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)


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)


Day 1: Getting Started – The Keyword Academy Scam Experiment


Well, today is the big day. I have been lurking around the Keyword Academy’s site for a while, leeching all the free info off their blog, e-book, etc. Now, it’s time to take the big plunge and spend… $1. Yep, they aren’t kidding about that, it’s really just a dollar to get started. At first, I was really worried that this meant there had to be a hidden fee for canceling or something. However, paying with PayPal is an option, which dispelled my notions of hidden fees. See, in PayPal, if you want to cancel a subscription, you deal with PayPal and PayPal only. You don’t even have to tell the place you subscribe to you’re leaving. You just log in to PayPal and say “Quit paying these guys” and they do it. Nice…

So, they have two plans when you sign up: Regular and Premium. Word on the street is that they are planing on having a third plan called “Diesel” soon (yes, that was a gasoline joke. Sorry, couldn’t help myself). Anyway, the only 2 differences in features are that with Premium:
1.you can download all they’re past “webinars” (in either audio or video format) and,
2.you get access to the forums.
As far as cost goes, the monthly cost for the Premium is $4 more: $33 instead of $29. The first month is only $1, regardless of which plan you choose.

Honestly, the webinars didn’t really sound that appealing to me, but I am a big believer in forums. I use them all the time to find answers to computer questions for my job. So I decided to spend the 4 extra bucks a month to go with the Premium plan, and logged in immediately.

The member’s area is very no-nonsense (which I like). There is some info on the page about how to get the most out of the system, there’s an event calendar in the top right corner, some links (forums, affiliates, etc.) across the top, and then (the important part) the links to the videos down the right side of the page. I decided to hop into the first lesson immediately.

Uh oh, speed bump. Clearwire happens to be the only ISP in my area that services my address, and they are SLOW! I tried to start playing the first video but it was just too choppy. So I did a quick Google search and found a tool that can download flash videos. It’s called Orbit and you can download it free here:
http://www.orbitdownloader.com/
I used this tool to download the video to my computer, then used VLC media player to play it. VLC is also free and you can download it here:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Ahh, much better.

The first lesson is all about how to brainstorm a list of potential keywords. I enlisted the help of my wife for this part (and I’m glad I did! She thought of some great keywords that never would have occurred to me). It took about 3 hours with both of us working on it, but we came up with a list of about 500 potential keywords. I know that sounds like a lot, but once you get started it goes pretty quick.

After that, we were both feeling pretty drained mentally so we decided to call it a day.

Money spent: $1.00
Time spent: 7 hours

The Keyword Academy Scam Experiment – RUNNING TOTALS:
Costs:
Monetary costs – $1.00
Time costs – 7 hours @ $8.40 = $58.80
Revenue:
Google  Adsense – $0.00

GRAND TOTAL:
- ($59.80)