I am told that this is NOT MUCH. You be the judge

P.s.: Everything left of the faucet and left of the toothbrushes is mine.

Definetly a WTF?! moment:)

So I got back from my trip to SE Asia about 3 months ago, but have yet to post hardly any pictures or recaps of what went down.

To start off, I will share my experience with overloading my backpack with unneccessary garbage.

Here is a list of things I didn`t use at all…not even once!

• Poncho -> Even if it did rain, it was warm at would only last 30-60 minutes max.
• Mosquito net -> I havent seen 1 mosquito there (FACT!) and the nets were almost everywhere.
• Army knife -> I didn`t go trekking or go hang out in the jungle, so I kept it closed all the time.
• 2 out of 3 towels -> They have towels everywhere and weird as it may seem, they changed them regularly.
• 95% of my meds, but I don`t mind hauling half a pound of pills just in case. Same goes for the First aid kit.
• Flashlight -> Again, there was no trekking involved so street lights worked just fine.
• Jeans! -> Arguably the heaviest and space consuming piece I didn`t need. It was too freaking hot all the freaking time!
• 1 book -> Althought I had 3, they are a bit ackward to carry around. Thank god for soft cover books. A Kindle would be much better.

Thats about it, as far as the things from the video I took and didn`t need. Allthough my backpack weighed 14 kgs alltogether, I believe I could get it down to around 10.

14 kgs isn`t all that much, but when you are constantly going on and off ferries,busses and “taxis” with freakin 99% humidity…its a pest!

I would however still reccomend you use a large backpack, because the way the Thai people (ferrys, buses etc.) handle the luggage…Buddha help you!

Never leave anything breakable in the main backpack and always carry a smaller (but not too small) backpack, for personal stuff. I was lucky enough to have the zipper on my mini backpack (detachable from the big one) break before I ever left the ground! But have no fear, cause backpacks in Thailand go for as little as 5€ onwards.

I wouldn`t add anything to my packing list, except maybe a few more locks, cause every freaking thing needs a lock (from bungallows,lockers and the backpack itself). I had to break 2 of my locks (with the help of some saws and helpfull staff).

It was funny however when I locked “myself” out of my locker in Kuala lumpur (Malaysia) that the staff member couldn`t destroy the lock “his own way” and politely asked :

Staff member : “Did you buy this lock in Malaysia?” …

Me: “Nop, in Thailand” …

Staff member: “Oooooh Thailand..I have some keys for those.” 

Me: “Excuse me!?! You have keys???”

And yes, he had a set of keys which all fit, but couldnt open it. It did however help with the breaking of the lock with the first blow of the hammer right after it.

Note to all: If you are going to Malaysia, don`t use locks from Thailand. However stupid it may sound

Thats it from me, regarding the packing issues with the do`s and the don`ts. Hopefully it will save you some unwanted hastle and make your trip safer.

Sincerely, Igor Buyseech

“#1 on Google = 34.35%, #3 on Google 11.42%, #6 – 5.05% of traffic” Chitika

As you can see from the quote above, being #1 on Google is worth at least 6x as being #6. Or is it?

The study from Chitika was done mainly with your ever day search results, found for random searches in Google made my millions of volunteers participating in the study. (You can check out the study and the results HERE .)

But as time goes on, so does Google`s march on world domination. The engineers keep on tweaking the algorithm and adding/testing new features daily. Some stick, but most of them never see day light (or at least never catch the eye of any users, because they stay at the “pilot” stage).

One of the best upgrades, coming out of the Googleplex in the past couple of months, is most definitely the implementation of the rel=”author” feature. I have used this feature to double, if not triple my conversions without gaining any higher rankings in the search results. Anyone can replicate this process so read carefully and pay attention to detail.

It is not pronounced Relauthor as some Nordic beast from Lord of the Rings, but just the html code for relationship (rel) from a link (placed before the command) to “author” (that would be me in this case).

What this feature does is connect your blog post/page or any piece of content on your blog, with your Google+ account. Why would it have any impact on my conversions, you might ask. The picture bellow should enlighten you, at least a bit if not the whole way.

If the bells are not ringing yet, let me help you bang them.

The human brain (hopefully connected to a pair of working eyeballs) is naturally attracted to images more than plain text. By adding an image right next to the title, description and url of your post, you are tremendously increasing the amount of eye balls plonking down to your #5 ranking, prior to checking out the #4, #3, #2 or even #1 search result.

It’s a well-established marketing/psychological method of attracting ones attention with proper ad/picture/video placement on a particular page. In our case it’s the only picture out there, if there are no Youtube movies ranking on the same page as well.

It is your job to keep the title and description as engaging as possible, so that the user will even want to click your result in the first place. It also helps to have your main keywords (the ones you are targeting) in the both meta features, to insure that they are bolded, which makes them pop-out even more.

How to get the picture next to the search result?

It’s a simple 3 step process, which will not take more than 15 minutes of your time to set up.

STEP #1 – Create an “About me” page on your blog

If you haven’t already, I would suggest creating an “About me” (about us, about) page with a short/long description of yourself or your company. I suggest creating a page with a url structure of www.yourblogname.com/about/

That’s it for step #1. You will come back to your “About” page at the end of step #2.

STEP #2 – Create a Google+ account

If you are not familiar with Google+, I urge you to go to http://plus.google.com and check it out. It’s a social network, very similar to Facebook. It has all the bits and bobs such as sharing pictures, activities, status etc. with your friends. NOTE: You don’t have to use the Google+ account in order for the picture to work.

The first thing that is to have an avatar/profile picture set up. This is the picture that will show up next to the search results.

The second thing is to link your newly created Google+ account with an “About” page on your blog. It could be about me, about us, about XYZ. In my case it is http://buyseech.com/about/ .

The way to do this is to log into your Google+ account go to Profile -> Edit profile -> Other profiles -> Add custom link (this is where you insert your URL pointing to your about page).

You should also have a return link pointing to your Google+ profile on that same “About us” page. Feel free to check out my “About” page on http://buyseech.com/about/ and find the “Google+” link. You must create a back-n-forward link ring in order for it to work.

The html version of my link:

To your online success, Buyseech @ <a href=”https://plus.google.com/103888400512181371901″ rel=”me” target=”_blank”>Google+</a>

That’s it for STEP #2

STEP #3 – Link your posts to your “About” page with rel=”author”

So you have done all the grunt work and all that is left to do is to link your existing, as well as new content, with your “About” page. You must do this in every post in order to get the picture next to the search result of the post. If you check out any of my posts you will see, that I end almost every post with the phrase “To your online success, Igor Buyseech”

The Igor Buyseech part is hyperlinked to my “about” page. The html code for the link is exactly as shown below:

To your online success, <span style=”color: #0000ff;”><a href=”http://buyseech.com/about/” rel=”author”><span style=”color: #0000ff;”>Igor Buyseech</span></a></span>

You can of course change the color of the text, but other than that it should stay exactly the same.

That’s it!

STEP #4

Yes, there is a step #4, which I did not mention before, because its not actually a step, but more of a “sit”. The only thing left to do is to sit and wait, because it could take a few weeks, if not months for the pictures to start appearing. Somebody must manually check your image, so that it complies with Google`s TOS.

Once granted, you will instantly get the picture with the first cache of your new content.

P.s.: All the links should be DO FOLLOW!

Hope you implement this fabulous tweak to your SEO arsenal of tricks.

To your online success, Igor Buyseech

The Internet marketing community is in chaos. The first great hit of “Google`s war on paid backlinks” occurred on the 19.3.2012, when one of the biggest players got hit hard. “Build my rank” is one of the biggest services offering backlinks from their (supposedly) huge blog network in return for a monthly fee, paid by their clients.

I have used BMR (short for “Build my rank”) in the past, but quit using it after the first month. Why?

The promise of getting “high quality” one-way backlinks from “relevant” blogs with “high PR” is a bit dodgy. I liked the concept at first, but when I got the reports of where my content and links were located I felt a bit down. The whole thing got outta hand. They started with sites that had mainly PR1-PR2, but boasted the PR1-PR7 part hard. Of course many were misled into thinking, that they would be getting a PR1-PR7 backlink which was not the case.

The links would be placed on PR1-PR7 domains. So maybe (just maybe) they would get picked up by Google`s crawlers before sliding their ass of the “Home” page. There are usually 5-10 posts on the first page of any blog. As the customer base of BMR grew, the time of your link, hanging on the first page, diminished. So much for PR juice!

What was the result?

The result of it all was plain and simple. You were left with a worthless link, from a “n/a” or at max PR0 boost located on mostly non-relevant site. It did not add any value to the page (which had no readers in the first place) or to your site (or the site it was linking to).

“But a backlink is a backlink…” IM Degenerates – 1996-…

I really can`t stand it anymore and I almost always pounce on the “IM degenerates” (as I call them), that bring this non-sense up. NO! Backlinks are not equal in no shape or form. I will take 10 quality backlinks over 10 000 000 totally non-related backlinks any day. Yes 10 million! I will choose Quality over quantity any day.

For those of you, who don’t know what I am on about, imagine the next scenario:

You are an owner of a Ferrari dealership. Would you rather have 10 World renowned rap-stars or would you rather see 10 000 000 Pakistani immigrant workers cueing up outside of your saloon?

I hope I got the point across. Yes, the 10 million Pakistani could all chip-in and throw their rupees on a huge pile, but the logistics of dealing with a crazy amount of anything (in our case worthless backlinks) is not the way to go.

“Doing something unimportant well, does not make it important!”

Why did BMR get sacked?

The way I see the reason behind this movement of ridding the index of paid-link blog networks is as follows:

• The core of the business was to “trick” Google into thinking these were quality links.

• The blogs themselves had low quality design, low quality layouts and low quality innerlinking.

• The blogs did not have any organic traffic coming via search engines, except the clients themselves (which did come via search, via “link search”

• The bounce rates of the blogs had to be in the top 90%s. Nobody gave a damn about anything else, except to see if their own content was up and the link was visible.

• Google`s TOS was violated big time, cause there was absolutely no value for the user (visitor of the web-site) at all, therefore the user experience was appalling.

Build my rank was just the first to go. As I am writing this, I see that many other blog networks are going down. Many have made their own private blog networks (some up to 6000 sites) that got completely de-indexed. But still 95% of the people blame Google. WHY?

If you can’t handle the heat, don’t play with the fire. And I believe Google is the flame, which will burn down all that try to “trick”, “hack”, “get-around” or best of all “FOOL” it. I pity these individuals, especially because I know most spend more time conjuring up evil schemes, buying supah-dupah software for “1st page in 24 hours” BS etc.

I like that thousands are moaning, about what happened. This will definitely clear the field of all the “ballast” being thrown around online. I hope people will finally realize that Google is not the boogie man who is out to hurt people.

With that said I would urge everyone reading this, to go and take a look at their page, articles posted anywhere they may be, BMR-style snippets and other content. Ask yourselves “What am I bringing to the table with this article? What value does this content add?”. If the answer is “None!” I would ponder on a new linking strategy, If I were you.

I hope none of you were hurt by the recent “disasters” and will continue on a safer path from now on. I am not saying you will not get anywhere with the tactics scrutinized above, but you sure as hell aren’t getting far.

To your online success, Igor Buyseech

All of these 7 steps are necessary and highly recommended that you do, whilst posting new or editing old hubs. They get juicier with each one and I have saved the coolest ones for the Premium section on the bottom (don’t worry its FREE).

So let`s get Hubbin…

1.) SEO for your Hubs

Although you cannot influence the pure html code of your Hubs, there is a lot of basic SEO that you can do without the hustle and bustle of html-ing:

– Keyword in Title

When choosing a title, be sure to put your targeted keyword you have preselected, while doing keyword research, in the title itself. The title will be shown next to the sub-domain and domain name in the URL therefore giving you the “KW in title tick” (Meta title). That’s a good thing!

Yourname.hubpages.com/hub/your-title

I would suggest getting a long tail keyword in the mix, so aim for title with at least 6 words, but make sure they make sense.

- Tags

For starters just add in a couple (2-5) in the “Create a hub” section. You will get recommendations for the rest later, when you post your content. Don’t go overboard and don’t lose focus. Keep it simple and related.

There is a very cool “tag trick” related to tags, that gets me 50-150 visits per day to a single hub. Its available in the Premium content section bellow (again no worries, its absolutely FREE).

- Description

Yes, you can determine the Meta description of your hubs. It simply collects the first 150 characters of your first paragraph of text. Make sure to include your keyword(s) in that part, preferably in bold or italic, if it makes sense.

- Generic SEO

Generic SEO rules apply as with any other page. Keep a certain keyword density; I suggest 3-5%. So, if you have a keyword of “How to make quality Hubs” and an article of 500 words, make sure you use the phrase around 3-5 times in the entire content.

If you are adding pictures, make sure to have the image name, file name as well as alternate text your exact keyword or a long tail of your keyword, if it is a 1-2 word keyword.

Keep in mind, that none of the techniques will do much good, if your article is not relevant and of high quality in the first place.

“Aim to help others, not just yourself.” Buyseech, This post

2.) How much Content, Pictures and Videos?

“Content is king.” - Anyone who knows what they are doing @ The web

There is a minimum amount of words needed for a hub to meet the standard. I believe it’s around 350-400. You shouldn’t focus on those numbers, because I prefer 500+ words as the minimum. The more content, the more combinations of keywords that people will find you by.

Focusing solely on the keyword and thinking traffic will come only via it is misleading, in a good way. Long tail keywords with searches of 100, 35 or even 10 searches per month will add up to quite a lot, but no one ever calculates this into their kw research.

I would suggest that you use “text capsules” (see picture bellow) into which you put 150-200 words. The reason for this is to give the hub some visual playfulness, not just a large chunk of text rolled down the screen. Use the titles of the text capsules, because they are H1,H2,H3 tags as well. Preferably add your keywords into some of them, not necessarily all of them though. The picture bellow is a typical layout I used for 500-600 word articles.

As far as pictures goes, keep in mind that the same rules apply than any other pictures on the web. You can’t just rip them from any page. Search for free images (not royalty free <- these still cost money to purchase).

I would suggest adding 1 picture per 500 words right bellow the first block of Google Adsense (note: there must be some content, 1 line is enough, between the Google Adsense and the picture, otherwise you are violating TOS).

I would really advise that you get pictures without borders and with white backgrounds. These blend in the best with the Hubpages standard layout.

After 500 words I would suggest embedding a related Youtube video. People love videos and will be happy to play it, therefore lengthening the time spent on your site and lowering bounce rate (which is important for ranking high in Google). If you have let’s say 1500 words you might wish to get 2 videos 2 pictures and fill the rest with an amazon banner, if there is a related product to your account.

Always keep in mind, that people are rating (vote up, vote down, useful, funny…) your hubs and all this counts for the positioning on Hubpages itself and by Google in the big picture of it all.

3.) Linking (Link Out and Link In)

It is very important to do linking in as well as linking out. Both must be done to/from related quality sources. I have stumbled upon a tremendous increase in rankings and traffic when I accidentally clicked the “Suggest links” button on one of my hubs. It linked out about 5-6 links on Wikipedia.

All the links were contextual based (so hyperlinks were made in the content itself). That Hub has been the best Hub to date, with a constant score of 90+ and 50-120 visitors A DAY via search engines alone.

I couldn’t say for certain that it’s all because of linking out to Wikipedia, but I know it helped massively. The latter will of course depend on the overall Hubscore of the Hubber; it must be 75+ in order for any outgoing links to be DO follow.

If you are using Hubpages for back-linking your own money sites/pages/blogs I suggest you wait a week or so, before you start putting any kind of links on them.

As far as linking in (backlinking), I would use my own related Hubs for starters. You can use back-linking services (but be carefull, cause Google has been pouncing on them for a while now) or hire a freelancer to do any sort of MANUAL <- I can’t stress this enough, not automatic/Software generated back-linking.

But in the 7.th step (Premium content section <- FREE for you) I unveil a secret which has brought me Hubs which are getting 100+ visitors per day, without any exterior back-linking at all.

4.) Monetizing – Where to put your ads?

Can you make money directly from your Hubs? Of course you can. How much can you make? All depends on how much traffic will you bring. You can have two pretty similar articles targeting the same keyword, one uses none of the tactics shown here, yet another uses all of them. I guarantee the latter one will be making a lot more than the former.

The first paragraph is suggested to be 200+ words, because the big Google Adsense block will be placed on the top-right part of the content area. If you have pictures make sure they are not touching the blocks in any way (there must be content in between, not just empty space or a border).

If you will put only 100 words, the ad box will drop lower and with that, it will lower your CTR. The CTR itself is not that high on Hubpages, compared to other “Adsense sites”. But it is doable to get 5-8% CTR, if there are relevant ads showing or you are in a niche filled with buyers.

There will usually be 2 blocks (1 block, 1 banner) of Google Adsense in the contemt itself, and a couple of them around the layout. Hubpages controls this, so don’t bother changing them (except the first paragraph). You can add Amazon banners and products as well, and position them as you please (the same as pictures – Amazon capsule).

You must of course become an Amazon affiliate prior to this, unless you don’t want any commissions and are just doing this for a laugh. Jokes aside, it’s easy to become an affiliate so I suggest you do it even if there are no products for you to sell now. There will be endless possibilities with them in the future.

NOTE: Do not try to incorporate links or banners from Clickbank or any other information product marketplace, because Hubpages hates it. Your hubs will be flagged, disapproved or even deleted.

IF you want to know my secret how to “Stay above Hubscore 75 effortlessly” and “Get relevant followers/readers” as well as the before mentioned 7.th secret which has brought 100+ visitors to Hubs without them actually ranking in the search engines? This is Premium content, but it’s yours today absolutely FREE! Enjoy.

Unlock the content with a Like, a Tweet or a +1. Tweet

I wish you great success with your Hubs. Feel free to post any questions or concerns you might have in the comment section bellow.

To your online success, Igor Buyseech

Instead of crying about it, you should look into various Google Adsense alternatives out there. There are dozens of them on the market, but I (alongside a team of other Adsense junkies) tested out various ones and came up with the following “TOP 5 Google Adsense Alternatives”. Hopefully this will monetize your traffic well, but to be completely honest, there is no equivalent PPC system to Google Adsense. We have gone as high up as reaching 45% of the Adsense income with a couple of the Google Adsense alternatives stated bellow.

Google Adsense Alternative #1 : Chitika

While advertising according to your website content can be an effective marketing tool, there are several Google AdSense alternatives that may prove equally useful. Chitika, for example, focuses on impulse merchandising by targeting ads according to visitor search keywords. With Chitika, the ads are not readily visible by simply visiting your site directly, and visitors must use a search engine to continue. Originally begun as a support system for existing publishing and advertising programs, Chitika can help web publishers earn revenue with this unique approach.

Unlike traditional ad boxes, Chitika started by showing active boxes that highlighted products targeted from a variety of manufacturers. Reading a blog that included a discussion of a particular product would likely give visitors a view of a Chitika box with links for the product in question as well as other similar products. If visitors continued on and actually bought the products, you would then earn a commission. Chitika now offers premium advertisements that are more likely to generate revenue, and this is due in large part to their newer and unique click predicting technology. Since select ads are shown when visitors are most likely to click on them, there is greater likelihood that you will earn advertisement revenue.

Google Adsense Alternative #2 : Bidvertiser

For small business owners looking for effective website solutions, Bidvertiser may be one of the most useful alternatives to date. Somewhat unique to Bidvertiser, you can select free design ad formats and create individualized text ads. While this may lead to an ad that has a unique look, you may run the risk of having an ad displayed that is below standard quality. As many advertisers prefer to control their ad layouts, you may be better off in terms of your generated revenue by sticking with standard advertising formats.

Bidvertiser has added some new features that may help improve your earnings, and one of these features is referred to as a conversion bonus. In addition to being paid for the usual valid clicks, this affiliate marketer also tracks clicks to see if they result in valid leads. If this happens, Bidvertiser will pay an extra conversion bonus. If your website directs attention to several highly valuable leads, this may mean a significant monthly bonus for your business. An additional bonus of this sort may be higher than standard cost per click earnings.

Bidvertiser also offers a revenue generating toolbar that may also be quite useful. The toolbar may be customized with varying logos, tools, and links and you may distribute your personalized toolbar to those who visit your website. This in turn may lead to revenue once visitors use your toolbar for their searches.

Google Adsense Alternative #3 : Adbrite

Whether you are a website owner or an advertiser, AdBrite may be an ideal alternative for a number of important reasons. While AdBrite may not offer the largest selection of advertising formats, website owners appreciate being able to manually approve any ads that appear on their sites. Likewise, advertisers like deciding which sites host their ads, and this is why AdBrite ranks as a major competitor when compared to Google Adsense. AdBrite offers the most popular advertising formats, as well as some page links that have consistently good click through rates. Strategically placed full page advertisements may be an additional way to make the most of your visitor traffic as well.

Compared to Google Adsense, AdBrite is often viewed as having less stringent terms and conditions. This is likely due to the fact that AdBrite is more open to accepting bloggers and other smaller publishers. Publishers can also set their own advertising rates, and you can sell your ads to visitors through your own unique link as well. This may account for approximately half of the generated sales, with the other portion coming from the AdBrite sales team and marketplace. AdBrite may also be used along with Google AdSense as well as Google AdSense alternatives if bid prices are not at your preferred minimum.

Google Adsense Alternative #4 : Clicksor

Much like Google AdSense, Clicksor uses technology that targets ads according to your particular content. This alternative is also a favorite of many small publishers, and Clicksor offers a variety of ad formats such as pop-unders, banner, and in-text. With a typically impressive cost per click outcome, subscribers can routinely anticipate earning a respectable income. Clicksor terms and conditions appear to be designed to make setup as streamlined as possible for subscribers, and their advertisements are helpfully context sensitive. While Clicksor may not have the most comprehensive or detailed statistics, you will likely receive enough useful feedback to keep accurate readings regarding any of your website trends.

The main advantage with Clicksor is that subscribers are relieved of having to make decisions in anticipation of what visitors may be searching for, thanks to the context sensitive technology. You can also add a virtually unlimited number of domains and sites, and this can be done under one account. Once your home page is approved, you can freely place ads on any of your subpages if you use Clicksor. The potential downside may be that Clicksor leans toward a more restrictive policy in terms of what accounts they do and do not accept.

Google Adsense Alternative #5 : Infolinks

Infolinks is relatively new in comparison to other Google AdSense alternatives, and the emphasis with this alternative is on in-text advertising. If your page contains phrases and keywords that are not linked to your best advantage, Infolinks will subsequently convert these phrases and keywords into advertising links. When a visitor scrolls across these links boxes open up and display the ads, and clicking on the link results in payment for Infolinks subscribers. Positive feedback usually includes how effective and straightforward the process works, and Infolinks may also be used with advertising campaigns that may already be in use in connection with business websites.

While Infolinks may not necessarily live up to claims of being an industry leader in terms of revenue guarantees, their payouts are generally considered good when compared to in-text advertising offered by other Internet marketing tools. This may be an especially useful option if your site is under construction, since Infolinks will conveniently make link conversions as needed. Many subscribers find this to be a subtle way to get visitors to click on their links without overwhelming them with flashy pop-ups or banners. The bottom line is that you are paid for each click and revenue is generated for your business.

While there is seemingly no shortage of alternatives to Google AdSense, the right choice for you may depend upon several factors. Ease or difficulty of setup, customization options, and available formats should all be considered. How and when you are paid should be factored into your final decision, and remembering to periodically review all of these considerations can help ensure that the marketing tool you select is fully supporting your site goals.

To your online success, Igor Buyseech

“Fuck it, I am outta here!”

Those were the exact words I used just prior to purchasing my tickets to Bangkok (Thailand) about a week ago. I have been dreaming of taking such a vacation for years, but the timing always seemed “off”. At least I thought it was. I was always caught up in the “excuse for excuses sake” circle, so the problem was studying, work, financial problems or just a girlfriend who doesn’t like traveling at all.

I have managed to unleash all of the shackles that were holding me back, thanks to a couple of inspirational people and some inspirational books I`ve read in the past. I am done with academics and care little about my degree in “there will be no jobs for you in the next 30 years” economics. I believe “street smarts” are way more important these days. The entrepreneurial road is way more fun and way more profitable, than the “please somebody stick a fork in my eye cause I don’t wanna go to my” 9-17 job.

One of the most influential books I have ever read was “The 4-hour workweek” by Tim Ferriss. It was a real slap on the back of the head, which got me moving in the right direction. I started my first company soon after finishing the book. I set up a business with my own brand of martial arts equipment, which I was selling online on a local scale. I incorporated many of the 4hww tactics, but in the end I realized the market size was just too low and the business was not sustainable without a brick and mortar business model. I stayed with the latter for about 2 years, but it was not the idea I envisioned.

I knew people were making thousands, if not millions of $ online, but never knew what exactly their business models were like. What did they do? What did they sell? Where did the money come from?

So without any knowledge whatsoever, I dug in and started an almost yearlong exploration of the online business world. The results were staggering. I have spent more time and read more books on this subject, than all my courses at the university put together…5 times over!

The result of all this is the lifestyle I have always imagined and the ability to go on a 6 week backpacking trip across south-east Asia (Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore) whilst my business grows. I will spend no more than 4 hours a week in front of my mini laptop, which I am bringing, just to check if everything is running smoothly and if there are any critical (and I do mean critical) questions that need answering.

How is this possible?

My business model is simple. I create sites/blogs which rank high in the search engines (SEO expertize comes in handy here). I get tons of traffic to those sites which offer valuable information to the searchers. I monetize the sites with either ads (pay per click), cpa offers (cost per action) or affiliate sales of products and services related to the topics on the site.

That’s basically it in a nut shell. How to achieve the first part, which is ranking high in the search engines, is a science in itself and I will have dozens if not hundreds of posts on this subject in the near future, so stay tuned.

The biggest edge I possess (excluding my knowledge of SEO) is the ability to work wherever and whenever as long as there is internet access available. I will not be creating new sites on this trip, but will only supervise the work from freelancers (people you hire to do things for you, but are not your employees) and from companies providing online services (usually software based).

Yes, I will only be spending 4 hours on this (if not less), but there is usually a problem (which most of you will not recognize as a problem at first) with the spare time you have, when you are not working. In this case I will be traveling through Thailand, island hopping via Koh Lanta, Koh PhiPhi, Koh Samui, Koh Phangan (Full moon party) and Koh Tao. I will be hopping over to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia as well as Singapore (I bought a plane ticket from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore for 3.90€!!!). Hopefully I will meet a lot of people on the way, since I am traveling alone. I am quite the talkative kind, so I believe meeting new people will not be all that difficult.

If I was to stay at home for 6 weeks, I would however continue to work for works sake. The misconception of working harder is embedded in our minds (mostly from our old-school parents teachings and from the culture itself). I prefer working smarter not harder (there is a huge emphasis on this in Tim`s book).

“Life doesn’t have to be so freaking hard!”

The other “funny” thing to focus on is also the cost of it all. I have just moved out of my rental apartment where I was paying roughly 650-700€ per month just for rent and expenses. Add food and gasoline to get to my office and around and we are in the 1000€ (1350$ at the time) mark. Thanks, but no thanks. Even though I can afford it, it doesn’t make any sense. I will go half way around the world to a tropical destination and enjoy myself for far less. I could theoretically stay there forever, but I have friends and family which I cherish more than any retreat. I believe Ljubljana, Slovenia has an optimal geographical location for accessing any endeavors I might think of in the future.

To summarize

Working 4 hours a week whilst growing an online business is possible. Focusing on the most important things, which bring the most results is key. Eliminating time consuming tasks and outsourcing them to freelancers is a must. Enjoying yourself and not thinking about work, and not doing work for works sake is critical!

I will hopefully write more posts on the Thailand trip prior to going, especially about the minimalistic approach to packing (taking as little luggage as possible) and also have some reports and videos ready when I come back.

Feel free to post any questions in the comment section.

Have fun and enjoy. I know I will

To your online success, Igor Buyseech

Stop Eating Out – If you believe that’s what SEO stands for, then you are in the right place. First and foremost SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and not the above mentioned tag line. The text bellow is my personal take on SEO Basics, which I know helped me in all my online endeavors and will hopefully help you as well. These SEO Basics are aimed for people with NO experience whatsoever, or to those that are just starting out. Some “senior” members will not be wasting their time, but they will do some refurbishing of the basics. (The read is approximately 8 minutes long and well worth your time).

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization is a process, which a webmaster (creator of a web-page, preferably YOU) goes through in order to get his website ranking well (as high as possible) in the search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. I will cut out all the jibber jabber about the other SE (search engines) out and focus solely on Google. Why? Because you are here to get the BEST advice in order to achieve the BEST results possible. If the latter is not your intent, you can leave and go play with pennies. We will not miss you.

In order to please Google your sites need to “follow” some basic guidelines that are very easy and simple to follow, yet still 99.9% of the people try their utter best to cheat, scam, spam their way around “the big G” (a slang name for Google in some parts of the Internet marketing (IM) community) with the obvious outcome…FAILURE! These poor souls are the ones you keep meeting on the online forums that keep on wining and crying about “how Google did this … how they did that…why does Google hate me … etc.” Stay away from these people and you will be fine.

I know you would like to be (hopefully you already are) in the 0.1% of the webmasters that want to have a clean slate. Here are the fundamentals of good SEO that will get you there:

• Post original (unique) and quality content on your site IN RELATION to whatever the general niche/theme your site is about. The more the better, as long as it stays relevant. (ON-PAGE-SEO)

• Get relevant quality backlinks to ALL of your sites (not just the main site). If you are not familiar with the phrase “backlink” – “A backlink is a link pointing to your targeted url (www.yourdomain.com for example) from ANOTHER domain/url. There are a lot of ways to get backlinks (more on back-linking coming soon!) (OFF-PAGE-SEO)

• Use the correct META features (think of them as employee name tags, Google being the boss who never recognizes you without it). These features are TITLE, DESCRIPTION and TAGS. If you are using WordPress for instance you will have various plugins that let you edit them easily. I also encourage you to keep your title (title of your post/page) in your HEADER as well as in the URL itself. (ON-PAGE-SEO)

These are the 3 most fundamental and crucial things you must focus on, if you wish to rank well. More importantly, if you wish to rank well FOR A LONG TIME.

You can see the ON-PAGE and OFF-PAGE signs in the text above. You will hear a lot of these being mentioned in the forums/blogs/products regarding SEO. It just simply states that some factors are embedded ON the PAGE itself and some have no direct correlation to your pages code/content, so they are called OFF PAGE factors (backlinks being the dominant factor here).

The above mentioned fundamentals have all become a science of their own and will be discussed in extreme detail in other posts, but sticking to the basics let me just quickly explain the “game-plan”.

What is original (unique) and quality content?

The question is a rhetorical one. Original (unique) just means you (or your writer) need to write the content yourself from scratch. You cannot copy/paste the content from other online sources in any way. The content on your site will be protected, if anyone else tries to copy it later (Google has an integrated “first come first serve” feature in their algorithm. The G will also penalize anyone (including you, if you take a walk on the dark side) who copies other peoples content and place it on their sites. Trust me, you do not wish to be on the receiving end of the beating stick with a “G” engraved in it.

Regarding quality, it just means that the text should be well written, user friendly, without any grammar issues and most important aspect is that it ADDS VALUE. If you will just rewrite an article which is ranking high and you will post no additional value, there is a slim chance you will ever rank as high, let alone higher than the predecessor.

“Keep it clean, and no hitting below the belt!”

What are relevant quality backlinks?

I have already stated what a backlink is in the previous chapters. It’s the “relevant” part that a lot of people don’t understand (or don’t want to understand). To simplify :”A relevant backlink, is a link to your site from another site which theme/topic/niche Google (therefor the user) sees as being relevant to your content.”

If you are linking from a site, with 200 posts on Astronomy, to your site which is about baby strollers makes absolute no sense whatsoever. That backlink is useless and ads no value, neither to the recipient nor to the supplier. There is a very tiny amount of “power” (its called “Pagerank”) you will gain from such a link, but you should focus on building related backlinks which carry 10 if not 100x more power in the users and Googles eyes. You will (if you haven’t already) realize that the “eyes of the user” are pretty damn close to the “eyes of Google”, because the former are the guideline to the latter.

“I will take quality over quantity any day my friend.”

“I would rather send 5 lions into battle, than 1000 sheep”

These are the top 2 fundamentals in my book. I will discuss META features in another post altogether (it gets a bit technical, but not too much).

How can SEO help you?

You can treat SEO as “the free media exposure tool”, because there is no better traffic than organic traffic from searchers of the exact information you are providing on your sites. You need all the traffic you can get. Always prefer organic traffic to PAID traffic (also known as PPC) simply because its free and because of its longevity (you will not lose good ranking easily, if you follow everything you`ve learned here) because PPC funds can run out extremely fast these days, especially in the English speaking parts of the world. The reason for this is simply the fact that people can`t get of their lazy asses and write some quality content and rather just PAY for some ads to pop-up to innocent users, forcing them to look at misleading sales pitches or low quality content.

It doesn’t matter, if you aren’t starting from scratch and you already have a website. You can always add META tags and descriptions, as well as new quality backlinks and more relevant content. Creating content is by far the most time consuming of the tasks, but in the overall picture is also the most important (you will notice I cannot stress the relevance factor enough in all of my posts, but trust me when I say “Relevance is key!”)

If you, by any chance, don’t know what to optimize your content/site for in the first place (so you don’t have any sets of predetermined KEYWORDS you wish to rank for) please bookmark this page, or press the Like button on the side to keep in touch, because we are working on an entire post regarding “Keyword research” which will go into greater detail on how to effectively cope with this issue.

Buyseechs TOP 3 SEO Tips

1.) Write quality original relevant content – The more the better!

2.) Create quality backlinks from authority sites regarding your niche/topics to ALL your sites evenly (not just the main site)

3.) Optimize individual sites and treat them as single entities forming a giant site, as oppose to making many smaller sites (buying more domains etc.)

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Feel free to post any questions regarding this topic in the comment section. I ensure you, that I will personally answer all related questions. More details on some of the topics within this article are on their way, so join me on my Facebook page (right sidebar) where we will post all the news regularly.

To your online success, Igor Buyseech

I have pondered on a new experimental endeavor in which I intend to give away my 17 year old Honda Prelude, cause there is not much chance anybody would want to buy one for the amount of money it is actually worth (mainly due to high gas price/consumption and registration fees).

But how can you say NO to a free car? That’s exactly my point:”You can’t!”

You can drive it, because after all it is a Honda and it will work for 127 years to come. It’s a coupe so it looks better than 99% of the cars on the road today.

You can sell it and make a profit for yourself. (It is one of the most tedious tasks in the world for me, therefore I am challenging myself to find a better and more “exciting” way to “get rid” of my car.

You can put a cubic meter of soil into it and plant a big ass palm tree in it, whilst placing it in the middle of your garden. I am not saying you should do it, but you could.

All in all I have no preoccupations with the cars future.

Profits???

Yes, profits! I have compiled a short list of possibilities of getting rid of the car, whilst making a profit. Hopefully the list will increase with your input (suggestions in the comment area are very welcome).

(For the experiment sake, lets presume I would like no less than 1500€ for my car)

I could:

• Issue 5€ coupons in a mass format for a chance to win a 1995 Honda Prelude and hopefully reach the 300 number and raffle someone out. Everything over 300 coupons sold would be my profit and everything under 300 would be a “loss”. The issue with this is the fact that it would be illegal, cause its considered to be “gambling” therefore I would need the concensus from the government (good luck with that).I could raise the ante to 100€ and just focus on 15+ bidders and get it over with as soon as possible, but I wouldn’t be insane to write about it on my blog. Or would I be?

• I could get a product already being sold by another vendor and pump up the price tag for 5-10€ whilst incorporating the “coupon” for the “Honda Prelude raffle” in it. This is more legit and would go well with some sort of insurance, brand related or used car related product. (Your ideas on this are welcome in the comment box bellow.)

• I could make a single-page sales page, which is actually a squeeze page on which you can enter the Honda Prelude raffle, but all you need to do is leave your information and accept the terms, that we can send the information to a local Honda dealership for commercial purposes in the future. I especially see potential in this one, if the local Honda dealers are aware of how much a list of lets say 10 000 people interested in owning a Honda is worth. Would it be worth 1500€ remains to be seen. Testing and negotiations is key.

• I could get a company (either directly or via a media dealership) to invest in a 1-2-3 year contract of having the Honda Prelude totally wrapped in their branding, with the obligation of the raffle recipient that he/she cannot remove the stickers/wrap for that period of time. This could go well together with the 3. Step. (The car in the picture is not a Honda Prelude)
  

This is what my brain cells have come up so far. NOW ITS YOUR TURN!

Any feedback, any ideas, any crazy plans, anything and everything is welcome!

I am looking forward to your comments and ideas.

To your online success, Igor Buyseech

P.s.: This entire process can be done for any car or any other item of similar value or caliber. Give it a try and let me know how it came out.

Yes, I did it. I stumbled upon (not reffering to the social bookmarking site) this “bug” a few months ago and made very good use of it ever since. I wish to share this with you, so you can start getting the traffic in as soon as possible. Just follow the few easy steps posted on the bottom and you will be well on your way.

Note to self : Whatever you do, DO NOT spam or over-promote your site with tons of other social bookmarks, because it will only make it worse in the long run. The healthy way to use social bookmarks will be explained in detial in another post, but for now just keep in mind that 1 … yes ONE backlink a day is ENOUGH. Adding more will only appear spammy and make it worse. Trust me on this one people, I ve been slapped, beaten and whipped by “The Big G” <- Google, to many times in the past.

The five easy steps are :

1. Go to identi.ca
2. Register an account and log in. (Do not put your link in the “Whats up YOURNAME” box!)
3. Click the PERSONAL tab on the top of the page.
4. On the right sidebar you will find a section called GROUPS. Click it.
5. Create a GROUP and add the URL OF YOUR WEBSITE as the Homepage of that group. (It helps to name the group as your homepage or the keyword you are targeting).

Thats it!

I do usualy use pingler.com just to PING this group and the page itself, but found it works just as well without the ping.

Note that pinging your site to often (well more than once is too much already) does life a harmfull effect and can leed to the allmighty Google slap. Most think its a myth and that “the big G” never actually performs such an activity, but trust me. Going from #3 to #344 and staying there for weeks can be quite stressfull. So dont play around with this.

Of course you can LATER use other social bookmarking sites like digg.com (which for some strange reason became DO FOLLOW yet again), folkd.com , oyax.com, reddit.com and many others. Make sure they are all DO FOLLOW, otherwise its just a waste of time. Some try to persuade you that you will get organic traffic, but trust me it will be minute and not worth your effort.

I personaly use sites that are DO FOLLOW and have high PR as well as having some sort of anti-spam system incorporated. There were many high PR sites that were “killing” it, but got shut down hard, because of spamming. The biggest by far was squidoo.com, which still has around 800k visitors per day, but “the big G” will hardly look at it, let alone go knocking on the door to see if anything new has been posted.

Pinging the domain ! Be careful with this delicate subject. If your sites are setup correctly, than you only need to apply 1 ping and the spider will crawl the site as long as he sees potential and relevancy. Make every site count!

Note : 95% of all may sites were made with WordPress, but I hae had success with static pages just as well.

Looking forward to your responses with comments on your success.

To your online success, Igor Buyseech