Last night at about 11PM I bought Link Farm Evolution just like I said I would. I grabbed it a bit early so I could get it installed and running before the first of the month.

First impressions so far are that its super easy to install. This took all of 5mins you simply upload the script make an sql database and then go to the install script. Once it dose its thing you are all set up.

The next thing I did was set up some catch all e-mail accounts for the program to use. They have instructions for this on their site so that makes it easy. You basically pick a domain name, make a catchall email, create a sql database and put a php file in the root of said domain. LFE automatically goes to this script so it can’t be renamed which kinda sucks.

I was really lazy with this at first since I didn’t quite understand how it worked. I thought I could just make catchalls all over the place and then forward its mail to another catchall. I mean if all the “activate me” emails went to the same account it should be much easier right? Well yeah but the php script that lfe uses can’t work this way. You actually have to set up each domain with its own database and php file.

I learned this lesson after my first test of 500 blogs when I never got any emails and lfe never activated them. This is one of those times it was better to follow the instructions and not just assume it would work. I had to go back into LFE and delete all of these blogs since I was never able to use them. So only time and captchers were wasted in my mistake. I have since fixed this problem by making proper catchall domains, which I hope will work much better this time.

In case you were wondering LFE come with a remote repository of wpmu and pligg sits that you can grab rather than scrapping your own. Mines busy right now so I can’t give exact numbers but its like 5k wpmu and 5k pligg sites. Lots of these sites are from other countries, or have special requirements. Like one site said I couldn’t make a blog there since I did not have a .edu email. This is due to the fact that all of these sites were just scrapped from the serps.

What pisses me off though is that there dose not seem to be a good way to weed out the bad blogs. There is no button to delete them from the database on failure. So I will have to manually weed them out. This is probably one of the major causes of the blog creation problems most people have. “I told it to make 500 blogs, and it only made 200!” etc etc.. If you never remove these bad hosts from your list they will always error. This will take time but I hope to have a decent working list by the end of the month.

Feel free to ask any questions you may have about the program and ill try to answer as I find them.

EDIT: I just finished a run of 500 blogs. Many failed and I started to copy and paste a giant list to week out the one that failed. 30 fucking mins later I go back to try and find and remove them and every site I paste back into find is gone. So I do believe that LFE automatically deletes out bad wpmu’s when they error.

Looks like GoDaddy is having a huge sale for the superbowl and is offering 0.99 cent .com’s! So load up and use coupon code BOWL2010 to take them down to 0.99.

I just launched a few seo sites and have done my initial linking for them like I do for all of my sites. One of the niches is doing very well and pulled in some very good money the last two days. So I figured this would be a good time to touch on the importance of campaign reinvesting.

Campaign reinvesting is when you reinvest any profits made by a new campaign back into the campaign. This of course is pretty basic shit that everyone should know and if common practice for PPC campaigns. But it also should apply to any SEO sites your doing, since when working with SEO you need to be constantly adding new links and content to keep you rankings.

The thing to work on is the mentality of how we pay our selves. Often at midnight I will check though stats and say to my self “Nice, I made X amount today.” This in some ways is correct but also a horrible way of doing things since it leaves out any reinvestment you need to do.  It is much better to think “Nice, X campaign made X today.” as this keeps the idea of it being your money out of your head.

So what do I do to reinvest cash back into SEO campaigns?  The most common expense I have is outsourcing.  I have a list of people I go to when I need link building done, I have a list of content writers, and so one and so on. It is always beneficial to spend 100% of a site’s first weeks of earnings back into the site.  This way the site will gain more and more traction and should make you more money.

Each site I build tries to follow these lines.

Week 1: 100% Reinvestment

Week 2: 100% Reinvestment

Week 3: 80% Reinvestment

And so on.  Of course this all depends on the site and situation. Often I also use a new sites income to invest into some other part of my business rather than the site its self. This is how I acquire most of my programs and scripts such as WFReview, LFE, BANS, etc.  Often these scripts can even be used on that they were funded by which makes it even better. It is much easier to drop $200-300 on a program if you stop thinking about it as being your money.  Just remember that it is not your money until you accountant says so.

I was recently going though projects and decided to check up on my comment killer wordpress plugin. Sales have not been all that great and it really didn’t get the attention it needed marketing wise. But the product is sound and has really saved my ass on countless wordpress installs.

So in an effort to get the plugin out to more people I have lowered the price to $2.00 for the plugin and unlimited use. I really can’t think of a better way to spend two bucks I hope this new price will allow more people to try out this amazing plugin.

If you have no idea what I am talking about or want to order CommentKiller you can learn more at http://www.commentkiller.com/.

So I know that I have been working on this project for a good while now. I am nowhere near my goal but I do have more money making site then when I started. When I first started this project I had a lot of sites in mind and a good number of domains just sitting there doing nothing. I had started to build them out and was going at a pretty good pace until I ran out of steam and things started to crawl. I stopped working on the SEO sites and started to get back into the fast stakes PPC game.

With 2010 a new year and decade I have decided to renew my efforts in my 1,000 site challenge, but I have modified the terms to just as many sites as it takes to make 1,000 bucks a day. Also no PPC campaign can be a part of it, as that will make it to easy. I want natural ranking sites that will make money with minimal effort. The idea still seems sound but will of course always be at the mercy of the search engines.

Now one of the major problems I was running into was that I did not have the capacity to build links for all of these sites as fast as I was building the sites themselves. Despite my skills as a site builder I wasn’t getting anywhere in the serps with out incoming links. I have a few link networks, sites, and services for link building but it was not enough to keep up with demand for new sites. This is why this time I have added a second smaller challenge to help support the first one.

I am planning on trying out a few programs for link building using various seo methods. The first of which will be Link Farm Evolution(LFE). I have had my eye on this script since it came out but it has been kept pretty low key by the people who use it. It hasn’t been as widely promoted across the affiliate scene so reviews of it are hard to find. What I have found has been good and the methods behind it are sound.

So with this in mind I will be buying LFE and challenging myself to earn the cost of the script ($297) within the 30 return period. I will be making new websites and promoting them with LFE in the hopes that I will be able to get these new sites to rank well enough to cover my costs. Depending on the amount of revenue generated by this method I will decide on if I will return the script and get my refund or if I will keep it and just work harder.

To give myself some set up time I have decided to purchase LFE on February 1st since this simplify matters and give me time to pick my targets. I will post updates and tips as they occur and I will report my final revenue at the end of the challenge so stay tuned.

I just got an e-mail I was not expecting… it looks as though WFReview has been sold once again to a new owner. Last time it was sold the new owner wasn’t able to keep up with it and it fell back on to nick the orignal owner. Here is the e-mail.

Some of you on twitter (http://twitter.com/wfreview) might have already

heard the news, but Nick is passing the torch. He is still going to be

around and a part of our community but I will be in charge.

Nick and I are very excited about this change, especially because I have 8

years professional experience with programming in PHP and 6 more with Ruby

on Rails. I have written a book about programming for O’Reilly

(http://bit.ly/5FGkTh). I LOVE to program, and I am very good at it.

I am excited to start diving into the code for WFReview. It is a very good,

quality product and it should not be very difficult for me to add

enhancements quickly. I have been reading all the forum posts and getting a

sense of what you guys need and want, as well as checking out my

competition. In fact, I have so many enhancements lined up for the next

release that it is not even going to be WFReview!

The upcoming release is called WF Review Ultra! Here are some of the

upcoming features.

Game changing features

* central UPC dataset – append data from separate sources about the same

product to the same post

* expire post on a specific date – use custom CSV meta to set the date and

have the post moved from published to deleted

* content spinning

* adlib support

* much easier installation

* bulk redirecting affiliate links through cleaner internal links

* custom data to posts

* THEMES!

Better CSV Imports

* Import .gz files straight from CJ

* Much smarter CSV import, no longer worry about many of the format

issues

* assign the imports to a specific user

Better User Interface

* ability to choose different stars within the UI

* comparison tables

* the ability to sort posts by price or overall rating

* improved commenter names, choose a percentage of male/female

* improve commenter name data to be more realistic

* pre-populate comments from CSV

* avatar support for commenters

Better Editing Support

* no longer need cron to run scheduled jobs

* delete and rename templates

* warn before saving a template with the same name as an existing

template

* one-off post ratings

Better Developer Support

* disable loading the css and google api call on pages where the script

isn’t active

* ability to use “last rated”, “highest rated”, etc. as a function instead

of a widget so you can use them as hooks in a custom_functions.php.

With so many changes, this plugin is going to revolutionize your review

sites and it will work so much better and faster that we think of it as a

new plugin entirely.

Though it is a new plugin, it will be available to all WFReview users for a

upgrade price of only $49 FREE, more than half off the retail price!

On top of that we will be releasing the long anticipated Premium Placements

plugin!

Here are the timeframes I am working with right now.

By January 15th, release the Premium Placements plugin

By February 7th, release WFReview Ultra

By March 7th, release the first 3 WFReview Ultra themes

Thank you for your patience and understanding during this transition

period. I look forward to helping you all achieve great success with your

projects.

-Lucas

As one of the biggest if not the biggest advocate for WFReview I am happy to see the new owner is capable of taking this script to a new level I am also worried that it will not happen and that this will just be a repeat of what happened last time. When I get the new script I will be sure to post a review.

Better Version of the Song.

This song should be a indication as to how my new year has started off. My lack of hardcore working has started to defiantly take its toll as several campaigns got the axe in december thanks to my good friend Google. I would stop using the fuckers all together but many of the sites I advertise on still have google placement ads. many of these sites to small to have their own advertising options or operate on only a CPM basis, which would be fine if it wasn’t for the insanely high CPM prices.

December ended up being the worst month of 2009 for me making half of what I pulled in the month before. Sure some SEO sites pulled in some extra cash from the shopping rush but my PPC campaigns are what brings in real money. As I had mentioned a few posts back I am trying to get enough SEO sites going that they will provide the majority of my income but as of yet I have not been able to get enough established sites going to offset the PPC income.

I have many projects that I am planing on working on and PPC campaigns that I need to give a booster shot. Hopefully I will be able to pull out some better numbers and recover from the December of Doom.

Incase anyone had missed it, bb_wolfe has offered to give out free and/or discounted copies of WFReview for charitable donations. As far as I know everyone who donates will not get a free version of WFReview but who knows its pretty much up to him and how generous he is feeling at the time. Other people who donate will be allowed to buy WFReview for only $75.00 a major discout from its full retail asking price of $139.00. Read the full details here…

The conditions are

• Has to be a legit charity, the Dennis Yu Legal Defense Fund does not count.
• Has to be over $25 in value. (Hey, it’s a fucking charity, splurge a little)
• The charity has to provide some sort of receipt that you contributed.
• Take out any personal info or financial info from the receipt.
• The donation dose not have to be in their name.

After your donation has been made you just need to forward the receipt (minus personal info) to ILoveJonFisher [@] reviewpluginforwordpress.com. Then you get to wait and see what the WFReview santa delivers to your mail box! I commend and respect him for doing this its not many that are willing to give up their work for the sake of others.

Also if anyone is interested in giving but dose not have a favorite charity I highly recommend Heifer International they have many worthwhile projects all across the globe and also allow the gift of animals.  Every year I get their catalog in the mail and show my support by donating a few animals for myself and as gifts to family and friends. The best part is that the families that receive the gift of these animals agree to also give away some of the offspring to continue the gift.  If one family received two flocks of chickens their offspring could help support entire villages or towns. Its defiantly a cause that is worth giving to.

I apologize for my lack of updates recently, I have been quite busy around the holidays and I started a few non-affiliate sites that have been getting my attention. Every time I think up a new post and I forget to write it down or get side tracked and it never gets done. Story of my life eh…but I am working on it!

Anyway since its Christmas I wanted to post an update but once again I lost it… instead I hope you will all humor me for this post as I am planing on ranting about gift giving as this seems to have become quite the problem for people.

/* Begin Rant

So this Christmas since its one of the first times I have not lived near any of my family they all are going on about what to get me or what do I want for Christmas since they know nothing about me. Rather than ask what hobbies or interests I have currently they are just asking me what I want. Sure this is great if you are lazy, poor, and just want stuff it makes it easy if you just get want you asked for. But I already own most of what I need or want.

It was great when I was a kid, when I would open that box and see the new mario I asked for I would go nuts. Alas now that I am a adult if I open a box and its just what I asked for I am not really going to be all that surprised or thrilled. More just slightly happy that I didn’t have to pay for something. Yaya Christmas! Just how boring would Christmas be if everyone started to do this?

We have become a lazy society with our lack of understanding each other and our gifts cards and other stupid easy ways out gift giving. But not I! I actually spent time looking for stuff people might actually like. I could care less if they wanted it or not, its a gift thats how it works. I buy it since I thought they would like it they get a surprise gift, if they don’t they return it and get something else they did want. While this dose seem kind of mean or insensitive I feel that it shows how much I know a person or how much thought I put into their gifts.

I didn’t need to call them and ask what they want, I didn’t ask them what their hobbies were. I already know this stuff. I mean they are friends and family I have known them for years. Even if I didn’t know what new hobby they are into I still at least know what they like and dislike in general. I am just at a loss how so many people seem to be getting caught up in Christmas that they seemingly forget everything they know about people. Are we all really that busy? I did 99% of my shopping online and had it all shipped free to my door. It really only took a few hours digging around and most of that was finding the best price. What’s the big deal?

So that’s my rant, I don’t see how I am so imposible to shop for. I can think of tons of stuff I think would be cool. Heck I am sure the world if full of interesting stuff id love. Why must I find it all my self?

Also one final point, this isn’t just shopping for me. People have asked me for advice for other family since they didn’t know what to get them. Wives, Brothers, Grandparents, Dads etc. How is it no one knows what to get each other?!

End Rant */

Anyone else having a similar problem?

This week I received word from PepperJam that they will no longer support the ebay affiliate program because they could not accommodate the new quality click pricing that eBay has launched. If you missed this e-mail from them then you have until Oct. 5th to move your sites/links over to eBay Partner Network. If you already did not have a EPN account before this change I don’t know what to tell you. eBay has become a real bitch on who its letting join its network. My only advice is to build a good looking legit website and apply with that. DO NOT apply with a bans or phpbay site! Make something like a collectible site that talks about model trains or some shit. Its got to look like your not trying to push people to eBay but that your ‘loyal readers’ are going to click on the link to visit eBay.

Once your in though you can ditch all that shit and get to making phpbay autoblogs, bans stores, review sites anything you want.  But should you even bother now that eBay has launched quality click pricing. Well for some they have seen payout increases and others have seen some big drops. Not to mention that no one know how they are figuring out this pricing structure works. eBay is pretty much going to make up any number they want and pay you that. I still have not seen how this is going to affect my eBay sites but I will continue to make sites for EPN.

Why? Because eBay is easy. Most of the sites I have I made over a year ago. I did a little seo made them look pretty and forgot that shit. They sat around on the net and found their own traffic. Giving me a bit of extra income that is totally hands off. Spend a few hours make a few sites and see how it goes. After this month I will see how my sites do with EPN since I have had to spend the time today moving them all from PepperJam to EPN. Here is hoping for some more extra cash.