*Looks round at the dust piling up………………*

Yep I haven’t been around for about a month. I took July off to spend some time with my family, plus I had one or two items that needed some time spent on them away from the internet.

As I come back people are talking about another Google slap. It seems to me that there isn’t much information about the slap that is utterly quantifiable right now. One thing I have heard is that Google doesn’t like affiliate marketers and it is us that are getting slapped hardest.

If any of my readers are concerned about this, I would like to direct you to a guy I have been following for a while and who makes a whole lot of sense, Andrew Hansen. You can read his thoughts on Google slap.

So, one of the reasons I took some time off was because I was totally fed up with affiliate marketing, internet marketing, the whole nine yards.

I felt pulled in all sorts of directions, I felt let down by people I respected, and I felt that perhaps this just wasn’t going to be the career for me. I think many of us feel like that from time to time.  Taking a month out has given me time to think about what I want to do and where I have been going wrong.

Many of you will know that I have been internet marketing for about a year now. I am sad to admit that I do not yet earn enough to “fire my boss”. I did seriously think about giving up the whole deal, canceling my Aweber and Hostgator accounts and heading back to what some consider normality. But there is something inside me that knows that this can work, and that it will work for me.

I have gathered so much information in the last year, so much knowledge, that surely it must count for something? It feels like I have all the pieces of the jigsaw but I just need to line them all up right.

Then I realised what was missing. It is fairly embarrassing to admit but what I have lacked is consistancy.

I know I need to keep doing things day after day to make the links and get the recognition I need to succeed. I need to be seen as an expert in my niche, and I need my site to have links, great links.

For your information, I have tried a few link shortcuts and frankly they do not work. I have added my site to link directory after link directory - don’t bother. Unless you have a page on your site that has a load of reciprocal links (who would want that anyway, it would ruin your SEO techniques) then you really shouldn’t waste time with that.

I believe that in order to get good quality links you need to think about what you are putting out there. Get links these ways:

Putting articles on EzineArticles. GoArticles or similar

Making Squidoo lenses, or hubpages, or ehow to’s

Writing good comments on peoples blogs. By which I mean not “great blog interesting info” type comments - add some value people! I get hundreds of comments that are just a waste of time. I mark them as spam.

When you pay good money for links, I think those are the links people make. Generic meaningless comments that just get deleted.

So make it meaningful, add some value, give an opinion, help someone out, that way your comments will be appreciated.

Use forums. Most of them will allow a signature. This is a great way to build a reputation, build relationships. You can easily add value to a discussion in your particular niche. Every time you add value people will not only see that you know what you are talking about, but they will also see your signature with your website on it. It’s another link.

I read somewhere that a new site needs about 1,000 links. That sounds like a huge amount, but if you are consistant (see it comes back to that again!) that amount is possible. Decide how long you want to work on your site before it becomes successful, pulling in many visitors per day. 100 days? So you need to produce ten links a day.

I have a site that is a few months old and it has links, a few. Some internal links too, of course, they are vital. But I am going to work hard on it. I am going to invest some time in it.

Every single day in August I am going to add an article to my site, to EzineArticles, plus to anywhere else I can where I can add value. I am aiming at ten links per day. I will not be checking email every five minutes, hanging out on twitter, chatting on the phone, or any other distraction. My daily goal is ten links which add value. Until I do that everything else can wait. It is my attempt at consistancy.

As always, my friends, I will let you know how I get on.

Best wishes,

Ruth