Day 32: Built Another Site – The Keyword Academy Scam Experiment
(Wednesday July, 22nd)
I wrote the first page of content for another site today. I posted that and put the finishing touches on the WordPress settings.
My wife wrote her first article for distribution, so that will give her her first link when it gets published.
I still haven’t heard from the Keyword Academy Support team about reactivating my account. I decided to just go through the registration process again. I was worried that I would have to create a new account, but thankfully, they give you the option of reactivating an existing account. They also detected that I was using the same PayPal account, and charged appropriately (ie $33, since I re-joined the premium membership). So for any of you thinking about cheating and getting multiple months for a dollar each, you’re out of luck.
I also sent out some emails for link exchanges for this site today. Lis Sowerbutts site about online income was one of the ones I offered a link trade to. She was not only was nice enough to link to my site, but also wrote about it in a post.
The post was more criticism than commendation. But it was constructive criticism which I find very helpful. In fact, comments from her post and also from an email I got from Courtney Tuttle (one of the Keyword Academy guys) a couple weeks or so ago, are making me think that I should revise some of my experiment’s terms and methods.
They both made the point that learning the ropes of Internet marketing should be treated like school. You usually don’t get paid to learn (it’s usually the other way around), but it pays for itself down the road. I think I may be doing you readers a disservice by putting you in the wrong mindset, and making you think that you’ve failed if you haven’t been fully reimbursed for your time and money within the first six months of online money making. Making money online is like starting a business (in fact, that’s exactly what it is). Building a business takes time, even if you already know the trade. However, if you, like me, are completely new to a particular business, you’ll need to spend time learning it. That’s just the way it is. So is it really right for me to count the time I spend learning the system as an expense?
When I get the time, I’ll probably make some revisions to my experiment. If you have something to say about this, please post I comment. I would love to hear from you!
PS – Checked Adsense today and I had some more clicks. My total revenue is now up to $12.58! Woo Hoo!
Money spent: $33.00
Time spent: 2 hours
The Keyword Academy Scam Experiment – RUNNING TOTALS:
Costs:
Monetary costs – $225.76
Time costs – 52 hours @ $8.40 = $436.80
Revenue:
Google Adsense – $12.58
GRAND TOTAL:
-($649.98)
Day 31: Helped My Wife – The Keyword Academy Scam Experiment
(Tuesday July, 21st)
I didn’t have much time to work on my sites today. (man, I’m tired of hearing myself say that!) But my wife finished the content for her first site and I was able to explain the link building process to her. She of course, picked it up quickly and started writing link exchange emails right away.
That was about it for today.
Money spent: $0.00
Time spent: 1 hours
The Keyword Academy Scam Experiment – RUNNING TOTALS:
Costs:
Monetary costs – $192.76
Time costs – 50 hours @ $8.40 = $420.00
Revenue:
Google Adsense – $11.41
GRAND TOTAL:
-($601.35)
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?