. Click around and notice how the categories are written with SEO-friendly URLS and room for total customization of the category text:

iLiveMusic.com

(As of July 12, 2008 the site is still in it’s generic install mode. By the end of July there should be a highly customized sheet music site.)

Why Am I Excited About A Measly $5?

Mainly because I haven’t even started driving traffic to my sites yet. I have only had a total of 60+ clicks and I snagged a sale.

I am fully confident this is going to go gangbusters soon when traffic starts moving towards those blogs more.

In the coming weeks I will begin offering some of my strategies for driving traffic to the BANS sites. In the meantime use the links below to get your sites setup so you’ll be ready to put these strategies to good use.

• Build A Niche Store Software:It’s under $100 and it also has an unlimited license - which means you can use it over and over again on any number of sites. (Update: I didn’t even know this when I bought it, but the site also says when you own the software you get free updates for life. I am a new BANS user and never used the old version, but apparently this new version is MUCH improved over the previous.)
• Register at eBay: Chances are you already have an eBay account. If not, the link listed will take you to the eBay Registration Page.
• My parked domain site using BANS software: lapsteel.org
• My sheet music site: iLiveMusic.com

I have tried GTD numerous times. I have tried Remember The Milk and related systems. I have tried every way imaginable via LifeHacker and other sites to maximize my productivity. I usually ended up more in love with task systems than actually doing the tasks - big ups to Merlin Mann and Courtney Tuttle for helping me see the light in this regard. It’s not that the aforementioned systems suck - because they actually ROCK! But my personality type hasn’t found a method that has helped me except for what I know best - just getting in there, getting dirty, and doing whatever it takes to get it done.

So, I have purged my newsreader of miscellaneous crap. I have unsubscribed from a zillion newsletters and forums that aren’t directly related to the next 90 days. I have routed via filters other emails that aren’t time sensitive while I am working on my plan (more details on that later). I have setup an aggressive 90 Day Internet Marketing plan (of which I will publish snippets at a later date), and it starts TODAY.

My goals are very specific and listed on a separate worksheet in Google docs from my 90 day plan I will be releasing those goals in the coming weeks as I accomplish them:

My 90 Day Internet Marketing Plan In Google Docs

Signed In Blood

To make it official I crafted a 90-Day agreement with myself, signed it, printed it, and hung it on my wall in front of me:

In case you can’t read it, it says:

MARKETING PLAN AGREEMENT

I, Donald W. Makoviney, promise to execute the self-created 90-Day Internet Marketing Plan. Following this plan will give me the freedom to pursue other larger projects and achieve financial and location independence.

I am allowed to miss 3 days during this 90 day period. I will not be allowed to shift ALL events forward, and will have to make up for the previous missed day on the next day. (i.e. double my workload the following day)

The program will begin on July 7th and will end on October 5th 2008.

My signature and date below signifies my willingness to participate in and complete the program.

Failure to complete the program will result in me having to kick my own ass.

Signed: Don Makoviney
Date: 7/7/2008

Sign up for the RSS feed or email updates if you would like to stay up-to-date on my 90 day plan.

I will be posting updates weekly at DonMak.com regarding my Internet Marketing efforts.

Wish me luck!

Court says:

While we have written extensively about a lot of different techniques that can be used by people that are trying to start a blog, I still don’t feel like we have an efficient road map that can be followed by anyone. I also see a lot of people struggle with their blogs. I believe that most people don’t make much at all through blogging, even though it can be very lucrative. Something is definitely missing…

This is true.

For those of you looking to make money with your blogs or websites or e-commerce stores, Court is a great guy and knows his stuff. About two months ago I first read his articles on keyword sniping, which rang a bell in my head because it identified exactly what I was doing with an affiliate site of mine - but I was unable to quantify or duplicate my efforts.

I am now running 6 different sniping sites (in addition to the two I “accidentally” originally had) as well as my 3 year old songwriting tips website. I have at least five articles per site and a couple of the sites have ten or more articles. I have begun working on my backlinking strategy and I am having a great time.

Coincidentally I have been finding tons of extra moneymaking opportunities - even on the sniping sites themselves. This has resulted in some eye opening experiences.

So I suggest you subscribe to Court’s RSS feed, and pay attention to what he has to say. I plan on being quite active in the discussions on his upcoming video series via comments. So drop by and ask your questions as well.

Court’s Internet Marketing Videos