Day 47: Remember Me? – The Keyword Academy Scam Experiment
(Thursday August, 6th)
Hey guys! I got back into town Monday. Camping was fun. It was nice to get away from work, the Internet, cell phones, etc. for a few days and just relax.
I started my new job Tuesday. So far it’s been good. I’m obviously just starting to learn the ropes, but I think I’ll enjoy it. It involves helping build websites. 
I think the things I am learning with The Keyword Academy will help me in my new job.
My boss from my old job has still been bugging me, which is starting to get on my nerves. I offered to work for him for another week while he finds someone to replace me, but he said “no” because things are slow. So I went ahead and started my new job. But now he is calling me every day, trying to get me to take jobs and call customers! You had your chance man, now leave me alone!
I know none of that is in any way related to The Keyword Academy or making money online, but I needed to vent.
So, amidst all this chaos, I have still managed to work on my niche websites a little. I finished writing all 5 of my article distribution articles for site #2. I tried to submit them all to the distribution site, but apparently I have to wait till 10 of my articles (total) get approved, before I can submit any others. Oh well, at least they are written and ready to go when the time comes. Now I need to focus on link exchanges for that site.
I have been thinking more about my site revisions and I think I am getting close to final decisions about what I want to change. Aside from the other things I have mentioned before (not tracking time as a cost, changing my tag line, etc.) I think I am going to stop trying to update this site every day, and aim for once or twice a week instead. It takes a lot of time to update this site every day, and that comes out of time I could be working on my niche sites (or sleeping 
). I think now that I have detailed the building of my first couple sites, there is going to be a lot of “rinse and repeat”. Nothing that would need to be reported on every day.
Also, I am trying to think of a better way to represent the progress I’ve made on my sites. Referring to them by names like “the first one”, “the other one”, and “my wife’s site” is starting to confuse even me. But I don’t want to give away my niche keywords by telling you the names of the sites. What’s a make money online blogger to do?
I have been thinking about using a table of some kind. Like having an Excel sheet with a column for each of my sites. And rows for each task I need to complete for them, like writing content, or link exchanges, etc. Taking and uploading a screen shot of an Excel spreadsheet seems kind of cumbersome though. However I recently read about how you can make tables on webpages using HTML. Like so:
| Row 1, cell 1 | Row 1, cell 2 | Row 1, cell 3 |
I’ll play with it and see what I can do. Anyway, time to go to bed.
Oh, and let me know what you think of these ideas, please. I haven’t received many comments on this site yet. I have Stat Counter installed, so I know somebody out there is reading this! 
Money spent: $0.00
Time spent: 1.5 hours
The Keyword Academy Scam Experiment – RUNNING TOTALS:
Costs:
Monetary costs – $225.76
Time costs – 58.75 hours @ $8.40 = $493.50
Revenue:
Google Adsense – $30.08
GRAND TOTAL:
-($689.18)
(Thursday August, 6th)
Hey guys! I got back into town Monday. Camping was fun. It was nice to get away from work, the Internet, cell phones, etc. for a few days and just relax.
I started my new job Tuesday. So far it’s been good. I’m obviously just starting to learn the ropes, but I think I’ll enjoy it. It involves helping build websites. I think the things I am learning with The Keyword Academy will help me in my new job.
My boss from my old job has still been bugging me, which is starting to get on my nerves. I offered to work for him for another week while he finds someone to replace me, but he said “no” because things are slow. So I went ahead and started my new job. But now he is calling me every day, trying to get me to take jobs and call customers! You had your chance man, now leave me alone!
I know none of that is in any way related to The Keyword Academy or making money online, but I needed to vent.
So, amidst all this chaos, I have still managed to work on my niche websites a little. I finished writing all 5 of my article distribution articles for site #2. I tried to submit them all to the distribution site, but apparently I have to wait till 10 of my articles (total) get approved, before I can submit any others. Oh well, at least they are written and ready to go when the time comes. Now I need to focus on link exchanges for that site.
I have been thinking more about my site revisions and I think I am getting close to final decisions about what I want to change. Aside from the other things I have mentioned before (not tracking time as a cost, changing my tag line, etc.) I think I am going to stop trying to update this site every day, and aim for once or twice a week instead. It takes a lot of time to update this site every day, and that comes out of time I could be working on my niche sites (or sleeping ). I think now that I have detailed the building of my first couple sites, there is going to be a lot of “rinse and repeat”. Nothing that would need to be reported on every day.
Also, I am trying to think of a better way to represent the progress I’ve made on my sites. Referring to them by names like “the first one”, “the other one”, and “my wife’s site” is starting to confuse even me. But I don’t want to give away my niche keywords by telling you the names of the sites. What’s a make money online blogger to do?
I have been thinking about using a table of some kind. Like having an Excel sheet with a column for each of my sites. And rows for each task I need to complete for them, like writing content, or link exchanges, etc. Taking and uploading a screen shot of an Excel spreadsheet seems kind of cumbersome though. However I recently read about how you can make tables on webpages using HTML. Like so:
<table>
<tr>
<td>Row 1, cell 1</td>
<td>Row 1, cell 2</td>
<td>Row 1, cell 3</td>
</tr>
</table>
I’ll play with it and see what I can do. Anyway, time to go to bed.
Oh, and let me know what you think of these ideas, please. I haven’t received many comments on this site yet. I have Stat Counter installed, so I know somebody out there is reading this!
Money spent: $0.00
Time spent: 1.5 hours
The Keyword Academy Scam Experiment – RUNNING TOTALS:
Costs:
Monetary costs – $225.76
Time costs – 58.75 hours @ $8.40 = $493.50
Revenue:
Google Adsense – $30.08
GRAND TOTAL:
-($689.18)
Tags: article distribution, feedback, HTML, link building, Results, revenue, revisions, StatCounter, The Keyword Academy scam, time costs
Hey, I’m a fellow member of TKA and I’ve been following this blog since the beginning. Your request for comments has inspired me to do so, but it took me some searching to even figure out how to leave one. I wasn’t expecting to have to click on individual posts to be offered the chance to comment, so without any indication on the main page that comments can be left, it’s no surprise you aren’t getting many.
Anyway, using code names for your individual sites when referencing them on this blog is a good idea as is posting excel screen shots.
PS: I might have artificially inflated your adsense stats a little bit, because I’ve clicked your ads a few times as a ‘thank you’ for writing this blog
Hey Travis,
)
Thanks for the feedback. I’m glad to hear you’re enjoying the info! It’s really encouraging to hear that I’m helping people (well, one person at least
I hadn’t really noticed that my comment forms were hard to find until you mentioned it. I’ll try to find some way to fix that in WordPress (I’m getting pretty familiar with editing the HTML/PHP code on my own).
I’m going to try to work more on my site revisions this weekend. It’s been hard trying to find the time, but I just need to suck it up and do it.
Anyway, thanks again for the feedback! I really appreciate it (and the clicks
).
There! With a little WordPress voodoo I was able to only show an excerpt of my articles on my homepage. Now people will have to click on the articles to read the whole thing and hopefully they’ll stumble across the comment form.
Great idea Travis!
Travis – don’t click ads as “thank yous” – all that will happen is that the owner of blog will get smart-priced as a result of your efforts (Google smart prices sites if the conversion rate for the advertiser from clicks to sales is poor). Plus Google tracks those who habitually click but don’t buy and soon all your clicks will be returning zeros.
Joel, I have been following your experiment with interest. I particularly like the way you are tracking and costing the time you spend on this. Time is valuable, there is an opportunity cost to doing this stuff, and all good businesses add manpower costs to their project analysis. Good luck with this experiment!
Hey
I’ve been reading and following your experiment pretty soon after coming across TKA site itself. I too was one of those already sceptical about the claims made by some people online so even though,like yourself, the info I was reading on TKA seemed fresh, clear and linear I wasnt quite convinced and started searching around the internet to see what other people to say.
I have to be honest I’m still not totally convinced but I will be starting soon when I have more time to put into this experiment.
To be honest when I first came across your site I didnt know whether it was a clever ploy by the people behing TKA to add legitimacy to their site. And like you noticed, I’ve wanted to leave comments before but just couldn’t find the comments box!
Anyways, good luck with your endeavours, I may be joining the program soon
Thanks for reading Damno. I hope my site has helped you to be able to make an informed decision about The Keyword Academy. From my experience so far, I think that the dollar for the trial month is totally worth doing. Also, the PayPal subscription is really nice, because it’s super easy to cancel if you decide it’s not for you.
Whether or not you decide to give it a try, I wish you the best in building your online business.