Some Internet marketers go all out with articles and write thousands of them. In the resource box they point a link to their blogs and sometimes they have their blogs redirected to an affiliate offer so the person goes straight to the offer. An advantage with articles is that sometimes they can rank high right out of the gate because they are coming from an authority site. That is what EzineArticles.com and HubPages are – authority sites.

I was doing some research for another niche this morning and came upon one writer who had over 149 active articles, resulting in 183,427 views on EzineArticles. Almost all these articles were for the same niche! I then did some more poking around and found someone by another name had over 167 articles for that same niche on ArticlesBase.com and these were all pointed to the same domain so it was the same lady.

One of her articles had over 58,000 views itself and obviously this one article has made her a ton of money even when you assume that only 10% or so click on the author box and get directed to her sight.  If only 10% of the people click her link (and often it is higher) that means almost 6000 readers had clicked through to her site which was redirected to the affiliate offer. That’s a lot of clicks for one article.

If you want to make money with CashCrate and any other paid online surveys sites by referrals, you need to get people to your blog. One way that can help is to pump out a lot of articles like that lady has done that are all loosely centered around the same subject (niche) and hope that a few of them are home runs. Like I have explained before, this would mean writing articles that were aimed at different groups of people who all need money. Thus, they would be interested in CashCrate and more likely to sign up.

If you want to know where to get backlinks for your online surveys for money blog, a good way is to write articles and submit them to article directories like Ezine, GoArticles, Buzzle.com and many others. Ezine is the best so you should start there. These are all authority sites which means that Google will often rank articles from these places quite high, especially if there is little competition. You, on the other hand, with your two month old CashCrate blog will never rank for the same keywords until you get tons more authority which may take months or years. That is why some people put a lot of effort into articles in hopes that a few will rank high and get a lot of clicks like the 58,000 clicks mentioned above.

People who go overboard with articles can get a lot of backlinks but they are all coming from the same place(s) so they are worth less as more come in. Also writing all that content and putting it up on someone else’s website is a questionable tactic. I write some articles but only enough to get some backlinks as I would prefer to put most of my material on my sites themselves. In other words, why would I spend all that time writing articles and helping build up other sites when I could be building up my own sites with that material.

One last note, if you do a Google search for any keyword term and find that the first page is full of articles, that means the keyword are very easy to beat. Any keyword that you see lots of articles on the first page of Google is a keyword that is easy to beat and outrank those articles (relatively easy anyway). If you do a search and find MSN, Forbes, and other similar sites occupying the top spots, you know that is an impossible term to attack. But if you see all articles at the top of the serps, that means those terms are ripe for the picking. This will not happen for anything associated with the word “CashCrate” or any other paid online surveys terms because there is so much competition.

Dan asks:

1. I know there are many sites with which I can earn money, but for now I would like to start with CashCrate. I know you believe that one should continue adding content to their blog instead of just having a few pages of tips and instructions for CashCrate. I can see how this would give the blog more authority. However, if I want to get CashCrate referrals, I still need these pages. If I make them the first few posts on my blog, they will gradually get pushed down as I add new content.

I was thinking of doing a blog detailing some of the other sites on which I have been able to earn money/prizes. How would one do this effectively while still keeping the focus on CashCrate referrals. I want to offer new content without burying my CashCrate links. Can I do this on a blog related to many different GPT sites, or would a traditional webpage type site work better?

Dan, figuring out the best strategy is one of the fun things for me about making money from online surveys for money  referrals and money online in general. There is no right answer to your question. As you can see, I have the same post at the top of my blog all the time. That is the post with the big check. That is my calling card for this blog and I feel it gives me some immediate credibility when a visitor stops by. I had the same exact problem that you are asking about.

So, I had the dilemma of what to do to make sure most or all traffic sees that check. I also have a page up top with the check and a video but I assume hardly anyone clicks that. I settled on keeping that post on top and having all new posts appear underneath it. I also tried to think of a way to put the “CashCrate check proof” picture on the right sidebar but decided against that.

You will have to figure out what works for you and your blog. You can try something like I did or come up with some other alternative. I am sure there are other inventive ways to do the same thing and make sure that your readers have access all the time to what you want them to read.

You are right that the more posts you have and the more words you have on your blog give Google more words to choose from and might make your blog appear in the SERPS for many different terms. You can make money with a one page blog or even one post but your odds are better that you will get into the SERPS by writing a lot.

2. You mention using three way linking as a means of getting one way anchored backlinks. So, I would create my flagship blog which another site would link to, and then I would give them a link on one of my secondary sites correct? If I do this, I will obviously want to focus most of my attention and new content posts on the main blog. Do I just use some of the content from my flagship site for the smaller ones? If not, do you have any suggestions for making the smaller sites different since I only have enough experience to write about so many money making sites?

The flagship blog should be your main money blog that you spend a good part of your time on. It should be your best work just in case you ever need it to show someone. You might even be able some day to charge for advertising. I am just saying that everyone should, in my opinion, have one blog that stands above the rest in terms of quality. 

You might be able to make other blogs that are related to your flagship blog but not on exactly the same subject. If your thing is making money, are there other topics that can relate to money somehow? Stocks relate to money. So do bonds, CD’s, loans, jobs, freelance work, and anything else you can think of that has to do with money. They can all be tied in to the same overall subject of money and might be useful to give and get 3 way links.

The more blogs you have, the more options you have. This is hard work I know but those that are successful making money with survey referrals, CashCrate, and other things work hard. Most CashCraters slap up a blog and 5 minutes later are complaining they have no traffic. LOL LOL. They think it all magically happens and eventually they give up. They conclude that the magic formula has been withheld from them or that it is all a scam. Making money online is not a scam, it’s just hard work!

Let’s say that I want people to link to this blog with the keywords “CashCrate referrals” because, afterall, that is what this blog is about. I want people to link to me using those words so that Google will know that is what we are discussing here and I want this blog to have authority for that term.

http://paidonlinesurveysformoney.com/ <—-this is not an anchored back link

CashCrate Referrals  <——-this is an achored back link

Both of those links will take the clicker to the exact same place: this blog. But one of those links helps me and the other is worthless. Guess which is which.

This first link is just a link that doesn’t tell Google anything. Well, it tells Google that this site is about http://paidonlinesurveysformoney.com/ which really doesn’t tell it anything because no one is going to ever type that in. Ever. Do you understand that? Nobody is ever going to go to their computer, turn it on, connect to the Internet, and then out of the blue type in http://paidonlinesurveysformoney.com/.

The second link is an anchored link and it will take the clicker to the same place (this blog) but that link tells Google that this site is about how to make cashcrate referrals. If people sign up to CashCrate and do some surveys but then decide they want to learn how to start referring others, they will go to Google and search for “CashCrate referrals” or “how to make CashCrate referrals” or some other variation of that.  I want this blog to rank high for that and so this type of link is valuable because it will help me get this blog to rise in the search engine rankings for CashCrate referrals.

There are two ways to make an anchored link on your blog. This first is the easiest:

Highlight the words you want to make the link out of like I have above. and the click on the little link icon above it. There is an icon with a link picture and an icon with a link breaking right next to it which can be used to remove the link from the words. When you click the “link” icon it will bring up this box:

You then put the URL of where you want the link to take the person who clicks it and then click the “Insert” button in the lower right and you will have made your first anchored link.

The second way to make an anchored link is to go to the HTML section of blog interface and type in:

<a href=”"> </a>

You then put the URL you want in between the ” ” and the words you want for the link in between the    > <     In this case the link would look like this in the HTML section:

<a href=”http://paidonlinesurveysformoney.com/”>CashCrate referrals</a>

and it would look like this after you publish your blog:

CashCrate referrals

So that is how you put anchored links on your blog. When someone else asks you for a link they are probably wanting an anchored link so you should ask them what they want the link to say. Giving them anything other than an anchored link is a waste of your time and their time.

If you want to get paid survey refferals or any kind of affiliate referrals, you need to get anchored links from other websites to link to your blog so that your blog will rise in the search engines. You can do the social sites like Digg and StumbleUpon until you are blue in the face and starving until you realize that is not the way to make money. Even if you should somehow get a lot of hits from one of those type of sites, traffic will eventually die down to a trickle and then die completely.

The only way to get a steady stream of maintainable targeted traffic to your blog is by getting anchored back links so that your blog will show up for the words you choose. That is the way Internet marketers make online money and that is the best way to make lots of CashCrate referrals.

For someone just starting out, the video below explains anchored links and their importance as well as I have ever seen it explained. It is from Allyn Hane over at blogging and Internet marketing. <–That is an anchored link.

In order to get online CashCrate referrals, you need a blog that is centered on one main topic (niche). That topic ultimately has to involve making money or the need to make money otherwise your readers would never have the desire to sign up to CashCrate. In order to get people to your blog (traffic), you need targeted organic search engine traffic from Google and you need to be at minimum on the 1st page of Google for as many search terms possible that are related to your niche.

When you get on the first page of Google (and especially in the top 3 spots) you will get traffic as long as you are there for keywords that people type in. In other words, if you own the top spot on Google for “intelligent blue ants”, you won’t get any traffic because no one will ever look for that. So, having the top spot or being on the first page for things that no one searches for will do you no good whatsoever.

However, if you are in the top spot for “paid online surveys“, you will get traffic because those three terms are searched for many times everyday. The trick is to get your blog on Google’s first page for terms that are searched. If you can do that, the more the terms are searched, the more money you will make (provided you figure out how to monetize your incoming traffic).

This is another post on the importance of getting anchored back links to your blogs which will create blog authority. When you start a blog, you want it to be about something specific and for it to gain authority for that subject. Most people start a blog with no goal or plan and it meanders all over the place. One day they write about gardening and the next they write about the great movie they just saw. Ultimately they have posts about a huge variety of things and blog authority for nothing. What this means is that Google has no idea about what their blog is about so they never rank high for anything.

The blogs that make money are centered around one subject and have tons of authority for that subject. Celebrity blogs are hot right now (the top ones make tens of thousands of dollars a month) and they have authority for anything to do with Hollywood, movies, movie stars, and celebrities in general. They only post about celebrities and many of the incoming back links are anchored for celebrities. This steady stream of incoming links about celebrities tells Google that the blog is about celebrities. Make sense?

When I started this blog, I knew I wanted it to be about getting “CashCrate referrals” along with anything else to do with making money with “paid online surveys” and “surveys for money“. There is hardly any competition for the two words “CashCrate referrals” and as I check right now, I am already on the first page of Google in 9th spot for that term. I was able to accomplis this because, unfortunately for me, not that many people search for that term and there is very little competition for it. Because there is so little competition, I believe I will be able to get to the top spot (or close to it) without too much trouble.

The more competition there is for a term, the harder it is to get to Google’s front page and then up to the top three spots. Of course this makes sense because everyone wants to rank for the popular terms so they can get readers and make money. If you get to the top spot easily without many links or much work, it probably means there is not much demand for those words and not too many people type them in. My blue ant scenario from above is this exact situation. Since there is no demand for those words (why would there be?) this post will most likely be on the first page and maybe even position #1 without any links at all. This is because absolutely no one else cares and is targeting the term.

The way your blog must get authority for any keyword or keywords is through anchored back links. Continually writing posts about the subject helps but ultimately it is the links that matter. Anchored back links are the single most important thing you have to learn about online. They are what make the difference between making money and starving. I read somewhere once that you should spend 20% of your time writing content and 80% of your time getting anchored links.

Remember that anchored links are NOT links like this: http://paidonlinesurveysformoney.com/

That link tells Google nothing about what this blog is about and that kind of link is absolutely USELESS. An unanchored link or a link that is anchored incorrectly is USELESS.

In the next post I will talk more about anchored links, what they look like, how to make them, and how to get them. If you have any questions please leave a comment and if you want to make sure you don’t miss a post please make sure you subscribe to my feed at the upper right of my blog.