Using Farmers and Distillers To Build Your Niche List and Get Back Links

By Victory | Published: August 24, 2009

In this post I am going to flesh out and expand on some of the ideas on how to get those sites which are far away from your money making disc0 to get linked to naturally, create content and help build your list.

This blog is too young to get many of the big players of SEO/SEM to give it much thought, so I am not completely surprised on not being “corrected” me on a couple of comments i made in How to Pick a Niche and Dominate Pt3 (though i do think i am in ::emps:: and Contempts Readers, w00t).

First off, although building PDFs, *nars and Videos are are really powerful tools that everyone should be using to get optins, it is something that either gets expensive to outsource or time consuming when you are trying to build the large collection of sites you need for Farmers and Distillers.

Generally Farmers are created by mashups, databases and the Madlib/directory of information style sites. They have a huge bounce rate and generally the surfers who come don’t come back.

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How to Pick a Niche and Dominate Pt 3

By Victory | Published: August 20, 2009

In this installment of picking niches i am going to walk you through a money making strategy for building and selling your niche list. I call this The Velvet Rope.

If you have yet to read parts one and two of this post series i suggest you do so now as i assume you have (everyone else has).

At this point in the game I assume you have some traffic to work with, your pollinators, farmers and distillers are either directly or indirectly getting traffic to your Merrymakers and Disc0, as well as affiliates, PPC and “banner ads.”

Now lets walk these clients to the till. Notice i said “walk them to the till” I use this terminology because i think we have all begun to notice that the chances of selling in a manner where the client buys the first time they see your product or know about you are getting slimmer and slimmer.

That being said for everything outside of merrymakers and disc0 you better get that money now boys and girls, because chances are they are not coming back to your farms and stills.

Attraction

The prospect lands on one of your money making sites for the first time. You first need to get her attention. You have seven seconds.

What on your landing page compels the reader to stay. Everything in the g_ddamn world is pulling her away. What assures her that what problem* she came here with will be solved someplace on this page.

You need to give her a reason to come back, to _trust_ you and to be building a thirst for the solutions your products and services provide.

Get her on your list. The three biggest tools for this are:

PDFs – with “secrete information” to help her have a “second at chance success.” [You can place an optin at the fold]

Videos – with “reassuring information” to help her have a “second chance at success” [front-right of landing page is good place for a video, as well as a "here is a link to a video" email, the video then says "here is a link to landing page"]

(Tele|live|chat)-seminar – allowing her a chance to get direct access to those with “insider information” to mingle with the people she is trying to become, while commiserating with the people who will meet her at the top.

Use all three always.

To get to any of these sources of information she must provide information about herself, not the least of which is contact information, email, twitter, IM Username, phone number, mailing address. Rule of Thumb: The more you are paying for the customer the more personal information you should expect to receive.

The pdf’s, videos and tele* are your bate for opening a communication channel.

Ok, did they optin?

If they opted in, then let them spread the word virally. After they have given there contact info entice them to tell three or more friends. Basically, “Your video is waiting for you in your email, but if you give me three names and email addresses of your closets friends, I will throw in an extra video which shows one secret which will double your chances of success and only takes 10 minutes a day to do. Just fill out this form giving there names and email addresses and customize the message you send them by editing the text below”.

If they don’t optin to your list you have to give them SOME reason to come back to your site, such as an event thats taking place or some other incentive. Ad a classic “BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!”

For example a thickbox frame with a discount, some other piece of really valuable information and a countdown. The thickbox should fire when the visitors mouse leaves the page. This provides a place to enter a comment/question/concern or optin (with them providing an email address). I don’t use alert boxes.

Aside: My very first money making website was an affiliate site. I used a live person (me) glued to a live chat box, it would beep when a visitor came on, i slept with my laptop next to me in my tiny Irish apartment (no desk or chair, just a bed and nightstand for a work space). I had the sound turned way up so it would wake me if people on the other side of the pond came a knocking.

I worked hard for those first sales, but it payed off. Eventually I became the top affiliate and later flew out to London to hang with the owner of the product I was pitching.

You Hinted at a Second Chance, Now on with the Play.

I used the term “second chance” over and over above, this was on purpose, i think that fundamentally the vast majority of non-essential purchases (i.e. stuff that isn’t rent, gas, taxes, etc..) are made because people want a “second chance” at success, happiness or at the very least to relive old successes and happinesses.

You don’t have to look to far for examples; YOUR foray into the world of IM is you moving to Plan B or C or … K as far as what you wanted to do with your life/time. Its good, your making progress, and you have the attention span to read this far and actually make something of yourself, congrats.

So now that you have shown them that “someone” really DOES have answer, “someone” really DOES know what they are FEELING

Personality in selling is HUGE. Nobody wants to buy from a company, period. Nobody.

People want to buy from a people.

They want a transaction that happens one on one. Two people sitting at a table, leaning into each other, talking in a hushed conspiratorial tone "You and me. We are in on it. I know what the successful people know, i know what the successful people have and I am about to give it to you. You were one of 'those other people,’ but since we have a cool thing going i am going let you in on a valuable secret.”

The Players

You need to pick your cast of characters. That is, you need to pick who ME is in the eyes of your prospect, who YOU are and who THEY are.

ME – This is the “side of yourself” that you want to present to the prospect. There are a handful of classic characters to choose. The most clean cut is “ME, i was like YOU, then i found this, now i am not like YOU or THEM anymore. I’m not special, i wasn’t trying to be the person to give out this kind of information, but jeeze it was so good i just had to share it.”

Note: that “ME” can also be your close friend. Like: “my wife is no longer ashamed to go skiing because she learned from the master …”

YOU – What are the common threads of all your prospects. What is the conversation the prospect is already having in their mind that you can join. What are their concerns. How can you explain their problem to them better than they can explain it to themselves. How can you give proof and reassurance that you do have the solution.

THEM – This is who the prospect does not want to be, this is the person who absolutely does not need your product. What are they like, what confidences do they have, what waits do they have lifted off there shoulders?

US – The club they will be in once they get your product or service.

You build this little story in short, punchy pros that tells the story of how you understand the problem, that you have the solution, that you can prove you have the solution and that you are willing to show the prospect the solution because the prospect deserves it.

Ding, Ding: Last Call

So you have shown your character to the readers and they know you understand them.

Its time to get them reaching for their pocketbooks.

You shoot out your (series) of emails/blog posts/twitters/faxes/whatevers telling that the time in now.

Get them to your sales letter.

This is actually the kind of stuff most IM’s seem to “get,” so i won’t spend that much time on it.

Basically you inform your list that there is scarcity, the price is going up, something was leaked so you have to release “the other part,” or that buying now comes with big bonuses that wont be here next week.

The Sales Page

The manner of the sales page will be addressed specifically in a future post, but you basically have all the pieces already, you just need to put them together in the shape of sales page.

Your sales page either converts or it doesn’t.

If it converts then you are tossing your paying customers (i.e. the no questioned ask most important, valuable indispensable thing in you business, no matter you business) to your back-end products. These go in a special list of only paying customers.

You don’t want paying customers getting the email/faxes/letters of your non-paying customers, they are COM_F*KING_LETLY different animals and should be dealt with as such.

If they don’t buy, you wait a day or two and downsell or cross sell them, if they still don’t buy you offer your risk free trials and if they STILL don’t buy you pawn off some (other) affiliate products.

Thats it.

I hope this post has brought some clarity to you so that you know which pieces you still need to incorporate into your business. I would really appreciate some comments, trackbacks, emails, followers on twitter/github (which i just joined as username ‘SEOVictory’) or any form of touching base. You can also find me on skype: thrilling_victory

Best of Luck!

* i use the term “problem’ to mean the reader wants to become, healthier, smarter, prettier and/or wealthier. Some how your site has to convey that it can do this for them.

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Moving to SQLite For Those Who Know MySQL

By Victory | Published: August 15, 2009

SQLite is a dialect of SQL similar to MySQL. SQLite3 comes with some huge benefits when it comes to CAAR over MySQL. PHP5.2+ comes with the PDO class by default which has an interface to SQLite3.

SQLite3 does not require any setting up of user accounts like MySQL. SQLite databases are just normal system files which and be copied, deleted, FTP’ed, scp’ed, rsync’ed and generally passed around like any other file on the system.

This is a HUGE advantage, because you can do things like have a central server which trivially downloads all stats from satellite sites. Similarly you can have one repository for a “config” file (or mappings) and then upload to all your server sites.

No more messing around with importing and exporting, creating user accounts etc, just copy the file and go.

SQLite3 is pretty darn fast and the only drawback is when doing a lot of inserts from a lot of different connections. If you can rap the inserts into a transaction that its really fast.

Learning SQLite if You Already Know MySQL by Example

First off SQLite3 has more in common with MySQL than differences. I would like to address some of the differences which come up commonly when programing CRUD.

First off you will need to create a sqlite file using the PDO class, in these example we will assume that the database is or will be created in the db/ directory and that database name will be site.sqlite.

As you look over this code it might look more involved than you are use to. I tried to post something which show many common uses.

If you don’t know what TRANSACTION’s, FOREIGN KEYS, TRIGGERS or prepared statements are, then well you are a little slow on the ball in the world of SQL, but this example will use all of them so you can add them to your tool belt.

You should read this code and the comments, its meant to be an example.

PDO/SQLite By Example

 
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" 
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
 
<html>
 
<head>
<title>Learning PDO/Sqlite 
For Those Who Know MySQL by Example</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" >
<meta http-equiv="content-type" 
      content="text/html; 
      charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body>
 
 
<?php
   echo "<" . "pre>"; 
 
 
// Creating the PDO object. This will attempt to open an sqlite3
// database or if it doesn't exist, create it. If you are just now
// creating the database make sure the 'db' folder is writable by the
// user Apache is wrong as.
$pdo=new PDO("sqlite:db/site.sqlite");
 
// When pdo/sqlite encounter an error we throw and exception
$pdo->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE,
		   PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
 
// Create a table of products with the sku number, name and
// price. Note there is no need to create the "id INT(11) PRIMARY KEY
// AUTO_INCREMENT" because SQLite auto matically creates one for you
// called "ROWID"
$sql="
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS products (
 
 -- Create a char variable called name, which should be 10 chars long,
 -- however sqlite will not truncate the char if you try to insert
 -- something longer. So the (1) is basically just a comment.
 `name` CHAR(10) NOT NULL,
 
 -- create a unique key called sku_number, which when a conflict
 -- happens we FAIL. FAIL just means: throw an exception, but keep the
 -- rest of the transaction in tact.
 `sku_number` INT UNIQUE NOT NULL ON CONFLICT FAIL,
 
 
 -- SQLite3 Will, let you put strings in INT columns, if it can't
 -- convert the string to an int in a resonable fashion.
 `price` INT
 
)
";
// Run the SQL statment to create the table
$pdo->query($sql);
 
 
// Create an index to speed up the retrival of products via the
// sku_number
$sql="
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX IF NOT EXISTS sku_index 
ON products(sku_number)
";
$pdo->query($sql);
 
 
// create an array to hold some to insert into are database.
$products=
  Array(
   Array(":sku_number"=>123,
	 ":name"=>"stove",
	 ":price"=>500),
 
   Array(":sku_number"=>456,
	 ":name"=>"lamp",
	 ":price"=>"30"),
 
 
   Array(":sku_number"=>100,
	 ":name"=>"sink",
	 ":price"=>300),
 
   Array(":sku_number"=>789,
	 ":name"=>"toaster",
	 ":price"=>"35 dollars after rebate"));
 
 
// prepare an insert statement, the ":sku_number" type strings will
// replaced with the appropriate value above. PDO does all the
// proper escaping.
$sql="
INSERT INTO products
 (sku_number,name,price) 
  VALUES
 (:sku_number,:name,:price)
";
 
// run the perpare statment and get the $statment object.
$statment=$pdo->prepare($sql);
 
 
// When inserting many rows, its a very good idea to the executes them
// in a beginTransaction() and commit() block, this will speed up the
// running of many inserts greatly.
$pdo->beginTransaction();
 
 
// Iterate over each of the products as returned by the $statment object 
foreach($products as $product){
  // ... executing the prepaired statment for each product.
  try{
    $statment->execute($product);
  }catch(Exception $e){
    // Note because we set `ON CONFLICT FAIL` for sku_number the
    // transaction will continue. See
    // /sqlite-3_6_16-docs/conflict.html for alternatives to FAIL,
    // such as IGNORE, REPLACE, ROLLBACK etc...
 
    if($e->getCode() == "23000"){
      // If you wanted you could simulate MySQL's "INSERT ... ON
      // DUPLICATE KEY ..." by running some other SQL commands
      // here. The lack of "ON DUPLICATE KEY" is the feature of MySQL
      // i miss the most in SQLite3.
    }
  }
}
 
// Now end the commit block, which writes the results to the disk
$pdo->commit(); 
 
// now just select all the items in the table to see what we have.
$sql="SELECT * FROM products ";
$result=$pdo->query($sql);
 
echo "<h2>All The Products</h2>";
while($row=$result->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)){
  var_dump($row);
}
/*
This will Print:
 
array(3) {
  ["name"]=>
  string(5) "stove"
  ["sku_number"]=>
  string(3) "123"
  ["price"]=>
  string(3) "500"
}
array(3) {
  ["name"]=>
  string(4) "lamp"
  ["sku_number"]=>
  string(3) "456"
  ["price"]=>
  string(2) "30"
}
array(3) {
  ["name"]=>
  string(4) "sink"
  ["sku_number"]=>
  string(3) "100"
  ["price"]=>
  string(3) "300"
}
array(3) {
  ["name"]=>
  string(7) "toaster"
  ["sku_number"]=>
  string(3) "789"
  ["price"]=>
  string(23) "35 dollars after rebate"
}
 
*/
 
 
$sql="
SELECT * FROM products
 WHERE
  ROWID='1';
";
$result=$pdo->query($sql);
$row=$result->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
 
echo "<h2>Selecting row with ROWID '1'</h2>";
var_dump($row);
/* 
This will print out:
array(3) {
  ["name"]=>
  string(5) "stove"
  ["sku_number"]=>
  string(3) "123"
  ["price"]=>
  string(3) "500"
}
 */
 
 
echo "<h3>Updating price to 300 on product with sku 123</h3>";
$sql="
UPDATE products SET
 price='300'
  WHERE
 sku_number='123'
";
$pdo->query($sql);
 
 
echo "<h3>Deleting all products with price less than 200</h3>";
$sql="
DELETE FROM products
 WHERE
  sku_number > 200
";
$pdo->query($sql);
 
$sql="SELECT ROWID,* FROM products";
$result=$pdo->query($sql);
 
echo "<h2>All The Products Now, Showing ROWID.</h2>";
while($row=$result->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)){
  var_dump($row);
}
/* 
This will print out:
 
array(3) {
  ["name"]=>
  string(5) "stove"
  ["sku_number"]=>
  string(3) "123"
  ["price"]=>
  string(3) "300"
}
array(3) {
  ["name"]=>
  string(4) "sink"
  ["sku_number"]=>
  string(3) "100"
  ["price"]=>
  string(3) "300"
}
 
*/
 
 
// SQLite doesn't have foreign key constrants by default but its easy
// enought to simulate with SQL Triggers.
$sql="
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS sales (
 
-- create a product id column, and check to see that we only insert
-- integers. You can put other types of checks as well.
 
product_id INT
 CHECK(typeof(product_id) = 'integer'),
 
 
sell_date DATETIME
)
";
$pdo->query($sql);
 
// Now we try to insert a product id which is not an int
$sql="
INSERT INTO sales
 (product_id,sell_date)
VALUES
 ('problem',DATETIME('NOW'))
";
// This throw an exception because, because 50000 is not a valid
// product id.
try{
  $pdo->query($sql);
}catch(Exception $e){
  // looks like we have a key constraint problem
  echo "product id not a int " .$e->getMessage() . "\n";
}
 
 
// If you are a bit new to creating TRIGGERS than this might look a
// little strange, but the pattern is always the same for a doing a
// foreign key constraint, so you can just wrap this in a function or
// copy/paste/modify.
$sql="
CREATE TRIGGER IF NOT EXISTS 
 sales_insert 
BEFORE INSERT ON
 sales
BEGIN
 SELECT CASE
  WHEN 
   (SELECT ROWID FROM products WHERE ROWID=NEW.product_id) IS NULL
  THEN 
   RAISE(ABORT,
         'Foreign Key Violation: product_id is not in products.ROWID')
 END;
END;
";
$pdo->query($sql);
 
 
// This is just to check to see if its safe to delete the key.
$sql="
CREATE TRIGGER IF NOT EXISTS 
 sales_delete
BEFORE DELETE ON
  products
BEGIN
 SELECT CASE
  WHEN
   (SELECT COUNT(ROWID) FROM sales WHERE product_id=OLD.ROWID) > 0
  THEN
   RAISE(ABORT,
         'Foreign Key Violation: product refrences sales')
 END;
END;
";
$pdo->query($sql);
 
 
// *** NOTE *** there is a bug in PDO which quotes integers, in SQLite
// *** quoted integers are NOT integers, they are strings, so using
// *** prepared statments will not do what we
// *** want. php.net/bug.php?id=49268
$sql="
INSERT INTO sales
 (product_id,
  sell_date)
  VALUES
 (1,
  DATE('NOW'))
";
// no error is thrown
$pdo->query($sql);
 
// this will throw an exception, because 5484 isn't a valid ROWID in
// products.
$sql="
INSERT INTO sales
 (product_id,
  sell_date)
  VALUES
 (5484,
  DATE('NOW'))
";
try{
  $pdo->query($sql);
}catch(PDOException $e){
  // i will get run, because 5484 isn't valid
  echo "bad product id " . $e->getMessage() . "\n";
}
 
$sql="
DELETE FROM products 
 WHERE
  sku_number='123'
";
// this will throw an exception, because i inserted a sale for a
// product with sku_number=123 above. Specifically product_id=1 has
// sku_number '123'
try{
  $pdo->query($sql); 
}catch(Exception $e){
  echo "cant delete sku_number 123 because we have sales " . 
    $e->getMessage() . "\n";
}
 
echo "<" . "/pre>"; 
 
// just delete the database because we are done with it.
unlink('db/site.sqlite');
?>
 
 
</body>
</html>

You can read most (all?) of the The definitive guide to SQLite By Mike Owens, Michael Owens on google books. The chapter entitled SQL is the most useful for our purposes.

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How To Pick A Niche And Dominate: The DFHU Way Pt2

By Victory | Published: August 10, 2009

In the last post of this series we talked about the structure of a DFHU network.

Some people have come to the conclusion that the CAAR network structure is mostly based around the “quality” of links. Particularly, lower-quality/higher-volume links are farther from Disc0, while higher-quality/lower-volume links are closer. This is true for pretty much all sites you control directly, however its missing the bigger picture.

Link structure is, in large part, the angle Eli took on his, now famous, SEO Empire post. I don’t take this angle here for a few reasons.

First, I assumed pretty much everyone who is reading this blog and understanding it also reads BluehatSEO.com (its in my blogroll). Two, Eli already explained the concept of “linking up;” i.e. lower quality sites link to higher quality sites (and never the other way round), its harder for sub domains to hurt the main domains and once you get over link volume, SEO gets easier. Finally, i want to focus more on resource management instead of link theory.

His ideas on network structure are clearly compatible to my network, its just that he focuses on network linking structure and my main point of structure is how much time and resources you spend on each site given its particular level in the network.

For instance, the Pollinators may very well have your best links; paid links clearly fall into the category of Pollinators. You also note that it takes very little time to create these links and compared to keeping up a quality MarryMaker site, paid links are cheap.

Being Realistic about “The Math” is Rarely The Funnest Part of Your Day

The two most common mistakes i see people make is that replicating a site will increase the returns linearly or that pumping money into an OK site will make it into a great site fast.

For example, some think that if one LoLWut site makes 2000/month than two cloned LuLWut sites will make 4000/month. I have NEVER seen this happen personally, i have NEVER pulled it off and i don’t really hear about too many other people pulling it off either. Usually people who do this type of math are working on sites which are not Disc0, but really just some random niche they picked and think is hot.

In reality the sites tend to fight with each other, like two nagging lovers who try not to know about each-other. They are scrambling for your attention.

You try to keep of them both up equally, but slowly you get paranoid. You start seeing “footprints” in everything you are going to do. “I can’t get all the links from the same place or GY Bing search will know, i can’t interlink because GY Bing search will ban the whole network, I can’t mention LuLWot2 in my LulWot1 newsletter or else my customers will know,” etc.. etc.. Its starts to take more than twice as long to create a piece of content for both than it would for just one.

“Ha ha, thats for n00bs, i will use SYNERGY”. Will you? Are your two sites really cross-sales/comparables or up sales? Is it really a coin toss of which one makes the most money? No, its not is it. One has better numbers than the other. So play the game, give your sites a pecking order.

If one site is making more, then let it support the other site, not fight against it. In short spend more time and energy on the money maker. In respecting this you realize that having LuLWotSiteA and LuLWotSiteB doesn’t mean 2000 + 2000, but probably something more like 1000 + 2500, if you are really good and lucky it might be like 1500 + 3000, but expecting such success without plenty of forethought (instead of counting the money) is a bad idea.

Furthermore the farther from disc0 you go, the faster you reach the point where new site creation results in only minor increases in wealth.

If you are good you will start doing the math to see. I can replicate this site for $20/year and it will take me 20 minutes to do it. So even though the next site might only bring in $100/year directly, you are still making a tiny global profit (you must include the time and resources it took you to get to the point where you can create a site in 20 minutes, and for $20/year).

Thinking about the network in terms of this pecking order from Pollinators to Disc0 lends it self to proper link structure as a side effect. In short your just doing the math. Sites that bring in tiny profits, require tiny resources, sites that bring in good money (and personal fulfillment) get more of your time and resources.

Now the other kind of math i see people make goes something like this, i spent $1000 on the site and promotion, its making me $100/month, but if i spend another $1000 on site it will make $200/month.

The biggest problem with this kind of math (unlike the linear repeatability), is that this CAN be true. In fact when it comes to your customer list, it is almost always the case that there is more money in the list than any other place your going to be looking.

The problem is scaling your site/operation is almost never going to lead to a linear increase in returns, just like cloning the site, the returns tend to be sub-linear, because you start being torn about how to expend your resources.

If the site really is a Merrymaker or Disc0 than it CAN result in linear or super linear returns, if you invest your resources correctly.

So what are some pointers to spending that extra $1000.

- Spend it on customer acquisition. Note: i didn’t say TRAFFIC acquisition. Get buying customers on your buying list. Don’t mix up your lists, buyers are buyers are buyers, be cool to these people. Start a real dialogue with them, find out what they are feeling, their concerns, their viewpoints, so that you can tailor your products, services and especially your copy to their language (you ARE analyzing the language people use when they post on your forums and send you emails aren’t YOU?!?) .

The people who are just after the free junk might be cool, but you can’t spend that much time on them expecting them to become customers.

- Use that money to outlive your competition. If you can live in the red longer than your competition that is one of the purest most easily proven competitive advantages you can have. If you can give out three months of free samples and your competition can only give out One month of free samples, you become very hard to touch. If your door prize has Lakers tickets and Your Competition has Clippers tickets well it can’t hurt. In short, being ready, willing and able to spend more to get a paying customer then your competition is always a winning formula.

- Spend that money on testing cross sales and up-sales or *gasp* a copywriter.

- Spend that money on getting more information about your prospects, who are they, where are they coming from and what do they really want?

- Finally, spend that money on getting more traffic. Do this after you have done the rest. Traffic is ephemeral. If you had a visitor to your site a week ago, who didn’t buy, or contact you, or bookmark, then really thats just money gone, spent fuel, there is no more value in it. You need to do this get enough data, of course, so its the price you pay. When you do pay for traffic make sure you are showing it something that is working or being tested.

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Use Your Cheap Webhosts To Proxy Your SOCKS Puppets

By Victory | Published: August 7, 2009

Sometimes there are forums with such authority and respect in your niche that you are more or less required to be on them.

There are situations where it doesn’t really make sense to outsource comments/posts such as:

• The niche is so esoteric that outsource people will have no way to add value to the topics.

• You know the forum and its people because you are very interested in the niche, thus you really know the “vibe” of forum and will know where/what to post.

• Your niche is replete with paranoid or skeptical prospects.

• Sometimes on the forum/blog it makes sense to “be yourself” or be the face of your website, but of course you don’t want people to know your sock puppet is you.

There are other reasons and chances are that at some point or another you have come to the conclusion that you need to invent a knowledgeable and respected sock puppet thus you can’t outsource the problem easily.

Use Technology to Distance You From Your Sock Puppet

Each sock puppet in my muppet show has its own Firefox Profile. This includes bookmarks, rss feeds, etc… etc… which are on-topic or associated with fake location of the puppet, this will make it easy to get a new idea of what to talk about if you don’t know already and will keep you in character. If your proxy puts in in Texas you might want to be able to throw in name of some medium size cities in your post to give you creditability. I was driving between east bumflok and west nowhere when i started looking at my vintage, handcrafted spirit bracelets and thought i need to get to vintageawsome.faux and buy some for Jacklin who works at the chop shop on corner of 7th and Pine

You want to use firefox’s profile manger and User Agent Switcher plugin to change your user agent string so that can’t be

You can use (just about) any cheap webhost who gives ssh access (one of my minimum requirements for a webhost) using the ssh -D 127.0.0.1:8888 username@myhost.faux on your home box*.

You then set your SOCKS proxy to 127.0.0.1 and port 8888. With a different user agent, a different IP and a character you are free method act your new SOCKSPuppet.

Of course if your cheap web hosting has some obvious footprints to your main site (not SEO footprints, but human noticeable) footprints then you might not be as safe if the webmaster of the forum you are posting at is really astute or really determined. But because your Farmers/Pollinators are so broad a topic and you switch up your posts a bit on the forum (every post shouldn’t link to your site of course) then you should fly well below the radar.

Using this extremely powerful method has worked really well for me^H^H some person i heard about once somewhere.

This method almost certainly will NOT work if you are in a really skeptical market like any make money, HYIP, Cashinos etc… type niche. It can work well for niches which have many civilian consumers (handbags, jewelery, tile floors, air conditioners, etc…).

If you aren’t building sock puppets, you really should set up accounts NOW “just in case.” The two things that are most easy for users to recognize are the age of your sock puppet’s account and the post count. So set up the accounts as soon as possible (like months in advance is a good idea) and put in your first couple of posts and maybe one post every two weeks after the first flurry of insightful, non-promotional posts.

For advanced users, you can actually give some positive feedback on your competition at first and THEN go back and say i was using blah blah blah link-to-old-post, but then i found awsomevintage.faux and they had everything that competitorvintage.faux had but also these really cool advantages … so now i use awsomevintage.faux

You have good IPs that you are not using to full advantage SSH -D is your friend.

I will stop, I will stop at nothing.
Say the right things when I’m puppeteering.
I trust I can rely on your vote.

When I go forwards you go backwards
and somewhere we will meet.
When I go forwards you go backwards
and somewhere we will meet.
Ha ha ha

Riot shields, voodoo economics,
it’s just business, cattle prods and the I.M.F.
I trust I can rely on your vote.

Listen to Jonny Greenwood Rip This Song Up

* Note that in windows you can use puTTY instead of the ssh command line client. The options are under Tunnel.

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