Keyword Academy Review

If you are at all interested in making money online, chances are good that at some point you’ll reach the point of information overload. A Google search of “how to make money online” returns somewhere in the neighborhood of 175 million hits. 175 million! How do you even begin to make sense of all of that?

The Keyword Academy, run by two guys named Court and Mark, is one of those websites that talks about how to make money online. They have a free blog with tons of information, and they also have a paid course that they say will teach you how to make some real money on the Internet. Is it any good? Is it a scam? Let’s see what they can actually teach us.

TKA Pro

Mary and I have been a member of TKA Pro for nearly 1 year now, and I can tell you that the Keyword Academy is definitely not a scam. The first clue that says they’re legit is their free blog, which has over 100 articles on making money online. If you were to read all of those articles, and put what you learned into practice, that alone would probably be enough information to get you started making an income online.

But the real value of TKA comes when you join TKA Pro. The curriculum and tools that have made available to the members of TKA Pro are flat out incredible. Let’s see what you get for joining.

Curriculum and Tools

The first thing that you get when you join is access to TKA’s Core Videos. This is a group of 9 videos that take you step by step through the process of identifying niches, building websites, creating content, and monetizing them. And when I say step by step, I mean that Court literally goes through the entire process with you in the videos, showing you exactly what to do.

One of the things that used to stop me from buying courses like this in the past was wondering if I was going to get any concrete, actionable information or just a lot of fluff. Am I going to be learning from someone who has done this already, or am I going to be “learning” from other people who are in the same boat as I am?

When you sign up for TKA Pro, you get tons of concrete information that will leave you no doubt as to what you need to do next. If you watch the Core Videos and follow the steps that they give you, you’ll have 10 to 15 websites set up in a few weeks, ready to target their specific niches.

As far as the tools that you get, TKA Pro gives you access to Niche Refinery, a super awesome keyword tool; the Guest Posting System, which allows you to build organic traffic to your site; Connect Content, a passive link building tool; and the TKA Pro forums, where you can talk and exchange ideas with other members of the site. If there is a tool that you need – actually need – to make money online, Court and Mark either have it or can tell you where to get it.

(Just a side note on the forums. There are two types of MMO forums out there: 1) the kind where any legitimate plea for help or sincere comment is immediately swallowed up by a barrage of “internet marketers” trying to sell you something, and 2) the kind where everyone sits around a campfire singing Kumbaya and talking about how great it would be to actually make some money online. The TKA Pro forums are neither of those. So… I guess there are three types of MMO forums.)

In addition to the core curriculum and tools, Court and Mark also do a monthly webinar for TKA Pro members that covers the latest things that they’ve learned and new techniques that you can implement on your own sites. These webinars are great and I’ve learned as much from them as I did from the Core Videos.

What Does TKA Pro Teach?

As I mentioned in my article on Making Money Online, the steps to making money on the internet are pretty simple: 1) set up a website, 2) get people to visit your website, and 3) sell them something. However, making money on the internet is a lot like playing chess – you can learn the basics in an afternoon, and then you can spend the rest of your life trying to master it.

TKA Pro teaches both the basics and the subtleties that you need to know to master internet marketing. They take you step by step through setting up your first few websites, and then teach you the principles that you need to know to make a real income from your IM business.

What TKA Pro Is Not

This is not a get-rich-quick scheme in any sense of the word. You will most likely not make much, if any, money from the TKA methods for several months. Depending on how much time you can spend doing this, I’d say you’re looking at 6 to 12 months before you’re making a decent amount of money. If you’re in a financial crisis and need to make some quick cash, this is not the program for you. If you need to be making $5,000 a month in 60 days, this is not the program for you. If, on the other hand, you are looking for a method of setting up passive income systems, then the Keyword Academy is definitely worth checking out.

Cost

TKA Pro costs $67 a month (and I can guarantee you it’s worth far more than that), but you can give it a try for $1. You get full access to everything I mentioned above – the Core Videos, the tools, the forums, the webinars – and you can check it all out for one full month. The subscription is billed through Paypal, so you can cancel it any time on your own. (You don’t have to call an 800-number during a lunar eclipse and submit a blood sample to get them to cancel your subscription.)

If you’ve been trying to make money online and haven’t figured out how yet, or are just intrigued by the idea of having a website that makes you money, check out the Keyword Academy. They are the real deal.

Still have more questions? I answer some of the more popular questions in the TKA Pro FAQ.

Making Money Online

There’s no doubt that the Internet irrevocably changed the way that business works. Instead of having to use paper catalogs to sell products, businesses can now set up one website and attract customers from around the world. Using email, we can interact and do business with people thousands of miles away that we’ll never even meet. With all of the opportunity out there, it’s not very surprising that lots and lots of people are interested in learning how to make money online.

In this post (and possibly the next couple as well) I want to take a look at the reality of making money online and discuss how it’s different from what most people think. We’ll also talk about what you should know if you are interested in making money online, and what you should look into before you start.

Why Make Money Online?

To start off, let’s talk about why the Internet is such a great opportunity for people who are interested in making some money on their own. I can sum it up in four points.

Little to no money required – You can start up a website for under $20, or even for free if you want to. If you wanted to start up a traditional business, you’re going to have a significant amount of expenses before you can really get going – start up costs, legal fees, office space, employees, advertising, etc. But you can start putting up a website right after breakfast and be done by lunch.

Easy access – Just about everyone has access to the Internet. All you need is a computer and a phone line, and if you can’t get those on your own, your public library will probably let you use theirs for free.

Huge audience – According to the latest data, there are now more than 1.7 billion people online across the world. That is a staggeringly huge potential audience for your website. If you could get your product, service or ad in front of one-half of one percent of those people, you could be extremely wealthy.

And lastly, the number one reason that the Internet is so great is that it make it easy to establish passive income systems. If you set up a website and then go eat a sandwich, the website doesn’t stop working while you’re eating. No matter what you’re doing – sleeping, playing, working, whatever – your website is still working to generate traffic. That’s an incredibly powerful tool for your business that you should not pass up.

So How Do You Make Money Online?

There are several ways to go about making money online (far too many to sum up in one article) but let’s talk today about the most popular method. It’s actually fairly simple in theory, and it goes a little something like this: You make a website, people come visit your website, and then you sell them something. In this regard, having a website really isn’t that much different than running a traditional, brick and mortar business. Not everyone that comes by will buy your product or services, but if you get enough people coming in you’re going to start making sales. Let’s take a look at each of those three steps in greater detail.

Make a website – This step is really much easier than people usually think it’s going to be. You can set up a simple website using free tools available online in just a few hours. If you want to own your website, you’ll need to purchase a domain, get a hosting plan and then get some content up on it (use Wordpress for getting content on your site). You can also go the free route and get a website up with Blogger or another similar service, but you won’t own your site. It’s probably better to spend $10 or $20 and get your own site set up.

Get traffic – There are several options for getting traffic to your website. You can pay for it (using Adwords or another ad network), you can use social media (such as Stumbleupon or Digg) or you can to try increase your visibility in Google and other search engines. If you are trying to make money from your website, the best traffic generating method, by far, is to rank as high in the search engines as you possibly can for your niche.

Sell them something – As with generating traffic, you have several options for monetizing your website. The quickest and easiest solution is to use Google Adsense on your site. You can also sell someone else’s product (called affiliate sales) or sell your own product directly. Adsense is a popular choice for many webmasters, but it may not provide the best long-term solution for monetization.

There’s a quick intro to making money online. I think I’ll explore this topic more fully in my next few posts.

Money Making Ideas

If you are serious about making money then you have to be willing to go beyond the conventional wisdom on how to make money. You have to find a system that works and then pursue it with all of the focus, persistence, and guts that you have.To explain what I mean here are few comparisons of how to pursue money making ideas the conventional way and how to pursue money making ideas the right way.

Go to the extreme. Selling your unused household goods in a yard sale has got to be the most frequently given advice for how to come up with a few bucks quickly. It’s on everybody’s top ten list. The average, run of the mill yard sale will probably net you a few hundred dollars. In the grand scheme of things, a few hundred dollars is not going to make much of a difference to anything.

However, if you were to sell everything in your house that was not an absolute need then you could effect quite a dramatic change in your circumstances. First of all, you could raise quite a bit of money, particularly if you take the time to sell items on Ebay, Craigslist, and through the classifieds. You would also find that you have a lot more time and energy to devote to your money making ideas once you’ve sold your TV. With fewer household goods you will also be able to be more flexible in your living arrangements. You won’t need as much square footage; you’ll feel more free to move because you won’t have that much to move. In other words, you’ll find a lot more freedom in your life.

Be the best. You may have thought that your babysitting days were over after you graduated from college, but you can actually earn a lot of extra money with this job at any time in your life. Most child sitters earn approximately $10/hr and get new jobs through word of mouth recommendations. You can do much better than that though.

If you pursue this idea with all of your energy and ingenuity then you can get more sitting jobs than the average competitor and earn a higher rate per hour. First, be the best sitter that your employer has ever used. If you’re sitting for children, then bring toys for the children to play with, teach the kids new games, clean the house when the kids are in bed. Do everything that you can think to do to give the kids a good time and make your employers return home as pleasant as possible. Then, give your employer several of your business cards so that she can refer you to others. Also give your cards to friends and family members. Post your availability on Facebook and Twitter. Post colorful ads on community bulletin boards. Get your name in front of people as much as possible, and then when they call be ready to give them references from people that will tell them what a wonderful sitter you are. If you follow these suggestions and any others that you can think of, you will have lots of sitting jobs and and can charge a higher rate per hour because you are providing so much value.

Be smart. You may have heard blogging touted as a great way to make money. There are definitely some bloggers that are able to make a living through their blogging. But you can also follow their advice and spend two years creating a great blog that only makes $50 a month. It’s very discouraging to spend so much time and energy on a project and never get any fruit from it.

I’ve done this exact thing. I spent tons of time and money building up the readership for my gluten free recipes blog, creating a community, and building my “name authority”. Once I’d done this I attempted to monetize the site by selling a product, and ended up spending a thousand dollars of saved earnings on a business that ultimately failed.

After this we finally took a class that taught us how to bring traffic to a blog and actually make money from it. Knowledge was the key. We were then able to take my existing blog and increase the earnings by 600% in just a few months. This same concept could apply to any money making idea. If you go into it without knowledge and understanding then you are likely to lose your shirt. You also need to be careful who’s advice you follow. You don’t want to ask a life-long employee for advice on how to start a business. They’ll likely tell you it’s impossible. Instead, look for people who have already done what you’re trying to do, and follow their advice.

Open your mind. If you’re suffering from a lack of financial abundance then you may have trouble believing that you can actually make lots of money. However, believing that you can do it is the first step. If you don’t believe that you can do something, then you definitely can’t. Remember the Little Train that could? In order to get yourself in the right mindset, check your local library for books on how to become a millionaire. You may not end up following many of the authors’ suggestions, but it is always interesting reading and can be very encouraging and mind-stretching. One particular book that I would recommend is Jack Canfield’s Success Principles. You can also get a list of recommended personal development books from Steve Pavlina’s site.

Build your Skills. If you’re in the midst of a long job search, there are many more productive things that you can do besides sending in hundreds of resumes and working part-time jobs that have no relevance to your desired career. For example, the twins featured in this New York Times article should focus on finding ways to be journalists even though they aren’t employed as journalists yet. A year’s portfolio of articles, blog posts, and newsletters that they had written would set them ahead of their competition who have all probably been working as waitresses for the past year.

If you work in a field that isn’t a good fit for freelance type work, look for opportunities to work for free. You may have to do other paid work at the same time to make ends meet, but be proactive and find ways to keep current and in practice with what you do. Working for free will show future employers how dedicated you are to your profession or craft. Think creatively and find ways to do your work even when the job opportunities seem few and far between.

In the end, you can make money. And you can make more money than you have in the past if you pursue your goal with all the smarts, guts, and energy that you have. Make your money making goal your primary focus until it is time to move on to something else. If you suffer setbacks, do not be discouraged. Learn from it, and then try something else. It will be worth it. I promise.