There are a lot of internet marketers out there and they all tell you how good they are and how much money they make on the internet, isn’t it?

They share the methodology with you, describing it sometimes in details so you can try it also, no secret there, isn’t it?

So you try it, but…the money are not yet there, you only manage to bring in $1-2 at the end of the day…

So, what’s wrong with that picture?

Well, internet marketers usually have a home site, one where they lead their business from, one they can call home; they use that site as their personal business card, they brag there about what they do, they get leads using that site, sell various products to various other wannabe marketers, etc.

However, what they don’t always tell you is that they don’t bring in those large checks they show to you FROM ONE SINGLE website. They usually have a lot of websites(50-100-150 ??!), in many cases almost identical, each one bringing in a relatively small quantity of money that adds at the end of the day pretty good. These sites work as little money harvesting units that pay the bills at the end of the month. By the way, do you think those big shots will brag about these websites? I don’t think so…

Now imagine that YOU can have 100 such small websites that bring in $1-2 per day (mostly from AdSense). If you would have 100 such websites, how $100-200/day would sound? Well, now we’re talking, isn’t it?!

That’s a very efficient method to bring in money. It’s not easy to make 100 sites, it requires time, dedication, market research, a lot of effort, but when you are there, you will be rewarded.

Now, don’t imagine EVERY marketer out there uses this technique. No, not everyone…just many of them…

If you don’t believe me, just start looking around. You will see a lot of small websites that aparently don’t have a reason to be there because they only have ads.

Well? Does this ring a bell or what?

There are 4 possible reasons for building links:

Ranking well in search engines. This is the most important reason I can think of. The more (planned) links you build to your website, the better you’ll rank in search engines results.

Page Rank in Google. Simple. If you get a link from a page with a PR better than your PR, it’s good. Get more such links and your PR will increase also.

Direct traffic. If you add links to visible spots on high traffic sites, people will click them and come to your site. Very simple. It’s like selling something on the most crowded place in your city. You must get at least a few customers, because it’s a crowded place.

Brand awareness. People see your web address and find out about you. Of course, in such cases, your web address should be visible so people see it and come to your website next time, just by remembering the address.

How links should be so you can rank well in search engines?

• If you build links for ranking in search engines, your links should contain a well searched set of keywords. Spend time in researching keywords.
  
• the link should be DOFOLLOW.
• Incontext links are better than sitewide links.
• Position matters less, if the link is above the fold or not.
• Traffic of the page that is linking to you doesn’t matter.
• PageRank of the page that links to you matters, a link from a page with a higher PR is more important than a link from a page with low PR
• The page that links to you must be relevant to your topic. Don’t link from pages about cars to pages about flowers.
• Outgoing links: when you link from a page with a high number of outgoing links, the importance of the link to you is lower. Look for pages that have not that many outgoing links. Avoid link farms and directories.

How links should be so your PageRank increase?

That’s quite a straight forward story:

• PageRank of the page linking to you matters. The higher the better.
• Traffic of the page linking to you doesn’t matter
• Position of your link in the page doesn’t matter, above the fold or not
• Outgoing links matter, you should obtain links from high PR pages with not that many outgoing links. The reason is that probably the owner of the page, after the most recent PR upgrade, exchanged links with as many sites as possible, and abused his PR so when the next update will occur, the PR will probably decrease.

How links should be so your direct traffic increase?

Not much to say here, even if it is a totally different kind of link.

• The main rule here is BE DIFFERENT AND VISIBLE!
• Above the fold links are better because people will immediately see them
• The color of the link should make it stand from the page: have a red link, for example
• Have some space around your link. Don’t have your link in a group of links cause it will probably not help you much. Instead, let your link breath, some space around it would be great.
• Have a description so people know what it is about.
• Check the ads that appear on the right side of the screen when you search something on Google. Those are the best examples. You should also read about copyrighting, about how to write ads.
• DOFOLLOW or NOFOLLOW, doesn’t matter for getting direct traffic, works the same.
• Traffic of the page that links to you really matters. A percentage of people visiting the page that links to you will click your link and come to your site. Naturally, if more people will visit that page, more people will click your link. Get it? The percentage will be low, think maybe 0.5-1%, just to make some calculations. The percentage differs depending on where your link will be added.
• There are some better positions for adding links in a page, of you can negotiate this, do it. Shortly speaking, left side and left-center positions are the best position to add banners and links, they get the highest percentage of clicks. Check the AdSense heat map, it will give you a great overview of this problem. Even if the map is explained for AdSense, it will work great for any banner and link for direct traffic.

How links should be so people find out about you?

BOLD. DIFFERENT.

Not much to say here, isn’t it?

• Doesn’t matter if the links are DOFOLLOW or NOFOLLOW, these attributes are for search engines only
• Have the address of the website somewhere in the link, people must find out about your site address
• A picture says more than 1000 words. Have a banner instead.
• Again, be bold, make people remember you. Being dull won’t help you. Better be controversial. Why do you think artists behave the way they do on the real world, making stupid things? Because they want people speak about them, so people remember.

Each link you build over time will belong probably in more than one category and almost every link you build is good. Not EVERY link, but ALMOST EVERY link, you should stay away from bad neighborhood links, they won’t do you much good.

You should build links with every possible occasion and you should never stop doing this. The more links you have, the better will be for your site. No matter that you want links for ranking well in search engines, direct traffic, brand awareness or for PageRank, you will only have benefits and honestly speaking, I don’t see this changing in the next year.

Links will probably rule for a link time. Don’t you agree?

Today I had an interesting conversation with one of my internet pen pals, Danny from GuitarPlayersCenter.com.

I like very much chatting with him, because he helps me a lot to understand how somebody who is not a internet professional receives all the information that internet marketers, SEO people, programmers throw at their readers. I am a bit of everything I enumerated above, so from time to time I have the tendency to throw a lot of information at my readers without waiting for a feedback, but I try to fix this…

Personally I have read quite a few websites about internet marketing, about how to make money online, you know the story I guess, get rich fast, buy now and get rich stuff. I still do this every day because this is what I like to do, to build websites and grow them so staying in touch with this industry is the best thing I can do.

However, as my buddy Danny said to me, “the arrogant “SEO” people should focus on customers, not themselves” and “people buy from them only to be disappointed. I’ll tell you more about my SEO experiences that I have had for about 2.5 years soon. Lets just say the time and money could have been put to better use in terms of making a living”

A very interesting observation, Danny, let me tell you, you’re right on the money, I have also observed it myself and I have thought a bit about it.

Internet marketers (not SEO people, they’re a different bunch) sometimes like to hear themselves speaking, that is true. However you should not come so hard on internet marketers or SEO people, I just think it is about how you present the information and about the level of knowledge of your readers. It is marketing. You need to identify your “target group”, to know who listens and reads you, and speak for that audience using a language that your audience will easily understand. Be sure that those marketers that have a name on the internet know that and obey that in a very strict sense.

But, coming back to the point, sometimes they like to hear themselves speak, indeed. I know sometimes it happens to me too! What?! Did somebody say that out loud? Damn! You didn’t hear that, OK, Danny?!

And indeed, a lot of times, encouraged by their own success, internet marketers make things sound easier than they are, making this whole “making money online” business a child play, when it really is not easy at all.

Actually, you know, in many cases, even the internet marketer is not that successful, he just plays that strategy you might have heard of, “fake it until you make it”, look how good I am and how well my business is doing! A lot of times, people get tricked by this strategy and start speaking about that person, about that site, creating the buzz, building the exact success the person behind the site actually wants, based on fake image.

I won’t try to sell you the big dream of expensive power boats, of making money while swimming, even if this can be achieved, but I will try to make you learn as much as I can about how to drive your website, to make a business out of a regular website, even if you don’t know much about it at that point.

And that’s a promise.