There are dozens of SEO tools and platforms to choose from, and it’s hard to find out which one will meet all of your needs. It’s not a simple decision, but the first consideration is how much time can any of these tools save you, and by using them what is the increased productivity worth to you, or to your clients?

There are a number of tools I use to make my life easier and improve my clients’ SEO. Here’s what I like and don’t like about each of then.

Tools to Evaluate Backlinks

Link Detox

Link Detox is part of LinkResearchTools but can be used separately, and is the perfect tool for quick analysis on a websites backlinks to understand their toxicity. The upgraded tool now offers some wonderful Risk Breakdown reports and scores your link profile for your Link Detox Risk, which helps understand your site’s chances of being hit by the next Penguin update. The other benefit of using the tool is that you can export Google Disavow files ready for submission to Google. Between you and me, I don’t believe the disavow tool works (that’s a topic for another post!) so I use LinkDetox to flag what links I want to remove manually. LinkResearchTool is a subscription product, but you can also just use Link Detox as a standalone product, as I have found that I only use the full suite of features during quarterly reviews. To make using Link Detox reports regularly a bit more cost effective I have a platform subscription and just buy bulk batches of Link Detox credits when I run out as when you have a monthly subscription additional Link Detox credits cost around  €1 each.

MajesticSEO

(Disclosure: I’m part of the MajesticSEO Ambassador Program)- MajesticSEO‘s full suite of products is something I only use around once a quarter when I often need to do some hardcore analysis of a competitors link profile to work out what is their new SEO tactic they are trying this time. I’ve had FREE account with them since 2010 and have always found it a great tool for analysis of historical links that often don’t show up in other tools, and often use their Site Explorer on a daily basis to check link profiles. The other benefit of their Site Explorer is that their Historic Index allows you to check a prospective website’s past dirty laundry and if there are any skeletons in their closet you’ll want to address or research before you make your bid to buy it. While they don’t have the prettiest UX, their platform does offer the largest range of SEO research tools and also offer a fairly simple API integration if you are looking to build a tool that can scale up if required.

Linkody

Linkody is the cutest little thing and just keeps getting better each month. They offer 24/7 monitoring of your backlinks to track the following: are your links still live, have your backlinks changed, what new links do you have, and have your prospects linked back yet? There are plenty of new features they are adding such as Link Analytics and SEO Metrics so you can do a detailed analysis on your site or a competitors backlinks and hopefully better understand why a Penguin algorithm update hit your sites. Their platform pricing also starts with a free option, so it’s worth having a try.

SEO Tools for Website Reviews & Research

SeoTools for Excel

I think Niels Bosma has done a wonderful job with his Excel add-in that adds some fairly hardcore functions for SEO data and insights right from within Excel. The plugin allows for integration with Google Analytics, SEOlytics and MajesticSEO which can make you job that much easier when working with a number of data-sets or just spot checking things are working fine. The Excel plugin is really useful for SEO analysis for OnPage recommendations, debugging technical issues but also amazing for domain research!

MozCheck

James Blackwell of Propel Digital has done a great job with MozCheck, a tool that quickly scrapes the SEOmoz Linkscape data from up to 100 links at a time and costs nothing! If you are planning on using this tool more frequently, I would suggest you looking at Mozcheck Pro which runs on your own server and allows you to check 1,000,000 links per month along with all sorts of added functionality, improved processing and social metrics. The hosted version is a blessing and pays for itself in just the time saved the first time you have to do a check of thousands of URLs or Domains.

RavenTools

While they no longer scrape Google SERPs for ranking reports, RavenTools have vastly improved their tools and I’ve found that Site Auditor for SEO Health checks and Site Performance are two indispensable tools I now use for monitor my websites automatically.  This SEO tool constantly runs in the background and monitors your sites for performance changes. RavenTools also collects data automatically and instantly so you can get on with your other tasks which makes SEO that little bit more scalable and trackable.

I have found the big time issue with tracking multiple metrics on your competitors is the amount of time that it can take to manually source the data from multiple tools. This doesn’t even include the time needed if you need to visualise the data you collect in a report or an Excel dashboard.  I have found some success with RavenTool’s Site Performance report for tracking both my social and SEO metrics and their changes overtime.  I have found little use for the local listings, as I’m dealing with multiple locations or a virtual business with no physical shopfront, but this is just a small part of the report so no love lost on local listings — and they might be just the thing for your business.

SEOmoz

SEOmoz is one of the few platforms that combines a detailed SEO audit platform and a number of enterprise tools linked to insights learned from their Linkscape data.  If you are unsure I would just suggest giving their platform a try and setup a few campaigns but you will find the data insight they offer hard to give up once you start to use it effectively in your SEO activities. I haven’t reviewed their platform in much detail as they are currently updating a number of their tools and have a “top secret” inbound marketing platform launching soon over on Moz.com, which I will review once it’s live.

Tools to Track Google Ranking

SEOmoz, again!

SEOmoz offers one of the most simplified weekly rank tracking platforms and, unlike many of their competitors, they refused to stop scraping Google SERPs in order to monitor rankings for your keywords. If you are using their platform you can track and monitor your Social and SEO from within a single dashboard which should save you some reporting time. Their pricing is fairly standard at $99/month but this increases if you need to track more than 300 keywords and more than 5 campaigns, and all offer you access to software like FollowerWonk and OpenSiteExplorer which you will find that you use almost everyday.

Advanced Web Ranking

Probably the most established platform in the market for SEO reporting, AWR is one platform that I have used personally and inhouse for over 6 years, so I can stand by its feature set and functionality. It’s a unique product in that it offers me desktop access to my data as it’s not cloud hosted, along with Google Analytics integration, plus a number of other tools such as Research, Auditing, Social Signals and obviously tracking my competitors. The standard license which should satisfy most users starts at $99 for a lifetime license, but I usually recommend the enterprise license as it offers more advanced SEO tools and support for Multiple Proxies to speed up your ranking reports.

Trusted Proxies

The reason you would consider buying from Trusted Proxies is that you can only run a certain number of search queries before your IP address gets banned by Google. By using proxies you can dramatically ramp up how quickly you can run your ranking reports in software such as Advanced Web Ranking. Trusted Proxies are one of the providers that I have used and found to be both reasonably priced but also have a  fairly proactive support teams should you have any issues. Depending on how many keywords you are running and how frequently you are running your ranking reports, you can save a bit of money and go for the “Virtual Proxies”, but I have found the “Dedicated Proxies”, while more expensive, will barely ever give you any occasional hiccups due to Google blocking them. You can get a batch of 5 Virtual Proxies for around $30/month which should do most small users and can increase them as you need to scale up.

AuthorityLabs

The platform that RavenTools use to use to power their SEO reports, AuthorityLabs have the functionality to track almost an unlimited amount of keywords and offer an enterprise API to make SEO reporting scalable.  Their platform is useful for SEOs who need to track large number of keywords or just monitor a few hundred without the hassle of proxies, or if they don’t want to run desktop software like AWR or have an SEOmoz subscription. Their interface is far simpler than some of the competitors, but they offer SEOs one of the best Cost-Per-Keyword models and for true scale and cost savings run your keyword checks via their API with prices starting at $49/month.

So, What Tools Should You Use?

I would advise to use as many tools as you find useful. If you find a particular unique feature or functionality in one platform that makes your job easier or your analysis more insightful, I would suggest sticking with that platform and hope the next version gives you any previously missing functionality. I use all the tools listed above but I use a mix of free/paid options, with upgrades when I need additional features/functionality depending on the project.

Which tools do you already use? Did I miss any must-have SEO tools?

It may seem like it is a great honor to be asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA. By presenting you with an NDA to sign, someone apparently believes that they have some very valuable, even secret information that they actually want to show you. They also think that you are so dangerous and/or clever that they couldn’t possibly show you this secret information without first obtaining your written agreement to not use or disclose it to anyone.

Often the signing of an NDA is the first step in buying or selling a website business — in fact, on Flippa, many high-end website listings are protected by an NDA. If you are a prospective buyer, you may want to find out about the seller’s traffic, revenue, customers, and other non-public information that would normally be considered private and confidential. If the seller is prepared to share this information with you in the hopes of ultimately selling you their website, the seller may present you with a NDA to sign.

Why an NDA?

Why take this extra step? The seller might have included some confidential information in the listing’s documentation, such as a customer list, and they don’t want you to use this information if ultimately a deal is not consummated. Similarly, a seller will be reluctant to even share its traffic or revenue data with someone who is or may become a competitor without written assurances that this sensitive data will not be used or disclosed with anyone else.

Having a written NDA in place is often seen as a good method for protecting the seller’s confidential information. A good NDA will make it clear precisely what is to be considered confidential, and will also clearly restrict what the recipient of this confidential information is and is not permitted to do with it.

When an NDA is not enough

Nevertheless, some prudent sellers are reluctant to rely on an NDA alone. At the end of the day, sharing very sensitive confidential information with anyone, especially an actual or potential competitor, can be very damaging, and once the information “gets out there” to the public, it is often too late. Likewise, once someone sees your confidential information, it is often impossible for that person to merely forget that information just because they signed an NDA. In addition, enforcing an NDA is often difficult due to the expense, the location of the parties, and also sometimes the difficulty in proving who exactly released the confidential information.

With all this in mind, a prudent seller will not always release particularly sensitive information under an NDA, or at least not until there is evidence of a greater commitment and security, which can often be found in the next step in buying and selling a website business, which is often a Memorandum of Understanding, or Offer to Purchase.

When asked to review an NDA, the first thing I check is whether it is a Mutual NDA. A Mutual NDA is an NDA that is a “two-way street”, i.e. it provides for each party sharing information with the other, not just one party. If the relationship requires mutual sharing (for example, if the prospective buyer shows the seller some of their financial records as proof of ability , a Mutual NDA is often appropriate, and the fact that both parties are getting treated equally often provides comfort. As a lawyer, a Mutual NDA gives me greater confidence that the NDA is a good agreement to sign.

Most of the NDAs I see are fairly standard, and an experienced website lawyer will be able to review such agreements in a matter of seconds or minutes. Accordingly, if you are presented with an NDA and are unsure of what it says and what obligations it imposes, it is easy to get a lawyer to provide a very quick review.

Today’s post is by Brad Gosse, a self-taught marketer from Ontario, Canada. Brad started his web business in 1997, and has learned a lot from an unexpected source: his work as a self-professed geek in the adult industry.

Before Google, Paypal, Clickbank and even before Facebook, at the very start of the web, there was adult entertainment.

Adult entertainment was the main driver of early Internet technology. Streaming video, credit card processing, cheap web hosting even affiliate programs were all pioneered by adult companies. As everyone knows, sex sells!

That’s where I got my start.

In the late 1990s, if you wanted to make money online, the easy road was to sell adult content. I was a webmaster and I knew how to build and manage websites but it was hard to find people willing to pay for such services.

So I built a really small porn site, then another, and before I knew it my girlfriend (now wife Claire) and I had built thousands of adult websites, each generating traffic and revenue.

That’s what we did for over 10 years. Adult entertainment.

Before you picture me with a giant mustache and hairy chest banging porn stars, I will tell you we just did the geek work. Not even behind the scenes. More like after the scenes, using licensed content already shot by studios. I would pay about $200 for the rights to put a full adult VHS/DVD on my website and anywhere from $0.01 to $4 per image.

This content either generated traffic and entice people to pay for more or was offered as members only product. We were a true mom and pop porn company. Super affiliates generating an awesome income out of a country house with a dial up connection in the Canadian boonies.

One of the high points was sitting in the #1 position for “porn” on Google back in 2007. This model worked well until the free line was pushed too far. Which happens in many categories.

Today we still live in the house. But we no longer rely on dial-up (we get high speed internet off a 100′ tower) and we don’t do much in the adult entertainment business anymore.

What I learned in that business was extremely valuable. Buy and/or create content assets whenever possible.

In 10 years I spent over a million dollars licensing adult images, movies, live streams and chat-rooms for my customers.

Lessons Learned

Now that my business is mostly mainstream I am the one selling the licenses. By hiring artists in the Philippines to create licensable images for designers.

As someone who has been slapped by Google I am not a fan of the Adsense model that seems to be so popular on Flippa. There are too many variables beyond my control. I would take a site with real customers and commerce over one where one company provides the traffic and the revenue with a shaky TOS at best.

So recently I decided to test my licensing model, and everything I’d learned from my days in the porn industry, on the Flippa buyer community.

I had just hired a new cartoonist and he was not quite drawing people in the style I wanted. He wasn’t doing a bad job, he just wasn’t doing exactly what I wanted. So I decided to let him continue for a month so I could build a “flippable” business.

Normally I sell my graphics on VectorToons.com one at a time. But in this case I decided to offer a bundle of images for a lower price.

By the end of the month I had 317 vector cartoon characters you could use on your websites as mascots, to illustrate points etc.

I took the content, registered a brand new domain, installed analytics, wrote a sales letter, did some basic affiliate recruiting and emailed my list of graphics buyers to take a look at my new bundle offer all in the course of a few days.

The result? Over 800 customers and $15,000 in gross sales within 2 weeks of launching.

More than a website

I wanted to offer my first Flippa buyer a business. Not just a website with articles and ads. So I created one with value.

When I listed VectorsGold.com on Flippa I focused on writing really good copy with a solid “What You Get” section. This is where I focused on the customer list, the graphics ownership, built in affiliates and back end recurring affiliate income.

The second most important section was where I spelled out “What you can do with this”. I knew that people might not see the potential of my listing so I wanted to frame it for them. I pointed out ways to cash in on the assets through third party stock sites, legal action against misusers, converting to grayscale, silhouettes etc.

I knew that people would need as many of these next steps spelled out as possible to make an educated (high) bid. The more you can show people your business has legs going forward the better.

Once I launched my listing I didn’t just let Flippa find buyers. I emailed my own customers, posted on social media and even reached out to my competitors to tell them my site was for sale. I wanted as much action as I could get.

The result was a $9000+ sale and a new partner to work with in future graphics launches. Not bad at all!

In 1996, visionary and research aficionado Brewster Kahle founded The Internet Archive. It’s housed in an unassuming San Francisco building, but stores some incredible data: the Archive currently boasts over 281 billion web pages and digital content, with billions more added every month.

The Archive’s mission is simple and yet ridiculously complex: To chronicle the history of the internet. All of it. Lofty as it is, this goal is critical to far more than just those among us obsessed with research and history. Maintaining a bona fide chronicle of the online world is also crucial to business owners keen on understanding trends, and studying what has and has not worked throughout different stages of the dot com journey. Thanks to the Archive, it’s still possible to learn from the internet’s short yet rich history.

First Things First: Google is Not an Archive 

You might wrongly assume that Google itself acts as an archive, since it’s essentially a dynamic homepage for the entire web. Since Google’s algorithms are not publicly accessible (and they can be frustratingly complicated to guess at), their data is proprietary and not preserved in the public’s interest — the days of Don’t Be Evil are long gone!

Compare that with the the Internet Archive, which is wisely set-up as a non-profit, and s0 maintains the interest of the masses, not of  a corporation. Google wants to sell ads; the Archive just wants to preserve the incredible creativity and storytelling of every web page it can capture.

Yes, this sounds very hippie-ish, but the integrity of an archive is as important as that of a library, so it’s crucial that we don’t rely on a private company for either one.

How and What Data is Collected

Archive engineers are tasked to monitor and crawl the top million web addresses in the world. Data is then captured and stored, and every three months, they start over again with a brand new list. Thanks to the ever-changing, wildly dynamic nature of the web, these top sites change regularly, so staying on top of current trends is critical.

In addition to the massive amount of web data, the Archive also contains over 750,000 books, with many more slated for future addition. Information is also collected from more than 60 TV stations and YouTube videos, which are often selected due to Twitter trending. The web collections manager at the Archive, Alexis Rossi, estimates that 10 billion URLs are saved every three months, which roughly equates to one-tenth of what is released across the entire internet. “It’s a Sisyphean task,” says Rossi. “We know we’ll never get it all. The web by its nature is infinite.”

How Business Owners Can Use the Archive

Taking the time to study the history of high-value homepages can give business owners insight into how navigation and page formatting has changed over the years to suit the needs of users. It’s also an excellent way to monitor the progress of your top competitors; you can track a URL or group of addresses over a selected time period, and take special note of the major changes made. This kind of insight can help you avoid mistakes your competitors have already made, and learn from the consistencies that helped them stay afloat.

The Archive is also a mecca for people engaged in web-related lawsuits. By accessing archived pages otherwise unavailable on the web, lawyers and those involved in suits can validate digital claims, like incomplete Terms and Conditions or deceitful advertising tactics. As a business owner, you can also use the archives to research active patents that may be relevant to your business.

Last but not least, studying past design trends will also reveal plenty of artistic insights; when you see what a page looked in 2000 versus 2013, you’ll quickly realize A) how much we have evolved (we’re certainly a bit shocked at how much Flippa’s design has evolved over the years!) and B) how many dot coms have yet to actually modernize. Pro tip: you want to avoid being in that second category.

The Wayback Machine: The Archive’s Ingenious Interface

Want to fast forward to the most critical and crazy fun part of the Archive? Head to the Wayback Machine. The Wayback Machine, whose name references a segment from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, is the method by which we can interface with the gigantic Archive. The interface allows you to type in a URL, and essentially time travel as you view that site’s growth and changes (or utter demise) through the years.

This interface helps to navigate the behemoth Archive in a very intuitive manner. People use it to find old digital art pieces, lost articles or blogs, or to just take a fabulous trip down memory lane. As of the start of 2013, the Wayback Machine covered over 240 billion URLs. Yes, its obvious you can get lost in this machine! But what a way to spend some quality researching time. 

Why Is It Important to Archive the Internet?

In additional to all the practical business applications of maintaining a comprehensive history of the web, the urgency to further develop the Archive continues to intensify. Part of this motivation comes from the fact that the data, in many ways, is in danger of disappearing. Government interests, as an example, continue to threaten the presence of much of the Archive, as they often have a strong desire to suppress and sensor data.

The inevitable damage to hardware systems that just do not last forever (yet) means that precious terabytes are lost every day, never to be recovered – unless there’s an Archive that has already secured the information. Finally, there are many who view the huge application onslaught as a potential “web killer”, as more and more digital experiences happen in the confines of an app, and not in an open web environment. It’s all the more critical to capture the nuances of the web while it still exists in such a massively public forum.

Long Live the Archive

Collecting and housing this many billions of web pages takes the same amount of energy it would take to power 45 homes. You can imagine the amount of hardware, organizational skills, and just plain tenacity it takes to pull off the salvation of even 10% of the web; but it’s a tremendous service the Archive is providing to netizens across the globe.

The Archive is like a modern day Library of Alexandria, once housed in ancient Egypt. Within the Archive lies the digital history of a generation that has changed so much in so little time, in many ways thanks to the internet itself. The Archive allows business owners to witness the evolution of their particular industry and niche, and to have a million case studies across the lifecycle of the web at their fingertips. You can’t put a price on that kind of precious historical data — but if you have a few spare dollars, it’s worth making a donation. If you haven’t yet used the Archive to further your understanding of web usage and best practices, it’s time. Give it 5 minutes, and I suspect you’ll be hooked for life.

A laptop and a GoDaddy account – That’s all you really need to get started on your entrepreneurial journey today.

This wasn’t always the case. Some of you are old enough to remember growing up before the internet… before cat pictures and Good Guy Greg captured our attention. Getting your business started took 6-7 figures up-front and there were very few opportunities to test your MVP before taking it to market.

The world has changed in many ways. We now have guys like John at EntrepreneurOnFire.com blowing up some of those tired old scripts. He took his laptop and a microphone, put together a cookie-cutter list of interview questions, and built his podcast out from a little-known blip on the radar to a virtual empire in less than 9 months. (Interviewing titans like Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss, and Gary V.)

Some things haven’t changed so much. You’re still going to need:

• Personal Runway – Enough cash in the bank or income to keep you full of Ramen noodles and peanut butter sandwiches until your business can sustain itself.
• Business Runway – Even a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) with Lean Startup methodology takes a bit of cash to ship.
• Team Of People – Automation isn’t a cure-all. Exponential growth requires sharp, talented team members.
• Connections – Forging strong connections with strategic partners will always be a critical aspect to growing your business.
• Opportunity – Putting yourself in the enviable position where these things just tend to “fall into your lap”.

All five of these requirements are easily achieved in the Philippines.

Look – If you think you’ll be able to build the next “bigger than Facebook” MLM (bleh) or you have an AirBnB-Meets-Dating app that requires VC and a 10X exit, this probably isn’t for you.

For the rest of us, here are the reasons the Philippines may be your dream location for building a kick-ass business:

Extend Your Personal Runway

I’m a little old for Ramen and PB&J sandwiches, but I love the fact I can live like a king in the Philippines. I have an amazing 4-bedroom house in a gated/private subdivision, right next to a lap-pool and an awesome restaurant for less than $1,000 per month. If you include electricity, two internet connections, our maid, and all other house bills…we’re talking $2,000 per month total.

You take four founders in an awesome house together and you’re looking at $500 per month each, all-in. Have $12,000 saved up? That could potentially get you TWO YEARS without the frills, baselining in the Philippines. Everyone who comes to Davao City from the US, Australia, etc. is floored with the value you get here.

Maybe even more important to your business isn’t the cost-savings, it’s the time savings. I don’t have to:

• Go food shopping (except when I want to)
• Cook food (Awesome maid + The Food Channel/Google)
• Pay bills
• Do laundry (Pressed and folded/hung in my closet like clockwork)
• Do yard work (Cut the grass + trim the bushes all day with scissors = $3)
• Perform any property/house maintenance

As anyone who’s grown their business will tell you, you start to put a much higher value on your time. I didn’t fully appreciate how much freedom this would bring me until I’d moved to the Philippines. I now spend my time working on my business, connecting with others, or doing whatever it is I want to be doing with my time…all the rest is just taken care of for me.

Mini Business Investments

My business partner (Joe Magnotti) and I are friends with Andrew and Jay – a couple of guys who have built an empire here in the Philippines. They started off investing a few thousand into a kiosk at the mall that paints and sells crabshells and have now built a mini-empire here in Davao City that includes:

• Four-story kids play zone and event center named Zoofari (largest in the country) with satellite locations
• Large new theme-based restaurant with fire dancers and a plane sticking out of the roof!
• Franchised popcorn kiosk business at the malls that is currently expanding throughout the country

This all started with a few thousand dollars invested.

Note: We generally discourage starting a local retail business unless you have experience in the industry and really know what you’re doing.

There is such a powerful opportunity for business here where Joe and I created what we call a “capture center” option for outsourcing in the Philippines. It basically allows you to rent our corporation, licensing, and connections to set up your own office here in the Philippines for your team. This can be done for as little as $5,000 to get up and running.

Building Your Team In The PI

There are nearly 100M people in the Philippines and they have the 4th largest English-speaking population in the world. (Around 16M more than the UK, in fact.) All business contracts are in English. All signs are in English. When you look at the Under-30 college graduates the opportunity is for start-ups and entrepreneurs becomes crystal clear.

Most will talk about the cost of employees in the Philippines (yes, you can get a great Virtual Assistant for $250-$350 and a Top Tier programmer for $800-$1,200 per month), but I think it’s much more than that. There’s a hunger here to work for and be a part of a cool company or business. Want to build a team of hot-shot, entrepreneurial-minded core team members? Get invited to any number of StartUp Weekend events (as a mentor or Judge, most likely), walk the room, and make some connections.

It really is that easy.

Aside from the local talent, your pool for co-founders, early hires, and Interns is now global. Want to bring that programmer from Latvia or the business guy from Germany to your headquarters in the Philippines? No problem! Visas are easy in the Philippines and the government here is VERY open to ambitious entrepreneurs that are building stuff. (They built the Special Visa For Employment Generation SVEG for this, specifically)

This isn’t theoretical – we’ve actually done this. Take a look at our friends that have run over a dozen Internships here in the Philippines – some have gone on to start building/developing their own empires. When Joe and I offered our first Internship we had 17 awesome people apply in just a few weeks. We’re now on our second Internship (Hi Erik!) and couldn’t be happier with how it’s turned out.

Making Connections, Simplified

I’m not overstating anything by telling you there’s a VIP status that comes with being an expat entrepreneur here. Sure, you could spend your time hanging out in local bars and talking to some of the disgruntled, grumpy retirees frequenting these haunts, (there are quite a few of those) but expat business owners in the Philippines carry a ton of clout. We’ve only been here a few years and we’ve had:

• VIP status, boxes, and backstage passes at beauty pageants, boxing events, and a nationally-televised show<
• Meetings with the Mayor’s office regarding expat tourism in Davao (The third largest city in the country)
• Free helicopter and private plane rides with a hotel owner and the owner of a construction company

Now…that’s exciting, but let’s talk a bit about connections that can help you grow your business.

Once you’ve become an expat entrepreneur you’re automatically a part of a smaller, well-connected, even influential club. There’s no initiation and we don’t have a handshake, but you’ll recognize it right away as soon as you start bumping into others at social events, gatherings, etc. We’re not discussing the latest controversies in local politics, the latest office gossip, or the cost to landscape our backyards next month because none of that applies anymore.

Instead, we connect and discuss the ways we can better support our customers, our teams, and each other in a meaningful way…and that’s powerful.

When Opportunity Knocks…

I’m not gonna lie – there are plenty of distractions living in the Philippines. If you’re not serious about building your business, a geographic change alone will not be the answer. But, if you’re serious about putting yourself in the right place to take advantage of opportunity, the Philippines is a great place to be.

For a great example, take a look at Chris from ChrisDucker.com. He started a small call center business with 5-figures and about a dozen employees and has built a behemoth organization in Cebu City through his Live2Sell group. A few years back he started sharing his journey through his blog/podcast and soon found himself with another 5-figures per month, featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, and speaking at conferences like New Media Expo.

Don’t get me wrong, Chris is a pretty amazing guy, but he’ll be the first to tell you that his success is directly tied to the team of people behind him here in the Philippines.

So What Are You Waiting For!

I’m not trying to paint TOO rosy a picture…the Philippines really isn’t for everybody. The disparity in income can be a bit of a downer along with slower internet, frustrating cultural differences, etc.

It truly is the Wild West out here. (The good, the bad, and the ugly if you will) And that’s exactly why you need to check it out.!

Want to see what it’s like? Here’s an open invitation – You come visit us in Davao City, Philippines and I’ll be happy to have a coffee, dinner, or beers with you and discuss it in person! We’ll see you soon?

This post was written by Ashwin Ramesh. Ashwin is the Chief Hustler at Guest Post Labs. You can follow the Guest Blogging Blog or follow him on Twitter.

Not that I feel particularly proud, but most of my guest blogging opportunities (unless it’s someone I know already) come from what some would deem as “cyber stalking”.

I’m going to be showing you how I landed this guest post on Flippa by reaching out to the right person and show you how you can do the same thing.

STEP #1 – Identify the blog that you want a guest post from

Before you even go about stalking your way to success, it’s important to first identify blogs or websites where you’re going to get maximum bang for your article.

I typically ask myself these questions:

a. What is a website or a company that is most aligned to my target customer base?
b. Who is an authority blog in my industry?
c. Which is the most socially active company or website in my industry?

Answering these questions will give you some easy targets to go after. But, if nothing else works, you can always go the grunt route and use the guest blogging query generator.

STEP #2 – Start looking at sources to stalk from

A. Facebook Graph Search

Facebook Graph Search is an exceptional way to find the right connect in the website that you’re looking to get a guest post from.

For instance, while I was looking to get a guest post up on Flippa, I did a Facebook graph search for “people who work at Flippa”.

That gave me a few options:

The most relevant among these options seemed like Ophelie who was a marketing lead, and I knew whom I had to reach out to in order to get a shot at contributing my content to the Flippa blog.

B. LinkedIn

While Facebook Graph Search is an excellent way to find the right contacts, it may not be successful for you all the time.

When Facebook fails, I typically head over to LinkedIn. The interesting thing about LinkedIn is that, it’s a great tool for you to “identify” the right people, but not so great for you to contact them.

So, taking the example of Flippa again:

I find a similar “connect” at Flippa (Ophelie, again) who’s relevant to what I’m about to pitch. But, LinkedIn is hit or a miss since I can’t really reach out to them unless they add me back as a contact.

C. Google

I like Google because it aggregates a lot of different sources – many a time, it may just work for you to enter “marketing + company name” to find a list of people that work in the marketing department of a company.

If you’re feeling it, you could even try more elaborate combinations like:

“marketing manager + company name”
“content manager + company name”

STEP #3 – Finding an email for a contact

If you find your right connect via Facebook, you’re in luck, since Facebook allows you to message anyone without them having to be in your friend’s list. But, there is still that oddball chance that your Facebook messages may get flagged as spam and never reach the intended recipient.

Under these circumstances, if you know a contact’s name but need to find their email address, the best tool to use would be Rapportive.

Install the Rapportive addon for Gmail and, once done, add different combinations of the first and last name of your contact in the “to” box in the Gmail compose box and wait until Rapportive gives you a hit.

Some combinations you can use are:

firstname@company.com
firstname.lastname@company.com
firstletterfirstname.lastname@company.com
firstname.firstleetterlastname@company.com

Now that you know how to find the right person to pitch – go ahead and bounce your ideas off them; you’re bound to get a nod of approval for at least one of them.

What do you think? Would you use these tips to submit a blog post to your favorite blogs? And who is on your guest blogging hit-list?

When you scan through the listings of sites for sale, you’ll often see some …. ummm … unique if not downright comical reasons that people give for wanting to sell their site or internet business. In fact, can you remember the last time someone listed their reason for sale as it being the “best strategic move to make”? Neither can I.

This could give the false impression that you need a reason to decide to sell, like something has to go wrong first, but if you’ve owned and operated a site for a long enough then knowing when to sell can actually work massively in your favour.

It all comes down to leverage

Take a look a these two examples:

• A seller owns a blog which he bought for $10,000 and it generates $800 net profit per month from advertising and affiliate sales to a mailing list.After one year, the seller will have $19,600 assuming the value of the site stays the same ($10,000 site value and $9,600 in earnings). After two years, this figure increases to $29,200 ($10,000 site value and $19,200 in earnings).

What if that seller sold up after the first year and bought a similar but larger blog with more traffic and a bigger list?

• If they invested $22,000 from year one into buying another blog at roughly the same valuation multiple, $22,000 would buy a site generating $1,760 net profit per month which means at the end of two years they would have $43,120 in total ($22,000 site value and $21,120 in earnings).

The numbers used are simple to illustrate the point, but it remains valid all the same – the second scenario results in more profit overall than the first. It works on the principle of leverage in two places.

Leveraging time

It’s highly unlikely that the second business takes twice as much work as the first. In fact it will probably take a near identical amount of time to manage, create content for and promote the second blog as it would do for the first.

This is something I often see when undertaking due diligence for organisations; there’s a section where you provide an independent estimate of the number of hours of labour that would be required to manage a site / internet business. There’s often little difference between a site valued at $20K versus one valued at $250K, as only some elements (like customer support or order fulfilment), increase proportionately as the business gets bigger. Things like search marketing, buying ads and creating content tends to be similar regardless of the size of the site (to a point), so it makes much more sense to be doing those activities where they will provide the greatest return i.e. the highest value site you can afford.

Leveraging finance

Statistically, based on the rate of small business failure, you’re more likely to be better off paying your money into a savings account than you are being an entrepreneur. I’m sure we all know this, but the reason why we choose the least likely path (other than it being more fun!) is the belief that we can leverage the money to provide a better rate of return through things like business, investments or property.

Going all in, reinvesting the revenue from a purchase and the value of the purchase itself is risky, but relatively safe if you’ve spent the previous months running a similar business and you know both the industry and what to look for in a similar business to guarantee stability. By putting your money to work in a bigger but similar “vehicle”, you ultimately get the same rate of return but on a much larger scale.

It’s not all happy days … or is it?

The increase in value is usually enough to make the decision to sell a no brainer, and that’s before you’ve considered things like

• The fact you can increase your return significantly if you increase your site value and earnings by increasing traffic or conversions. The same work will have a much better rate of return on a larger site.

• Most of us love new ideas and opportunities rather than day to day management. The rush of excitement from taking on a new project can often counter the 2 year boredom itch you get with doing the same thing day in, day out.

• Your past experience will have much greater use this time round. There are certain things you probably did on your current project to increase conversions or drive sales that you can only do once. Playing with Google’s Experiments feature in Analytics is my idea of a good night out, but there’s only so much button colour or menu tweaking that you can do to see a positive change. With a new project you can take all that knowledge and apply it again.

That said, there are still some good reasons why selling isn’t right – at least for the time being. Ramsay from Blog Tyrant provides a great alternative view on knowing your site’s worth to you versus its worth to a buyer. Sometimes the leads or opportunities that you get from being active in a space, especially if that site has your personality attached to it, is worth much more than you could gain from a sale.

Another common reason is knowing that you’ve still got significant value to extract from the business. The example above work on the idea that you’ve bought a site and either have little desire, or little opportunity to make improvements to increase its value. Ironically, this also the reason that prevents many people from selling when they should – they think they’re able to do more than they realistically can, not realising that the site has hit a ceiling or that they’ve taken it as far as they can go.

Another reason, one I personally understand, is simply having a connection with what you’re doing. Business is ultimately about profit, but the greatest part for many tech/web entrepreneurs is really loving what you do. If you’ve stumbled across a project or business that makes you excited to wake up on Monday and get stuck into a new idea or campaign, then you’ve probably found something worth keeping, especially if generates enough income to meet your immediate goals.

Of course, all of this is my opinion but I’d love to hear yours. Do you think there’s another reason not to sell that I’ve forgotten to include? Are you thinking of selling but can’t quite make your mind up? Let me know in the comments below.