First Month Summary – The Keyword Academy Scam Experiment


As mentioned in my last daily update, I’ve already come to the end of my first month of using The Keyword Academy system. I just wanted to take a second to give a quick overview of what all has been done. Note: these are in more of a logical order, not necessarily the order I did them in.

  • Watched and downloaded all of the core videos
  • Made a keyword “brainstorm” list
  • Narrowed down that list to only keywords that have enough income potential and won’t be too competitive
  • Selected 20 of the best keywords
  • Registered 20 domains (one for each keyword)
  • Setup hosting for all 20 sites
  • Installed WordPress, WordPress themes, and an SEO plugin on all 20 sites
  • Completed configuring and creating content for 2 sites (almost 2, my wife only has half an article to go on hers and she’ll finish today)
  • Installed Adsense and Statcounter on both of those sites
  • Completed the first month’s link building schedule on 1 site
  • Created 1 page of content for 2 other sites
  • Made almost $12 from Adsense revenue

Whew! It has been a really active month! It’s definitely been work, but it’s been a lot of fun too. It’s really neat to see sites that you created rising up the Google results pages and it’s even better to see people clicking your ads! Like I said at the beginning of the experiment, I am a total newbie to Internet marketing, so this is all new to me and VERY exciting. I find myself daydreaming quite often, of quitting my job and doing this instead. I really hope this all pans out, because I could totally do this full-time.

There have been a few missteps and frustration points, but overall I have been very pleased. I cannot even begin to imagine how much frustration, time, and effort it would have taken me to figure this stuff out on my own (if I ever even could). My advice to anyone thinking about joining The Keyword Academy is: do it! It’s only $1 (really, you get access to everything for that 1 dollar). Even if you just want to try it out, or even if you just want to watch the videos or peruse the forums. It’s only $1.

You might be thinking: “But what about domain registration and hosting costs?” I’m pretty sure I mentioned this before at some point, but if not: you don’t HAVE TO register and host your own sites. You can use The Keyword Academy’s methods on free blog sites if you want to. They encourage buying your sites because if you do, you can sell them later. But if you don’t have the money then just make a free blog! In fact, “hubpages” are all the rage right now in The Keyword Academy forums. They are free and apparently earn pretty decent revenue. I plan on setting some up later myself.

I know I said that I wouldn’t advocate this system to other people until I had proved to myself that it works, and that’s still true. However, what I do advocate and, in fact, highly recommend, is that you take the Keyword Academy up on their offer of $1 for the first month’s membership. It’s 1 dollar! What else are you going to spend it on? A chicken sandwich at McDonalds? I can assure you that while the chicken sandwich may be tasty, the Keyword Academy is much more valuable and much less fattening.

Here is the link: join The Keyword Academy for a buck

I do want to be up front with you about that link above. Yes, it is my affiliate link. I get paid a commission when people join using that link. My commission is 35% of what you pay, for every month that you’re an active member. So, if you join for the 1st month, then quit, I stand to make exactly 35 cents from you. I hope that helps to convince you that I am not recommending this for the money. I genuinely believe that your dollar spent joining The Keyword Academy is one of the best you’ll ever spend.

So, what are you waiting for?


Day 2: Eliminating Keywords – The Keyword Academy Scam Experiment


After a good nights rest, me and my wife were both feeling ready to go again. Unfortunately, we both had to work all day which completely drained us of our eagerness. So, I had to tempt my wife with the thought of being able to quit her job and do this instead if the system works out. She begrudgingly agreed to help me again.

So, the next lesson (which I had pre-downloaded) is about eliminating keywords from your list that either:
1. Don’t have enough earning potential, or
2. Are going to be too competitive in the search engine results
The keywords that get eliminated we called “red” keywords (because you color them red in your spreadsheet to show they are eliminated) and the ones that don’t get eliminated, we called “green” keywords (because you color them green in your spreadsheet).

This is actually kind of fun. Me and my wife had a little competition going to see who had found the highest paying green keyword, the most green keywords, etc.

We were also both pretty impressed with the system of determining the potential income and competitiveness of each keyword. The system used is quite logical and straight forward; it just makes sense. But, we were both in awe of the time and money that someone (I assume Mark and Court, the owners of The Keyword Academy) must have spent figuring this out. Honestly, I feel like the dollar I’ve paid for the system and all the time we’ve spent up to this point are nothing compared to the time and cost it would have taken me to figure out something like that on my own. I am feeling very reassured about my purchase at this point.

Being the computer nerd that I am, I found a way to use macros and formulas in my spreadsheet program to make this process go a little faster. I plan on writing a post in the Keyword Academy forums on what I did, so it can hopefully help some other people.

By the way, I am using OpenOffice Calc as my spreadsheet program. It’s free and works every bit as good as Excel, so if you don’t have Excel, don’t worry. You can download OpenOffice here:
http://www.openoffice.org/

So after about two and a half hours (each), we had worked through all 500 potential keywords. I decided that if I was really going to make a go of this system that I had to give it my all. So, me and my wife each picked out 10 of our green keywords and tomorrow I am going to register domains for all 20. I am a little nervous. This is the first big amount of money (big to me anyway) I’ll be investing in the system…

Money spent: $0.00
Time spent: 6 hours

The Keyword Academy Scam Experiment – RUNNING TOTALS:
Costs:
Monetary costs – $1.00
Time costs – 13 hours @ $8.40 = $109.20
Revenue:
Google  Adsense – $0.00

GRAND TOTAL:
- ($110.20)