info barrel blogging

Info barrel is a blogging system similar to Hub Pages. It allows you to quickly fire up a blog post about any topic you like without the need to actually have your own blog.

Info barrel blogging is a perfect way to test out blogging niches to see if it possible to make any money through Google adsense or affiliate marketing.

Starting blogging with Info barrel is very easy. All you have to do is sign up for an Info barrel account. The sign up is very simple as you hardly have to add any personal information unless you want to.

You may want to include your Google adsense publisher ID otherwise any ad clicks from your article pages won't actually result in you getting paid! As I only signed up for my Info barrel blogging account yesterday I am yet to see any adsense revenue from my posts.

Services like Hub Pages and Info Barrel are great as the domains already have domain authority and Page Rank so this may make it easier for your posts to rank well in the Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). The benefit to ranking highly in Google with any of your Info Barrel blogs is that this is how you will generate your adsense revenue.

I have published three Info Barrels and some long tail keywords I am already ranking at the top of the first page of Google. This just goes to show the domain authority that Info Barrel has. Or maybe it just means I am writing about very obscure topics...perhaps a bit of both!

alkaline green juice SERPs results

This graphic shows that an article I wrote less than 24 hours ago is already in second position in the Google SERPs for the term alkaline green juice. Using the actual title of the article - health benefits of alkaline green juice - it appears in the number one spot! Admittedly the amount of searchers for these terms per month is minimal. But this doesn't mean that I have wasted my time.

Having pages that rank highly in the SERPs is good for the reason mentioned above, the chance that people will search for keywords that return your page. This then gives you the opportunity to make some adsense revenue.

On top of this is another huge benefit. Pages at the top of the SERPs themselves have authority that you can then pass on to your other sites.

My current aim is to continue writing Info Barrel blog posts to see if there is any real money making potential there.

09.07.2009. 22:12

ConnectContent review | Connect Content review

Connect Content or rather ConnectContent helps anyone looking for relevant links to their website. The creator RT Cunningham runs the blog Untwisted Vortex which discusses a variety of issues, e.g. applying for credit cards. But is it a Connect Content scam? RT has this to say about his Connect Content service.

"ConnectContent is a search engine community network comprised of individuals and other entities who desire the same thing: Relevant links, containing relevant anchor terms, which point to their websites or to the individual pages of their websites."

As an aim, this is fantastic and appears to be perfect a way to increase relevant links coming from related sites to your own website or blog. Tracking down link buddies is a necessary step to succeed at internet marketing but it is also a very time consuming activity. ConnectContent simply acts as a middle man bringing together many interested parties who are then free to give, or not give, links to sites in similar niches. In this review of ConnectContent I will discuss whether I feel it delivers. Bear in mind that this review is written simply from my own experiences with this link building program. Admittedly before I signed up I worried about connect content being a scam.

ConnectContent costs $12 a month to be a member. RT offers an affiliate program where existing Connect Content members get half the subscription fee, on a monthly basis, of any new members they bring in through the affiliate link program. Use of affilate links made me worry that it might just be a ConnectContent scam.

I read an excellent post by Griz that discussed writing product reviews. His post discussed the merits of payday loans. On Griz's post about the payday loan program he did not include an affilate link. He argued that by putting an affilate link for payday loan on his post he would then be seen to be offering a potentially biased review of the system. Not putting an affilate link benefited him because he felt it garnered him more inbound links to his post.

So in the same fashion as someone I admire greatly in the make money online world I have not included an affilate link for the connectcontent program on this post. If you would like to visit Connect Content to find out more you could simply do a google search for "ConnectContent" or click this non-affilate connect content link. Just in case you think this is some kind of affilate marketing trick, just hover your mouse over the link and you will be able to see that the link simply points to https://connectcontent.com. If it was an affilate link it would have a trailing member number e.g. /p123? By the way, that's not my member number, I simply used this number as an example in this review.

The price of $12 really is low so the question is do you actually get high quality relevant keyword anchored links? I have been a member of Connect Content for a couple of months. So far I have had about 20 links to a variety of my blogs. So far all of the links come from PR- or PR0 pages although the homepages related to these posts sometimes have PR. Whether this is indicative of me having blogs that higher ranking sites don't want to link to; no high Page Rank sites in my niche using Connect Content; or just a general lack of activity of Connect Content members is hard to say. The fact that I remain a member of the program means I do not think it is simply a connect content scam but rather a bonafide means of building quality backlinks.

From my correspondence with RT Cunningham I feel it is the latter of the three. So this leads to the question as to how to encourage existing members to create even more outbound links than they are at present. One way to encourage new links is to encourage new members to join, the more members there are, the more backlinks that will be created. Hopefully this Connect Content evaluation review will stimulate an increase to the member list. Perhaps that's simply wishful thinking. I wonder how many people will actually read what is turning into a lengthy discussion. In my experience, RT runs the service well. When I have had queries he has sometimes answered within the hour. If it was simply a scam product, I'm sure he wouldn't provide such excellent customer service.

ConnectContent has a members' forum but it is very quiet. RT is on top of the forum too and posts responses to any user issues. I recently discussed the lack of activity as far as backlinks coming my way. RT assured me it was nothing personal and that there appears to be a general slow down in the backlink distribution from current members. Included in this ConnectContent review is some breaking news of his system. He assures me there are some, soon to be unveiled, developments in the pipeline to encourage even more linking between members. I know what some of these measures are but as it is not my service it is not really my place to divulge RT's service information in this review.

Synopsis of how to use the Connect Content user interface. The user interface looks fairly basic. But the service is not really about flashy graphics, it is about building quality backlinks to your niche marketing websites. While it might score low marks in a computer game review magazine, it provides the required functionality. There are full instructions available once you sign up via PayPal at the price of $12 monthly subscription or $120 for the year.

As a brief outline first you must get your account into backlink credit. This means adding some backlinks for other members. First you search for relevant backlink terms in the "unsused anchor terms" section. Visit and review the site that is requesting a link to ensure it is of adequate quality. Assuming it is not a spammy looking site (too be honest I haven't seen any sites of too poor quality to link to), add the anchor term and back link to the site in a similar niche. This adds a link but your work on Connect Content is not over. You then have to go to the "add backlink" page and tell ConnectContent that you have added a link. You have to select the link you added and paste the URL of the page you added the backlink to. Next you are presented with a review page which you must confirm, assuming the details are correct. This credits your account with 1 link and the amount of credit you get is a factor of the Page Rank of the URL that you linked from. So one link from a high PR page can be worth more than a few links from PR0 pages.

Once you have some Connect Content backlink credit you are then able to start requesting backlinks yourself. All you have to do is go to the "add anchor request" page and paste the URL of the page(s) you want linked to as well as the desired anchor text. The wider the variety of anchors you request the more chance you have of people linking to you. I think this was one of my "mistakes" with the system in my first month. I hardly added any anchor requests and then wondered why I wasn't getting tons of backlinks.

That's my brief review of how to use Connect Content. As long as your account remains in backlink credit, your anchor requests are visible for other members to link to you. Once you go into the red, your anchor requests may disappear from the available anchor list until you start linking to other sites yourself again. This seems a fair way to ensure that members have to give if they want to receive. This is similar to something else I learned from Griz - "paying it forward". A lesson for life not just MMO!

As I conclude my Connect Content review I would like to suggest what I would do differently if I had the knowledge to provide a service like RT Cunningham has done. This is in no way a criticism of Connect Content rather just a different way of doing things. If I knew how, that is!

Firstly I believe charging for the service is a good idea. It might make you worry that it is just a Connect Content scam but in my experience, that is not the case. The reason as far as I am aware is that the small charge keeps out spammers. I think it would keep them out even if the charge was smaller. I would also do away with the affilate sales offer. Simply cutting the charge for the service in half and no affilate revenue would mean the owner would still make the same money. Further people would only then promote the service if it was providing them value.

Many of us remember Lissie's Site Build It scam review a few months back. I am of the view that affiliate marketing can be a good thing. But sometimes as was proven in the Site Build It scam review case that people are often tempted to write favorable reviews of a product simply to try and make money. This is why I chose to follow Griz's advice and write a review simply stating my opinion without trying to make money online directly from this post.

Secondly if there was a way to do all the admin from one page on the site, this may increase the speed of adding links. For example, if you could click on a link you wanted to add which then opened a pop up containing the URL and anchor to use, as well as a space to paste the URL of the page where you put the link then just click OK, in one swift movement you'd have added a link AND had it credited to your Connect Content account.

Finally I'd just like to see more backlink activity between the Connect Content users. RT seems to have this covered though. I am really looking forward to the direction he takes ConnectContent over the next few weeks and months. Even at a rate of 3 relevant anchored backlinks a week the fact that you don't have to put in much work to get them makes the outlay of $12/month worth while.

Ways to stimulate activity could be member rules. For example having to give over a certain backlink value , e.g. 20, otherwise pay a penalty. This could be an additional fee which could go into a prize fund or simply being booted off the service.

Also being guaranteed a certain amount of backlink worth is in my opinion a good idea. It would put the reputation of Connect Content on the line. The service is strong enough to handle it in my opinion. If members were guaranteed backlink value of greater than or equal to 12, as the cost of the service is $12 it would make a nice match. Any member not receiving this figure in a given calender month would receive a full refund.

Incentives and penalties like these could help increase the giving of backlinks between connectcontent users improving everyone's fortunes in the SERPs.

These Connect Content review ideas may be much harder to implement than suggest. But that's all I'm doing, throwing ideas out there. With a little more backlink activity going on amongst ConnectContent members the value the service provides could go through the roof!

That concludes my ConnectContent review. If you would like to read another unbiased connect content review check out Leo's site.

Bookmark and Share

Comments (0) 16.06.2009. 15:59

making money online

As I continue my quest to start making money online I am beginning to think that the three most important aspects of the game are, choosing your niche(s) well; decent niche support and of major importance, perseverance.

Anyone who has ever tried to build a niche marketing website will know that choosing a viable niche is so important if you actually want to make money online.

Recently I have been building a diet website that is a niche I am interested in because I physical health and well being is even more important than financial health to me. If I have chosen my niche as well as I initially thought, blogging about my diet which is a passion of mine may actually mean I end up with a blog that provides interesting and useful information as well as making me some money too!

As with most people involved with internet marketing I am attempting to monetize my site using Google Adsense. The Adsense program serves up advertisments related to the content of your site. So if you want to stand a chance of earning revenue online, the content of your site has to be focussed around the keywords of your niche so that Adsense displays adverts that will be appealing to your visitors.

adsense earnings

This shows my earnings from my money diet site for the first 8 days of June 2009. I still have a long way to go if I really want to make money online and stop working a regular job.

A famous proverb says that every journey starts with a single step. Even though I still have a very long way to go to reach my online money making destination, I have at least started the journey.

There are a variety of ways to make money online and monetizing a website with adsense is just one of them. The link above talks about a variety of ways to make money in an effort to free yourself from the man.

Unless you are very fortunate or have a sixth sense for finding easy to dominate niches, internet marketing also requires that we find high quality niche support. Griz has put together a page where people with niche blogs can connect with other bloggers in the same field. We can then give and receive quality links from quality sites that are related to our own.

What I particularly like about his niche support page is that there is a real community feel with people wanting to improve their own blogs and at the same time help others get more traffic. Further it is more than just about giving and getting backlinks. Giving and receiving quality backlinks is what counts.

Finally, to make it as an internet marketer perseverance is a very important trait. Niche blogging is not a get rich quick scheme. Rather it is about building websites that will be ranked highly in the SERPs for terms that people want to know about.

I believe, although don't yet have the experience to back it up, that internet marketers must create a site with on and off page optimization that also has information of some relevance to potential readers. I still have a while to go before I really make money writing but I am loving the adventure so far!

Although my online money making financial development journey has only just begun I know that if I want to make it as a niche marketer and fulfill my dream of giving up my day job I simply have to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Eventually I will start making money online.

Comments (0) 08.06.2009. 08:46