The Keyword Academy Scam Experiment

Archive for June, 2009

Day 6: DNS, Addon Domains, and Plug-ins – The Keyword Academy Scam Experiment

Today, I decided to tackle the rest of the supplemental video stuff.

So first, I pointed all my domains at the Host Gator DNS servers. In the video, Court uses Proud Domains as his registrar, but their site seems to function almost exactly like GoDaddy, so I just pretty much followed his steps. One slight variation: his video shows how to change the DNS servers for a single domain, but I was doing 20. However, all you have to do is put a check mark beside all the domains you want to make the change for, and it will change them all at once, instead of having to change them one at a time. This part was cake.

Now, I needed to add all of my domains to my Host Gator account. I looked through the supplemental videos, but I didn’t see anything about how to do that. So, I turned to the Keyword Academy forums. A quick search for “addon domains” (that’s what Host Gator calls them) revealed a thread with a guy named Stede, asking the same question I had. The solution is pretty simple. In the Host Gator control panel there is a link called “addon domains” which takes you to a tool that you can use to add extra domains. (A word to the wise on this part, when you fill in the domain name you want to add, the tool auto populates the next 2 fields, just leave those alone. The auto populated defaults work fine. I cost myself some time messing around with these because I thought they did something other than they really do, lol).

It was at this point that I was very glad I had decided to spend the extra 4 bucks a month for the Premium plan. Probably would have taken me a lot longer to figure that out, without the benefit of those forums.

The next supplemental video shows you how to install WordPress to your site. WordPress is a tool that helps you build your wesite (more like builds it for you). I thought this part was going to be kind of time consuming, but boy was I wrong. Court shows you how to install WordPress using a tool that Host Gator has called “Fantastico De Luxe” (I think). I just followed the steps and had WordPress installed to my first domain in less than 5 minutes! I had it installed to all 20 domains in no time flat.

The next video shows you how to find and upload a WordPress theme to your site. I did this on one of my sites, just to get the hang of it, but I decided to wait and choose themes for all my sites later. This step is, once again, really easy especially if you’ve ever used Filezilla (or any other FTP client) before.

The last supplemental video shows you how to install a particular Search Engine Optimization plug-in to your site. The steps are almost the exact same ones you used to upload a WordPress theme in the last video.

However, I ran into another little speed bump here. My terrible ISP, Clearwire, is once again to blame. This step involves uploading files to your website through FTP, but because of my slow upload speed, the connection was timing out and failing on about every other domain. This means I would have to re-queue the files and try again. This was really frustrating. But then I thought to myself, “Since each site uses the same plug-in files, I really only need to upload the files to the server one time. After that I just need to find a way to copy them to each site’s ‘wp-content’ folder.” I couldn’t find a way to do this using Filezilla (but if there is one, please feel free to leave a comment explaining how). I remembered though, seeing a file manager in the Host Gator control panel. I opened it, and sure enough, it has a copy function, so I just used that to copy the set of plug-in files I had already uploaded to the “wp-content” folder of each of my sites. Tada!

That last video also talks a little about how to configure the SEO plug-in, but I decided to leave that for later, since it is covered more thoroughly in lesson 3 (I peeked).

Money spent: $0.00
Time spent: 4 hours

The Keyword Academy Scam Experiment – RUNNING TOTALS:
Costs:
Monetary costs – $192.76
Time costs – 20 hours @ $8.40 = $168.00
Revenue:
Google  Adsense – $0.00

GRAND TOTAL:
- ($360.76)

Day 5: Purchasing Hosting – The Keyword Academy Scam Experiment

After watching the rest of the supplemental videos I was ready to purchase my hosting. I went with Host Gator (the web host recommended in the videos). If you go with their “Baby” plan, you can host an unlimited number of domains, with an unlimited amount of bandwidth for $10 a month (less if you pay for a full year at a time). They also have a coupon code on their home page right now for 20% off your first order. Well, I’m sold!

Setting up the hosting was really easy an didn’t take long at all. Just follow the steps in the video and you’re done.

I didn’t really have any more time to devote to this today, so I quit here.

Money spent: $7.96
Time spent: 1 hour

The Keyword Academy Scam Experiment – RUNNING TOTALS:
Costs:
Monetary costs – $192.76
Time costs – 16 hours @ $8.40 = $134.40
Revenue:
Google  Adsense – $0.00

GRAND TOTAL:
- ($327.16)

Day 3: Domain Registration – The Keyword Academy Scam Experiment

Me and my wife spent some time figuring out what domains to buy for our keywords (the method for doing this is covered at the end of the second lesson). That really didn’t take long at all.

However, I was a bit lost when I went to register my domains. I’d never done this before and was a little unsure of the process. I wish they had covered how to do this in the Keyword Academy course.

Since they had made no suggestion about which domain registrar to go with in the second video, I just picked  GoDaddy. It was actually very simple and quick. Still, I would have appreciated some help with the steps.

Also, if you register in bulk (5 domains or more) you get a price break. The cost wasn’t that bad considering that I registered 20 domains for 1 year each, but on my budget 180 bucks is a pretty big deal.

I started thinking more about why they wouldn’t explain in the Keyword Academy course how to do this. They have been very thorough up to this point with giving explicit, step-by-step instructions. I went back to their website and clicked on the next lesson (which is about configuring WordPress). I noticed at the top of the page, some links to supplemental videos, the first of which deals with registering your domains. Ah ha!

I think this was a bad design choice for the site. If you are going to tell people at the end of lesson 2 that they can go ahead and buy their domains, then you should also tell them that there are supplemental videos that show them how to do that, and link them in lesson 2, not in lesson 3. Kind of a minor thing, but it would have been very helpful to me and I am sure to other beginners.

Money spent: $183.80
Time spent: 2 hours

The Keyword Academy Scam Experiment – RUNNING TOTALS:
Costs:
Monetary costs – $184.80
Time costs – 15 hours @ $8.40 = $126.00
Revenue:
Google  Adsense – $0.00

GRAND TOTAL:
- ($310.80)