What it really takes to get blog traffic and increased Amazon Associates earnings? One word: backlinks

I am learning so much from writing and researching this 50 Over $50K website it is seriously changing my paradigm about the online world.

(Still figuring out how to actually send those Aweber email updates to the folks who've subscribed, so expect your update soon if you've signed up for the free email updates.)

But one common thread I've read from guys like Terry Zulit, who sells the auto-blog system, and Pat Flynn, who was a laid-off architect now pulling down around $200k each year from online endeavors, is that backlinks matter.

It's the same spiel echoed by Wanda and Paula, two women who wrote The Amazonian Profit Plan ebook (stayed tuned for their profile on 50over50k.com) and claim to have made some big-time earnings via their method of promoting Amazon.com products.

It's not about merely writing a good post and hoping they will come read...
...although, mercifully, that has worked for me many times. Some stuff is just mean to go viral.

But I'm taking what I learned from Flynn's amazing backlink strategy that works, the one that helped him rank #1 on Google for a search term about training to become a security guard -- and all these other tips I'm learning from the 50 over $50k people to create pages like my new Not Your Daughters Jeans review to give myself some backlink love from this blog, which has enjoyed a pagerank 5 during certain updates, and is currently a 4.

(I'm already up to ranking #62 on my NYDJ review page on PaulaNealMooney.com on Google just one day after writing up the long-butt post. Flynn's strategies are really working!)

The thing the big online money-makers are really teaching me is to try new things. Yes, Zulit's book challenged my mind and had me stepping out and calling Cloud Host to figure out the whole c-panel stuff, but now that my "comfort zone is expanding," like a guy told me last night, I'm feeling better.

The trend toward Google claiming to change their strategy towards sniffing out the traffic whores feels like we are always steps in front of them.

But those of us who've been writing diligently online for years want to know the exact methods that work -- and though I've largely ignored the backlink strategy -- I'm not anymore. With JC Penney's SEO firm allegedly getting caught for using methods to push them to the top of the Google SERPS for many terms let me know that the method did in fact work, whatever they did.

We might as well use these tips to our advantage to draw traffic. It's still a lot of work -- but I'm ready for the "set it and forget it" eventually type of work that will let me get back on the elliptical and swim and lose some weight and relax instead of pulling 12 hour days here and there to bring in a great income.