The Keyword Academy Scam Experiment

A Most Sincere Apology

(Thursday, September 24th)
It’s been nearly 2 moths since I have worked on any of my sites, including this one. That thought has been growing heavier on my mind. I have been feeling more and more guilty that I have let my experiment fall by the wayside for so long, but I have just kind of justified it in my head by reminding myself that I have been adjusting to a new job with a new schedule (I started a new job on August 4th).

That has eased my conscience when it comes to my niche sites, but hasn’t really helped me to feel better about not updating this site. Why? Because I feel like I have let you all down. I have come to feel responsible to all of you for providing an honest and helpful review of the Keyword Academy’s methods. Even more, I feel like I have set myself up as an example for those who want to build an online business. Not working on that business at all in almost 2 months makes me a very poor example indeed.

I would like to not only extend a heartfelt apology to all of you, but also let you know that I plan to re-commit to my experiment and to building my online business. I hope you have not lost faith in me and will continue to read and enjoy this blog.

On a slightly less sombre note, even though I haven’t been working on my business, it has continued to work for me. here are my latest earning numbers:

Revenue:
Google: $43.19
Affiliate: $24.15
Subtotal: $67.34
Costs:
TKA Membership: -($66.00) ($33 x 2 months)
Subtotal: -($66.00)
—–
Total: $1.34
Time Spent: 0 hours

That’s right! Even though I haven’t touched my sites in 2 months, I made enough to pay for my TKA membership. I guess that’s the “residual” part of residual income. That idea gets me really excited. Just imagine what I would have made if I had actually been working on the sites! Lol.

Also, The Keyword Academy has been doing A LOT of revamping and adding of new content. They have been testing out some new methods that are really exciting. I have really been wanting to watch the last few webinars they did, but haven’t been able to find the time. Hopefully soon.

It’s definitely time for me to get back to work! I may not be able to spend hours at a time, but I am going to try to work on my sites at least a little bit every day.

The Keyword Academy Scam Experiment – Running Totals:
Revenue: $97.42
Costs: -($291.76)
Total: -(194.34)

Time spent : 58.75 hours

Big Changes – The Keyword Academy Scam Experiment

Well as I’m sure many of you noticed, I finally had time to make some revisions to my site. However, after I finished up I was too tired to go ahead and write a post about it. So, now that I’ve gotten a little sleep I just want to go over some of the revisions that I made.

Home – I made some pretty major changes here. First, I received a comment from a guy named Travis, who pointed out that it was hard to find my comment form. He said that he didn’t realize that he had to click an individual article to get the form to show up. That made me realize that most people probably just read the posts off of the home page, instead of reading the article page. So I did little PHP research, and discovered that I could set WordPress to only show an excerpt on the home page instead of an entire post. I’m hoping this will encourage more people to comment on my posts. Also I changed my blog’s subtitle. I never liked the other one anyway.

The Purpose – I did a major rewrite on this page. I wanted to focus more on the fact that I am creating an online business, and not just using a money making system. I also rewrote it be a little less derogatory. I felt that the wording I used before would put people into a negative frame of mind. After all, I am trying to help people create their own online business, not discourage them.

The Terms – Another major rewrite. In fact, the changes I made to this page are the biggest, in that they affect just about every aspect of the experiment. Once again, I rewrote this page to focus more on the creation of an online business, instead of just the use of a money making system. I also thought this page was pretty derogatory, so I corrected that. Aside from these changes, I also made some major procedural changes. The biggest one being, that I will no longer assign a monetary value to my time.

It’s been pointed out to me by several people that building a business online is much like building any other business. For example, doctors don’t get paid to go to medical school (in fact it’s the other way around). So why should I expect to get paid to learn how to make money online. Will the system pay for itself in the future? Yes (hopefully ). But for the time being, I need to put in my dues.

Please note however, that I still feel it’s very important for me to track the time I spend, and I will continue to do so. So, if you disagree with the whole “not getting paid to learn” thing, feel free to assign the hours whatever value you feel is fair.

Because of that fundamental change in my thinking, I also felt that I needed to revise the possible outcomes. You can read more about these four possible outcomes on The Terms page.

I also tried to consolidate and simplify this page a little bit. As it is still pretty long, I’m not sure if I succeeded or not.

The Results – The changes here were pretty minor. I pretty much just had to rewrite it to reflect the changes in the terms. I also added a milestones section.

About Me – The changes here were very minor. In fact, the only thing I did was remove the last paragraph because I thought it sounded stupid.

Posts – All I did here was revised the running totals format to reflect the changes in The Terms. I think it would take way too long to go back and change all my previous posts to the new format, so this will just be a “from now on” thing.

Links – I haven’t got around to it yet, but I think I’m going to go ahead and add my Keyword Academy affiliate link. I’ve been using the system less than two months, and I’ve already made over $30, so I’m starting to feel pretty comfortable recommending it to other people.

Well, I’m pretty sure that that’s about everything. I feel a lot better now that I finally got around to making these revisions. I think it has given The Keyword Academy Experiment a much more positive spin. As I mentioned before, I want to help and encourage my readers to create their own online businesses. I hope that these new changes reflect that desire.

As always, I welcome and encourage your comments. I want to know what you think about these new changes! Please, take a few seconds to add a comment letting me know your opinion.

Well, it’s about 1 AM here and I’m starting to get pretty tired, so I’m going to wrap this up. I’ll talk to you guys later.

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)