AFP 1: Keyword Research With Long Tail Pro

Justin:
Hey everyone! Glad to have you on the AdSense Flippers Podcast. To start first ever we are really excited to be putting it out and we’re excited to be talking to you today.

I just want to cover a bit about the program what we are gonna be looking at today – just to start off, we are going to go over some updates, some news and some talking points that Joe and I had, that we want to cover.

Next, we are getting to kind of the ‘Meat and Potatoes’, basically the bulk of the podcast and the reason that we are talking to you today, and today we are starting off our podcast series with an amazing first interview with a guy that we absolutely love, adore and read on a regular basis. So you won’t wanna miss that.

Finally, we are going to wrap up the podcast. One of our absolute best tips or resources, we are gonna share that with you and hopefully you can get some value out of that and move forward.

The plan with our podcast it will be extremely fast. We want to move fairly quick pace, kind of get you through it and get you as much content as you can without any of the crap that comes along with some of the affiliate offers and stuff you normally hear.

So Joe, how are you doing man?

Joe:
I’m doing great Justin. It’s great to finally be on this program, get everything rolling, I know we had some technical issues to iron out and man, I am just happy to get the content out there because that’s what it’s all about.

Justin:
Yeah man, what a mess! I mean trying to get a podcast up and running, I mean from the technical details, to getting an editor, to kind of putting everything together – it’s outrageously time-consuming but I am glad that we have it all now up you know and rolling and getting ready to go.

Joe, thanks a lot for the technical stuff man, you know that’s not my area.

Joe:
Yeah Justin, I know that’s not your area and I love taking care of that stuff. It requires some research, requires some testing but I think we have it down now and hopefully everyone is hearing us loud and clear.
If you do have any comments, questions or suggestions, please make sure to leaving for us in the ‘Comments’ section down below. We will look to improve any of the technology so that you can hear us better.
So Justin, now that we got this podcast up and running, a lot of people are going to be wondering, why exactly are we doing it?

Justin:
Well, one of the reasons we are doing the podcast is to really get our information out there in kind of a different medium, to help expand on some of the points I think that we have made that aren’t as clear to some people, and also share some of the stuff we are reading, some of the people we are following, and some of the people that we are working with that we think are helping our business tremendously, and that can help some of the listener’s businesses as well.

So it’s a really good medium to be able to explain that information and to kind of get that across where we are not necessarily able to do that in the blog. Do you know what I mean?

Joe:
There’s a lot of great podcasters out there but I would say our particular inspiration comes from two big time podcast people – Dan and Ian over at ‘Lifestyle Business Podcast’, which is an awesome podcast – just check it out. I think it’s in its 77th episode now. They have great stuff going on over there.

We met up with Dan in Puerto Galera, as many of you know, and we were really inspired by his podcast. We were on the show. We really liked this format.

Then you have ‘Virtual Business Lifestyle’ – Chris Ducker, he is up in Cebu in the Philippines – another guy that we would love to emulate in terms of his outsourcing model, he is the outsourcing god of the Philippines and we hope to be there one day.

Justin:
Yeah Joe, Pat Flynn. I have been following his podcasts and one of the ones that really struck out for me was the one that helped him kind of determine, he is the guy from ‘Social Triggers’, really helped him to determine like how he could better convert on his blog and I thought that was just amazing.
And if they were able to put that kind of useful information now, I mean if we can get the same kind of people on our program and help our listeners, I think we are going to help them go far and we are really going to help ourselves out as well in the process.
So, I know that Pat once mentioned that starting the podcast is one of the best things he did for his business, and I didn’t get that the first time I heard it but now that we are getting involved in this and we are starting to talk about it and we are starting to get some feedback from other people, I can see how that would be the case – you know what I mean?

Joe:
I do, and plus, getting a podcast out there I feel is almost easier once you have the technology out of the way, than a blog post. You can just speak. I mean just…that’s always a lot easier than writing.

Justin:
So Joe, our business deals with AdSense. It deals with selling sites. It deals with potentially buying sites. It deals with monetization, deals with internet marketing  – what types of things we would be covering in the podcast you think? What kind of things should our listeners expect from us?

Joe:
Well, one thing we won’t be doing Justin is we won’t be revealing our niches on this show. You know, If you are listening right now, expecting us to reveal all 900 sites that we have, you’ve come to the wrong spot. But if you are looking for the method that we use to get there, how we got there, the tools we use, how we are earning this money, you’ve come to the right place because that’s what it’s really all about, right Justin?

Justin:
Yeah man, I think what’s important is to share both our successes and our failures. And you know, I think personally I learn a lot, especially when some of the people are talking about like what they failed on, where they made mistakes.
As long as we continue to be extremely honest with both ourselves and our listeners, and explaining what we think is working and what’s not, You know, I think we are going to grow and they are going to hold us accountable to what we are doing and make sure that what we are doing is making sense.

Joe:
The interaction is going to be key and in that vein Justin, what kind of ways can people contact us? I mean how can they actually get on the show?

Justin:
The easiest way is I am always on Twtter. Just look us up on Twitter @AdSenseFlippers and you can contact me there, let me know what you thought about the show. If you like to chat back and forth, we can do that there.

Later on, we are going to have an 800 number if you are looking call in to and they can actually word lips that we’ll get on the show. If they have any tips or tricks they want to share, we can put them on as well.

So we really want to be able to get some involvement. We are looking for interview opportunities. We have a couple of really good ones potentially lined up. I am excited about that and if we can get that worked out we will have them on and have some pretty amazing shows in the near future.

Joe:
Great Justin!

Justin:
So Joe, buddy, what’s going on with Market Samurai man?

Joe:
You know Justin, that’s a great question because as you know, we used to highly recommend Market Samurai, right? It was our premier keyword research tool for finding niche websites. We loved it. Our people used it.
We highly recommended it to our readers, but in the last couple of months, it’s really become a drag. I mean it’s slow. It’s not working. Support is not as good as it used to be and it just is not helpful anymore in finding micro niche websites.

Justin:
Dude, I was a huge fan and how many people did I tell about Market Samurai, have gone, “Oh my god! This keyword research tool is amazing. This is going to get you everything you need, find you all the keywords you need,” and I loved it. I still do actually. It’s just too slow man. It’s not getting us the niches we need and definitely not getting them fast enough for us.

Joe:
Yeah, and it still had the best features and was the most robust keyword research product out there but I think it’s been toppled. I really do, and the reason why is not because of its features, not because of its glamorous UI, but I do think that this new product we are going to talk about in the interview, is the best thing out there.

Justin:
So what is it buddy? What’s the deal with the product? Spit it out.

Joe:
Long Tail Pro from Spencer Haw at ‘Niche Pursuits’ and we are going to have Spencer on the program right now. We are going to do an interview with him. He is going to talk about ‘Niche Pursuits’, his blog and the development of Long Tail Pro and how he came up with it.

Justin:
Yeah, first of all, I’ll just say I am a huge fan of Spencer. I have been reading him for months. I have read him religiously. I have read him up/down sideways, read the comments, I mean the guy is on point. So if you are in our niche, if you are doing what we are doing – looking to create sites and monetize via AdSense, you have to be paying attention to this guy and you must have heard of him.

We are so excited to have him on the program because in the internet marketing arena in general, there’s very few people who I think like kind of match our values and like what we think is important, and I think Spencer gets it. You know what I mean?

Joe:
I do know exactly what you mean. So without further ado, let’s get into this interview.

*The AdSense Flippers Podcast continues…

Justin:
Hey guys! Justin and Joe here with AdSenseFlippers.com. We’ve got our first podcast. We’ve got our first interview and it’s with someone I love to talk to, a guy who is really bright, really sharp – he is from NichePursuits.com. This is Spencer.

We have been a big fan of his and sought his progression. He makes a ton of money with niche AdSense sites doing extremely well and it’s just a really cool, all-around guy. So I just want to pass it up to you Joe, do you have anything to say?

Joe:
Thanks Justin! Well, very happy to have Spencer on the program too and we have been very excited about his site and what he is doing over there. Spencer, how are you doing today?

Spencer:
I am doing great, Justin and Joe. I appreciate you having me on your first podcast.

Joe:
Well the pleasure is all ours. Without further ado, we’ll get a little bit into your background here and a little bit about ‘Niche Pursuits’. Now tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got involved with niche websites.

Spencer:
Yeah, it’s almost one of those things that I kind of stumbled on really. I was like a lot of people out there. I went to college and had my whole career sort of planned and sort of on the side, recently after I graduated, I started dabbling in sort of building websites just for fun.

I worked a full-time job in the financial services industry for quite a while. I just really wanted to see if I could propone almost, get a website up and running, just to kind of figure out the whole internet thing, and taught myself a tiny bit of HTML.
Back in the day I didn’t know about WordPress or anything, learned a little bit of HTML, got a website up. Then peaked my interest into how do websites actually rank in the search engines and how do they actually make money, and that sort of began a journey that spanned a few years, sort of learning about websites.
And in the meantime I built a few on the side. Again, I was working a full-time job for about 5 or 6 years after I graduated from university but yeah, just kind of on the side, as a hobby, started dabbling in things.
And then it wasn’t until I felt on several of my websites that I really decided, ‘you know what, I need to figure out what’s going to work and what doesn’t’. it was really at that point that I sort of realized I wasn’t targeting a specific enough topic on my website. So I was building great content websites, big things like credit repair and large financial topics.

Justin:
The high-paying stuff, ton of searches, that kind of thing, right?

Spencer:
Yeah, exactly, and the super competitive niches. I didn’t really grasped that, sort of figured I have got to target these high-traffic, high-paying keywords if I want to make lots of money. And so that’s what I did and I felt miserably.

So it wasn’t until I sort of had this shift in my thinking that you know what, if I can just rank for a small enough term and just make a little bit of money, then I might be able to duplicate that process. And so I built a couple of small websites that were not real competitive and they each started making me about $20.00 a month – Google AdSense, because that was the easiest thing to do.

Joe:
Yeah.

Spencer:
And that really was the mental shift that I found. I was like ‘wow, I am now making $40.00 a month, why don’t I just duplicate that?

Justin:
Started to take off for you, right? You were like ‘okay, it looks like the process is working, let me kind of expand it’?

Spencer:
Exactly. I decided I am going to go big with this. This is working for me and let’s just build a ton of these little niche websites, and that’s exactly what I have done about. It’s been a couple of years, I quit my job earlier this year and so things are going really well.

Justin:
Awesome Spencer, and let me ask you this because we get this question a lot too – we are particularly good at building these niche sites, right, like we are good at that, we’ve got that down. People ask us, “Why don’t you expand into this? Why don’t you do affiliate marketing? Why don’t you use Amazon stuff?’

And my question for you would be like do you focus on a few small areas you are good at, or should you expand into 8, 10, 12 different niches and find one that works really well for you? Which approach do you think is better – focus on a couple or really shoot for a bunch and find the one that works?

Spencer:
Well, that’s kind of what I did is I guess initially as I just didn’t have any one particular niche that I was in, I just sort of built lots of sites somehow to different niches but it came to the point where one of my sites was doing better than the others, and so then I did stick within that same niche.

Now I have a couple of dozen sites, all in that one niche because I know it can perform well. So my advice on that point is do find what’s working and then if you can expand either within that same niche or sort of stick with the same process you are using, that’s probably your best bet for success.

Justin:
And let me ask you this too, I notice that you are looking like storage unit auctions and some other things that are non-website related, do you give up or you think it’s working with the niche sites and do that, or do it in addition to – what’s your goal there with ‘Niche Pursuits’ specifically?

Spencer:
Yeah, ‘Niche Pursuits’ definitely is if people read that originally, and this is still the goal – originally I had wanted to sort of discuss and write about lots of different ways of making money outside of my niche websites. You mentioned storage unit auctions. I looked at building iPhone apps and other things. The point was to show how I could try to find a way that I could diversify my income out of just one thing.
At this point I haven’t done too much just because the niche websites have done so well, putting a lot of effort into that but I still would like to find something outside of niche websites just so I can feel like my income is diversified a little bit better.
Recently I did release some software Long Tail Pro which is helping to diversify my income out of just niche websites and eventually I am still planning on building an iPhone app or two, to give that a go, just so I can feel like I am going to have a few businesses in my portfolio that are all bringing in some money.

Joe:
Yeah, and we are looking in to diversify in that sense, what’s the difference between a niche and an authority site?

Spencer:
It probably comes down to a couple of things and it’s more than perhaps just the amount of content on the website. I think that’s one distinguishing factor is that a niche website is maybe a smaller site with 5 to 10 pages of content, and authority site is something with a couple of hundred pages of content.

One distinguishing factor but also more specifically, an authority site may cover a little bit broader niche than some of these smaller niche websites and is a website that eventually and ideally as a site, it is a destination site for visitors – something where visitors either visit on a regular basis or it’s seen really as an authority within that niche, meaning it’s a place where maybe other websites within that same niche refer to or send visitors to, something that’s really looked at as the site to go to for that topic.

Joe:
What would you consider a thin site – something that’s just too small?

Spencer:
That’s a tough question because some of the searches that are done in Google, I mean we all know that people are searching for millions of things everyday and some of the things they are searching for, can be answered in a paragraph, or one page is enough to give that visitor everything and more that they are searching for. So it’s hard to say what is enough and what isn’t enough.

I like to typically start off my sites with about five pages of content and I feel like that a lots of the niches that I am going into, that’s enough of a site to answer sort of the questions and to cover the topic in detail to give the user all the information they need.

I don’t know if there’s an exact answer for that. I don’t know if you guys have an exact answer for what’s too small or what isn’t, but that’s sort of my thoughts at least on the topic.

Justin:
Yeah, I think that if a site doesn’t answer the searcher’s query, if it doesn’t really get into the mean details of what they are looking for, that maybe a little too thin. I mean it doesn’t have to answer every question but at least the info that a person searching for that particular niche would want, I think that’s our impression of a thin site.

How long does it take for you to decide whether or not that particular keyword or that particular niche is going to work or not? Like how long do you wait before you decide to add content to it to really beef it up?

Spencer:
Some sites are obvious sought. They will start ranking fairly quickly and start earning money. Those are the easy ones – within a month or something, a lot of times sites will start ranking well and you could tell that you have a winner in your hands. And so I would go ahead and start adding content at that point.

But then the majority of sites take a little bit longer to start ranking and just start showing any potential. I typically will rate, sort of as my rule of thumb, about 90 days. Usually within about 90 days or three months, you can see roughly which sites are going to perform well.

In 90 days if the site is still ranking on the 8th or 9th page of Google and really hasn’t moved anywhere, the chances are that it might take more efforts than it’s worth I guess to get that site on the page 1. So that’s sort of my rule of thumb, I guess.

Justin:
I think you mentioned on NichePursuits.com where you are talking about the concept of a winner or a loser – a winner or dead, right, and it’s some sites you create and they just work, and others you create and they just don’t – for whatever reason, right? You have no idea but it just doesn’t work.

So you think 90 days gives you a good realistic timeframe before you determine the winners and the losers?

Spencer:
Yeah, exactly. That’s what I use for the most part. I leave the sites up and if things change, I look at it but really I try to sort of actively build links and look at the sites for about 90 days to decide whether they are winner or they are loser.

Justin:
We have AdSenseFlippers.com and we do that to blog about our experience just to help others, to kind of just share the journey because really we had nothing to lose, and it’s really taken off as people appreciate the honesty and like what we are doing there.

We do something, but we sell our websites, right? And we sell our websites there and on Flippa and we mentioned that to our readers and people that follow the site, why do you blog about your experience? Why aren’t you just doing it quietly and making a ton of money like some of those other guys that are just quietly in the background killing it? You are doing it publicly, what’s the purpose of that man?

Spencer:
I guess I often ask myself that same question but you know, the blog is great but it is a lot of work. So sometimes I think ‘man, I should just build out tons of these sites all by myself and not tell anybody about it’.

I quit my job, like I said, in March of this year. My blog is really a way for me to connect with people in general. I didn’t have my blog. I literally would be sitting in my room, never talking to anybody all day long. So the blog really is an outlet for me to both interact with people online but also to be able to teach other people because I know that there’s a lot of blogs out there. There’s a ton of either good or bad resources out there and I think people do appreciate things like what you are doing on AdSense Flippers and what I am doing. We are just really trying to say it the way it is.

So I just kind of write about what I am doing and I try to be as upfront as possible to hopefully teach people a little bit but I also give them a realistic picture of what this business is all about.

So those couple of things and then obviously there is the benefit that as I build my audience, that does open up other opportunities if I do to either start selling my websites or doing other things. Now I just recently started selling some software. It does open up a lot of opportunities as well.

Joe:
What do you think is the best most actionable piece of advice for someone just starting out?

Spencer:
Yeah, I would give two pieces of advice – the first piece of advice in my opinion would really be, learn keyword research, learn how to analyze the competition on Google to determine if a keyword is worth going after or not. I mean that is the one thing that if somebody wants to do well in this business, they need to nail that down.

They need to understand keyword research, they need to understand why websites are ranking, and if you get that, really everything else honestly is almost just details. It’s all about picking those keywords to find the winners and the losers.

So that’s sort of my direct piece of advice, but my sort of caveat to that, my second piece of advice is to just go after the business strategy that makes sense to you.

We are here talking about a business strategy that works really well for us, but the best piece of advice is for somebody to sit down in their own mind and figure out a business strategy that works for them and it may not even be niche websites. It may be some variation of that or something different because if you get in the habit of just following what other people do and trying to follow step-by-step what other people are saying they do, you can follow on to a lot of thrash but if you sit down and think about things on your own and do things that make sense in your own mind, you are more likely to succeed.

So that would be my kind of couple of pieces of advice.

Justin:
Yeah Spencer, I totally agree with that. When we started off doing keyword research, I completely screwed that up. I made a big mess of it and we had to figure it out. We had to kind of get a process and something that worked for us.

And the second thing, we just recently mentioned this to someone else but just because the process works for us or works for you, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to work for someone else. I mean they could follow it step-by-step but there may be luck, there may be other things involved that leave them to not have success.

So finding something that they think does make the most sense and probably getting bits and pieces from us and from you, is the most effective strategy because then they are doing it on their own. They are doing it in a way that they think would be effective and I think that’s great.

But I want to transition a bit to talk about Long Tail Pro really quick. Now I’ll tell you Spencer, honestly, I was pretty happy with Market Samurai. Joe was saying, “Let’s check out Long Tail Pro. Let’s give it a shot”. I was happy with what we had but once he started playing with these, he said, “Man, you got to check this out”.

So I started using it for like first page competition research and found it to be killer – way faster, much better in that department, but tell us a little bit about how you came up with the idea for Long Tail Pro and a little bit about what it is exactly?

Spencer:
Yeah, Long Tail Pro really came about because honestly, I wasn’t happy with the other keyword research tools out there. When I do keyword research, I want to look at as many seed keywords as I can at once, or a lot of them.

So I was like most people. I was out there. I was using Market Samurai and with that tool you punch in one seed keyword, you wait for to sort of generate a list of updated 100 keywords and then you have to go in and filter and do all sorts of things and it can take literally 15-20 minutes to just look at one seed keyword.

Justin:
Slow, man, it’s miserably slow.

Spencer:
Yeah, and then after all that time of analyzing all these things, after looking at one seed keyword you are probably not going to find a winner, or maybe you’ll get lucky but really, you need to look at lots of keywords and that’s what I was doing. I was spending hours just looking at 5 or 6 keywords to see if I could find some to build a website on.

And so that really got my wheel spinning as just there’s got to be a faster way to do this. Eventually, after trying out tons of keyword tools, I decided I just needed to build my own and I figured that if I was frustrated with the keyword tools that were out there, that other people would be interested in the same thing.

So I really built it for myself and so what Long Tail Pro does is sort of what I wanted it to do, but at the same time it meets the needs of a lot of people out there. So that initially was just out of frustration.

Joe:
How long did the development process take?

Spencer:
I had the Long Tail Pro in its current state, it took…I am trying to think, I probably began in about January of this year and just released the full version just this month, so almost 10 months of building the software.

So it was a pretty comprehensive project and again, I, for those out there that maybe don’t know, I am not a programmer by any means at all. Like I said, I can barely do any HTML at all. So this was a big undertaking for me.

I actually found a programmer on Elance.com, that’s where I found my lead programmer and hired him and he has been great. Also we have several other programmers underneath him that are working on the project as well.

So this is, I mean it’s completely outsourced project that I essentially told them ‘this is what I want to see, this is what I wanted to do’, and so yeah, it’s been about 10 months that now it’s finally up and running.

Joe:
And your experience with outsourcing it was great, did you have to go through a couple of different developers or the first guy you picked, worked out and there was no problem?

Spencer:
Well, I wish I could say it was that easy. Yeah, I did. I don’t know if you noticed, I sort of slipped in there, this current version of Long Tail Pro. There was a previous version that did get up and running, that I had hired a different programmer previously but I really didn’t know what I was doing. It was my first sort of software project, and he was a good programmer but he wasn’t able to keep up with any changes that were needed and things like that.

So the first version, which I built at the end of last year, it worked for a while but as soon as it broke, he couldn’t keep up with any changes and things like that. So it wasn’t full success.

So I really had to start all over again from scratch. It really was the best thing. Trust me, I mean I could go on to a lot of details but essentially, I had hired a two cheaper programmers. He was good but he was in India and the communication was difficult.

The first version was a learning experience. I learned from that. I hired a top-notch programmer who is here in the US. I can call on the phone at any time and he has several programmers under him and so what I have gone now is great. I learned a ton from my sort of first go around with Long Tail Pro, but now definitely I have done it right.

Justin:
Well Spencer, I can tell you as a non-technical guy like trying to start that, sounds like just…I’d be scared honestly. It’s ridiculous. So trying to get that rolling I think is pretty cool and the fact that you did, the fact that you got it out, you’ve got the first version, it sucked. You had to fix it, got it down working – I think it’s amazing.

And we really appreciate the fact that you taking some feedback from us in Beta and that you have improved it. It’s looking good. It’s ready for the public so I think that’s really awesome. How do you plan on expanding Long Tail Pro and adapting?

Spencer:
Absolutely! I mean this is a long-term project for me. It’s doing well. I plan on obviously continuing to reinvest and improve the product and so there’s even been more feedback from you guys I know that I haven’t quite implemented yet and some of those things I actually do plan on implementing.

At this point, I have the core product that I am just making as perfect as possible. Some of the things that we want to do are ways for people to calculate their own winning keywords – sort of put in almost a ‘formula-builder’ where you can say ‘the keyword has over a certain amount of monthly searches, has over a dollar cost per click and has this amount of title competition’ – those are the things that you want. You can build that in a formula and mark the keyword as a winning keyword or something of that nature.

So we want to input some formulas that will take into account the user’s input and allow them to do that and also do that…that’s in the ‘Keyword Research’ portion. We also want to do that in the ‘Competitor Analysis’ portion where users can input for example, highlight all the listings that have a Page Rank of zero and have less than 10 backlinks, or something like that, and really make it driven on what the user wants to see to highlight certain keywords.

Justin:
We love the Spencer. So many tools have kind of their own sub-parameters on telling you what they think is a winner, what they think as a loser, but like if you have been doing this on any scale, or doing it at all, you start to figure out what’s profitable for you. So being able to determine that inside the tool, I think is killer. That’s going to own, man.

Spencer:
That’s almost why I haven’t added sort of my proprietary highlighting or formulas because I have seen the other tools that do that. When I look at them or use them, I’d really don’t know what their calculations are, so they might be saying ‘this is a winning keyword’, but I look at it and go ‘Well no, it’s not. It’s not what I see’, and I think that makes a lot of people not do as well in this business is because they sort of take the feedback they see from software and they really don’t know where that feedback is calculated from.

That’s one thing that we want to add. We are going to also be looking at adding the ability to add some proxies so that you can search for more things a little bit quicker, and things of that nature. So there’s some other improvements as well that we are looking at.

Justin:
One of the questions I have, especially for products that you have to buy and you buy it upfront and there’s no…I am not paying you again later, it’s a one-time deal – it’s done, right? I don’t know why you didn’t attach even like a $5.00/month fee. One of my concerns with buying it upfront would be that in three months you are no longer supporting it, so what’s going to keep you supporting it 3 months, 6 months, 12 months down the road?

Spencer:
The reality is that this market is huge, that there are lots of people that I haven’t even approached, that don’t even know about Long Tail Pro and so as I continue to market the software there’s going to be a ton of new users.

And so that’s one thing is that right now I am in a tiny sort of little segment here that as the word…it’s going to be more and more users, which obviously is bringing in that income, so that I can reinvest that, but as well, there’s always new people coming into this market. There’s so many people that are learning about internet marketing.

Say there’s million people out there today that may be are interested in something like this. A year from now, there’s going to be another 250,000 that are even interested in this market today. So it’s a huge market and it’s ever expanding. So that’s sort of why I feel like I am able to do that.

Joe:
Why are you giving Long Tail Pro away with just one simple flat fee, which seems to us like you could charge a small monthly fee and people would be willing to pay that?

Spencer:
I appreciate that feedback as well. At this point it’s a one-time purchase. I can always look at readjusting that in the future if I need to. I don’t plan on changing it but I may, and this is nothing that’s coming right away, but I may add some premium features, that perhaps I might add a monthly fee too, and there could be a number of different things but I am sort of thinking about sort of add-ons that maybe I could add to Long Tail Pro that if somebody really wants this add-on feature, they would be willing to pay a monthly subscription too.

So down the road, I may be charging an ongoing fee for certain things but the way it is now, it’s working well, going to stick with the one-time fee.

Justin:
I can tell you, we are big fans of Long Tail Pro. We are using on a regular basis. We have trained our keyword research agents and we have basically siphoned them off of Market Samurai and pushed them over to Long Tail Pro. So we are using it, we know you use it, so I mean this is the tool that you kind of whip together to sell to the ‘Warrior Special Offer’ kind of crew. I mean this is…

Spencer:
Right.

Justin:
…these on a regular basis. Now I tell you, I much prefer and I know because we have talked about this before, I much prefer marketers that are selling what they actually use, and so it’s refreshing to see someone who uses the tool, build something for themselves and is now offering that to the people, and we are friends as well. We will continue to use that as well.

So I had also mentioned that at the bottom of this, we are going to put a link to Long Tail Pro for sure so people can pick it up if they want. We are also going to put a video in with some tips and tricks that we found on how to use Long Tail Pro, so hopefully some people find that helpful and to help them decide like how to use it and some of the tricks you can use it effectively.

I want to go over really quick Spencer, some of the things we talked about in the call and I think is actionable, I think is useful, and one of the most difficult things to do is to figure out how to find keywords and analyze the first page. So it’s critical to get important with that for anyone just starting out, and if our listeners are considering building some niches sites, and also to take bits and pieces from us, from you and from others like Pat Flynn, on how to build these sites, but to really make it their own, rather than just copy a process. Does that makes sense?

Spencer:
Definitely! Whole-heartedly agree with that. I think that’s spot on there because somebody might start in this market listening to what we have to say but they might come up with a great idea that we never thought of, or they might do things a little bit differently than we do and they can expand their success beyond what we are teaching. So I think it’s so important to sort of I guess, think outside the box, do things differently and on their own but they can really hopefully achieve the most success possible for themselves.

Justin:
That’s one of the things we love about what you are doing as far as like explaining exactly how to do the keyword research stuff. I know a lot of people struggle with it, building a tool that helps them get the keywords that are going to make them money, is key man.

And best of luck to you Spencer. You have had a ton of success over there at ‘Niche Pursuits’. I am going to continue following you man, I am a fan. It’s great to interview you but we’ll keep checking in with each other. I love the fact that seems like we are kind of aligned on some of our thinking in marketing, so I think it’s pretty cool and I hope to learn a lot more from you as we continue to go forward.

Spencer:
And also I appreciate that. It’s a huge compliment to hear that you guys use Long Tail Pro on a regular basis. So I appreciate hearing that very much. At the same time I am huge fans of you guys over there at AdSenseFlippers.com. I love what you are doing there. I keep thinking that I need to try out selling some of my other niche sites on Flippa. So I may be dabbling with that here in the next little while and I am sure I can pick up plenty of tips from you guys there. So will definitely stay in touch.

*This is the AdSense Flippers podcast…

Justin:
Well that’s the interview with Spencer from NichePursuits. Big thanks to him for coming on the show man. I love what he had to say. The guy is on point. So if you haven’t checked out his blog or haven’t checked out Long Tail Pro, you need to get over there and check it out.

And for AdSenseFlippers’ listeners only, he has given us a $77.00 price tag. So that’s down 20 bucks and that can be good until November 10th only so you should take advantage of this special offer. There’s a link below if you want to check it out, take a look and get moving from there.

So Joe, let’s talk about tips on using Long Tail Pro man – what’s the best way to use Long Tail Pro? What special things have you figured out while you have been using it?

Joe:
One of the best ways to use it is for the competition analysis. Right now, sometimes when I look at a Search Engine Results Page or a SERP, it’s like the matrix. I can just read the code. I know whether it’s going to be easy to rank for or difficult, but how I got to that stage was by having Long Tail Pro opened in one window and the Sear Engine Results Page on the other, and comparing the two and seeing how a search engine really looks at that page and how it determines ranking, and if that’s going to be a difficult page to rank on because of the number of inlinks, the PR for the pages, is there a title match – all that is given to you in one little screen right on Long Tail Pro.

Justin:
Yeah, if you check out our keyword research strategy part-2, you will find that we ranked competition on the first page. So if we put five, I mean it’s very, very easy. We are going to nail it, no problem. We are going to own this down to one where we suck and we are not going to be really get this done.

Fives and ones are easy. Ones we wipe, fives, we are nailing down. And so it’s the three’s and four’s that are difficult, right? I mean the three’s are like ‘I don’t know, I could do it, it could work, I am not sure’, but the four’s, yeah we are pretty sure we can get it down.

So I think Long Tail Pro really helps determine that line and helps you figure out like the difference between a three and four really nail that down.

So anyway, love Long Tail Pro. You should definitely give it a look. So that’s it for this first podcast of ours – really excited to be putting it out. Our next podcast is going to be in about two weeks and that podcast should be covering a bit more about our story and like what we are doing with AdSense Flippers, where we see it going, where we want to take it, and some of the things we are doing to really round it out and help bring in more from our site.

So stay tuned, have a listen and we will see you next time around.

Joe:
See you later everybody.