Category: Internet Marketing

For the last year and a half, I have been “working” on one of my largest sites. It has passed over half a million words and started off as a no link building experiment. I use the word “working” loosely as for about half a year I have been focusing on other projects. Despite not having much time to focus on this project, it has been slowly ranking, and making more and more money every month.

Every once in a while, I take a look at Ahrefs and check out the backlink profile to see if I have gotten any more organic links. A week or two ago I noticed something strange. What I saw was a site that I had never heard of or seen before so of course I visited the URL to see what they were all about.

What I saw though was a bit of a shock and something I have not dealt with before. The site in question “linking back to me” was a 100% clone of my website! Same template, same link structure, same header, same everything! The really weird thing is that all the affiliate links were still carrying my affiliate code. What then would be the point of them doing this? My best guess at this point is an attempt at negative SEO by duplicate content.

What Has Happened To Date

The first thing I did was try and find out who was doing this. If this is happening to you, the easiest way to do this is run a whois querry on the domain. You can do this here: http://whois.domaintools.com/.

As you can see from the screenshot above, the website is being routed through Cloudflare. Cloudflare is essentially a proxy to the webhost so right off the bat, I was a bit stuck. Since they also have privacy on the domain, I was not able to see who had registered it.

The next thing I did was immediately check Google to see if any of the results were indexed. You can do this by typing this into the search bar: Site:http://sitename.com. This should show all URLs that Google has indexed.

Dammit! While they only have 81 results indexed, and my site has around 500 articles, this is still not good. Duplicate content is indexed. My site gets indexed almost immediately, so I was wondering how it was possible they were getting MY content indexed on “their” site. I then ran the domain through Semrush.

Well, that would explain it then! They have spammed their website in order to get it indexed.

The last thing I had to figure out is if they simply copied my website by hand or if they were just proxying to my domain. To test this, I simply made an edit on one of my articles to see if it immediately showed up on the clone website. It did! I have never dealt with this before, so I knew my first steps were filing DMCA notices.

Filing the DMCA

Since this clone site is using Cloudflare, I needed to find out where the site is actually hosted. To do this, you need to fill out Cloudflare’s abuse page. That can be found here: https://www.cloudflare.com/abuse/form. This should have them respond to you rather quickly and give you the information of the host. You can see their response below.

So with that filled out, I then moved on. When you do a whois on the domain, even though the information we really want is hidden, I was able to see that the domain name registrar was namesilo. I then filed a complaint with them here: https://www.namesilo.com/report_abuse.php.

With that being done, and waiting to hear back from namesilo (I already found the host from the cloudflare email above), it was time to write a DMCA. Believe it or not, in the last 4-5 years of doing online marketing, I have never sent one of these to another website so I had to do a bit of research. Below is the DMCA template that I used found at ipwatchdog.com.

Sample DMCA

My name is INSERT NAME and I am the INSERT TITLE of INSERT COMPANY NAME.  A website that your company hosts (according to WHOIS information) is infringing on at least one copyright owned by my company.

An article was copied onto your servers without permission. The original ARTICLE/PHOTO, to which we own the exclusive copyrights, can be found at:

PROVIDE WEBSITE URL

The unauthorized and infringing copy can be found at:

PROVIDE WEBSITE URL

This letter is official notification under Section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (”DMCA”), and I seek the removal of the aforementioned infringing material from your servers. I request that you immediately notify the infringer of this notice and inform them of their duty to remove the infringing material immediately, and notify them to cease any further posting of infringing material to your server in the future.

Please also be advised that law requires you, as a service provider, to remove or disable access to the infringing materials upon receiving this notice. Under US law a service provider, such as yourself, enjoys immunity from a copyright lawsuit provided that you act with deliberate speed to investigate and rectify ongoing copyright infringement. If service providers do not investigate and remove or disable the infringing material this immunity is lost. Therefore, in order for you to remain immune from a copyright infringement action you will need to investigate and ultimately remove or otherwise disable the infringing material from your servers with all due speed should the direct infringer, your client, not comply immediately.

I am providing this notice in good faith and with the reasonable belief that rights my company owns are being infringed. Under penalty of perjury I certify that the information contained in the notification is both true and accurate, and I have the authority to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright(s) involved.

Should you wish to discuss this with me please contact me directly.

Thank you.

/s/YOUR NAME

Address
City, State Zip
Phone
E-mail

Now that you have your new DMCA filled out, it is time to send them out. I sent this to the host, and moved on to the next step.

Asking Google To Remove Indexed Results

Now that I had sent the DMCA to the host, it was time to try and get this deindexed so I will not face possible duplicate content in the future.

First visit this page: https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?hl=en#ts=1115655.

Click on “I have a legal issue that is not mentioned above” and then “I have found content that may violate my copyright” and follow the directions to fill out the form. I copied and pasted the DMCA notice here.

Once I had everything filled out, it was just a waiting game to get emails back.

Things Get Weird

Then things start to get weird. Remember the DMCA I sent to the webhost listed in the Cloudflare email? Well, that bounced right back to me! I will be the first person to say I know next to nothing about how servers work. I am good with content and making money, but I have no idea how this proxy thing works. I recently moved this site to an unmanaged VPS that I have a good friend managing for me. We were both confused as to why this bounced back to us at first.

Then, Google responds…

What the hell?

Not really sure what they were getting at, I send them this as a response:

Surely that should take care of it right? I have friends who own software/plugins who send these out on the daily and Google is always removing results for them without question. Why would this be a problem? Then they responded again!

At this point, I am just lost for words. This entire clone site has been running for almost a month now, has 81 pages of indexed content, and they are unable to locate it? I know Google is known for their piss poor customer service in all aspects of their company unless you have an incredibly large ad spend on adwords, but really?

Wrapping It Up

I started Passive Marketing with the hopes to keep it real and share my wins as well as my failures with the internet marketing community. So here it is! This issue is still unresolved and I am at a loss of what to do moving forward. If anyone has any ideas how to deal with this, drop a comment and let me know!

Until then, keep at it!

I have some down time today so I thought I would finally come and write an update to one of the goals I set at the beginning of the year.

Right after the new year, on January 2nd, I released my first post on Passive Marketing about some of the goals I wanted to hit this year. I wanted to cut down on the projects I was working on and focus on just the core money makers.

Merch by Amazon was a very new side project to me at that point. I mentioned in the post that I only had 17 shirts uploaded but that I would release a guide on the subject, which I did near the end of the month.

That post became pretty popular (even though Amazon had locked down the service and now required you to apply and be accepted). It even got a mention on the Merch Forums, where I received my first negative feedback as seen below.

If this guy had actually read the article, I showed everyone how they could find designs on Amazon that were selling, and use that as Inspiration to create something better.

None of that really matters though. After reading my guide, two online friends took it to heart and started grinding hard. They are both now making thousands of dollars a month through their T-Shirt business and have both surpassed me in the amount of designs they have uploaded.

The guy above can pound sand.

My Merch By Amazon Update – Smashing Goals!

So, as a side project that I am spending only a few hours on each week, I thought it would take me at least till the end of the year to hit my goal of $4,000 per month. Why $4,000? I figured at that figure, it will be enough to sell the business and purchase my first rental property (which is also in my 2016 goals).

When I wrote my original post, you can see my first screenshot of 25 designs live and 100 slots available for upload.

That was ALMOST 6 months ago on the dot. Here are how many I have live today and slots available.

As you can see I have been tiered up multiple times, have 416 designs live (50 more sitting in my inbox to upload), and 2000 spots total. I have a LOT of room to grow.

What About Earnings?

When I first started with this program, I tiered up fast. I was one of the first people to get in, but I also had some simple designs that were selling well. I do not have a screenshot of the first few months, but I CAN show you what my first 4 months looked like right before I created my original guide.

Pretty pathetic huh? Like I said, this was, and remains a side project for me. It was not until I wrote the guide that my earnings started to take off from designs I had done myself. Up until that point, there was zero investment.

Things turned around quickly when I hired a designer, and here is what I am at today.

Boom, hit my goal 6 months early!

Lessons Learned

Apply Early!

The biggest downside about getting started with Merch is actually getting an account. Amazon clearly had no idea how popular this program would be and quickly turned it into an invite only program only a few weeks after it opened. Currently you need to apply to be accepted and the wait times are now 3-4 months or LONGER. If you do not have an account and are interested in getting started, apply now, do not wait. It only takes about 30 seconds anyway.

Outsource When You Can Afford It

As this is a side project for me, I knew that I would not be able to sit down and create designs all day with Photoshop. I am terrible at that program and have limited knowledge.

That being said, I do not recommend hiring a designer as soon as you are accepted for an account. You can create text designs and use free vectors like I mentioned  in my original Merch guide. The way I have done it, is allow the account to pay for itself. If I make $50 dollars with my first few designs, I will assign that $50 to a designer and no more. That way, it stays a zero sum game and you never lose any money!

When you decide you are ready to outsource, I highly recommend looking on Upwork.

Choose Your Designer Wisely

One of the biggest issues on Merch right now is copyright infringement. If you upload a shirt with stolen upwork, or infringe on a patent or copyright, you may get away with it for a little while but eventually Amazon will find out and remove your listings. Get enough listings removed and you may just lose your account and all the work you put into it. You don’t want that right?

Pro Tip: When you are vetting designers, send them 3-4 designs that you would like to get created. I usually send them links of shirts I like and that I want them to use as inspiration to create something completely different but in the same niche. In those 3-4 designs, I will include a link to a shirt that is CLEARLY copyright protected. I will then inform the graphic designer that they need to ensure that everything they give me is both unique and does not infringe on anyone else’s work. If they come back to you and give you the same design, or do not change it enough where it would be infringement, I let the artist know their mistake, and immediately terminate them.

When you find a graphic artist that understands how to be creative and consistently provides you amazing designs, stick with them!

Focus On Evergreen Niches

Let’s be honest for a second. You could chase niches that exploding currently. I am not saying that this is a bad idea, but it depends on what your goals are for. Getting a viral shirt is a great way to boost earnings. However, if you only have limited spots, focus on more evergreen niches when it comes to T-shirt designs. These are going to sell year round, and will not die down in a week or two like a viral shirt would.

If you have thousands of spots available, you can play around with this and chase both viral designs, and evergreen content. I wanted my account to contentiously make good money without bouncing up and down so I went into every niche that I could find.

Quality AND Quantity

You know what kind of designs are going to keep selling year end and year out? Quality designs, that’s what. However, if you want to make real progress with Merch, you need to upload and upload FAST. Take advantage of the invite system and be first to market.

To give you an idea, a friend that read my guide when I first posted it got accepted and focused extremely hard on the designs. He is nearing 1,000 designs uploaded whereas I am sitting at less than half of that. You have to be willing to do what it takes to hit your goals.

Big News!

I have some huge news regarding Merch and how I can help you reach some insane numbers in under 6 months coming out very soon. Probably the next post I will do will be revealing some quality value without selling you anything. If you are interested in knowing when that is coming out, make sure you hope on my email list below. Anyone on the list knows I barely email you at all, but I usually have something interesting to say.

Enter Your Name and Email Below and Click

Just wanted to update you guys on one of my goals.

Keep pushing forward and killing it! Until next time.

As 2015 has left and we all welcomed in the new year, I think it is time to make a post about what 2016 holds for me and Passive Marketing.

2015 sure was a roller coaster. Anyone in Internet Marketing is well aware of the ups and downs we can all have. Early in the year I saw my entire network of Amazon sites get hit with manual penalties from using public PBNs. Fast forward a few months and I had set up a Facebook campaign that was doing 1300% ROI daily. That was until Facebook banned my account because they did not like the subject matter I was promoting. Next I decided I was going to try my hand out at Android Apps. I had a popular app on my hands and just as I was about to sell it off for around $10,000, I got my developer account banned by making a dumb mistake (reskinning my app and getting it rejected 3 times was an auto ban).

With all the failures and learning experiences over the last year, I have really neglected this blog. I originally started Passive Marketing because I was sick and tired of all the “guru” blogs out there pushing their affiliate links even when the services were bad. I was sick of these people rehashing information that they do not even practice.

4 posts is all I managed to publish in the entire year. This is not acceptable. I practice what I preach here, and I have not shared any of my failures with you. This will change over the next year. I never updated the $100 a day with adsense post and have not shared any of my new projects with you. Over the next year, I am going to try and make Passive Marketing a priority. While I may not be sharing the exact URLs of certain projects, we are going to go on a ride together.

So along with updating posts and talking a little about my failures in the past, here are my goals for 2016 and what I expect to be writing about.

Goals for 2016 and Passive Marketing

Release my first SaaS product

This is the project that I am most excited about. I originally got the idea for this (Software as a Service) over a year ago. I had the money to invest to get it created, but soon after I was talking to developers, I lost a few of my big money sites with blackhat SEO. I put the project on the back burner.

Fast forward a year later, and I met a guy from across the globe from me who has released other softwares and plugins with his own team. After some talk and planning, we are ready to begin finally making the product.

When I first got into IM, the fact that I did not have to deal with any customers was my favorite aspect. Now, years later, I feel like I am ready to try the other side of the coin. Maybe it is part of the “grass is always greener” mentality, but this software is going to streamline something that I do everyday, and that I feel that other marketers would greatly benefit with.

As time goes on, you will be getting more and more information about this product. If you would like to get updates with how this project is going, feel free to subscribe to our email list below.

Enter Your Name and Email Below and Click

Increase FBA Profits to $50,000 per Month

Amazon FBA (fulfillment by Amazon) is something that I literally got into just a few months ago and have been seeing some good success with. I will be typing up a giant guide to get started soon.

So many of the other guides from other internet marketers leave out information. They tell you about their massive sales, but nothing about expenses and how much of a pain it is to get the product into the states and to the warehouse.

With just a few products launched, and with how much traffic Amazon receives, I have found it is very hard to lose money on the FBA platform.

The goal this year is to scale this business as much as possible. All money that I make selling my products will be funneled back into the business to scale as quickly as possible. Keep and eye out for posts about FBA. That being said, I will not be abandoning niche/authority sites!

Take My T-Shirt Business to $4,000 per Month

In the next few weeks I will be releasing a guide to how I started a T shirt business with absolutely no money and am already making around $400-$500 dollars a month with about a 1 hour time investment.

So many people start T shirt businesses and end up failing. There are a lot of start up costs involved, and marketing is always a pain.

Other people like to try services like Teespring and ultimately end up blowing their budget on Facebook ads.

I will be taking you step by step in an upcoming guide on how you can start a T shirt business with absolutely no investment.

Currently, I have 17 shirts, with only about 3 best sellers bringing me $400-$500 a month. I feel that it will be easy to scale this to $4000 per month in 2016 and want to take you on this journey with me.

Build Out Massive Authority Sites

Even with all my failures over the last year, the one thing I have been working on behind the scenes and not talking about is a couple of authority sites.

I originally had a goal of building out 5 authority sites with 1,000,000 words each in 2016. The more I think about that, the more daunting it seems.

I think instead, I will focus on 2 authority sites and just aim for 2,000,000 words each.

One of these authority sites was started in February 2015 and currently has 330k words on it. The other one I will be focusing on has about 70k words on it. Neither are authority sites yet, but that is the goal. Another thing to mention about these couple of sites is that I am focusing all my time on proper keyword research and not offsite SEO. While links work, and they work great, I will not be focusing on gaining shady links for these sites. Only hard earned outreach/guest post links will go to these sites. Both of them barely have any links currently and are already earning a nice sum of money.

For those wondering, the plugin that displays this information is Word Stats.

While this is a good start on the project, I believe that I will need to automate this project as much as possible. Keyword research is what I do well, but posting the articles and formatting them correctly takes time! One of the goals will be to build out a team of content writers and have them automatically scheduled to post to grow as fast as possible.

Buy First Rental Property

This is something that has always intrigued me. As the girlfriend and I are planning to move across the country, I would like to purchase my first rental home for some nice passive income.

Instead of buying a depreciating asset like a nice sports car like I would have a year ago, it is time to act like an adult and invest in what I want to be a real estate empire at some point that I can retire on. I have absolutely no experience in this field, so everything will be a learning experience.

Deadlift 4 Plates

This goal has absolutely nothing to do with Internet Marketing at all. When you work at home all day every day, you have to find reasons to get out of your house.

Last year a friend first brought me to the gym and I got addicted. All I have wanted to do since then was deadlift 4 plates (405 pounds). I managed to go from an 85 pound deadlift to a 355 pound deadlift in just a single year. 2016 is the year I finally pull 4 plates!

If you work at home and are not exercising, I would strongly encourage you to get out of the house. It does wonders for your mental clarity and helps you focus on work.

Wrapping It Up

And there you have it, a few of my goals for 2016. This year is going to be great. Good luck to everyone out there. Buckle down, start a business, or scale. Just take action!

I would like to leave you all with one of my favorite funny pictures…