My New Survival Guide
I’m an “underdog” – a bootstrapping underdog, at that. Who woulda guessed that I’d have a chance in all this “make money online” mumbo-jumbo. I was at a total disadvantage when I got the big, hairy idea to make money from my computer at home – I knew NOTHING about it. Chances of my survival were slim – chances of my success were virtually non-existent.
But here I am – Finding a way to pay the bills through the power of my internet connection.
Pretty cool, huh?
I think so and I am so glad I am so hard-headed that giving up wasn’t an option (don’t tell my hubby I admitted to being hard-headed, ok? Thanks!).
Know what else is really cool? There are LOTS of folks out there just like me! I think that is AMAZING!
Perhaps YOU are a Bootstrappin’ Underdog as well?
I know that a large majority of my readers ARE – and for me, it is super exciting to be able to talk with, and share with, others who are just like me.
We’re a unique breed. Yep, we do tend to be hard-headed and we certainly aren’t quitters, are we? We know only the tough and relentless survive and we ARE tough and relentless.
It’s an honor to be in your company and to have YOU hanging out here with little ol’ me.
Thank you!
Things sure have been going crazy with online marketing and ranking in Google lately, haven’t they?
I’ve read a TON about all the changes and TONS of advice about what to DO about the changes – but I really haven’t come across anything that really helps and relates to people like us.
We aren’t big, fancy businesses with staff and teams for PR or SEO or content marketing. WE are all those things.
Odds are good that few of us only have ONE project going online. We tend to be “niche marketers” and have lots of things going so we have lots of revenue streams.
When things get whack online, where’s the help and advice for us?
I couldn’t find it.
However, as I’ve learned about all the changes, tested things, looked at stats, etc, I have had a long internal talk with myself that has helped ME get through these crazy times.
That long talk I’ve had with myself? Well, I turned that into my own personal Survival Guide.
I went ahead and typed everything out so I could share it with others that just might need this long talk as well.
- I talk about the 10 questions I really needed to ask MYSELF so I could get my head on straight and back to business.
- I show examples of things I think are hurting sites now – and helping sites.
- I share the “band-aid” techniques I am using to help get my exposure and sales back NOW.
- I share the ‘fill in the blank” part of a statement I made on my Google Penguin post.
- I share my Rocket Method which helped me BEFORE all this craziness and has really saved my butt in the midst of all this craziness.
- I share how I am doing things now moving forward and WHY I am doing things this way.
- I talk about backlinks and doing things moving forward.
- I reveal my C.H.E.A.T. Method for starting and growing a new site.
It’s almost 70 pages long so yes, I talk about a LOT of things that really come into play in today’s online marketing atmosphere for people like us.
It’s a trip inside my brain as I attempt to grasp and explain what is going on, repair any damage done, and what I’m doing moving forward.
I’m not doing some fancy-dancy sales page for it – this is it for now.
I want to offer my Survival Guide to y’all first.
If y’all like it and want me to set it up “officially” with an affiliate program and all that cool stuff, let me know. If there is enough interest, I’ll make it happen.
So there ya go – my big fancy, high-pressure sales pitch…lol!
If you’d like a copy of PotPieGirl’s Survival Guide, just use the PayPal button below. My Survival Guide costs a whopping $37 right now (tho that very well could change if I switch to a “real” sales page and affiliate set up).
If you do pick up a copy, please let me know your thoughts in the comments area.
I’d really appreciate the feedback.
I’m not sure how long I will keep it set up like this. That’s not a ‘threat’ or a sales tactic – just the truth.
There’s no up-sells, down-sells, side-sells, or anything like that. Just click, buy, read.
Hope it helps!
Hi Jennifer, I purchased your one-week-marketing premium and sent you an email but still don’t have an answer. I really need your help because SEO techniques on the guide are before the penguin area and I would like to know if still works to do what on the guide says to do. Thank you very much!!
Lorena.
Yep, still works 😉
PP Girl, can you give us an idea of how much you make online to give us some perspective?
Thx
Some perspective on what?
On how much you make online, so we can get an idea of: authority, whether to buy your book, whether it’s worth following your lead to work online, etc.
Perspective is important. It allows people to make better informed decisions.
Hi Georgia Peach,
I took your advise & bought IPK (Info Product Killer) & NB the upscale website builder… some really great info.
Now with the latest from Google, I am wondering how much of Craig’s OPSEO is good & which should be avoided. Also, does NB get a black mark from Google?
I went to the NB Forum but found little or no activity recently which makes me wonder what’s going on.
I would like your thoughts about your former recommendation.
Thanks,
Wally
Hey Wally =)
IPK stuff is not me… perhaps this was meant for Tiff?
Thx!
Thanks, Jennifer, just finished it. Awesome info in here, and I love your style and anti B.S. Sometimes it takes the brutal honest truth to cut through the hype. Love your rocket and CHEAT methods too! Cheers, and keep pulling yourself up by your, urr, shoelaces 🙂
Thank you, Chris! BIG thank you!
This new survival guide should be the type of info that you should be sharing with us who are still Elite members in your Power 3 Marketing course. We could sure use it…
This isn’t about local marketing… Sorry!
Okay – can you explain that a little more please Jennifer? Those of us in the Elite P3 Marketing forum have now lost our rankings in google for many of our local sites. The description of your product sais that you include information about backlinking post penguin. So, you’re saying that this survival guide won’t help us at all if we’re working in the local marketing space to get our rankings back in google?
Laura,
Your remark is exactly why I was asking. Many of my websites that I created for clients in the Power 3 Marketing course fell completely off Google’s rankings. I can’t find them in Google’s top 500…but, they all still rank on Yahoo/Bing’s first page. And, I have not seen any new input in the Power 3 Marketing course to help us out…nothing.
I think it’s time to pull myself up by my own shoelaces and stop following the crowd.
It’s following the crowd that got me into the mess my sites are in right now; it’s all most killed my internet business off.
From now on, I find my own way of doing things… Everyone says don’t try to reinvent the wheel. However, when that wheel buckles everyone loses at the same time.
Well, that’s the last time for me, from this day forwards I’m going to become the inventor…
I don’t believe you can bring a site back from the deep reaches of cyberspace once Google as tagged it and put it there for having done what they see as using bad practices by the webmaster.
So I’m going to start again, and this time keep away from what the crowds are doing or being told to do. I’m going to reinvent the wheel my way.
Hey,
Just wondering if you saw the weirdness on 6 6 2012 having to do with the search engine rankings. Seems none of the big guns are talking about it, yet, a search turned up at least 4 different businesses and several lower level marketers noticing it (including some in France). Did you notice anything?
“..a search turned up at least 4 different businesses…”
Sorry, that confuses me. Could you give more detail?
I’ve noticed a major roller coaster ride going on. Many urls I track are Top 10 at point of the day (or hour) and then down into the 200’s – 300’s the next. Been crazy to watch.
Yeah, sorry. A few of the sites I worked with experienced massive hits yesterday. So, I was crawling around the web looking for instances of the same thing happening to other people. I found 4 other businesses in the US who reiterated what happened the sites I consult with (not including my own) at this time. I also saw evidence the change is as far reaching as France (as we know, has different Google results than we do in the US.) However, none of the big name marketers or SEO people have mentioned it as of yet. Matt Cutts at SMX Advanced (yesterday) said specifically, “No new Penguin updates have been rolled out”. This means that there have not been any since the one rolled out over last weekend.
I know you watch the rankings closely. Thought I’d ask you, because I saw an instance of a site with natural links (I’ve checked the link profile and the density – it is 58 back links) and a domain age of 2 years drop from position 1 to position 580.
Keep in mind this is ranking for a business name that is unique and there are no competitors with a similar name.
Let me understand, when you Google search for “business name” the business website comes on the 580th position??
Thanks for expanding on that, Scott.
I can’t say any one thing popped out at me yesterday (6-6) but since I was busy working on other projects, I didn’t really look at everything in-depth (but I will now).
The drop from 1 to 580 is pretty massive. Was there a notice inside Webmaster tools or anything like that?
I do know that some rank tracking programs kinda “glitch” when the G data centers are varying wildly. One check might show a normal first page ranking and then next (on another data center) will show something totally whack.
Did they recently do anything regarding their back link profile? Do you see anything new done TO their back links?
A lot could be going on here… and yes, G might have rolled something out or refreshed something, no doubt.
I’ll keep my eyes and ears open for ya, but just keep an eye on it right now. One day of weird rankings does not mean anything permanent.
Thanks for sharing!
Nope, checked the web master tools. Nothing. So, I can at least confirm that it wasn’t a manual slap. I’ve checked the back links, no signs of “negative SEO” or new links. I actually personally checked the results when they came up and they are accurate. I’m pretty baffled by this to be honest. I’ll watch for recovery, but I do not have high hopes. Just going to have to wait 2 weeks and see what happens.
Hmmm… odd. But perhaps we’ll hear something from the folks at G.
Got the information I was looking for, I’m posting it here for your benefit. Here’s what I know about what happened (I built this for a private group, but I’m posting it here too).
I promised an update when I found out more about the algorithmic updates. There is one confirmed update or technically speaking, one “refresh” to Google Panda and there is one update that they are pretty tight lipped about as of yet (more about this later). This happened on June 8th. If you noticed any ranking changes, then it is due to this “update/refresh.”
However, the June 6th rankings drop was due to a change that they have not talked about that is called, the “Bigfoot update” by insiders in the SEO world. This update seems to be a bigger push into “brand” identity. (This is still theoretical in nature). Here is what some big name SEO people noticed. Google started pushing results for a brand name like “Kohl’s” higher and also looked for other cases not on the site. For example, if the website had listings on the white pages, then it was putting those as close as possible to the website “Kohl’s.” This accounts for the major ranking drops as they moved things around. This could be directly tied into the change over to Google + from Google Maps (my best guess). I will have more information has it comes about, but this is the change that I noticed with a name and some data.
Sources:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-bigfoot-update-aka-dr-pete-goes-crazy#jtc184520
http://searchengineland.com/official-google-panda-update-version-3-7-on-june-8th-124281
Shoot, I put in links, sorry. Remove them if you want. Sorry.
Hi PPG,
I’m not sure if it’s ok to post this, but I know you moderate comments, so I’ll ask anyway.
I enjoyed your guide; however, I’m a bit confused on two things:
You say you’re breaking up with Google, but your guide focuses exclusively on how to get your sites ranking again and what to do now about new ones. Huh?
Second, I like the “find a problem” approach; seems we should have been doing that a long time ago. But how narrow are we talking here? I wish I had a few more examples is all. If you go too wide, (like dog training) there are a million different problems. If you go too narrow, (like stop baby crying) how will you ever come up with enough topics to keep writing on it? Are you focusing on one small problem in a big niche, or many problems that make up that niche? Or maybe a section of a section of it? A little confused . . .
Any help would be awesome! Thanks!
Hiya Genevieve =)
Sorry for any confusion!
“breaking up with Google” means not relying on them anymore. Sure, I want my good rankings/Google exposure again, but only as ONE source of traffic; not for ALL my traffic. Does that make sense? My section on band-aids tells the part of what I’m doing to help my sites thru the “now” as I work it forward with my Rocket Method.
Also, my C.H.E.A.T. system in the survival guide describes how I am doing it with much, MUCH less regard for Google.
As for ‘finding a problem” – let’s see how to explain this better (and thank you for letting me know it wasn’t clear to you)…
With your narrow example (stop baby crying), that stills sounds like a ‘keyword’ more than a problem. From a problem angle (and I’m thinking on my feet here without even looking into it), I would have a site name something like RockaByeMommy.com and then have my articles talk about situations where babies keep a new mom from sleeping – and the solutions. As a mom, I know I could talk about that type of topic for quite some time…lol!
That’s just off the top of my head – hope it helps some?
Hello PPG… greetings from sunny San Salvador, El Salvador…
I’m gonna be honest with you. I’ve been struggling in this whole affiliate marketing thing for… too long now, (don’t want to say how long) and making little money (very, very little) and seems like Google is always messing around with my head, ranking my site for non-profitable keywords and stucking me in the 56th+ position for those keywords that probably could give me some money, so I consider myself a underneath newby. I’ve always loved your posts, and I’m about to purchase your survivors guide. I was wondering If in the future you could maybe write about how to work with sites in other languages (maybe not a long post, but something usefull), right now I’m struggling with a site in spanish, and thinking about starting with another site from scratch in a different niche, and people call me crazy, but I know I’m not.
Anyway, just wanted to congratulate you and hopefully in the near future I can share my success story with you.
Thanks
Hi Jennifer,
I’ve read alot of your material over the past couple of days. Does your content based on article marketing posted back in 2009 still apply to today? Is it just as likely for a person to have success with these 2009 methods today as was then?
Summarised (Recursive) survival guide: sell a “survival guide” e-book.
Although I might sound a bit skeptical, I really like your blog 🙂
Hi Jennifer,
the articles is very helpful, and will others in there life.
I would definitely promote this guide. So if you create an affiliate program to market the survival guide, I’m in. This guide gives you a fresh new perspective on not only dealing with Google’s changes, but also provides alternative traffic sources so you’re not tied down to Google so much.
I’m still an IM newb. I have some stuff out there, I’ve made some $$, but I’m still learning. PotPieGirl’s systems are extremely newbie-friendly. Her guides and e-books give you the tools to do things from the ground-up. She offers products in her materials, sure. Some I’ve bought into, others I haven’t. Mostly I won’t buy something if I haven’t done it manually yet. That’s the real difference between her training materials and a lot of other SEO gurus. She always follows her affiliate offers with the caveat that we don’t have to buy anything until we are comfortable. Do it the manual way so you can learn, then come back and look at ways to make your IM work easier.
My advice- use this guide in conjunction with her Mind Eraser method and Article Marketing Secrets guide. With all 3, you’re on your way to building a strong foundation for an online business, for a very small investment. After going through the materials and actually starting your own campaign, take a look at her One Week Marketing guide. Yes, it still works. If Google is still around, most of what you learn regarding fundamental IM techniques still work. The spammy techniques are the ones that go out of style. PotPieGirl’s materials teach you the fundamentals, as well as different ways of thinking creatively.