Mark Mason just posted this on his blog.  He is giving away FREE BACKLINKS to anyone who needs them.  And the best part its free.  You read that right… FREE.

This is all in an effort to show folks the results you can get from using 1 Way Links from Jonathan Ledger. Mark is going to give away 21 free do-follow back links to any 3 URLs that you choose (7 links to each of 3 URLs).  Not bad if you ask me.  And whats more impressive is the exposure Mark is getting from this offer.

If you dont know what 1WayLinks is… in a nutshell its a blog network where you can get hundreds if not thousands of backlinks to your websites. If you havent seen it yet. Go to Marks Blog about FREE BACKLINKS and check it out.  Follow his instructions and get yourselfs some free traffic. Then after you see the results, purchase 1WayLinks from Marks affiliate link.  Its the least you can do for the free bump in traffic Mark is giving everyone.

I love this business. There are some really cool people in it and Mark Mason is one of them. Now its time for me to go.  I have an article to write so I can get me my 21 free do-follow back links.

– So, why are you still here? Go to Marks Blog about FREE BACKLINKS and check it out!

Well I did it.  I took the plunge and started using FirePow to begin managing all of my niche sites and blogs.  I’ve debated it for a long while, trying to justify the cost and of course waiting for my next affiliate check to come in to pay for it

Mark Mason of MasonWorld explained it best by saying that if this tool can save you an hour a day of work, and that hour is worth at least $10 dollars to you, then it has paid for itself.

So my first impression?  Its amazing! I was able to import one of my existing blogs in no time and have already added new content and generated a few backlinks.  Most all of my sites are hosted at Hostgator and adding all of my login settings to manage my sites was a breeze.

The accompanying blueprints and tutorials are outstanding as well.  Andrew Hansen provides lots of great information and tips for finding profitable niches.  Thorough step by step info on how to do the research needed to have a successful niche without wasting your time.

I’m in the middle of moving many of my sites from BANS to WordPress and FirePow looks like the perfect tool to help me in my task.

I still have a lot of reading left to do, I’ve only scratched the surface with what it can do. I’m really interested to learn the blog network and see how that works.  I’ll write more as I learn more.

If you would like to see more reviews of FirePow – check it out at MasonWorld.com.  Mark Mason has been using FIrepow and has some great posts about it on his blog.

Many of you know that I’ve used Build a Niche Store (or BANS) to build quick eBay affiliate sites.  BANS allowed me to take my first step into affiliate marketing and enabled me to make money quickly online. I still recommend BANS for anyone just starting out. Its fast and easy to understand. However there are several problems with BANS that eventually become more problematic as you try to grow your sites.

BANS is great for quickly creating thin ebay affiliate sites, the problem is that Google hates thin affiliate sites.  BANS also is not very good at content management.  Yes you can add content and extra pages, new store pages, etc., but really WordPress is by far superior.  One solution many people have done and that I do is to integrate both WordPress and BANS together in the same web site.  Both BANS and WordPress are written in php, so with a little tweaking you can get BANS and just about any WordPress theme to play nice together in one seamless web site.  But this raises another problem.  It can take a lot of time to cram these two applications together to make it look and behave right.  Another problem is that it takes a good bit of html and php experience to make it all happen.  This is definitely not something for everyone.

Building websites should be easy.  You need to have a way to get them up and running fast so you can concentrate on link building and content.   So to solve these problems and create a feature rich website quickly with lots of great content with WordPress (by the way Google loves blogs and WordPress) I’ve been spending a lot of time to moving my sites to a straight WordPress install with the phpBay plugin.

phpBay is a great WordPRess plugin, very similar to BANS in that it allows you to setup ebay affiliate pages on your blog.  Its very simple and easy to use and it works great with WordPress.  The biggest difference with phpBay versus BANS is that you have to setup each page individually.  BANS on the other hand would create an entire site full of product pages in a matter of minutes.  When I first started my niche business I was super excited to have an entire site built so quickly.  But now that I’ve grown, I really prefer to build my pages by hand.  I can set all of my keywords and phrases exactly the way I want them, put some good relevant content on each page for indexing, and ensure my link text is optimum for deep linking.

It may seem like a lot more work to build your site this way. I don’t think anyone like to do things the manual way, but from my experience, I really am saving a lot a time building my sites this way.  I no longer have to recode WordPress themes to work with BANS. I don’t have to go back through each and every page to rewrite and change default keyword structures and link text. I can build out product pages and product catagories in a way that best suits my readers.  And the best of all, I have WordPress to management all of my content.

So far I completed three of my niche sites to use only WordPress and phpBay.  I was able to get these sites finished a lot faster than if I would have tried to integrate BANS and WordPress together.  And you know? phpBay is cheaper than BANS too.  $49 for phpBay -  $97 for BANS.  I think you get the point.

Okay,  I need to get back to moving things over to phpBay and making my sites profitable again.  Oh and did I mention that there is a phpZon too?  This is a great plugin made by Wade Wells (author of phpBay) that does what phpBay does only with Amazon products!  I love WordPress!!!

Untill next time – I hope you all are having all the success you diserve.

Joe

There is a really interesting thread going on over at the Coaching with Josh forum.  It was started with a great and simple question -

How did you earn your first money online?
How long did it take?
What would you have done otherwise?

Well okay that’s three questions.  But it was really great to hear everyone’s stories of their beginning.  We all remember our first penny or dollar ever made online…  If you have yet to make your first penny, trust me, you will remember that day!

This got me to thinking about my first money I made online.  It was $.32 and I was jumping up and down happy!

A good few years ago I started an free web based email site called WickedMail.com. This was way before Google, way before Paypal… about the time Yahoo! and Hotmail were in their hay day and were duking it out for email subs.  I had an account on Yahoo! and really couldn’t stand the interface.  Yeah, it was functional and free, but the Martha Stewart pastel colors were enough to drive be creatively numb.

When I was younger I was in a metal band in Austin called Wicked Gypsy.  I always liked things a little on the radical side.. I fealt like the web based email environmnet needed some excitment.  There needed to be a more fun, cool web based email site… there needed to be a site that would throw out the pastels and add some fire and flames to the design, and how about some skulls too for good measure.  Well of course none of that existed. So I thought, well then why not creat one!  The true rocker in me came out and Wicked Mail was born.

I did a little research and found that there were a lot of open source web email applications to choose from where I could create something cool like this.  There were also a few commercial applications too.  I quickly found one that fit the bill, written in php and not too terribly tough to configure.  I got it installed and quickly redisgned it.  Black background, purple and grean text, flames and skulls.  It was great.   At least I thought so…. and I guess other folks liked it too, I quickly built up a nice little database of subscribers.

So my next goal was to create a way to start charging people. I need to capitalize on this and make some money.  I needed a way to set a flag in the database for those that paid and those that didnt.  I had no idea how to do that!  I also needed a way to process credit cards!  I had no idea how to do that either!  You see there wasnt any paypal back then.  I was stuck at a point where I could either hire a developer and database admin to help me get things setup, or just let it ride and try to fumble through the code myself.  I didnt have any money so I just fumbled away at things.

It didnt take much time after that when I soon learned that local residential cable companies don’t like you running full blown mail servers from your house.  Cox cable realized what I was doing, saw a huge amount of transmit traffic coming from my house, shut off my Internet connection and told me I could never get internet access from them again!  “Geeze kind a touchy about it they were”

It was all fun and exciting look back on it. At the time I felt beaten and like I had failed.

If I could have done things differently -  I would have taken the gamble and hire that developer and dba.  I would have held on to those subscribers.

Oh and I almost forgot.  My first money I made online?  It was right at the peak of things, I got a check in the mail for $.32 for ad clicks on a banner for a condom company.  It was a great day I will always remember.

For more great discussions and learning from folks who are making money online – check out Coaching with Josh.