SEO WORLD NEWS

We arived in Amsterdamn (minus 1 bag that wanted to see other parts of the world apparently) around 6:00 pm and went to explore the local “coffee” shops and the red light district. Visited the Moulin Rouge for a strip show, bananna act and live sex on stage. In truth, it couldn’t have been any less sexy - but the novelty of it was pretty fun. When the male performer got on stage, my wife and I turned to each other and said in unison “It’s Jackie Chan!” - I swear, the dude was a spitting image.

Early this afternoon we took one of our MacBook Pros in to be service. It has the white screen of death (needs new hard drive) and 3 of the keys on the keyboard don’t work. But hey, at least we can still fry and egg on it.

Of course it was out of warrenty - which expired on Auguest 10th. Apple must have a fucking time bomb that goes off in their computers to destroy them once they’re out of warrenty.

Total damage was 314 euros: and now that the dollar is worth about the same as a piece of used toilet paper, that comes to $439 . . . about the price of a cheap non Apple laptop. Guess that’s what it means to “Think Different” . . . I think we just got fucked.

The Food has been good, the people nice, and the weather a bit cold and rainy - but no complaints. Amsterdamn is a lot of fun.

The Webmaster Access show starts tomorrow and I’ll probably post some highlights and pics.

The program for granting an automatic 24-hour transit visa to people flying with connecting flights in the US from one International Location to another apparently no longer exists. It did a few years ago, but it doesn’t any more.

If you are from:

Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium Brunei, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, or the United Kingdom

You have nothing to worry about.

If however, you are traveling with your Brazilian wife who only just applied for a Visa 9 months ago (Which means she doesn’t have a visa yet) and you (for example) want to fly from Panama with a 3 hour layover in Atlanta before you continue on to Amsterdam . . . well you’re just shit out of luck.

It doesn’t matter if you specifically ask the airline about this very issue on the phone when you purchase the tickets and they tell you you’re fine, they will not let your wife get on the plane if you do not go to the embassy and get a visa.

In a scenario like the one above, where you purchased your tickets and arrived at the airport – lets say on a Sunday, you’re options will be to deal with the US visa process (which could take forever) or to just find another rout that does not include the United Police States Of America.

Via Andy Beard, we find Stumbleupon mathematics for stumblers.

We may be totally wrong so just a heads up but I hope this will at least give you some idea of what your thumb up is doing.

 

One Theory Point:

The audience score was based on number of fans, number of pages thumbed up, number of pages thumbed down and number of reviews written. The score is what determines how much stumble juice a person carries.

 

And possible working Algorithm:

(Initial stumbler audience /# domain) + ((% stumbler audience /# domain)+ organic bonus – nonfriend) – (((% stumbler audience + organic bonus) + N

 

Only those inside stumble know for sure, but this Stumbleupon formula looks like it could be close to right.

These last few weeks have been incredibly hectic. Between buying and selling sites, tweaking a custom CMS, stacking the seo black hat forum, traveling all over the world, visiting lawyers, partners, and investors, getting back into the gym and everything else, I’ve barely had time to breath.

The 2 projects I couldn’t help notice getting tons of ink are Blogrush and the Million Dollar Wiki. So congrats to those guys for a full on web-relations assault. I wish you both the best of luck (even though I haven’t visited the sites) and congratulate you on your early success.

Grey Wolf has an Interesting look at the differences in analytics software results.

Cory Doctorow did a cool short story on If Google Were Evil.

And Jeff Random turned me on to a really cool new novel, Accelerando, that’s available for a free download from the author. I’m about 100 pages in and it’s SUPER Geeky . . . and that’s just fine by me.

Via v7n, we find 8 Ways a Competitor Can Sabotage Your Site:

Although you may feel helpless against these attacks, victims of sabotage have the law on their side. Many of these 8 methods are explicitly illegal under US la

 

In the next two weeks, I will be acquiring a site for $400,000. Obviously, there are risks involved; the market for the services could collapse, a new competitor could spring up and take away traffic, or Google Could just give us the Flaming Finger and take away half the site’s traffic overnight.

Now, I’m confident we can continue to grow the site and there is great synergy with some of the other projects we work on. I like to think I know a thing or two about managing Google, so I’m not overly worried about the Search Engine traffic. The price we agreed on is very fair; not so cheap that it’s a steal and not so expensive that it doesn’t make sense.

$400,000 isn’t chump change for me . . . not yet anyway. For an acquisition like this, I like to mitigate some of the risk and preserve my cash position for future acquisitions. It’s also important to me not to give up equity if I don’t have to.

Enter our Mezzanine Financing Structure

We’re working with a private investor or two this week to loan money to buy the site using the domain and site revenue as collateral. While I will be taking over the operation of the site, I’m not personally guaranteeing the loan, so the rate has to be attractive to the Investors. Moreover, Investors like to see that I actually believe in the project and have some “skin in the game.”

So I’ll be putting up 20% of my money to buy the site: $80,000. The Investor puts up $320,000 and gets a monthly payment of $ 15,200 - $16,000 for 24 months depending on what rate we finally agree on; that’s a yield of 13%-18%.

With this Financing structure I’m happy because I don’t have to give up equity, I mitigated my risk and acquired the site.

The Investor is happy because he gets a great return on his money and doesn’t have the hassle of running a site.

The current site owner is happy because he gets a nice payday and is relieved of all the risk and responsibility associated with the site.

It’s the kind of deal you always want to craft: one where everyone wins.

Looking to jumpstart your career as a web entrepreneur or SEO Consultant? Aching to see how the pros really do it? Want to work alongside me, QuadsZilla?

Well then today just may be your lucky day.

SEO Black Hat will be taking on an unpaid intern to work on various projects in Search, Mainstream Web Projects, and porn Adult (and no, we’re not shooting content).

The Hours will be long (about 25 per week), the pay sucks (nothing), you have to put up with my shit (yay fun!) and you will be doing mostly white and grey hat projects (read “somewhat boring”).

I can be a demanding hard ass who doesn’t have time for people who can come up with “great excuses” for not getting things dong.

If you’re not responsive and reliable or there just isn’t a personality fit, I’ll fire your ass from this unpaying job faster than a [see here].

However, you will get hands on experience and training on how to:

• run extremely profitable web businesses
• build sites from scratch to profitability
• grow web communities
• network and develop a digital rolodex of successful web entrepreneurs

Most Good SEOs are taking home more than $350k per year and doing it on their own terms. Look at me – I basically work when I want, where I want, and with whom I want.

My ideal candidate is a sexy English major senior at an Ivy league University who has worked summers as a successful sales rep even though she’s a trust fund baby. . . but I might just settle for you.

Think you should get the job?

Convince me.

I got this email from Christine Daukas a few minutes after a signup to the SEO Black Hat Forums:

My name is Christine Daukas and I just received a very alarming email
from Pay Pal stating that I subscribed something from you and your
company for $100.00 Stop Now! I am a student teacher and the $100.00
that you are “steling” from me will cause my checking account to be
overdrawn> I am very very angry put the money back into my account
now!
Christine Daukas

 

I replied to Christine Daukas:

Christine Daukas,

Your account was probably phished. It wasn’t done by me.

Be sure to change your papal and email passwords and, in the future, be more careful.

Please forward the paypal receipt to me and I’ll take care of it today.

 

Christine Daukas didn’t forward the receipt. However, since it was a very recent transaction and I wanted to get it off my plate, I went into paypal, was able to see it on the front page and reversed it in about 2 minutes.

Then Christine Daukas sends me back this email:

Don’t have the audacity to tell me to “be more careful” ass wipe. Make
sure that you confirm your transactions.

 

Odd way of saying thank you – don’t you think?

Update from Christine Daukas:

Because of your carelessness and having to deal with the theft I was
late to the most important interview of my career. Sorry that I called
you a name, it’s not my style. I was very stresssed having to contact
you, paypal my bank and credit card company.

 

While I don’t feel that I was at all careless, (having refunded the money 3 minutes after hearing about the situation and giving her tips to avoid similar problems in the future) I do understand that sometimes people get stressed and act out of character, and accept her apology.

I didn’t make it to SES Domain Roundtable, but via aaron wall I found Frank Schilling’s Keynote Speech - and it was Awesome. It’s an Hour video, but well worth the watch.

Frank Said he’s “A lot like the people in this room” and I think he’s right. Well, he’s at least a like like the people in the room I’m in now. I could see myself making a similar speech in a similar tone; hopefully he doesn’t take this the wrong way, but Frank’s a lot like me.

An SES highlight that’s making the rounds is Grey Wolf’s powerpoint presentation on paid links: it’s also worth a look. Most everyone who’s anyone in SEO knows that paid links work. Now it seems clear that Google sees Buying and selling links as “Black Hat SEO”. In light of this seemingly steadfast attitude of casting the entire competent SEO community as blackhats, we will probably be expanding our coverage of the paid link market and best outline more best / worst practices for buying and selling links.

A few days ago I got this email:

Hi Quad,

How would you start if you only had 2000 to start with? Would you work on one authority site or multiple site in a network for the same niche. I’m looking at ppc, e-com and authority sites. Would you master one thing or have your hand in different areas of making money online?

 

So the question is really “Where should someone new to Internet Entrepreneurship Start?’

First, if you’re new and on a budget you will probably be better off doing one site (and doing it well) in a niche than putting up many sites in the same niche with substantially the same content.

Next there’s “Would you master one thing or have your hand in different areas of making money online?” Well, for me I usually pound the hell out of one thing till it’s working then move on to something else once I have a profitable system in place or the “thing” no longer works. It is kinda cool getting a paycheck every month for sites I set up 2 years ago and have barely looked at in the past 20 months. I make more money off of bullshit side stuff now than I did from the stuff I was working my ass off on a few years ago.

PPC vs Organic

Then there is the question of PPC vs organic (authority). Personally, I’d spend that $2000 buying authority, but if you have a great landing page that converts well (and profitably), you could conceivably parlay that $2000 into $4000 rather quickly.

The problem is $2000 isn’t a hell of lot to start with on PPC. And if you’re not making money right off the bat, you have to wonder “is it the terms I’m buying?’ “Is it the Landing Page?” “what about quality score?” and “am I just paying too much per click?” If you don’t solve that problem quickly, you could run through all your seed money before you even get started.

So what about e-commerce?

I hear all kinds of cool stories about people making good money sell crap on ebay. They’ll find something they are interested in and go out and get some inventory (Like used books that they buy for pennies a pound) and resell it on ebay. That’s not exactly my cup of tea (dealing with postage and all), but it’s a nice way to start making some extra cash quickly. Everyone’s got some kind of crap they can sell on ebay.

How to Choose a Niche

You could develop your own niche informational product – like an ebook about traveling in Bangladesh and sell it. You could build up several authority sites and just sell links. You could start a porn site, sell a simple web ap, generate Investment property leads, do café pess stuff . . . really there’s just no end to the possibilities.

What are you really interested in? What niche can you become a bona fide expert in where people will want to seek out and do business with you? It doesn’t matter if it’s Jousting Midgets or Exotic Horticulture, MMORPGs or Woman’s Shoes. What matters is that it’s something you’re passionate about because that will dictate your enthusiasm to get things going and stamina to keep it growing.

Find something you will ENJOY leaning and reading about all day. Then make sure there is some money to be made in that niche and pound the hell out it. For choosing a niche for an aspiring entrepreneur it should really it boils down to:

What do you love?