#if somebody wants to drop me a line and sell me on it that’d be great cuz otherwise I might never get to it ^^’

[thegrinningghost]

I’m gonna be honest, I don’t know anything about Transformers Lost Light.

. . . except for that I think this quote fits somebody in it—

“Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane! Everybody strap in!”

— Snakes on a Plane, 2006

[luci-in-trenchcoats]

A Place To Call Home: Dads

Summary: When the reader gets an offer to make some money on the side, things quickly evolve to Jensen learning about where some of the reader and TJ’s money has been going, namely TJ’s father. Jensen offers to help out but discovers that Rick might be up to something... 

Masterlist

Square: A Place To Call Home

Pairing: Jensen x foster daughter!reader

Word Count: 7,600ish

Warnings: language, angst (so much family angst), minor injury

A/N: Written for @supernatural-jackles​ Tell Me A Story Bingo. This part takes place after the Halloween timestamp. Enjoy!

______

“Thank you, Barry,” you said as he left the office at the brewery. Your head was still up when your dad slipped inside and he shut the door. “What’s up?”

“There’s a talent scout out in the draft room,” he said.

“Fascinating,” you said, going back to reading over a contract with a new distributor.

“Y/N they’re here to see you.” You turned in your seat and stared at him, breaking out into a giggle. “I’m serious.”

“This is by far your worst prank yet.”

“You modeled some of the new merch last week? He’s here for you,” he said.

“To what, model?” you scoffed. “No thank you.”

“Well can you go tell him that because he was insisting on hearing it from you,” he said. You sighed and walked out front, a guy in a suit with no tie on sipping from a glass. He smiled when he saw your dad behind you. 

“Ms. Ackles,” he said, holding out his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“It’s Mrs. Hanover,” you said with a friendly enough smile. 

“You’re clearly used to some hard negotiations.”

“I’m tougher than I look Mr…”

“Elbridge but please call me Dan.”

“What can I do for you today, Dan?” you asked. He walked out to a quieter spot by the railing, settling at one ot the standing tables.

“I work for a talent agency, Mrs. Hanover. We’ve worked with your father a few times when he was starting out,” he said, your dad giving a nod. “We’ve seen your modeling pictures and we’re very interested in you doing a shoot.”

“I appreciate the offer but my answer is no. I’m not a model or an actress or any of the things my parents are besides someone invested in this brewery,” you said.

“She is a tough cookie,” he said as he looked at your dad. “I’m assuming you told her nothing I told you.”

“You gotta sell it on your own,” he said.

“Y/N, we’d like you to be in a commercial with some other women. An underwear commercial.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s a commercial for inclusivity for people with differences,” he said.

“He means the scar on your back, Y/N. From the accident,” said your dad.

“You’re exactly the kind of person we want included in the line. There’ll be a photo run of things too and-“

“Why exactly do you know I have a scar on my back?”

“Your Instagram. I assumed it was public knowledge.”

“Okay but it’s not even that big. Like it blends in. I’m boring. Get like, an amputee or a burn survivor. That’s inclusive. I’m average.”

“We have a vast array of women in the line including those types and all kinds of body types. But you’re...a brand name we could put to the project.”

“Brand name,” you said. He hummed and you laughed. “My dad? That’s a brand name, not me. Throw him in some underwear and I’m sure you’ll get all the attention you want.”

“Well we want you,” he said. He pulled out a business card and handed it over. “Our initial offer is on the back but we’re open to negotiations. Call us if you think you might be interested. Oh and the beer’s great.”

“Thanks,” you said, looking over the card. The guy had wandered off by the time you flipped it over.

“I told him you wouldn’t be interested,” said your dad, sipping from his bottle of water. You blinked at the card, your dad raising an eyebrow. “You’re not considering it are you?”

“Dad,” you said. You flipped the card around and showed it to him, water spitting out of his mouth.

“Hey, Dan,” he said, rushing back and waving him over. Dan smiled as he walked back, drink in his hand.

“I thought that’d-” said Dan before your dad got in his face. “Is there a problem?”

“What are you up to,” he said.

“Dad.”

“Y/N no one gets offered that much money off the street. No one. So I’m gonna ask again. What are you up to?” 

“It’s for a package deal. A photo shoot. A commercial. Ad sponsorship for three months bi-weekly on her social media accounts. We’d also like her to design the set for the commercial. There’s a time crunch of next week so we felt a hundred was a fair offer for that amount of work on short notice,” said Dan. “If she were simply modeling, we’d offer her twenty five but this is our biggest line of the year. You are more than welcome to come along every step of the way.”

“Dan I really do appreciate the offer but I’m not a model. I don’t even remember the last time I wore makeup. I will happily design a set and build if you like and maybe I can do the ad thing but I’m not a model like my parents. Can I talk to my dad for a second?”

He nodded and walked off a ways, your dad sighing.

“Maybe mom could do it or something? She’s done that stuff before,” you said.

“I’m not gonna tell you what to do. Go for the set design for sure. You’re good at it and I know you get to break back into your architecture skills for that. But the rest...once you get on that train you can’t get off.”

“Dad, people already know who I am. I have like...an obnoxious number of followers on my accounts and stuff. My most popular posts? Always about you. I’ve never been in the shadows.”

“I know but that’s different than you doing these things. If you start taking pictures in underwear, you’re gonna attract at least a few weirdos and most of them are harmless but maybe some aren’t and there is a reason that Uncle Cliff still hangs out with me at certain times.”

“It’s a hundred thousand dollars. TJ and I could pay off the lawyer fees for Allie’s adoption finally,” you said. “We could get our mortgage payment down.”

“You’ve never cared about money,” he said. You pursed your lips and he narrowed his eyes. “Are things tight?”

“Dad.”

“Are they?”

“I don’t ask about your finances.”

“I sat down with both you and TJ when you bought the house and even with the renovation costs, your monthly payment was very affordable. Allie’s adoption should have been paid off months ago.”

“Do you stalk our spending now or what?” you shot back.

“Well you haven’t bought a new car or any big expenses. Where’s the money going?” he asked.

“I’ll take the set design and leave it at that,” you said. You brushed past him and over to Dan. 

Thirty minutes later you had a signed contract and were back in your office, your dad grumbling as he walked inside.

“I’m busy,” you said.

“Where’s the money going, Y/N?”

“TJ and I make very good money,” you said, typing up an email. He leaned over the desk and narrowed his eyes. “I took the set design only for twenty. Happy?”

“Why do you need twenty thousand dollars?”

“Coming from the guy who made how much fucking money for a single freaking episode? At least I’m not slutting out my face,” you said. He stood back and slammed the door shut on his way out. You sighed and got up, finding him out back, splitting old pallets down. “Dad I’m sorry.”

“Whatever,” he mumbled. 

“Dad. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

“Yeah you did,” he said. “That is exactly why I didn’t want you doing that shoot. Then all you are is a pretty face.”

He moved a pallet and picked up the axe again, bringing it down in the center.

“Dad.”

“What?” he snapped as he spun around. 

“I said it because I knew it’d make you mad and piss you off and get you to drop it. It’s the only reason I said it. Please stop asking about where my money goes. Please.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“Dad I said to stop asking.”

“Tough shit,” he said with a shrug. “Call me whatever you want. Maybe I get pissed off but I’ll cool off too. I know how much you make and I know how much he makes and I know you two have both been taking side jobs recently. You should have your house paid off by now, not barely making your mortgage. What’s going on and I want the truth.”

“I can’t.”

“What’s TJ involved in,” he said. You looked away and he nodded. “There are very few reasons why you wouldn’t tell me the truth and considering how small Allie and Colin are, he’s the only one I can think of.”

“I can’t.”

“Hey! There you are,” said TJ, walking around the corner with a bag in his hand. “I was out at a ranch nearby for work and figured we could have lunch together.”

“Speak of the little devil,” said your dad. He dropped the axe and TJ set the food on the hood of his truck, cocking his head.

“You okay, Jensen?” he asked.

“Peachy,” he said, putting his hands on his hips when he stopped in front of him. “So. Want to tell me what’s going on with your finances lately?”

TJ glanced to you and you shook your head.

“Nothing,” said TJ quietly.

“You want to try that again and not lie to me this time?” asked Jensen. TJ shook his head and your dad shut his eyes. “If you’re involved in something bad, let me help. I have money.”

“TJ just tell him,” you said. TJ sighed and picked up the food, walking over to the employee picnic area and sat down. You took a seat beside him and TJ handed you a wrapped burrito, your dad sitting across from him.

“I’m not angry. Let me help is all,” said your dad.

“It’s not us who’s in trouble,” said TJ. Your dad looked to you and you nodded. “It’s my dad.”

“Oh you two,” he said, shutting his eyes. “You’re paying off Rick’s debt he owes somebody, aren’t you.”

“Rick owes money to a bookie and...he beat him up kinda bad and we have extra so…” you said, your dad staring at you. “He asked us not to tell anyone.”

“How much?” he asked.

“Five...hundred,” said TJ. 

“Five hundred thousand?” he asked, your heads nodding. “Five hundred thousand? What...how much have you given him already?”

“About half,” said TJ. Your dad shook his head and put his hands over his face, quickly pulling them off. “I know it’s a lot.”

“Yeah…” he said, swallowing to himself.

“We got it covered. Really. At the rate we’re doing extra side work-”

“Kids...you’re both so kind I think you missed something pretty important,” said your dad. 

“I don’t understand,” said TJ. He looked to you and you shrugged. 

“Guys that’s a lot of money. That’s...an extraordinary amount of money to a lot of people. How on earth does your father owe that much money all of a sudden?” asked your dad.

“He made some bets he lost on,” said TJ.

“But how could it be that much. What was the original bet?”

“What?”

“What was the original bet he made and lost on?”

“I don’t know. We figured it must have been like a hundred.”

“So your father bet a hundred, say he lost. That’s two hundred. Say he got some insane interest on it. Okay. Maybe, maybe he truly owes that much. But where did he get that original one hundred?”

“He didn’t have it,” said TJ. “We think.”

“Okay. He bet badly and ends up owing the whole thing,” he said.

“Exactly.”

“Do you give this money to Rick or the bookie?” asked your dad.

“My dad. He didn’t want us to get involved with the guy,” said TJ. 

“Okay,” said your dad. “Here’s what’s gonna happen. I’m gonna drive up to your folks this afternoon TJ and talk to your dad, see what’s left he owes. I will pay the rest.”

“Jensen that’s a lot of money.”

“I know it is. But it’s better to get him out of the hole quickly before something were to happen and I can afford it. Okay? I’m gonna head up. You two enjoy your lunch. I’ll be home in a few hours.”

Something was off about him as he stood and left but you weren’t quite sure what was wrong.

“My dad’s gonna be pissed. He didn’t want Jensen to know at all,” said TJ.

“He wants to help. He’s got a point. The quicker it’s paid off, the quicker your dad’s out of danger. Let’s have lunch and you can tell me about that ranch you’re fixing up.”

“Arrow,” you grumbled that night as she reached for the hot pan. “Let it cool off.”

“Why are we having dinner at your house?” she asked. “No offense but you can only cook like five things.”

“Would you like to cook dinner for seven?” you asked. She held up her hands and you rolled your eyes.

“To be fair, Colin still eats baby food,” she said.

“Thank you for volunteering to feed your nephew,” you said with a grin.

“I didn’t-”

“Ro!” he said as he waddled into the kitchen, wrapping her legs up in a hug.

“I hate you,” she said, narrowing her eyes before she picked him up.

“Thank you Arrow,” you said as she put him on her hip. “He’s got dinner in the fridge if you wouldn’t mind?”

“I got it,” she said, opening it up one handed. “Mom and dad have some last minute thing or something?”

“I don’t know,” you said, your phone ringing, Jared’s name popping up. “Can you get that?”

“Hey Uncle Jared,” she said, hitting it on speaker.

“Arrow? Hey you mind finding your sister for me?” he asked.

“She’s busy making dinner. Apparently it’s very difficult.”

“I’m here Jared,” you said. You grabbed the phone and shoved it between your shoulder and ear. “What’s up?”

“Don’t freak out,” he said. “But come outside.”

You turned down the heat on the stove and went out the front door, finding Jared on the seat out front.

“Uh, what’s up?” you asked, pulling the door shut behind you. “This is weird.”

“Your dad may have...listen. Shit went down when Jensen went up to see TJ’s dad whatever his fuckface name is.”

“Jared.”

“Oh you’re about to call him fuckface too.”

“What happened?”

“Well...he had a bad feeling about this whole thing. He and De went up there to talk to them. Things aren’t...your dad’s in the hospital.”

“What?” you said quietly. He stood up and gave you a smile, pulling you into a hug.

“It’s okay. He got a little cut when he got...pushed,” he said. 

“Jared,” said TJ, stepping outside with a curious look. “What’s up dude?”

“Normally being the Uncle is the fun stuff,” he said. TJ frowned when you both saw a cop car pull into your driveway, Cody getting out. “Codes.”

“Dad, I got this,” he said as he hopped up on the porch. You smiled and looked back at TJ. “Oh shut up. I got adopted like six months ago. I might as well.”

“What exactly is happening?” asked TJ.

“Dad,” said Cody again. Jared sat back in the seat, Cody sighing. “TJ...dude I’m sorry. You’re like my brother.”

“Did my...did something happen to my parents,” he said quietly, Cody’s head shaking. “Oh.”

“Rick’s been stealing money from you. There’s no bookie to pay off. Jensen and De went up today to talk to him and they found out the truth and your dad’s got in a fist fight and you guys ought to head up North. It’s not my jurisdiction so I’m not much help.”

“My father did what?” said TJ. Cody glanced at you and you looked down. “That’s not true.”

“Yes, it is,” he said. “TJ the police from your hometown looked into it. He took the money. He’s claiming it was a gift from the two of you but we all know that’s not true.”

“No, he’s been making progress. We’ve been making progress. We’ve been getting along really well,” said TJ.

“Did that start when you started giving him money?” asked Cody.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m just saying what I know as a cop. Did your relationship start changing when money started exchanging hands?”

“Why does he hate me,” said TJ. You grabbed his hand and he shut his eyes. “He must hate me. That’s the only reason I can see why he would do something like that.”

“He doesn’t hate you,” you said.

“He hates you and Jensen. He thinks De is eye candy to stare at. I don’t know how on earth he can pretend to like me,” he said.

“TJ,” said Jared.

“You gonna tell me he loves me or some shit? It’s not good enough,” said TJ.

“I was gonna say you can cut him out of your life if you want to and you’re still gonna have a dad you know. I don’t understand him. I do think he loves you but there’s some resentment towards everyone else you call family. I don’t know why but it’s your choice what you want to do. I’m gonna go inside and finish cooking dinner and we’ll watch all of them tonight. Y/N-”

“I got him,” you said with a nod. 

Ten minutes later you were on the road and driving, TJ staring out the passenger window. 

“Honey-”

“Don’t,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. You reached over and grabbed his hand, TJ squeezing it. “We’re going to my parents house after and we’re packing up as much crap as we can to bring back. I’m never speaking to him again after tonight.”

“TJ.”

“All the late hours I put in doing side jobs. All the jobs you’ve been doing for set design on the weekends. For months and months we’ve been doing it. Straight into his fucking pocket. We could have paid off the house with that money. Paid off bills. That’s our money. It’s our kids money. It’s not some sack of shit’s to go buy whatever he wants with. I could fucking kill him.”

“We’ll get it back,” you said.

“It’s not about the money.”

“I know, babe,” you said. 

“Why is he like that?”

“It’s not an excuse but I think he was raised very poorly and he doesn’t...he knows it’s wrong but I think he thinks we have so much it’s okay if he takes from us.”

“He took two hundred and fifty thousand dollars from us. A year of side jobs for the both of us on top of everything else. We sleep four hours a night. We weren’t handed that. We worked for it. We worked our asses off. All that pressure and all the pressure we thought somebody would hurt him if we were late with money? I can’t believe I ever gave a shit about him. I should have trusted you. You’ve never liked him. No one in your family did. Even Arrow and that kid loves everybody. I should have trusted you guys.”

“TJ they didn’t like him because of the way he treated you, not me. I knew he was a dick when I met him but he belittles you, so, so much. We hate that he does that to you.”

“I don’t know how my mom is married to someone like him.”

“Don’t cut her out,” you said. “She raised you. You’re all her. Anyone who meets you can see that.”

“He’s going to lie when I see him again. I don’t know what to do,” he said. 

“Why?” you asked.

“Because.” You pulled over and he sat back in his seat. He turned his head and you saw all the tears streaming down his face.

“Honey,” you said. You leaned over and hugged him, TJ gripping you back.

“He’d kick my ass for crying right now.”

“Who was it that sat up with my dad after the accident and let him cry all over him? My dad who hates to cry and he’s not afraid to cry in front of you.”

“He’s strong. I’m not.”

“You’re my best friend. The girl who thought she was so fucked up and would be alone. God, Thomas. You gave me something even my parents and family couldn’t. You know how I never thought in a million years I could have this kind of love and you were never scared. The insecurities. The nightmares. The days where I’m quiet and my head gets to me. You just grab my hand and you make it better. You’re stronger than most everyone on this planet. I love and I’ve loved you since I met you and I’ll do anything for you, you know that. We’re partners. If you want to give your dad another chance you can and I won’t question it for a second.”

“I don’t want to talk to him again,” he said, sitting up somewhat. “But how do I say that when you didn’t get a choice? You didn’t get a choice with your parents. They were just gone and you had no say. How can I just walk away like that?”

“My parents didn’t treat me like the way your father does. Neither of my moms or dads ever have. You can walk away from someone that does, TJ. I don’t want you near someone like that. Jared was right too you know. You’re not gonna lose a dad tonight. You’ve always had one and he’s gonna be there for you always.”

“He hurt Jensen, didn’t he?” he sniffled.

“I’m sure he's fine. He’s very...defensive of his children is all.”

“Jensen gave me a letter,” he said. “Addressed to me. That’s when I really knew he loved me.”

“He loved you before that.”

“I know he did. I don’t know why I wanted my dad when I’ve had Jensen the whole time.”

“I’ve been there. Trust me,” you said. He let out a small laugh and you hugged him, TJ taking a deep breath. “I’m sorry Rick hurt you.”

“He hurt both of us.”

“Yeah but I care more about the fact he hurt you. I may deck him when I see him,” you said.

“That’d be kinda awesome,” he said. “But please don’t.”

“Hugs instead?” you said.

“I’ll take hugs,” he said. His stomach grumbled and you kiss his temple. 

“I’m gonna hit the drive thru and then we’ll get on the road again, okay honey?”

“Okay,” he said. You kissed him one last time before you got out of the car and dug around in the trunk. You took out your oversized hoodie and brought it up to the front, handing it to him. “What’s this?”

“You can steal it if you want. Your hoodie’s kinda make me feel better on crappy days,” you said.

“Thanks,” he said. “I really love you.”

“Me too. It’s gonna be okay.”

One Hour Later

“Let’s go to the hospital first,” said TJ as you hit the edge of town. 

“Jared said my dad was fine.”

“Y/N. Let’s go to the hospital,” he said. You nodded and about ten minutes later you were parked and getting a room number. He held your hand on the elevator ride up, kissing the top of your head. “You alright?”

“I’d prefer if he could stay out of the hospital.”

“Me too,” he said, the doors opening. You walked a little too quickly until you found the room, your mom and dad talking as you walked in.

“What are you two doing here?” he asked.

“Jared and Cody came by and we learned some stuff,” you said. “Why are you in the hospital? You look...normal.”

“Your father hit his head.”

“I’m fine.”

“After the accident last year-”

“It was nearly a year ago.”

“After the accident they wanted to be safe and monitor overnight just in case. He got a cut on his arm from some metal but that’s all,” said your mom. 

“I’m fine,” said your dad. He got up out of bed and spun around. “See? No concussion. An itty bitty scratch is all you worry worts.”

“Was there a fight?” you asked. He sat down and sighed. “You don’t look like it.”

“No,” he said. He looked at TJ and pursed his lips. “TJ would you mind grabbing me a drink from the vending machine?”

“Whatever you want to say, you’re gonna say it in front of me,” he said. 

“Mom and I went up to your parents place and it started out okay. But your mom didn’t quite understand what was going on. She thought Rick had been doing well betting horses at a track and that’s where the sudden money came from. Things...devolved from there and Rick got defensive and I was angry so we started arguing and he shoved me and your mom and De shut it down and the cops came and I’m sorry but he took the money for himself. Last we heard from your mom a little while ago she’s giving all the money back to you guys.”

“You pressing charges?” asked TJ.

“It was a shove. He didn’t take my money. You two are the ones that have a right to charge him,” he said.

“Do you know where my mom is?” asked TJ.

“She’s at your house along with your dad,” he said.

“Y/N why don’t you hang here with your parents,” said TJ. You shook your head and he frowned. “You’re worried about your dad. Stay.”

“He’s okay and I’m coming with you,” you said.

“Me too,” said your mom. 

“De-”

“TJ. You’re not gonna win this one,” she said. “Jensen’s okay on his own for a bit and he’d come if he could. You’re not gonna go talk to your dad alone.”

“Fine. Let’s go,” he said, already leaving the room. Your mom grabbed her purse and you ran your hands over your face.

“Go take care of him,” said your dad quietly.

“Dad.” You walked in front of him and he wrapped his arms around you. “He’s gonna be fucked up.”

“I know. We’ll take care of him,” he said. He kissed your temple and pushed you towards the door gently. “Go take care of your husband.”

“We’ll be back.”

“Guys I think maybe I should go in first,” said your mom a short while later, the three of you parked in his parent’s driveway. 

“No,” said TJ.

“Thomas.”

“Danneel,” he said. He turned in the passenger seat and she sighed. “I’m a big boy. I can go in first.”

“Don’t be violent.”

“I won’t,” he said quietly. She kissed his cheek and nodded. 

“Okay sweetie. Let’s get this over with,” she said. You got out and took his hand, TJ not as tense as you were expecting.

“His car isn’t here,” he said quietly on the way up the porch steps. He rang the doorbell and the door flew open, his mom standing there. “Hi mom.”

“I kicked him out for the night,” she said, letting the door open for the three of you. “I’m so sorry. Danneel is Jensen-”

“He’s pissed but fine,” said your mom, following you inside. TJ walked around for a moment, stopping at a picture on the wall.

“Mom. Why does dad hate me?” he asked. He looked over his shoulder and she frowned. “He manipulated me and Y/N. He’s horrible to her family. I get that he went through something as a kid but he’s a grown man.”

“Your father loves you. He doesn’t always know the best way to show it,” she said.

“He hurt me and you’re gonna side with him. Again,” he said.

“He made a mistake.”

“Hell of a mistake,” you mumbled.

“Do you think he wants to be the way he is?” she asked.

“I could have gotten past everything before but this? He doesn’t get to worm his way out of it. I’m done with him.”

“Then you’re gonna be done with me too,” she said. TJ turned around and she lifted her chin. “He doesn’t deserve to thrown out of your life over a mistake.”

“I seem to recall you not saying a word when he almost hit your grandaughter with a belt,” said TJ. “Why do you make excuses for him?”

“Why do you hate him?” she asked. TJ threw up his hands and shook his head. “Always since you were a little boy you’ve hated him.”

“He didn’t want me, not the other way around. I know he worked a lot but all I wanted when he came home at night was a hug or a bedtime story. I wasn’t asking for much,” said TJ. “He resented me.”

“He put in all those long hours for you, to provide for you.”

“I’ve been working since I was fourteen. I paid for my own things from the second I was able to. I paid for school all on my own. My apartment. My car. I paid for my wedding and honeymoon. He paid for food and roof over my head which is the bare minimum he could have done. Don’t tell me he provided for me. He fucking hated me.”

“Because you’re not his,” she said. You and your mom looked at one another, TJ blinking where he stood. “Rick isn’t your father.”

“Excuse me?”

“I cheated on your father because he can be an asshole and I needed an escape. He found out when I was pregnant.”

“Excuse me?” asked TJ again.

“He never wanted children because he thought he’d be a bad father. I guess he was right in your mind,” she said. 

“If you’re gonna tell the story, you might as well tell the whole thing,” said Rick. He stepped out from down the hall, TJ’s mom sighing. 

“So you are here,” said TJ.

“Car’s in the shop,” he said. 

“You hate me?” 

“I love you. It doesn’t mean I’m a good person though,” he said.

“You stole from us.”

“Yes I did.”

“Why?”

“This house is the size of your living room. You have so much.”

“If you wanted money just fucking ask,” said TJ.

“Like I said, just cause I love you doesn’t mean I’m a good person.”

“You’re not even my father apparently.”

“I’m your father,” he said. “Didn’t make ya but I’m your father.”

“What’s the story?” asked your mom. They all looked to her and she looked at TJ’s mom. “What don’t we know.”

“You ever wonder how someone like me wound up with someone like your mother? We’re polar opposites most days,” said Rick. TJ narrowed his eyes and looked between them.

“Don’t tell him,” said his mom.

“Alright,” said Rick. “I must have been mistaken.”

“TJ, can I talk to you,” you said, pulling him into the kitchen. “TJ do you remember in family studies when we had that project to track our family trees and you found your parents marriage certificate and the year was wrong?”

“Y/N what’s that got to do with anything.”

“What if the year wasn’t wrong.”

“It can’t be. They would have gotten married after I was born then.”

“TJ I’m not saying your dad is great but he just lied for your mom. He loves her. Something happened before you were born or after. I have this feeling that she didn’t cheat on him.”

“What are you saying?”

“Maybe I’m wrong but maybe your mom was in a bad situation and Rick stepped in to help because of her.”

“Rick,” said TJ, very quickly exiting back to the family room. “When did you meet my mom. If you ever want to speak to me again, if you want me to speak to her again, you’ll tell me the truth.”

Rick glanced to TJ’s mom, TJ smirking.

“You do care about her.”

“Of course I fucking care about her. I care about you too.”

“That’s great. I feel very cared for,” said TJ. Rick pursed his lips and his mom nodded. “Truth or I walk out that door and never come back.”

“I was married,” said TJ’s mom. “He was charming until he wasn’t. I got pregnant with you and you were born and he would get so angry at you for being a simple baby and crying and...I was so scared of him hurting you that I left. I had nothing and I stayed with a friend for a few days. I met Rick through them and he offered us a safe place to stay with him. It was only supposed to be short term but things developed. He is not perfect but he’s not the monster you think he is. We are safe and the reason you have all you do well and truly is because of him.”

“Do you have anything to say?” asked TJ quietly.

“I loved your mother before I loved you, that’s true. But I learned and I’ve done my best. You were far better off without me in your life. Look at what you have. You’d be angry and bitter if I had more of a hand in raising you. So you can hate me but you do not hurt your mother like that. You do not walk away from her after everything she has done for you. Understand me?”

“I need space from you,” said TJ, Rick nodding. “I also need something else.”

“What?”

“I still don’t understand why you took the money if you weren’t going to spend it.”

“Was gonna impress you, turn a profit on it, give it back with interest. Be like her father, give you some money for once.”

“Jensen doesn’t impress me because of money. Yes, their family doesn’t have to think twice about the cost of most anything. But Jensen, De, they don’t impress me for any reason other than how kind they’ve been to me. They treat me like their son, like I’m their own. They don’t pretend to. They don’t tolerate me for Y/N. They genuinely care about me, all because I fell in love with their daughter, a girl that’s not even theirs and they love her to death. The house is nice. The wedding was nice and so are the vacations. But I could live in a cardboard box and be happy if all I ever got was their kindness. They never made me work for it. They just gave it to me. You could have just given it to me and I would have been a happier kid. But you didn’t and now you have to work for it on my terms. So I want our money back and I want some space from you. If and when I’m ready to talk to you again, I’ll reach out. Alright?”

“Okay,” he said. TJ crossed his arms and nodded before he went outside. His mom followed after and you gave Rick a look. He pulled out his phone and tapped on it for a few moments before shoving it in his pocket. “It says it’s pending for that big of a transfer. It should be back in your account in a few days.”

“Oh I’ll make sure of that,” you said, walking over to him. “Rick. Maybe try some therapy if you really want to salvage this relationship.”

“You think I can afford that?” he said.

“We’ll pay,” said your mom. “Jensen and I will.”

“Why?”

“Cause he’s a fucking awesome kid and he deserves a relationship with you, even if we don’t like you,” she said.

“What about you? You hate me too kid?” he asked you.

“I can learn to tolerate and respect you. But you hurt him and I’ll protect him from anyone that does that, including you. But it’s not my forgiveness you need. It’s his so maybe try the therapy and let him come back if he’s ever ready for that, okay?”

“Alright.” You turned to go when he caught your shoulder. “Can I ask where the money came from? Jensen made it sound like you were behind on bills.”

“It made things tight for us. TJ and I have both been working side jobs nights and weekends to scrounge up extra money. We weren’t handed any of that money we gave you. We even took from ourselves and our children. Just because we live in a nice house doesn’t mean we don’t work for it,” you said. “Oh and one more thing. Touch my father again or call my mom slutty behind her back one more time, you’ll find out which one of us isn’t the good person in this relationship.”

“He what…” said your mom as you walked out, pulling her along behind you. “Dickhead!”

“Come on mom,” you said, pushing her back to the car. TJ gave his mom a nod and hug before he climbed back into the backseat.

“Slut my ass,” your mom mumbled under breath as she started the car back up. 

“Mom, let it go,” you said, shutting your eyes and slumping down in your seat.

“Put on your seatbelt,” she said. You reached up and put it on, turning back to catch TJ with his head leaned back. “You okay back there?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“That’s probably the right answer,” you said. 

“Let’s get back to dad. I’m sure he’s climbing the walls to get out of there by now.”

Two Days Later

“Howdy,” said your dad, taking a seat in the patio chair beside you as you watched TJ swim in your pool with Allie. “Where’s the babe?”

“Naptime,” you said, TJ tossing Allie up in the air and hugging her tight when he caught her again. 

“How’s he holding up?” he asked, reaching over and taking a chip out of the bag in front of you.

“Better than expected. He’ll give Rick another chance someday.”

“He said that?”

“No. I know Thomas though. He’s too good to hold onto that crap. It might not be for six months or a year but it’ll happen eventually.”

“Well I think he’s a dick,” said your dad. “But if TJ wants to give him a chance, we’ll give him a chance.”

“Thanks for being his dad too,” you said.

“I love the kid,” he said, throwing his arm over your shoulders. “So what are you two gonna do with all that money?”

“Pay off the last of the lawyer fees, pay off a big chunk of what’s left on the mortgage. When that set design comes in then we won’t owe too much more on the house,” you said. “Speaking of which, I gotta go to work on it.”

“Y/N? Use some of that money and take a nice vacation with the kids. Or even just a long weekend away for you and TJ.”

“We really ought to use it for stuff like the house,” you said. 

“Have you and TJ ever taken a vacation just the two of you?”

“Of course. We went on our honeymoon.”

“That doesn’t count. The answer’s no, isn’t it.”

“Dad, I don’t need-”

“Maybe you don’t but somebody in that pool needs to have some fun. Plan a little trip away next month,” he said.

“He’s always wanted to go to Mardi Gras,” you said with a smile.

“You guys would have a blast and I got some pull down there and all. Come on. Let me spoil my grandkids for a weekend.”

“Alright, alright. You’ve convinced me,” you said.

“You mind if the twins have dinner with you guys?”

“We’re actually going to the Pads for dinner. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind more though. You got a hot date?”

“Getting a private college tour with mom and JJ,” he said. “Ya’ll can stop growing up anytime you want you know.”

“She wants to live at home you know.”

“Really?”

“Contrary to her teenage angst as of late, she does love us. Just you know, drop the curfew like you did with me.”

“And we get texts when you stay out.”

“That’s what you thought,” you mumbled. He raised an eyebrow and you shrugged. “I let you know when I wouldn’t be home that night. You didn’t need to know my exact whereabouts.”

“When’s the first time you stayed over TJ’s?”

“Fall of Freshman year in his dorm,” you said.

“Never mind. I don’t need to know,” he said.

“Yup. Let her have fun when she gets there, she’s smart,” you said. “Plus you know she’ll call me if shit happens. Also she has a year and a half of high school left. Relax.”

“At least I know Tom will keep an eye on her too.”

“Already planning the wedding?” you smirked.

“Shut up,” he said, ruffling your hair. “Make sure he gets this.”

He dug into his back pocket and took out an envelope, handing it to you.

“Thanks,” you said quietly. “Dad?”

“Mhm,” he said as he stood. 

“Can you invite him on your fishing trip this weekend with grandpa?”

“Already did,” he said, nodding down at the envelope. “I’ll talk to you soon, tall munchkin.”

“Later dad,” you said, TJ giving him a wave as he headed out. You left the letter on the patio table and went over to the pool, slipping into the shallow end.

“Everything good?” he asked.

“Yeah. My dad left you a letter,” you said, Allie swimming off on her own, doing circles around TJ. He nodded and got out of the pool, drying off some before he went to the table and sat down. “Time for a snack.”

You scooped her up and swung her around in the water, throwing her up your hip. You walked out with her, setting her down to dry her off some. 

“Is daddy okay?” she asked. 

“Yeah,” you said. “Why don’t you change back into some clothes and we’ll get Colin and snack time going.”

She rushed over to TJ and smiled up at him, TJ tucking her hair behind her ear.

“Daddy snack time!” she said.

“I’ll be inside in just a minute, sweetie,” he said. He leaned over and kissed her head, pushing her back towards you. You patted her inside, TJ rubbing his thumb over his lip as he read.

“Take your time, babe,” you said. You kissed his cheek and he nodded. “I’ll leave some tissues just inside the door in case.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Give me five minutes and I’ll be there.”

“Take all the time you need. I got these two,” you said. He nodded and smiled. “Love you.”

“Love you too, Y/N.”

_________

A/N: Read the First Summer Timestamp here!

[freefallingup13]

Toni AU; The Organization pt. 2

Hey, man, you know those awkward dinner table moments with the family where somebody says something you just... don't agree with and ya'll gotta deal with that for the rest of the meal? Yeah. Yeah that.

Part 1 here

Part 3 here Part 4 here Part 5 here

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The clanking of soup spoons against emptying bowls filled the room, cutting through the silent tension. Toni was able to maintain a slightly pleasant demeanor, but Derek's expression was dark as he stared at the centerpiece, stirring his bowl absentmindedly.

"What's wrong, my son?" The figure at the head of the table asked. "Cat got your tongue?"

Derek scoffed as his bowl was taken away and replaced with the entree, a few slices of leg of lamb, with roasted potatoes and creamed kale. "Are we resorting to jokes now? Is that the status of our relationship with each other?"

His father sighed as he picked up his fork. "Well, it certainly seems that you've brought your temper to the table..."

Quietly, Toni sliced off a piece of lamb and placed it delicately on her tongue. Rosemary... garlic... lemon? There seemed to be honey as well.

"Why are we here, father? We've already given you our reports for the day, and I have more work to do. For a man who prides himself on efficiency, you sure are wasting time."

The man smiled at his son. It was not the same smile as earlier. Toni could feel it. Cold. Degrading. She dared not look up, staring at her plate.

"Well, as for the status of our... relationship, I'm glad you were able to get that part across. It will be important in the future, son."

"Cut the crap." Derek seethed, dropping his fork on the plate. He had only taken a bite of the potatoes, Toni noticed. How unfortunate. "I asked you a questio-"

"And I would like to remind you to watch your tone with me, young man."

The other servants in the room froze, and Toni put her fork down to set her hands in her lap. She would most likely have to go soon. Shame - she hadn't yet figured out the kale recipe. She would have to ask later.

Silence returned as Derek glared at his father, debating whether or not to continue to directly challenge him. Toni studied the food on her plate, waiting for them to continue.

"Now." The man pierced the silence, glowering at his son. "As I was saying.

"You understand that as my son, and more importantly, second in command of this organization, that you're going to be taking over the business when I'm done. As I get older, the chance of me letting my guard down will increase. There is a chance that I will be killed or otherwise removed from my position." With the last statement, he cast a glance around the room at his servants, who shifted nervously. Even Toni looked concerned. She knew they had enemies, but she didn't think that he suspected his own employees.

"Oh, that would be too soon..." Mocked Derek, putting his head in his hand and stabbing a piece of meat on his plate. "What a pity."

Toni took a deep breath as she tried to calm down. Derek wasn't fond of his father, but he usually wasn't this offensive unless he was particularly stressed. It seemed as if he'd been overworking himself after all.

"Too soon, indeed." Derek's father replied calmly, though his jaw was clenched. "But you are old enough now that I can set my affairs in order with you in mind."

Derek groaned and dropped his fork onto his plate with a clatter. "Get to the point, old ma-"

"You're going to be marrying Toni."

Silence stunned the room. A few of the servants dared to whisper to each other, spreading the revelation to the kitchens. All of Derek's attitude vanished into thin air as he stared at his father, who continued speaking. "Besides that, you'll begin receiving tutoring on the weapons we create. You've clearly been working enough that you're well-acquainted with the business and marketing side of the enterprise. As for your day trips, both you and Toni will be-"

"Are... Are you serious?" Derek narrowed his eyes at his father, trying to see if his father was about to laugh, or had any hint of a smile on his face. "About marrying Toni?"

Toni's heart began to sink into her stomach. "Of course." Derek's father raised an eyebrow. "I'm not one to joke around."

A nervous laugh escaped Derek's throat, and he ran a hand over his face. "Why..."

"No clever words? No silly comebacks?" It was now the father's turn to be smug as he leaned forward, lacing his fingers together. Gulping, Derek slowly shook his head, leaning back and slumping in his chair, the knuckles of his fingers pressed against his forehead. Toni looked at him, unable to hide the confusion and pain on her face as his father continued speaking about combat and tactical training. Why did it trouble Derek so much? Was it that wrong for them to marry each other?

"Did you have any idea about this, Toni?" Derek's gaze met hers, slowly getting angry. Not annoyed, this time. Truly angry. "Was this your idea?"

The question stunned her for a few moments, and she waved her hands, completely forgetting the food flicking off of her fork onto the table. "I- No, Master! I had no idea. I… I didn't know!" Desperation invaded her voice as he glared at her, unconvinced. He opened his mouth to speak again, standing up, and her voice died in her throat. Why was he so angry?

"Calm down, Derek. Toni didn't know that this was my plan, and the idea was my own," spoke his father from the end of the table. "You can stop suspecting her now."

"Your plan!?" Derek yelled, slamming his hands on the table and directing his anger at his father. "Your plan is to take away my free will and write my entire life for me!?"

Oh. Thank goodness. Toni began to relax, putting a hand on her chest. He wasn't angry about marrying her, he was angry abou-

"Why would I marry Toni!?"

... Oh.

"Watch your tongue," His father snapped, casting a glance at Toni. "Honestly, have you no heart?"

Derek's nails scraped into the wood of the table, growling rising in his throat. "Look, no offense, but I am not marrying Toni. She's practically my sister! That'd just be so fu-"

"I said watch your tongue!" The man shouted as he slammed his fist on the table. "Toni has demonstrated nothing but complete loyalty to you, and to our cause. It is only natural that-"

"Natural how!? No, you know what? I don't want to hear any more. I'm leaving, and I'm going to eat dinner by myself, like I planned!" The chair screeched against the floor as Derek thrust it away, grabbing his coat and storming out of the room.

Toni wanted to go after him. She really did. It was technically her duty to do so. it was always his best interest that she had to keep in mind. Tonight, though...

"Toni."

She jumped, gasping at the sight of Derek's father standing next to her chair. He wore an expression on his face, which he didn't often do. It was a sad one.

"Come, child, dry your tears. It'll be alright."

Like a stranger's, Toni's hand floated up to her cheek to touch it. It was wet, and her lips parted in surprise at the droplets on her fingertips as she pulled them back. Holding back a sniff and gulping instead, she rubbed her sleeves over her eyes. "I... Sorry, Sir."

He shook his head. "There's no need to be sorry, Toni," he noted glumly. "In fact, I'm sorry it turned out this way. I didn't expect such a reaction from him. You two are so close, I honestly thought it was on his mind already."

Toni nodded softly. "I... I'm sorry to speak out of line, Sir, but... Derek doesn't focus on such things like marriage, and especially not relationships. He's... He's quite enamored with his work."

"Oh, forget about that! You two live together and spend so much time with each other. You accompany him on every day trip he has, and keep a far closer eye on him than is necessary by your position. What I meant was that surely you two have some sort of feelings for each other. After all, I can tell you do."

Her fists clenched as she dropped her gaze to her lap. "I… I...."

"Toni. Look." He pulled out her chair to face her towards him, and put his hand on her shoulder, which directed her eyes back upward. "I mean what I said. You have demonstrated nothing but complete loyalty to Derek for all the years you've been here. You've kept him in line and even discouraged him from doing things that would lead to... disastrous results."

Memories flashed in her head of Derek talking to others in whispers, and the fight they had the night she'd found out what he'd said. She didn't know how his father had found out about it, but at the same time it felt only natural that he had.

"Unlike any other employee here, you are the best fit for my son strictly because of how deeply you keep his best interests in mind. Somebody needs to stay by his side and help keep everything in order. To keep him safe. Do you understand?"

"I... Sir, I..." Eyes blinking fast, she held a hand up, her voice stuck in her throat.

He raised an eyebrow and brought his hands behind his back. "Permission to speak granted, Miss Mallory."

She gulped as the words instantly cleared her head. She always rehearsed what she had to say when she asked him permission to speak. Now the phrase made it easier to find the words she was trying to say. "I... Sir, I could do any of that without being married to him. To Master Derek, I mean. A-After all, I do it now."

Toni shifted nervously as he took a deep breath and sighed. "Toni. Please understand.

"I have lived my life alone since Derek's mother died in that crash. You never met her, but she was just... absolutely wonderful. I want that for Derek. That dependability, that loyalty, that love. Having him choose just whatever woman he meets on a day trip could lead to trouble. She could leave him and sell our secrets, or she could dismantle our entire operation from the inside out simply because she is bored. She could be weak and unable to stand up for herself, let alone the organization. That kind of chance I will not risk. I have worked far too hard for some silly little girl to come in and tear it all to the ground.

"You, however, have worked hard for your place. You were never supposed to be anything more than a servant, yet you've become an astounding scientist and third in command should anything happen to Derek and I. Once all this training is said and done, you will be just as fit as Derek to run the Organization. I have absolutely no question about your loyalties to this operation, and even fewer questions about your loyalty to my son. There is nobody better for the role of Derek's wife than you."

She understood. His father was a man of efficiency, after all. Of course he'd think like this regarding his son's future. If it weren't for Derek's reaction, she would be inclined to agree with him.

But this development had made Derek unhappy. Angry. And because of that she couldn't agree with this decision at all.

Not the slightest bit.

Not at all.

Even she couldn't convince herself that it wasn't true.

[magic5ball]

Nature Trail to Hell Arc IV: Megamart of Darkness (9)

Chapter 9: Dropping the A-Bomb

           I just stood there, having no idea what to say or do. It was like looking in a mirror at the grim, jaded hump of crap you know you’re going to be in ten years if the scholarship doesn’t work out. It was a sight that would bring most grown men to their knees, so considering I was a little kid at the time, it was a wonder I was even standing at all.

Yet somehow, I managed to spit words.

“T-the water.” I trembled, “g-give it back.”

He looked at the glowing plastic bottle in his hand. “Sorry kid, no can do. This here’s company property now. But if you want, I’m more than willing to sit down for an adult conversation.”

The way he said those last two words made my blood freeze, no small task when the ‘sun’ was shining so bright overhead. 

He gestured over to an area at the foot of the inflatable volcano, where two plastic chairs and a table rested. On top of the table were several Red Solo cups and a bottle of Crystal Springs Bottled Water.

“Like I said, its’ been awhile since I’ve had company. Besides the Wegmart Company, that is! Ha!”

My feeble ten year old mind struggled to grapple with the fact that someday I would find jokes like that funny. One of the most horrible experiences of my life.

But what could I do? Thanks to stories from my gangster days, I knew darn well what this A-Bomb was capable of, and I wasn’t really in a position to take chances. So I followed him to the tables, trying not to think about how Bokrug should have been here by now, despite his lumbering movements.

Naturally, I didn’t make a peep. If there’s one thing I learned from comic books, its’ best not to set these friendly-lookin’ types off.

When we did get to that table, first thing the guy did was offer me some of that crisp, refreshing, bottled water. Though the heat from the lava made it really tempting, I knew I’d never be able to live with myself if I did.

“Suit yourself, kiddo.” He said, pouring a cup of his own. “We aren’t that different, you know. In fact, you’re a lot like me when I was little…”

On the outside, I stared like the teacher was about to bring the whipping stick. On the inside, I wanted to scream, because long talks with my Dad had taught me where this was going.

                                                      .   .   .

“When I was your age, I also went to a Summer Camp, it was called Camp Salmon or something like that. Anyway, the counselors running the camp were mean. Like, really, really mean, so the second I could I dashed right on out of there and into the woods. Sound familiar?”

Naturally, I didn’t say a word. Throat was too parched, anyway. A-Bomb laughed.

“Oh who am I kidding?! Of course it does! I know because Wegmart has surveillance cameras everywhere!”

He pressed something under the table, and from the ground emerged a device made from a bunch of big screen T.V.s hastily duct taped together, several flashing images of my adventures over the summer. The rest showed the frozen foods aisle, where my feathered allies were getting ‘ahem’, ‘cleaned up’ in the most gruesome way possible.

“Like you, Watterson Tostig, I went into the underworld and escaped. I too, was inducted into a gang of dinosaurs. I, too, became God of Roadside America. But at the end of the day, guys like us have to settle down and face reality. Wegmart saved me, kid, and if you’re willing, it’ll save you too.”

All that time, I didn’t turn away from the screen. I couldn’t.

“I thought I could spend the rest of my life hiding in the produce aisle. But I was foolish back then, a rogue vagrant eating grapefruit peels. Until THEY rescued we. The founders of Wegmart took my withered ghost and showed me the way to love, happiness, and most importantly, low, low prices!”

Yeah, yeah. The low, low price of a human soul!

“I was weak at first, but the kind folks at Wegmart saw my talents as a brown bagger and before I knew it, I had my own private toothpick in the faculty room! After that, they put me into production.”

Here’s the thing about young me being stoic: even at the best of times, he was kinda bad at it. Sometimes I even wonder if he had some kind of attention deficit. Not saying little me cocked an eyebrow at the mention of ‘production’, but he looked at me like I did before he went on yammering again. 

“Oh yeah! You’re not in the know of company business. Right!  See, our store used to have a 3D printer they would use to take the employee of the month and just clone him until they had an entire staff of the perfect worker! And yours truly has held the position for ten years!”

Ever since I was young enough to confuse Wegmart with Disneyland, I’d always noticed how all the brown baggers looked the same. Suddenly, everything made terrible, terrible sense. But worse was the realization that, just like those cereal box sweepstakes, the empty, dotted line cutout of a man could have easily been me!

“Shame they recalled the printer. Something about lead based ink. Or the clones having higher than normal rates of cancer. Really, I just signed the paperwork. But enough of the sad stuff, Watters! Let’s talk future! Because I’ve seen you in action and man, you’re just the kind of spunk to breathe life into this company!”

Least, I think that’s what he said. Bokrug’s running tardy was really nerving me up.

“So join me, Watterson! And let us rule the Wegmart like manager and employee!”

“No.” I whispered.

“Eh?” A-Bomb cocked an eyebrow, like he’d never heard the word in years.

And with that, I could stay silent no longer. The anger, the one that’d been boiling so steadily I me like the giant volcano we sat at the foot of, went full Krakatoa!

“Are you deaf, poophead?! I said NO!. And you know why? Because all you did was make a giant self-pity sob story for yourself, because you think that if you can drag me down with you into this Megamart of Darkness, you’ll feel better about stealing water from a bunch of geese! I’m pretty sure you could have gotten some from Rite Aid if you were willing to play fair!”

“Rite Aid doesn’t sell-“

“My point is, you’re just jealous of me because I’m not a cog in the machine like you! And that ‘we’re so alike’ bullcrap wouldn’t work on a five year old! So no, I won’t join you, because I might have sold my soul to a Tako Shak, but even I have stinking standards, you self-pitying TURD!”

A-Bomb stared at me, mouth agape for a few seconds. “T-the T-word?...”

“You heard me right, TURD!, so you better let me go unless you want more of the same! I’ll even tell my Mom, and you really don’t want to see her when she’s angry!”

“No, no, I get it…” he pushed a button under the table.

Another hole opened in the ground, and from it emerged what I can only describe as a nuclear missile made entirely of fuzzy orange Shampows.

“Your friends and family are holding you back, little bro! So how about I sweeten the deal: you join me, and I don’t rain Shampow down on your entire neighborhood!”

I tried to move, only to find myself stuck to my seat. Literally. The son of a snitch must have superglued the thing beforehand!

“So, do we have a deal?”

I didn’t say a word.

“Do. We. Have. A. Deal?”

Now I might have been a bit of a turd back in the day, but darn it, I couldn’t let an entire neighborhood get wiped from existence! Especially when the neighbor hadn’t even returned out lawnmower yet!

“Okay! Okay! I’ll join you! I’ll be your whipping boy. I’ll even stock Barbie dolls if I have to! Just don’t press hat button!”

And you know what the prick did? He kept putting his finger closer and closer to the launch button!

“But I thought you said you wouldn’t do it if I joined!”

“Foolish Watt! Your petty loyalties to the neighborhood make you weak! We must purge this from your mind so you can know true Wegmart! Just like my manager did to my neighborhood!”

But you know what the worst part was? He said this using the most condescending, prickish voice I could imagine.

Still, one thing needed clearing up.

“Hey A-Bomb? What was your neighborhood?”

Guy didn’t say a word, but the way he shut up after that spoke plenty.

“… They called it New Jersey.” He whispered.

I rolled my eyes, knowing full well it might be the last time I ever express sarcasm. Of course!

Time slowed to a crawl as I waited on the imminent destruction of everything I ever gave a crap about. Oh, I tried to see things from the half full perspective, but not even the knowledge my douchebag brother was probably going to get caught dab smack in the middle of the detonation zone passed out on the couch watching teen drama reruns could compensate for everything. At least A-Bomb was taking his sweet time pressing, probably so he could rub it in more.

In fact, he was taking a lot of sweet time. (Granted five minutes is pretty long for a ten year old, but still!) Then I noticed he was pressing the detonation button multiple times, each time faster and more flustered. I looked up, wondering if the Lord himself had intervened on behalf of little old me, even after everything. 

In fact, my salvation had come in the form of a certain goose, who grinned triumphantly, a plug and wire in his beak, machine gun cradled in his wings.

“Bokrug!”

The noble bird spit out the plug, beaming with triumph despite being so plucked of feathers he was practically naked. A-Bomb was, on the other hand, for the first time since I saw him feeling something other than calm, collected, or several other words you find in yoga advertisements. His face turned so red I figured he’d explode any minute, just like his namesake.

“YOU!” he leapt up from his seat, facing down the glorious gander. ”I had ONE chance to find happiness! ONE chance to have somebody to share this miserable job! Years of planning, plotting, scheming, and with one bite you ruined it!” He unsheathed those golf clubs from his back. “Do you know what its’ like to run a store with only clones of yourself?! With everyone knowing exactly what you do?! Its’ so, so BOORIIINNGGG!”

“Then perhaps you should have found a happiness that did not require the suffering of another.” He bared his beak, bits of Wegmart technology still stuck in them. “Or technology easily damaged by the humblest of beaks.” like he was emphasizing the point, he cocked the machine gun, maing probably the world’s most satisfying click. 

“Who do you think you are, my Mom?!” He spun his golf clubs around, making a combination of kung-fu poses and noises that could only be described as either really stupid or really racist. Possibly both.

“Bokrug-kun! You have brought great dishonor upon my house. Prepare to die!” he cried in the phoniest Japanese accent I ever heard.

“I’m Egyptian, you a$$hole!”

With a guttural roar, the waterfowl from hell charged in kind, raining bullets like hellfire.

It was the awesomest f*cking thing I ever saw.

[montocalypse]

For 'If I go now, I'd look for another you': Qs 1, 4, 13, 14 and 15. And for 'Sleepless,' Qs 6 and 10. (I know these are a lot, so feel free to take your time.) Thank you!

Thank you so much for the ask @soy-celeste! As you predicted, this did take a while, what with NaNo taking most of my free time, but here we go:

If I go now...

1. What inspired you to write the fic this way?

Story time, kiddos. Back in early 2019, I was just generally feeling miserable and missing Monto while he was frozen out of the squad, and then Alessio posted a couple of photos on his Insta from some cultural event they both attended, and it was really all the push I needed. I’d never even thought of this ship before, but once I saw it, it couldn’t be unseen. I just loved the idea of these two spending time together and maybe even being friends outside Milanello.

I’ve always been drawn to the dynamic of being queer while playing professionally - some of you might remember my first longer story also exploring that theme - and I saw this as a perfect opportunity to take a deep dive. I’d rarely written Monto as the older/more experienced party before, so that was a bit of a challenge, but it was also very fitting considering I was processing my feelings over his absence and inevitable retirement through the story.

So, I wrote like half of the first chapter back in February 2019. Then I was floored by some massive changes in my personal and professional life, and dropped the story for over half a year. When I finally came back to it in the autumn, after Monto’s retirement had put things into a new perspective, I basically rewrote the whole thing to put more depth to their relationship and drive home this generational shift that was happening in Milan, with Monto being brushed aside while Alessio climbed up to become the captain. It became much more than just a simple coming out love story: I was basically reliving the last few years on Monto’s career through the story.

So yeah, the main inspiration was definitely Monto’s retirement, even though the story begins four years earlier. All the other themes - sexuality, friendship, feeling like an outsider, emotional growth etc - all ties back to it. In short, I was feeling emotional, so I was also expressing lots of emotions I was either going through or had gone through before, in the only way I knew how.

4. What’s your favorite line of dialogue?

What a sneaky way to make me go through the story again!

It’s a tie between two very different scenes:

“Ask me why I kissed you.”

and

“Even after I met Cristina and fell in love with her, I kept expecting something to go wrong – for her to find out and leave me, for me to realize I wasn’t really into her, for someone else to come along and tell me I couldn’t be the person I wanted to be…”

First one because it packs all the unspoken feelings into one single sentence. It’s a scene I wrote in one sitting, with next to no edits even in the final version, and this line was something I knew I would use long before I actually got to do it.

The second one because I’m sick of bisexuality being swept under the rug, and this whole scene was my official ‘fuck you’ to everyone who thinks that being in a straight-passing relationship makes us any less queer.

13. What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?

Sunrise Avenue has been my go-to band throughout the creation of this story, with Heartbreak Century (where the title and all subtitles come from), Somebody Like Me (Crazy), and Question Marks probably being the ones I’ve listened to the most while working this story.

14. Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?

For the longest time I’d wanted to write a story with a bisexual character where the sexual identity matters. I feel like sexual orientation - bisexuality in particular - is often unfairly ignored/forgotten in favour of Fun Gay Shit(TM) in fanfiction, and it’s always kind of bugged me even though I’ve definitely done it myself on many an occasion. 

In this story I wanted to show that being bi is a valid identity that affects how people act and experience the world regardless of their relationship status, and we go through a lot of the same struggles as other LGBTQ+ individuals, as well as stuff that’s specific to us. If there’s one reader who picked that up and maybe gained a new perspective on how they view sexuality, I’d be very pleased.

15. What did you learn from writing this fic?

That sometimes it’s completely OK to take my time writing and updating a story. I think this might be the first time I haven’t felt guilty for taking months to update, because this fic started as a personal therapy project that I never expected anyone else to pick up. And honestly? Had I written and pushed it out when the idea first struck me, I don’t think the story would have turned out half as good, because only with time and numerous edits (and lots of help from @hendos) did I find the right balance and my voice as a writer.

Sleepless

6. What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?

I could be cheap and just say it’s the ship because this is the only time I’ve written either Edi or Diego. However, that’d be selling it short, because this is actually one of the most personal stories I’ve ever written. 

I wrote it back when I was getting ready to move to another continent, and had to cope with an end to a very short-lived summer romance I’d gone through just before - that story didn’t end there, and it ended up being much more complicated than I’d ever imagined, but back then I didn’t know that. I just knew I’d found something special and I was choosing to walk away from it because if I didn’t, I would have regretted it. And that didn’t make the relationship-that-never-happened mean any less.

Sleepless, as short and (bitter)sweet as it is, re-tells a moment from the end of that non-relationship in as much detail as I could while also keeping true to the characters and context of the fictional relationship I was writing. I’m pretty sure it’s the only one among all my fics where I’ve basically lifted stuff from my own life and written it into a story with only some relatively small changes.

10. Why did you choose this pairing for this particular story?

I adopted Uruguay as my secondary national team during the 2010 World Cup after Italy went out. Sad, I know, but it was also surprisingly easy to fall for them when my attention wasn’t being hogged by the Azzurri. I remember falling particularly hard for Forlán, I was just awestruck.

When it came to choosing characters/pairing for this story, I knew I needed to find players with a clear age gap (to mirror the above-mentioned irl relationship) who were also living/about to live on other sides of the world. Forlán was the obvious choice because he was leaving Europe and I was upset to say the least.

As for Cavani, he was playing in Napoli at the time, so I’d been following him through Serie A, and was intrigued by this introverted singlemindedness I could see in him. I found it very relatable. He seemed like such an interesting person, I just wanted to take a shot at writing him, even if it was only a short piece.

[paulbenedictblog]

%news%

New Post has been published on %http://paulbenedictsgeneralstore.com%

Fox news NFC South draft grades: Bucs just owning offseason - NFL.com

Fox news

Why provide instantaneous grades on the selections of potentialities who possess yet to get an NFL snap? Effectively, you are learning this, don't seem to be you? Brooding in regards to the makeup of every roster and the components surrounding every comprise, Gennaro Filice and Dan Parr strive a division-by-division evaluation of the 2020 NFL Draft. Procure in mind that these grades are per draft hauls on my own -- picks traded for historical gamers were now not taken into story. Below is Gennaro's evaluation of the NFC South.

NOTABLE SELECTIONS

BEST PICK: Tristan Wirfs, OT, Iowa Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Spherical 1, No. 13 overall

As talked about earlier than in the NFC East installment of this sequence, over the long, daunting stroll-as much as the draft, NFL.com printed 31 mock drafts by 11 diversified analysts. Of these analysts, handiest one projected Wirfs to Tampa Bay -- and that man did so in all three of his mocks! Charley Casserly, I dub thee Wirfs Whisperer. The frail Redskins/Texans fashioned supervisor had the Bucs plucking Wirfs with the No. 14 overall comprise in Mocks 1.0 and 2.0, and then he had Jason Licht jumping as much as No. 9 in verbalize to staunch the athletic address's companies in Mock 3.0. Coincidentally, neither of these scenarios in point of fact performed out. Effectively, Licht did land Wirfs by shopping and selling up, however handiest by one slot. What became as soon as the inducement within the assist of that uncommon mini-jump up the board? As chronicled by NBC Sports actions' Peter King, Licht had caught wind that 49ers LT Joe Staley became as soon as going to retire -- which he did two days later -- and the Bucs GM became as soon as frightened San Francisco would per chance per chance also comprise the closing of the Nice Four tackles at No. 13. So Licht switched spots with Niners GM John Lynch -- swapping a fourth-spherical comprise for a seventh-rounder at some stage in -- and bought his man, shoring up the protection on Tom Brady's front aspect. And that, boys and girls, is the anatomy of a first-spherical draft comprise.

MOST SURPRISING PICK: Cesar Ruiz, C/OG, Michigan Unusual Orleans Saints, Spherical 1, No. 24 overall

The Saints arguably entered this draft with per chance the most total roster within the NFL. Which skill, mock predix on the No. 24 comprise were in each place, environment up a scenario the place any comprise shall be deemed a surprise. ... Or no comprise shall be deemed a surprise?? I assemble now not know -- barely made it by Philosophy 101. Nevertheless I contend that Ruiz became as soon as certainly a surprise preference, because Unusual Orleans became as soon as already declare to return all five starters from an extraordinarily adorned neighborhood up front. LT Terron Armstead, LG Andrus Peat and RG Larry Warford made the Skilled Bowl closing season, RT Ryan Ramczyk became as soon as first-personnel All-Skilled and C Erik McCoy nabbed a predicament on PFWA's All-Rookie Crew. So, what's the conception for next season? Straight away following the sequence of Ruiz, who performed heart and guard at Michigan, all eyes went to Warford. The 28-yr-archaic carries the 2d-greatest cap hit on the personnel at $12.875 million, trailing handiest Drew Brees' $23.650 million figure, and closer watchers of the Saints' offensive line than me notify that the lawful guard's play slipped rather closing yr. With a first-rounder now getting into the interior-OL fray, Warford appears to be like like a top reduce candidate. If that's the case, Unusual Orleans will favor to take in trusty over $5 million in dreary money, however that'd peaceful liberate virtually $8 million in cap declare. And it would give the Saints' offensive line an moderate age of about 24 years archaic, with each person below contract by now not lower than the next two seasons. Juicy.

BIGGEST SLEEPER: Tyler Johnson, WR, Minnesota Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Spherical 5, No. 161 overall

With a pair of Skilled Bowl wide receivers (Mike Evans and Chris Godwin) and a trio of proficient tight ends (Utilize Gronkowski, Cameron Brate and -- for now -- O.J. Howard), Tom Brady arrived in Tampa to rather a sequence of hump catchers. Did the Bucs trusty nab the cherry on top: a subtle slot receiver? Johnson rewrote the Minnesota file e book closing season, racking up 86 catches for 1,318 yards. And the bulk of that manufacturing -- 67 catches and 1,086 yards, per Skilled Football Focus -- got right here within the slot. The 6-foot-1, 206-pounder is a atypical more or less participant than the undersized, cat-speedy slot machines Brady maximized in Unusual England. Johnson doesn't shake cornerbacks, he bullies them. Johnson lacks top-stay juice and welcomes contact, excelling in contested-web instances. Nevertheless he does part one fashioned trait with Wes Welker, Julian Edelman and Danny Amendola: pristine route-working capacity. If Johnson can successfully-organized up the drops, he would per chance per chance also hasty turn accurate into a precious weapon in TB12's arsenal.

TEAM GRADES

NOTE: Draft classes are ranked from handiest to worst within the division.

» Spherical 1: (No. 13 overall) Tristan Wirfs, OT, Iowa. » Spherical 2: (45) Antoine Winfield Jr., S, Minnesota. » Spherical 3: (76) Ke'Shawn Vaughn, RB, Vanderbilt. » Spherical 5: (161) Tyler Johnson, WR, Minnesota. » Spherical 6: (194) Khalil Davis, DT, Nebraska. » Spherical 7: (241) Chapelle Russell, LB, Temple; (245) Raymond Calais, RB, Louisiana-Lafayette.

So, what's it gonna be, Bucs followers: Tompa Bay or Tampa Brady? GM Jason Licht continues to assemble every part in his strength to place the brand new franchise face within the very supreme declare to succeed, the employ of three of his first four picks on offensive needs. Wirfs looks to be as if a hump-and-play starter at lawful address, with supreme athleticism and the supreme lower physique I've ever laid eyes on on the NFL Scouting Mix. (Seriously, this man is a miles superior species to me.) Spherical 3 frankly felt a exiguous successfully off for Vaughn -- RB Zack Moss' violent, all-around sport gave the impact quite a bit more enticing at that time -- however the Buccaneers wanted yet another backfield presence to enroll in Ronald Jones II, and it appears to be just like the one-reduce Vandy product became as soon as their man. Johnson shall be the last portion to Tampa's loaded pack of hump catchers, as a huge slot who runs the more or less nuanced routes Brady will fancy. The one defensive participant Licht snatched within the first five rounds is a gem. A flexible safety who's perfect for this day's sport, Winfield hits like his dad and has the playmaking instincts you'd demand from somebody who grew up in NFL locker rooms. "Once I became as soon as youthful my dad would lay in his bed along with his computer computer, and I'd be sitting lawful next to him looking out at film," Winfield said on the combine. Todd Bowles is gonna celebrate with this beginner.

» Spherical 1: (No. 7 overall) Derrick Brown, DT, Auburn. » Spherical 2: (38) Yetur Noxious-Matos, Edge, Penn Deliver; (64) Jeremy Chinn, S, Southern Illinois. » Spherical 4: (113) Troy Pleasure Jr., CB, Notre Dame. » Spherical 5: (152) Kenny Robinson, S, West Virginia. » Spherical 6: (184) Bravvion Roy, DT, Baylor. » Spherical 7: (221) Stantley Thomas-Oliver III, CB, Florida Global.

While you watched the 2020 NFL Draft for five minutes, you heard the phrase "Rhule Restoration" 10 times. So, what precisely is that, moreover rapid alliteration? Effectively, within the first draft of the Matt Rhule technology, Carolina's Rhule Restoration consisted of carpet-bombing the protection with draftees -- ALL THE DRAFTEES. The Panthers grew to became the first personnel within the fashioned-draft technology to employ all of their picks on defensive gamers. It's in point of fact now not that horrid, both. Carolina carried out 31st in scoring protection closing season. ... After which one amongst the very handiest gamers in franchise historical past -- linebacker Luke Kuechly -- all straight away retired. ... After which the Panthers' CB1 signed a mega-address the Giants. ... After which they lost four skilled disruptors up front ( Mario Addison, Bruce Irvin, Dontari Poe and Vernon Butler), as successfully as Eric Reid within the assist stay. Long legend speedy, Carolina got right here into this draft with serious needs on all three phases of the protection. In Spherical 1, the Panthers handed on assemble-every part playmaker Isaiah Simmons in favor of a gargantuan anchor to scheme around (Brown). In Spherical 2, they snagged a toolsy edge rusher to hunt opposite closing yr's first-spherical comprise, Brian Burns, and then traded assist into the spherical to realize Chinn, an nice looking hybrid who sounds like store-trace Simmons. Essentially the most considerable Day 3 addition became as soon as Pleasure, who would per chance per chance also push for early playing time in a cornerback rotation within the meantime topped by the inconsistent Donte Jackson and the awesomely named/minimally confirmed Corn Elder. Rhule Restorers ... MOUNT UP!

» Spherical 1: (No. 24 overall) Cesar Ruiz, C, Michigan. » Spherical 3: (74) Zack Baun, LB, Wisconsin; (105) Adam Trautman, TE, Dayton. » Spherical 7: (240) Tommy Stevens, QB, Mississippi Deliver.

Heading into the draft, Unusual Orleans did now not possess a single obtrusive want. With an NFL-handiest 37 wins over the last three traditional seasons, the Saints boast as successfully-rounded -- and battle-examined -- a roster as there might per chance be within the NFL this day. So or now not it is no surprise they selected to bundle picks in quite a bit of alternate-ups, leaving the draft with the league's smallest prospect haul. How does the category grade out? Now now not too shabby. Spending a first-spherical comprise on an interior offensive linemen is now not precisely moving, however that does not imply or now not it is senseless. Ruiz became as soon as the stop pivot in his recruiting class out of highschool, started at guard and heart in some unspecified time in the future of three gorgeous years of play in Ann Arbor and hits the NFL ready to begin on Day 1. (Incumbent lawful guard Larry Warford and his hefty cap hit seem like on borrowed time.) Baun offers Unusual Orleans a flexible linebacker within the Kyle Van Noy mildew. He can provide stress off the sting, however moreover has the athleticism and consciousness to again his delight in in coverage. And Trautman's an nice looking developmental prospect as a precise Y tight stay. At 6-5 and 255 kilos, he's equal aspects receiver and blocker, however his transition from the FCS to the NFL is gonna comprise time. Shrimp class, massive capacity.

» Spherical 1: (No. 16 overall) A.J. Terrell, CB, Clemson. » Spherical 2: (47) Marlon Davidson, DL, Auburn. » Spherical 3: (78) Matt Hennessy, C, Temple. » Spherical 4: (119) Mykal Walker, LB, Fresno Deliver; (134) Jaylinn Hawkins, S, Cal. » Spherical 7: (228) Sterling Hofrichter, P, Syracuse.

Over the course of the pre-draft course of, Jeff Okudah became as soon as widely notion to be the stop cornerback prospect, whereas C.J. Henderson established himself as CB2. Nevertheless the third-handiest nook on this class? That became as soon as a hotly debated topic. When the Falcons weighed in with their decision -- taking Terrell, an Atlanta native, at No. 16 overall -- many disapproved, in conjunction with ESPN draft guru Mel Kiper Jr., who said the personnel "reached for a want, straightforward and straight forward." I truly possess a sneaking suspicion there might per chance be some recency bias at play right here. Terrell, finally, had a tough evening on the declare of enterprise in his closing sport, the College Football Playoff Nationwide Championship. On the brightest stage of his playing profession, Terrell became as soon as torched by LSU wide receiver Ja'Marr Trot. Nevertheless let's be aesthetic: Who did now not salvage torched by Ja'Marr Trot? The Biletnikoff Award winner caught 84 passes for 1,780 yards and 20 touchdowns -- with the latter two marks environment SEC records -- and he's poised to be a truly highly selected participant within the 2021 draft. Out of doors of that exhausting day day commute, Terrell acquitted himself swish darn successfully on the island. He's long (6-1) and rapid (4.42 40), too. And with each person screaming "REACH!!" upon his preference, the 21-yr-archaic must enter the NFL with a lovely wide chip on his shoulder. Very to seem how his profession performs out.

Relate Gennaro Filice on Twitter @GennaroFilice.

[howtohero]

#053 Going to Hell

Some people spend their entire lives trying to avoid going to Hell so it might surprise you that some of the most superheroic individuals in history have willingly ventured into the Bad Place at one time or another for some reason or another.

There is a myriad of reasons for a superhero to have to or want to venture down into the mysterious beyond. Perhaps they are going to rescue the soul of a loved one or the wrongfully damned or a loved one of somebody who is blackmailing them (it’s very easy to find yourself being blackmailed into performing impossible tasks when you have a ginormous secret that you’re constantly trying to protect) maybe you’re returning a lost demon to the address on its collar, maybe you’re going down there to give Hades or the Devil or Greg the Skeleton King or whoever a good butt-kicking for some villainous action. Maybe an unfortunate side effect of your extreme power is that normal human, non-hellfire, saunas aren’t hot enough for you. Maybe you just lost a bet! Whatever the reason is, it often transpires that a hero needs to a quick way into the underworld.

One surefire way to get to the realm of the dead is to commit some evil acts and then die. The classic “push an old lady into oncoming traffic and then following her” move should do the trick. But then you’re condemning yourself to an eternity of torture and suffering and that’s probably not what you were looking for! So, for the still-living-and-still-loving-it crowd, getting to Tartarus is pretty much the same as getting anywhere else, public transportation. The Ferry to Heck runs eight times a day. You’d think it would run more often what with all the dead people it needs to cart around and you’d be right and it used to run every time someone died but then there was a strike and it was a whole mess so now it runs just eight times a day and the dead people just have to wait in an orderly fashion at the docks at the edge of the River Styx (just put edge of the River Styx into your navigation app of choice I’m not gonna sit here and draw you a map). So you’re gonna have to wait with them. And they smell bad. They smell like rotting flesh and regret. It’s a very uncomfortable experience. But on the bright side, dead people often are not in a rush to get to their eternal vacation at the damnation station. So they’ll usually let you cut in line. When you get on the boat make sure you say hello to Charon, the captain, and let him know that you are a living person. That’s the only way to secure a complimentary meal that isn’t worms or whatever it is dead people to eat (usually its worms but one time everybody got grilled cheese so you could risk it but I’d let somebody know that you’re not dead). When you meet Charon don’t be nervous, he can be a little bit scary but he’s a reasonable bloke. Try telling him a joke. He likes jokes and nobody ever tells him any. Say something like “Charon my good man you look stunning, drop-dead gorgeous.” He’ll laugh, you’ll laugh, you’ll get your grilled cheese, it will be a good time.

If you’re too fancy to ride on a ferry that floats on top of the souls of the damned there are some other options available to you. You or someone you know can conjure up a doorway to hell using the dark arts. Of course, this means going on a scavenger hunt to find lizard eyes and peacock feathers and Greek coins. If you’re in a rush you can always buy one of those prepackaged doorway to Hell kits that they sell in most Wal-Marts but those ingredients are usually artificial and don’t work nearly as well as fresh ones. You can also hire a wizard guide to the deadlands for pretty cheap, a lot of them deal in memories these days and those are priceless, so they don’t cost anything! Or you can jump on a demon right as they’re about to teleport back to their fiery homes (to lure a demon to your location in the first place I suggest using peanut butter, demons love peanut butter). Alternatively, if you’re already in Heaven, there’s a train that goes to Hel whenever you want it to. Lots of things happen whenever you want them to up there. It’s one of the perks of Heaven

Once you get to Hell there are  a variety of characters you might encounter. There’s Cerberus, the three headed literal guard dog from Hell but he (they?) are actually pretty easily dealt with. See, Cerberus is actually three times as much dog as regular doggos, so he (she?) loves dog things like playing fetch and belly rubs. If you’re going to play fetch though you need to bring three balls. For maximum distraction try throwing the three balls in three different directions. Additionally, music puts Cerberus to sleep (I wish music put me to sleep, then me and my neighbors who are in a band that I think is called “We Only Practice at Night and Gee Golly Are We Loud About It” would get along much better). Cerb’s favorite kind of music is heavy metal covers played on a harp but if you’re not strong enough or committed enough to lug a harp around with you into the afterlife he likes fiddles too. You’ll also encounter a variety of demons, dark angels, poltergeists, imps, telemarketers and all manner of ungodly evils. If you can avoid them great but if not you may have to fight some of them. They’ll probably try to stop you from freeing one of the souls they’ve come to love to torment so I hope you came prepared for fisticuffs. 

Stealing from Hell is a lot like stealing from anywhere. You’ll have to bypass the security guards as we’ve just discussed and then break any locks or riddles (they love riddles in Hell, also, speaking in rhyme) that stand between you and your goal. I actually recommend not going on this adventure by yourself. At the very least you’ll need someone who is familiar with the unholy magicks at work in the underworld but it would also be smart to bring someone who knows something about stealing things. If you can find a magician thief person that’d be ideal but there are only like seven of those and four of them are either in jail or already in Hell at any given time. You’re also going to want to avoid being noticed by whoever’s running the place on that day (all the major demons and Greg the Skeleton King have a rotation, just like I suggested superhero teams should do, maybe they read this blog). Once the Boss notices you mucking around stealing souls you’re almost certainly toast. Sometimes you can win your freedom by being a fiddle aficionado or by making some sort of horrific deal but usually that’s just instant damnation for you and your party. Then you’ll need someone else to come and save you and it becomes a whole cycle until everybody on Earth is in Hell because of you!

If you somehow, despite everything, manage to get to the soul that you’re after congratulations! Now what’re you gonna do with it? You need some means of transporting that sucker with you out of the underworld. Most jars can actually hold souls pretty well (But none as well as Jerry’s Homegrown Condiment Jars please think of us for all your eternally damned soul jarring needs!) But no containment will work as well as the person’s actual body. Plus if you get them back in their body you’ll have another couple of hands to help fight your way out of hell. Of course that means lugging around a lot of literal dead weight with you on the way in but I dunno, it might be worth it. (We did not actually authorize that advertisement and we don’t know how it got there.)

Infiltrating and exfiltrating Hell is very tricky and highly dangerous so I hope whoever you’re going in for was worth it. [Howtohero is not responsible for any eternal damnations that result from following the advice presented here.]

[captainexplody]

Cat Whistles

Knock knock knock! Bobert Armitage knocks on the front door of a house, knocking three times as he has been officially trained to do. Well not really, nobody really trained him at all, he just figured his profession out himself. And he thinks that knocking on a door three times is a good idea, it sounds good. Looks good. Looks and sounds good, that’s what he always says. I mean obviously he doesn’t ALWAYS say that, that’d be a really weird thing to say all the time. Although that’s Bobert Armitage in a nutshell, a kinda weird guy. That’s probably the best way to describe him. A weird guy.

Anyway so Bobert Armitage knocks the door of this house three times. Knock knock knock! That’s the sound of a man knocking on a front door with his fist. Bobert waits patiently outside the door, calmly waiting for somebody to open it for him, so he can converse with the person who has opened the door. That is part one of his plan. He grins to himself as he looks down at the big bag he is carrying with him. Step one: get a guy inside a house to open the door of the house. Step two: engage in dialogue with said person. Step three: Sell that person some wares. Bobert Armitage’s wares are contained in the bag, y’see. Now it’s all starting to make sense.

Bobert Armitage rings the doorbell of this house, pressing on the button three times sharply. He then knocks on the front door three times, and sets his big bag of wares down on the ground beside him as he straightens his tie, getting ready for the big presentation he is about to deliver to whoever finally ends up opening that door. Bobert Armitage is not at all put off by the long time it takes people to answer their doors these days, he’s well used to it. He does this a lot, this is his job, bothering people until they open their doors to him. He knows how to wait. He always heard people say ‘good things come to those who wait’ and so Bobert Armitage is adept at waiting things out. He’s waiting for those good things to come to him, and he can wait all day if he has to.

Knock knock knock! Bobert Armitage knocks on the door three times once again, brushing some dust off of the shoulders of his jacket, his big smile never once waining. He’s full of enthusiasm, that Bobert Armitage. Always prepared for a sale, always finding the fun in everything. Some people would lose their enthusiasm quickly enough, would tire of this repetitive and rarely satisfying job, but Bobert Armitage relishes it, perhaps because it’s all he has left. Eventually Bobert Armitage can hear some movement behind the big wooden door, and he knocks sharply three times again. Knock knock knock!

He puts his biggest, cheeriest grin on as he waits patiently for the door to open. A clickity clack of locks being turned can be heard, and then the big door swings open slowly, revealing a very angry looking man standing behind it, glaring at Bobert Armitage angrily.

Angry Man: What?

Bobert Armitage: Hello sir! How are you today?

Angry Man: What do you want?

Bobert Armitage: I want to know how you are today?

Angry Man: I’m fine. What do you really want?

Bobert Armitage: Why sir, I am here to revolutionise your entire life!

Angry Man: I doubt that very much.

Bobert Armitage: There is no need for doubts, my friend! I can help you, if you will only grant me but one moment of your time.

Angry Man: ... How long exactly is a moment?

Bobert Armitage: Why we could quibble over the various quantities of time, but instead of that I would like to spend a small portion of our precious time on what I have in my bag!

Bobert Armitage waggles his index finger around the way a salesman does inexplicably, and then he reaches down to the bag on the ground, popping it open as the angry man watches on patiently.

Angry Man: You better not be selling me Bibles, boy. I’ve had my fill of Bibles, I have too many as it is. And I’ve only read half of one of them, I don’t have time to read any more Bibles. Also its so bloody boring! You’d think if this was the straight word of God, he’d get to the point better.

Bobert Armitage: What I have in this bag is no Bible, sir. What I have in this bag is an incredible, practical invention that everybody on your street will want!

Angry Man: I doubt that very much.

Bobert Armitage: Well my good friend, let me show you my wares!

Bobert Armitage eagerly reaches into the bag and pulls out a big handful of his wares, which he then holds up in front of the angry man. In Bobert Armitage‘s hands are a large collection of small plastic pipes with a hole drilled into one end. The pipes are multicoloured, all around the same size. Bobert Armitage holds his hands out a little closer to the angry mans face. Angry man does not look amused.

Angry Man: ... What are these supposed to be?

Bobert Armitage: Why my good sir, these are cat whistles!

Angry Man: ... What is a cat whistle?

Bobert Armitage: These! These are cat whistles!

Angry Man: What am I supposed to do with a cat whistle?

Bobert Armitage: Why my friend, what CAN’T you do with a cat whistle?

Angry Man: Ok, tell me what I CAN do with one first.

Bobert Armitage: Certainly! 

Bobert Armitage drops most of the cat whistles back into his bag, picking out one specific one which he holds in between his fingers, the way a magician would hold up a card that he wants the mark to focus on, a card which is no more special than the others, and not special at all unless in the hands of a skilled man.

Bobert Armitage: You can blow on it like a whistle!

Bobert Armitage shows off exactly what a whistle is supposed to do, by putting it in between his lips and then blowing on it relatively hard. A strange, ethereal whistling noise comes out of the little whistle, it sounds nothing like the kind of sound you would imagine a little whistle like that would make. After a few painful seconds of listening to this odd whistling sound, Bobert Armitage ceases blowing and pulls the whistle out from between his lips again. He grins at the angry man in the doorway, pleased that his whistle worked. The angry man does not look any less angry.

Angry Man: Is that it? It’s a whistle?

Bobert Armitage: Yes sir!

Angry Man: What’s that got to do with cats? Can cats hear it?

Bobert Armitage: I don’t know, I’ve never asked a cat if it could hear it before.

The angry man continues to look angry.

Angry Man: What is this, a joke? I don’t understand. You’re wasting my time here, I don’t appreciate that.

Bobert Armitage: I’m just trying to sell you some cat whistles.

Angry Man: Ok first of all, it’s really bad at being a whistle. I mean that is a terrible noise for a whistle to make. Second of all, why are they called cat whistles if they don’t have anything to do with cats?

Bobert Armitage shrugs his shoulders calmly.

Bobert Armitage: I just like the name.

Angry Man: Ok well thats false advertising right there. You come around here bothering people like this, eventually you’re going to get your head kicked in, know what I mean?

Bobert Armitage: Not really. I’m just a travelling salesman trying to peddle his wares to make an honest living. I hand crafted these cat whistles myself, this is all one hundred percent unique and special.

Angry Man: It’s one hundred percent bullshit if you ask me. Your crappy whistles won’t sell, nobody around here wants any of that garbage. Have you been to other people’s houses in this street?

Bobert Armitage: Yessir.

Angry Man: And how many of my neighbours liked your crappy whistles?

Bobert Armitage: Well one family looked interested in buying some soon...

Angry Man: They pretended to look interested because they felt sad for you and your stupid crappy whistles that you’ve wasted your life on making. Just go home and give this crap up. You’re annoying people around here trying to sell them something nobody wants or likes.

Bobert Armitage: Just because you don’t like something, doesn’t mean that everybody won’t like it. 

Angry Man: Yeah, but nobody is going to want something as crappy as this. Alright, I’ve wasted enough time talking to you. SOME of us have things to do today!

Bobert Armitage: I’d just like to point out I have something to do today.

Angry Man: And what’s that?

Bobert Armitage: Selling cat whistles! Would you like one? I’m doing a deal, you can get all 45 colours for a low low price of £12! Now THAT’S a good deal!

The angry man glares at Bobert Armitage angrily (as you would imagine an angry man to do) and then he slams the door shut. Bobert Armitage sighs to himself, before he perks himself up again and grabs his bag full of cat whistles. He pokes one of the whistles in between his lips again and starts whistling a very strange sounding tune as he skips down the path away from the angry mans house. He strolls down the street until he gets to the next house in line, and then he happily strolls down that garden path. He made these cat whistles himself, he’s very proud of them. Sure, they might not make sense to everybody, but there’s got to be somebody out there who appreciates his craftsmanship and originality, somebody who appreciates what he has to offer to the world, even if it isn’t the most useful thing. Bobert Armitage stands in front of another front door, eagerly awaiting the challenge in front of him, the challenge of trying to persuade some people that his cat whistles are a cool idea. There’s only so many houses in the world, if he keeps trying he’s going to stumble into the right one eventually. Knock knock knock.

[musesfromnippon]

   { So I’m still awake and thinking... “You know, until I get those about pages set up, why not write short bits that sum up the muse?” So that’s what I’m doing.     Expect some of these to be a bit ridiculous, cause I haven’t slept yet. }

Amenominakanushi: The Dad of all Dads. He’s gonna drop some wisdom on you and also be really vague sometimes. I bet he knows too much about everything.

Inari-okami: Gender doesn’t exist, especially for them. Feel free to refer by she/her, he/him, or they/them. Foxes are friends and also the thieves of your missing socks. Might adopt you like Ammy does, but less “parent” type and more “party uncle/aunt with a glass of sake in one hand.”

Nuregami: Pure bean who is here to make sure things are going okay...with the water, of course! She’s a little awkward around people. Family, save her.

Kabegami: Will climb everything tall that you own, including you, if you’re tall. Hope you like cats; she’s got a lot of kitty friends. Will steal any seafood you have...or just give it to her. Make a new friend.

Sakuya: Guardian of the trees and wishing she could do a bit more with her life. Still, she knows all the secrets of Kamiki. All. Of. Them. Become her gossip buddy, it’ll be worth your time. But be careful of what you want to know about....

Kushi: Came home to raise her sons and brew sake...and her adopted son left to figure out his past while her other child is probably learning things he shouldn’t from his father. Brew so good it can get the gods wasted, so beware....

Camellia & Camille: The traveling sisters who visit Guardian Saplings around Nippon! Camellia being the elder sister and Camille being the younger and who is also super up to date on that kami stuff. Big sis is waaaay behind, yo.

Princess Fuse: Princess of the canines and the boss of Kusa Village. Totally. Also OkamiDen isn’t canon, so there’s no acting going on here. Only a woman trying to keep her warrior-dogs in line and encourage them to keep protecting their home!!!

Kaguya: Just your average space princess from the moon, no big deal. Also one of few remaining Lunarians after some massive bullshit that somebody pulled and our bets are either on Orochi or Yami...... So yeah, now she’s the ruler of the shambles of her home and kinda needs to get on fixing that. Sometime soon, hopefully.

Queen Himiko: She may be dead in Okami canon, but now is the time to say, “fUCK SHE MAY BE DEAD....but that’s what we have past RPs and AU threads for.” Anyways, she’s a badass who rules the throne while her husband plays with demon fangs, so know who’s the powerful one around Sei’an City... Cause it’s her.

Kamo & Abe: Some Tao Troopers who serve under Waka. Just remember that Abe is the ditz and Kamo is the cool, collected dude you can trust with anything. Abe would probably sell all of your secrets for a dinner at Sei’an’s finest. Abe is a DORK.

Queen Oto: Remember kids, “Otohime” is “Princess Oto”, so technically she’s “Queen Oto” now, a’right?? ANYWHO. You know Himiko and how badass she is/was? Well, here comes Queen Oto, ready to LAY DOWN THE LAW OF BADASSERY. Cause she changed into a huge fucking dragon while preggo to help the sun kami and her bouncing friend fight off a God Complex Ninetails. She’s also a widowed, single mother and that kid is gonna be just as incredible as she is. Damn.

Tobi: Speaking of the Ninetails, that big bro had a cool dude working for him...and that guy, was a demonic slip of paper. Who liked to race! And helped you to the top with those races!! LONG LIVE TOBI!!! So yeah, he’s stickin’ around here and ready to hand out some flowers.

Samickle: Yo, you won’t believe this, but.... This guy is the Oina chief now. Crazy, right?! Yeah... He’s also sorta engaged. Just some fanficy shit, dON’T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT, GOSH.

Tuskle: They made her as a one-off priestess in-game.... And then I came along and went, “Mine now.” So now we’re gonna get a badass shaman in this group, helping people heal, giving advice, and lowkey being a mom to everyone. Someone’s gotta!

Ayame: The OkamiDen one-off to play really hardcore on your emotions, while also tying into a story nobody knows about... Again though, I’m taking her. She’s mine now. Imma make her cute as hell and ya’ll gonna have to love her now!!! (Don’t worry, you will naturally. Ayame is too cute and pure. Gotta love them pure peeps~)

Kuni: He was the son of Susano and Kushi...until he revealed he actually wasn’t, he’s just adopted. We can either talk about this crazy kiddo and his attempts to figure out who he really is...or just get our butts into the future, where he’s a damn good swordsman and a handsome boi.

Nanami: The Dragonians continue to be badass and elegant...and Nanami’s here to hammer that point home. Hope you like water and water hair, cause that’s what you’re getting here, bucko. She’s real cute, though. Prepare to be charmed.

Kagu: OkamiDen may have flopped in story, but DAMN if all their girls ain’t #goals! Our little actress-miko Kagu, back at it again with her incredible powers, eventual (possible) heir to the Sei’an throne, and also getting a little sweeter with the acceptance of who she is. Confidence out the wazoo and it looks GOOD for her!!

Kurow: ...Blease protect my boy..... He did not deserve what canon gave him...... So now he’s gonna be coddled here and protected... Probably for a week or two. Then we toss him to the angst hounds. Also should mention all of the kid partners (including this rad dude) have “adult AUs” so... That’s a thing.

Sugawara: Hey, if Capcom could maybe like....stop hurting my babes from the Moon Tribe, that’d be rad, okay? That’s gonna be my job, dudes. SO. Denying canon a bit? Maybe. Mostly just wanna set this guy free... Maybe get him a date. He’s too attractive to be single I mEAN WHAT--

Dark Chibiterasu: Remember that bit? At the end? Well, screw that, too, cause I’m gonna make my own dark Chibi. He’s sorta his own entity now, though. How you interact with him, shapes how he’s gonna be, so.... Play with him wisely! Else you’re gonna be at fault if he grows up to be a very bad pupper.

(Oh hey, it’s the OC section. We made it this far!!)

Koamashi of Nippon: So in a summary, Koamashi are like...land guardians? They collect the history of their homeland and stuff and this could go on forever. This one is a happy being and also ready to kick your ass. But she probably won’t, cause being friendly is the way to go! (Also that whole “cursed land” thing didn’t go well for her, so she’s still trying to recover from that.

Koamashi of Kamui: A cold guy (ahahahaa, get it??), but could be tight-knit...if he had friends. He just sorta...watches over the Oina and Poncles. That’s his main dealio. He’s a sad man, give him a hug...once you know him better, anyways. Doesn’t like touches from strangers, m’dude.

Koamashi of the Takamagahara: You’ll likely never meet this guy unless, like... You die or something. Or are a deity of some kind? He’s a cool dude, though. Very friendly, patient, and kind. Probably gives warm hugs. Will kick your ass if need be, though. Died once; not fun. Also, the Koamashi are technically genderless, but they do lean towards a preference of appearance, so.... And they really don’t mind, either way.

Handmaiden Reiko: Dad the sake brewer, mom the painter, and big brother the warrior...and their parents are dead, of course. Reiko somehow managed to get a job as a handmaiden to a tanuki princess, but... Geez, is it straining or WHAT?! Makes using a bow look so, so easy.... Patient af, though; she’s still working to keep getting money to ensure a good life back at home. Also has an Oina bf named Hayato.

Demon Cat Sukei: Fight first, questions later. Won’t let you pet him and will bite if you try. Maybe claw, too, if he can manage it. Can speak English/Japanese and will hand over demonic wares and give advice on demons/imps to talk to who might be of help, if got need of them. Alright, if an asshole.

Genetic Pup Aoi: Remember the “Science is Bad” trope? Well, it’s sorta true here; get the hair and blood of a kami with some science shit and BAM!! Here’s four godly puppies, have fun explaining that shit to the higher ups. Aoi is the blu boi and he’s got them water powers. Eldest of the four sibs and thus, the leader.

Genetic Pup Hinote: Second in command to Aoi, but sorta like Starscream in that he keeps trying for first place. Dark pupper and the only one to have black fur; he controls fire and- yes- is a bit of a hothead. He’s a good big bro to Kusa, though.

Genetic Pup Kusa: The green boy, associated with wind, and the fastest of ‘em all because of it. Could probably speed over water, honestly. He just likes to run and play with Hinote, cause they’re the other duo to Aoi and Sakura.

Genetic Pup Sakura: Cliche name for the pink pup with the earth powers... Also the sole girl, but she knows that just makes her better then! ...Right? Is the runt of the group, but also sorta the powerhouse, considering how important nature is, and all. Is the “underling” to the duo between her and Aoi, though she secretly prefers Hinote to give her attention.

Lunarian Aristocrat Kiyoshi: One of the Moon Tribe runaways during the fall. Kinda sorta doesn’t care what happened back home, cause Sei’an City is a lot cooler, anyhow... Mostly cause 300+ years of being there and it’s still a neat place to him. Is a little shit in the way only a very flashy man can be. It’s all a part of that Lunarian charm, eh~?

Tanuki Princess Yua: Got big tiddies cause mythology states that tanuki have ridiculously huge and useful ballsacks. The more you know!! Yua, however, is the second child who is a girl, and thus won’t get the throne. So via la rebellion and exploring the world of Nippon and Kamui time!! She’s the princess Reiko has to watch over, bless the woman’s heart... Yua likes playing tricks, flirting a bit, but has some wild ADHD that just....won’t settle. Can at least relax a little in Wep’keer/Kamui, so Reiko can see her man and not have to fuss over the princess during that bit of their trip.

Oina Woman Miame: CALLBACK TIME. So remember Samickle? Being engaged? Here’s his fiancée. YUP. Casual woman who he kinda had to help when she got herself trapped and hurt... Sorta stuck around with nowhere else to go, wormed her way into the pack....and then some cheesy bit like “warming up Sami’s heart” or something. Definitely does know how to keep him from stressing out too much, though, so... Go her!!

Demon Priest Takahiro: He got a name for this appearance. At long last, he hAS A NAME!!! He’s mostly here to pay for his crimes years ago, when he forced Amaterasu to swallow up this stone of darkness kinda thing? It makes her go into a baddie mode, basically. Yeah, he did it. That’s his fault. Also, that hasn’t been fixed, so..... Someone needs to get on that and drag Takahiro with them!!

Young Fox Akemi: “Young” by kitsune standards, thank you. She’s still in her early 200s! Anywho... Fox from a small kitsune village. Has been going around to learn stuff about the world as she gains her tails. Made a friend in another wandering kitsune with similar goals, so they joined up; he’s been traveling longer, though. Associated with the autumn season.

Teenage Fox Yoshirou: Akemi’s friend and a black fox of 3-tails, so... About 300 years already under his belt. Wanted to be alone and in peace, but Akemi was younger than him, so... He relented. Acts like her big brother now, basically. Since they’ve wandered from their homes and families, expect him to be the one to look over suitors in place of her actual family.

Lunarian Scholar Kazuki: If you’ve been around me for about a year, you know this guy already. If not, he’s basically the ex-love interest to Shiori over at Goddessof-Poems. He kinda died during the whole wipeout of the Moon Tribe? Yeah... He used to do a lot of important writing for the Moon Tribe and gave Shiori her signature, golden collar. (Still wears it to this day.) He’s a dead guy now, but Izanami likes setting him free sometimes to amuse herself. So whether in the past or present, Kazuki is around somehow...somewhere.....

[boneslaw]

Prologue

Rendezvous was exactly where you'd expect for this sort of thing. The right atmosphere on the wrong side of town.

We decided to meet at the local pub. Local to me- I'd been doing oddjobs a while. Slick white scars lining my hands, and charcoal under my nails- I made myself a staple in town, saving up for this endeavor. It’d been a long few months but the wait was supposed to be worth it. He'd be breezing through on his way north, in town for one night only. That was his story, anyways. I hoped he'd find the bar alright. The tavern's sign post was stolen ages ago, repeatedly. No one needed it. Those who came through here were creatures of habit. This was a pub that patched itself up with the same lumber its kegs came in. The sickly sweet smell it radiated suggested spilled whiskey kept it together, while the whole thing was wedged in line with the other decrepit, seedier establishments. A hole in the wall in the literal sense, you could worm your way in the broken boards of the neighboring brothel. I used the front door. Lowlights inside distorted the barflies' faces like masks. Smiles turned ominous and anything else went dour. My target was easy to spot among the regulars. Tucked in a corner, he sported a flower in his hat. That was the signal I was told to look for. "Halstead?" I asked, low, just audible over the raucous laughter. The hunched figure ahead lifted two fingers, coincidentally confirming the two things I needed from him: 1. This was the man I wanted. 2. He was in no hurry to advertise it. The two of us had been exchanging letters for some time. This was our first visit in person, and I couldn't say this was the face I'd put to him. His elegant script wasn't indicative of a man who hadn't shaved at least a week. His posture was too poor for the pristine stationary, and his clothes too disheveled for the wit he concluded each message. The petals on his rim glowed in the dark; he must have picked it fresh this morning. It was the only visible evidence he'd seen sunlight in weeks. I offered my hand to introduce myself properly. "Mulligan." He shook it, smiling wide. "Mulligan! A pleasure to meet you in the flesh." "Pleasure's mine. Did you get in well?" "Fairly enough. Nice city, you have." Sarcasm. He's over here because he was inevitably bullied away from the bar at the first syllable of that fancy accent of his. "I can't imagine why you're in a hurry to leave." "We all have our reasons." "I'm sure you do. And Private Ruiz, too?" The butt of my cigar burned bright, an unfortunate giveaway against my otherwise immaculate poise. "I forgot I had given you my nickname." "You didn't." "You're right, I didn't." I took a seat. In the same, harsh exhale that obscured my face I mapped my exits. When the smoke lifted, I found him taking a long draw from his drink, waiting for other shoe to drop. "What do you want?" "Nothing." He gibed. I remained impassive as he reveled in the advantage he'd given himself. I couldn't decipher what it meant yet, and his answer clarified little. "Just to make sure my legacy didn't go toward nefarious means." "Legacy?" His head canted, "Are you saying you didn't look into me at all?" "I did not." Nor did I appreciate the condescension. Those in the business of selling their identities didn't usually have a 'legacy.' Or fame, or anything I usually wanted further insight into. Only ghosts. I left mine scattered across the states. Everywhere from a hole 200 feet in the Earth to the shores of Morehead, but if I've learned anything, it's that they are confined to their haunting grounds. They hitch a ride in your psyche only if you let them. I didn't- but I was there for those who couldn't shake the shadows behind them. It was counter intuitive for me to look deeper into a name than where it can get me. If they were running from something, why would I seek that something out? No. I needed prominent people, with prominent identification to successfully do what I needed to do. That's it. These meetings always ran the risk of going this way, but I'd been 'lucky' so far. It's a term I use lightly. I smothered my cigar before the blasted thing gives me away again. Getting to the point, "I want what I came here for. Or to be arrested. Whichever you had in mind." He laughed mirthfully and I caught the glassiness in his eyes. He's drunk but wears it well. I can outrun him. But instead of pushing it or telling me anything else I already know about myself, he slid a folder my way. "Sorry. I couldn't help having a little fun. Here." I flipped it open, looking between it and him. Inside was what I came here to retrieve. A passport. With it were our letters, returned as a show of good faith. Beyond that, a little something extra. Further pages were marred with whatever poison he had been drinking all night- the last of which was a page outlining his apparent accolades. This was bestowed upon by a governor, it's prestige too great for the disrespect it'd been paid ending up in this condition. In this bar. In my hands. "What's this?" His gloating turned to disapproval, face falling as if to say 'Read it, dumbass.’ "Detective Halstead." I hedged. "That'd be me." "Active?" "Not advised, this side of the Mississippi." A closer look revealed it true. Everything inside was stamped hundreds of leagues away. But why? "What do you think?" He baited. I remained quiet. I couldn't tell. My mind was going in too many directions at once. Too many mixed signals. I think I've been caught. I think that there is now a barmaid blocking the nearest exit, and I think Private Ruiz is AWOL to the second power, and Arthur Mulligan- Well Arthur Mulligan didn't do anything wrong, except have a wife who is dangerously good at tracking. (Mrs Avery Mulligan is an exception to the ghost rule. Hot on my coattails, I haven't lost her since Tennessee- she's after child support I don't have. The kids look nothing like me.) And beyond that is more than I wanted to deal with, at any capacity. I have too many loose ends, and not enough incentive to face prosecution for anything I've done or the actions of my lives before I've reaped them. "Are you with the military?" I finally asked, getting to the crux of it. "I'm not here for your desertion, Private." Loaded question. That told me how deep his information goes. Confident now, I rose from my seat abruptly, taking care to note that no bodies around me jumped too. Not even Mr.Halstead. "What?" His cocky bubble burst. "Did I scare you?" "What is your ploy?" "The original plan." His finger traced the rim off his glass. Fake as his smile, it didn't sing. "I don't have a ploy. No ulterior motive. Nothing except I intend to be on the first train out in the morning, coffers full." "And your 'legacy'?" "Dead to me. Maybe it'll be better use to you." "Why?" "We all have our reasons." That couldn't have been more ominous. There were plenty of reasons to walk. Beyond minor inconvenience, there was nothing stopping me from truly progressing with what I had except...stagnancy. I'd be fine as Arthur another few months, a static vaguely somebody doing what work he could around the state- Or I could do more. Charlie promised he had something good for me, and by god he delivered. Alarm bells told me this was a bad idea, but those bells had been playing since I left home. Looking between him and his credentials, it was my most ambitious break yet. Did I want to let that go so easily? "Well?" He offered, one last time. I paid him in full. - - - There was always a trial period between new identities. Before I slipped into the cold shoes of someone else, I wanted to make sure I could fill them. Insurance, if there were to be any. Halstead didn't intend for me to usurp his position. It was an idiotic move given his reputation. The extra bits were probably just given to me because he was arrogant like that, but digging up dirt would be the confirmation I needed for his mantle in full. I was sure he'd hate me doing this too, which was all the more motivation. I backtracked from the governor's letters. Letter after letter, telegram after telegram, I matched the names up to cases, and the cases stacked together to form the former life of a prosperous detective. Charlie Halstead grew up in a small town, child of the deputy. His parents put him through private school. No record of a sweetheart but between cracking cases like the Disappearance of Anna Louis, to the Robbery of Welton bank, to shutting down a smuggling operation along the Idorough river there wasn't time. A local legend, until the height of his career ultimately led to its plummet "Jesus Christ." My ash singed the results. He fell hard. Very hard. Borderline sociopathic criminal, or in the very least giant asshole. He left everything because it was a liability. Being him meant trouble- more than me being me did. He wriggled off the hook by the skin of his teeth, legal technicality, and a pinch of nepotism, but no one really escapes public scrutiny. He must've realized this when he couldn't find work in the town he was once beloved. When people spat at his face, or crossed the street to avoid his path. I wouldn't want to be him either, and I just dumped my savings into it. My first reaction was to take the loss. My second reaction, however. My second was to seize it. He could have got another identity if he wanted. Could have easily abandoned his in pursuit of something quieter, quainter, and out of the public eye- but I think he wanted his name to ping on the map beyond him. Maybe let rumors of him bleed across the US, until his infamy died with his obscurity. I was a tool in this way. A pawn- But whatever his reasoning was, it no longer mattered. I saw potential. I took his accomplishments and did away with the rest- something he himself could never do. This life was a new avenue to pursue. An exciting one, with the most advanced resume I've acquired to date. I could use this. I could be this, and I decided to prove it to myself with the last dregs of my cash. A name like this could take me anywhere if I was smart about it. Even if I couldn't trust my fortunes, I could trust myself. My ad was in the paper of a new town the following day. Charlie Halstead, detective for hire.

[lawrenceseitz22]

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 167

Click on the video above to watch Episode 167 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at https://semanticmastery.com/humpday.  

  Announcement

Bradley: Right as the fucking buzzer’s going. Oh, pardon me. Hey guys. This is Bradley Benner with Semantic Mastery. This is Hump Day Hangouts for January 17th, 2018.I believe this is episode 167. Yes, it is. 167. Sorry, we were in the middle of testing something. Like literally right as we were going live. Never stop testing, right? So we’ve got almost everybody here. Adam’s not here today. So I’m gonna go right on down the line as I see it. Chris, how’re you doing buddy? No audio from Chris. I know he’s traveling.

Hernan: Yeah.

Bradley: Okay. So Chris is here in spirit. We got Hernan with us too. What’s up, Hernan?

Hernan: What’s up guys? I’m really really excited to be here. Good stuff coming up, so I’m really really glad that we’re here.

Bradley: Hey, your Christmas tree’s down.

Hernan: It is. I mean, it’s gone. It’s been gone for 10 days or something.

Bradley: Gone, man.

Hernan: Yeah, it’s gone.

Bradley: It’s kind of disheartening. Kind of depressing.

Hernan: I could put that up. I have another plant over there.

Bradley: Awesome.

Chris: Sorry man. I was on [inaudible 00:01:14]. I’m sitting in a snowstorm in Austria. Like crazy. But everything else is good.

Bradley: Nice. Well that’s Chris. What’s up, man? Alright, Marco. What’s up, buddy?

Marco: What’s up, dude?

Bradley: How are you?

Marco: Testing. Always testing out.

Bradley: Yeah, that’s awesome. And then we got Roman on with us today, which is awesome, from SerpSpace. And we got some cool announcements that he’s gonna be talking about as well. So what’s up, Roman?

Roman: Hey, I’m good.

Bradley: Good. Okay, well, I know Hernan’s got a couple of announcements to go through. I wanna mention real quick, because I had this already. We did a webinar with Jeffery Smith again on Monday, which was for the SEO bootcamp guys. If you guys have been following us for at all the last two months or so, you know that we’ve talked about this course before. It’s hands down the best on page SEO course I’ve ever seen. And I mean that. It’s fabulous. And Jeffrey Smith just put in an enormous amount of work into it. It’s really really good. And so we’re not even gonna try to compete with that. We just said “Jeffrey, we just wanna promote yours.” So we had another webinar with him. It was our third one, actually. The first one went horribly wrong. The second one did better. But this one, this third one, was much much better.

So if you guys haven’t had a chance to watch it, it was almost like an hour and 40 minutes long. It was very very good. Very informative. I mean, yes, there’s an offer at the end for SEO bootcamp, but it’s at half price right now, or at least through our link it is. And it’s totally worth it, number one. But even if you don’t end up purchasing it, you can learn a lot just by going through the webinar. And I know that’s kind of cliché. You hear that shit all the time, but you’ll see how in depth he goes with like keyword research, as well as what entities are and how to basically like semantic relationships between the entities and things like … It’s incredible. I even learned a lot just from the presentation alone. So I would highly recommend that you guys go check it out. I’m gonna drop the link on the page for the replay. And then with that, Hernan, I’m gonna turn it over to you.

Hernan: Yeah, because apparently I do have some announcements. So yeah, the video lead gen system is coming up next week. I know that Bradley has been working hard with that and we have … Here’s the thing. We have crafted that and Bradley has been going through his process of getting really good results with video, with lead gen, using video. So we’re gonna be releasing that next week. It’s probably gonna go through your … We’re probably gonna announce that the next Hump Day Hangout, but stay tuned to your emails because that’s gonna be released over there. And then we have Roman here, and I wanted to ask you, Roman, a little bit about the SEO ramp packages that you guys have been cooking on SerpSpace over there. So can you give us a little bit about the ramp down? What would be the ideal scenario to use them and how to use them, pretty much.

Bradley: And while you’re doing that … Excuse me, pardon me, Roman, but while you’re doing that, if you want, do you wanna pull up the screen to the page and just kind of showcase that page while you’re going through it?

Roman: Sure.

Bradley: Can you do that, or do you want me to pull it up?

Roman: Yeah, if you could pull it up, that’d be easier.

Bradley: Okay. I’ll see what I can do.

Roman: Yeah, basically, we’ve been working on this for the last few months, trying to get this pushed out live, but basically it’s a done for your solution for SEO packages. And we’ve got two main kind of packages. One for local and one for national. The big difference between the two is national is a little bit more of an oomph. You get a lot more links than you would with local and that’s for obvious reasons. A lot of times with national, there’s a bit more competition involved. But with our local rank packages, basically, it’s completely done for you. So there’s a plugin that we have on our backend and what that does is it integrates with let’s say your WordPress site or if you have an html site or another type of site, we can work with those as well.

And what it does is it creates the pages on your site and it does the back linking automatically. And every month it adds more pages onto your site and generates more additional back links that way as well. So over time, it’s effectiveness grows and these type of links that it’s setting to your site are some of the best ones that you can get anywhere. They come from trusted, validated entities and, seriously, from an SEO standpoint, you can’t ask for a higher quality link. These are all real businesses that are essentially linking to you. And it’s a beautiful content distribution network that’s going on with this.

Bradley: Yeah, and I’m testing it right now with some sites guys and it’s super powerful and we know the kind of like what the infrastructure is behind it, and it’s fucking amazing, really. And like he said, these are all established entities. Like verified Google my business type sites that we’re getting links from. It’s just amazing. Which those are the best types of links you can get, especially for local business, you know.

Roman: Yeah. It’s coming from relevant, local businesses. And that’s … What more could you ask for?

Bradley: Yep. One thing, Roman, I’ve got a bone to pick. Who the fuck let that be the thumbnail for the video? Come on guys. That’s shitty.

Roman: We’ll have to get Alvin to-

Bradley: Come on, man. Can somebody please go update that?

Roman: Tony and I were talking about it.

Bradley: God almighty. It’s not doing me a service at all.

Roman: We’ll get that fixed up for you.

Bradley: I’m used to Wayne doing that shit on Hump Day Hangouts with memes and stuff. But come on, man, this is a sales page.

Roman: Apologize about that.

Bradley: No worries on that.

Hernan: Anyways, I think the link is on the comments over there, guys. So if you wanna go ahead and check them out, they’re really really powerful. We’re pretty pumped about this. So go ahead and check them out. You can always open a free account at serpspace.com and then Bradley’s just put the link on the questions over there on the comments and the events, so you should definitely check it out.

Yeah, guys, you have anything else to add before we move on to-

Roman: Yeah, the only thing is I wanted to mention is this is really a set it and forget it type of service. So it’s really easy to set up and just to go with. So if you’re somebody that’s a local business owner, anything like this, this is really a great solution for you. If you’re selling to local businesses, then this is also a fantastic solution because it allows you to be able to focus on you bringing in more revenue and not so much on the backside of the fulfillment services. So this makes your life easy.

Hernan: Right, right. And we have a lot of people come into the Hump Day Hangouts and students [inaudible 00:08:12] general have their own agency, so I think this is both a time saver and a headache saver because mostly because it’s like turning around and giving a better service to your own clients. This works for your own lead gen, if you’re doing lead gen, if you’re doing pay per call, or rather if you’re doing rank and run, whatever you’re trying to do. Or if you’re selling the service to your clients.

Roman: Yep.

Hernan: Okay. Pretty cool. Pretty cool. Alright, so go ahead guys and check it out. Again, you can always open a free account over there at SerpSpace and if you have any questions, you can contact us with any questions that you might have. And the last note that I had over here was to talk a little bit about the charity, the nations. Marco, you wanna take a stab at it? Like, what’s the status of that and how we’re looking.

Marco: Yeah, absolutely. You can just go to the page. I’ve posted the link towards the top, and see how close we are to the goal where we started, which was 10,000. Guys if you put us above 10,000 before or on Friday the 26th, I’ll take it up to 15,000. If you take us up to 15 by one dollar, I’ll take it up to 20. It’s a challenge. Put it over a dollar. If you see it at 9999, go ahead and contribute two bucks and make Marco spend the rest for the kids. I don’t mind. It’s a really worthy cause. It’s an education initiative. The only way out of poverty is giving people access to a quality education, with all the tools that they need to be able to compete in school.

So once they have that, once you have that education, once you’re on that track, you also need the support, right? Community support and other tools to keep you on that track and to keep you from going astray, which is also part of this. So I think it’s just a great initiative. Visit the page, watch the video so that you know what it’s about. And if you feel like giving, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and the kids thank you. And if not, that’s fine. We’re still going to be here and we’re still going to answer your questions for free. So either way, it’s cool, we love you.

Hernan: Awesome.

Bradley: That’s pretty cool.

Hernan: Yeah, we’re really really near. And it’s just last but not least, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, welcome. We have more and more people joining us on Hump Day Hangout pretty much every week, so thank you guys for the support, for the comments, for everything. So I would really appreciate you guys dropping your questions, taking the time to do that. If you’re new to Semantic Mastery, welcome. If you’ve been around with us for a while, thank you for that. And the best place to start is always this, Hump Day Hangouts, and then the second best place is for you to get the battle plan. It’s really inexpensive and it’s an investment on your business. You go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com and you can get a copy of the battle plan. People are having really really good results with that. And yeah, that’s basically all I got, Bradley, so we can jump right into questions.

Bradley: Alright, sweet. I was pre-reading some of the questions. It makes it a little bit easier for me. So Andy T … Oh yeah, first of all, I say this at the beginning of every webinar now, guys. Go to bradleybenner.com and subscribe to my mindset emails everyday. I’m actually not writing everyday right now. I started … It was the second week in January I started coaching CrossFit classes everyday now, in the mornings. And so the hour I was spending writing an email everyday is now being devoted to CrossFit training, or coaching, so I’m not writing everyday. I’m trying to squeeze in emails as I can, as I can find time.

So I’m trying to get at least two or three emails done per week. It is still a priority, guys, but there’s only so many hours in the day and this is a … The CrossFit thing’s a new business for me and I love it. It’s a lot of fun and it’s also part of what we’re doing in Mastermind for the 2018 education track. With that said, go sign up to bradleybenner.com, or go there and subscribe to the email list, because I’ve been sending out a lot of emails and it’s just stuff that I talk about on a daily business about mindset stuff and success habits and goal setting and that kind of things, and I know that that would help pretty much everybody that attends these Hump Day Hangouts, okay? So go check it out.

Does The “Related Post” Feature Make The Silos Less Effective Since It’s Pulling Posts From Another Silo?

That said. Andy, he’s up first. He says “Hey BB and team, I am currently using a theme that has this related post feature at the bottom of the page. Sometimes it is pulling posts from other silos. Is this related post feature will make the silo less effective since it’s pulling post from other silo?” Yes, Andy, it will. Most of the time those types of related posts, like plugins, or I don’t know about the themes themselves, but a lot of times those types of plugins will allow you to set categories. In other words, it will only show related posts from the same category. And that’s how you would do it, right? Because then it would prevent it from showing posts from other silos. Because that’s all a silo is, is a category. So I would check the settings. I assume there’s some sort of way to customize that. If there’s not, then I would disable that feature entirely and go with a plugin or do it manually. So, but yes, it will absolutely be the theme. Somebody got a comment on that?

Marco: Yeah, I think Jeffrey Smith’s … And it comes with the unpaid version of the plugin, but the deep link juggernaut would be a better investment, so that you could link throughout the silo, rather than delving outside the silo and kind of … You’re not sure whether it fits the silo or not. You know, because you could keep your links within the silo.

Would It Be Wise To Set Up A New Niche Site In An Existing Hosting And Only Move It To A New Hosting After Verifying It Shows Potential For Growth?

Bradley: Yep. Totally agree. Also, I am planning to start a new niche site, but I am not sure if the new site will take off. Do you think it will be wise to setup the site in existing hosting and only move it to new hosting after verifying that the site shows potential for growth? The reason I’m thinking this is to save money. What is your advice? Well, that’s kind of a … Yes, I would say don’t go setup a new hosting account for one site. Test it first. You can always move it to another host. If money’s an issue, I mean, hosting’s relatively inexpensive, but you wanna get good hosting. That’s the key. And we talked about this … Well, I guess it was the last Mastermind, or maybe it was two times ago, but we had Roman on and he was talking about PBN stuff and we were talking about hosting and we’ve always said that you should have good hosting.

So if you’re gonna be putting the site on an existing hosting account that’s decent hosting for testing purposes or to validate or verify whether it’s a good project to pursue, that’s fine. Because you have nothing to worry about. I wouldn’t put it on some real crappy like hostgater account, or something like that, because it may end up … A lot of times, it’s hard to rank sites on those accounts, guys, because it’s just a shitty, dirty IP. So my point is, if you’ve got a decent hosting account already, I’d just go ahead and throw it on there for now, and then if you start to get a lot of traffic and that kind of stuff, yeah, move it to its own hosting account, or better yet, a VPS or something. Any comments on that, guys?

Marco: We’re good.

Should You Have An Individual Blog On Each Page That Is Related To A City Or Just Produce Content Related To The City And Post On Home Page?

Bradley: Okay. Todd says “On my website ibuyhomes.com” … I would not recommend Todd, for future reference, that you post your URLs here, because there are trolls online, believe it or not. There’s even trolls in our audience. So just keep that in mind. Anyways, onto the question. I have an individual city pages where I try and buy homes on WordPress. Okay, on WordPress. Can I, or should I, have an individual blog for each page that is related to that city? Or should I just produce content related to that city and post it on the homepage?

Well, I’m not sure what you mean … If you’ve got a blog roll on the homepage … In other words, if every time you post a blog post, it’s automatically added to the homepage and it knocks the oldest post off, then that’s not a big deal. It’s gonna be dynamically updated every time you publish a new blog anyways. But if you’re talking about individual city … I’m assuming you mean like posts … Again, I’m not really following the question. I know each … In my opinion, at least for lead gen, for like contractors and stuff, it’s better for each location to have its own page. Or post. It really doesn’t matter. But it’s better to target, because then you can optimize specifically for that location. What causes problems is when you try to optimize for two location names in the same page or post. Then it an create what they call ambiguity. Ambiguity. That’s a difficult word to say. But you need to disambiguate the content by making it more specific, or adding other content that will reinforce what the theme is of that particular piece of content.

So in this case, it’s just a lot easier to create individual pages or posts for each location, so that you can target specifically one location. Now you can have … Here’s an example, Todd, and I’m sure this is probably what you’re referring to, but I think Fairfax County, Virginia has like 24 individual towns and cities, census designated areas, incorporated cities. You know, all that kind of stuff. Just basically 24 localities within the county. So each locality could have its own post or page on the site, where it’s optimized for ibuyhouses Vienna VA, ibuyhouses whatever, Oakland VA. All these different cities within Fairfax. Fairfax County. Then you could have a county page that lists every one of the individual locations and has maybe a brief snippet, a blurb, like a sentence or two or three about each location that then links out to that location page or post.

That makes sense. Because then it’s kind of a hierarchy, right? You could have like … In this example, Fairfax County would be a page, that then links out to all the individual locations, like I just mentioned, like Vienna, and Tyson’s Corner, and all these different locations within Fairfax County. And that way you’re creating basically a location-based silo. It makes a lot of sense that way, if you want to organize your content that way. It seems, at least with the lead gen stuff I do … I don’t do a lot of stuff in real estate, but for contractor leads, it seems to work really really well. Do you guys have any comments on that?

Hernan: No, I think you nailed it, Bradley. Because I would do the … Yeah, I would do pretty much what you were suggesting.

Bradley: Yeah, and by the way, Todd, you don’t need to make them super long posts. I found that if you’re gonna spend a lot of energy or effort and content, like long form content, I would want it to be on the county page, the longer page, where you’re listing everything. The individual posts, I would do it as posts, right? The individual locations would each be posts. But however you decide to do it. They don’t have to be that much content. Literally, 300 words could do it. It’s just a matter of … Usually those smaller areas are gonna be a lot less competitive anyways, so they don’t require as much content. But what you’re trying to do is just stack the theme. You’re trying to stack the keywords in such a way that it reinforces the overall theme of that silo or category, in this case, in this example’s case, Fairfax County, right? And so the actual individual location posts don’t need to have that much content on them, okay? So hopefully that’s helpful.

Why Is It Better To Host All Products In One Domain Instead Of Two?

Mark’s up. He says “Bradley, I need to make the argument that it’s better for a company to have all their products on one primary domain, with their website like www.mico.com and not have a website like www.mico.com and their products on sub domains, like product.mico.com, with the two interlinking. Give me all the good reasons why one domain is better.” Okay, I don’t do e-commerce and this sure sounds like an e-commerce question, Mark. Question mark. Ha ha. This sounds like an e-commerce question, Mr. York. So, anyways, I really don’t know whether that’s true or not. I honestly have no idea. I could tell you just from an assumption that if you have the products on sub domains, would those be separate sites? Or would they just be like somehow a product page on a sub domain, even though it’s all hosted from the same CMS or website platform or whatever? I don’t know. I don’t do e-commerce. That’s why I’m even asking that question. And so basically, if anybody here has an idea for an answer for this, that’s great, otherwise, Mark, I’m gonna have to pass, because I honestly don’t know what to tell you.

Hernan: Right, well what I’m thinking is that … If you have their website … Like, here’s the thing. Usually, when you’re doing e-commerce, you wanna have an e-commerce solution. And by e-commerce solution, I mean something like Shopify, or not Shopify, or Wucomm, or something like that, right? So the templates that are optimized for a institutional website might not be as optimized for an e-commerce. So that’s the only reason where I would definitely go ahead with a sub domain, where a completely different template that’s optimized for an e-commerce, because on the e-commerce, the action it’s on the spot. So people can actually click on the thing, add to cart, pay and that’s it. Usually, when you’re trying to mesh the two under the same template, even for if you’re doing WordPress, usually it doesn’t end up too well, you know what I mean?

Because the institutional or corporate template or themes are not optimized for e-commerce, for the most part, because they have a lot of stuff going on. When you have an e-commerce store, you want to have the least amount of steps between the person landing until they checkout, you know what I’m saying? So the goals of the websites are completely different. So one, you wanna showcase your services or whatever, and on the other hand, you wanna showcase your products and you want them to purchase. That’s why I would think that having a sub domain, with a different theme would be a better idea. And then you can rank the products. You can try to rank the products, and then you know how the thing goes with sub domains being more protective, or they’re protecting the [inaudible 00:23:07], you know?

Marco: Yeah, and if I could add, real quick. If it’s e-commerce, look at what Amazon does. Because they have a huge number of sub domains. For example, they have music, they have KDP, which is the Kindle Direct Publishing, they have the video, they have S3. Everything they do on a sub domain, and they do that because they know that the sub domains will power up the root domain and shoot back power into the sub domain. So they start feeding off each other. Now, the problem is that when you’re a one man gang, one man show, is that you have to maintain when you get to 10, 15, 20 sub domains on the same website, those have to be maintained. And so it’s kind of how much work are you gonna put into it and what the return is going to be for the time that you’ve invested.

Bradley: Yeah, and I think he’s trying to make the argument that to put them all onto one, which would make sense for efficiencies and ease of management. So I get what you’re saying, Mark, and I may have misunderstood the question when I read it the first time, because I think what you’re saying is having one sub domain where all the products are listed and then having the corporate site on the root is what you’re saying, I think. If I’m interpreting the question correctly, then yes, then Hernan’s answer makes a lot of sense and I get that, because I would totally agree that if you have … Like, if it’s e-commerce and they have their corporate template on the root domain, that you’d wanna have an e-commerce type solution on a sub domain, because again, the functionality wouldn’t be present in the actual root domain type framework, if that makes sense.

However, if it’s just … For example, if it were like a plumber, right, and so there’s a corporate domain saying “Hey, we’re a plumber in this area, give us a call, blah blah blah” and here’s all our services on a service sub domain, to me that wouldn’t make any sense. That’s not e-commerce, though. That’s just listing their services and hey call us and we’ll come give you an estimate. So that would be all on one root domain. But as far as if it is e-commerce, which is how I’m interpreting the question, it would make sense to have it on a separate sub domain because then you could have an e-commerce platform on the sub domain, where the company’s website would sit on the root. Any other comments on that, guys?

Hernan: No, yeah, no I agree with what you just say. It’s all about what the website is designed to do, right? So it all comes down to that.

Whose Name Do You Publish Under When Providing Content Services For Clients?

Bradley: James Rich, he says “When providing content services for clients, who’s name do you publish under?” It depends, James. Do you ask your clients for their preference or decide for them? Well, no, I always ask the clients. I don’t just decide stuff for clients, usually. I mean, I do, but not when it’s something public facing like publishing posts to their blog. Usually, my curators end up … They just use their own profile because probably 90% of all the posts that we post are curated posts and so I just have curators doing that stuff and they have their own profile. So they get an account added, or I add them, as either an editor, or sometimes an administrator, or whatever, an admin, to the actual site, publisher, or whatever, whatever you call it. There’s different options for user levels in WordPress. Typically, I just select it as editor for most of my curators and I just create the account for them through the WordPress dashboard and it just sends them the login details via email. But they have … For example, all my curators, I have them go set up their profile on Gravatar, which Gravatar integrates with WordPress.

So as soon as I send them their login details using their email that’s been registered through Gravatar with their profile photo, then once they get their login details for the WordPress site, then when they login, their profile photo’s already gonna be attached, and then they can go to the users section and edit their profile to include bio and links to their social media properties and stuff like that. Or, in a lot of cases, we have author box plugins on the WordPress sites because a lot of newer themes do have the author credit stuff, but some of the older themes, which I still have a lot of sites in use that are on older themes that didn’t have nice author box settings native to the themes, so we would add author box plugins, like star boxes in one of them we use a lot. So in which case, like I said, they just go in and edit their profile data once they get access to the WordPress site, to make sure everything looks good.

Now I do have a couple of clients, though, that prefer that it’s their name listed as the author of the post, even though it’s my curators producing the content, which is fine. If that’s what they want, we do it that way. We just set up an account, a user account, for the client, basically as an author, or an editor, or whatever. And then we have my VA’s, my curators actually login under their account, if that makes sense, and post that way. Also, I believe as an editor, they can login even as their own … Like, as an admin, I know we can do this. We can go in and change the author of a post or whatever, or when we go to create a post, we can select who we want the post to be placed under or given … Who we can choose who we want the author to be from all the available users on the WordPress site.

As an admin you can do that. I don’t know about … I think editors can do that too. But anyways, so again, it’s just a matter of logging in, depending on what their privileges are, as far as access privileges, they can either update that stuff on their own, or they just login underneath the client’s profile. Okay?

What Is Your Process For Giving VA’s Access To Each Site?

What is my process for giving VA’s access to each site? Whenever I sell a client on content marketing services, I just get access to WordPress for me, and then I set my curators up with access, just like I mentioned. Just go to users, add new user, and then put in their profile, their email address … Again, recommend that your VA’s have their own Gravatar.

If they have like a primary email account that has a bunch of stuff that’s not related to what you want their profile image to be as a writer for that blog, have them create a new Google account, a new Gmail account and a profile that is basically tailored to what you want them to be, to give the image that you want them to present. And then use that Gmail as the email account that you set up their WordPress access with. Because then they can set up a new Gravatar account under the new email address that has all the data that you want and it would be more specific to the type of authors, and I’m using air quotes, that you want writing on each one of your blogs. That’s certainly a possibility too. That’s a good question though, James.

What Kind Of Results Do You Typically See In Using Video Email To Do Outreach And Prospect?

[Yanan 00:30:15] says “Hey team,” or “Hey guys,” excuse me. “Tell me something. Are you still using video email to do outreach and prospect?” Well, as a matter of fact, we are. In fact, that’s what the video lead gen system product we’re launching next week, or in two weeks, or whatever it is … It’s completely about that because it is still very very effective and we have a lot of people actually using that now since we taught about it in Mastermind, as well as in some other places. And we’ve got some really good feedback from it. So, video lead gen system, coming out … When is it, Hernan? Next week, or the following week?

Hernan: Next week, actually.

Bradley: Next week.

Hernan: Yeah, so stay tuned, guys, because we’re gonna drop some emails and there’s probably gonna be some sort of coupon or launch price, et cetera, et cetera. That’s gonna last probably 24 hours, is not less, so stay tuned.

Bradley: Yep. And we’re not doing some big launch on this stuff, guys. It’s not gonna be something you’re gonna get a shit ton of emails from a hundred different IM marketers and stuff like that. It’s not gonna happen. This is an internal launch only. We are just creating this product and launching it to people on our subscriber list. That’s it. So it’s not gonna be some big, stupid launch. It’s a great freaking product. It works really really well, the process. And here’s something that I hadn’t even mentioned yet … Oh, damn. You guys gotta remind me. I gotta get a VSL done on that page and all that. I’m gonna be throwing a bonus webinar into that product, that we’re gonna do live, within probably two weeks of the product being launched, where I’m gonna show how to find prospects to use the video email method for, with YouTube, and it’s a very very easy process, and it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, so to speak. It’s so easy to find good clients, good prospects, good candidates this way. And so that’s something I’m gonna be covering in a bonus webinar.

Alright. What kind of results do you typically see? Well, when I was doing a lot of that … I’m doing more the shotgun approach now than the rifle approach because it’s a time thing. Plus, the shotgun approach can be scaled more easily than the rifle approach can. And the video email system, or the video lead gen system is basically a rifle approach. It’s incredibly effective. But, like I said, it’s a bit time consuming. It’s not something you can scale very easily, compared to like a shotgun method, which would be like a mass marketing or a mass prospecting method, which is what I’m kind of developing now. But for this method in particular, when I was doing that a lot to grow my own agency, for every 10 emails I sent, I would get three or four. So the average was 35%. Three or four replies, responses, from every 10 emails. And it was like clockwork. And out of every three or four responses that I got, I would close one or two of them.

And guys, it was like … But here was the problem, here’s where I failed with that method. It was incredibly successful for me landing clients. But I always would go into the prospecting mode and I would spend basically three or four days locating prospects, I.e., prospects that I would wanna contact, creating the actual videos, then sending out the emails, creating the emails and sending them out because they’re all personalized emails, they’re all personalized videos … This is why I said it can be time consuming. And I would spend two or three days setting it up. Then I would do the … Send out 10 emails, or whatever, 10 or 15, whatever it was. Then I would process the results, which would be like any responses, I’d get the communication going, start the dialogue between the prospects that replied and that kind of stuff. And I wouldn’t do anymore prospecting. Then I would land one or two of those clients, or those prospects then I’d turn them into clients, I’d sell them, I’d close them. Then I’d work on fulfilling their work with no additional prospecting. And then, once I got them to a point where it was more like autopilot and it could be more hands off for me, then I would turn the prospecting back on and I’d go back through that process all over again. And it was never consistent.

And so what I talked about in the training was how to make it a consistent process that gets repeated and done every single week. So that for example, if you send out 10 … If you made it part of your standard operating procedure for your business to send out 10 video emails per week and you outsourced 90% of it, which again, I show you in the training exactly how to do that, then you know it will get done. And if you have 10 going out every week, and let’s say on the low end you get three responses a week, and out of those three, you can only close one of them because you suck at sales. I’m not speaking to you directly, Yanan. I’m saying, just on a conservative estimate, let’s just say, hypothetically, you send out 10 a week, you get three responses, out of the three you close one. But you do that consistently, week in and week out. You have a VA doing most of the work for you and all you have to do is record the actual audit video, the video audit … Excuse me, the audit videos, is what I’m calling them. You record those so it’s in your voice. It’s going to be you making the contact with the prospect. So it’s kind of required that you do that.

But you could do it to where if you’re just doing 10 audit videos and they’re less than 10 minutes each, you could, in two and a half, or three hours, you could have all of the videos done every single week and then have a VA do all the rest of the work, send them out, locate prospects, collect contact info, send the templates out, the emails out, all that kind of stuff. And then all you have to do is process the leads. It would become part of your normal day-to-day operations, and you would always have a pipeline full of leads. And highly qualified leads, guys. These aren’t like the mass prospecting stuff that I’m doing right now where a lead is somebody that is just aware of who we are now, because they’ve interacted with us online in some way, shape, or form. At some level they interacted or engaged with one of my marketing messages, whether it’s an email, an ad, or whatever. But that’s not a very qualified lead yet. That’s just somebody that’s expressed some sort of interest. With this method, it is a highly qualified lead when they reply, because they know who you are, they feel like they’ve met you and blah blah blah.

So I don’t wanna spend a lot of time on that, guys. But the reason why I did is because the video lead gen system that we’re launching next week is incredibly powerful for those of you who are trying to get your agencies off the ground, or your business period off the ground, and you wanna provide local clients consulting services, or lead gen services and you’re looking for service providers, this is an outstanding way to do it. It’s non-confrontational, it’s easy, it’s not intimidating like making cold calls are, and it just works really really well. Any comments on that, guys, before I move on?

Does anybody else out here have any experience with the video emails for prospecting other than me?

Marco: You’re the man when it comes to that. I’ve never done … That’s not the way I’ve done my marketing.

How Would You Find A VA Who Would Want To Learn All SEO Bootcamp Stuff And How Would You Keep Them Working For You?

Bradley: Okay. I just know Adam’s used it quite a bit. I didn’t know if anybody else here had. Alright, good question, though, Yanan. Next question’s Quit This House. I know I’ve heard your name a bunch of times but I never remember. That SEO bootcamp is comprehensive. I don’t wanna learn all that stuff. Plus one that. I know it’s a bit intimidating, but it is awesome. He says “You suggested hiring a VA to learn and implement. How would you find a VA who would wanna learn all that stuff and how would you keep them working for you?” Okay, well, first of all, if you use an outsource or hiring funnel, like what we teach in outsource kingpin, exactly how to setup an outsource or hiring funnel. You eliminate all the people that wouldn’t be interested in doing all that to learning all that kind of stuff anyways, right? Like, literally, that’s why we developed that system, and I learned that from somebody else. We just custom tailored it for our own purposes.

But the hiring funnel system works so well, that you eliminate all the tire kickers and all the lazy people and all that kind of shit. It makes it so much easier to kind good good quality virtual assistant candidates that are willing to put in work and also you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they know how to follow instructions. That’s what the outsource or hiring funnel does. And so if you implement that right off the bat, then the people that make it all the way through the funnel process, the hiring funnel, are gonna be the top quality candidates that then you interview … And again, all this is taught in outsource kingpin. But then you set up interviews. I typically just do Skype text chat. Not phone, ear, or video interviews, because most of VA’s are in like Philippines, or India or whatever. So I really don’t care to talk to them. And I don’t mean that to sound like I’m being a prick. I mean, I just wanna know that they can communicate via text chat well.

And so the interview process is more about how well they communicate with me. Not whether they know how to do something or not, because I’m going to provide them with instructions for what I want them to do and exactly how I want them to do it. So I don’t care what they know how to do. All I wanna know, by the point when they’ve gotten through the hiring funnel, is that they’ve already proven they can follow instructions. They’ve already proven that they want the work. They’re hungry, they’re ambitious because they went through this process where you’re gonna lose most people through the process because they’re gonna be like “Eff this, I’m not doing this crap. I’m not even getting paid yet.”

But that’s the whole point, because by the time they get all the way through the end, you know that you’ve got highly qualified candidates that are ambitious, they’re hungry, they’re driven, and then the interview process is about which out of the remaining candidates are the best … Can I communicate the best with. Then that’s my hire. And it works like crazy. I know Marco’s used that, Hernan. Everyone on our team has used that process multiple times and it just works like magic. And so … I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Hernan: No, I mean, yeah, I totally agree with you, Bradley. You know, I get the question of … Or you find the questions in group saying “Hey, where do I find the best candidates?” “Where can I find help to do X, Y, Z? Because most people are just leaving, or most people are not committed.” And we always come up with the same answer. It’s not a matter of where. It’s a matter of the process you put them through before they even get to talk to you, or before they even-

Bradley: You qualify them.

Hernan: Yeah. Exactly. So before they even get to talk to you, before you even hire them, are you getting them to do some work before they get to talk to you, before you actually hire them? That will weed out 98% of your problems and the tire kickers. So I think it’s more like a question of what kind of treatment they get before they get hired, than the place. There’s no magic bullet because people will have several profiles anyways. So it’s not a matter of going to Upwork or going to Fiver. No, it’s a matter of the process that they go through before they get to you.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: Yep, I’m glad this question came up because I was at the same place that he is, or I love the information, but there’s just so much stuff that I don’t wanna go through all of those videos, like force fed. I actually wanna take my time going through it because I enjoy it. So what I ended up doing is I ran, I just ran it, our outsource kingpin funnel and ended up with three people. I interviewed them and I finished the third interview this morning actually. And that’s the person that I’m probably going to hire as a VA to go through the course thoroughly and then we’ll see how we can use them. But I need that person to go through the training, we’ll pay them to train, but I have to see if that person is able to go through the training and then apply it the way that it’s taught. And then we will decide after that. We pay them for the training, 75% of the salary that they’re going to get. But they need to be paid. They need to have that incentive, okay, I’m doing something, I’m not gonna get beat at the of this if I’m not getting paid for doing work. I’m actually going to get paid.

And so I think that’s a really good incentive. But that’s the final step that I think a lot of people miss, that you have to put the people through the test. You can’t just hire them, give them work and then say “Oh, freak. They didn’t work out for whatever reason.” No. Put them through training, and then see what kind of work they produce and then you make the final decision on the hire, and if not, you have other people you can fall back on, or you put three people through the training and the best person gets the job, like we did with RYS Academy, the very first VA that we hired for that. But, I mean, our shit works. We use it and it works for us. It should work for you.

Bradley: Yeah. And the last thing I wanna mention about that is that’s the point is if you say how would you keep them working for you? Just like Marco said, whenever I hire somebody from the funnel process, the hiring funnel process, I always, when I make the job offer, it’s in the offer, it’s made really very clear that I give them whatever we agreed upon for the proposed salary, I list all that in the welcome letter, the job offer letter, excuse me, but I also let them know that for the first 30 days, they’re on 75% their salary pay, because I pay by salary too, by the way. We don’t pay by hour. We pay by salary. And that gives us incentive to make sure we always give our VA’s enough work, because we’re paying them whether they’re working or not, does that make sense. So that makes us make sure that they’re constantly working. But I tell them 75% of their … And I call that training pay, because for the first 30 days, they’re on probation and they’re in training. I do still pay them, but they’re totally aware that at the end of 30 days, they’re salary will go up, pending review.

Obviously, if they’ve performed well, and about 80% of them do. There’s no question, there’s no doubt, I’m not gonna lie and say that it’s 100% effective all the time. It’s not. But it is about 80% effective, compared to, as you probably already know and many of you probably have experienced this, trying to outsource shit on your own without a good process, how effective has that been for you? It’s probably more like 20% effective, if that. Most people fail miserably when they try to outsource stuff, and it’s because of this reason. They don’t have a good process to put people through on the front end to qualify the outsourcer. And that’s what this does. This pre-qualifies everything. And then, once they’ve been pre-qualified, they’re still on probation until we’ve agreed that they’ve done well, they performed well, and they’ve met the requirements to go to full pay and stay on as an employee. So hopefully that was helpful.

Is Link Building Still Effective And How Often And In What Quantity Should We Be Getting Link Building For Our Network And Press Releases?

Steven. “Hey team. Thank you for all your great information you guys provide for free every week.” You’re welcome, Steven. “MY question is in two parts. First of all, is link building still effective?” It is. There is no question it is still effective and it will be for some time, Steven. “How often and in what quantity should we be getting link building for our networks and press releases?” Well, that depends on each project, each keyword, really. What it is you’re trying to do. How often is really gonna be determined based upon competition levels, as well as many other variables, like the age of the site, that kind of stuff. As far as networks and press releases, though, I can tell you one thing. Press releases, you can freaking hammer those. I don’t even think there’s a velocity issue, ever, with press releases. I could be wrong, but I never worry about it. Whenever I publish a press release and I wanna hit it with links, let me just make it really clear though, Steven. If you’re gonna be boosting press releases with links, find out which press releases are going to remain published, because a lot of press releases get purged after, sometimes even 30 days. Other press release sites or media sites don’t purge … It’s anywhere between 30 days and six months. But a lot of sites purge. In other words, they basically delete posts after a certain amount of time.

And so if you do a ton of link building to press release that’s going to be purged at some point, then you’ve basically thrown money away. It may give you a temporary boost, but once the … And I know this for 100% fact, because I’ve been testing press releases and using that as my sole link building method for multiple lead gen projects over the last several months, guys, like going on seven months now, and I had outstanding results, but then all of a sudden a lot of the stuff that I had outstanding results for started to drop significantly in MAPS rankings. And when I started to investigate, it’s because the vast majority of the press releases that I published over the last seven months are now gone. They no longer exist. And so my point is, it’s either something for press releases that you have to continue doing regularly, which is a great thing, guys, if you’re providing these services to clients, because you can sell clients on we need to publish these regularly, like one or two press releases a month.

Whatever you can sell them on, it now becomes a recurring service that you sell, instead of just hey, every now and then we’ll do a press release. No. We should be doing a press release once per month at least for every single client. That makes sense. And that’s another service that you can sell. It’s great. I love it. But, if you’re gonna be building links to press releases, find out which sites they remain published on and you choose those as your targets, your target URLs to build links to. As far as your networks, guys, networks typically I do a link building package right when the network has been built, created. Once a few seed posts have been published to it. So usually, I always try to season every single network with at least three posts. It’s three to five, typically, for every new network. Three to five posts. And then I’ll send it over for link building. And then once I get that back, then it’s just a matter of monitoring results. If I see that I need … Like, I’ll usually publish several more posts over the next several weeks … Or, I don’t publish them. My curators do. But I’ll just monitor results.

And if I’m not … I’m usually seeing movement at some point, but if I’m not seeing as much movement as I would like, then maybe I’ll boost the network again. But instead of just always building links to the network, I might do a drive stack instead, you know what I mean? Not might, I typically always do a drive stack too, but my point is it’s not always just about the link building, guys. Because remember, once you have a drive stack, then you can boost the drive stack with links. So there’s just a ton of things that you can do. All I would recommend is that for anything linking directly to your money site, try to keep it clean, something that you have control over, branded properties, you should make those your priority, stuff that you can brand, and then link to your site. And then you can do your link building to those, your tire one stuff. Okay? Good question though. Roman, do you have any recommendations on that? Is Roman still here?

Hernan: Yeah, he is, but I think he’s muted.

Roman: There we go. Sorry about that. In terms of link building still being effective … That question, correct?

Bradley: Yep.

Roman: Yeah, so in terms of link building being effective, it’s going to be a long while for it not to be. It’s just you have to understand what’s going on with it and how things are being reduced and re-weighted and what’s going on with that. So links are here to stay, because they’re part of the base algorithm. Google can’t just change the core fundamental of how it works overnight, not without upsetting the entire world and everyone else. So link building’s definitely here to stay for a while. In terms of how often and in what quantity, there’s a lot of variables that come into play, like you were mentioning. One of the main ones that a lot of people don’t talk about is traffic and how much traffic is coming in on links. And this is part of the reason why press releases are so effective, because they receive natural traffic. And stop and think about it too, right? If something goes viral, does it make sense that it would get links at a higher velocity than something else that isn’t viral, right?

Bradley: Absolutely.

Roman: Traffic is a major component when it comes to things like that. So whether you’re doing what Marco does with art, or triple T with Pierce’s side, it’s that same basic principle.

Bradley: Awesome. Thank you, Roman.

Roman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Will There Be A New Indexing Service To Be Introduced In Serp Space Soon?

Bradley: Okay, guys, we’ve got … I’m gonna try to get through these next three, up to Pete Hogg, in the next eight minutes. So we’re gonna try to make this the lightning round because we’re almost out of time. And I’d really like to get to these three guys. Okay, Jeff is up. He says “A week or so ago, Marco mentioned the indexing service in SerpSpace wasn’t working the way it should and that it was being redone. Just checking to see when a new indexing service will be available.” Do we have any ETA on that, guys?

Roman: Not yet. We’re still working on it.

Is It Possible To Have Separate Page For Each Location Using Maps Powerhouse?

Bradley: Alright, Jeff. We do not have an ETA for you on that. We apologize. We will certainly announce that when we do. “Secondly, dealing with a multi-location bank, 11 locations, if I wanna do MAPS powerhouse, can I do a separate one for each location?” Absolutely. Absolutely. “The URLs are like this, okay, locations bank one, bank two, et cetera. Is there an issue with all these coming back to the main site even though they would be going to separate pages?” No, because they’re all Google Maps properties. Like that wouldn’t hurt anything. And remember, you’re just embedding Google Maps. So anybody have a comment on that before I move on?

Marco: No, I mean that’s perfect. There are no issues with Google Maps or My Maps, for that matter, because Google lets you play with them and embed them. And yes, Jeffrey Smith’s stuff is awesome.

When Buying Double Phone Verified Gmail Accounts, Are Aged Accounts Better Or Are Brand New Accounts Recommended?

Bradley: It is. It is. I totally agree, though. It’s worth hiring a VA to learn how to go do all that stuff, keyword research, and everything else. Very in depth. Alright, Nigel. “Good day, gents. Grateful as always for you guys Jeffrey Smith was impressive. Talk about knowledge and value commensurate with SM and pedigree.” Exactly. I mean, that’s why we brought him on because he’s that good. “I picked up the SEO bootcamp and appreciated the generous discounts and bonuses. Thank you. Can’t wait to dig in and report back.” Please do, Nigel. Seriously. Please do report back what you think and also the results that you get from implementing what you learn, because that’s the best testimonial you can give. “I have TTT personas. When buying double phone verified Gmail accounts, are aged accounts better, or brand new accounts recommended?” Okay, I would only use aged accounts for YouTube stuff, guys. I mean, that’s …

Let me be real clear. I’ve only tested using aged accounts on YouTube stuff. I don’t care if I’m setting up a brand new profile or persona that I’m gonna build a network for. I don’t care if it’s on a brand new Gmail account. It doesn’t make any difference to me because it’s likely that that YouTube account that’s created with that profile, if we create a YouTube account with that profile, isn’t gonna be the one that I’m using to boost my … You know, as my content … My distribution channel, in other words. It’s usually persona networks are just supporting networks that will boost another channel’s videos. So the channel that I’m gonna be publishing videos to, that I want aged, and I have been testing some of those aged accounts and they do absolutely work better, at least according to my tests they do. But as far as for just double phone verified accounts for setting up persona accounts, no, don’t spend the extra money on aged accounts. At least, I haven’t tested that. I don’t see the need to do that. They may work better, but I just don’t know how if you’re not using … I mean, personally, I don’t really see how it would benefit at all, unless you were using one of those Google properties as your distribution engine, in which case, then an aged account makes sense.

Do You Recommend Building Personas Details Yourself For IFTTT Setups Or Let VAs Do Everything?

“Best practice. Do you recommend building persona details yourself for IFTT setups or let VA’s do everything when they create?” I let the VA’s do everything because I don’t wanna do the damn work. That’s why I pay the VA’s. That’s what we do in SerpSpace. If you provide us with the details, we can provide you with the persona data and all that. You just gotta give us the theme, like tags, interests, stuff like that, and we can produce the profile around that. You can create your own manual checklist. That might be something we can do at some point, which is create a manual checklist. That’s not a bad idea. That’s a pretty good idea. As far as I know, when we sell the Done for You networks on RYS stuff, they don’t come with a checklist, right guys?

Marco: No, they don’t come with a checklist right now. It could be done, but since it’s done up to our standards and specs and directly from the training that’s available in RYS Reloaded, we don’t feel that it’s necessary for that manual checklist, because not only does the VA, whoever gets the order, do it, [inaudible 00:56:07] will go over it once it’s done and perform that checklist that he’s talking about. There is a human that actually goes through it and makes sure that it’s done up to the standards that are expected. Now we do get some clunkers, guys. We’re not perfect. We’re all human. We have bad days. When that happens, all you have to do is contact us and we’ll go in there and manually fix whatever it was that might have gone wrong, or was omitted, or wasn’t done correctly. So we do backup everything that we sell and that we say. So you can have that comfort that when you order, it’s going to be done according to the training, and that it’s going to be checked before it’s delivered to you.

Bradley: Make a note of it, though, that that’s not a bad idea maybe to produce a checklist for both networks and drive stacks.

Marco: Yeah, Roman.

Bradley: To give with delivery.

Marco: Yeah, that would be on SerpSpace.

Are Live Rank Sniper And CrowdSearch Still Viable Tool Strategies 2018?

Bradley: Yep. That could be a really good value added thing that would make it more useful for people. Number three … God, we’re almost out of time. I really hope I can get to Pete’s, too. “Are Live Rank Sniper and Crowd Search still working viable tool strategies for 2018?” Well, Live Rank Sniper, yes. I use that tool all the time. I’ve used it this week already to poke over 200 keywords. I use that tool freaking all the time. It’s amazing. I love that tool, Live Rank Sniper. The only thing that I don’t like about it is it’s slow. In other words, if you load in 25 or 30 keywords that you wanna poke, it’ll take a couple hours for it to run. Where there’s some other tools out there that will poke keywords a hell of a lot faster, but I like the fact that I don’t need videos, I don’t need a shit ton of channels. You only need one channel to make Live Rank Sniper work. I use it literally every week, almost. Almost every single week. I’ve used it several days this week already.

Alright, so anyways, Crowd Search. The only thing I would use Crowd Search for right now, which I still have credits in there. I don’t subscribe anymore, but I still have credits. I use them still for referral traffic campaigns, and also for some video … You know, sending traffic to video, although I’ve just been setting up YouTube ads for sending traffic to video now and that works so much better because that’s real genuine traffic. You’re buying views from Google, essentially. And so that works so much better. But I still do use Crowd Search for sending referral traffic through like social media links and things like that. But it’s only because I’ve got a store of credits. I probably wouldn’t subscribe now. Not probably, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t subscribe now. And I’m not trying to say anything bad except the fact that, guys, it’s not as effective as it used to be and it’s because … We think we have an idea as to why. It’s probably because the IP’s are all coming from pretty much a similar pool of IP’s like a lot of those other tools are using, and therein lies the problem.

So, but Live Rank Sniper, absolutely. Crowd Search, if you’re gonna use it in a very specific way, then I could see it as still being viable. We have our own traffic tool in progress, but it’s bene in progress for months. We don’t have an estimated time that that’s gonna be launched, so I don’t wanna tease you with that just yet. We’ve done enough of that. So next time we talk about it, it’ll be when it’s ready.

Should You Use A Current Youtube Account And Add Another Channel Branded Towards Contractors And The Building Trade Or Create An Entirely New Account?

Alright, last question. We got a minute. Pete says “Hey guys, the SEO bootcamp looks solid. I’m just starting out. If I was in a position to sign up, I would be there. It looks awesome, like awesome training.” I totally understand, Pete. Don’t worry about it. Follow some of what we teach you, go make some revenue and then you can invest in your education. “I have a YouTube channel for my business brand which is SEO and marketing. I wanna set up a channel for local contractors to rank lead gen videos in home improvement sector. I’ve started a YouTube training course, but not finished it yet. Should I use my current YouTube account and add another channel branded towards contractors in the building trade, or should I set up a completely new account specifically for the contractor lead gen videos?” Okay. I recommend that you set up a new Gmail account.

We just talked about this a moment ago, with the aged accounts. If you’re gonna be setting up a new channel that you’re gonna be using as a content distribution engine, basically for publishing all of your videos, then I highly recommend that you buy an aged YouTube account. It can be a persona account. It doesn’t matter. Just buy an aged YouTube account because then you have now … And here’s why I’m telling you this, guys. I recommend creating the new channel under a new Google account, so basically a new profile, and then adding your main account … So in your case, Pete, your Pete Hogg account, as a manager. So a channel manager, so that you could access and still do all the work on that channel through your main Gmail login. But the reason why I always say separate them with different owners, channel owners, is because if in the event you were to ever get slapped for something, you don’t wanna … It could potentially affect your Gmail account, that could then affect all channels associated as you as the owner of those channels.

In other words, any channel that you’re the owner of could be potentially affected, whereas if you’re just the manager, if the contractor account YouTube channel, the contract YouTube channel is owned by another Google account and you’re just the manager, in case you were to get some sort of penalty for something or another, it wouldn’t affect the other channel because you’re just a manager, not the owner. So that’s the reason why I do it that way, guys. It’s a way to protect my assets. So it’s a way to cover my assets. And that’s why I do it that way. But you can do it either way. I recommend that you do it that way just because it provides a level of protection. If you’re gonna do that, buy an aged YouTube account, set the YouTube account up underneath that account, and then add yourself as a manager. “Or should I set up …” I already answered that. “What is your advice for best results?” That is my advice. It’s just a way to save yourself from potential catastrophe in the event that something were to happen to your account, okay?

Okay guys, we’re a little bit over. Thanks for everybody being here. Sorry about the questions that we didn’t get to, guys. We apologize, but that’s why first come, first served. We certainly appreciate everybody being here. Thanks, Roman, for sticking around, and you too as well, Marco.

Roman: Yep.

Marco: Alright, man. Bye everyone.

Roman: Bye bye.

Bradley: See you, guys.

Chris: Take it easy.

Roman: Later.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 167 posted first on your-t1-blog-url from Blogger http://ift.tt/2ruPN5M via IFTTT

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 167

Click on the video above to watch Episode 167 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

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The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at https://semanticmastery.com/humpday.  

  Announcement

Bradley: Right as the fucking buzzer’s going. Oh, pardon me. Hey guys. This is Bradley Benner with Semantic Mastery. This is Hump Day Hangouts for January 17th, 2018.I believe this is episode 167. Yes, it is. 167. Sorry, we were in the middle of testing something. Like literally right as we were going live. Never stop testing, right? So we’ve got almost everybody here. Adam’s not here today. So I’m gonna go right on down the line as I see it. Chris, how’re you doing buddy? No audio from Chris. I know he’s traveling.

Hernan: Yeah.

Bradley: Okay. So Chris is here in spirit. We got Hernan with us too. What’s up, Hernan?

Hernan: What’s up guys? I’m really really excited to be here. Good stuff coming up, so I’m really really glad that we’re here.

Bradley: Hey, your Christmas tree’s down.

Hernan: It is. I mean, it’s gone. It’s been gone for 10 days or something.

Bradley: Gone, man.

Hernan: Yeah, it’s gone.

Bradley: It’s kind of disheartening. Kind of depressing.

Hernan: I could put that up. I have another plant over there.

Bradley: Awesome.

Chris: Sorry man. I was on [inaudible 00:01:14]. I’m sitting in a snowstorm in Austria. Like crazy. But everything else is good.

Bradley: Nice. Well that’s Chris. What’s up, man? Alright, Marco. What’s up, buddy?

Marco: What’s up, dude?

Bradley: How are you?

Marco: Testing. Always testing out.

Bradley: Yeah, that’s awesome. And then we got Roman on with us today, which is awesome, from SerpSpace. And we got some cool announcements that he’s gonna be talking about as well. So what’s up, Roman?

Roman: Hey, I’m good.

Bradley: Good. Okay, well, I know Hernan’s got a couple of announcements to go through. I wanna mention real quick, because I had this already. We did a webinar with Jeffery Smith again on Monday, which was for the SEO bootcamp guys. If you guys have been following us for at all the last two months or so, you know that we’ve talked about this course before. It’s hands down the best on page SEO course I’ve ever seen. And I mean that. It’s fabulous. And Jeffrey Smith just put in an enormous amount of work into it. It’s really really good. And so we’re not even gonna try to compete with that. We just said “Jeffrey, we just wanna promote yours.” So we had another webinar with him. It was our third one, actually. The first one went horribly wrong. The second one did better. But this one, this third one, was much much better.

So if you guys haven’t had a chance to watch it, it was almost like an hour and 40 minutes long. It was very very good. Very informative. I mean, yes, there’s an offer at the end for SEO bootcamp, but it’s at half price right now, or at least through our link it is. And it’s totally worth it, number one. But even if you don’t end up purchasing it, you can learn a lot just by going through the webinar. And I know that’s kind of cliché. You hear that shit all the time, but you’ll see how in depth he goes with like keyword research, as well as what entities are and how to basically like semantic relationships between the entities and things like … It’s incredible. I even learned a lot just from the presentation alone. So I would highly recommend that you guys go check it out. I’m gonna drop the link on the page for the replay. And then with that, Hernan, I’m gonna turn it over to you.

Hernan: Yeah, because apparently I do have some announcements. So yeah, the video lead gen system is coming up next week. I know that Bradley has been working hard with that and we have … Here’s the thing. We have crafted that and Bradley has been going through his process of getting really good results with video, with lead gen, using video. So we’re gonna be releasing that next week. It’s probably gonna go through your … We’re probably gonna announce that the next Hump Day Hangout, but stay tuned to your emails because that’s gonna be released over there. And then we have Roman here, and I wanted to ask you, Roman, a little bit about the SEO ramp packages that you guys have been cooking on SerpSpace over there. So can you give us a little bit about the ramp down? What would be the ideal scenario to use them and how to use them, pretty much.

Bradley: And while you’re doing that … Excuse me, pardon me, Roman, but while you’re doing that, if you want, do you wanna pull up the screen to the page and just kind of showcase that page while you’re going through it?

Roman: Sure.

Bradley: Can you do that, or do you want me to pull it up?

Roman: Yeah, if you could pull it up, that’d be easier.

Bradley: Okay. I’ll see what I can do.

Roman: Yeah, basically, we’ve been working on this for the last few months, trying to get this pushed out live, but basically it’s a done for your solution for SEO packages. And we’ve got two main kind of packages. One for local and one for national. The big difference between the two is national is a little bit more of an oomph. You get a lot more links than you would with local and that’s for obvious reasons. A lot of times with national, there’s a bit more competition involved. But with our local rank packages, basically, it’s completely done for you. So there’s a plugin that we have on our backend and what that does is it integrates with let’s say your WordPress site or if you have an html site or another type of site, we can work with those as well.

And what it does is it creates the pages on your site and it does the back linking automatically. And every month it adds more pages onto your site and generates more additional back links that way as well. So over time, it’s effectiveness grows and these type of links that it’s setting to your site are some of the best ones that you can get anywhere. They come from trusted, validated entities and, seriously, from an SEO standpoint, you can’t ask for a higher quality link. These are all real businesses that are essentially linking to you. And it’s a beautiful content distribution network that’s going on with this.

Bradley: Yeah, and I’m testing it right now with some sites guys and it’s super powerful and we know the kind of like what the infrastructure is behind it, and it’s fucking amazing, really. And like he said, these are all established entities. Like verified Google my business type sites that we’re getting links from. It’s just amazing. Which those are the best types of links you can get, especially for local business, you know.

Roman: Yeah. It’s coming from relevant, local businesses. And that’s … What more could you ask for?

Bradley: Yep. One thing, Roman, I’ve got a bone to pick. Who the fuck let that be the thumbnail for the video? Come on guys. That’s shitty.

Roman: We’ll have to get Alvin to-

Bradley: Come on, man. Can somebody please go update that?

Roman: Tony and I were talking about it.

Bradley: God almighty. It’s not doing me a service at all.

Roman: We’ll get that fixed up for you.

Bradley: I’m used to Wayne doing that shit on Hump Day Hangouts with memes and stuff. But come on, man, this is a sales page.

Roman: Apologize about that.

Bradley: No worries on that.

Hernan: Anyways, I think the link is on the comments over there, guys. So if you wanna go ahead and check them out, they’re really really powerful. We’re pretty pumped about this. So go ahead and check them out. You can always open a free account at serpspace.com and then Bradley’s just put the link on the questions over there on the comments and the events, so you should definitely check it out.

Yeah, guys, you have anything else to add before we move on to-

Roman: Yeah, the only thing is I wanted to mention is this is really a set it and forget it type of service. So it’s really easy to set up and just to go with. So if you’re somebody that’s a local business owner, anything like this, this is really a great solution for you. If you’re selling to local businesses, then this is also a fantastic solution because it allows you to be able to focus on you bringing in more revenue and not so much on the backside of the fulfillment services. So this makes your life easy.

Hernan: Right, right. And we have a lot of people come into the Hump Day Hangouts and students [inaudible 00:08:12] general have their own agency, so I think this is both a time saver and a headache saver because mostly because it’s like turning around and giving a better service to your own clients. This works for your own lead gen, if you’re doing lead gen, if you’re doing pay per call, or rather if you’re doing rank and run, whatever you’re trying to do. Or if you’re selling the service to your clients.

Roman: Yep.

Hernan: Okay. Pretty cool. Pretty cool. Alright, so go ahead guys and check it out. Again, you can always open a free account over there at SerpSpace and if you have any questions, you can contact us with any questions that you might have. And the last note that I had over here was to talk a little bit about the charity, the nations. Marco, you wanna take a stab at it? Like, what’s the status of that and how we’re looking.

Marco: Yeah, absolutely. You can just go to the page. I’ve posted the link towards the top, and see how close we are to the goal where we started, which was 10,000. Guys if you put us above 10,000 before or on Friday the 26th, I’ll take it up to 15,000. If you take us up to 15 by one dollar, I’ll take it up to 20. It’s a challenge. Put it over a dollar. If you see it at 9999, go ahead and contribute two bucks and make Marco spend the rest for the kids. I don’t mind. It’s a really worthy cause. It’s an education initiative. The only way out of poverty is giving people access to a quality education, with all the tools that they need to be able to compete in school.

So once they have that, once you have that education, once you’re on that track, you also need the support, right? Community support and other tools to keep you on that track and to keep you from going astray, which is also part of this. So I think it’s just a great initiative. Visit the page, watch the video so that you know what it’s about. And if you feel like giving, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and the kids thank you. And if not, that’s fine. We’re still going to be here and we’re still going to answer your questions for free. So either way, it’s cool, we love you.

Hernan: Awesome.

Bradley: That’s pretty cool.

Hernan: Yeah, we’re really really near. And it’s just last but not least, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, welcome. We have more and more people joining us on Hump Day Hangout pretty much every week, so thank you guys for the support, for the comments, for everything. So I would really appreciate you guys dropping your questions, taking the time to do that. If you’re new to Semantic Mastery, welcome. If you’ve been around with us for a while, thank you for that. And the best place to start is always this, Hump Day Hangouts, and then the second best place is for you to get the battle plan. It’s really inexpensive and it’s an investment on your business. You go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com and you can get a copy of the battle plan. People are having really really good results with that. And yeah, that’s basically all I got, Bradley, so we can jump right into questions.

Bradley: Alright, sweet. I was pre-reading some of the questions. It makes it a little bit easier for me. So Andy T … Oh yeah, first of all, I say this at the beginning of every webinar now, guys. Go to bradleybenner.com and subscribe to my mindset emails everyday. I’m actually not writing everyday right now. I started … It was the second week in January I started coaching CrossFit classes everyday now, in the mornings. And so the hour I was spending writing an email everyday is now being devoted to CrossFit training, or coaching, so I’m not writing everyday. I’m trying to squeeze in emails as I can, as I can find time.

So I’m trying to get at least two or three emails done per week. It is still a priority, guys, but there’s only so many hours in the day and this is a … The CrossFit thing’s a new business for me and I love it. It’s a lot of fun and it’s also part of what we’re doing in Mastermind for the 2018 education track. With that said, go sign up to bradleybenner.com, or go there and subscribe to the email list, because I’ve been sending out a lot of emails and it’s just stuff that I talk about on a daily business about mindset stuff and success habits and goal setting and that kind of things, and I know that that would help pretty much everybody that attends these Hump Day Hangouts, okay? So go check it out.

Does The “Related Post” Feature Make The Silos Less Effective Since It’s Pulling Posts From Another Silo?

That said. Andy, he’s up first. He says “Hey BB and team, I am currently using a theme that has this related post feature at the bottom of the page. Sometimes it is pulling posts from other silos. Is this related post feature will make the silo less effective since it’s pulling post from other silo?” Yes, Andy, it will. Most of the time those types of related posts, like plugins, or I don’t know about the themes themselves, but a lot of times those types of plugins will allow you to set categories. In other words, it will only show related posts from the same category. And that’s how you would do it, right? Because then it would prevent it from showing posts from other silos. Because that’s all a silo is, is a category. So I would check the settings. I assume there’s some sort of way to customize that. If there’s not, then I would disable that feature entirely and go with a plugin or do it manually. So, but yes, it will absolutely be the theme. Somebody got a comment on that?

Marco: Yeah, I think Jeffrey Smith’s … And it comes with the unpaid version of the plugin, but the deep link juggernaut would be a better investment, so that you could link throughout the silo, rather than delving outside the silo and kind of … You’re not sure whether it fits the silo or not. You know, because you could keep your links within the silo.

Would It Be Wise To Set Up A New Niche Site In An Existing Hosting And Only Move It To A New Hosting After Verifying It Shows Potential For Growth?

Bradley: Yep. Totally agree. Also, I am planning to start a new niche site, but I am not sure if the new site will take off. Do you think it will be wise to setup the site in existing hosting and only move it to new hosting after verifying that the site shows potential for growth? The reason I’m thinking this is to save money. What is your advice? Well, that’s kind of a … Yes, I would say don’t go setup a new hosting account for one site. Test it first. You can always move it to another host. If money’s an issue, I mean, hosting’s relatively inexpensive, but you wanna get good hosting. That’s the key. And we talked about this … Well, I guess it was the last Mastermind, or maybe it was two times ago, but we had Roman on and he was talking about PBN stuff and we were talking about hosting and we’ve always said that you should have good hosting.

So if you’re gonna be putting the site on an existing hosting account that’s decent hosting for testing purposes or to validate or verify whether it’s a good project to pursue, that’s fine. Because you have nothing to worry about. I wouldn’t put it on some real crappy like hostgater account, or something like that, because it may end up … A lot of times, it’s hard to rank sites on those accounts, guys, because it’s just a shitty, dirty IP. So my point is, if you’ve got a decent hosting account already, I’d just go ahead and throw it on there for now, and then if you start to get a lot of traffic and that kind of stuff, yeah, move it to its own hosting account, or better yet, a VPS or something. Any comments on that, guys?

Marco: We’re good.

Should You Have An Individual Blog On Each Page That Is Related To A City Or Just Produce Content Related To The City And Post On Home Page?

Bradley: Okay. Todd says “On my website ibuyhomes.com” … I would not recommend Todd, for future reference, that you post your URLs here, because there are trolls online, believe it or not. There’s even trolls in our audience. So just keep that in mind. Anyways, onto the question. I have an individual city pages where I try and buy homes on WordPress. Okay, on WordPress. Can I, or should I, have an individual blog for each page that is related to that city? Or should I just produce content related to that city and post it on the homepage?

Well, I’m not sure what you mean … If you’ve got a blog roll on the homepage … In other words, if every time you post a blog post, it’s automatically added to the homepage and it knocks the oldest post off, then that’s not a big deal. It’s gonna be dynamically updated every time you publish a new blog anyways. But if you’re talking about individual city … I’m assuming you mean like posts … Again, I’m not really following the question. I know each … In my opinion, at least for lead gen, for like contractors and stuff, it’s better for each location to have its own page. Or post. It really doesn’t matter. But it’s better to target, because then you can optimize specifically for that location. What causes problems is when you try to optimize for two location names in the same page or post. Then it an create what they call ambiguity. Ambiguity. That’s a difficult word to say. But you need to disambiguate the content by making it more specific, or adding other content that will reinforce what the theme is of that particular piece of content.

So in this case, it’s just a lot easier to create individual pages or posts for each location, so that you can target specifically one location. Now you can have … Here’s an example, Todd, and I’m sure this is probably what you’re referring to, but I think Fairfax County, Virginia has like 24 individual towns and cities, census designated areas, incorporated cities. You know, all that kind of stuff. Just basically 24 localities within the county. So each locality could have its own post or page on the site, where it’s optimized for ibuyhouses Vienna VA, ibuyhouses whatever, Oakland VA. All these different cities within Fairfax. Fairfax County. Then you could have a county page that lists every one of the individual locations and has maybe a brief snippet, a blurb, like a sentence or two or three about each location that then links out to that location page or post.

That makes sense. Because then it’s kind of a hierarchy, right? You could have like … In this example, Fairfax County would be a page, that then links out to all the individual locations, like I just mentioned, like Vienna, and Tyson’s Corner, and all these different locations within Fairfax County. And that way you’re creating basically a location-based silo. It makes a lot of sense that way, if you want to organize your content that way. It seems, at least with the lead gen stuff I do … I don’t do a lot of stuff in real estate, but for contractor leads, it seems to work really really well. Do you guys have any comments on that?

Hernan: No, I think you nailed it, Bradley. Because I would do the … Yeah, I would do pretty much what you were suggesting.

Bradley: Yeah, and by the way, Todd, you don’t need to make them super long posts. I found that if you’re gonna spend a lot of energy or effort and content, like long form content, I would want it to be on the county page, the longer page, where you’re listing everything. The individual posts, I would do it as posts, right? The individual locations would each be posts. But however you decide to do it. They don’t have to be that much content. Literally, 300 words could do it. It’s just a matter of … Usually those smaller areas are gonna be a lot less competitive anyways, so they don’t require as much content. But what you’re trying to do is just stack the theme. You’re trying to stack the keywords in such a way that it reinforces the overall theme of that silo or category, in this case, in this example’s case, Fairfax County, right? And so the actual individual location posts don’t need to have that much content on them, okay? So hopefully that’s helpful.

Why Is It Better To Host All Products In One Domain Instead Of Two?

Mark’s up. He says “Bradley, I need to make the argument that it’s better for a company to have all their products on one primary domain, with their website like www.mico.com and not have a website like www.mico.com and their products on sub domains, like product.mico.com, with the two interlinking. Give me all the good reasons why one domain is better.” Okay, I don’t do e-commerce and this sure sounds like an e-commerce question, Mark. Question mark. Ha ha. This sounds like an e-commerce question, Mr. York. So, anyways, I really don’t know whether that’s true or not. I honestly have no idea. I could tell you just from an assumption that if you have the products on sub domains, would those be separate sites? Or would they just be like somehow a product page on a sub domain, even though it’s all hosted from the same CMS or website platform or whatever? I don’t know. I don’t do e-commerce. That’s why I’m even asking that question. And so basically, if anybody here has an idea for an answer for this, that’s great, otherwise, Mark, I’m gonna have to pass, because I honestly don’t know what to tell you.

Hernan: Right, well what I’m thinking is that … If you have their website … Like, here’s the thing. Usually, when you’re doing e-commerce, you wanna have an e-commerce solution. And by e-commerce solution, I mean something like Shopify, or not Shopify, or Wucomm, or something like that, right? So the templates that are optimized for a institutional website might not be as optimized for an e-commerce. So that’s the only reason where I would definitely go ahead with a sub domain, where a completely different template that’s optimized for an e-commerce, because on the e-commerce, the action it’s on the spot. So people can actually click on the thing, add to cart, pay and that’s it. Usually, when you’re trying to mesh the two under the same template, even for if you’re doing WordPress, usually it doesn’t end up too well, you know what I mean?

Because the institutional or corporate template or themes are not optimized for e-commerce, for the most part, because they have a lot of stuff going on. When you have an e-commerce store, you want to have the least amount of steps between the person landing until they checkout, you know what I’m saying? So the goals of the websites are completely different. So one, you wanna showcase your services or whatever, and on the other hand, you wanna showcase your products and you want them to purchase. That’s why I would think that having a sub domain, with a different theme would be a better idea. And then you can rank the products. You can try to rank the products, and then you know how the thing goes with sub domains being more protective, or they’re protecting the [inaudible 00:23:07], you know?

Marco: Yeah, and if I could add, real quick. If it’s e-commerce, look at what Amazon does. Because they have a huge number of sub domains. For example, they have music, they have KDP, which is the Kindle Direct Publishing, they have the video, they have S3. Everything they do on a sub domain, and they do that because they know that the sub domains will power up the root domain and shoot back power into the sub domain. So they start feeding off each other. Now, the problem is that when you’re a one man gang, one man show, is that you have to maintain when you get to 10, 15, 20 sub domains on the same website, those have to be maintained. And so it’s kind of how much work are you gonna put into it and what the return is going to be for the time that you’ve invested.

Bradley: Yeah, and I think he’s trying to make the argument that to put them all onto one, which would make sense for efficiencies and ease of management. So I get what you’re saying, Mark, and I may have misunderstood the question when I read it the first time, because I think what you’re saying is having one sub domain where all the products are listed and then having the corporate site on the root is what you’re saying, I think. If I’m interpreting the question correctly, then yes, then Hernan’s answer makes a lot of sense and I get that, because I would totally agree that if you have … Like, if it’s e-commerce and they have their corporate template on the root domain, that you’d wanna have an e-commerce type solution on a sub domain, because again, the functionality wouldn’t be present in the actual root domain type framework, if that makes sense.

However, if it’s just … For example, if it were like a plumber, right, and so there’s a corporate domain saying “Hey, we’re a plumber in this area, give us a call, blah blah blah” and here’s all our services on a service sub domain, to me that wouldn’t make any sense. That’s not e-commerce, though. That’s just listing their services and hey call us and we’ll come give you an estimate. So that would be all on one root domain. But as far as if it is e-commerce, which is how I’m interpreting the question, it would make sense to have it on a separate sub domain because then you could have an e-commerce platform on the sub domain, where the company’s website would sit on the root. Any other comments on that, guys?

Hernan: No, yeah, no I agree with what you just say. It’s all about what the website is designed to do, right? So it all comes down to that.

Whose Name Do You Publish Under When Providing Content Services For Clients?

Bradley: James Rich, he says “When providing content services for clients, who’s name do you publish under?” It depends, James. Do you ask your clients for their preference or decide for them? Well, no, I always ask the clients. I don’t just decide stuff for clients, usually. I mean, I do, but not when it’s something public facing like publishing posts to their blog. Usually, my curators end up … They just use their own profile because probably 90% of all the posts that we post are curated posts and so I just have curators doing that stuff and they have their own profile. So they get an account added, or I add them, as either an editor, or sometimes an administrator, or whatever, an admin, to the actual site, publisher, or whatever, whatever you call it. There’s different options for user levels in WordPress. Typically, I just select it as editor for most of my curators and I just create the account for them through the WordPress dashboard and it just sends them the login details via email. But they have … For example, all my curators, I have them go set up their profile on Gravatar, which Gravatar integrates with WordPress.

So as soon as I send them their login details using their email that’s been registered through Gravatar with their profile photo, then once they get their login details for the WordPress site, then when they login, their profile photo’s already gonna be attached, and then they can go to the users section and edit their profile to include bio and links to their social media properties and stuff like that. Or, in a lot of cases, we have author box plugins on the WordPress sites because a lot of newer themes do have the author credit stuff, but some of the older themes, which I still have a lot of sites in use that are on older themes that didn’t have nice author box settings native to the themes, so we would add author box plugins, like star boxes in one of them we use a lot. So in which case, like I said, they just go in and edit their profile data once they get access to the WordPress site, to make sure everything looks good.

Now I do have a couple of clients, though, that prefer that it’s their name listed as the author of the post, even though it’s my curators producing the content, which is fine. If that’s what they want, we do it that way. We just set up an account, a user account, for the client, basically as an author, or an editor, or whatever. And then we have my VA’s, my curators actually login under their account, if that makes sense, and post that way. Also, I believe as an editor, they can login even as their own … Like, as an admin, I know we can do this. We can go in and change the author of a post or whatever, or when we go to create a post, we can select who we want the post to be placed under or given … Who we can choose who we want the author to be from all the available users on the WordPress site.

As an admin you can do that. I don’t know about … I think editors can do that too. But anyways, so again, it’s just a matter of logging in, depending on what their privileges are, as far as access privileges, they can either update that stuff on their own, or they just login underneath the client’s profile. Okay?

What Is Your Process For Giving VA’s Access To Each Site?

What is my process for giving VA’s access to each site? Whenever I sell a client on content marketing services, I just get access to WordPress for me, and then I set my curators up with access, just like I mentioned. Just go to users, add new user, and then put in their profile, their email address … Again, recommend that your VA’s have their own Gravatar.

If they have like a primary email account that has a bunch of stuff that’s not related to what you want their profile image to be as a writer for that blog, have them create a new Google account, a new Gmail account and a profile that is basically tailored to what you want them to be, to give the image that you want them to present. And then use that Gmail as the email account that you set up their WordPress access with. Because then they can set up a new Gravatar account under the new email address that has all the data that you want and it would be more specific to the type of authors, and I’m using air quotes, that you want writing on each one of your blogs. That’s certainly a possibility too. That’s a good question though, James.

What Kind Of Results Do You Typically See In Using Video Email To Do Outreach And Prospect?

[Yanan 00:30:15] says “Hey team,” or “Hey guys,” excuse me. “Tell me something. Are you still using video email to do outreach and prospect?” Well, as a matter of fact, we are. In fact, that’s what the video lead gen system product we’re launching next week, or in two weeks, or whatever it is … It’s completely about that because it is still very very effective and we have a lot of people actually using that now since we taught about it in Mastermind, as well as in some other places. And we’ve got some really good feedback from it. So, video lead gen system, coming out … When is it, Hernan? Next week, or the following week?

Hernan: Next week, actually.

Bradley: Next week.

Hernan: Yeah, so stay tuned, guys, because we’re gonna drop some emails and there’s probably gonna be some sort of coupon or launch price, et cetera, et cetera. That’s gonna last probably 24 hours, is not less, so stay tuned.

Bradley: Yep. And we’re not doing some big launch on this stuff, guys. It’s not gonna be something you’re gonna get a shit ton of emails from a hundred different IM marketers and stuff like that. It’s not gonna happen. This is an internal launch only. We are just creating this product and launching it to people on our subscriber list. That’s it. So it’s not gonna be some big, stupid launch. It’s a great freaking product. It works really really well, the process. And here’s something that I hadn’t even mentioned yet … Oh, damn. You guys gotta remind me. I gotta get a VSL done on that page and all that. I’m gonna be throwing a bonus webinar into that product, that we’re gonna do live, within probably two weeks of the product being launched, where I’m gonna show how to find prospects to use the video email method for, with YouTube, and it’s a very very easy process, and it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, so to speak. It’s so easy to find good clients, good prospects, good candidates this way. And so that’s something I’m gonna be covering in a bonus webinar.

Alright. What kind of results do you typically see? Well, when I was doing a lot of that … I’m doing more the shotgun approach now than the rifle approach because it’s a time thing. Plus, the shotgun approach can be scaled more easily than the rifle approach can. And the video email system, or the video lead gen system is basically a rifle approach. It’s incredibly effective. But, like I said, it’s a bit time consuming. It’s not something you can scale very easily, compared to like a shotgun method, which would be like a mass marketing or a mass prospecting method, which is what I’m kind of developing now. But for this method in particular, when I was doing that a lot to grow my own agency, for every 10 emails I sent, I would get three or four. So the average was 35%. Three or four replies, responses, from every 10 emails. And it was like clockwork. And out of every three or four responses that I got, I would close one or two of them.

And guys, it was like … But here was the problem, here’s where I failed with that method. It was incredibly successful for me landing clients. But I always would go into the prospecting mode and I would spend basically three or four days locating prospects, I.e., prospects that I would wanna contact, creating the actual videos, then sending out the emails, creating the emails and sending them out because they’re all personalized emails, they’re all personalized videos … This is why I said it can be time consuming. And I would spend two or three days setting it up. Then I would do the … Send out 10 emails, or whatever, 10 or 15, whatever it was. Then I would process the results, which would be like any responses, I’d get the communication going, start the dialogue between the prospects that replied and that kind of stuff. And I wouldn’t do anymore prospecting. Then I would land one or two of those clients, or those prospects then I’d turn them into clients, I’d sell them, I’d close them. Then I’d work on fulfilling their work with no additional prospecting. And then, once I got them to a point where it was more like autopilot and it could be more hands off for me, then I would turn the prospecting back on and I’d go back through that process all over again. And it was never consistent.

And so what I talked about in the training was how to make it a consistent process that gets repeated and done every single week. So that for example, if you send out 10 … If you made it part of your standard operating procedure for your business to send out 10 video emails per week and you outsourced 90% of it, which again, I show you in the training exactly how to do that, then you know it will get done. And if you have 10 going out every week, and let’s say on the low end you get three responses a week, and out of those three, you can only close one of them because you suck at sales. I’m not speaking to you directly, Yanan. I’m saying, just on a conservative estimate, let’s just say, hypothetically, you send out 10 a week, you get three responses, out of the three you close one. But you do that consistently, week in and week out. You have a VA doing most of the work for you and all you have to do is record the actual audit video, the video audit … Excuse me, the audit videos, is what I’m calling them. You record those so it’s in your voice. It’s going to be you making the contact with the prospect. So it’s kind of required that you do that.

But you could do it to where if you’re just doing 10 audit videos and they’re less than 10 minutes each, you could, in two and a half, or three hours, you could have all of the videos done every single week and then have a VA do all the rest of the work, send them out, locate prospects, collect contact info, send the templates out, the emails out, all that kind of stuff. And then all you have to do is process the leads. It would become part of your normal day-to-day operations, and you would always have a pipeline full of leads. And highly qualified leads, guys. These aren’t like the mass prospecting stuff that I’m doing right now where a lead is somebody that is just aware of who we are now, because they’ve interacted with us online in some way, shape, or form. At some level they interacted or engaged with one of my marketing messages, whether it’s an email, an ad, or whatever. But that’s not a very qualified lead yet. That’s just somebody that’s expressed some sort of interest. With this method, it is a highly qualified lead when they reply, because they know who you are, they feel like they’ve met you and blah blah blah.

So I don’t wanna spend a lot of time on that, guys. But the reason why I did is because the video lead gen system that we’re launching next week is incredibly powerful for those of you who are trying to get your agencies off the ground, or your business period off the ground, and you wanna provide local clients consulting services, or lead gen services and you’re looking for service providers, this is an outstanding way to do it. It’s non-confrontational, it’s easy, it’s not intimidating like making cold calls are, and it just works really really well. Any comments on that, guys, before I move on?

Does anybody else out here have any experience with the video emails for prospecting other than me?

Marco: You’re the man when it comes to that. I’ve never done … That’s not the way I’ve done my marketing.

How Would You Find A VA Who Would Want To Learn All SEO Bootcamp Stuff And How Would You Keep Them Working For You?

Bradley: Okay. I just know Adam’s used it quite a bit. I didn’t know if anybody else here had. Alright, good question, though, Yanan. Next question’s Quit This House. I know I’ve heard your name a bunch of times but I never remember. That SEO bootcamp is comprehensive. I don’t wanna learn all that stuff. Plus one that. I know it’s a bit intimidating, but it is awesome. He says “You suggested hiring a VA to learn and implement. How would you find a VA who would wanna learn all that stuff and how would you keep them working for you?” Okay, well, first of all, if you use an outsource or hiring funnel, like what we teach in outsource kingpin, exactly how to setup an outsource or hiring funnel. You eliminate all the people that wouldn’t be interested in doing all that to learning all that kind of stuff anyways, right? Like, literally, that’s why we developed that system, and I learned that from somebody else. We just custom tailored it for our own purposes.

But the hiring funnel system works so well, that you eliminate all the tire kickers and all the lazy people and all that kind of shit. It makes it so much easier to kind good good quality virtual assistant candidates that are willing to put in work and also you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they know how to follow instructions. That’s what the outsource or hiring funnel does. And so if you implement that right off the bat, then the people that make it all the way through the funnel process, the hiring funnel, are gonna be the top quality candidates that then you interview … And again, all this is taught in outsource kingpin. But then you set up interviews. I typically just do Skype text chat. Not phone, ear, or video interviews, because most of VA’s are in like Philippines, or India or whatever. So I really don’t care to talk to them. And I don’t mean that to sound like I’m being a prick. I mean, I just wanna know that they can communicate via text chat well.

And so the interview process is more about how well they communicate with me. Not whether they know how to do something or not, because I’m going to provide them with instructions for what I want them to do and exactly how I want them to do it. So I don’t care what they know how to do. All I wanna know, by the point when they’ve gotten through the hiring funnel, is that they’ve already proven they can follow instructions. They’ve already proven that they want the work. They’re hungry, they’re ambitious because they went through this process where you’re gonna lose most people through the process because they’re gonna be like “Eff this, I’m not doing this crap. I’m not even getting paid yet.”

But that’s the whole point, because by the time they get all the way through the end, you know that you’ve got highly qualified candidates that are ambitious, they’re hungry, they’re driven, and then the interview process is about which out of the remaining candidates are the best … Can I communicate the best with. Then that’s my hire. And it works like crazy. I know Marco’s used that, Hernan. Everyone on our team has used that process multiple times and it just works like magic. And so … I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Hernan: No, I mean, yeah, I totally agree with you, Bradley. You know, I get the question of … Or you find the questions in group saying “Hey, where do I find the best candidates?” “Where can I find help to do X, Y, Z? Because most people are just leaving, or most people are not committed.” And we always come up with the same answer. It’s not a matter of where. It’s a matter of the process you put them through before they even get to talk to you, or before they even-

Bradley: You qualify them.

Hernan: Yeah. Exactly. So before they even get to talk to you, before you even hire them, are you getting them to do some work before they get to talk to you, before you actually hire them? That will weed out 98% of your problems and the tire kickers. So I think it’s more like a question of what kind of treatment they get before they get hired, than the place. There’s no magic bullet because people will have several profiles anyways. So it’s not a matter of going to Upwork or going to Fiver. No, it’s a matter of the process that they go through before they get to you.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: Yep, I’m glad this question came up because I was at the same place that he is, or I love the information, but there’s just so much stuff that I don’t wanna go through all of those videos, like force fed. I actually wanna take my time going through it because I enjoy it. So what I ended up doing is I ran, I just ran it, our outsource kingpin funnel and ended up with three people. I interviewed them and I finished the third interview this morning actually. And that’s the person that I’m probably going to hire as a VA to go through the course thoroughly and then we’ll see how we can use them. But I need that person to go through the training, we’ll pay them to train, but I have to see if that person is able to go through the training and then apply it the way that it’s taught. And then we will decide after that. We pay them for the training, 75% of the salary that they’re going to get. But they need to be paid. They need to have that incentive, okay, I’m doing something, I’m not gonna get beat at the of this if I’m not getting paid for doing work. I’m actually going to get paid.

And so I think that’s a really good incentive. But that’s the final step that I think a lot of people miss, that you have to put the people through the test. You can’t just hire them, give them work and then say “Oh, freak. They didn’t work out for whatever reason.” No. Put them through training, and then see what kind of work they produce and then you make the final decision on the hire, and if not, you have other people you can fall back on, or you put three people through the training and the best person gets the job, like we did with RYS Academy, the very first VA that we hired for that. But, I mean, our shit works. We use it and it works for us. It should work for you.

Bradley: Yeah. And the last thing I wanna mention about that is that’s the point is if you say how would you keep them working for you? Just like Marco said, whenever I hire somebody from the funnel process, the hiring funnel process, I always, when I make the job offer, it’s in the offer, it’s made really very clear that I give them whatever we agreed upon for the proposed salary, I list all that in the welcome letter, the job offer letter, excuse me, but I also let them know that for the first 30 days, they’re on 75% their salary pay, because I pay by salary too, by the way. We don’t pay by hour. We pay by salary. And that gives us incentive to make sure we always give our VA’s enough work, because we’re paying them whether they’re working or not, does that make sense. So that makes us make sure that they’re constantly working. But I tell them 75% of their … And I call that training pay, because for the first 30 days, they’re on probation and they’re in training. I do still pay them, but they’re totally aware that at the end of 30 days, they’re salary will go up, pending review.

Obviously, if they’ve performed well, and about 80% of them do. There’s no question, there’s no doubt, I’m not gonna lie and say that it’s 100% effective all the time. It’s not. But it is about 80% effective, compared to, as you probably already know and many of you probably have experienced this, trying to outsource shit on your own without a good process, how effective has that been for you? It’s probably more like 20% effective, if that. Most people fail miserably when they try to outsource stuff, and it’s because of this reason. They don’t have a good process to put people through on the front end to qualify the outsourcer. And that’s what this does. This pre-qualifies everything. And then, once they’ve been pre-qualified, they’re still on probation until we’ve agreed that they’ve done well, they performed well, and they’ve met the requirements to go to full pay and stay on as an employee. So hopefully that was helpful.

Is Link Building Still Effective And How Often And In What Quantity Should We Be Getting Link Building For Our Network And Press Releases?

Steven. “Hey team. Thank you for all your great information you guys provide for free every week.” You’re welcome, Steven. “MY question is in two parts. First of all, is link building still effective?” It is. There is no question it is still effective and it will be for some time, Steven. “How often and in what quantity should we be getting link building for our networks and press releases?” Well, that depends on each project, each keyword, really. What it is you’re trying to do. How often is really gonna be determined based upon competition levels, as well as many other variables, like the age of the site, that kind of stuff. As far as networks and press releases, though, I can tell you one thing. Press releases, you can freaking hammer those. I don’t even think there’s a velocity issue, ever, with press releases. I could be wrong, but I never worry about it. Whenever I publish a press release and I wanna hit it with links, let me just make it really clear though, Steven. If you’re gonna be boosting press releases with links, find out which press releases are going to remain published, because a lot of press releases get purged after, sometimes even 30 days. Other press release sites or media sites don’t purge … It’s anywhere between 30 days and six months. But a lot of sites purge. In other words, they basically delete posts after a certain amount of time.

And so if you do a ton of link building to press release that’s going to be purged at some point, then you’ve basically thrown money away. It may give you a temporary boost, but once the … And I know this for 100% fact, because I’ve been testing press releases and using that as my sole link building method for multiple lead gen projects over the last several months, guys, like going on seven months now, and I had outstanding results, but then all of a sudden a lot of the stuff that I had outstanding results for started to drop significantly in MAPS rankings. And when I started to investigate, it’s because the vast majority of the press releases that I published over the last seven months are now gone. They no longer exist. And so my point is, it’s either something for press releases that you have to continue doing regularly, which is a great thing, guys, if you’re providing these services to clients, because you can sell clients on we need to publish these regularly, like one or two press releases a month.

Whatever you can sell them on, it now becomes a recurring service that you sell, instead of just hey, every now and then we’ll do a press release. No. We should be doing a press release once per month at least for every single client. That makes sense. And that’s another service that you can sell. It’s great. I love it. But, if you’re gonna be building links to press releases, find out which sites they remain published on and you choose those as your targets, your target URLs to build links to. As far as your networks, guys, networks typically I do a link building package right when the network has been built, created. Once a few seed posts have been published to it. So usually, I always try to season every single network with at least three posts. It’s three to five, typically, for every new network. Three to five posts. And then I’ll send it over for link building. And then once I get that back, then it’s just a matter of monitoring results. If I see that I need … Like, I’ll usually publish several more posts over the next several weeks … Or, I don’t publish them. My curators do. But I’ll just monitor results.

And if I’m not … I’m usually seeing movement at some point, but if I’m not seeing as much movement as I would like, then maybe I’ll boost the network again. But instead of just always building links to the network, I might do a drive stack instead, you know what I mean? Not might, I typically always do a drive stack too, but my point is it’s not always just about the link building, guys. Because remember, once you have a drive stack, then you can boost the drive stack with links. So there’s just a ton of things that you can do. All I would recommend is that for anything linking directly to your money site, try to keep it clean, something that you have control over, branded properties, you should make those your priority, stuff that you can brand, and then link to your site. And then you can do your link building to those, your tire one stuff. Okay? Good question though. Roman, do you have any recommendations on that? Is Roman still here?

Hernan: Yeah, he is, but I think he’s muted.

Roman: There we go. Sorry about that. In terms of link building still being effective … That question, correct?

Bradley: Yep.

Roman: Yeah, so in terms of link building being effective, it’s going to be a long while for it not to be. It’s just you have to understand what’s going on with it and how things are being reduced and re-weighted and what’s going on with that. So links are here to stay, because they’re part of the base algorithm. Google can’t just change the core fundamental of how it works overnight, not without upsetting the entire world and everyone else. So link building’s definitely here to stay for a while. In terms of how often and in what quantity, there’s a lot of variables that come into play, like you were mentioning. One of the main ones that a lot of people don’t talk about is traffic and how much traffic is coming in on links. And this is part of the reason why press releases are so effective, because they receive natural traffic. And stop and think about it too, right? If something goes viral, does it make sense that it would get links at a higher velocity than something else that isn’t viral, right?

Bradley: Absolutely.

Roman: Traffic is a major component when it comes to things like that. So whether you’re doing what Marco does with art, or triple T with Pierce’s side, it’s that same basic principle.

Bradley: Awesome. Thank you, Roman.

Roman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Will There Be A New Indexing Service To Be Introduced In Serp Space Soon?

Bradley: Okay, guys, we’ve got … I’m gonna try to get through these next three, up to Pete Hogg, in the next eight minutes. So we’re gonna try to make this the lightning round because we’re almost out of time. And I’d really like to get to these three guys. Okay, Jeff is up. He says “A week or so ago, Marco mentioned the indexing service in SerpSpace wasn’t working the way it should and that it was being redone. Just checking to see when a new indexing service will be available.” Do we have any ETA on that, guys?

Roman: Not yet. We’re still working on it.

Is It Possible To Have Separate Page For Each Location Using Maps Powerhouse?

Bradley: Alright, Jeff. We do not have an ETA for you on that. We apologize. We will certainly announce that when we do. “Secondly, dealing with a multi-location bank, 11 locations, if I wanna do MAPS powerhouse, can I do a separate one for each location?” Absolutely. Absolutely. “The URLs are like this, okay, locations bank one, bank two, et cetera. Is there an issue with all these coming back to the main site even though they would be going to separate pages?” No, because they’re all Google Maps properties. Like that wouldn’t hurt anything. And remember, you’re just embedding Google Maps. So anybody have a comment on that before I move on?

Marco: No, I mean that’s perfect. There are no issues with Google Maps or My Maps, for that matter, because Google lets you play with them and embed them. And yes, Jeffrey Smith’s stuff is awesome.

When Buying Double Phone Verified Gmail Accounts, Are Aged Accounts Better Or Are Brand New Accounts Recommended?

Bradley: It is. It is. I totally agree, though. It’s worth hiring a VA to learn how to go do all that stuff, keyword research, and everything else. Very in depth. Alright, Nigel. “Good day, gents. Grateful as always for you guys Jeffrey Smith was impressive. Talk about knowledge and value commensurate with SM and pedigree.” Exactly. I mean, that’s why we brought him on because he’s that good. “I picked up the SEO bootcamp and appreciated the generous discounts and bonuses. Thank you. Can’t wait to dig in and report back.” Please do, Nigel. Seriously. Please do report back what you think and also the results that you get from implementing what you learn, because that’s the best testimonial you can give. “I have TTT personas. When buying double phone verified Gmail accounts, are aged accounts better, or brand new accounts recommended?” Okay, I would only use aged accounts for YouTube stuff, guys. I mean, that’s …

Let me be real clear. I’ve only tested using aged accounts on YouTube stuff. I don’t care if I’m setting up a brand new profile or persona that I’m gonna build a network for. I don’t care if it’s on a brand new Gmail account. It doesn’t make any difference to me because it’s likely that that YouTube account that’s created with that profile, if we create a YouTube account with that profile, isn’t gonna be the one that I’m using to boost my … You know, as my content … My distribution channel, in other words. It’s usually persona networks are just supporting networks that will boost another channel’s videos. So the channel that I’m gonna be publishing videos to, that I want aged, and I have been testing some of those aged accounts and they do absolutely work better, at least according to my tests they do. But as far as for just double phone verified accounts for setting up persona accounts, no, don’t spend the extra money on aged accounts. At least, I haven’t tested that. I don’t see the need to do that. They may work better, but I just don’t know how if you’re not using … I mean, personally, I don’t really see how it would benefit at all, unless you were using one of those Google properties as your distribution engine, in which case, then an aged account makes sense.

Do You Recommend Building Personas Details Yourself For IFTTT Setups Or Let VAs Do Everything?

“Best practice. Do you recommend building persona details yourself for IFTT setups or let VA’s do everything when they create?” I let the VA’s do everything because I don’t wanna do the damn work. That’s why I pay the VA’s. That’s what we do in SerpSpace. If you provide us with the details, we can provide you with the persona data and all that. You just gotta give us the theme, like tags, interests, stuff like that, and we can produce the profile around that. You can create your own manual checklist. That might be something we can do at some point, which is create a manual checklist. That’s not a bad idea. That’s a pretty good idea. As far as I know, when we sell the Done for You networks on RYS stuff, they don’t come with a checklist, right guys?

Marco: No, they don’t come with a checklist right now. It could be done, but since it’s done up to our standards and specs and directly from the training that’s available in RYS Reloaded, we don’t feel that it’s necessary for that manual checklist, because not only does the VA, whoever gets the order, do it, [inaudible 00:56:07] will go over it once it’s done and perform that checklist that he’s talking about. There is a human that actually goes through it and makes sure that it’s done up to the standards that are expected. Now we do get some clunkers, guys. We’re not perfect. We’re all human. We have bad days. When that happens, all you have to do is contact us and we’ll go in there and manually fix whatever it was that might have gone wrong, or was omitted, or wasn’t done correctly. So we do backup everything that we sell and that we say. So you can have that comfort that when you order, it’s going to be done according to the training, and that it’s going to be checked before it’s delivered to you.

Bradley: Make a note of it, though, that that’s not a bad idea maybe to produce a checklist for both networks and drive stacks.

Marco: Yeah, Roman.

Bradley: To give with delivery.

Marco: Yeah, that would be on SerpSpace.

Are Live Rank Sniper And CrowdSearch Still Viable Tool Strategies 2018?

Bradley: Yep. That could be a really good value added thing that would make it more useful for people. Number three … God, we’re almost out of time. I really hope I can get to Pete’s, too. “Are Live Rank Sniper and Crowd Search still working viable tool strategies for 2018?” Well, Live Rank Sniper, yes. I use that tool all the time. I’ve used it this week already to poke over 200 keywords. I use that tool freaking all the time. It’s amazing. I love that tool, Live Rank Sniper. The only thing that I don’t like about it is it’s slow. In other words, if you load in 25 or 30 keywords that you wanna poke, it’ll take a couple hours for it to run. Where there’s some other tools out there that will poke keywords a hell of a lot faster, but I like the fact that I don’t need videos, I don’t need a shit ton of channels. You only need one channel to make Live Rank Sniper work. I use it literally every week, almost. Almost every single week. I’ve used it several days this week already.

Alright, so anyways, Crowd Search. The only thing I would use Crowd Search for right now, which I still have credits in there. I don’t subscribe anymore, but I still have credits. I use them still for referral traffic campaigns, and also for some video … You know, sending traffic to video, although I’ve just been setting up YouTube ads for sending traffic to video now and that works so much better because that’s real genuine traffic. You’re buying views from Google, essentially. And so that works so much better. But I still do use Crowd Search for sending referral traffic through like social media links and things like that. But it’s only because I’ve got a store of credits. I probably wouldn’t subscribe now. Not probably, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t subscribe now. And I’m not trying to say anything bad except the fact that, guys, it’s not as effective as it used to be and it’s because … We think we have an idea as to why. It’s probably because the IP’s are all coming from pretty much a similar pool of IP’s like a lot of those other tools are using, and therein lies the problem.

So, but Live Rank Sniper, absolutely. Crowd Search, if you’re gonna use it in a very specific way, then I could see it as still being viable. We have our own traffic tool in progress, but it’s bene in progress for months. We don’t have an estimated time that that’s gonna be launched, so I don’t wanna tease you with that just yet. We’ve done enough of that. So next time we talk about it, it’ll be when it’s ready.

Should You Use A Current Youtube Account And Add Another Channel Branded Towards Contractors And The Building Trade Or Create An Entirely New Account?

Alright, last question. We got a minute. Pete says “Hey guys, the SEO bootcamp looks solid. I’m just starting out. If I was in a position to sign up, I would be there. It looks awesome, like awesome training.” I totally understand, Pete. Don’t worry about it. Follow some of what we teach you, go make some revenue and then you can invest in your education. “I have a YouTube channel for my business brand which is SEO and marketing. I wanna set up a channel for local contractors to rank lead gen videos in home improvement sector. I’ve started a YouTube training course, but not finished it yet. Should I use my current YouTube account and add another channel branded towards contractors in the building trade, or should I set up a completely new account specifically for the contractor lead gen videos?” Okay. I recommend that you set up a new Gmail account.

We just talked about this a moment ago, with the aged accounts. If you’re gonna be setting up a new channel that you’re gonna be using as a content distribution engine, basically for publishing all of your videos, then I highly recommend that you buy an aged YouTube account. It can be a persona account. It doesn’t matter. Just buy an aged YouTube account because then you have now … And here’s why I’m telling you this, guys. I recommend creating the new channel under a new Google account, so basically a new profile, and then adding your main account … So in your case, Pete, your Pete Hogg account, as a manager. So a channel manager, so that you could access and still do all the work on that channel through your main Gmail login. But the reason why I always say separate them with different owners, channel owners, is because if in the event you were to ever get slapped for something, you don’t wanna … It could potentially affect your Gmail account, that could then affect all channels associated as you as the owner of those channels.

In other words, any channel that you’re the owner of could be potentially affected, whereas if you’re just the manager, if the contractor account YouTube channel, the contract YouTube channel is owned by another Google account and you’re just the manager, in case you were to get some sort of penalty for something or another, it wouldn’t affect the other channel because you’re just a manager, not the owner. So that’s the reason why I do it that way, guys. It’s a way to protect my assets. So it’s a way to cover my assets. And that’s why I do it that way. But you can do it either way. I recommend that you do it that way just because it provides a level of protection. If you’re gonna do that, buy an aged YouTube account, set the YouTube account up underneath that account, and then add yourself as a manager. “Or should I set up …” I already answered that. “What is your advice for best results?” That is my advice. It’s just a way to save yourself from potential catastrophe in the event that something were to happen to your account, okay?

Okay guys, we’re a little bit over. Thanks for everybody being here. Sorry about the questions that we didn’t get to, guys. We apologize, but that’s why first come, first served. We certainly appreciate everybody being here. Thanks, Roman, for sticking around, and you too as well, Marco.

Roman: Yep.

Marco: Alright, man. Bye everyone.

Roman: Bye bye.

Bradley: See you, guys.

Chris: Take it easy.

Roman: Later.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 167 published first on https://dilatepage.tumblr.com/

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 167

Click on the video above to watch Episode 167 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at https://semanticmastery.com/humpday.  

  Announcement

Bradley: Right as the fucking buzzer’s going. Oh, pardon me. Hey guys. This is Bradley Benner with Semantic Mastery. This is Hump Day Hangouts for January 17th, 2018.I believe this is episode 167. Yes, it is. 167. Sorry, we were in the middle of testing something. Like literally right as we were going live. Never stop testing, right? So we’ve got almost everybody here. Adam’s not here today. So I’m gonna go right on down the line as I see it. Chris, how’re you doing buddy? No audio from Chris. I know he’s traveling.

Hernan: Yeah.

Bradley: Okay. So Chris is here in spirit. We got Hernan with us too. What’s up, Hernan?

Hernan: What’s up guys? I’m really really excited to be here. Good stuff coming up, so I’m really really glad that we’re here.

Bradley: Hey, your Christmas tree’s down.

Hernan: It is. I mean, it’s gone. It’s been gone for 10 days or something.

Bradley: Gone, man.

Hernan: Yeah, it’s gone.

Bradley: It’s kind of disheartening. Kind of depressing.

Hernan: I could put that up. I have another plant over there.

Bradley: Awesome.

Chris: Sorry man. I was on [inaudible 00:01:14]. I’m sitting in a snowstorm in Austria. Like crazy. But everything else is good.

Bradley: Nice. Well that’s Chris. What’s up, man? Alright, Marco. What’s up, buddy?

Marco: What’s up, dude?

Bradley: How are you?

Marco: Testing. Always testing out.

Bradley: Yeah, that’s awesome. And then we got Roman on with us today, which is awesome, from SerpSpace. And we got some cool announcements that he’s gonna be talking about as well. So what’s up, Roman?

Roman: Hey, I’m good.

Bradley: Good. Okay, well, I know Hernan’s got a couple of announcements to go through. I wanna mention real quick, because I had this already. We did a webinar with Jeffery Smith again on Monday, which was for the SEO bootcamp guys. If you guys have been following us for at all the last two months or so, you know that we’ve talked about this course before. It’s hands down the best on page SEO course I’ve ever seen. And I mean that. It’s fabulous. And Jeffrey Smith just put in an enormous amount of work into it. It’s really really good. And so we’re not even gonna try to compete with that. We just said “Jeffrey, we just wanna promote yours.” So we had another webinar with him. It was our third one, actually. The first one went horribly wrong. The second one did better. But this one, this third one, was much much better.

So if you guys haven’t had a chance to watch it, it was almost like an hour and 40 minutes long. It was very very good. Very informative. I mean, yes, there’s an offer at the end for SEO bootcamp, but it’s at half price right now, or at least through our link it is. And it’s totally worth it, number one. But even if you don’t end up purchasing it, you can learn a lot just by going through the webinar. And I know that’s kind of cliché. You hear that shit all the time, but you’ll see how in depth he goes with like keyword research, as well as what entities are and how to basically like semantic relationships between the entities and things like … It’s incredible. I even learned a lot just from the presentation alone. So I would highly recommend that you guys go check it out. I’m gonna drop the link on the page for the replay. And then with that, Hernan, I’m gonna turn it over to you.

Hernan: Yeah, because apparently I do have some announcements. So yeah, the video lead gen system is coming up next week. I know that Bradley has been working hard with that and we have … Here’s the thing. We have crafted that and Bradley has been going through his process of getting really good results with video, with lead gen, using video. So we’re gonna be releasing that next week. It’s probably gonna go through your … We’re probably gonna announce that the next Hump Day Hangout, but stay tuned to your emails because that’s gonna be released over there. And then we have Roman here, and I wanted to ask you, Roman, a little bit about the SEO ramp packages that you guys have been cooking on SerpSpace over there. So can you give us a little bit about the ramp down? What would be the ideal scenario to use them and how to use them, pretty much.

Bradley: And while you’re doing that … Excuse me, pardon me, Roman, but while you’re doing that, if you want, do you wanna pull up the screen to the page and just kind of showcase that page while you’re going through it?

Roman: Sure.

Bradley: Can you do that, or do you want me to pull it up?

Roman: Yeah, if you could pull it up, that’d be easier.

Bradley: Okay. I’ll see what I can do.

Roman: Yeah, basically, we’ve been working on this for the last few months, trying to get this pushed out live, but basically it’s a done for your solution for SEO packages. And we’ve got two main kind of packages. One for local and one for national. The big difference between the two is national is a little bit more of an oomph. You get a lot more links than you would with local and that’s for obvious reasons. A lot of times with national, there’s a bit more competition involved. But with our local rank packages, basically, it’s completely done for you. So there’s a plugin that we have on our backend and what that does is it integrates with let’s say your WordPress site or if you have an html site or another type of site, we can work with those as well.

And what it does is it creates the pages on your site and it does the back linking automatically. And every month it adds more pages onto your site and generates more additional back links that way as well. So over time, it’s effectiveness grows and these type of links that it’s setting to your site are some of the best ones that you can get anywhere. They come from trusted, validated entities and, seriously, from an SEO standpoint, you can’t ask for a higher quality link. These are all real businesses that are essentially linking to you. And it’s a beautiful content distribution network that’s going on with this.

Bradley: Yeah, and I’m testing it right now with some sites guys and it’s super powerful and we know the kind of like what the infrastructure is behind it, and it’s fucking amazing, really. And like he said, these are all established entities. Like verified Google my business type sites that we’re getting links from. It’s just amazing. Which those are the best types of links you can get, especially for local business, you know.

Roman: Yeah. It’s coming from relevant, local businesses. And that’s … What more could you ask for?

Bradley: Yep. One thing, Roman, I’ve got a bone to pick. Who the fuck let that be the thumbnail for the video? Come on guys. That’s shitty.

Roman: We’ll have to get Alvin to-

Bradley: Come on, man. Can somebody please go update that?

Roman: Tony and I were talking about it.

Bradley: God almighty. It’s not doing me a service at all.

Roman: We’ll get that fixed up for you.

Bradley: I’m used to Wayne doing that shit on Hump Day Hangouts with memes and stuff. But come on, man, this is a sales page.

Roman: Apologize about that.

Bradley: No worries on that.

Hernan: Anyways, I think the link is on the comments over there, guys. So if you wanna go ahead and check them out, they’re really really powerful. We’re pretty pumped about this. So go ahead and check them out. You can always open a free account at serpspace.com and then Bradley’s just put the link on the questions over there on the comments and the events, so you should definitely check it out.

Yeah, guys, you have anything else to add before we move on to-

Roman: Yeah, the only thing is I wanted to mention is this is really a set it and forget it type of service. So it’s really easy to set up and just to go with. So if you’re somebody that’s a local business owner, anything like this, this is really a great solution for you. If you’re selling to local businesses, then this is also a fantastic solution because it allows you to be able to focus on you bringing in more revenue and not so much on the backside of the fulfillment services. So this makes your life easy.

Hernan: Right, right. And we have a lot of people come into the Hump Day Hangouts and students [inaudible 00:08:12] general have their own agency, so I think this is both a time saver and a headache saver because mostly because it’s like turning around and giving a better service to your own clients. This works for your own lead gen, if you’re doing lead gen, if you’re doing pay per call, or rather if you’re doing rank and run, whatever you’re trying to do. Or if you’re selling the service to your clients.

Roman: Yep.

Hernan: Okay. Pretty cool. Pretty cool. Alright, so go ahead guys and check it out. Again, you can always open a free account over there at SerpSpace and if you have any questions, you can contact us with any questions that you might have. And the last note that I had over here was to talk a little bit about the charity, the nations. Marco, you wanna take a stab at it? Like, what’s the status of that and how we’re looking.

Marco: Yeah, absolutely. You can just go to the page. I’ve posted the link towards the top, and see how close we are to the goal where we started, which was 10,000. Guys if you put us above 10,000 before or on Friday the 26th, I’ll take it up to 15,000. If you take us up to 15 by one dollar, I’ll take it up to 20. It’s a challenge. Put it over a dollar. If you see it at 9999, go ahead and contribute two bucks and make Marco spend the rest for the kids. I don’t mind. It’s a really worthy cause. It’s an education initiative. The only way out of poverty is giving people access to a quality education, with all the tools that they need to be able to compete in school.

So once they have that, once you have that education, once you’re on that track, you also need the support, right? Community support and other tools to keep you on that track and to keep you from going astray, which is also part of this. So I think it’s just a great initiative. Visit the page, watch the video so that you know what it’s about. And if you feel like giving, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and the kids thank you. And if not, that’s fine. We’re still going to be here and we’re still going to answer your questions for free. So either way, it’s cool, we love you.

Hernan: Awesome.

Bradley: That’s pretty cool.

Hernan: Yeah, we’re really really near. And it’s just last but not least, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, welcome. We have more and more people joining us on Hump Day Hangout pretty much every week, so thank you guys for the support, for the comments, for everything. So I would really appreciate you guys dropping your questions, taking the time to do that. If you’re new to Semantic Mastery, welcome. If you’ve been around with us for a while, thank you for that. And the best place to start is always this, Hump Day Hangouts, and then the second best place is for you to get the battle plan. It’s really inexpensive and it’s an investment on your business. You go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com and you can get a copy of the battle plan. People are having really really good results with that. And yeah, that’s basically all I got, Bradley, so we can jump right into questions.

Bradley: Alright, sweet. I was pre-reading some of the questions. It makes it a little bit easier for me. So Andy T … Oh yeah, first of all, I say this at the beginning of every webinar now, guys. Go to bradleybenner.com and subscribe to my mindset emails everyday. I’m actually not writing everyday right now. I started … It was the second week in January I started coaching CrossFit classes everyday now, in the mornings. And so the hour I was spending writing an email everyday is now being devoted to CrossFit training, or coaching, so I’m not writing everyday. I’m trying to squeeze in emails as I can, as I can find time.

So I’m trying to get at least two or three emails done per week. It is still a priority, guys, but there’s only so many hours in the day and this is a … The CrossFit thing’s a new business for me and I love it. It’s a lot of fun and it’s also part of what we’re doing in Mastermind for the 2018 education track. With that said, go sign up to bradleybenner.com, or go there and subscribe to the email list, because I’ve been sending out a lot of emails and it’s just stuff that I talk about on a daily business about mindset stuff and success habits and goal setting and that kind of things, and I know that that would help pretty much everybody that attends these Hump Day Hangouts, okay? So go check it out.

Does The “Related Post” Feature Make The Silos Less Effective Since It’s Pulling Posts From Another Silo?

That said. Andy, he’s up first. He says “Hey BB and team, I am currently using a theme that has this related post feature at the bottom of the page. Sometimes it is pulling posts from other silos. Is this related post feature will make the silo less effective since it’s pulling post from other silo?” Yes, Andy, it will. Most of the time those types of related posts, like plugins, or I don’t know about the themes themselves, but a lot of times those types of plugins will allow you to set categories. In other words, it will only show related posts from the same category. And that’s how you would do it, right? Because then it would prevent it from showing posts from other silos. Because that’s all a silo is, is a category. So I would check the settings. I assume there’s some sort of way to customize that. If there’s not, then I would disable that feature entirely and go with a plugin or do it manually. So, but yes, it will absolutely be the theme. Somebody got a comment on that?

Marco: Yeah, I think Jeffrey Smith’s … And it comes with the unpaid version of the plugin, but the deep link juggernaut would be a better investment, so that you could link throughout the silo, rather than delving outside the silo and kind of … You’re not sure whether it fits the silo or not. You know, because you could keep your links within the silo.

Would It Be Wise To Set Up A New Niche Site In An Existing Hosting And Only Move It To A New Hosting After Verifying It Shows Potential For Growth?

Bradley: Yep. Totally agree. Also, I am planning to start a new niche site, but I am not sure if the new site will take off. Do you think it will be wise to setup the site in existing hosting and only move it to new hosting after verifying that the site shows potential for growth? The reason I’m thinking this is to save money. What is your advice? Well, that’s kind of a … Yes, I would say don’t go setup a new hosting account for one site. Test it first. You can always move it to another host. If money’s an issue, I mean, hosting’s relatively inexpensive, but you wanna get good hosting. That’s the key. And we talked about this … Well, I guess it was the last Mastermind, or maybe it was two times ago, but we had Roman on and he was talking about PBN stuff and we were talking about hosting and we’ve always said that you should have good hosting.

So if you’re gonna be putting the site on an existing hosting account that’s decent hosting for testing purposes or to validate or verify whether it’s a good project to pursue, that’s fine. Because you have nothing to worry about. I wouldn’t put it on some real crappy like hostgater account, or something like that, because it may end up … A lot of times, it’s hard to rank sites on those accounts, guys, because it’s just a shitty, dirty IP. So my point is, if you’ve got a decent hosting account already, I’d just go ahead and throw it on there for now, and then if you start to get a lot of traffic and that kind of stuff, yeah, move it to its own hosting account, or better yet, a VPS or something. Any comments on that, guys?

Marco: We’re good.

Should You Have An Individual Blog On Each Page That Is Related To A City Or Just Produce Content Related To The City And Post On Home Page?

Bradley: Okay. Todd says “On my website ibuyhomes.com” … I would not recommend Todd, for future reference, that you post your URLs here, because there are trolls online, believe it or not. There’s even trolls in our audience. So just keep that in mind. Anyways, onto the question. I have an individual city pages where I try and buy homes on WordPress. Okay, on WordPress. Can I, or should I, have an individual blog for each page that is related to that city? Or should I just produce content related to that city and post it on the homepage?

Well, I’m not sure what you mean … If you’ve got a blog roll on the homepage … In other words, if every time you post a blog post, it’s automatically added to the homepage and it knocks the oldest post off, then that’s not a big deal. It’s gonna be dynamically updated every time you publish a new blog anyways. But if you’re talking about individual city … I’m assuming you mean like posts … Again, I’m not really following the question. I know each … In my opinion, at least for lead gen, for like contractors and stuff, it’s better for each location to have its own page. Or post. It really doesn’t matter. But it’s better to target, because then you can optimize specifically for that location. What causes problems is when you try to optimize for two location names in the same page or post. Then it an create what they call ambiguity. Ambiguity. That’s a difficult word to say. But you need to disambiguate the content by making it more specific, or adding other content that will reinforce what the theme is of that particular piece of content.

So in this case, it’s just a lot easier to create individual pages or posts for each location, so that you can target specifically one location. Now you can have … Here’s an example, Todd, and I’m sure this is probably what you’re referring to, but I think Fairfax County, Virginia has like 24 individual towns and cities, census designated areas, incorporated cities. You know, all that kind of stuff. Just basically 24 localities within the county. So each locality could have its own post or page on the site, where it’s optimized for ibuyhouses Vienna VA, ibuyhouses whatever, Oakland VA. All these different cities within Fairfax. Fairfax County. Then you could have a county page that lists every one of the individual locations and has maybe a brief snippet, a blurb, like a sentence or two or three about each location that then links out to that location page or post.

That makes sense. Because then it’s kind of a hierarchy, right? You could have like … In this example, Fairfax County would be a page, that then links out to all the individual locations, like I just mentioned, like Vienna, and Tyson’s Corner, and all these different locations within Fairfax County. And that way you’re creating basically a location-based silo. It makes a lot of sense that way, if you want to organize your content that way. It seems, at least with the lead gen stuff I do … I don’t do a lot of stuff in real estate, but for contractor leads, it seems to work really really well. Do you guys have any comments on that?

Hernan: No, I think you nailed it, Bradley. Because I would do the … Yeah, I would do pretty much what you were suggesting.

Bradley: Yeah, and by the way, Todd, you don’t need to make them super long posts. I found that if you’re gonna spend a lot of energy or effort and content, like long form content, I would want it to be on the county page, the longer page, where you’re listing everything. The individual posts, I would do it as posts, right? The individual locations would each be posts. But however you decide to do it. They don’t have to be that much content. Literally, 300 words could do it. It’s just a matter of … Usually those smaller areas are gonna be a lot less competitive anyways, so they don’t require as much content. But what you’re trying to do is just stack the theme. You’re trying to stack the keywords in such a way that it reinforces the overall theme of that silo or category, in this case, in this example’s case, Fairfax County, right? And so the actual individual location posts don’t need to have that much content on them, okay? So hopefully that’s helpful.

Why Is It Better To Host All Products In One Domain Instead Of Two?

Mark’s up. He says “Bradley, I need to make the argument that it’s better for a company to have all their products on one primary domain, with their website like www.mico.com and not have a website like www.mico.com and their products on sub domains, like product.mico.com, with the two interlinking. Give me all the good reasons why one domain is better.” Okay, I don’t do e-commerce and this sure sounds like an e-commerce question, Mark. Question mark. Ha ha. This sounds like an e-commerce question, Mr. York. So, anyways, I really don’t know whether that’s true or not. I honestly have no idea. I could tell you just from an assumption that if you have the products on sub domains, would those be separate sites? Or would they just be like somehow a product page on a sub domain, even though it’s all hosted from the same CMS or website platform or whatever? I don’t know. I don’t do e-commerce. That’s why I’m even asking that question. And so basically, if anybody here has an idea for an answer for this, that’s great, otherwise, Mark, I’m gonna have to pass, because I honestly don’t know what to tell you.

Hernan: Right, well what I’m thinking is that … If you have their website … Like, here’s the thing. Usually, when you’re doing e-commerce, you wanna have an e-commerce solution. And by e-commerce solution, I mean something like Shopify, or not Shopify, or Wucomm, or something like that, right? So the templates that are optimized for a institutional website might not be as optimized for an e-commerce. So that’s the only reason where I would definitely go ahead with a sub domain, where a completely different template that’s optimized for an e-commerce, because on the e-commerce, the action it’s on the spot. So people can actually click on the thing, add to cart, pay and that’s it. Usually, when you’re trying to mesh the two under the same template, even for if you’re doing WordPress, usually it doesn’t end up too well, you know what I mean?

Because the institutional or corporate template or themes are not optimized for e-commerce, for the most part, because they have a lot of stuff going on. When you have an e-commerce store, you want to have the least amount of steps between the person landing until they checkout, you know what I’m saying? So the goals of the websites are completely different. So one, you wanna showcase your services or whatever, and on the other hand, you wanna showcase your products and you want them to purchase. That’s why I would think that having a sub domain, with a different theme would be a better idea. And then you can rank the products. You can try to rank the products, and then you know how the thing goes with sub domains being more protective, or they’re protecting the [inaudible 00:23:07], you know?

Marco: Yeah, and if I could add, real quick. If it’s e-commerce, look at what Amazon does. Because they have a huge number of sub domains. For example, they have music, they have KDP, which is the Kindle Direct Publishing, they have the video, they have S3. Everything they do on a sub domain, and they do that because they know that the sub domains will power up the root domain and shoot back power into the sub domain. So they start feeding off each other. Now, the problem is that when you’re a one man gang, one man show, is that you have to maintain when you get to 10, 15, 20 sub domains on the same website, those have to be maintained. And so it’s kind of how much work are you gonna put into it and what the return is going to be for the time that you’ve invested.

Bradley: Yeah, and I think he’s trying to make the argument that to put them all onto one, which would make sense for efficiencies and ease of management. So I get what you’re saying, Mark, and I may have misunderstood the question when I read it the first time, because I think what you’re saying is having one sub domain where all the products are listed and then having the corporate site on the root is what you’re saying, I think. If I’m interpreting the question correctly, then yes, then Hernan’s answer makes a lot of sense and I get that, because I would totally agree that if you have … Like, if it’s e-commerce and they have their corporate template on the root domain, that you’d wanna have an e-commerce type solution on a sub domain, because again, the functionality wouldn’t be present in the actual root domain type framework, if that makes sense.

However, if it’s just … For example, if it were like a plumber, right, and so there’s a corporate domain saying “Hey, we’re a plumber in this area, give us a call, blah blah blah” and here’s all our services on a service sub domain, to me that wouldn’t make any sense. That’s not e-commerce, though. That’s just listing their services and hey call us and we’ll come give you an estimate. So that would be all on one root domain. But as far as if it is e-commerce, which is how I’m interpreting the question, it would make sense to have it on a separate sub domain because then you could have an e-commerce platform on the sub domain, where the company’s website would sit on the root. Any other comments on that, guys?

Hernan: No, yeah, no I agree with what you just say. It’s all about what the website is designed to do, right? So it all comes down to that.

Whose Name Do You Publish Under When Providing Content Services For Clients?

Bradley: James Rich, he says “When providing content services for clients, who’s name do you publish under?” It depends, James. Do you ask your clients for their preference or decide for them? Well, no, I always ask the clients. I don’t just decide stuff for clients, usually. I mean, I do, but not when it’s something public facing like publishing posts to their blog. Usually, my curators end up … They just use their own profile because probably 90% of all the posts that we post are curated posts and so I just have curators doing that stuff and they have their own profile. So they get an account added, or I add them, as either an editor, or sometimes an administrator, or whatever, an admin, to the actual site, publisher, or whatever, whatever you call it. There’s different options for user levels in WordPress. Typically, I just select it as editor for most of my curators and I just create the account for them through the WordPress dashboard and it just sends them the login details via email. But they have … For example, all my curators, I have them go set up their profile on Gravatar, which Gravatar integrates with WordPress.

So as soon as I send them their login details using their email that’s been registered through Gravatar with their profile photo, then once they get their login details for the WordPress site, then when they login, their profile photo’s already gonna be attached, and then they can go to the users section and edit their profile to include bio and links to their social media properties and stuff like that. Or, in a lot of cases, we have author box plugins on the WordPress sites because a lot of newer themes do have the author credit stuff, but some of the older themes, which I still have a lot of sites in use that are on older themes that didn’t have nice author box settings native to the themes, so we would add author box plugins, like star boxes in one of them we use a lot. So in which case, like I said, they just go in and edit their profile data once they get access to the WordPress site, to make sure everything looks good.

Now I do have a couple of clients, though, that prefer that it’s their name listed as the author of the post, even though it’s my curators producing the content, which is fine. If that’s what they want, we do it that way. We just set up an account, a user account, for the client, basically as an author, or an editor, or whatever. And then we have my VA’s, my curators actually login under their account, if that makes sense, and post that way. Also, I believe as an editor, they can login even as their own … Like, as an admin, I know we can do this. We can go in and change the author of a post or whatever, or when we go to create a post, we can select who we want the post to be placed under or given … Who we can choose who we want the author to be from all the available users on the WordPress site.

As an admin you can do that. I don’t know about … I think editors can do that too. But anyways, so again, it’s just a matter of logging in, depending on what their privileges are, as far as access privileges, they can either update that stuff on their own, or they just login underneath the client’s profile. Okay?

What Is Your Process For Giving VA’s Access To Each Site?

What is my process for giving VA’s access to each site? Whenever I sell a client on content marketing services, I just get access to WordPress for me, and then I set my curators up with access, just like I mentioned. Just go to users, add new user, and then put in their profile, their email address … Again, recommend that your VA’s have their own Gravatar.

If they have like a primary email account that has a bunch of stuff that’s not related to what you want their profile image to be as a writer for that blog, have them create a new Google account, a new Gmail account and a profile that is basically tailored to what you want them to be, to give the image that you want them to present. And then use that Gmail as the email account that you set up their WordPress access with. Because then they can set up a new Gravatar account under the new email address that has all the data that you want and it would be more specific to the type of authors, and I’m using air quotes, that you want writing on each one of your blogs. That’s certainly a possibility too. That’s a good question though, James.

What Kind Of Results Do You Typically See In Using Video Email To Do Outreach And Prospect?

[Yanan 00:30:15] says “Hey team,” or “Hey guys,” excuse me. “Tell me something. Are you still using video email to do outreach and prospect?” Well, as a matter of fact, we are. In fact, that’s what the video lead gen system product we’re launching next week, or in two weeks, or whatever it is … It’s completely about that because it is still very very effective and we have a lot of people actually using that now since we taught about it in Mastermind, as well as in some other places. And we’ve got some really good feedback from it. So, video lead gen system, coming out … When is it, Hernan? Next week, or the following week?

Hernan: Next week, actually.

Bradley: Next week.

Hernan: Yeah, so stay tuned, guys, because we’re gonna drop some emails and there’s probably gonna be some sort of coupon or launch price, et cetera, et cetera. That’s gonna last probably 24 hours, is not less, so stay tuned.

Bradley: Yep. And we’re not doing some big launch on this stuff, guys. It’s not gonna be something you’re gonna get a shit ton of emails from a hundred different IM marketers and stuff like that. It’s not gonna happen. This is an internal launch only. We are just creating this product and launching it to people on our subscriber list. That’s it. So it’s not gonna be some big, stupid launch. It’s a great freaking product. It works really really well, the process. And here’s something that I hadn’t even mentioned yet … Oh, damn. You guys gotta remind me. I gotta get a VSL done on that page and all that. I’m gonna be throwing a bonus webinar into that product, that we’re gonna do live, within probably two weeks of the product being launched, where I’m gonna show how to find prospects to use the video email method for, with YouTube, and it’s a very very easy process, and it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, so to speak. It’s so easy to find good clients, good prospects, good candidates this way. And so that’s something I’m gonna be covering in a bonus webinar.

Alright. What kind of results do you typically see? Well, when I was doing a lot of that … I’m doing more the shotgun approach now than the rifle approach because it’s a time thing. Plus, the shotgun approach can be scaled more easily than the rifle approach can. And the video email system, or the video lead gen system is basically a rifle approach. It’s incredibly effective. But, like I said, it’s a bit time consuming. It’s not something you can scale very easily, compared to like a shotgun method, which would be like a mass marketing or a mass prospecting method, which is what I’m kind of developing now. But for this method in particular, when I was doing that a lot to grow my own agency, for every 10 emails I sent, I would get three or four. So the average was 35%. Three or four replies, responses, from every 10 emails. And it was like clockwork. And out of every three or four responses that I got, I would close one or two of them.

And guys, it was like … But here was the problem, here’s where I failed with that method. It was incredibly successful for me landing clients. But I always would go into the prospecting mode and I would spend basically three or four days locating prospects, I.e., prospects that I would wanna contact, creating the actual videos, then sending out the emails, creating the emails and sending them out because they’re all personalized emails, they’re all personalized videos … This is why I said it can be time consuming. And I would spend two or three days setting it up. Then I would do the … Send out 10 emails, or whatever, 10 or 15, whatever it was. Then I would process the results, which would be like any responses, I’d get the communication going, start the dialogue between the prospects that replied and that kind of stuff. And I wouldn’t do anymore prospecting. Then I would land one or two of those clients, or those prospects then I’d turn them into clients, I’d sell them, I’d close them. Then I’d work on fulfilling their work with no additional prospecting. And then, once I got them to a point where it was more like autopilot and it could be more hands off for me, then I would turn the prospecting back on and I’d go back through that process all over again. And it was never consistent.

And so what I talked about in the training was how to make it a consistent process that gets repeated and done every single week. So that for example, if you send out 10 … If you made it part of your standard operating procedure for your business to send out 10 video emails per week and you outsourced 90% of it, which again, I show you in the training exactly how to do that, then you know it will get done. And if you have 10 going out every week, and let’s say on the low end you get three responses a week, and out of those three, you can only close one of them because you suck at sales. I’m not speaking to you directly, Yanan. I’m saying, just on a conservative estimate, let’s just say, hypothetically, you send out 10 a week, you get three responses, out of the three you close one. But you do that consistently, week in and week out. You have a VA doing most of the work for you and all you have to do is record the actual audit video, the video audit … Excuse me, the audit videos, is what I’m calling them. You record those so it’s in your voice. It’s going to be you making the contact with the prospect. So it’s kind of required that you do that.

But you could do it to where if you’re just doing 10 audit videos and they’re less than 10 minutes each, you could, in two and a half, or three hours, you could have all of the videos done every single week and then have a VA do all the rest of the work, send them out, locate prospects, collect contact info, send the templates out, the emails out, all that kind of stuff. And then all you have to do is process the leads. It would become part of your normal day-to-day operations, and you would always have a pipeline full of leads. And highly qualified leads, guys. These aren’t like the mass prospecting stuff that I’m doing right now where a lead is somebody that is just aware of who we are now, because they’ve interacted with us online in some way, shape, or form. At some level they interacted or engaged with one of my marketing messages, whether it’s an email, an ad, or whatever. But that’s not a very qualified lead yet. That’s just somebody that’s expressed some sort of interest. With this method, it is a highly qualified lead when they reply, because they know who you are, they feel like they’ve met you and blah blah blah.

So I don’t wanna spend a lot of time on that, guys. But the reason why I did is because the video lead gen system that we’re launching next week is incredibly powerful for those of you who are trying to get your agencies off the ground, or your business period off the ground, and you wanna provide local clients consulting services, or lead gen services and you’re looking for service providers, this is an outstanding way to do it. It’s non-confrontational, it’s easy, it’s not intimidating like making cold calls are, and it just works really really well. Any comments on that, guys, before I move on?

Does anybody else out here have any experience with the video emails for prospecting other than me?

Marco: You’re the man when it comes to that. I’ve never done … That’s not the way I’ve done my marketing.

How Would You Find A VA Who Would Want To Learn All SEO Bootcamp Stuff And How Would You Keep Them Working For You?

Bradley: Okay. I just know Adam’s used it quite a bit. I didn’t know if anybody else here had. Alright, good question, though, Yanan. Next question’s Quit This House. I know I’ve heard your name a bunch of times but I never remember. That SEO bootcamp is comprehensive. I don’t wanna learn all that stuff. Plus one that. I know it’s a bit intimidating, but it is awesome. He says “You suggested hiring a VA to learn and implement. How would you find a VA who would wanna learn all that stuff and how would you keep them working for you?” Okay, well, first of all, if you use an outsource or hiring funnel, like what we teach in outsource kingpin, exactly how to setup an outsource or hiring funnel. You eliminate all the people that wouldn’t be interested in doing all that to learning all that kind of stuff anyways, right? Like, literally, that’s why we developed that system, and I learned that from somebody else. We just custom tailored it for our own purposes.

But the hiring funnel system works so well, that you eliminate all the tire kickers and all the lazy people and all that kind of shit. It makes it so much easier to kind good good quality virtual assistant candidates that are willing to put in work and also you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they know how to follow instructions. That’s what the outsource or hiring funnel does. And so if you implement that right off the bat, then the people that make it all the way through the funnel process, the hiring funnel, are gonna be the top quality candidates that then you interview … And again, all this is taught in outsource kingpin. But then you set up interviews. I typically just do Skype text chat. Not phone, ear, or video interviews, because most of VA’s are in like Philippines, or India or whatever. So I really don’t care to talk to them. And I don’t mean that to sound like I’m being a prick. I mean, I just wanna know that they can communicate via text chat well.

And so the interview process is more about how well they communicate with me. Not whether they know how to do something or not, because I’m going to provide them with instructions for what I want them to do and exactly how I want them to do it. So I don’t care what they know how to do. All I wanna know, by the point when they’ve gotten through the hiring funnel, is that they’ve already proven they can follow instructions. They’ve already proven that they want the work. They’re hungry, they’re ambitious because they went through this process where you’re gonna lose most people through the process because they’re gonna be like “Eff this, I’m not doing this crap. I’m not even getting paid yet.”

But that’s the whole point, because by the time they get all the way through the end, you know that you’ve got highly qualified candidates that are ambitious, they’re hungry, they’re driven, and then the interview process is about which out of the remaining candidates are the best … Can I communicate the best with. Then that’s my hire. And it works like crazy. I know Marco’s used that, Hernan. Everyone on our team has used that process multiple times and it just works like magic. And so … I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Hernan: No, I mean, yeah, I totally agree with you, Bradley. You know, I get the question of … Or you find the questions in group saying “Hey, where do I find the best candidates?” “Where can I find help to do X, Y, Z? Because most people are just leaving, or most people are not committed.” And we always come up with the same answer. It’s not a matter of where. It’s a matter of the process you put them through before they even get to talk to you, or before they even-

Bradley: You qualify them.

Hernan: Yeah. Exactly. So before they even get to talk to you, before you even hire them, are you getting them to do some work before they get to talk to you, before you actually hire them? That will weed out 98% of your problems and the tire kickers. So I think it’s more like a question of what kind of treatment they get before they get hired, than the place. There’s no magic bullet because people will have several profiles anyways. So it’s not a matter of going to Upwork or going to Fiver. No, it’s a matter of the process that they go through before they get to you.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: Yep, I’m glad this question came up because I was at the same place that he is, or I love the information, but there’s just so much stuff that I don’t wanna go through all of those videos, like force fed. I actually wanna take my time going through it because I enjoy it. So what I ended up doing is I ran, I just ran it, our outsource kingpin funnel and ended up with three people. I interviewed them and I finished the third interview this morning actually. And that’s the person that I’m probably going to hire as a VA to go through the course thoroughly and then we’ll see how we can use them. But I need that person to go through the training, we’ll pay them to train, but I have to see if that person is able to go through the training and then apply it the way that it’s taught. And then we will decide after that. We pay them for the training, 75% of the salary that they’re going to get. But they need to be paid. They need to have that incentive, okay, I’m doing something, I’m not gonna get beat at the of this if I’m not getting paid for doing work. I’m actually going to get paid.

And so I think that’s a really good incentive. But that’s the final step that I think a lot of people miss, that you have to put the people through the test. You can’t just hire them, give them work and then say “Oh, freak. They didn’t work out for whatever reason.” No. Put them through training, and then see what kind of work they produce and then you make the final decision on the hire, and if not, you have other people you can fall back on, or you put three people through the training and the best person gets the job, like we did with RYS Academy, the very first VA that we hired for that. But, I mean, our shit works. We use it and it works for us. It should work for you.

Bradley: Yeah. And the last thing I wanna mention about that is that’s the point is if you say how would you keep them working for you? Just like Marco said, whenever I hire somebody from the funnel process, the hiring funnel process, I always, when I make the job offer, it’s in the offer, it’s made really very clear that I give them whatever we agreed upon for the proposed salary, I list all that in the welcome letter, the job offer letter, excuse me, but I also let them know that for the first 30 days, they’re on 75% their salary pay, because I pay by salary too, by the way. We don’t pay by hour. We pay by salary. And that gives us incentive to make sure we always give our VA’s enough work, because we’re paying them whether they’re working or not, does that make sense. So that makes us make sure that they’re constantly working. But I tell them 75% of their … And I call that training pay, because for the first 30 days, they’re on probation and they’re in training. I do still pay them, but they’re totally aware that at the end of 30 days, they’re salary will go up, pending review.

Obviously, if they’ve performed well, and about 80% of them do. There’s no question, there’s no doubt, I’m not gonna lie and say that it’s 100% effective all the time. It’s not. But it is about 80% effective, compared to, as you probably already know and many of you probably have experienced this, trying to outsource shit on your own without a good process, how effective has that been for you? It’s probably more like 20% effective, if that. Most people fail miserably when they try to outsource stuff, and it’s because of this reason. They don’t have a good process to put people through on the front end to qualify the outsourcer. And that’s what this does. This pre-qualifies everything. And then, once they’ve been pre-qualified, they’re still on probation until we’ve agreed that they’ve done well, they performed well, and they’ve met the requirements to go to full pay and stay on as an employee. So hopefully that was helpful.

Is Link Building Still Effective And How Often And In What Quantity Should We Be Getting Link Building For Our Network And Press Releases?

Steven. “Hey team. Thank you for all your great information you guys provide for free every week.” You’re welcome, Steven. “MY question is in two parts. First of all, is link building still effective?” It is. There is no question it is still effective and it will be for some time, Steven. “How often and in what quantity should we be getting link building for our networks and press releases?” Well, that depends on each project, each keyword, really. What it is you’re trying to do. How often is really gonna be determined based upon competition levels, as well as many other variables, like the age of the site, that kind of stuff. As far as networks and press releases, though, I can tell you one thing. Press releases, you can freaking hammer those. I don’t even think there’s a velocity issue, ever, with press releases. I could be wrong, but I never worry about it. Whenever I publish a press release and I wanna hit it with links, let me just make it really clear though, Steven. If you’re gonna be boosting press releases with links, find out which press releases are going to remain published, because a lot of press releases get purged after, sometimes even 30 days. Other press release sites or media sites don’t purge … It’s anywhere between 30 days and six months. But a lot of sites purge. In other words, they basically delete posts after a certain amount of time.

And so if you do a ton of link building to press release that’s going to be purged at some point, then you’ve basically thrown money away. It may give you a temporary boost, but once the … And I know this for 100% fact, because I’ve been testing press releases and using that as my sole link building method for multiple lead gen projects over the last several months, guys, like going on seven months now, and I had outstanding results, but then all of a sudden a lot of the stuff that I had outstanding results for started to drop significantly in MAPS rankings. And when I started to investigate, it’s because the vast majority of the press releases that I published over the last seven months are now gone. They no longer exist. And so my point is, it’s either something for press releases that you have to continue doing regularly, which is a great thing, guys, if you’re providing these services to clients, because you can sell clients on we need to publish these regularly, like one or two press releases a month.

Whatever you can sell them on, it now becomes a recurring service that you sell, instead of just hey, every now and then we’ll do a press release. No. We should be doing a press release once per month at least for every single client. That makes sense. And that’s another service that you can sell. It’s great. I love it. But, if you’re gonna be building links to press releases, find out which sites they remain published on and you choose those as your targets, your target URLs to build links to. As far as your networks, guys, networks typically I do a link building package right when the network has been built, created. Once a few seed posts have been published to it. So usually, I always try to season every single network with at least three posts. It’s three to five, typically, for every new network. Three to five posts. And then I’ll send it over for link building. And then once I get that back, then it’s just a matter of monitoring results. If I see that I need … Like, I’ll usually publish several more posts over the next several weeks … Or, I don’t publish them. My curators do. But I’ll just monitor results.

And if I’m not … I’m usually seeing movement at some point, but if I’m not seeing as much movement as I would like, then maybe I’ll boost the network again. But instead of just always building links to the network, I might do a drive stack instead, you know what I mean? Not might, I typically always do a drive stack too, but my point is it’s not always just about the link building, guys. Because remember, once you have a drive stack, then you can boost the drive stack with links. So there’s just a ton of things that you can do. All I would recommend is that for anything linking directly to your money site, try to keep it clean, something that you have control over, branded properties, you should make those your priority, stuff that you can brand, and then link to your site. And then you can do your link building to those, your tire one stuff. Okay? Good question though. Roman, do you have any recommendations on that? Is Roman still here?

Hernan: Yeah, he is, but I think he’s muted.

Roman: There we go. Sorry about that. In terms of link building still being effective … That question, correct?

Bradley: Yep.

Roman: Yeah, so in terms of link building being effective, it’s going to be a long while for it not to be. It’s just you have to understand what’s going on with it and how things are being reduced and re-weighted and what’s going on with that. So links are here to stay, because they’re part of the base algorithm. Google can’t just change the core fundamental of how it works overnight, not without upsetting the entire world and everyone else. So link building’s definitely here to stay for a while. In terms of how often and in what quantity, there’s a lot of variables that come into play, like you were mentioning. One of the main ones that a lot of people don’t talk about is traffic and how much traffic is coming in on links. And this is part of the reason why press releases are so effective, because they receive natural traffic. And stop and think about it too, right? If something goes viral, does it make sense that it would get links at a higher velocity than something else that isn’t viral, right?

Bradley: Absolutely.

Roman: Traffic is a major component when it comes to things like that. So whether you’re doing what Marco does with art, or triple T with Pierce’s side, it’s that same basic principle.

Bradley: Awesome. Thank you, Roman.

Roman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Will There Be A New Indexing Service To Be Introduced In Serp Space Soon?

Bradley: Okay, guys, we’ve got … I’m gonna try to get through these next three, up to Pete Hogg, in the next eight minutes. So we’re gonna try to make this the lightning round because we’re almost out of time. And I’d really like to get to these three guys. Okay, Jeff is up. He says “A week or so ago, Marco mentioned the indexing service in SerpSpace wasn’t working the way it should and that it was being redone. Just checking to see when a new indexing service will be available.” Do we have any ETA on that, guys?

Roman: Not yet. We’re still working on it.

Is It Possible To Have Separate Page For Each Location Using Maps Powerhouse?

Bradley: Alright, Jeff. We do not have an ETA for you on that. We apologize. We will certainly announce that when we do. “Secondly, dealing with a multi-location bank, 11 locations, if I wanna do MAPS powerhouse, can I do a separate one for each location?” Absolutely. Absolutely. “The URLs are like this, okay, locations bank one, bank two, et cetera. Is there an issue with all these coming back to the main site even though they would be going to separate pages?” No, because they’re all Google Maps properties. Like that wouldn’t hurt anything. And remember, you’re just embedding Google Maps. So anybody have a comment on that before I move on?

Marco: No, I mean that’s perfect. There are no issues with Google Maps or My Maps, for that matter, because Google lets you play with them and embed them. And yes, Jeffrey Smith’s stuff is awesome.

When Buying Double Phone Verified Gmail Accounts, Are Aged Accounts Better Or Are Brand New Accounts Recommended?

Bradley: It is. It is. I totally agree, though. It’s worth hiring a VA to learn how to go do all that stuff, keyword research, and everything else. Very in depth. Alright, Nigel. “Good day, gents. Grateful as always for you guys Jeffrey Smith was impressive. Talk about knowledge and value commensurate with SM and pedigree.” Exactly. I mean, that’s why we brought him on because he’s that good. “I picked up the SEO bootcamp and appreciated the generous discounts and bonuses. Thank you. Can’t wait to dig in and report back.” Please do, Nigel. Seriously. Please do report back what you think and also the results that you get from implementing what you learn, because that’s the best testimonial you can give. “I have TTT personas. When buying double phone verified Gmail accounts, are aged accounts better, or brand new accounts recommended?” Okay, I would only use aged accounts for YouTube stuff, guys. I mean, that’s …

Let me be real clear. I’ve only tested using aged accounts on YouTube stuff. I don’t care if I’m setting up a brand new profile or persona that I’m gonna build a network for. I don’t care if it’s on a brand new Gmail account. It doesn’t make any difference to me because it’s likely that that YouTube account that’s created with that profile, if we create a YouTube account with that profile, isn’t gonna be the one that I’m using to boost my … You know, as my content … My distribution channel, in other words. It’s usually persona networks are just supporting networks that will boost another channel’s videos. So the channel that I’m gonna be publishing videos to, that I want aged, and I have been testing some of those aged accounts and they do absolutely work better, at least according to my tests they do. But as far as for just double phone verified accounts for setting up persona accounts, no, don’t spend the extra money on aged accounts. At least, I haven’t tested that. I don’t see the need to do that. They may work better, but I just don’t know how if you’re not using … I mean, personally, I don’t really see how it would benefit at all, unless you were using one of those Google properties as your distribution engine, in which case, then an aged account makes sense.

Do You Recommend Building Personas Details Yourself For IFTTT Setups Or Let VAs Do Everything?

“Best practice. Do you recommend building persona details yourself for IFTT setups or let VA’s do everything when they create?” I let the VA’s do everything because I don’t wanna do the damn work. That’s why I pay the VA’s. That’s what we do in SerpSpace. If you provide us with the details, we can provide you with the persona data and all that. You just gotta give us the theme, like tags, interests, stuff like that, and we can produce the profile around that. You can create your own manual checklist. That might be something we can do at some point, which is create a manual checklist. That’s not a bad idea. That’s a pretty good idea. As far as I know, when we sell the Done for You networks on RYS stuff, they don’t come with a checklist, right guys?

Marco: No, they don’t come with a checklist right now. It could be done, but since it’s done up to our standards and specs and directly from the training that’s available in RYS Reloaded, we don’t feel that it’s necessary for that manual checklist, because not only does the VA, whoever gets the order, do it, [inaudible 00:56:07] will go over it once it’s done and perform that checklist that he’s talking about. There is a human that actually goes through it and makes sure that it’s done up to the standards that are expected. Now we do get some clunkers, guys. We’re not perfect. We’re all human. We have bad days. When that happens, all you have to do is contact us and we’ll go in there and manually fix whatever it was that might have gone wrong, or was omitted, or wasn’t done correctly. So we do backup everything that we sell and that we say. So you can have that comfort that when you order, it’s going to be done according to the training, and that it’s going to be checked before it’s delivered to you.

Bradley: Make a note of it, though, that that’s not a bad idea maybe to produce a checklist for both networks and drive stacks.

Marco: Yeah, Roman.

Bradley: To give with delivery.

Marco: Yeah, that would be on SerpSpace.

Are Live Rank Sniper And CrowdSearch Still Viable Tool Strategies 2018?

Bradley: Yep. That could be a really good value added thing that would make it more useful for people. Number three … God, we’re almost out of time. I really hope I can get to Pete’s, too. “Are Live Rank Sniper and Crowd Search still working viable tool strategies for 2018?” Well, Live Rank Sniper, yes. I use that tool all the time. I’ve used it this week already to poke over 200 keywords. I use that tool freaking all the time. It’s amazing. I love that tool, Live Rank Sniper. The only thing that I don’t like about it is it’s slow. In other words, if you load in 25 or 30 keywords that you wanna poke, it’ll take a couple hours for it to run. Where there’s some other tools out there that will poke keywords a hell of a lot faster, but I like the fact that I don’t need videos, I don’t need a shit ton of channels. You only need one channel to make Live Rank Sniper work. I use it literally every week, almost. Almost every single week. I’ve used it several days this week already.

Alright, so anyways, Crowd Search. The only thing I would use Crowd Search for right now, which I still have credits in there. I don’t subscribe anymore, but I still have credits. I use them still for referral traffic campaigns, and also for some video … You know, sending traffic to video, although I’ve just been setting up YouTube ads for sending traffic to video now and that works so much better because that’s real genuine traffic. You’re buying views from Google, essentially. And so that works so much better. But I still do use Crowd Search for sending referral traffic through like social media links and things like that. But it’s only because I’ve got a store of credits. I probably wouldn’t subscribe now. Not probably, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t subscribe now. And I’m not trying to say anything bad except the fact that, guys, it’s not as effective as it used to be and it’s because … We think we have an idea as to why. It’s probably because the IP’s are all coming from pretty much a similar pool of IP’s like a lot of those other tools are using, and therein lies the problem.

So, but Live Rank Sniper, absolutely. Crowd Search, if you’re gonna use it in a very specific way, then I could see it as still being viable. We have our own traffic tool in progress, but it’s bene in progress for months. We don’t have an estimated time that that’s gonna be launched, so I don’t wanna tease you with that just yet. We’ve done enough of that. So next time we talk about it, it’ll be when it’s ready.

Should You Use A Current Youtube Account And Add Another Channel Branded Towards Contractors And The Building Trade Or Create An Entirely New Account?

Alright, last question. We got a minute. Pete says “Hey guys, the SEO bootcamp looks solid. I’m just starting out. If I was in a position to sign up, I would be there. It looks awesome, like awesome training.” I totally understand, Pete. Don’t worry about it. Follow some of what we teach you, go make some revenue and then you can invest in your education. “I have a YouTube channel for my business brand which is SEO and marketing. I wanna set up a channel for local contractors to rank lead gen videos in home improvement sector. I’ve started a YouTube training course, but not finished it yet. Should I use my current YouTube account and add another channel branded towards contractors in the building trade, or should I set up a completely new account specifically for the contractor lead gen videos?” Okay. I recommend that you set up a new Gmail account.

We just talked about this a moment ago, with the aged accounts. If you’re gonna be setting up a new channel that you’re gonna be using as a content distribution engine, basically for publishing all of your videos, then I highly recommend that you buy an aged YouTube account. It can be a persona account. It doesn’t matter. Just buy an aged YouTube account because then you have now … And here’s why I’m telling you this, guys. I recommend creating the new channel under a new Google account, so basically a new profile, and then adding your main account … So in your case, Pete, your Pete Hogg account, as a manager. So a channel manager, so that you could access and still do all the work on that channel through your main Gmail login. But the reason why I always say separate them with different owners, channel owners, is because if in the event you were to ever get slapped for something, you don’t wanna … It could potentially affect your Gmail account, that could then affect all channels associated as you as the owner of those channels.

In other words, any channel that you’re the owner of could be potentially affected, whereas if you’re just the manager, if the contractor account YouTube channel, the contract YouTube channel is owned by another Google account and you’re just the manager, in case you were to get some sort of penalty for something or another, it wouldn’t affect the other channel because you’re just a manager, not the owner. So that’s the reason why I do it that way, guys. It’s a way to protect my assets. So it’s a way to cover my assets. And that’s why I do it that way. But you can do it either way. I recommend that you do it that way just because it provides a level of protection. If you’re gonna do that, buy an aged YouTube account, set the YouTube account up underneath that account, and then add yourself as a manager. “Or should I set up …” I already answered that. “What is your advice for best results?” That is my advice. It’s just a way to save yourself from potential catastrophe in the event that something were to happen to your account, okay?

Okay guys, we’re a little bit over. Thanks for everybody being here. Sorry about the questions that we didn’t get to, guys. We apologize, but that’s why first come, first served. We certainly appreciate everybody being here. Thanks, Roman, for sticking around, and you too as well, Marco.

Roman: Yep.

Marco: Alright, man. Bye everyone.

Roman: Bye bye.

Bradley: See you, guys.

Chris: Take it easy.

Roman: Later.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 167 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 167

Click on the video above to watch Episode 167 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at https://semanticmastery.com/humpday.  

  Announcement

Bradley: Right as the fucking buzzer’s going. Oh, pardon me. Hey guys. This is Bradley Benner with Semantic Mastery. This is Hump Day Hangouts for January 17th, 2018.I believe this is episode 167. Yes, it is. 167. Sorry, we were in the middle of testing something. Like literally right as we were going live. Never stop testing, right? So we’ve got almost everybody here. Adam’s not here today. So I’m gonna go right on down the line as I see it. Chris, how’re you doing buddy? No audio from Chris. I know he’s traveling.

Hernan: Yeah.

Bradley: Okay. So Chris is here in spirit. We got Hernan with us too. What’s up, Hernan?

Hernan: What’s up guys? I’m really really excited to be here. Good stuff coming up, so I’m really really glad that we’re here.

Bradley: Hey, your Christmas tree’s down.

Hernan: It is. I mean, it’s gone. It’s been gone for 10 days or something.

Bradley: Gone, man.

Hernan: Yeah, it’s gone.

Bradley: It’s kind of disheartening. Kind of depressing.

Hernan: I could put that up. I have another plant over there.

Bradley: Awesome.

Chris: Sorry man. I was on [inaudible 00:01:14]. I’m sitting in a snowstorm in Austria. Like crazy. But everything else is good.

Bradley: Nice. Well that’s Chris. What’s up, man? Alright, Marco. What’s up, buddy?

Marco: What’s up, dude?

Bradley: How are you?

Marco: Testing. Always testing out.

Bradley: Yeah, that’s awesome. And then we got Roman on with us today, which is awesome, from SerpSpace. And we got some cool announcements that he’s gonna be talking about as well. So what’s up, Roman?

Roman: Hey, I’m good.

Bradley: Good. Okay, well, I know Hernan’s got a couple of announcements to go through. I wanna mention real quick, because I had this already. We did a webinar with Jeffery Smith again on Monday, which was for the SEO bootcamp guys. If you guys have been following us for at all the last two months or so, you know that we’ve talked about this course before. It’s hands down the best on page SEO course I’ve ever seen. And I mean that. It’s fabulous. And Jeffrey Smith just put in an enormous amount of work into it. It’s really really good. And so we’re not even gonna try to compete with that. We just said “Jeffrey, we just wanna promote yours.” So we had another webinar with him. It was our third one, actually. The first one went horribly wrong. The second one did better. But this one, this third one, was much much better.

So if you guys haven’t had a chance to watch it, it was almost like an hour and 40 minutes long. It was very very good. Very informative. I mean, yes, there’s an offer at the end for SEO bootcamp, but it’s at half price right now, or at least through our link it is. And it’s totally worth it, number one. But even if you don’t end up purchasing it, you can learn a lot just by going through the webinar. And I know that’s kind of cliché. You hear that shit all the time, but you’ll see how in depth he goes with like keyword research, as well as what entities are and how to basically like semantic relationships between the entities and things like … It’s incredible. I even learned a lot just from the presentation alone. So I would highly recommend that you guys go check it out. I’m gonna drop the link on the page for the replay. And then with that, Hernan, I’m gonna turn it over to you.

Hernan: Yeah, because apparently I do have some announcements. So yeah, the video lead gen system is coming up next week. I know that Bradley has been working hard with that and we have … Here’s the thing. We have crafted that and Bradley has been going through his process of getting really good results with video, with lead gen, using video. So we’re gonna be releasing that next week. It’s probably gonna go through your … We’re probably gonna announce that the next Hump Day Hangout, but stay tuned to your emails because that’s gonna be released over there. And then we have Roman here, and I wanted to ask you, Roman, a little bit about the SEO ramp packages that you guys have been cooking on SerpSpace over there. So can you give us a little bit about the ramp down? What would be the ideal scenario to use them and how to use them, pretty much.

Bradley: And while you’re doing that … Excuse me, pardon me, Roman, but while you’re doing that, if you want, do you wanna pull up the screen to the page and just kind of showcase that page while you’re going through it?

Roman: Sure.

Bradley: Can you do that, or do you want me to pull it up?

Roman: Yeah, if you could pull it up, that’d be easier.

Bradley: Okay. I’ll see what I can do.

Roman: Yeah, basically, we’ve been working on this for the last few months, trying to get this pushed out live, but basically it’s a done for your solution for SEO packages. And we’ve got two main kind of packages. One for local and one for national. The big difference between the two is national is a little bit more of an oomph. You get a lot more links than you would with local and that’s for obvious reasons. A lot of times with national, there’s a bit more competition involved. But with our local rank packages, basically, it’s completely done for you. So there’s a plugin that we have on our backend and what that does is it integrates with let’s say your WordPress site or if you have an html site or another type of site, we can work with those as well.

And what it does is it creates the pages on your site and it does the back linking automatically. And every month it adds more pages onto your site and generates more additional back links that way as well. So over time, it’s effectiveness grows and these type of links that it’s setting to your site are some of the best ones that you can get anywhere. They come from trusted, validated entities and, seriously, from an SEO standpoint, you can’t ask for a higher quality link. These are all real businesses that are essentially linking to you. And it’s a beautiful content distribution network that’s going on with this.

Bradley: Yeah, and I’m testing it right now with some sites guys and it’s super powerful and we know the kind of like what the infrastructure is behind it, and it’s fucking amazing, really. And like he said, these are all established entities. Like verified Google my business type sites that we’re getting links from. It’s just amazing. Which those are the best types of links you can get, especially for local business, you know.

Roman: Yeah. It’s coming from relevant, local businesses. And that’s … What more could you ask for?

Bradley: Yep. One thing, Roman, I’ve got a bone to pick. Who the fuck let that be the thumbnail for the video? Come on guys. That’s shitty.

Roman: We’ll have to get Alvin to-

Bradley: Come on, man. Can somebody please go update that?

Roman: Tony and I were talking about it.

Bradley: God almighty. It’s not doing me a service at all.

Roman: We’ll get that fixed up for you.

Bradley: I’m used to Wayne doing that shit on Hump Day Hangouts with memes and stuff. But come on, man, this is a sales page.

Roman: Apologize about that.

Bradley: No worries on that.

Hernan: Anyways, I think the link is on the comments over there, guys. So if you wanna go ahead and check them out, they’re really really powerful. We’re pretty pumped about this. So go ahead and check them out. You can always open a free account at serpspace.com and then Bradley’s just put the link on the questions over there on the comments and the events, so you should definitely check it out.

Yeah, guys, you have anything else to add before we move on to-

Roman: Yeah, the only thing is I wanted to mention is this is really a set it and forget it type of service. So it’s really easy to set up and just to go with. So if you’re somebody that’s a local business owner, anything like this, this is really a great solution for you. If you’re selling to local businesses, then this is also a fantastic solution because it allows you to be able to focus on you bringing in more revenue and not so much on the backside of the fulfillment services. So this makes your life easy.

Hernan: Right, right. And we have a lot of people come into the Hump Day Hangouts and students [inaudible 00:08:12] general have their own agency, so I think this is both a time saver and a headache saver because mostly because it’s like turning around and giving a better service to your own clients. This works for your own lead gen, if you’re doing lead gen, if you’re doing pay per call, or rather if you’re doing rank and run, whatever you’re trying to do. Or if you’re selling the service to your clients.

Roman: Yep.

Hernan: Okay. Pretty cool. Pretty cool. Alright, so go ahead guys and check it out. Again, you can always open a free account over there at SerpSpace and if you have any questions, you can contact us with any questions that you might have. And the last note that I had over here was to talk a little bit about the charity, the nations. Marco, you wanna take a stab at it? Like, what’s the status of that and how we’re looking.

Marco: Yeah, absolutely. You can just go to the page. I’ve posted the link towards the top, and see how close we are to the goal where we started, which was 10,000. Guys if you put us above 10,000 before or on Friday the 26th, I’ll take it up to 15,000. If you take us up to 15 by one dollar, I’ll take it up to 20. It’s a challenge. Put it over a dollar. If you see it at 9999, go ahead and contribute two bucks and make Marco spend the rest for the kids. I don’t mind. It’s a really worthy cause. It’s an education initiative. The only way out of poverty is giving people access to a quality education, with all the tools that they need to be able to compete in school.

So once they have that, once you have that education, once you’re on that track, you also need the support, right? Community support and other tools to keep you on that track and to keep you from going astray, which is also part of this. So I think it’s just a great initiative. Visit the page, watch the video so that you know what it’s about. And if you feel like giving, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and the kids thank you. And if not, that’s fine. We’re still going to be here and we’re still going to answer your questions for free. So either way, it’s cool, we love you.

Hernan: Awesome.

Bradley: That’s pretty cool.

Hernan: Yeah, we’re really really near. And it’s just last but not least, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, welcome. We have more and more people joining us on Hump Day Hangout pretty much every week, so thank you guys for the support, for the comments, for everything. So I would really appreciate you guys dropping your questions, taking the time to do that. If you’re new to Semantic Mastery, welcome. If you’ve been around with us for a while, thank you for that. And the best place to start is always this, Hump Day Hangouts, and then the second best place is for you to get the battle plan. It’s really inexpensive and it’s an investment on your business. You go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com and you can get a copy of the battle plan. People are having really really good results with that. And yeah, that’s basically all I got, Bradley, so we can jump right into questions.

Bradley: Alright, sweet. I was pre-reading some of the questions. It makes it a little bit easier for me. So Andy T … Oh yeah, first of all, I say this at the beginning of every webinar now, guys. Go to bradleybenner.com and subscribe to my mindset emails everyday. I’m actually not writing everyday right now. I started … It was the second week in January I started coaching CrossFit classes everyday now, in the mornings. And so the hour I was spending writing an email everyday is now being devoted to CrossFit training, or coaching, so I’m not writing everyday. I’m trying to squeeze in emails as I can, as I can find time.

So I’m trying to get at least two or three emails done per week. It is still a priority, guys, but there’s only so many hours in the day and this is a … The CrossFit thing’s a new business for me and I love it. It’s a lot of fun and it’s also part of what we’re doing in Mastermind for the 2018 education track. With that said, go sign up to bradleybenner.com, or go there and subscribe to the email list, because I’ve been sending out a lot of emails and it’s just stuff that I talk about on a daily business about mindset stuff and success habits and goal setting and that kind of things, and I know that that would help pretty much everybody that attends these Hump Day Hangouts, okay? So go check it out.

Does The “Related Post” Feature Make The Silos Less Effective Since It’s Pulling Posts From Another Silo?

That said. Andy, he’s up first. He says “Hey BB and team, I am currently using a theme that has this related post feature at the bottom of the page. Sometimes it is pulling posts from other silos. Is this related post feature will make the silo less effective since it’s pulling post from other silo?” Yes, Andy, it will. Most of the time those types of related posts, like plugins, or I don’t know about the themes themselves, but a lot of times those types of plugins will allow you to set categories. In other words, it will only show related posts from the same category. And that’s how you would do it, right? Because then it would prevent it from showing posts from other silos. Because that’s all a silo is, is a category. So I would check the settings. I assume there’s some sort of way to customize that. If there’s not, then I would disable that feature entirely and go with a plugin or do it manually. So, but yes, it will absolutely be the theme. Somebody got a comment on that?

Marco: Yeah, I think Jeffrey Smith’s … And it comes with the unpaid version of the plugin, but the deep link juggernaut would be a better investment, so that you could link throughout the silo, rather than delving outside the silo and kind of … You’re not sure whether it fits the silo or not. You know, because you could keep your links within the silo.

Would It Be Wise To Set Up A New Niche Site In An Existing Hosting And Only Move It To A New Hosting After Verifying It Shows Potential For Growth?

Bradley: Yep. Totally agree. Also, I am planning to start a new niche site, but I am not sure if the new site will take off. Do you think it will be wise to setup the site in existing hosting and only move it to new hosting after verifying that the site shows potential for growth? The reason I’m thinking this is to save money. What is your advice? Well, that’s kind of a … Yes, I would say don’t go setup a new hosting account for one site. Test it first. You can always move it to another host. If money’s an issue, I mean, hosting’s relatively inexpensive, but you wanna get good hosting. That’s the key. And we talked about this … Well, I guess it was the last Mastermind, or maybe it was two times ago, but we had Roman on and he was talking about PBN stuff and we were talking about hosting and we’ve always said that you should have good hosting.

So if you’re gonna be putting the site on an existing hosting account that’s decent hosting for testing purposes or to validate or verify whether it’s a good project to pursue, that’s fine. Because you have nothing to worry about. I wouldn’t put it on some real crappy like hostgater account, or something like that, because it may end up … A lot of times, it’s hard to rank sites on those accounts, guys, because it’s just a shitty, dirty IP. So my point is, if you’ve got a decent hosting account already, I’d just go ahead and throw it on there for now, and then if you start to get a lot of traffic and that kind of stuff, yeah, move it to its own hosting account, or better yet, a VPS or something. Any comments on that, guys?

Marco: We’re good.

Should You Have An Individual Blog On Each Page That Is Related To A City Or Just Produce Content Related To The City And Post On Home Page?

Bradley: Okay. Todd says “On my website ibuyhomes.com” … I would not recommend Todd, for future reference, that you post your URLs here, because there are trolls online, believe it or not. There’s even trolls in our audience. So just keep that in mind. Anyways, onto the question. I have an individual city pages where I try and buy homes on WordPress. Okay, on WordPress. Can I, or should I, have an individual blog for each page that is related to that city? Or should I just produce content related to that city and post it on the homepage?

Well, I’m not sure what you mean … If you’ve got a blog roll on the homepage … In other words, if every time you post a blog post, it’s automatically added to the homepage and it knocks the oldest post off, then that’s not a big deal. It’s gonna be dynamically updated every time you publish a new blog anyways. But if you’re talking about individual city … I’m assuming you mean like posts … Again, I’m not really following the question. I know each … In my opinion, at least for lead gen, for like contractors and stuff, it’s better for each location to have its own page. Or post. It really doesn’t matter. But it’s better to target, because then you can optimize specifically for that location. What causes problems is when you try to optimize for two location names in the same page or post. Then it an create what they call ambiguity. Ambiguity. That’s a difficult word to say. But you need to disambiguate the content by making it more specific, or adding other content that will reinforce what the theme is of that particular piece of content.

So in this case, it’s just a lot easier to create individual pages or posts for each location, so that you can target specifically one location. Now you can have … Here’s an example, Todd, and I’m sure this is probably what you’re referring to, but I think Fairfax County, Virginia has like 24 individual towns and cities, census designated areas, incorporated cities. You know, all that kind of stuff. Just basically 24 localities within the county. So each locality could have its own post or page on the site, where it’s optimized for ibuyhouses Vienna VA, ibuyhouses whatever, Oakland VA. All these different cities within Fairfax. Fairfax County. Then you could have a county page that lists every one of the individual locations and has maybe a brief snippet, a blurb, like a sentence or two or three about each location that then links out to that location page or post.

That makes sense. Because then it’s kind of a hierarchy, right? You could have like … In this example, Fairfax County would be a page, that then links out to all the individual locations, like I just mentioned, like Vienna, and Tyson’s Corner, and all these different locations within Fairfax County. And that way you’re creating basically a location-based silo. It makes a lot of sense that way, if you want to organize your content that way. It seems, at least with the lead gen stuff I do … I don’t do a lot of stuff in real estate, but for contractor leads, it seems to work really really well. Do you guys have any comments on that?

Hernan: No, I think you nailed it, Bradley. Because I would do the … Yeah, I would do pretty much what you were suggesting.

Bradley: Yeah, and by the way, Todd, you don’t need to make them super long posts. I found that if you’re gonna spend a lot of energy or effort and content, like long form content, I would want it to be on the county page, the longer page, where you’re listing everything. The individual posts, I would do it as posts, right? The individual locations would each be posts. But however you decide to do it. They don’t have to be that much content. Literally, 300 words could do it. It’s just a matter of … Usually those smaller areas are gonna be a lot less competitive anyways, so they don’t require as much content. But what you’re trying to do is just stack the theme. You’re trying to stack the keywords in such a way that it reinforces the overall theme of that silo or category, in this case, in this example’s case, Fairfax County, right? And so the actual individual location posts don’t need to have that much content on them, okay? So hopefully that’s helpful.

Why Is It Better To Host All Products In One Domain Instead Of Two?

Mark’s up. He says “Bradley, I need to make the argument that it’s better for a company to have all their products on one primary domain, with their website like www.mico.com and not have a website like www.mico.com and their products on sub domains, like product.mico.com, with the two interlinking. Give me all the good reasons why one domain is better.” Okay, I don’t do e-commerce and this sure sounds like an e-commerce question, Mark. Question mark. Ha ha. This sounds like an e-commerce question, Mr. York. So, anyways, I really don’t know whether that’s true or not. I honestly have no idea. I could tell you just from an assumption that if you have the products on sub domains, would those be separate sites? Or would they just be like somehow a product page on a sub domain, even though it’s all hosted from the same CMS or website platform or whatever? I don’t know. I don’t do e-commerce. That’s why I’m even asking that question. And so basically, if anybody here has an idea for an answer for this, that’s great, otherwise, Mark, I’m gonna have to pass, because I honestly don’t know what to tell you.

Hernan: Right, well what I’m thinking is that … If you have their website … Like, here’s the thing. Usually, when you’re doing e-commerce, you wanna have an e-commerce solution. And by e-commerce solution, I mean something like Shopify, or not Shopify, or Wucomm, or something like that, right? So the templates that are optimized for a institutional website might not be as optimized for an e-commerce. So that’s the only reason where I would definitely go ahead with a sub domain, where a completely different template that’s optimized for an e-commerce, because on the e-commerce, the action it’s on the spot. So people can actually click on the thing, add to cart, pay and that’s it. Usually, when you’re trying to mesh the two under the same template, even for if you’re doing WordPress, usually it doesn’t end up too well, you know what I mean?

Because the institutional or corporate template or themes are not optimized for e-commerce, for the most part, because they have a lot of stuff going on. When you have an e-commerce store, you want to have the least amount of steps between the person landing until they checkout, you know what I’m saying? So the goals of the websites are completely different. So one, you wanna showcase your services or whatever, and on the other hand, you wanna showcase your products and you want them to purchase. That’s why I would think that having a sub domain, with a different theme would be a better idea. And then you can rank the products. You can try to rank the products, and then you know how the thing goes with sub domains being more protective, or they’re protecting the [inaudible 00:23:07], you know?

Marco: Yeah, and if I could add, real quick. If it’s e-commerce, look at what Amazon does. Because they have a huge number of sub domains. For example, they have music, they have KDP, which is the Kindle Direct Publishing, they have the video, they have S3. Everything they do on a sub domain, and they do that because they know that the sub domains will power up the root domain and shoot back power into the sub domain. So they start feeding off each other. Now, the problem is that when you’re a one man gang, one man show, is that you have to maintain when you get to 10, 15, 20 sub domains on the same website, those have to be maintained. And so it’s kind of how much work are you gonna put into it and what the return is going to be for the time that you’ve invested.

Bradley: Yeah, and I think he’s trying to make the argument that to put them all onto one, which would make sense for efficiencies and ease of management. So I get what you’re saying, Mark, and I may have misunderstood the question when I read it the first time, because I think what you’re saying is having one sub domain where all the products are listed and then having the corporate site on the root is what you’re saying, I think. If I’m interpreting the question correctly, then yes, then Hernan’s answer makes a lot of sense and I get that, because I would totally agree that if you have … Like, if it’s e-commerce and they have their corporate template on the root domain, that you’d wanna have an e-commerce type solution on a sub domain, because again, the functionality wouldn’t be present in the actual root domain type framework, if that makes sense.

However, if it’s just … For example, if it were like a plumber, right, and so there’s a corporate domain saying “Hey, we’re a plumber in this area, give us a call, blah blah blah” and here’s all our services on a service sub domain, to me that wouldn’t make any sense. That’s not e-commerce, though. That’s just listing their services and hey call us and we’ll come give you an estimate. So that would be all on one root domain. But as far as if it is e-commerce, which is how I’m interpreting the question, it would make sense to have it on a separate sub domain because then you could have an e-commerce platform on the sub domain, where the company’s website would sit on the root. Any other comments on that, guys?

Hernan: No, yeah, no I agree with what you just say. It’s all about what the website is designed to do, right? So it all comes down to that.

Whose Name Do You Publish Under When Providing Content Services For Clients?

Bradley: James Rich, he says “When providing content services for clients, who’s name do you publish under?” It depends, James. Do you ask your clients for their preference or decide for them? Well, no, I always ask the clients. I don’t just decide stuff for clients, usually. I mean, I do, but not when it’s something public facing like publishing posts to their blog. Usually, my curators end up … They just use their own profile because probably 90% of all the posts that we post are curated posts and so I just have curators doing that stuff and they have their own profile. So they get an account added, or I add them, as either an editor, or sometimes an administrator, or whatever, an admin, to the actual site, publisher, or whatever, whatever you call it. There’s different options for user levels in WordPress. Typically, I just select it as editor for most of my curators and I just create the account for them through the WordPress dashboard and it just sends them the login details via email. But they have … For example, all my curators, I have them go set up their profile on Gravatar, which Gravatar integrates with WordPress.

So as soon as I send them their login details using their email that’s been registered through Gravatar with their profile photo, then once they get their login details for the WordPress site, then when they login, their profile photo’s already gonna be attached, and then they can go to the users section and edit their profile to include bio and links to their social media properties and stuff like that. Or, in a lot of cases, we have author box plugins on the WordPress sites because a lot of newer themes do have the author credit stuff, but some of the older themes, which I still have a lot of sites in use that are on older themes that didn’t have nice author box settings native to the themes, so we would add author box plugins, like star boxes in one of them we use a lot. So in which case, like I said, they just go in and edit their profile data once they get access to the WordPress site, to make sure everything looks good.

Now I do have a couple of clients, though, that prefer that it’s their name listed as the author of the post, even though it’s my curators producing the content, which is fine. If that’s what they want, we do it that way. We just set up an account, a user account, for the client, basically as an author, or an editor, or whatever. And then we have my VA’s, my curators actually login under their account, if that makes sense, and post that way. Also, I believe as an editor, they can login even as their own … Like, as an admin, I know we can do this. We can go in and change the author of a post or whatever, or when we go to create a post, we can select who we want the post to be placed under or given … Who we can choose who we want the author to be from all the available users on the WordPress site.

As an admin you can do that. I don’t know about … I think editors can do that too. But anyways, so again, it’s just a matter of logging in, depending on what their privileges are, as far as access privileges, they can either update that stuff on their own, or they just login underneath the client’s profile. Okay?

What Is Your Process For Giving VA’s Access To Each Site?

What is my process for giving VA’s access to each site? Whenever I sell a client on content marketing services, I just get access to WordPress for me, and then I set my curators up with access, just like I mentioned. Just go to users, add new user, and then put in their profile, their email address … Again, recommend that your VA’s have their own Gravatar.

If they have like a primary email account that has a bunch of stuff that’s not related to what you want their profile image to be as a writer for that blog, have them create a new Google account, a new Gmail account and a profile that is basically tailored to what you want them to be, to give the image that you want them to present. And then use that Gmail as the email account that you set up their WordPress access with. Because then they can set up a new Gravatar account under the new email address that has all the data that you want and it would be more specific to the type of authors, and I’m using air quotes, that you want writing on each one of your blogs. That’s certainly a possibility too. That’s a good question though, James.

What Kind Of Results Do You Typically See In Using Video Email To Do Outreach And Prospect?

[Yanan 00:30:15] says “Hey team,” or “Hey guys,” excuse me. “Tell me something. Are you still using video email to do outreach and prospect?” Well, as a matter of fact, we are. In fact, that’s what the video lead gen system product we’re launching next week, or in two weeks, or whatever it is … It’s completely about that because it is still very very effective and we have a lot of people actually using that now since we taught about it in Mastermind, as well as in some other places. And we’ve got some really good feedback from it. So, video lead gen system, coming out … When is it, Hernan? Next week, or the following week?

Hernan: Next week, actually.

Bradley: Next week.

Hernan: Yeah, so stay tuned, guys, because we’re gonna drop some emails and there’s probably gonna be some sort of coupon or launch price, et cetera, et cetera. That’s gonna last probably 24 hours, is not less, so stay tuned.

Bradley: Yep. And we’re not doing some big launch on this stuff, guys. It’s not gonna be something you’re gonna get a shit ton of emails from a hundred different IM marketers and stuff like that. It’s not gonna happen. This is an internal launch only. We are just creating this product and launching it to people on our subscriber list. That’s it. So it’s not gonna be some big, stupid launch. It’s a great freaking product. It works really really well, the process. And here’s something that I hadn’t even mentioned yet … Oh, damn. You guys gotta remind me. I gotta get a VSL done on that page and all that. I’m gonna be throwing a bonus webinar into that product, that we’re gonna do live, within probably two weeks of the product being launched, where I’m gonna show how to find prospects to use the video email method for, with YouTube, and it’s a very very easy process, and it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, so to speak. It’s so easy to find good clients, good prospects, good candidates this way. And so that’s something I’m gonna be covering in a bonus webinar.

Alright. What kind of results do you typically see? Well, when I was doing a lot of that … I’m doing more the shotgun approach now than the rifle approach because it’s a time thing. Plus, the shotgun approach can be scaled more easily than the rifle approach can. And the video email system, or the video lead gen system is basically a rifle approach. It’s incredibly effective. But, like I said, it’s a bit time consuming. It’s not something you can scale very easily, compared to like a shotgun method, which would be like a mass marketing or a mass prospecting method, which is what I’m kind of developing now. But for this method in particular, when I was doing that a lot to grow my own agency, for every 10 emails I sent, I would get three or four. So the average was 35%. Three or four replies, responses, from every 10 emails. And it was like clockwork. And out of every three or four responses that I got, I would close one or two of them.

And guys, it was like … But here was the problem, here’s where I failed with that method. It was incredibly successful for me landing clients. But I always would go into the prospecting mode and I would spend basically three or four days locating prospects, I.e., prospects that I would wanna contact, creating the actual videos, then sending out the emails, creating the emails and sending them out because they’re all personalized emails, they’re all personalized videos … This is why I said it can be time consuming. And I would spend two or three days setting it up. Then I would do the … Send out 10 emails, or whatever, 10 or 15, whatever it was. Then I would process the results, which would be like any responses, I’d get the communication going, start the dialogue between the prospects that replied and that kind of stuff. And I wouldn’t do anymore prospecting. Then I would land one or two of those clients, or those prospects then I’d turn them into clients, I’d sell them, I’d close them. Then I’d work on fulfilling their work with no additional prospecting. And then, once I got them to a point where it was more like autopilot and it could be more hands off for me, then I would turn the prospecting back on and I’d go back through that process all over again. And it was never consistent.

And so what I talked about in the training was how to make it a consistent process that gets repeated and done every single week. So that for example, if you send out 10 … If you made it part of your standard operating procedure for your business to send out 10 video emails per week and you outsourced 90% of it, which again, I show you in the training exactly how to do that, then you know it will get done. And if you have 10 going out every week, and let’s say on the low end you get three responses a week, and out of those three, you can only close one of them because you suck at sales. I’m not speaking to you directly, Yanan. I’m saying, just on a conservative estimate, let’s just say, hypothetically, you send out 10 a week, you get three responses, out of the three you close one. But you do that consistently, week in and week out. You have a VA doing most of the work for you and all you have to do is record the actual audit video, the video audit … Excuse me, the audit videos, is what I’m calling them. You record those so it’s in your voice. It’s going to be you making the contact with the prospect. So it’s kind of required that you do that.

But you could do it to where if you’re just doing 10 audit videos and they’re less than 10 minutes each, you could, in two and a half, or three hours, you could have all of the videos done every single week and then have a VA do all the rest of the work, send them out, locate prospects, collect contact info, send the templates out, the emails out, all that kind of stuff. And then all you have to do is process the leads. It would become part of your normal day-to-day operations, and you would always have a pipeline full of leads. And highly qualified leads, guys. These aren’t like the mass prospecting stuff that I’m doing right now where a lead is somebody that is just aware of who we are now, because they’ve interacted with us online in some way, shape, or form. At some level they interacted or engaged with one of my marketing messages, whether it’s an email, an ad, or whatever. But that’s not a very qualified lead yet. That’s just somebody that’s expressed some sort of interest. With this method, it is a highly qualified lead when they reply, because they know who you are, they feel like they’ve met you and blah blah blah.

So I don’t wanna spend a lot of time on that, guys. But the reason why I did is because the video lead gen system that we’re launching next week is incredibly powerful for those of you who are trying to get your agencies off the ground, or your business period off the ground, and you wanna provide local clients consulting services, or lead gen services and you’re looking for service providers, this is an outstanding way to do it. It’s non-confrontational, it’s easy, it’s not intimidating like making cold calls are, and it just works really really well. Any comments on that, guys, before I move on?

Does anybody else out here have any experience with the video emails for prospecting other than me?

Marco: You’re the man when it comes to that. I’ve never done … That’s not the way I’ve done my marketing.

How Would You Find A VA Who Would Want To Learn All SEO Bootcamp Stuff And How Would You Keep Them Working For You?

Bradley: Okay. I just know Adam’s used it quite a bit. I didn’t know if anybody else here had. Alright, good question, though, Yanan. Next question’s Quit This House. I know I’ve heard your name a bunch of times but I never remember. That SEO bootcamp is comprehensive. I don’t wanna learn all that stuff. Plus one that. I know it’s a bit intimidating, but it is awesome. He says “You suggested hiring a VA to learn and implement. How would you find a VA who would wanna learn all that stuff and how would you keep them working for you?” Okay, well, first of all, if you use an outsource or hiring funnel, like what we teach in outsource kingpin, exactly how to setup an outsource or hiring funnel. You eliminate all the people that wouldn’t be interested in doing all that to learning all that kind of stuff anyways, right? Like, literally, that’s why we developed that system, and I learned that from somebody else. We just custom tailored it for our own purposes.

But the hiring funnel system works so well, that you eliminate all the tire kickers and all the lazy people and all that kind of shit. It makes it so much easier to kind good good quality virtual assistant candidates that are willing to put in work and also you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they know how to follow instructions. That’s what the outsource or hiring funnel does. And so if you implement that right off the bat, then the people that make it all the way through the funnel process, the hiring funnel, are gonna be the top quality candidates that then you interview … And again, all this is taught in outsource kingpin. But then you set up interviews. I typically just do Skype text chat. Not phone, ear, or video interviews, because most of VA’s are in like Philippines, or India or whatever. So I really don’t care to talk to them. And I don’t mean that to sound like I’m being a prick. I mean, I just wanna know that they can communicate via text chat well.

And so the interview process is more about how well they communicate with me. Not whether they know how to do something or not, because I’m going to provide them with instructions for what I want them to do and exactly how I want them to do it. So I don’t care what they know how to do. All I wanna know, by the point when they’ve gotten through the hiring funnel, is that they’ve already proven they can follow instructions. They’ve already proven that they want the work. They’re hungry, they’re ambitious because they went through this process where you’re gonna lose most people through the process because they’re gonna be like “Eff this, I’m not doing this crap. I’m not even getting paid yet.”

But that’s the whole point, because by the time they get all the way through the end, you know that you’ve got highly qualified candidates that are ambitious, they’re hungry, they’re driven, and then the interview process is about which out of the remaining candidates are the best … Can I communicate the best with. Then that’s my hire. And it works like crazy. I know Marco’s used that, Hernan. Everyone on our team has used that process multiple times and it just works like magic. And so … I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Hernan: No, I mean, yeah, I totally agree with you, Bradley. You know, I get the question of … Or you find the questions in group saying “Hey, where do I find the best candidates?” “Where can I find help to do X, Y, Z? Because most people are just leaving, or most people are not committed.” And we always come up with the same answer. It’s not a matter of where. It’s a matter of the process you put them through before they even get to talk to you, or before they even-

Bradley: You qualify them.

Hernan: Yeah. Exactly. So before they even get to talk to you, before you even hire them, are you getting them to do some work before they get to talk to you, before you actually hire them? That will weed out 98% of your problems and the tire kickers. So I think it’s more like a question of what kind of treatment they get before they get hired, than the place. There’s no magic bullet because people will have several profiles anyways. So it’s not a matter of going to Upwork or going to Fiver. No, it’s a matter of the process that they go through before they get to you.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: Yep, I’m glad this question came up because I was at the same place that he is, or I love the information, but there’s just so much stuff that I don’t wanna go through all of those videos, like force fed. I actually wanna take my time going through it because I enjoy it. So what I ended up doing is I ran, I just ran it, our outsource kingpin funnel and ended up with three people. I interviewed them and I finished the third interview this morning actually. And that’s the person that I’m probably going to hire as a VA to go through the course thoroughly and then we’ll see how we can use them. But I need that person to go through the training, we’ll pay them to train, but I have to see if that person is able to go through the training and then apply it the way that it’s taught. And then we will decide after that. We pay them for the training, 75% of the salary that they’re going to get. But they need to be paid. They need to have that incentive, okay, I’m doing something, I’m not gonna get beat at the of this if I’m not getting paid for doing work. I’m actually going to get paid.

And so I think that’s a really good incentive. But that’s the final step that I think a lot of people miss, that you have to put the people through the test. You can’t just hire them, give them work and then say “Oh, freak. They didn’t work out for whatever reason.” No. Put them through training, and then see what kind of work they produce and then you make the final decision on the hire, and if not, you have other people you can fall back on, or you put three people through the training and the best person gets the job, like we did with RYS Academy, the very first VA that we hired for that. But, I mean, our shit works. We use it and it works for us. It should work for you.

Bradley: Yeah. And the last thing I wanna mention about that is that’s the point is if you say how would you keep them working for you? Just like Marco said, whenever I hire somebody from the funnel process, the hiring funnel process, I always, when I make the job offer, it’s in the offer, it’s made really very clear that I give them whatever we agreed upon for the proposed salary, I list all that in the welcome letter, the job offer letter, excuse me, but I also let them know that for the first 30 days, they’re on 75% their salary pay, because I pay by salary too, by the way. We don’t pay by hour. We pay by salary. And that gives us incentive to make sure we always give our VA’s enough work, because we’re paying them whether they’re working or not, does that make sense. So that makes us make sure that they’re constantly working. But I tell them 75% of their … And I call that training pay, because for the first 30 days, they’re on probation and they’re in training. I do still pay them, but they’re totally aware that at the end of 30 days, they’re salary will go up, pending review.

Obviously, if they’ve performed well, and about 80% of them do. There’s no question, there’s no doubt, I’m not gonna lie and say that it’s 100% effective all the time. It’s not. But it is about 80% effective, compared to, as you probably already know and many of you probably have experienced this, trying to outsource shit on your own without a good process, how effective has that been for you? It’s probably more like 20% effective, if that. Most people fail miserably when they try to outsource stuff, and it’s because of this reason. They don’t have a good process to put people through on the front end to qualify the outsourcer. And that’s what this does. This pre-qualifies everything. And then, once they’ve been pre-qualified, they’re still on probation until we’ve agreed that they’ve done well, they performed well, and they’ve met the requirements to go to full pay and stay on as an employee. So hopefully that was helpful.

Is Link Building Still Effective And How Often And In What Quantity Should We Be Getting Link Building For Our Network And Press Releases?

Steven. “Hey team. Thank you for all your great information you guys provide for free every week.” You’re welcome, Steven. “MY question is in two parts. First of all, is link building still effective?” It is. There is no question it is still effective and it will be for some time, Steven. “How often and in what quantity should we be getting link building for our networks and press releases?” Well, that depends on each project, each keyword, really. What it is you’re trying to do. How often is really gonna be determined based upon competition levels, as well as many other variables, like the age of the site, that kind of stuff. As far as networks and press releases, though, I can tell you one thing. Press releases, you can freaking hammer those. I don’t even think there’s a velocity issue, ever, with press releases. I could be wrong, but I never worry about it. Whenever I publish a press release and I wanna hit it with links, let me just make it really clear though, Steven. If you’re gonna be boosting press releases with links, find out which press releases are going to remain published, because a lot of press releases get purged after, sometimes even 30 days. Other press release sites or media sites don’t purge … It’s anywhere between 30 days and six months. But a lot of sites purge. In other words, they basically delete posts after a certain amount of time.

And so if you do a ton of link building to press release that’s going to be purged at some point, then you’ve basically thrown money away. It may give you a temporary boost, but once the … And I know this for 100% fact, because I’ve been testing press releases and using that as my sole link building method for multiple lead gen projects over the last several months, guys, like going on seven months now, and I had outstanding results, but then all of a sudden a lot of the stuff that I had outstanding results for started to drop significantly in MAPS rankings. And when I started to investigate, it’s because the vast majority of the press releases that I published over the last seven months are now gone. They no longer exist. And so my point is, it’s either something for press releases that you have to continue doing regularly, which is a great thing, guys, if you’re providing these services to clients, because you can sell clients on we need to publish these regularly, like one or two press releases a month.

Whatever you can sell them on, it now becomes a recurring service that you sell, instead of just hey, every now and then we’ll do a press release. No. We should be doing a press release once per month at least for every single client. That makes sense. And that’s another service that you can sell. It’s great. I love it. But, if you’re gonna be building links to press releases, find out which sites they remain published on and you choose those as your targets, your target URLs to build links to. As far as your networks, guys, networks typically I do a link building package right when the network has been built, created. Once a few seed posts have been published to it. So usually, I always try to season every single network with at least three posts. It’s three to five, typically, for every new network. Three to five posts. And then I’ll send it over for link building. And then once I get that back, then it’s just a matter of monitoring results. If I see that I need … Like, I’ll usually publish several more posts over the next several weeks … Or, I don’t publish them. My curators do. But I’ll just monitor results.

And if I’m not … I’m usually seeing movement at some point, but if I’m not seeing as much movement as I would like, then maybe I’ll boost the network again. But instead of just always building links to the network, I might do a drive stack instead, you know what I mean? Not might, I typically always do a drive stack too, but my point is it’s not always just about the link building, guys. Because remember, once you have a drive stack, then you can boost the drive stack with links. So there’s just a ton of things that you can do. All I would recommend is that for anything linking directly to your money site, try to keep it clean, something that you have control over, branded properties, you should make those your priority, stuff that you can brand, and then link to your site. And then you can do your link building to those, your tire one stuff. Okay? Good question though. Roman, do you have any recommendations on that? Is Roman still here?

Hernan: Yeah, he is, but I think he’s muted.

Roman: There we go. Sorry about that. In terms of link building still being effective … That question, correct?

Bradley: Yep.

Roman: Yeah, so in terms of link building being effective, it’s going to be a long while for it not to be. It’s just you have to understand what’s going on with it and how things are being reduced and re-weighted and what’s going on with that. So links are here to stay, because they’re part of the base algorithm. Google can’t just change the core fundamental of how it works overnight, not without upsetting the entire world and everyone else. So link building’s definitely here to stay for a while. In terms of how often and in what quantity, there’s a lot of variables that come into play, like you were mentioning. One of the main ones that a lot of people don’t talk about is traffic and how much traffic is coming in on links. And this is part of the reason why press releases are so effective, because they receive natural traffic. And stop and think about it too, right? If something goes viral, does it make sense that it would get links at a higher velocity than something else that isn’t viral, right?

Bradley: Absolutely.

Roman: Traffic is a major component when it comes to things like that. So whether you’re doing what Marco does with art, or triple T with Pierce’s side, it’s that same basic principle.

Bradley: Awesome. Thank you, Roman.

Roman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Will There Be A New Indexing Service To Be Introduced In Serp Space Soon?

Bradley: Okay, guys, we’ve got … I’m gonna try to get through these next three, up to Pete Hogg, in the next eight minutes. So we’re gonna try to make this the lightning round because we’re almost out of time. And I’d really like to get to these three guys. Okay, Jeff is up. He says “A week or so ago, Marco mentioned the indexing service in SerpSpace wasn’t working the way it should and that it was being redone. Just checking to see when a new indexing service will be available.” Do we have any ETA on that, guys?

Roman: Not yet. We’re still working on it.

Is It Possible To Have Separate Page For Each Location Using Maps Powerhouse?

Bradley: Alright, Jeff. We do not have an ETA for you on that. We apologize. We will certainly announce that when we do. “Secondly, dealing with a multi-location bank, 11 locations, if I wanna do MAPS powerhouse, can I do a separate one for each location?” Absolutely. Absolutely. “The URLs are like this, okay, locations bank one, bank two, et cetera. Is there an issue with all these coming back to the main site even though they would be going to separate pages?” No, because they’re all Google Maps properties. Like that wouldn’t hurt anything. And remember, you’re just embedding Google Maps. So anybody have a comment on that before I move on?

Marco: No, I mean that’s perfect. There are no issues with Google Maps or My Maps, for that matter, because Google lets you play with them and embed them. And yes, Jeffrey Smith’s stuff is awesome.

When Buying Double Phone Verified Gmail Accounts, Are Aged Accounts Better Or Are Brand New Accounts Recommended?

Bradley: It is. It is. I totally agree, though. It’s worth hiring a VA to learn how to go do all that stuff, keyword research, and everything else. Very in depth. Alright, Nigel. “Good day, gents. Grateful as always for you guys Jeffrey Smith was impressive. Talk about knowledge and value commensurate with SM and pedigree.” Exactly. I mean, that’s why we brought him on because he’s that good. “I picked up the SEO bootcamp and appreciated the generous discounts and bonuses. Thank you. Can’t wait to dig in and report back.” Please do, Nigel. Seriously. Please do report back what you think and also the results that you get from implementing what you learn, because that’s the best testimonial you can give. “I have TTT personas. When buying double phone verified Gmail accounts, are aged accounts better, or brand new accounts recommended?” Okay, I would only use aged accounts for YouTube stuff, guys. I mean, that’s …

Let me be real clear. I’ve only tested using aged accounts on YouTube stuff. I don’t care if I’m setting up a brand new profile or persona that I’m gonna build a network for. I don’t care if it’s on a brand new Gmail account. It doesn’t make any difference to me because it’s likely that that YouTube account that’s created with that profile, if we create a YouTube account with that profile, isn’t gonna be the one that I’m using to boost my … You know, as my content … My distribution channel, in other words. It’s usually persona networks are just supporting networks that will boost another channel’s videos. So the channel that I’m gonna be publishing videos to, that I want aged, and I have been testing some of those aged accounts and they do absolutely work better, at least according to my tests they do. But as far as for just double phone verified accounts for setting up persona accounts, no, don’t spend the extra money on aged accounts. At least, I haven’t tested that. I don’t see the need to do that. They may work better, but I just don’t know how if you’re not using … I mean, personally, I don’t really see how it would benefit at all, unless you were using one of those Google properties as your distribution engine, in which case, then an aged account makes sense.

Do You Recommend Building Personas Details Yourself For IFTTT Setups Or Let VAs Do Everything?

“Best practice. Do you recommend building persona details yourself for IFTT setups or let VA’s do everything when they create?” I let the VA’s do everything because I don’t wanna do the damn work. That’s why I pay the VA’s. That’s what we do in SerpSpace. If you provide us with the details, we can provide you with the persona data and all that. You just gotta give us the theme, like tags, interests, stuff like that, and we can produce the profile around that. You can create your own manual checklist. That might be something we can do at some point, which is create a manual checklist. That’s not a bad idea. That’s a pretty good idea. As far as I know, when we sell the Done for You networks on RYS stuff, they don’t come with a checklist, right guys?

Marco: No, they don’t come with a checklist right now. It could be done, but since it’s done up to our standards and specs and directly from the training that’s available in RYS Reloaded, we don’t feel that it’s necessary for that manual checklist, because not only does the VA, whoever gets the order, do it, [inaudible 00:56:07] will go over it once it’s done and perform that checklist that he’s talking about. There is a human that actually goes through it and makes sure that it’s done up to the standards that are expected. Now we do get some clunkers, guys. We’re not perfect. We’re all human. We have bad days. When that happens, all you have to do is contact us and we’ll go in there and manually fix whatever it was that might have gone wrong, or was omitted, or wasn’t done correctly. So we do backup everything that we sell and that we say. So you can have that comfort that when you order, it’s going to be done according to the training, and that it’s going to be checked before it’s delivered to you.

Bradley: Make a note of it, though, that that’s not a bad idea maybe to produce a checklist for both networks and drive stacks.

Marco: Yeah, Roman.

Bradley: To give with delivery.

Marco: Yeah, that would be on SerpSpace.

Are Live Rank Sniper And CrowdSearch Still Viable Tool Strategies 2018?

Bradley: Yep. That could be a really good value added thing that would make it more useful for people. Number three … God, we’re almost out of time. I really hope I can get to Pete’s, too. “Are Live Rank Sniper and Crowd Search still working viable tool strategies for 2018?” Well, Live Rank Sniper, yes. I use that tool all the time. I’ve used it this week already to poke over 200 keywords. I use that tool freaking all the time. It’s amazing. I love that tool, Live Rank Sniper. The only thing that I don’t like about it is it’s slow. In other words, if you load in 25 or 30 keywords that you wanna poke, it’ll take a couple hours for it to run. Where there’s some other tools out there that will poke keywords a hell of a lot faster, but I like the fact that I don’t need videos, I don’t need a shit ton of channels. You only need one channel to make Live Rank Sniper work. I use it literally every week, almost. Almost every single week. I’ve used it several days this week already.

Alright, so anyways, Crowd Search. The only thing I would use Crowd Search for right now, which I still have credits in there. I don’t subscribe anymore, but I still have credits. I use them still for referral traffic campaigns, and also for some video … You know, sending traffic to video, although I’ve just been setting up YouTube ads for sending traffic to video now and that works so much better because that’s real genuine traffic. You’re buying views from Google, essentially. And so that works so much better. But I still do use Crowd Search for sending referral traffic through like social media links and things like that. But it’s only because I’ve got a store of credits. I probably wouldn’t subscribe now. Not probably, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t subscribe now. And I’m not trying to say anything bad except the fact that, guys, it’s not as effective as it used to be and it’s because … We think we have an idea as to why. It’s probably because the IP’s are all coming from pretty much a similar pool of IP’s like a lot of those other tools are using, and therein lies the problem.

So, but Live Rank Sniper, absolutely. Crowd Search, if you’re gonna use it in a very specific way, then I could see it as still being viable. We have our own traffic tool in progress, but it’s bene in progress for months. We don’t have an estimated time that that’s gonna be launched, so I don’t wanna tease you with that just yet. We’ve done enough of that. So next time we talk about it, it’ll be when it’s ready.

Should You Use A Current Youtube Account And Add Another Channel Branded Towards Contractors And The Building Trade Or Create An Entirely New Account?

Alright, last question. We got a minute. Pete says “Hey guys, the SEO bootcamp looks solid. I’m just starting out. If I was in a position to sign up, I would be there. It looks awesome, like awesome training.” I totally understand, Pete. Don’t worry about it. Follow some of what we teach you, go make some revenue and then you can invest in your education. “I have a YouTube channel for my business brand which is SEO and marketing. I wanna set up a channel for local contractors to rank lead gen videos in home improvement sector. I’ve started a YouTube training course, but not finished it yet. Should I use my current YouTube account and add another channel branded towards contractors in the building trade, or should I set up a completely new account specifically for the contractor lead gen videos?” Okay. I recommend that you set up a new Gmail account.

We just talked about this a moment ago, with the aged accounts. If you’re gonna be setting up a new channel that you’re gonna be using as a content distribution engine, basically for publishing all of your videos, then I highly recommend that you buy an aged YouTube account. It can be a persona account. It doesn’t matter. Just buy an aged YouTube account because then you have now … And here’s why I’m telling you this, guys. I recommend creating the new channel under a new Google account, so basically a new profile, and then adding your main account … So in your case, Pete, your Pete Hogg account, as a manager. So a channel manager, so that you could access and still do all the work on that channel through your main Gmail login. But the reason why I always say separate them with different owners, channel owners, is because if in the event you were to ever get slapped for something, you don’t wanna … It could potentially affect your Gmail account, that could then affect all channels associated as you as the owner of those channels.

In other words, any channel that you’re the owner of could be potentially affected, whereas if you’re just the manager, if the contractor account YouTube channel, the contract YouTube channel is owned by another Google account and you’re just the manager, in case you were to get some sort of penalty for something or another, it wouldn’t affect the other channel because you’re just a manager, not the owner. So that’s the reason why I do it that way, guys. It’s a way to protect my assets. So it’s a way to cover my assets. And that’s why I do it that way. But you can do it either way. I recommend that you do it that way just because it provides a level of protection. If you’re gonna do that, buy an aged YouTube account, set the YouTube account up underneath that account, and then add yourself as a manager. “Or should I set up …” I already answered that. “What is your advice for best results?” That is my advice. It’s just a way to save yourself from potential catastrophe in the event that something were to happen to your account, okay?

Okay guys, we’re a little bit over. Thanks for everybody being here. Sorry about the questions that we didn’t get to, guys. We apologize, but that’s why first come, first served. We certainly appreciate everybody being here. Thanks, Roman, for sticking around, and you too as well, Marco.

Roman: Yep.

Marco: Alright, man. Bye everyone.

Roman: Bye bye.

Bradley: See you, guys.

Chris: Take it easy.

Roman: Later.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 167 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 167

Click on the video above to watch Episode 167 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at https://semanticmastery.com/humpday.  

  Announcement

Bradley: Right as the fucking buzzer’s going. Oh, pardon me. Hey guys. This is Bradley Benner with Semantic Mastery. This is Hump Day Hangouts for January 17th, 2018.I believe this is episode 167. Yes, it is. 167. Sorry, we were in the middle of testing something. Like literally right as we were going live. Never stop testing, right? So we’ve got almost everybody here. Adam’s not here today. So I’m gonna go right on down the line as I see it. Chris, how’re you doing buddy? No audio from Chris. I know he’s traveling.

Hernan: Yeah.

Bradley: Okay. So Chris is here in spirit. We got Hernan with us too. What’s up, Hernan?

Hernan: What’s up guys? I’m really really excited to be here. Good stuff coming up, so I’m really really glad that we’re here.

Bradley: Hey, your Christmas tree’s down.

Hernan: It is. I mean, it’s gone. It’s been gone for 10 days or something.

Bradley: Gone, man.

Hernan: Yeah, it’s gone.

Bradley: It’s kind of disheartening. Kind of depressing.

Hernan: I could put that up. I have another plant over there.

Bradley: Awesome.

Chris: Sorry man. I was on [inaudible 00:01:14]. I’m sitting in a snowstorm in Austria. Like crazy. But everything else is good.

Bradley: Nice. Well that’s Chris. What’s up, man? Alright, Marco. What’s up, buddy?

Marco: What’s up, dude?

Bradley: How are you?

Marco: Testing. Always testing out.

Bradley: Yeah, that’s awesome. And then we got Roman on with us today, which is awesome, from SerpSpace. And we got some cool announcements that he’s gonna be talking about as well. So what’s up, Roman?

Roman: Hey, I’m good.

Bradley: Good. Okay, well, I know Hernan’s got a couple of announcements to go through. I wanna mention real quick, because I had this already. We did a webinar with Jeffery Smith again on Monday, which was for the SEO bootcamp guys. If you guys have been following us for at all the last two months or so, you know that we’ve talked about this course before. It’s hands down the best on page SEO course I’ve ever seen. And I mean that. It’s fabulous. And Jeffrey Smith just put in an enormous amount of work into it. It’s really really good. And so we’re not even gonna try to compete with that. We just said “Jeffrey, we just wanna promote yours.” So we had another webinar with him. It was our third one, actually. The first one went horribly wrong. The second one did better. But this one, this third one, was much much better.

So if you guys haven’t had a chance to watch it, it was almost like an hour and 40 minutes long. It was very very good. Very informative. I mean, yes, there’s an offer at the end for SEO bootcamp, but it’s at half price right now, or at least through our link it is. And it’s totally worth it, number one. But even if you don’t end up purchasing it, you can learn a lot just by going through the webinar. And I know that’s kind of cliché. You hear that shit all the time, but you’ll see how in depth he goes with like keyword research, as well as what entities are and how to basically like semantic relationships between the entities and things like … It’s incredible. I even learned a lot just from the presentation alone. So I would highly recommend that you guys go check it out. I’m gonna drop the link on the page for the replay. And then with that, Hernan, I’m gonna turn it over to you.

Hernan: Yeah, because apparently I do have some announcements. So yeah, the video lead gen system is coming up next week. I know that Bradley has been working hard with that and we have … Here’s the thing. We have crafted that and Bradley has been going through his process of getting really good results with video, with lead gen, using video. So we’re gonna be releasing that next week. It’s probably gonna go through your … We’re probably gonna announce that the next Hump Day Hangout, but stay tuned to your emails because that’s gonna be released over there. And then we have Roman here, and I wanted to ask you, Roman, a little bit about the SEO ramp packages that you guys have been cooking on SerpSpace over there. So can you give us a little bit about the ramp down? What would be the ideal scenario to use them and how to use them, pretty much.

Bradley: And while you’re doing that … Excuse me, pardon me, Roman, but while you’re doing that, if you want, do you wanna pull up the screen to the page and just kind of showcase that page while you’re going through it?

Roman: Sure.

Bradley: Can you do that, or do you want me to pull it up?

Roman: Yeah, if you could pull it up, that’d be easier.

Bradley: Okay. I’ll see what I can do.

Roman: Yeah, basically, we’ve been working on this for the last few months, trying to get this pushed out live, but basically it’s a done for your solution for SEO packages. And we’ve got two main kind of packages. One for local and one for national. The big difference between the two is national is a little bit more of an oomph. You get a lot more links than you would with local and that’s for obvious reasons. A lot of times with national, there’s a bit more competition involved. But with our local rank packages, basically, it’s completely done for you. So there’s a plugin that we have on our backend and what that does is it integrates with let’s say your WordPress site or if you have an html site or another type of site, we can work with those as well.

And what it does is it creates the pages on your site and it does the back linking automatically. And every month it adds more pages onto your site and generates more additional back links that way as well. So over time, it’s effectiveness grows and these type of links that it’s setting to your site are some of the best ones that you can get anywhere. They come from trusted, validated entities and, seriously, from an SEO standpoint, you can’t ask for a higher quality link. These are all real businesses that are essentially linking to you. And it’s a beautiful content distribution network that’s going on with this.

Bradley: Yeah, and I’m testing it right now with some sites guys and it’s super powerful and we know the kind of like what the infrastructure is behind it, and it’s fucking amazing, really. And like he said, these are all established entities. Like verified Google my business type sites that we’re getting links from. It’s just amazing. Which those are the best types of links you can get, especially for local business, you know.

Roman: Yeah. It’s coming from relevant, local businesses. And that’s … What more could you ask for?

Bradley: Yep. One thing, Roman, I’ve got a bone to pick. Who the fuck let that be the thumbnail for the video? Come on guys. That’s shitty.

Roman: We’ll have to get Alvin to-

Bradley: Come on, man. Can somebody please go update that?

Roman: Tony and I were talking about it.

Bradley: God almighty. It’s not doing me a service at all.

Roman: We’ll get that fixed up for you.

Bradley: I’m used to Wayne doing that shit on Hump Day Hangouts with memes and stuff. But come on, man, this is a sales page.

Roman: Apologize about that.

Bradley: No worries on that.

Hernan: Anyways, I think the link is on the comments over there, guys. So if you wanna go ahead and check them out, they’re really really powerful. We’re pretty pumped about this. So go ahead and check them out. You can always open a free account at serpspace.com and then Bradley’s just put the link on the questions over there on the comments and the events, so you should definitely check it out.

Yeah, guys, you have anything else to add before we move on to-

Roman: Yeah, the only thing is I wanted to mention is this is really a set it and forget it type of service. So it’s really easy to set up and just to go with. So if you’re somebody that’s a local business owner, anything like this, this is really a great solution for you. If you’re selling to local businesses, then this is also a fantastic solution because it allows you to be able to focus on you bringing in more revenue and not so much on the backside of the fulfillment services. So this makes your life easy.

Hernan: Right, right. And we have a lot of people come into the Hump Day Hangouts and students [inaudible 00:08:12] general have their own agency, so I think this is both a time saver and a headache saver because mostly because it’s like turning around and giving a better service to your own clients. This works for your own lead gen, if you’re doing lead gen, if you’re doing pay per call, or rather if you’re doing rank and run, whatever you’re trying to do. Or if you’re selling the service to your clients.

Roman: Yep.

Hernan: Okay. Pretty cool. Pretty cool. Alright, so go ahead guys and check it out. Again, you can always open a free account over there at SerpSpace and if you have any questions, you can contact us with any questions that you might have. And the last note that I had over here was to talk a little bit about the charity, the nations. Marco, you wanna take a stab at it? Like, what’s the status of that and how we’re looking.

Marco: Yeah, absolutely. You can just go to the page. I’ve posted the link towards the top, and see how close we are to the goal where we started, which was 10,000. Guys if you put us above 10,000 before or on Friday the 26th, I’ll take it up to 15,000. If you take us up to 15 by one dollar, I’ll take it up to 20. It’s a challenge. Put it over a dollar. If you see it at 9999, go ahead and contribute two bucks and make Marco spend the rest for the kids. I don’t mind. It’s a really worthy cause. It’s an education initiative. The only way out of poverty is giving people access to a quality education, with all the tools that they need to be able to compete in school.

So once they have that, once you have that education, once you’re on that track, you also need the support, right? Community support and other tools to keep you on that track and to keep you from going astray, which is also part of this. So I think it’s just a great initiative. Visit the page, watch the video so that you know what it’s about. And if you feel like giving, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and the kids thank you. And if not, that’s fine. We’re still going to be here and we’re still going to answer your questions for free. So either way, it’s cool, we love you.

Hernan: Awesome.

Bradley: That’s pretty cool.

Hernan: Yeah, we’re really really near. And it’s just last but not least, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, welcome. We have more and more people joining us on Hump Day Hangout pretty much every week, so thank you guys for the support, for the comments, for everything. So I would really appreciate you guys dropping your questions, taking the time to do that. If you’re new to Semantic Mastery, welcome. If you’ve been around with us for a while, thank you for that. And the best place to start is always this, Hump Day Hangouts, and then the second best place is for you to get the battle plan. It’s really inexpensive and it’s an investment on your business. You go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com and you can get a copy of the battle plan. People are having really really good results with that. And yeah, that’s basically all I got, Bradley, so we can jump right into questions.

Bradley: Alright, sweet. I was pre-reading some of the questions. It makes it a little bit easier for me. So Andy T … Oh yeah, first of all, I say this at the beginning of every webinar now, guys. Go to bradleybenner.com and subscribe to my mindset emails everyday. I’m actually not writing everyday right now. I started … It was the second week in January I started coaching CrossFit classes everyday now, in the mornings. And so the hour I was spending writing an email everyday is now being devoted to CrossFit training, or coaching, so I’m not writing everyday. I’m trying to squeeze in emails as I can, as I can find time.

So I’m trying to get at least two or three emails done per week. It is still a priority, guys, but there’s only so many hours in the day and this is a … The CrossFit thing’s a new business for me and I love it. It’s a lot of fun and it’s also part of what we’re doing in Mastermind for the 2018 education track. With that said, go sign up to bradleybenner.com, or go there and subscribe to the email list, because I’ve been sending out a lot of emails and it’s just stuff that I talk about on a daily business about mindset stuff and success habits and goal setting and that kind of things, and I know that that would help pretty much everybody that attends these Hump Day Hangouts, okay? So go check it out.

Does The “Related Post” Feature Make The Silos Less Effective Since It’s Pulling Posts From Another Silo?

That said. Andy, he’s up first. He says “Hey BB and team, I am currently using a theme that has this related post feature at the bottom of the page. Sometimes it is pulling posts from other silos. Is this related post feature will make the silo less effective since it’s pulling post from other silo?” Yes, Andy, it will. Most of the time those types of related posts, like plugins, or I don’t know about the themes themselves, but a lot of times those types of plugins will allow you to set categories. In other words, it will only show related posts from the same category. And that’s how you would do it, right? Because then it would prevent it from showing posts from other silos. Because that’s all a silo is, is a category. So I would check the settings. I assume there’s some sort of way to customize that. If there’s not, then I would disable that feature entirely and go with a plugin or do it manually. So, but yes, it will absolutely be the theme. Somebody got a comment on that?

Marco: Yeah, I think Jeffrey Smith’s … And it comes with the unpaid version of the plugin, but the deep link juggernaut would be a better investment, so that you could link throughout the silo, rather than delving outside the silo and kind of … You’re not sure whether it fits the silo or not. You know, because you could keep your links within the silo.

Would It Be Wise To Set Up A New Niche Site In An Existing Hosting And Only Move It To A New Hosting After Verifying It Shows Potential For Growth?

Bradley: Yep. Totally agree. Also, I am planning to start a new niche site, but I am not sure if the new site will take off. Do you think it will be wise to setup the site in existing hosting and only move it to new hosting after verifying that the site shows potential for growth? The reason I’m thinking this is to save money. What is your advice? Well, that’s kind of a … Yes, I would say don’t go setup a new hosting account for one site. Test it first. You can always move it to another host. If money’s an issue, I mean, hosting’s relatively inexpensive, but you wanna get good hosting. That’s the key. And we talked about this … Well, I guess it was the last Mastermind, or maybe it was two times ago, but we had Roman on and he was talking about PBN stuff and we were talking about hosting and we’ve always said that you should have good hosting.

So if you’re gonna be putting the site on an existing hosting account that’s decent hosting for testing purposes or to validate or verify whether it’s a good project to pursue, that’s fine. Because you have nothing to worry about. I wouldn’t put it on some real crappy like hostgater account, or something like that, because it may end up … A lot of times, it’s hard to rank sites on those accounts, guys, because it’s just a shitty, dirty IP. So my point is, if you’ve got a decent hosting account already, I’d just go ahead and throw it on there for now, and then if you start to get a lot of traffic and that kind of stuff, yeah, move it to its own hosting account, or better yet, a VPS or something. Any comments on that, guys?

Marco: We’re good.

Should You Have An Individual Blog On Each Page That Is Related To A City Or Just Produce Content Related To The City And Post On Home Page?

Bradley: Okay. Todd says “On my website ibuyhomes.com” … I would not recommend Todd, for future reference, that you post your URLs here, because there are trolls online, believe it or not. There’s even trolls in our audience. So just keep that in mind. Anyways, onto the question. I have an individual city pages where I try and buy homes on WordPress. Okay, on WordPress. Can I, or should I, have an individual blog for each page that is related to that city? Or should I just produce content related to that city and post it on the homepage?

Well, I’m not sure what you mean … If you’ve got a blog roll on the homepage … In other words, if every time you post a blog post, it’s automatically added to the homepage and it knocks the oldest post off, then that’s not a big deal. It’s gonna be dynamically updated every time you publish a new blog anyways. But if you’re talking about individual city … I’m assuming you mean like posts … Again, I’m not really following the question. I know each … In my opinion, at least for lead gen, for like contractors and stuff, it’s better for each location to have its own page. Or post. It really doesn’t matter. But it’s better to target, because then you can optimize specifically for that location. What causes problems is when you try to optimize for two location names in the same page or post. Then it an create what they call ambiguity. Ambiguity. That’s a difficult word to say. But you need to disambiguate the content by making it more specific, or adding other content that will reinforce what the theme is of that particular piece of content.

So in this case, it’s just a lot easier to create individual pages or posts for each location, so that you can target specifically one location. Now you can have … Here’s an example, Todd, and I’m sure this is probably what you’re referring to, but I think Fairfax County, Virginia has like 24 individual towns and cities, census designated areas, incorporated cities. You know, all that kind of stuff. Just basically 24 localities within the county. So each locality could have its own post or page on the site, where it’s optimized for ibuyhouses Vienna VA, ibuyhouses whatever, Oakland VA. All these different cities within Fairfax. Fairfax County. Then you could have a county page that lists every one of the individual locations and has maybe a brief snippet, a blurb, like a sentence or two or three about each location that then links out to that location page or post.

That makes sense. Because then it’s kind of a hierarchy, right? You could have like … In this example, Fairfax County would be a page, that then links out to all the individual locations, like I just mentioned, like Vienna, and Tyson’s Corner, and all these different locations within Fairfax County. And that way you’re creating basically a location-based silo. It makes a lot of sense that way, if you want to organize your content that way. It seems, at least with the lead gen stuff I do … I don’t do a lot of stuff in real estate, but for contractor leads, it seems to work really really well. Do you guys have any comments on that?

Hernan: No, I think you nailed it, Bradley. Because I would do the … Yeah, I would do pretty much what you were suggesting.

Bradley: Yeah, and by the way, Todd, you don’t need to make them super long posts. I found that if you’re gonna spend a lot of energy or effort and content, like long form content, I would want it to be on the county page, the longer page, where you’re listing everything. The individual posts, I would do it as posts, right? The individual locations would each be posts. But however you decide to do it. They don’t have to be that much content. Literally, 300 words could do it. It’s just a matter of … Usually those smaller areas are gonna be a lot less competitive anyways, so they don’t require as much content. But what you’re trying to do is just stack the theme. You’re trying to stack the keywords in such a way that it reinforces the overall theme of that silo or category, in this case, in this example’s case, Fairfax County, right? And so the actual individual location posts don’t need to have that much content on them, okay? So hopefully that’s helpful.

Why Is It Better To Host All Products In One Domain Instead Of Two?

Mark’s up. He says “Bradley, I need to make the argument that it’s better for a company to have all their products on one primary domain, with their website like www.mico.com and not have a website like www.mico.com and their products on sub domains, like product.mico.com, with the two interlinking. Give me all the good reasons why one domain is better.” Okay, I don’t do e-commerce and this sure sounds like an e-commerce question, Mark. Question mark. Ha ha. This sounds like an e-commerce question, Mr. York. So, anyways, I really don’t know whether that’s true or not. I honestly have no idea. I could tell you just from an assumption that if you have the products on sub domains, would those be separate sites? Or would they just be like somehow a product page on a sub domain, even though it’s all hosted from the same CMS or website platform or whatever? I don’t know. I don’t do e-commerce. That’s why I’m even asking that question. And so basically, if anybody here has an idea for an answer for this, that’s great, otherwise, Mark, I’m gonna have to pass, because I honestly don’t know what to tell you.

Hernan: Right, well what I’m thinking is that … If you have their website … Like, here’s the thing. Usually, when you’re doing e-commerce, you wanna have an e-commerce solution. And by e-commerce solution, I mean something like Shopify, or not Shopify, or Wucomm, or something like that, right? So the templates that are optimized for a institutional website might not be as optimized for an e-commerce. So that’s the only reason where I would definitely go ahead with a sub domain, where a completely different template that’s optimized for an e-commerce, because on the e-commerce, the action it’s on the spot. So people can actually click on the thing, add to cart, pay and that’s it. Usually, when you’re trying to mesh the two under the same template, even for if you’re doing WordPress, usually it doesn’t end up too well, you know what I mean?

Because the institutional or corporate template or themes are not optimized for e-commerce, for the most part, because they have a lot of stuff going on. When you have an e-commerce store, you want to have the least amount of steps between the person landing until they checkout, you know what I’m saying? So the goals of the websites are completely different. So one, you wanna showcase your services or whatever, and on the other hand, you wanna showcase your products and you want them to purchase. That’s why I would think that having a sub domain, with a different theme would be a better idea. And then you can rank the products. You can try to rank the products, and then you know how the thing goes with sub domains being more protective, or they’re protecting the [inaudible 00:23:07], you know?

Marco: Yeah, and if I could add, real quick. If it’s e-commerce, look at what Amazon does. Because they have a huge number of sub domains. For example, they have music, they have KDP, which is the Kindle Direct Publishing, they have the video, they have S3. Everything they do on a sub domain, and they do that because they know that the sub domains will power up the root domain and shoot back power into the sub domain. So they start feeding off each other. Now, the problem is that when you’re a one man gang, one man show, is that you have to maintain when you get to 10, 15, 20 sub domains on the same website, those have to be maintained. And so it’s kind of how much work are you gonna put into it and what the return is going to be for the time that you’ve invested.

Bradley: Yeah, and I think he’s trying to make the argument that to put them all onto one, which would make sense for efficiencies and ease of management. So I get what you’re saying, Mark, and I may have misunderstood the question when I read it the first time, because I think what you’re saying is having one sub domain where all the products are listed and then having the corporate site on the root is what you’re saying, I think. If I’m interpreting the question correctly, then yes, then Hernan’s answer makes a lot of sense and I get that, because I would totally agree that if you have … Like, if it’s e-commerce and they have their corporate template on the root domain, that you’d wanna have an e-commerce type solution on a sub domain, because again, the functionality wouldn’t be present in the actual root domain type framework, if that makes sense.

However, if it’s just … For example, if it were like a plumber, right, and so there’s a corporate domain saying “Hey, we’re a plumber in this area, give us a call, blah blah blah” and here’s all our services on a service sub domain, to me that wouldn’t make any sense. That’s not e-commerce, though. That’s just listing their services and hey call us and we’ll come give you an estimate. So that would be all on one root domain. But as far as if it is e-commerce, which is how I’m interpreting the question, it would make sense to have it on a separate sub domain because then you could have an e-commerce platform on the sub domain, where the company’s website would sit on the root. Any other comments on that, guys?

Hernan: No, yeah, no I agree with what you just say. It’s all about what the website is designed to do, right? So it all comes down to that.

Whose Name Do You Publish Under When Providing Content Services For Clients?

Bradley: James Rich, he says “When providing content services for clients, who’s name do you publish under?” It depends, James. Do you ask your clients for their preference or decide for them? Well, no, I always ask the clients. I don’t just decide stuff for clients, usually. I mean, I do, but not when it’s something public facing like publishing posts to their blog. Usually, my curators end up … They just use their own profile because probably 90% of all the posts that we post are curated posts and so I just have curators doing that stuff and they have their own profile. So they get an account added, or I add them, as either an editor, or sometimes an administrator, or whatever, an admin, to the actual site, publisher, or whatever, whatever you call it. There’s different options for user levels in WordPress. Typically, I just select it as editor for most of my curators and I just create the account for them through the WordPress dashboard and it just sends them the login details via email. But they have … For example, all my curators, I have them go set up their profile on Gravatar, which Gravatar integrates with WordPress.

So as soon as I send them their login details using their email that’s been registered through Gravatar with their profile photo, then once they get their login details for the WordPress site, then when they login, their profile photo’s already gonna be attached, and then they can go to the users section and edit their profile to include bio and links to their social media properties and stuff like that. Or, in a lot of cases, we have author box plugins on the WordPress sites because a lot of newer themes do have the author credit stuff, but some of the older themes, which I still have a lot of sites in use that are on older themes that didn’t have nice author box settings native to the themes, so we would add author box plugins, like star boxes in one of them we use a lot. So in which case, like I said, they just go in and edit their profile data once they get access to the WordPress site, to make sure everything looks good.

Now I do have a couple of clients, though, that prefer that it’s their name listed as the author of the post, even though it’s my curators producing the content, which is fine. If that’s what they want, we do it that way. We just set up an account, a user account, for the client, basically as an author, or an editor, or whatever. And then we have my VA’s, my curators actually login under their account, if that makes sense, and post that way. Also, I believe as an editor, they can login even as their own … Like, as an admin, I know we can do this. We can go in and change the author of a post or whatever, or when we go to create a post, we can select who we want the post to be placed under or given … Who we can choose who we want the author to be from all the available users on the WordPress site.

As an admin you can do that. I don’t know about … I think editors can do that too. But anyways, so again, it’s just a matter of logging in, depending on what their privileges are, as far as access privileges, they can either update that stuff on their own, or they just login underneath the client’s profile. Okay?

What Is Your Process For Giving VA’s Access To Each Site?

What is my process for giving VA’s access to each site? Whenever I sell a client on content marketing services, I just get access to WordPress for me, and then I set my curators up with access, just like I mentioned. Just go to users, add new user, and then put in their profile, their email address … Again, recommend that your VA’s have their own Gravatar.

If they have like a primary email account that has a bunch of stuff that’s not related to what you want their profile image to be as a writer for that blog, have them create a new Google account, a new Gmail account and a profile that is basically tailored to what you want them to be, to give the image that you want them to present. And then use that Gmail as the email account that you set up their WordPress access with. Because then they can set up a new Gravatar account under the new email address that has all the data that you want and it would be more specific to the type of authors, and I’m using air quotes, that you want writing on each one of your blogs. That’s certainly a possibility too. That’s a good question though, James.

What Kind Of Results Do You Typically See In Using Video Email To Do Outreach And Prospect?

[Yanan 00:30:15] says “Hey team,” or “Hey guys,” excuse me. “Tell me something. Are you still using video email to do outreach and prospect?” Well, as a matter of fact, we are. In fact, that’s what the video lead gen system product we’re launching next week, or in two weeks, or whatever it is … It’s completely about that because it is still very very effective and we have a lot of people actually using that now since we taught about it in Mastermind, as well as in some other places. And we’ve got some really good feedback from it. So, video lead gen system, coming out … When is it, Hernan? Next week, or the following week?

Hernan: Next week, actually.

Bradley: Next week.

Hernan: Yeah, so stay tuned, guys, because we’re gonna drop some emails and there’s probably gonna be some sort of coupon or launch price, et cetera, et cetera. That’s gonna last probably 24 hours, is not less, so stay tuned.

Bradley: Yep. And we’re not doing some big launch on this stuff, guys. It’s not gonna be something you’re gonna get a shit ton of emails from a hundred different IM marketers and stuff like that. It’s not gonna happen. This is an internal launch only. We are just creating this product and launching it to people on our subscriber list. That’s it. So it’s not gonna be some big, stupid launch. It’s a great freaking product. It works really really well, the process. And here’s something that I hadn’t even mentioned yet … Oh, damn. You guys gotta remind me. I gotta get a VSL done on that page and all that. I’m gonna be throwing a bonus webinar into that product, that we’re gonna do live, within probably two weeks of the product being launched, where I’m gonna show how to find prospects to use the video email method for, with YouTube, and it’s a very very easy process, and it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, so to speak. It’s so easy to find good clients, good prospects, good candidates this way. And so that’s something I’m gonna be covering in a bonus webinar.

Alright. What kind of results do you typically see? Well, when I was doing a lot of that … I’m doing more the shotgun approach now than the rifle approach because it’s a time thing. Plus, the shotgun approach can be scaled more easily than the rifle approach can. And the video email system, or the video lead gen system is basically a rifle approach. It’s incredibly effective. But, like I said, it’s a bit time consuming. It’s not something you can scale very easily, compared to like a shotgun method, which would be like a mass marketing or a mass prospecting method, which is what I’m kind of developing now. But for this method in particular, when I was doing that a lot to grow my own agency, for every 10 emails I sent, I would get three or four. So the average was 35%. Three or four replies, responses, from every 10 emails. And it was like clockwork. And out of every three or four responses that I got, I would close one or two of them.

And guys, it was like … But here was the problem, here’s where I failed with that method. It was incredibly successful for me landing clients. But I always would go into the prospecting mode and I would spend basically three or four days locating prospects, I.e., prospects that I would wanna contact, creating the actual videos, then sending out the emails, creating the emails and sending them out because they’re all personalized emails, they’re all personalized videos … This is why I said it can be time consuming. And I would spend two or three days setting it up. Then I would do the … Send out 10 emails, or whatever, 10 or 15, whatever it was. Then I would process the results, which would be like any responses, I’d get the communication going, start the dialogue between the prospects that replied and that kind of stuff. And I wouldn’t do anymore prospecting. Then I would land one or two of those clients, or those prospects then I’d turn them into clients, I’d sell them, I’d close them. Then I’d work on fulfilling their work with no additional prospecting. And then, once I got them to a point where it was more like autopilot and it could be more hands off for me, then I would turn the prospecting back on and I’d go back through that process all over again. And it was never consistent.

And so what I talked about in the training was how to make it a consistent process that gets repeated and done every single week. So that for example, if you send out 10 … If you made it part of your standard operating procedure for your business to send out 10 video emails per week and you outsourced 90% of it, which again, I show you in the training exactly how to do that, then you know it will get done. And if you have 10 going out every week, and let’s say on the low end you get three responses a week, and out of those three, you can only close one of them because you suck at sales. I’m not speaking to you directly, Yanan. I’m saying, just on a conservative estimate, let’s just say, hypothetically, you send out 10 a week, you get three responses, out of the three you close one. But you do that consistently, week in and week out. You have a VA doing most of the work for you and all you have to do is record the actual audit video, the video audit … Excuse me, the audit videos, is what I’m calling them. You record those so it’s in your voice. It’s going to be you making the contact with the prospect. So it’s kind of required that you do that.

But you could do it to where if you’re just doing 10 audit videos and they’re less than 10 minutes each, you could, in two and a half, or three hours, you could have all of the videos done every single week and then have a VA do all the rest of the work, send them out, locate prospects, collect contact info, send the templates out, the emails out, all that kind of stuff. And then all you have to do is process the leads. It would become part of your normal day-to-day operations, and you would always have a pipeline full of leads. And highly qualified leads, guys. These aren’t like the mass prospecting stuff that I’m doing right now where a lead is somebody that is just aware of who we are now, because they’ve interacted with us online in some way, shape, or form. At some level they interacted or engaged with one of my marketing messages, whether it’s an email, an ad, or whatever. But that’s not a very qualified lead yet. That’s just somebody that’s expressed some sort of interest. With this method, it is a highly qualified lead when they reply, because they know who you are, they feel like they’ve met you and blah blah blah.

So I don’t wanna spend a lot of time on that, guys. But the reason why I did is because the video lead gen system that we’re launching next week is incredibly powerful for those of you who are trying to get your agencies off the ground, or your business period off the ground, and you wanna provide local clients consulting services, or lead gen services and you’re looking for service providers, this is an outstanding way to do it. It’s non-confrontational, it’s easy, it’s not intimidating like making cold calls are, and it just works really really well. Any comments on that, guys, before I move on?

Does anybody else out here have any experience with the video emails for prospecting other than me?

Marco: You’re the man when it comes to that. I’ve never done … That’s not the way I’ve done my marketing.

How Would You Find A VA Who Would Want To Learn All SEO Bootcamp Stuff And How Would You Keep Them Working For You?

Bradley: Okay. I just know Adam’s used it quite a bit. I didn’t know if anybody else here had. Alright, good question, though, Yanan. Next question’s Quit This House. I know I’ve heard your name a bunch of times but I never remember. That SEO bootcamp is comprehensive. I don’t wanna learn all that stuff. Plus one that. I know it’s a bit intimidating, but it is awesome. He says “You suggested hiring a VA to learn and implement. How would you find a VA who would wanna learn all that stuff and how would you keep them working for you?” Okay, well, first of all, if you use an outsource or hiring funnel, like what we teach in outsource kingpin, exactly how to setup an outsource or hiring funnel. You eliminate all the people that wouldn’t be interested in doing all that to learning all that kind of stuff anyways, right? Like, literally, that’s why we developed that system, and I learned that from somebody else. We just custom tailored it for our own purposes.

But the hiring funnel system works so well, that you eliminate all the tire kickers and all the lazy people and all that kind of shit. It makes it so much easier to kind good good quality virtual assistant candidates that are willing to put in work and also you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they know how to follow instructions. That’s what the outsource or hiring funnel does. And so if you implement that right off the bat, then the people that make it all the way through the funnel process, the hiring funnel, are gonna be the top quality candidates that then you interview … And again, all this is taught in outsource kingpin. But then you set up interviews. I typically just do Skype text chat. Not phone, ear, or video interviews, because most of VA’s are in like Philippines, or India or whatever. So I really don’t care to talk to them. And I don’t mean that to sound like I’m being a prick. I mean, I just wanna know that they can communicate via text chat well.

And so the interview process is more about how well they communicate with me. Not whether they know how to do something or not, because I’m going to provide them with instructions for what I want them to do and exactly how I want them to do it. So I don’t care what they know how to do. All I wanna know, by the point when they’ve gotten through the hiring funnel, is that they’ve already proven they can follow instructions. They’ve already proven that they want the work. They’re hungry, they’re ambitious because they went through this process where you’re gonna lose most people through the process because they’re gonna be like “Eff this, I’m not doing this crap. I’m not even getting paid yet.”

But that’s the whole point, because by the time they get all the way through the end, you know that you’ve got highly qualified candidates that are ambitious, they’re hungry, they’re driven, and then the interview process is about which out of the remaining candidates are the best … Can I communicate the best with. Then that’s my hire. And it works like crazy. I know Marco’s used that, Hernan. Everyone on our team has used that process multiple times and it just works like magic. And so … I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Hernan: No, I mean, yeah, I totally agree with you, Bradley. You know, I get the question of … Or you find the questions in group saying “Hey, where do I find the best candidates?” “Where can I find help to do X, Y, Z? Because most people are just leaving, or most people are not committed.” And we always come up with the same answer. It’s not a matter of where. It’s a matter of the process you put them through before they even get to talk to you, or before they even-

Bradley: You qualify them.

Hernan: Yeah. Exactly. So before they even get to talk to you, before you even hire them, are you getting them to do some work before they get to talk to you, before you actually hire them? That will weed out 98% of your problems and the tire kickers. So I think it’s more like a question of what kind of treatment they get before they get hired, than the place. There’s no magic bullet because people will have several profiles anyways. So it’s not a matter of going to Upwork or going to Fiver. No, it’s a matter of the process that they go through before they get to you.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: Yep, I’m glad this question came up because I was at the same place that he is, or I love the information, but there’s just so much stuff that I don’t wanna go through all of those videos, like force fed. I actually wanna take my time going through it because I enjoy it. So what I ended up doing is I ran, I just ran it, our outsource kingpin funnel and ended up with three people. I interviewed them and I finished the third interview this morning actually. And that’s the person that I’m probably going to hire as a VA to go through the course thoroughly and then we’ll see how we can use them. But I need that person to go through the training, we’ll pay them to train, but I have to see if that person is able to go through the training and then apply it the way that it’s taught. And then we will decide after that. We pay them for the training, 75% of the salary that they’re going to get. But they need to be paid. They need to have that incentive, okay, I’m doing something, I’m not gonna get beat at the of this if I’m not getting paid for doing work. I’m actually going to get paid.

And so I think that’s a really good incentive. But that’s the final step that I think a lot of people miss, that you have to put the people through the test. You can’t just hire them, give them work and then say “Oh, freak. They didn’t work out for whatever reason.” No. Put them through training, and then see what kind of work they produce and then you make the final decision on the hire, and if not, you have other people you can fall back on, or you put three people through the training and the best person gets the job, like we did with RYS Academy, the very first VA that we hired for that. But, I mean, our shit works. We use it and it works for us. It should work for you.

Bradley: Yeah. And the last thing I wanna mention about that is that’s the point is if you say how would you keep them working for you? Just like Marco said, whenever I hire somebody from the funnel process, the hiring funnel process, I always, when I make the job offer, it’s in the offer, it’s made really very clear that I give them whatever we agreed upon for the proposed salary, I list all that in the welcome letter, the job offer letter, excuse me, but I also let them know that for the first 30 days, they’re on 75% their salary pay, because I pay by salary too, by the way. We don’t pay by hour. We pay by salary. And that gives us incentive to make sure we always give our VA’s enough work, because we’re paying them whether they’re working or not, does that make sense. So that makes us make sure that they’re constantly working. But I tell them 75% of their … And I call that training pay, because for the first 30 days, they’re on probation and they’re in training. I do still pay them, but they’re totally aware that at the end of 30 days, they’re salary will go up, pending review.

Obviously, if they’ve performed well, and about 80% of them do. There’s no question, there’s no doubt, I’m not gonna lie and say that it’s 100% effective all the time. It’s not. But it is about 80% effective, compared to, as you probably already know and many of you probably have experienced this, trying to outsource shit on your own without a good process, how effective has that been for you? It’s probably more like 20% effective, if that. Most people fail miserably when they try to outsource stuff, and it’s because of this reason. They don’t have a good process to put people through on the front end to qualify the outsourcer. And that’s what this does. This pre-qualifies everything. And then, once they’ve been pre-qualified, they’re still on probation until we’ve agreed that they’ve done well, they performed well, and they’ve met the requirements to go to full pay and stay on as an employee. So hopefully that was helpful.

Is Link Building Still Effective And How Often And In What Quantity Should We Be Getting Link Building For Our Network And Press Releases?

Steven. “Hey team. Thank you for all your great information you guys provide for free every week.” You’re welcome, Steven. “MY question is in two parts. First of all, is link building still effective?” It is. There is no question it is still effective and it will be for some time, Steven. “How often and in what quantity should we be getting link building for our networks and press releases?” Well, that depends on each project, each keyword, really. What it is you’re trying to do. How often is really gonna be determined based upon competition levels, as well as many other variables, like the age of the site, that kind of stuff. As far as networks and press releases, though, I can tell you one thing. Press releases, you can freaking hammer those. I don’t even think there’s a velocity issue, ever, with press releases. I could be wrong, but I never worry about it. Whenever I publish a press release and I wanna hit it with links, let me just make it really clear though, Steven. If you’re gonna be boosting press releases with links, find out which press releases are going to remain published, because a lot of press releases get purged after, sometimes even 30 days. Other press release sites or media sites don’t purge … It’s anywhere between 30 days and six months. But a lot of sites purge. In other words, they basically delete posts after a certain amount of time.

And so if you do a ton of link building to press release that’s going to be purged at some point, then you’ve basically thrown money away. It may give you a temporary boost, but once the … And I know this for 100% fact, because I’ve been testing press releases and using that as my sole link building method for multiple lead gen projects over the last several months, guys, like going on seven months now, and I had outstanding results, but then all of a sudden a lot of the stuff that I had outstanding results for started to drop significantly in MAPS rankings. And when I started to investigate, it’s because the vast majority of the press releases that I published over the last seven months are now gone. They no longer exist. And so my point is, it’s either something for press releases that you have to continue doing regularly, which is a great thing, guys, if you’re providing these services to clients, because you can sell clients on we need to publish these regularly, like one or two press releases a month.

Whatever you can sell them on, it now becomes a recurring service that you sell, instead of just hey, every now and then we’ll do a press release. No. We should be doing a press release once per month at least for every single client. That makes sense. And that’s another service that you can sell. It’s great. I love it. But, if you’re gonna be building links to press releases, find out which sites they remain published on and you choose those as your targets, your target URLs to build links to. As far as your networks, guys, networks typically I do a link building package right when the network has been built, created. Once a few seed posts have been published to it. So usually, I always try to season every single network with at least three posts. It’s three to five, typically, for every new network. Three to five posts. And then I’ll send it over for link building. And then once I get that back, then it’s just a matter of monitoring results. If I see that I need … Like, I’ll usually publish several more posts over the next several weeks … Or, I don’t publish them. My curators do. But I’ll just monitor results.

And if I’m not … I’m usually seeing movement at some point, but if I’m not seeing as much movement as I would like, then maybe I’ll boost the network again. But instead of just always building links to the network, I might do a drive stack instead, you know what I mean? Not might, I typically always do a drive stack too, but my point is it’s not always just about the link building, guys. Because remember, once you have a drive stack, then you can boost the drive stack with links. So there’s just a ton of things that you can do. All I would recommend is that for anything linking directly to your money site, try to keep it clean, something that you have control over, branded properties, you should make those your priority, stuff that you can brand, and then link to your site. And then you can do your link building to those, your tire one stuff. Okay? Good question though. Roman, do you have any recommendations on that? Is Roman still here?

Hernan: Yeah, he is, but I think he’s muted.

Roman: There we go. Sorry about that. In terms of link building still being effective … That question, correct?

Bradley: Yep.

Roman: Yeah, so in terms of link building being effective, it’s going to be a long while for it not to be. It’s just you have to understand what’s going on with it and how things are being reduced and re-weighted and what’s going on with that. So links are here to stay, because they’re part of the base algorithm. Google can’t just change the core fundamental of how it works overnight, not without upsetting the entire world and everyone else. So link building’s definitely here to stay for a while. In terms of how often and in what quantity, there’s a lot of variables that come into play, like you were mentioning. One of the main ones that a lot of people don’t talk about is traffic and how much traffic is coming in on links. And this is part of the reason why press releases are so effective, because they receive natural traffic. And stop and think about it too, right? If something goes viral, does it make sense that it would get links at a higher velocity than something else that isn’t viral, right?

Bradley: Absolutely.

Roman: Traffic is a major component when it comes to things like that. So whether you’re doing what Marco does with art, or triple T with Pierce’s side, it’s that same basic principle.

Bradley: Awesome. Thank you, Roman.

Roman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Will There Be A New Indexing Service To Be Introduced In Serp Space Soon?

Bradley: Okay, guys, we’ve got … I’m gonna try to get through these next three, up to Pete Hogg, in the next eight minutes. So we’re gonna try to make this the lightning round because we’re almost out of time. And I’d really like to get to these three guys. Okay, Jeff is up. He says “A week or so ago, Marco mentioned the indexing service in SerpSpace wasn’t working the way it should and that it was being redone. Just checking to see when a new indexing service will be available.” Do we have any ETA on that, guys?

Roman: Not yet. We’re still working on it.

Is It Possible To Have Separate Page For Each Location Using Maps Powerhouse?

Bradley: Alright, Jeff. We do not have an ETA for you on that. We apologize. We will certainly announce that when we do. “Secondly, dealing with a multi-location bank, 11 locations, if I wanna do MAPS powerhouse, can I do a separate one for each location?” Absolutely. Absolutely. “The URLs are like this, okay, locations bank one, bank two, et cetera. Is there an issue with all these coming back to the main site even though they would be going to separate pages?” No, because they’re all Google Maps properties. Like that wouldn’t hurt anything. And remember, you’re just embedding Google Maps. So anybody have a comment on that before I move on?

Marco: No, I mean that’s perfect. There are no issues with Google Maps or My Maps, for that matter, because Google lets you play with them and embed them. And yes, Jeffrey Smith’s stuff is awesome.

When Buying Double Phone Verified Gmail Accounts, Are Aged Accounts Better Or Are Brand New Accounts Recommended?

Bradley: It is. It is. I totally agree, though. It’s worth hiring a VA to learn how to go do all that stuff, keyword research, and everything else. Very in depth. Alright, Nigel. “Good day, gents. Grateful as always for you guys Jeffrey Smith was impressive. Talk about knowledge and value commensurate with SM and pedigree.” Exactly. I mean, that’s why we brought him on because he’s that good. “I picked up the SEO bootcamp and appreciated the generous discounts and bonuses. Thank you. Can’t wait to dig in and report back.” Please do, Nigel. Seriously. Please do report back what you think and also the results that you get from implementing what you learn, because that’s the best testimonial you can give. “I have TTT personas. When buying double phone verified Gmail accounts, are aged accounts better, or brand new accounts recommended?” Okay, I would only use aged accounts for YouTube stuff, guys. I mean, that’s …

Let me be real clear. I’ve only tested using aged accounts on YouTube stuff. I don’t care if I’m setting up a brand new profile or persona that I’m gonna build a network for. I don’t care if it’s on a brand new Gmail account. It doesn’t make any difference to me because it’s likely that that YouTube account that’s created with that profile, if we create a YouTube account with that profile, isn’t gonna be the one that I’m using to boost my … You know, as my content … My distribution channel, in other words. It’s usually persona networks are just supporting networks that will boost another channel’s videos. So the channel that I’m gonna be publishing videos to, that I want aged, and I have been testing some of those aged accounts and they do absolutely work better, at least according to my tests they do. But as far as for just double phone verified accounts for setting up persona accounts, no, don’t spend the extra money on aged accounts. At least, I haven’t tested that. I don’t see the need to do that. They may work better, but I just don’t know how if you’re not using … I mean, personally, I don’t really see how it would benefit at all, unless you were using one of those Google properties as your distribution engine, in which case, then an aged account makes sense.

Do You Recommend Building Personas Details Yourself For IFTTT Setups Or Let VAs Do Everything?

“Best practice. Do you recommend building persona details yourself for IFTT setups or let VA’s do everything when they create?” I let the VA’s do everything because I don’t wanna do the damn work. That’s why I pay the VA’s. That’s what we do in SerpSpace. If you provide us with the details, we can provide you with the persona data and all that. You just gotta give us the theme, like tags, interests, stuff like that, and we can produce the profile around that. You can create your own manual checklist. That might be something we can do at some point, which is create a manual checklist. That’s not a bad idea. That’s a pretty good idea. As far as I know, when we sell the Done for You networks on RYS stuff, they don’t come with a checklist, right guys?

Marco: No, they don’t come with a checklist right now. It could be done, but since it’s done up to our standards and specs and directly from the training that’s available in RYS Reloaded, we don’t feel that it’s necessary for that manual checklist, because not only does the VA, whoever gets the order, do it, [inaudible 00:56:07] will go over it once it’s done and perform that checklist that he’s talking about. There is a human that actually goes through it and makes sure that it’s done up to the standards that are expected. Now we do get some clunkers, guys. We’re not perfect. We’re all human. We have bad days. When that happens, all you have to do is contact us and we’ll go in there and manually fix whatever it was that might have gone wrong, or was omitted, or wasn’t done correctly. So we do backup everything that we sell and that we say. So you can have that comfort that when you order, it’s going to be done according to the training, and that it’s going to be checked before it’s delivered to you.

Bradley: Make a note of it, though, that that’s not a bad idea maybe to produce a checklist for both networks and drive stacks.

Marco: Yeah, Roman.

Bradley: To give with delivery.

Marco: Yeah, that would be on SerpSpace.

Are Live Rank Sniper And CrowdSearch Still Viable Tool Strategies 2018?

Bradley: Yep. That could be a really good value added thing that would make it more useful for people. Number three … God, we’re almost out of time. I really hope I can get to Pete’s, too. “Are Live Rank Sniper and Crowd Search still working viable tool strategies for 2018?” Well, Live Rank Sniper, yes. I use that tool all the time. I’ve used it this week already to poke over 200 keywords. I use that tool freaking all the time. It’s amazing. I love that tool, Live Rank Sniper. The only thing that I don’t like about it is it’s slow. In other words, if you load in 25 or 30 keywords that you wanna poke, it’ll take a couple hours for it to run. Where there’s some other tools out there that will poke keywords a hell of a lot faster, but I like the fact that I don’t need videos, I don’t need a shit ton of channels. You only need one channel to make Live Rank Sniper work. I use it literally every week, almost. Almost every single week. I’ve used it several days this week already.

Alright, so anyways, Crowd Search. The only thing I would use Crowd Search for right now, which I still have credits in there. I don’t subscribe anymore, but I still have credits. I use them still for referral traffic campaigns, and also for some video … You know, sending traffic to video, although I’ve just been setting up YouTube ads for sending traffic to video now and that works so much better because that’s real genuine traffic. You’re buying views from Google, essentially. And so that works so much better. But I still do use Crowd Search for sending referral traffic through like social media links and things like that. But it’s only because I’ve got a store of credits. I probably wouldn’t subscribe now. Not probably, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t subscribe now. And I’m not trying to say anything bad except the fact that, guys, it’s not as effective as it used to be and it’s because … We think we have an idea as to why. It’s probably because the IP’s are all coming from pretty much a similar pool of IP’s like a lot of those other tools are using, and therein lies the problem.

So, but Live Rank Sniper, absolutely. Crowd Search, if you’re gonna use it in a very specific way, then I could see it as still being viable. We have our own traffic tool in progress, but it’s bene in progress for months. We don’t have an estimated time that that’s gonna be launched, so I don’t wanna tease you with that just yet. We’ve done enough of that. So next time we talk about it, it’ll be when it’s ready.

Should You Use A Current Youtube Account And Add Another Channel Branded Towards Contractors And The Building Trade Or Create An Entirely New Account?

Alright, last question. We got a minute. Pete says “Hey guys, the SEO bootcamp looks solid. I’m just starting out. If I was in a position to sign up, I would be there. It looks awesome, like awesome training.” I totally understand, Pete. Don’t worry about it. Follow some of what we teach you, go make some revenue and then you can invest in your education. “I have a YouTube channel for my business brand which is SEO and marketing. I wanna set up a channel for local contractors to rank lead gen videos in home improvement sector. I’ve started a YouTube training course, but not finished it yet. Should I use my current YouTube account and add another channel branded towards contractors in the building trade, or should I set up a completely new account specifically for the contractor lead gen videos?” Okay. I recommend that you set up a new Gmail account.

We just talked about this a moment ago, with the aged accounts. If you’re gonna be setting up a new channel that you’re gonna be using as a content distribution engine, basically for publishing all of your videos, then I highly recommend that you buy an aged YouTube account. It can be a persona account. It doesn’t matter. Just buy an aged YouTube account because then you have now … And here’s why I’m telling you this, guys. I recommend creating the new channel under a new Google account, so basically a new profile, and then adding your main account … So in your case, Pete, your Pete Hogg account, as a manager. So a channel manager, so that you could access and still do all the work on that channel through your main Gmail login. But the reason why I always say separate them with different owners, channel owners, is because if in the event you were to ever get slapped for something, you don’t wanna … It could potentially affect your Gmail account, that could then affect all channels associated as you as the owner of those channels.

In other words, any channel that you’re the owner of could be potentially affected, whereas if you’re just the manager, if the contractor account YouTube channel, the contract YouTube channel is owned by another Google account and you’re just the manager, in case you were to get some sort of penalty for something or another, it wouldn’t affect the other channel because you’re just a manager, not the owner. So that’s the reason why I do it that way, guys. It’s a way to protect my assets. So it’s a way to cover my assets. And that’s why I do it that way. But you can do it either way. I recommend that you do it that way just because it provides a level of protection. If you’re gonna do that, buy an aged YouTube account, set the YouTube account up underneath that account, and then add yourself as a manager. “Or should I set up …” I already answered that. “What is your advice for best results?” That is my advice. It’s just a way to save yourself from potential catastrophe in the event that something were to happen to your account, okay?

Okay guys, we’re a little bit over. Thanks for everybody being here. Sorry about the questions that we didn’t get to, guys. We apologize, but that’s why first come, first served. We certainly appreciate everybody being here. Thanks, Roman, for sticking around, and you too as well, Marco.

Roman: Yep.

Marco: Alright, man. Bye everyone.

Roman: Bye bye.

Bradley: See you, guys.

Chris: Take it easy.

Roman: Later.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 167 this post was syndicated

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 167

Click on the video above to watch Episode 167 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

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The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at https://semanticmastery.com/humpday.  

  Announcement

Bradley: Right as the fucking buzzer’s going. Oh, pardon me. Hey guys. This is Bradley Benner with Semantic Mastery. This is Hump Day Hangouts for January 17th, 2018.I believe this is episode 167. Yes, it is. 167. Sorry, we were in the middle of testing something. Like literally right as we were going live. Never stop testing, right? So we’ve got almost everybody here. Adam’s not here today. So I’m gonna go right on down the line as I see it. Chris, how’re you doing buddy? No audio from Chris. I know he’s traveling.

Hernan: Yeah.

Bradley: Okay. So Chris is here in spirit. We got Hernan with us too. What’s up, Hernan?

Hernan: What’s up guys? I’m really really excited to be here. Good stuff coming up, so I’m really really glad that we’re here.

Bradley: Hey, your Christmas tree’s down.

Hernan: It is. I mean, it’s gone. It’s been gone for 10 days or something.

Bradley: Gone, man.

Hernan: Yeah, it’s gone.

Bradley: It’s kind of disheartening. Kind of depressing.

Hernan: I could put that up. I have another plant over there.

Bradley: Awesome.

Chris: Sorry man. I was on [inaudible 00:01:14]. I’m sitting in a snowstorm in Austria. Like crazy. But everything else is good.

Bradley: Nice. Well that’s Chris. What’s up, man? Alright, Marco. What’s up, buddy?

Marco: What’s up, dude?

Bradley: How are you?

Marco: Testing. Always testing out.

Bradley: Yeah, that’s awesome. And then we got Roman on with us today, which is awesome, from SerpSpace. And we got some cool announcements that he’s gonna be talking about as well. So what’s up, Roman?

Roman: Hey, I’m good.

Bradley: Good. Okay, well, I know Hernan’s got a couple of announcements to go through. I wanna mention real quick, because I had this already. We did a webinar with Jeffery Smith again on Monday, which was for the SEO bootcamp guys. If you guys have been following us for at all the last two months or so, you know that we’ve talked about this course before. It’s hands down the best on page SEO course I’ve ever seen. And I mean that. It’s fabulous. And Jeffrey Smith just put in an enormous amount of work into it. It’s really really good. And so we’re not even gonna try to compete with that. We just said “Jeffrey, we just wanna promote yours.” So we had another webinar with him. It was our third one, actually. The first one went horribly wrong. The second one did better. But this one, this third one, was much much better.

So if you guys haven’t had a chance to watch it, it was almost like an hour and 40 minutes long. It was very very good. Very informative. I mean, yes, there’s an offer at the end for SEO bootcamp, but it’s at half price right now, or at least through our link it is. And it’s totally worth it, number one. But even if you don’t end up purchasing it, you can learn a lot just by going through the webinar. And I know that’s kind of cliché. You hear that shit all the time, but you’ll see how in depth he goes with like keyword research, as well as what entities are and how to basically like semantic relationships between the entities and things like … It’s incredible. I even learned a lot just from the presentation alone. So I would highly recommend that you guys go check it out. I’m gonna drop the link on the page for the replay. And then with that, Hernan, I’m gonna turn it over to you.

Hernan: Yeah, because apparently I do have some announcements. So yeah, the video lead gen system is coming up next week. I know that Bradley has been working hard with that and we have … Here’s the thing. We have crafted that and Bradley has been going through his process of getting really good results with video, with lead gen, using video. So we’re gonna be releasing that next week. It’s probably gonna go through your … We’re probably gonna announce that the next Hump Day Hangout, but stay tuned to your emails because that’s gonna be released over there. And then we have Roman here, and I wanted to ask you, Roman, a little bit about the SEO ramp packages that you guys have been cooking on SerpSpace over there. So can you give us a little bit about the ramp down? What would be the ideal scenario to use them and how to use them, pretty much.

Bradley: And while you’re doing that … Excuse me, pardon me, Roman, but while you’re doing that, if you want, do you wanna pull up the screen to the page and just kind of showcase that page while you’re going through it?

Roman: Sure.

Bradley: Can you do that, or do you want me to pull it up?

Roman: Yeah, if you could pull it up, that’d be easier.

Bradley: Okay. I’ll see what I can do.

Roman: Yeah, basically, we’ve been working on this for the last few months, trying to get this pushed out live, but basically it’s a done for your solution for SEO packages. And we’ve got two main kind of packages. One for local and one for national. The big difference between the two is national is a little bit more of an oomph. You get a lot more links than you would with local and that’s for obvious reasons. A lot of times with national, there’s a bit more competition involved. But with our local rank packages, basically, it’s completely done for you. So there’s a plugin that we have on our backend and what that does is it integrates with let’s say your WordPress site or if you have an html site or another type of site, we can work with those as well.

And what it does is it creates the pages on your site and it does the back linking automatically. And every month it adds more pages onto your site and generates more additional back links that way as well. So over time, it’s effectiveness grows and these type of links that it’s setting to your site are some of the best ones that you can get anywhere. They come from trusted, validated entities and, seriously, from an SEO standpoint, you can’t ask for a higher quality link. These are all real businesses that are essentially linking to you. And it’s a beautiful content distribution network that’s going on with this.

Bradley: Yeah, and I’m testing it right now with some sites guys and it’s super powerful and we know the kind of like what the infrastructure is behind it, and it’s fucking amazing, really. And like he said, these are all established entities. Like verified Google my business type sites that we’re getting links from. It’s just amazing. Which those are the best types of links you can get, especially for local business, you know.

Roman: Yeah. It’s coming from relevant, local businesses. And that’s … What more could you ask for?

Bradley: Yep. One thing, Roman, I’ve got a bone to pick. Who the fuck let that be the thumbnail for the video? Come on guys. That’s shitty.

Roman: We’ll have to get Alvin to-

Bradley: Come on, man. Can somebody please go update that?

Roman: Tony and I were talking about it.

Bradley: God almighty. It’s not doing me a service at all.

Roman: We’ll get that fixed up for you.

Bradley: I’m used to Wayne doing that shit on Hump Day Hangouts with memes and stuff. But come on, man, this is a sales page.

Roman: Apologize about that.

Bradley: No worries on that.

Hernan: Anyways, I think the link is on the comments over there, guys. So if you wanna go ahead and check them out, they’re really really powerful. We’re pretty pumped about this. So go ahead and check them out. You can always open a free account at serpspace.com and then Bradley’s just put the link on the questions over there on the comments and the events, so you should definitely check it out.

Yeah, guys, you have anything else to add before we move on to-

Roman: Yeah, the only thing is I wanted to mention is this is really a set it and forget it type of service. So it’s really easy to set up and just to go with. So if you’re somebody that’s a local business owner, anything like this, this is really a great solution for you. If you’re selling to local businesses, then this is also a fantastic solution because it allows you to be able to focus on you bringing in more revenue and not so much on the backside of the fulfillment services. So this makes your life easy.

Hernan: Right, right. And we have a lot of people come into the Hump Day Hangouts and students [inaudible 00:08:12] general have their own agency, so I think this is both a time saver and a headache saver because mostly because it’s like turning around and giving a better service to your own clients. This works for your own lead gen, if you’re doing lead gen, if you’re doing pay per call, or rather if you’re doing rank and run, whatever you’re trying to do. Or if you’re selling the service to your clients.

Roman: Yep.

Hernan: Okay. Pretty cool. Pretty cool. Alright, so go ahead guys and check it out. Again, you can always open a free account over there at SerpSpace and if you have any questions, you can contact us with any questions that you might have. And the last note that I had over here was to talk a little bit about the charity, the nations. Marco, you wanna take a stab at it? Like, what’s the status of that and how we’re looking.

Marco: Yeah, absolutely. You can just go to the page. I’ve posted the link towards the top, and see how close we are to the goal where we started, which was 10,000. Guys if you put us above 10,000 before or on Friday the 26th, I’ll take it up to 15,000. If you take us up to 15 by one dollar, I’ll take it up to 20. It’s a challenge. Put it over a dollar. If you see it at 9999, go ahead and contribute two bucks and make Marco spend the rest for the kids. I don’t mind. It’s a really worthy cause. It’s an education initiative. The only way out of poverty is giving people access to a quality education, with all the tools that they need to be able to compete in school.

So once they have that, once you have that education, once you’re on that track, you also need the support, right? Community support and other tools to keep you on that track and to keep you from going astray, which is also part of this. So I think it’s just a great initiative. Visit the page, watch the video so that you know what it’s about. And if you feel like giving, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and the kids thank you. And if not, that’s fine. We’re still going to be here and we’re still going to answer your questions for free. So either way, it’s cool, we love you.

Hernan: Awesome.

Bradley: That’s pretty cool.

Hernan: Yeah, we’re really really near. And it’s just last but not least, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery, welcome. We have more and more people joining us on Hump Day Hangout pretty much every week, so thank you guys for the support, for the comments, for everything. So I would really appreciate you guys dropping your questions, taking the time to do that. If you’re new to Semantic Mastery, welcome. If you’ve been around with us for a while, thank you for that. And the best place to start is always this, Hump Day Hangouts, and then the second best place is for you to get the battle plan. It’s really inexpensive and it’s an investment on your business. You go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com and you can get a copy of the battle plan. People are having really really good results with that. And yeah, that’s basically all I got, Bradley, so we can jump right into questions.

Bradley: Alright, sweet. I was pre-reading some of the questions. It makes it a little bit easier for me. So Andy T … Oh yeah, first of all, I say this at the beginning of every webinar now, guys. Go to bradleybenner.com and subscribe to my mindset emails everyday. I’m actually not writing everyday right now. I started … It was the second week in January I started coaching CrossFit classes everyday now, in the mornings. And so the hour I was spending writing an email everyday is now being devoted to CrossFit training, or coaching, so I’m not writing everyday. I’m trying to squeeze in emails as I can, as I can find time.

So I’m trying to get at least two or three emails done per week. It is still a priority, guys, but there’s only so many hours in the day and this is a … The CrossFit thing’s a new business for me and I love it. It’s a lot of fun and it’s also part of what we’re doing in Mastermind for the 2018 education track. With that said, go sign up to bradleybenner.com, or go there and subscribe to the email list, because I’ve been sending out a lot of emails and it’s just stuff that I talk about on a daily business about mindset stuff and success habits and goal setting and that kind of things, and I know that that would help pretty much everybody that attends these Hump Day Hangouts, okay? So go check it out.

Does The “Related Post” Feature Make The Silos Less Effective Since It’s Pulling Posts From Another Silo?

That said. Andy, he’s up first. He says “Hey BB and team, I am currently using a theme that has this related post feature at the bottom of the page. Sometimes it is pulling posts from other silos. Is this related post feature will make the silo less effective since it’s pulling post from other silo?” Yes, Andy, it will. Most of the time those types of related posts, like plugins, or I don’t know about the themes themselves, but a lot of times those types of plugins will allow you to set categories. In other words, it will only show related posts from the same category. And that’s how you would do it, right? Because then it would prevent it from showing posts from other silos. Because that’s all a silo is, is a category. So I would check the settings. I assume there’s some sort of way to customize that. If there’s not, then I would disable that feature entirely and go with a plugin or do it manually. So, but yes, it will absolutely be the theme. Somebody got a comment on that?

Marco: Yeah, I think Jeffrey Smith’s … And it comes with the unpaid version of the plugin, but the deep link juggernaut would be a better investment, so that you could link throughout the silo, rather than delving outside the silo and kind of … You’re not sure whether it fits the silo or not. You know, because you could keep your links within the silo.

Would It Be Wise To Set Up A New Niche Site In An Existing Hosting And Only Move It To A New Hosting After Verifying It Shows Potential For Growth?

Bradley: Yep. Totally agree. Also, I am planning to start a new niche site, but I am not sure if the new site will take off. Do you think it will be wise to setup the site in existing hosting and only move it to new hosting after verifying that the site shows potential for growth? The reason I’m thinking this is to save money. What is your advice? Well, that’s kind of a … Yes, I would say don’t go setup a new hosting account for one site. Test it first. You can always move it to another host. If money’s an issue, I mean, hosting’s relatively inexpensive, but you wanna get good hosting. That’s the key. And we talked about this … Well, I guess it was the last Mastermind, or maybe it was two times ago, but we had Roman on and he was talking about PBN stuff and we were talking about hosting and we’ve always said that you should have good hosting.

So if you’re gonna be putting the site on an existing hosting account that’s decent hosting for testing purposes or to validate or verify whether it’s a good project to pursue, that’s fine. Because you have nothing to worry about. I wouldn’t put it on some real crappy like hostgater account, or something like that, because it may end up … A lot of times, it’s hard to rank sites on those accounts, guys, because it’s just a shitty, dirty IP. So my point is, if you’ve got a decent hosting account already, I’d just go ahead and throw it on there for now, and then if you start to get a lot of traffic and that kind of stuff, yeah, move it to its own hosting account, or better yet, a VPS or something. Any comments on that, guys?

Marco: We’re good.

Should You Have An Individual Blog On Each Page That Is Related To A City Or Just Produce Content Related To The City And Post On Home Page?

Bradley: Okay. Todd says “On my website ibuyhomes.com” … I would not recommend Todd, for future reference, that you post your URLs here, because there are trolls online, believe it or not. There’s even trolls in our audience. So just keep that in mind. Anyways, onto the question. I have an individual city pages where I try and buy homes on WordPress. Okay, on WordPress. Can I, or should I, have an individual blog for each page that is related to that city? Or should I just produce content related to that city and post it on the homepage?

Well, I’m not sure what you mean … If you’ve got a blog roll on the homepage … In other words, if every time you post a blog post, it’s automatically added to the homepage and it knocks the oldest post off, then that’s not a big deal. It’s gonna be dynamically updated every time you publish a new blog anyways. But if you’re talking about individual city … I’m assuming you mean like posts … Again, I’m not really following the question. I know each … In my opinion, at least for lead gen, for like contractors and stuff, it’s better for each location to have its own page. Or post. It really doesn’t matter. But it’s better to target, because then you can optimize specifically for that location. What causes problems is when you try to optimize for two location names in the same page or post. Then it an create what they call ambiguity. Ambiguity. That’s a difficult word to say. But you need to disambiguate the content by making it more specific, or adding other content that will reinforce what the theme is of that particular piece of content.

So in this case, it’s just a lot easier to create individual pages or posts for each location, so that you can target specifically one location. Now you can have … Here’s an example, Todd, and I’m sure this is probably what you’re referring to, but I think Fairfax County, Virginia has like 24 individual towns and cities, census designated areas, incorporated cities. You know, all that kind of stuff. Just basically 24 localities within the county. So each locality could have its own post or page on the site, where it’s optimized for ibuyhouses Vienna VA, ibuyhouses whatever, Oakland VA. All these different cities within Fairfax. Fairfax County. Then you could have a county page that lists every one of the individual locations and has maybe a brief snippet, a blurb, like a sentence or two or three about each location that then links out to that location page or post.

That makes sense. Because then it’s kind of a hierarchy, right? You could have like … In this example, Fairfax County would be a page, that then links out to all the individual locations, like I just mentioned, like Vienna, and Tyson’s Corner, and all these different locations within Fairfax County. And that way you’re creating basically a location-based silo. It makes a lot of sense that way, if you want to organize your content that way. It seems, at least with the lead gen stuff I do … I don’t do a lot of stuff in real estate, but for contractor leads, it seems to work really really well. Do you guys have any comments on that?

Hernan: No, I think you nailed it, Bradley. Because I would do the … Yeah, I would do pretty much what you were suggesting.

Bradley: Yeah, and by the way, Todd, you don’t need to make them super long posts. I found that if you’re gonna spend a lot of energy or effort and content, like long form content, I would want it to be on the county page, the longer page, where you’re listing everything. The individual posts, I would do it as posts, right? The individual locations would each be posts. But however you decide to do it. They don’t have to be that much content. Literally, 300 words could do it. It’s just a matter of … Usually those smaller areas are gonna be a lot less competitive anyways, so they don’t require as much content. But what you’re trying to do is just stack the theme. You’re trying to stack the keywords in such a way that it reinforces the overall theme of that silo or category, in this case, in this example’s case, Fairfax County, right? And so the actual individual location posts don’t need to have that much content on them, okay? So hopefully that’s helpful.

Why Is It Better To Host All Products In One Domain Instead Of Two?

Mark’s up. He says “Bradley, I need to make the argument that it’s better for a company to have all their products on one primary domain, with their website like www.mico.com and not have a website like www.mico.com and their products on sub domains, like product.mico.com, with the two interlinking. Give me all the good reasons why one domain is better.” Okay, I don’t do e-commerce and this sure sounds like an e-commerce question, Mark. Question mark. Ha ha. This sounds like an e-commerce question, Mr. York. So, anyways, I really don’t know whether that’s true or not. I honestly have no idea. I could tell you just from an assumption that if you have the products on sub domains, would those be separate sites? Or would they just be like somehow a product page on a sub domain, even though it’s all hosted from the same CMS or website platform or whatever? I don’t know. I don’t do e-commerce. That’s why I’m even asking that question. And so basically, if anybody here has an idea for an answer for this, that’s great, otherwise, Mark, I’m gonna have to pass, because I honestly don’t know what to tell you.

Hernan: Right, well what I’m thinking is that … If you have their website … Like, here’s the thing. Usually, when you’re doing e-commerce, you wanna have an e-commerce solution. And by e-commerce solution, I mean something like Shopify, or not Shopify, or Wucomm, or something like that, right? So the templates that are optimized for a institutional website might not be as optimized for an e-commerce. So that’s the only reason where I would definitely go ahead with a sub domain, where a completely different template that’s optimized for an e-commerce, because on the e-commerce, the action it’s on the spot. So people can actually click on the thing, add to cart, pay and that’s it. Usually, when you’re trying to mesh the two under the same template, even for if you’re doing WordPress, usually it doesn’t end up too well, you know what I mean?

Because the institutional or corporate template or themes are not optimized for e-commerce, for the most part, because they have a lot of stuff going on. When you have an e-commerce store, you want to have the least amount of steps between the person landing until they checkout, you know what I’m saying? So the goals of the websites are completely different. So one, you wanna showcase your services or whatever, and on the other hand, you wanna showcase your products and you want them to purchase. That’s why I would think that having a sub domain, with a different theme would be a better idea. And then you can rank the products. You can try to rank the products, and then you know how the thing goes with sub domains being more protective, or they’re protecting the [inaudible 00:23:07], you know?

Marco: Yeah, and if I could add, real quick. If it’s e-commerce, look at what Amazon does. Because they have a huge number of sub domains. For example, they have music, they have KDP, which is the Kindle Direct Publishing, they have the video, they have S3. Everything they do on a sub domain, and they do that because they know that the sub domains will power up the root domain and shoot back power into the sub domain. So they start feeding off each other. Now, the problem is that when you’re a one man gang, one man show, is that you have to maintain when you get to 10, 15, 20 sub domains on the same website, those have to be maintained. And so it’s kind of how much work are you gonna put into it and what the return is going to be for the time that you’ve invested.

Bradley: Yeah, and I think he’s trying to make the argument that to put them all onto one, which would make sense for efficiencies and ease of management. So I get what you’re saying, Mark, and I may have misunderstood the question when I read it the first time, because I think what you’re saying is having one sub domain where all the products are listed and then having the corporate site on the root is what you’re saying, I think. If I’m interpreting the question correctly, then yes, then Hernan’s answer makes a lot of sense and I get that, because I would totally agree that if you have … Like, if it’s e-commerce and they have their corporate template on the root domain, that you’d wanna have an e-commerce type solution on a sub domain, because again, the functionality wouldn’t be present in the actual root domain type framework, if that makes sense.

However, if it’s just … For example, if it were like a plumber, right, and so there’s a corporate domain saying “Hey, we’re a plumber in this area, give us a call, blah blah blah” and here’s all our services on a service sub domain, to me that wouldn’t make any sense. That’s not e-commerce, though. That’s just listing their services and hey call us and we’ll come give you an estimate. So that would be all on one root domain. But as far as if it is e-commerce, which is how I’m interpreting the question, it would make sense to have it on a separate sub domain because then you could have an e-commerce platform on the sub domain, where the company’s website would sit on the root. Any other comments on that, guys?

Hernan: No, yeah, no I agree with what you just say. It’s all about what the website is designed to do, right? So it all comes down to that.

Whose Name Do You Publish Under When Providing Content Services For Clients?

Bradley: James Rich, he says “When providing content services for clients, who’s name do you publish under?” It depends, James. Do you ask your clients for their preference or decide for them? Well, no, I always ask the clients. I don’t just decide stuff for clients, usually. I mean, I do, but not when it’s something public facing like publishing posts to their blog. Usually, my curators end up … They just use their own profile because probably 90% of all the posts that we post are curated posts and so I just have curators doing that stuff and they have their own profile. So they get an account added, or I add them, as either an editor, or sometimes an administrator, or whatever, an admin, to the actual site, publisher, or whatever, whatever you call it. There’s different options for user levels in WordPress. Typically, I just select it as editor for most of my curators and I just create the account for them through the WordPress dashboard and it just sends them the login details via email. But they have … For example, all my curators, I have them go set up their profile on Gravatar, which Gravatar integrates with WordPress.

So as soon as I send them their login details using their email that’s been registered through Gravatar with their profile photo, then once they get their login details for the WordPress site, then when they login, their profile photo’s already gonna be attached, and then they can go to the users section and edit their profile to include bio and links to their social media properties and stuff like that. Or, in a lot of cases, we have author box plugins on the WordPress sites because a lot of newer themes do have the author credit stuff, but some of the older themes, which I still have a lot of sites in use that are on older themes that didn’t have nice author box settings native to the themes, so we would add author box plugins, like star boxes in one of them we use a lot. So in which case, like I said, they just go in and edit their profile data once they get access to the WordPress site, to make sure everything looks good.

Now I do have a couple of clients, though, that prefer that it’s their name listed as the author of the post, even though it’s my curators producing the content, which is fine. If that’s what they want, we do it that way. We just set up an account, a user account, for the client, basically as an author, or an editor, or whatever. And then we have my VA’s, my curators actually login under their account, if that makes sense, and post that way. Also, I believe as an editor, they can login even as their own … Like, as an admin, I know we can do this. We can go in and change the author of a post or whatever, or when we go to create a post, we can select who we want the post to be placed under or given … Who we can choose who we want the author to be from all the available users on the WordPress site.

As an admin you can do that. I don’t know about … I think editors can do that too. But anyways, so again, it’s just a matter of logging in, depending on what their privileges are, as far as access privileges, they can either update that stuff on their own, or they just login underneath the client’s profile. Okay?

What Is Your Process For Giving VA’s Access To Each Site?

What is my process for giving VA’s access to each site? Whenever I sell a client on content marketing services, I just get access to WordPress for me, and then I set my curators up with access, just like I mentioned. Just go to users, add new user, and then put in their profile, their email address … Again, recommend that your VA’s have their own Gravatar.

If they have like a primary email account that has a bunch of stuff that’s not related to what you want their profile image to be as a writer for that blog, have them create a new Google account, a new Gmail account and a profile that is basically tailored to what you want them to be, to give the image that you want them to present. And then use that Gmail as the email account that you set up their WordPress access with. Because then they can set up a new Gravatar account under the new email address that has all the data that you want and it would be more specific to the type of authors, and I’m using air quotes, that you want writing on each one of your blogs. That’s certainly a possibility too. That’s a good question though, James.

What Kind Of Results Do You Typically See In Using Video Email To Do Outreach And Prospect?

[Yanan 00:30:15] says “Hey team,” or “Hey guys,” excuse me. “Tell me something. Are you still using video email to do outreach and prospect?” Well, as a matter of fact, we are. In fact, that’s what the video lead gen system product we’re launching next week, or in two weeks, or whatever it is … It’s completely about that because it is still very very effective and we have a lot of people actually using that now since we taught about it in Mastermind, as well as in some other places. And we’ve got some really good feedback from it. So, video lead gen system, coming out … When is it, Hernan? Next week, or the following week?

Hernan: Next week, actually.

Bradley: Next week.

Hernan: Yeah, so stay tuned, guys, because we’re gonna drop some emails and there’s probably gonna be some sort of coupon or launch price, et cetera, et cetera. That’s gonna last probably 24 hours, is not less, so stay tuned.

Bradley: Yep. And we’re not doing some big launch on this stuff, guys. It’s not gonna be something you’re gonna get a shit ton of emails from a hundred different IM marketers and stuff like that. It’s not gonna happen. This is an internal launch only. We are just creating this product and launching it to people on our subscriber list. That’s it. So it’s not gonna be some big, stupid launch. It’s a great freaking product. It works really really well, the process. And here’s something that I hadn’t even mentioned yet … Oh, damn. You guys gotta remind me. I gotta get a VSL done on that page and all that. I’m gonna be throwing a bonus webinar into that product, that we’re gonna do live, within probably two weeks of the product being launched, where I’m gonna show how to find prospects to use the video email method for, with YouTube, and it’s a very very easy process, and it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, so to speak. It’s so easy to find good clients, good prospects, good candidates this way. And so that’s something I’m gonna be covering in a bonus webinar.

Alright. What kind of results do you typically see? Well, when I was doing a lot of that … I’m doing more the shotgun approach now than the rifle approach because it’s a time thing. Plus, the shotgun approach can be scaled more easily than the rifle approach can. And the video email system, or the video lead gen system is basically a rifle approach. It’s incredibly effective. But, like I said, it’s a bit time consuming. It’s not something you can scale very easily, compared to like a shotgun method, which would be like a mass marketing or a mass prospecting method, which is what I’m kind of developing now. But for this method in particular, when I was doing that a lot to grow my own agency, for every 10 emails I sent, I would get three or four. So the average was 35%. Three or four replies, responses, from every 10 emails. And it was like clockwork. And out of every three or four responses that I got, I would close one or two of them.

And guys, it was like … But here was the problem, here’s where I failed with that method. It was incredibly successful for me landing clients. But I always would go into the prospecting mode and I would spend basically three or four days locating prospects, I.e., prospects that I would wanna contact, creating the actual videos, then sending out the emails, creating the emails and sending them out because they’re all personalized emails, they’re all personalized videos … This is why I said it can be time consuming. And I would spend two or three days setting it up. Then I would do the … Send out 10 emails, or whatever, 10 or 15, whatever it was. Then I would process the results, which would be like any responses, I’d get the communication going, start the dialogue between the prospects that replied and that kind of stuff. And I wouldn’t do anymore prospecting. Then I would land one or two of those clients, or those prospects then I’d turn them into clients, I’d sell them, I’d close them. Then I’d work on fulfilling their work with no additional prospecting. And then, once I got them to a point where it was more like autopilot and it could be more hands off for me, then I would turn the prospecting back on and I’d go back through that process all over again. And it was never consistent.

And so what I talked about in the training was how to make it a consistent process that gets repeated and done every single week. So that for example, if you send out 10 … If you made it part of your standard operating procedure for your business to send out 10 video emails per week and you outsourced 90% of it, which again, I show you in the training exactly how to do that, then you know it will get done. And if you have 10 going out every week, and let’s say on the low end you get three responses a week, and out of those three, you can only close one of them because you suck at sales. I’m not speaking to you directly, Yanan. I’m saying, just on a conservative estimate, let’s just say, hypothetically, you send out 10 a week, you get three responses, out of the three you close one. But you do that consistently, week in and week out. You have a VA doing most of the work for you and all you have to do is record the actual audit video, the video audit … Excuse me, the audit videos, is what I’m calling them. You record those so it’s in your voice. It’s going to be you making the contact with the prospect. So it’s kind of required that you do that.

But you could do it to where if you’re just doing 10 audit videos and they’re less than 10 minutes each, you could, in two and a half, or three hours, you could have all of the videos done every single week and then have a VA do all the rest of the work, send them out, locate prospects, collect contact info, send the templates out, the emails out, all that kind of stuff. And then all you have to do is process the leads. It would become part of your normal day-to-day operations, and you would always have a pipeline full of leads. And highly qualified leads, guys. These aren’t like the mass prospecting stuff that I’m doing right now where a lead is somebody that is just aware of who we are now, because they’ve interacted with us online in some way, shape, or form. At some level they interacted or engaged with one of my marketing messages, whether it’s an email, an ad, or whatever. But that’s not a very qualified lead yet. That’s just somebody that’s expressed some sort of interest. With this method, it is a highly qualified lead when they reply, because they know who you are, they feel like they’ve met you and blah blah blah.

So I don’t wanna spend a lot of time on that, guys. But the reason why I did is because the video lead gen system that we’re launching next week is incredibly powerful for those of you who are trying to get your agencies off the ground, or your business period off the ground, and you wanna provide local clients consulting services, or lead gen services and you’re looking for service providers, this is an outstanding way to do it. It’s non-confrontational, it’s easy, it’s not intimidating like making cold calls are, and it just works really really well. Any comments on that, guys, before I move on?

Does anybody else out here have any experience with the video emails for prospecting other than me?

Marco: You’re the man when it comes to that. I’ve never done … That’s not the way I’ve done my marketing.

How Would You Find A VA Who Would Want To Learn All SEO Bootcamp Stuff And How Would You Keep Them Working For You?

Bradley: Okay. I just know Adam’s used it quite a bit. I didn’t know if anybody else here had. Alright, good question, though, Yanan. Next question’s Quit This House. I know I’ve heard your name a bunch of times but I never remember. That SEO bootcamp is comprehensive. I don’t wanna learn all that stuff. Plus one that. I know it’s a bit intimidating, but it is awesome. He says “You suggested hiring a VA to learn and implement. How would you find a VA who would wanna learn all that stuff and how would you keep them working for you?” Okay, well, first of all, if you use an outsource or hiring funnel, like what we teach in outsource kingpin, exactly how to setup an outsource or hiring funnel. You eliminate all the people that wouldn’t be interested in doing all that to learning all that kind of stuff anyways, right? Like, literally, that’s why we developed that system, and I learned that from somebody else. We just custom tailored it for our own purposes.

But the hiring funnel system works so well, that you eliminate all the tire kickers and all the lazy people and all that kind of shit. It makes it so much easier to kind good good quality virtual assistant candidates that are willing to put in work and also you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they know how to follow instructions. That’s what the outsource or hiring funnel does. And so if you implement that right off the bat, then the people that make it all the way through the funnel process, the hiring funnel, are gonna be the top quality candidates that then you interview … And again, all this is taught in outsource kingpin. But then you set up interviews. I typically just do Skype text chat. Not phone, ear, or video interviews, because most of VA’s are in like Philippines, or India or whatever. So I really don’t care to talk to them. And I don’t mean that to sound like I’m being a prick. I mean, I just wanna know that they can communicate via text chat well.

And so the interview process is more about how well they communicate with me. Not whether they know how to do something or not, because I’m going to provide them with instructions for what I want them to do and exactly how I want them to do it. So I don’t care what they know how to do. All I wanna know, by the point when they’ve gotten through the hiring funnel, is that they’ve already proven they can follow instructions. They’ve already proven that they want the work. They’re hungry, they’re ambitious because they went through this process where you’re gonna lose most people through the process because they’re gonna be like “Eff this, I’m not doing this crap. I’m not even getting paid yet.”

But that’s the whole point, because by the time they get all the way through the end, you know that you’ve got highly qualified candidates that are ambitious, they’re hungry, they’re driven, and then the interview process is about which out of the remaining candidates are the best … Can I communicate the best with. Then that’s my hire. And it works like crazy. I know Marco’s used that, Hernan. Everyone on our team has used that process multiple times and it just works like magic. And so … I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Hernan: No, I mean, yeah, I totally agree with you, Bradley. You know, I get the question of … Or you find the questions in group saying “Hey, where do I find the best candidates?” “Where can I find help to do X, Y, Z? Because most people are just leaving, or most people are not committed.” And we always come up with the same answer. It’s not a matter of where. It’s a matter of the process you put them through before they even get to talk to you, or before they even-

Bradley: You qualify them.

Hernan: Yeah. Exactly. So before they even get to talk to you, before you even hire them, are you getting them to do some work before they get to talk to you, before you actually hire them? That will weed out 98% of your problems and the tire kickers. So I think it’s more like a question of what kind of treatment they get before they get hired, than the place. There’s no magic bullet because people will have several profiles anyways. So it’s not a matter of going to Upwork or going to Fiver. No, it’s a matter of the process that they go through before they get to you.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: Yep, I’m glad this question came up because I was at the same place that he is, or I love the information, but there’s just so much stuff that I don’t wanna go through all of those videos, like force fed. I actually wanna take my time going through it because I enjoy it. So what I ended up doing is I ran, I just ran it, our outsource kingpin funnel and ended up with three people. I interviewed them and I finished the third interview this morning actually. And that’s the person that I’m probably going to hire as a VA to go through the course thoroughly and then we’ll see how we can use them. But I need that person to go through the training, we’ll pay them to train, but I have to see if that person is able to go through the training and then apply it the way that it’s taught. And then we will decide after that. We pay them for the training, 75% of the salary that they’re going to get. But they need to be paid. They need to have that incentive, okay, I’m doing something, I’m not gonna get beat at the of this if I’m not getting paid for doing work. I’m actually going to get paid.

And so I think that’s a really good incentive. But that’s the final step that I think a lot of people miss, that you have to put the people through the test. You can’t just hire them, give them work and then say “Oh, freak. They didn’t work out for whatever reason.” No. Put them through training, and then see what kind of work they produce and then you make the final decision on the hire, and if not, you have other people you can fall back on, or you put three people through the training and the best person gets the job, like we did with RYS Academy, the very first VA that we hired for that. But, I mean, our shit works. We use it and it works for us. It should work for you.

Bradley: Yeah. And the last thing I wanna mention about that is that’s the point is if you say how would you keep them working for you? Just like Marco said, whenever I hire somebody from the funnel process, the hiring funnel process, I always, when I make the job offer, it’s in the offer, it’s made really very clear that I give them whatever we agreed upon for the proposed salary, I list all that in the welcome letter, the job offer letter, excuse me, but I also let them know that for the first 30 days, they’re on 75% their salary pay, because I pay by salary too, by the way. We don’t pay by hour. We pay by salary. And that gives us incentive to make sure we always give our VA’s enough work, because we’re paying them whether they’re working or not, does that make sense. So that makes us make sure that they’re constantly working. But I tell them 75% of their … And I call that training pay, because for the first 30 days, they’re on probation and they’re in training. I do still pay them, but they’re totally aware that at the end of 30 days, they’re salary will go up, pending review.

Obviously, if they’ve performed well, and about 80% of them do. There’s no question, there’s no doubt, I’m not gonna lie and say that it’s 100% effective all the time. It’s not. But it is about 80% effective, compared to, as you probably already know and many of you probably have experienced this, trying to outsource shit on your own without a good process, how effective has that been for you? It’s probably more like 20% effective, if that. Most people fail miserably when they try to outsource stuff, and it’s because of this reason. They don’t have a good process to put people through on the front end to qualify the outsourcer. And that’s what this does. This pre-qualifies everything. And then, once they’ve been pre-qualified, they’re still on probation until we’ve agreed that they’ve done well, they performed well, and they’ve met the requirements to go to full pay and stay on as an employee. So hopefully that was helpful.

Is Link Building Still Effective And How Often And In What Quantity Should We Be Getting Link Building For Our Network And Press Releases?

Steven. “Hey team. Thank you for all your great information you guys provide for free every week.” You’re welcome, Steven. “MY question is in two parts. First of all, is link building still effective?” It is. There is no question it is still effective and it will be for some time, Steven. “How often and in what quantity should we be getting link building for our networks and press releases?” Well, that depends on each project, each keyword, really. What it is you’re trying to do. How often is really gonna be determined based upon competition levels, as well as many other variables, like the age of the site, that kind of stuff. As far as networks and press releases, though, I can tell you one thing. Press releases, you can freaking hammer those. I don’t even think there’s a velocity issue, ever, with press releases. I could be wrong, but I never worry about it. Whenever I publish a press release and I wanna hit it with links, let me just make it really clear though, Steven. If you’re gonna be boosting press releases with links, find out which press releases are going to remain published, because a lot of press releases get purged after, sometimes even 30 days. Other press release sites or media sites don’t purge … It’s anywhere between 30 days and six months. But a lot of sites purge. In other words, they basically delete posts after a certain amount of time.

And so if you do a ton of link building to press release that’s going to be purged at some point, then you’ve basically thrown money away. It may give you a temporary boost, but once the … And I know this for 100% fact, because I’ve been testing press releases and using that as my sole link building method for multiple lead gen projects over the last several months, guys, like going on seven months now, and I had outstanding results, but then all of a sudden a lot of the stuff that I had outstanding results for started to drop significantly in MAPS rankings. And when I started to investigate, it’s because the vast majority of the press releases that I published over the last seven months are now gone. They no longer exist. And so my point is, it’s either something for press releases that you have to continue doing regularly, which is a great thing, guys, if you’re providing these services to clients, because you can sell clients on we need to publish these regularly, like one or two press releases a month.

Whatever you can sell them on, it now becomes a recurring service that you sell, instead of just hey, every now and then we’ll do a press release. No. We should be doing a press release once per month at least for every single client. That makes sense. And that’s another service that you can sell. It’s great. I love it. But, if you’re gonna be building links to press releases, find out which sites they remain published on and you choose those as your targets, your target URLs to build links to. As far as your networks, guys, networks typically I do a link building package right when the network has been built, created. Once a few seed posts have been published to it. So usually, I always try to season every single network with at least three posts. It’s three to five, typically, for every new network. Three to five posts. And then I’ll send it over for link building. And then once I get that back, then it’s just a matter of monitoring results. If I see that I need … Like, I’ll usually publish several more posts over the next several weeks … Or, I don’t publish them. My curators do. But I’ll just monitor results.

And if I’m not … I’m usually seeing movement at some point, but if I’m not seeing as much movement as I would like, then maybe I’ll boost the network again. But instead of just always building links to the network, I might do a drive stack instead, you know what I mean? Not might, I typically always do a drive stack too, but my point is it’s not always just about the link building, guys. Because remember, once you have a drive stack, then you can boost the drive stack with links. So there’s just a ton of things that you can do. All I would recommend is that for anything linking directly to your money site, try to keep it clean, something that you have control over, branded properties, you should make those your priority, stuff that you can brand, and then link to your site. And then you can do your link building to those, your tire one stuff. Okay? Good question though. Roman, do you have any recommendations on that? Is Roman still here?

Hernan: Yeah, he is, but I think he’s muted.

Roman: There we go. Sorry about that. In terms of link building still being effective … That question, correct?

Bradley: Yep.

Roman: Yeah, so in terms of link building being effective, it’s going to be a long while for it not to be. It’s just you have to understand what’s going on with it and how things are being reduced and re-weighted and what’s going on with that. So links are here to stay, because they’re part of the base algorithm. Google can’t just change the core fundamental of how it works overnight, not without upsetting the entire world and everyone else. So link building’s definitely here to stay for a while. In terms of how often and in what quantity, there’s a lot of variables that come into play, like you were mentioning. One of the main ones that a lot of people don’t talk about is traffic and how much traffic is coming in on links. And this is part of the reason why press releases are so effective, because they receive natural traffic. And stop and think about it too, right? If something goes viral, does it make sense that it would get links at a higher velocity than something else that isn’t viral, right?

Bradley: Absolutely.

Roman: Traffic is a major component when it comes to things like that. So whether you’re doing what Marco does with art, or triple T with Pierce’s side, it’s that same basic principle.

Bradley: Awesome. Thank you, Roman.

Roman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Will There Be A New Indexing Service To Be Introduced In Serp Space Soon?

Bradley: Okay, guys, we’ve got … I’m gonna try to get through these next three, up to Pete Hogg, in the next eight minutes. So we’re gonna try to make this the lightning round because we’re almost out of time. And I’d really like to get to these three guys. Okay, Jeff is up. He says “A week or so ago, Marco mentioned the indexing service in SerpSpace wasn’t working the way it should and that it was being redone. Just checking to see when a new indexing service will be available.” Do we have any ETA on that, guys?

Roman: Not yet. We’re still working on it.

Is It Possible To Have Separate Page For Each Location Using Maps Powerhouse?

Bradley: Alright, Jeff. We do not have an ETA for you on that. We apologize. We will certainly announce that when we do. “Secondly, dealing with a multi-location bank, 11 locations, if I wanna do MAPS powerhouse, can I do a separate one for each location?” Absolutely. Absolutely. “The URLs are like this, okay, locations bank one, bank two, et cetera. Is there an issue with all these coming back to the main site even though they would be going to separate pages?” No, because they’re all Google Maps properties. Like that wouldn’t hurt anything. And remember, you’re just embedding Google Maps. So anybody have a comment on that before I move on?

Marco: No, I mean that’s perfect. There are no issues with Google Maps or My Maps, for that matter, because Google lets you play with them and embed them. And yes, Jeffrey Smith’s stuff is awesome.

When Buying Double Phone Verified Gmail Accounts, Are Aged Accounts Better Or Are Brand New Accounts Recommended?

Bradley: It is. It is. I totally agree, though. It’s worth hiring a VA to learn how to go do all that stuff, keyword research, and everything else. Very in depth. Alright, Nigel. “Good day, gents. Grateful as always for you guys Jeffrey Smith was impressive. Talk about knowledge and value commensurate with SM and pedigree.” Exactly. I mean, that’s why we brought him on because he’s that good. “I picked up the SEO bootcamp and appreciated the generous discounts and bonuses. Thank you. Can’t wait to dig in and report back.” Please do, Nigel. Seriously. Please do report back what you think and also the results that you get from implementing what you learn, because that’s the best testimonial you can give. “I have TTT personas. When buying double phone verified Gmail accounts, are aged accounts better, or brand new accounts recommended?” Okay, I would only use aged accounts for YouTube stuff, guys. I mean, that’s …

Let me be real clear. I’ve only tested using aged accounts on YouTube stuff. I don’t care if I’m setting up a brand new profile or persona that I’m gonna build a network for. I don’t care if it’s on a brand new Gmail account. It doesn’t make any difference to me because it’s likely that that YouTube account that’s created with that profile, if we create a YouTube account with that profile, isn’t gonna be the one that I’m using to boost my … You know, as my content … My distribution channel, in other words. It’s usually persona networks are just supporting networks that will boost another channel’s videos. So the channel that I’m gonna be publishing videos to, that I want aged, and I have been testing some of those aged accounts and they do absolutely work better, at least according to my tests they do. But as far as for just double phone verified accounts for setting up persona accounts, no, don’t spend the extra money on aged accounts. At least, I haven’t tested that. I don’t see the need to do that. They may work better, but I just don’t know how if you’re not using … I mean, personally, I don’t really see how it would benefit at all, unless you were using one of those Google properties as your distribution engine, in which case, then an aged account makes sense.

Do You Recommend Building Personas Details Yourself For IFTTT Setups Or Let VAs Do Everything?

“Best practice. Do you recommend building persona details yourself for IFTT setups or let VA’s do everything when they create?” I let the VA’s do everything because I don’t wanna do the damn work. That’s why I pay the VA’s. That’s what we do in SerpSpace. If you provide us with the details, we can provide you with the persona data and all that. You just gotta give us the theme, like tags, interests, stuff like that, and we can produce the profile around that. You can create your own manual checklist. That might be something we can do at some point, which is create a manual checklist. That’s not a bad idea. That’s a pretty good idea. As far as I know, when we sell the Done for You networks on RYS stuff, they don’t come with a checklist, right guys?

Marco: No, they don’t come with a checklist right now. It could be done, but since it’s done up to our standards and specs and directly from the training that’s available in RYS Reloaded, we don’t feel that it’s necessary for that manual checklist, because not only does the VA, whoever gets the order, do it, [inaudible 00:56:07] will go over it once it’s done and perform that checklist that he’s talking about. There is a human that actually goes through it and makes sure that it’s done up to the standards that are expected. Now we do get some clunkers, guys. We’re not perfect. We’re all human. We have bad days. When that happens, all you have to do is contact us and we’ll go in there and manually fix whatever it was that might have gone wrong, or was omitted, or wasn’t done correctly. So we do backup everything that we sell and that we say. So you can have that comfort that when you order, it’s going to be done according to the training, and that it’s going to be checked before it’s delivered to you.

Bradley: Make a note of it, though, that that’s not a bad idea maybe to produce a checklist for both networks and drive stacks.

Marco: Yeah, Roman.

Bradley: To give with delivery.

Marco: Yeah, that would be on SerpSpace.

Are Live Rank Sniper And CrowdSearch Still Viable Tool Strategies 2018?

Bradley: Yep. That could be a really good value added thing that would make it more useful for people. Number three … God, we’re almost out of time. I really hope I can get to Pete’s, too. “Are Live Rank Sniper and Crowd Search still working viable tool strategies for 2018?” Well, Live Rank Sniper, yes. I use that tool all the time. I’ve used it this week already to poke over 200 keywords. I use that tool freaking all the time. It’s amazing. I love that tool, Live Rank Sniper. The only thing that I don’t like about it is it’s slow. In other words, if you load in 25 or 30 keywords that you wanna poke, it’ll take a couple hours for it to run. Where there’s some other tools out there that will poke keywords a hell of a lot faster, but I like the fact that I don’t need videos, I don’t need a shit ton of channels. You only need one channel to make Live Rank Sniper work. I use it literally every week, almost. Almost every single week. I’ve used it several days this week already.

Alright, so anyways, Crowd Search. The only thing I would use Crowd Search for right now, which I still have credits in there. I don’t subscribe anymore, but I still have credits. I use them still for referral traffic campaigns, and also for some video … You know, sending traffic to video, although I’ve just been setting up YouTube ads for sending traffic to video now and that works so much better because that’s real genuine traffic. You’re buying views from Google, essentially. And so that works so much better. But I still do use Crowd Search for sending referral traffic through like social media links and things like that. But it’s only because I’ve got a store of credits. I probably wouldn’t subscribe now. Not probably, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t subscribe now. And I’m not trying to say anything bad except the fact that, guys, it’s not as effective as it used to be and it’s because … We think we have an idea as to why. It’s probably because the IP’s are all coming from pretty much a similar pool of IP’s like a lot of those other tools are using, and therein lies the problem.

So, but Live Rank Sniper, absolutely. Crowd Search, if you’re gonna use it in a very specific way, then I could see it as still being viable. We have our own traffic tool in progress, but it’s bene in progress for months. We don’t have an estimated time that that’s gonna be launched, so I don’t wanna tease you with that just yet. We’ve done enough of that. So next time we talk about it, it’ll be when it’s ready.

Should You Use A Current Youtube Account And Add Another Channel Branded Towards Contractors And The Building Trade Or Create An Entirely New Account?

Alright, last question. We got a minute. Pete says “Hey guys, the SEO bootcamp looks solid. I’m just starting out. If I was in a position to sign up, I would be there. It looks awesome, like awesome training.” I totally understand, Pete. Don’t worry about it. Follow some of what we teach you, go make some revenue and then you can invest in your education. “I have a YouTube channel for my business brand which is SEO and marketing. I wanna set up a channel for local contractors to rank lead gen videos in home improvement sector. I’ve started a YouTube training course, but not finished it yet. Should I use my current YouTube account and add another channel branded towards contractors in the building trade, or should I set up a completely new account specifically for the contractor lead gen videos?” Okay. I recommend that you set up a new Gmail account.

We just talked about this a moment ago, with the aged accounts. If you’re gonna be setting up a new channel that you’re gonna be using as a content distribution engine, basically for publishing all of your videos, then I highly recommend that you buy an aged YouTube account. It can be a persona account. It doesn’t matter. Just buy an aged YouTube account because then you have now … And here’s why I’m telling you this, guys. I recommend creating the new channel under a new Google account, so basically a new profile, and then adding your main account … So in your case, Pete, your Pete Hogg account, as a manager. So a channel manager, so that you could access and still do all the work on that channel through your main Gmail login. But the reason why I always say separate them with different owners, channel owners, is because if in the event you were to ever get slapped for something, you don’t wanna … It could potentially affect your Gmail account, that could then affect all channels associated as you as the owner of those channels.

In other words, any channel that you’re the owner of could be potentially affected, whereas if you’re just the manager, if the contractor account YouTube channel, the contract YouTube channel is owned by another Google account and you’re just the manager, in case you were to get some sort of penalty for something or another, it wouldn’t affect the other channel because you’re just a manager, not the owner. So that’s the reason why I do it that way, guys. It’s a way to protect my assets. So it’s a way to cover my assets. And that’s why I do it that way. But you can do it either way. I recommend that you do it that way just because it provides a level of protection. If you’re gonna do that, buy an aged YouTube account, set the YouTube account up underneath that account, and then add yourself as a manager. “Or should I set up …” I already answered that. “What is your advice for best results?” That is my advice. It’s just a way to save yourself from potential catastrophe in the event that something were to happen to your account, okay?

Okay guys, we’re a little bit over. Thanks for everybody being here. Sorry about the questions that we didn’t get to, guys. We apologize, but that’s why first come, first served. We certainly appreciate everybody being here. Thanks, Roman, for sticking around, and you too as well, Marco.

Roman: Yep.

Marco: Alright, man. Bye everyone.

Roman: Bye bye.

Bradley: See you, guys.

Chris: Take it easy.

Roman: Later.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 167 published first on your-t1-blog-url