Exclusive Interview With Neil Shearing
Of ScamFreeZone.com

Part 5 of 5

LA - And after you set up the site you haven't needed to add to the site since? And have you done much promotion for it at the start or since?

NS - No I did a tiny bit of promotion about 6 months ago and I actually released a couple of articles through the Article Marketing Automation site which we talked about earlier, the one that sends out your articles and they look like individual blog posts. I did a couple of those articles to promote the sites, but hardly anything.

I remember I took the name... it was nomerchantaccount.com, but because I thought (laughter)... because I thought short domains were better and that one would have been too long, I actually took the name NoMerchantAcct.com - 'account' spelt just 'acct' - which has to be one of the worst domain names (laughter) ever in the history of the Internet.

So after a while I put up the same content at 3rdPartyProcessors.com and there 'third' is spelt '3', the number '3' and then 'RD' - so that's hardly brilliant either but, now it's just half a dozen pages on each site.

I think Google likes them because they're old. And that's another thing, Google likes things you can't fake and you can't fake the age of your domain name. So they're not going to trust when it's brand new and conversely they do trust domains that are very old, and these domains I think they went online 2000 or 2001, so they're just sitting there basically, but because they haven't done anything risky in all that time I think Google quite likes them.

LA - Actually just related to that, a tip I read probably 2 or 3 years ago - I can't remember where I read it - but if you do have plans for certain sites why not get the domain... even if you're not ready to develop it yet, just get the domain online and just put some articles there from article directories which are related to the topic and maybe link to it from your other sites, or maybe just start a Blogger blog and link to it a couple of times.

But, basically, I think the point was even if you're not ready to develop a domain just put some relevant content there even if it's not yours, as long as you have the right to put it of course, and just let the domain get into Google and let the domain age.

NS - Yeah that's really important. But, yeah, like you say, put content on there, it's not enough just to own the domain and not put content up because I'm sure some people think, "Oh okay I need an auto insurance domain. So I'll take AutoInsurance.com or whatever and then I own that domain name and I'll let that age".

But, until you actually host it and put content on there then Google really will not care that it exists. So yeah, you need the content up there that's on topic and related to the domain name. And then yes, you can let that age.

LA - And sorry, just one further example then I'll move onto the other questions. A site, it's actually a Blogger blog, but it's set up so it's through a dedicated domain name rather than leaving it containing 'blogspot.com' in the address.

And it was for my niece who had a hamster so she wanted to write some hamster posts. And I think over the age of the site it's only had 6 posts or something. And for the first year, obviously it doesn't have any links at all because I haven't done any marketing because it was just a little hobby site, and I did submit it manually to Google and Google completely ignored it, but after a year finally it started getting some attention from Google and now a 6 page site with no links gets about 40 visitors a month.

So it's just funny how that happens and how sites can often be ignored at the beginning, but then Google does pay more and more attention to them over time.

NS - It's a good point. I've got a similar site about rearing guinea pigs, but unfortunately it doesn't make a whole lot of money - I don't think it's a massively lucrative niche. I should have taken AutoInsurance.com back in 1996 or 7 or something.

But that's a whole other story because back then when you took a domain name it was Network Solutions or no-one. And they wanted a minimum of 2 years and $70, do you remember that? I don't know if you do but... (laughter)?

LA - I do, yes (laughter).

NS - It was expensive back then. I remember thinking "Hmm, am I going to invest this money in ScamFreeZone.com or not?" So, yeah, back then you had to have quite a bit of money if you were going to seriously buy up several domain names. Now it's what, about 9 bucks a year (laughter)...

So whichever domain name you want... well, the best idea would be to get a domain name and age it if you can because then you know where it's been hosted, you know what contents appear on it and what link building you've done.

Another thing to potentially do is buy someone else's domain but you'd want to do quite a lot of research - use something like the Way Back Machine. Just type "Way Back Machine" into Google and they'll give you the link.

You can go back in time and look at how the site looked, but you still really can't guarantee that they haven't done anything suspicious, but if it's not in a highly competitive niche then potentially you could buy someone's site complete with the content and the links and change it to your ownership, and that should still count as an aged domain.

LA - The questions I have left... I'll maybe see if I can compress them into a specific question. Everything we've talked about - fantastic tips and strategies from your own business and also some examples we've touched upon - this makes money...

So what would be your suggestions for taking these tips, these strategies and maybe turning them into a good supplemental income - it's relatively easy to make a hundred dollars, a few hundred dollars a month with sites like this.

But how about turning it into a few thousand a month or even if you have very big plans turning it into 6 or 7 figures a year? What would be your comments or suggestions on that?

NS - Well, while it's nice to think about 6 and 7 figures a year (laughter) that is a whole order of magnitude more difficult, like you were saying, than getting started.

Once you get started it's relatively simple to start making some money, but the big trick is to go from knowing how to make a couple of hundred dollars a month, work out exactly what you have to do to get there, define the systems that you needed, so was it: the blog installation... the keyword research... the content creation... graphics creation... sourcing affiliate programs... all those different systems that went into it.

And then outsourcing that because there's no way you're going to get to 6 or 7 figures on your own, it's just going to take a long time even if you know what you're doing because you've got to create all the content.

So outsourcing every single system so that you can get these things built pretty much on autopilot... And then you need to realize that if it makes $200 per month but it costs you maybe, I don't know, say it's going to cost a lot, say it's going to cost $500 to set a site up through having everything outsourced, you're obviously going to take a couple of months before that site pays back the initial investment, which means you need to have funds up front in order to get it all working.

So, you're going to have to put in the time and effort yourself, to come up with seed capital that you can then put into outsourcing, to pay for the sites to be built up front, before they start making money, and before you see a return on your investment. So it would be doable, but it would be many orders of magnitude more difficult to make that amount of money than to make the couple of hundred dollars a month.

One really big tip is that Daniel and Mark, who run Article Marketing Automation in Australia, are guys that I really admire. What happened was they came online several years ago and worked really hard to create websites that were like affiliate sites and made some money. And then Daniel deconstructed exactly how everything was done and broke it down into systems and then outsourced the systems and... the guy, I don't think he ever sleeps, I'm not sure he even eats.

He works phenomenally hard at this and they're just about to release a product. I've only seen the first module of, I think it's 7 or 8 modules in this course, but I know how hard they've worked; I know their business is doing, I think it's several million dollars this year, and so his product is going through exactly how he did everything, and he did everything himself initially - putting in 100 hour weeks, creating all the content, building all the links, getting everything to make money and then deconstructed it and then outsourced it and then they've taken it to the next stage of making huge amounts of money from outsourcing everything.

So they're releasing a product, I think it's next week, maybe the week after, called The Outsource Method, and it's at OutSourceMethod.com. And if anyone goes there now they won't see anything immediately, but the product should be available from there and I'm sure it will be absolutely brilliant.

I don't need to put together an affiliate link or anything to recommend that, I'll be devouring it as soon as he gives me full access to it. I think he's probably still putting in 100-hour weeks just to get this product done. But yeah, those are guys that unlike most Internet marketers who will tell you what to do without actually having the expertise and the wisdom of having done it themselves, which is what I've always tried to do. I've always tried to find a way to make money online, get it to work, test it, make sure it works and then sell the information, as opposed to some people who will just say "You need to do this. I'm an expert", "You need to do that", without having tested it themselves.

I know that Daniel and Mark have put in the groundwork of building all these sites and working out how to do everything through outsourcing. So if people actually, really, genuinely wanted to get to 6 or 7 figures per year through building these websites then that would be the recommendation from me - would be to pick up the Outsource Method.

LA - So as we round up this interview... now, with everything to do with the Internet, things change quickly and constantly. From everything you've talked about what possible alterations do you think may need to be made in the future to the systems and the tactics and the strategies you've talked through?

NS - Well, yeah you're right the Internet does change rapidly, and that is a problem for building income on autopilot - because it's not always possible to.

I think I got lucky with this one that's paid me for 9 years; I think that's a bit of an outlier and it's probably one of the few affiliate programs in the entire history of the Internet that's paid out over almost 9 years, and the Internet hasn't been around commercially for that much longer than that.

I think what your question gets at is that it's not possible to have 100% automation and automatic income streams, because you do need to keep an eye on your business. And even when you outsource stuff like we're talking about, you need to manage the people who are doing the outsource work or you need to have a manager to manage them. And even if you have a manager to manage them that manager will still need direction presumably.

So if you have a business that is paying you income and unless you're just a passive shareholder then it will need direction and it will need input. And things like Google - like you say - they've changed their algorithm.

Now if you do the basics, like we've been talking about in this interview, and you do them well and you write quality content and you get quality links and you minimize the chances of raising red flags, then there really shouldn't be any problem with Google.

The one thing you'll need to keep an eye is that they add things and test things and change things. So if you type in a local name now, a local town name and say "Butchers..." - I don't know - "...Glasgow", or something like that, they will give you their local search results, so you won't just get a plain list of search engine results pages. Instead, a map will appear and next to it will be a list of butchers in Glasgow and their actual addresses will be highlighted on the little map, and then underneath that will be the regular search results. So that's their local search which they've just rolled out. Every time someone types in a local search you can almost guarantee seeing this map.

So that's interesting. Because if you're competing on local phrases - like one of the search engine guru's favorite things to say is "drill down into a niche" - so don't go for car insurance, go for "car insurance Denver", or go for "car insurance..." - I don't know, what's a town in Denver?

But say you're going for "auto insurance Denver", well you need to be careful because if you've built a site all around "auto insurance Denver Colorado", and then Google rolls out their local search results - instead of being number one on the search result page for "auto insurance Denver Colorado" you'd be pushed out by this map and all the different places with physical addresses in Denver, Colorado that sell auto insurance. They'll all be listed on the map and they'll all come above your website. So that could lead to a sudden drop off in traffic to a website that's specifically focused on phrases such as "Auto insurance, Denver, Colorado".

The other thing is Google sometimes integrates its news. If you type in a keyword phrase that is newsworthy or Google thinks it has enough news results for, it will show you the news results, which comes back to issuing press releases. Why? Because maybe you can get your press release picked up by Google and listed above the regular search engine results pages if anyone types in a phrase that relates to your press release. So that's something else to consider - how search engines such as Google are using different data and integrating it.

You'll often see videos when Google thinks it's appropriate, they'll put videos into the top 10 search engine results pages. So if you type in, I don't know... "Cooking Lasagna" they think, "Oh, maybe they're looking for a video" and they'll put in the video results.

So maybe if you have a page or a website or you're thinking of building a website that relates to something people can see visually you may want to create videos as part of the marketing for that website. So it's just trying to see if there are any changes that you need to keep abreast of, any changes that may impact the amount of traffic you get from Google. So that's quite important to consider long term.

I'm not sure what other things are necessary - you need to be checking that your affiliate links don't change. Sometimes merchants will say "Okay, we've moved to a new affiliate system and unfortunately all the old links aren't going to work any more and you need to be using this style of link".

Now that's not very friendly if you ask me, not a smart move on the part of the actual merchant, but they do it once in a while so you need to be testing your own affiliate links or at least make sure that the tracking works.

Oh, the other thing I was going to say is that script and server security changes often, so they'll be patches to things like WordPress quite often; patches to things like cPanel or Apache or various other things that run on your web server, and you need to make sure that your web host is installing these new security patches for you - and what is their responsibility, and what is your responsibility, so that you stay up to date.

You don't want to ever update your WordPress blog and then suddenly have it hacked into and have Viagra adverts appear all over your pages, so that's something else you need to keep up to date with. So yeah there are lots of things that it's important to stay up to date with.

You can't just think "This is autopilot" and you can walk away and never have to touch it again, it always needs some level of oversight. Having said that, if you do the basics, like we've been talking about: quality content, quality links, then there shouldn't be too much that you should have to keep up-to-date with and you should be able to have a high degree of automation, just not 100% automation.

LA - Okay that's great. And just as we wrap this up I think people listening may be interested in your WordPress... it's your WordPress plug-in, is that correct?

NS - Yeah.

LA - They can get that as part of the 10 Day Cash Secret, is that correct?

NS - That's right, but we're updating it at the moment, Louis, because WordPress changes so often (laughter). I don't know why WordPress changes so often, I think they hate me. But I have to keep up to date with the changes at WordPress to make the plug-in still work.

So yeah, at the moment it's not possible to buy that, it's only possible to opt-in and we'll let people know when that's available again.

LA - Where do they go for that at the minute?

NS - Just www.10dayCashSecret.com.

LA - Okay. And that's also linked from your main site is it? - ScamFreeZone.com?

NS - Yeah - ScamFreeZone.com and NeilShearing.com.

LA - For people listening who want to go even more in depth into link building, what's your book going to be called or where it's going to be available from?

NS - That's at TopLinkingSecrets.com.

LA - Okay, excellent. Well, thank you very much for your time today Neil, it's greatly appreciated.

NS - It's been a pleasure. It's been really good fun.

Neil Shearing Interview: Transcript Part 1

Neil Shearing Interview: Transcript Part 2

Neil Shearing Interview: Transcript Part 3

Neil Shearing Interview: Transcript Part 4

Neil Shearing Interview: Transcript Part 5

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