What exactly is SERP Attacks?

Basically, SERP Attacks is a blistering fast site backlink explorer, KW research tool and overall a user friendly, powerful toolbox for drilling down into the best and most profitable niches, be it you dabble in Adsense, Amazon affiliate websites, domain flipping, or what have you. SERP Attacks is still a bit rough on the edges, but clearly shows signs of potential, if the developer does everything right. Here’s a quick glance at what you can do with this software out of the box:

The good stuff about SERP Attacks

Being a regular Market Samurai user I was awestruck by the sheer speed at which SERP Attacks operates, even in this early version (1.2.35). When loading the software for the first time I clicked OK to let it update itself, and few seconds later a neatly organized main window opened on my screen.

The user friendly interface makes it easy to type in a web domain for a backlink check, and SERP Attacks went to work immediately: in a matter of seconds it listed the top 20 domains based on my KW, complete with their external backlinks, site links and PR.

Below the results a short text in bold confirmed the KW to have a Difficulty Rating of “Moderately Easy”. All of this information is neatly arranged on one page for an easy overview at a quick glance. Note: on the screenshot I had just ran a search on the extremely competitive KW “dog training”.

A brief listing of what SERP Attacks can do for you:

• Helps you drill down into profitable and realistic niches
• Localized search competition analysis
• Supports Yahoo!, Altavista, Google, Bing and Ask (W.I.P.)
• Shows future trends for your keywords
• Helps you find good domain names
• Use it to find good affiliate products at ClickBank and Amazon
• See your site rank from different locations and in different SE
• Built-in back link spy lets you easily reveal your competitors BL
• Easily analyze how your keyword is doing in the SERP
• Analyzes your website for possible SEO improvements
• And more

That is an impressive list of features for such affordable product, although bear in mind that the price for the paid version will increase from the current $47 at some point, as it is still in development and the team is currently running a heavy discount to get it out on the market. I am guessing it will land at $97, which will still give competitors such as Market Samurai, Traffic Travis and others a run for the money.

SERP Attacks still needs improvements and polishing, but other than minor snags, which is to be expected in an early version, I am impressed by how well it runs. Some reviewers are a little reluctant in regard to how Google Adwords works in conjunction with this software; the user must type in his/her Adwords login data in order to take full advantage of Adwords from within SERP Attacks. On the other hand, if this is an issue at all, simply create a new, free Google Adwords account for this purpose.

This is my initial impression with the SERP Attacks software. It is fast, offers a nice range of tools, and developed by the same team who made Tweet Attacks, they seem to know pretty well what they are doing.

Back to the title question: is SERP Attacks better than Market Samurai? The only answer I can give at this point, is that you should download both (Market Samurai is available as a Free Trial here) and see for yourself. Market Samurai has been out for years, whereas SERP Attacks is a (pretty awesome) newbie, one that might give the guys at Noble Samurai a run for their money eventually. The PRO version of SERP Attacks is temporarily lowered to an introductory price $47 and comes with a 7 day full satisfaction guarantee. Click here for more information on SERP Attacks and a free download.

To Autoblog or not to Autoblog

It is a common misconception that autoblogs merely requires a quick and simple set up to run on autopilot and take care of itself from there on. On contrary, properly setting up and managing a network with many fully automated blogs requires significant effort on your part, using a number of different plugins within each blog, which in turn requires updates in order to preserve the overall blog and plugin security and efficiency .

The higher the number of autoblogs, the more work goes into keeping everything alive and updated, and even though it may sound easy now, many autoblog owners maintain up to, or more than 100 automated blogs. On the other hand: one single, properly set up autoblog covering a strong niche, or even several niches, alternating high quality, unique content and syndicated posts, is likely to be more productive than typically quick-and-dirty set up auto-blog networks.

Before setting up an automated nice WordPress blog, let’s look at pros and cons:

(The most obvious) Advantages of automated blogs:

• With a proper blog set up it is possible to achieve a near hands-off approach to making money on the Internet
• After setting up everything and with a solid system in place, an autoblog requires relatively little maintenance
• Easy: you can buy complete packages with plugins, content, e.t.c., for installing on your own domain
• Contrary to (dis)belief, Google appreciates syndicated content when used in compliance with their T.O.S.
• Autoblogs can work very well with Amazon, ClickBank, and numerous other solid affiliate opportunities

(The most obvious) Disadvantages of running automated blogs:

• Using your Adsense Publisher ID on web pages within an auto-blog is risky, and you might lose your account
• Due to vast amount of content, server and bandwidth usage, shared hosting is not an optimal option (see below)
• Without proper setup and regular maintenance, autoblog networks will be prone to security holes and issues
• Google dislikes poorly setup autoblogs, and they will de-index the domain if it is in violation of their T.O.S.
• Using a cheesy, automated content rewrite plugin with your autoblog almost guarantees a de-index or worse
• Setting up and running autoblogs is hardly as easy as many perceive
• Auto-blogging is considered blackhat, thus it is imperative that you know exactly what you are doing

“Why can’t I use my shared hosting account with autoblogs? I do it now!”"

Installing autoblogs on a shared web hosting account you are effectively exploiting the web host provider. Autoblogs are resource-hogs and not intended for cheap, shared hosting. Shared hosting servers are designed to handle small to medium websites and/or a couple blogs running a limited number of plugins. Customers using shared hosting for running their massive autoblogs risk being kicked out by the hosting provider as their autoblogs often taxes the server CPU, memory and bandwidth enough to cause a noticeable performance impact for other users on the same server.

“But I cannot afford Dedicated hosting… so that means I’m out of options, or what?”

Actually, to some extent it is possible to run autoblogs on shared hosting servers, depending on the type of blog or website. For instance, an automated Amazon affiliate website is typically not very resource-hungry if set up to run efficiently without slowing the server down with a number of resource-sucking, poorly optimized WP-plugins. HostGator use solid shared hosting server hardware capable of handling a bigger workload than most, and autoblogs are allowed, but occasionally they fire customers taxing a shared server with their autoblog/s to such degree, other customers experience a significant performance hit.

Case in point: “HostGator suspended my autoblog due high server load” (Warrior Forum)

To Autoblog or not to Autoblog – the first steps

1. Find a lucrative main niche to focus on. Read more here, and here (YouTube). One of my favorite tools for market niche research is Market Samurai. Click here for the free trial.
2. Decide on a blog system, whichever you prefer. I choose WordPress
3. Install the blog software on your server (I prefer HostGator)
4. Google plugins: Google search inquiry on “autoblog plugins”
5. Visit WordPress.org for free autoblog plugins
6. This plugin is mandatory for autoblogs: WP Super Cache
7. Find a suitable theme: 10 beautiful and free WP 3.0-ready themes
8. When syndicating articles, leave the backlinks to the author intact!
9. Mix syndicated and unique content for higher perceived quality
10. Do not use auto-spin tools or plugins; auto-spun content sucks, not to mention it is easily recognized for bots and humans alike.

If you plan to start autoblogging, take into consideration the risk factors mentioned above. Respect the search engines and their terms, mix properly syndicated content with your own, unique content and your autoblogs are more likely to be treated well by SE and achieve better SERP rankings than sloppy autoblogs syndicating re-hashed and poorly spun content.

Practice makes imperfect

When having set up and tweaked a couple of autoblogs, you will develop your own technique and feeling for which plugins works best, balancing the unique and the syndicated content, and ultimately to give your visitors a good experience, which is what Google wants. Autoblogs are far from perfect, considering they are driven by bot software and cannot interact with visitors, but when doing it right your autoblog looks just like any normal blog, and behaves almost exactly the same.

Revisiting the initial question of whether to Autoblog or not to Autoblog, I hope you have found this post helpful at all, and I hope you are successful whichever path you take.

WordPress, Internet Marketing and The Future

WordPress keeps growing and improving, and what you are looking at here is WordPress 3.1 with one of the default themes, the Twenty Ten. I have not edited it any since I installed it, having been struggling somewhat with lots of various problems possibly caused by all the hundreds of lines of code that I have previously changed and played around with in my WordPress installation.

So far I am really impressed with the “new WordPress”. The custom menus aren’t new, but the overall improvements shows a lot of care has gone into improving and polishing the blog, website and CMS platform we all have grown attached to. Many marketers and entrepreneurs still prefer other and similar solutions, i.e. Joomla, however I believe WP with its strong foundation and versatile structure is bigger than ever.

I was going to just clean this slate and re-install WordPress around Christmas, but better late than never, and I will have a look at backing up the database and installing everything fresh on my server, today.

The Game called Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing is as exciting as it ever was, perhaps even more so these days. New products are being developed and released every other day, prices are more often beginner-friendly (IncanSoft makes a great example). And sometimes you simply need to buy another tool or two, if only to feel you are moving somewhere (preferably forward) with your efforts, and not just standing in the same spot as last year.

But please, don’t buy just any random and hyped-up IM product you see offered in forum WSO’s, on Twitter or wherever you may roam on your never-ending hunt for the perfect tool to aid in your efforts to make money online. Sometimes it is wise to invest a couple of dollars in a new tool, especially when it offers a lot for the money. The tools mentioned below are ones I had been considering for many months, before I finally took the plunge and bought them all. Having been paid by Google several times since I got started with Adsense, now is a perfect time to pay something back to IM product developers.

So, I went out and purchased some new IM tools in the last couple of days. I look forward to take full advantage of it, and I will share my experience with you, in case you are sitting on the fence on these products yourself, like I did for a while:

• Market Samurai ($149, see below for discount information)
• The Best Spinner ($7 trial then $77/year, see below for discount information)
• ScrapeBox ($97, see below for a discount information)
• ClickBump Engine ($97, no discount available as far as I can tell)

I’ll describe these products briefly as follows (no affiliate links, promise):

Market Samurai is the Ultimate All-In-One solution for Keyword and Niche research. The current price is $149, which is what I paid for it, having already used the free trial period last year. Honestly, the Noble Samurai team has earned my money 100% with this extremely powerful market research toolbox. I recommend nonetheless that you sign up for their free trial first, then upgrade (if you like it) to to the full version for $97.

The Best Spinner runs at $7 for a trial period, then $77 annually. It is still being regarded one of the very best article/blog spinning software solutions available today. Note that TBS is not an fully automated spinning tool, it doesn’t produce worthless crap articles that will only get you banned from article directories and worst case scenario lose your SERP ranking. It still requires that you use your grey matter, but it helps tremendously with re-writing PLR and other content into high quality spins. I hope they won’t get mad at me for sharing this, but I pay only $47 annually for the very same product, thanks to the kind Warrior Forum member kingwarrior and his discount thread here. The offer won’t last much longer, so if you read this in due time and are still on the fence for this product, I strongly suggest that you take the plunge now.

ScrapeBox is currently $97, and even though I respect the work they have done with this incredibly powerful scraper enough to not post a discount link, it suffices to say that a quick Google search will return a $57 discount price for this product. ScrapeBox is capable of producing huge lists with auto approval WP blogs with a decent PR, and build tons of back-links. Like weapons and live ammo, always treat ScrapeBox with caution, and it is generally recommended that you use it with high quality, reliable private proxies. Another thing that makes ScrapeBox cool: it has built-in add-on support, with one-click installation! I have installed several add-ons to filter out WP blogs with PR 0, no comments, to check the domain back-links, outbound links, and more. Very versatile and powerful tool.

ClickBump Engine is another $97 product made by and for WordPress addicts. There is no discount available for this product, I’m afraid, but here’s what you get for less than a hundred US dollars:

• The ClickBump Engine system
• 12 SEO-optimized WordPress templates (not themes)
• Jumpstart: with one mouseclick your brand new WP blog is 99% complete
• ClickBump SEO: reads your new posts & gives advice on SEO improvements
• Buy new Premium WP themes for only $10 each, with easy installation
• Superb, free support and updates for 6 months included, then a small $17 fee for future support and updates
• Earn up to $48,50 per sale (ClickBump Engine bundle) as a CB affiliate

Everything considered, this is a great offer. I am working on setting up a couple of new WP sites with this system as I write this, and I will come back with updates when I’m done. The Warrior Forum members have been all over this product since developer Scott Blanchard released it, and they are loving it, from what I can see. The only thing I am not too hyped about is the X-Factor-clone WP templates included with the ClickBump Engine package. I probably won’t use them, and instead I purchased some of the affordable WP Premium themes running at ~$10-15 each. These are uploaded and activated from within the WP ClickBump panel.

That’s all for now. I am going to prepare my puny WP database for the next backup, then remove everything reminiscent of this current installation, before I install everything again. Don’t be surprised if I decide to use the ClickBump Engine for Easy Money Central as well! With its powerful SEO juice plug-ins, I see no reason not to; these are all part of my efforts to improve my relationship with WordPress, Internet Marketing and the Future.

Take care and have a most excellent day!

To take advantage of their offer, use the discount code “SAVEBIG” on their website. If you have been contemplating registering a new domain name or a few, this is an excellent opportunity to save money.

Do your KW research, make a list with domain names without too much competition (product type websites work very well with Adsense), add to the order list in your NameCheap account (free to register) and simply type in the discount code “SAVEBIG” before you continue with the purchase.

You do not HAVE TO use an exact keyword in your domain name, but by doing so you gain some advantage even before your website/blog is filling up with SEO-rich content. A combination of the exact keyword in your domain and SEO rich content (don’t overdo it; write for humans, not bots), will give your domain a nice boost in the SERP.

Dicsount offers like this are not very common, so grab it while you can.

If you are planning to purchase new domains or renew your current .COM or .NET domains, do it within the next two days. A price increase is coming which is going to make an impact on the economy of smalltime bulk domain buyers and renewers. Is it something to be worried about?

On July 1, 2010, the price on .COM and .NET domain names will increase by 7% and 10% respectively according to VeriSign®, the registry operator of .COM and .NET. Register your new domains and/or renew your current ones before that date, and you will save anything from Pennies to larger amounts. Owners of micro niche blog /website networks especially will notice the impact of the increase.

As you may have noticed from my post thumbnail, my preferred domain registrar is NameCheap. I use GoDaddy too, but would not hesitate to recommend NameCheap simply because they offer the most complete solution for me. They provide WhoIs Guard protection and an SSL sertificate for the first year for each new domain registered with them, at no extra cost.

A few words on micro niche domains and the new prices

The price increase is hardly an issue for those with less than 10-30 domains. Micro niche blog and site builders on the other hand, will no doubt feel the sting. On that note: with the changes introduced with the infamous MayDay-update, with which Google confirmed they hate dislike micro niche blogs with keyword-optimized content to entice visitors into clicking AdSense or other affiliate links, I’m sure there already are thousands of niche domains available in the market today, seeing how many micro niche sites have been de-indexed lately.

According to this response in the NameCheap support forum, effective on July 1, 2010 the new price on .COM and .NET domains will be $9.98 plus an $0.18 ICANN fee. In other words not a big deal for us small timers, but if you are the next niche network King and you have everything planned out but haven’t completed the domain bulk purchase yet, now is the time.

Also take note that, discount coupon codes for NameCheap domain names are only valid when either purchasing a new domain, or if you have at least 40 domain names registered with NameCheap, you can use the discount code when renewing your domains. I have noticed some customers with less than 40 domain names who asked nicely for an exception from those terms, and the NameCheap staff seem to respond positively quite often to those requests. But on general basis you should have at least 20-30 domains with them if you are going to try your luck.

Don’t forget about the thousands of laser-targeted niche domains that will become available in the market in the next couple of months, many of which already have a significant number of back-links pointing to them. Not that it has not been like that for several years, but the MayDay update killed off thousands of niche sites and I have already seen many great domain names going cheap in places like NamePros.

Happy site building and domain hunting!

I haven’t given up on this blog, but rather channeling my efforts in other areas right now, to increase my online income, update myself on the massive, recent changes in the Google camp (MayDay update) and learn more about everything in general.

I am also happy to say that the MayDay update didn’t hurt my domains, and that you should not listen to doomsday-sayers  claiming it to be the end to all micro niche sites and blogs. Google now rewards your efforts richly upon posting relevant, in context content in your blog or on your website, simply as that. Also, Web 2.0 properties such as Squidoo and Hub Pages seem to attract more followers now. Why should they post their own, unique content on their own domain when they can simply post regurgitated PLR content on a lens or miniwebsite, and still earn shared AdSense revenue with it.

But, enough of that!

Today, Tuesday June 22, 9:00PM – 11:00PM EDT, Brian Johnson and Alex Goad will team up to talk about and show a live demonstration of their new product launch, the Halloween Super Affiliate system. As the Webinar will promote a new IM product, expect a lot of hype and sales pitch, but it is 100% free to join and you’ll get this:

Free Bonus Gifts for the webinar participants:

• Bonus Gift #1: Revenue Domains Exposted ($97 value)
• Bonus Gift #2: 4 Months Free Access to SEO Cockpit. This is truly a must-have which includes the following tools: Backlink Monitoring, Automatic Rankings Monitor, Indexed Pages Monitor, Automatic Stats Alert, and more.
• Bonus Gift #3: Affiliate Payload + Advanced Training Videos ($97 + $127 Value – Free)
• Bonus Gift #4: Site Rush + Advanced Training Videos ($97 + $127 Value – Free) – Learn how to flip (sell) your niche sites for profit.

Sign up by clicking the link below, and click the Webinar link that you will find in your Inbox, when the party launches:

Halloween Webinar with Awesome Super-Affiliate Bonus Gifts

(don’t worry; it’s not an affiliate link)

The information is neatly organized, easy to navigate and well worth a read, and I suggest that you add their website to your bookmarks for easy access to the information when you need it. Before you go off spending your heard earned money on random auction websites, do yourself a favour and visit their Online auction website.

As one of their members put it in their forum: “this e-mail was the final nail in the coffin.” The e-mail was sent out earlier today and the first reactions from the IM Report Card community are starting to show, starting with disbelief. Being the last in a serious of events continually weakening their relationship with the user base, this “final nail” is likely to cause a number of IMRC members to close their accounts and/or stop participating, e.g. adding new reviews.

IM Report Card’s new and revised system still allows members to earn credits for posting reviews, suggesting new IM websites and vote on other members reviews, with main difference being that they are no longer eligible to cash out their credits as money. Instead, they are required to exchange the credits into digital IM products.

I had a feeling “something was up” when I had suggested a couple of websites in accordance with the F.A.Q., and they were still “Pending” a week and a half later. I have lost my earnings with IM Report Card, although I do not regret the reviews I posted on their website, based on personal experience with the products. If my reviews are of any help to those looking for honest reviews on a particular product or service, it was time well spent.

I repeat: as of February 22, 2010, you are no longer eligible to earn real money with IM Report Card, only credits that can be exchanged into digital Internet Marketing products. Even though some members suggest they (IM Report Card) will put a credit price tag on freebie products and sell it as something with monetary value, those are pure speculations, and it would be wise to take such rumors with a grain of salt.

IM Report Card has another issue, though: communication; they sent out an e-mail update on their recent Trial Pay Now offer, but forgot to mention that they had removed the referral earnings. This was silently added to their website F.A.Q., and members who found it shared the update in the support forum. A couple of days later came the message about IM Report Card no longer paying their members.

According to IMRC, it was numerous frauds that ultimately led to this, although their members question why other social communities such as MyLot, that has been online for five years, still running and paying their members despite having to combat fraud attempts all the time, are doing just fine.

Either way, I wrote this as a head’s up for those who haven’t read their e-mail or in other ways are not aware of the recent changes in their system. IM Report Card is a decent user review site, but without the incentives it will be interesting to see how many new user reviews are added in the coming days and weeks.

When visiting the website you are offered a free account with 1 bid included. The idea is to use the free bid to learn how the system works; you won’t need to use your own money for that. Thanks to the basic rules you will be up and bidding in no time.

When you feel confident on how to operate the bidding system, browse the auctions until you find one you want to participate in. Click the “Active Auctions” button to get an overview of the current Live auctions. You will notice a small “i” in each auction’s link button. Click it for more information on that particular auction. The information provided is as follows:

• Bidback 2nd
• Bidback 3rd
• Unique bidders
• Bid ope time
• BidJames On/Off

When you have found the auction you want to participate in for a chance to earn easy money, all you have to do is to press the bid button, and your bid will register and you are in the game.

BidJames is your virtual bidding helper, always ready to assist in your bidding rounds by placing the optimal bid amounts for you, so that you can do other things while the auction runs in the background. Every time you place a bid the countdown timer is reset and the price will increase by 1¢, one cent. New auctions start at $0,00 and your BidonCash account is deducted with one bid for each successful auction bid. Participants must be 18 years or older to place a bid in a BidonCash auction.

BidonCash also has a referral program: for each friend you refer to BidonCash, you earn 10 free bids which is a value of $10. Register with BidonCash for free now: Easy Money

While browsing some of Camarades’ web cams, I suddenly found myself looking at what could have been a very strange dog breed, or a mutant cat of some kind. But it was a deer. A vision impaired, domestic house pet deer! I thought those creatures were supposed to wandering around in the woods, looking adorable. A lady popped into view from the left, approaching the bed upon which a wild animal was resting. She sat down and cuddled it like she probably would any cute dog or cat, really big ones.

It was a true Disney moment. Dillie the house pet deer lives in Ohio together with the rest of the family, which includes some just as adorable cats, and a nice lady. You can watch their web cam by visiting this link, and they even have their own FaceBook  fan page!

Other than finding a domestic deer on a web cam, it’s been a weird day: a free e-mail provider I have used for many years and always liked, are shutting down their services, and I have received the first warnings from Microsoft regarding Windows 7 Ultimate RTM soon to be deactivated. I have contemplated upgrading, but will revert to Windows XP Professional, instead. Nothing about Windows 7 made me want nor need it more than XP.

Since this post was so very serious already, let’s finish off with a delicious dog fart:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Z28X42_oX4