By day, I am a fairly good technology writer who has authored many magazines articles, some blogs and a few books. There's a deeper, darker side to me though that few know of. I have an addiction. Knowledge is my high and education is my drug. I am just about to complete my second bachelors. As soon as I'm done, I am enrolling into a masters-to-PhD program. The problem, like with most addictions, is that this costs money. If you are educated in the US, a lot of money. I read that the average PhD graduates $170,000 in debt. I needed a way to feed my addiction. A way that would allow me enough free time to put into the research and internship time required of a PhD student.
I decided that blackhat methods may provide a means. I did a lot of research, and quite honestly, took a lot of tips from BHW member Leith. Here is what I have tried since the beginning of May and the results I have seen:
I'm still exploring the best ways to monetize, and have some ideas about turning my KDP offerings into affiliate programs. I feel like I am still quite far from earning a full-time income through IM, but the last couple of months have been valuable experience. Certainly, none of what I learned would have been possible without the valuable input from the members here on BHW.
I decided that blackhat methods may provide a means. I did a lot of research, and quite honestly, took a lot of tips from BHW member Leith. Here is what I have tried since the beginning of May and the results I have seen:
- I've written about this is other posts, but to recap, I have had a good amount of success writing for the Amazon Kindle. Kindle books of about 50 pages priced in the $5 range targeting the "make money" crowd have done well. Be forewarned - If you're book is crap, it will not sell. Amazon gives people the opportunity sample before buying. I've read some pretty awful KDP books. So bad that I almost wanted to demand payment from the author for wasting my time. Keys with the Kindle are 1) enroll in KDP for 70% royalties, 2) provide a free promo period of 4-5 days to get some buzz going, 3) if you are doing fiction, turn it into a series
- Dating affiliate is another I've tried and have used some of the top names like AFF, DG, and Loaded Cash. Whatever the reason, I have not been able to convert even a single free sign-up. Using methods like the sexy model video from Fiverr, I've been able to drive thousands of people to my link, but no one has converted.
- Reselling Fiverr gigs is another that I have put to work. The only marketing I did with this is through Scrapebox commenting. Surprisingly, it actually resulted in some sales. I was able to charge $30 for .edu backlinks using a Fiverr provider who delivered in under 24 hours. Definitely could be scaled.
- Content locking has been a tough one. I have a niche site that brings in a few hundred visitors per day. I only ever built up this traffic to learn the ropes when it came to SEO. I decided I'd try to lock certain portions of the content down with Blam Ads. My traffic dropped off almost immediately. Even the traffic that still came was not converting. I eventually dropped the content locking, and traffic went back to normal. Even better, Adsense earnings started to pick up due to some keyword optimization I did after removing the content locking.
I'm still exploring the best ways to monetize, and have some ideas about turning my KDP offerings into affiliate programs. I feel like I am still quite far from earning a full-time income through IM, but the last couple of months have been valuable experience. Certainly, none of what I learned would have been possible without the valuable input from the members here on BHW.
