Fake Hustle #3: 20 links

Oh man! Da Hustler burst out laughing when he checked out the details behind a web startup. Check this out, there is a company that wants you to PAY for links to your website! Now if you’ve been online for a while and you operate a website, you know the importance of having other sites link to yours. It’s good to drive traffic to your site, and it’s good for that Google PR (PageRank) love.

However, instead of earning links the old-fashioned way (producing good content and getting people to visit because of value), some people want to take the easy way out and simply pay to play on the internet. This isn’t unheard of, and sometimes it may make sense, but let me give you the skinny on this site and it’s business model, because I was included in the beta testing last year:

Basically, to get a link, a website has to have a link to your website located somewhere on theirs. If you operate a blog, this will come through as an incoming link, pingback or trackback. These are good because it says that not only are people coming to your website, other people are actually writing about it!

Well 20 links is (was) a collection of blogs that can offer links back to your site. However, there’s one big problem: YOU have to register for the site, upload one of your articles (or short description of an article you wrote), include your own link, then publish it. So it’s basically like you are operating two sites (your own and this one), only you didn’t pay to set it up or register it. Furthermore, you have to do this on EVERY SITE in the 20 links network.

You can see that after a while, this can get REALLY time consuming.

Da Hustler did this for a while and got decent results, but I only want to operate the blogs I own, not explicitly help someone else build up their network. Now these guys are back with basically the same business model, only they want you to pay a MONTHLY FEE to get links to your site! You do ALL the work, and pay them for the privilege! Can’t believe it? Check out this snippet from their FAQ:

Question: Won’t I risk a duplicate content penalty if my article gets published all across the network on umpteen sites?
Answer: No, because it won’t be. Every submitted article is published only once within our network. So, to get 600 links a month you’ll submit 600 unique articles. No duplicate content allowed!

And following that question, here’s the next:

Question: Where will the articles come from?
Answer:You are responsible for creating your own articles. If you don’t have the time, the resources or the inclination to attend to this part of the link building process yourself, we suggest you outsource the task.

WTF?! If this isn’t the biggest load of crap that I’ve seen in a long time, I don’t know what is. Who writes 20 articles a day? I don’t know ANY website – including MSN, Yahoo! and whatever else – that has 20 updates or additions on their page throughout the day at best, maybe 5 or 6, but they are NEWS sites, not blogs). Trust me, writing that much per day will drive away readers, not pull them in. It will seem like a desperate attempt at gaining attention. Oh, and the pricing? Please, if you are drinking or eating something, please remove it from being near your computer, and finish chewing or swallowing before you take a look at this:

20 Links A Day™ Standard Account Subscription • $157 per month (avg. $5.2/day)
20 Links A Day™ Premium Account Subscription • $197 per month (avg. $6.5/day)

So basically for a little less than the price of AN ACTUAL DOMAIN on 1&1 ($6.99), you can get a link to your site. Oh, excuse me, you can get up to 20 links, that is, if you publish 20 articles in a single day. On another website. AND your own website. Copy and paste from yours to theirs 20 times. then do the hokey pokey, and turn yourself around, cause that’s what it’s all about. I’m telling you, they should take this comedy act on the road! Please, for the love of God, do not give away your money to this company. If you must, give to the less fortunate, give to Da Hustler, heck, give some to a Nigerian Prince. But don’t say you haven’t been warned.

**UPDATE: Looks like the owner or someone who works for the site felt compelled to defend themselves below in the comments. Be sure to check out what they said, and then Da Hustler’s rebuttal.

Hustler Tips: Pay it with PayPal

Want to make some money while getting your bills paid? Make sure you pay everything with PayPal!

Here’s the scoop: many of you may know that PayPal offers 1% back on all of your purchases when you use their debit card. I don’t know why they do it, but I really don’t care either. because I’m getting some of my money back which is cool. Well, their debit card is FREE, and once you register to get one, you receive it in a couple of days. Here’s what you do from here to get the money:

• Make sure ALL of your purchases are done with the PayPal MasterCard. If you have another card that has better perks than 1% cash back, that’s cool, but if not, use this one.
• If possible, I would try to pay every bill from the rent payment on an apartment to your mortgage payment, car payment, etc. HOWEVER, make sure your creditors accept credit cards as a form of payment, AND that there is no fee to pay your bills this way. Many utilities charge a fee when you pay by credit card. Da Hustler hates that they can get away with this, because I have a merchant account to accept credit cards and in the terms and conditions, I cannot charge customers a fee solely to recoup the fees I have to pay to accept the cards. Furthermore, since I see it as the cost of doing business, I think these merchants should just eat it instead of adding to their profit margin.
• Once the bills are paid, check your PayPal account for the “Chargeback Bonus.” DO NOT SPEND THIS MONEY! Sent it to a online savings account, such as one with ING and earn interest on your bonuses. Also do not allow the money to sit in your PayPal account for even one day, because you could have been earning money with it. If you don’t have an ING account, send me an e-mail, and I’ll send you a link to get you an extra $25 in your account when you deposit $250!
• Getting $0.01 back on $1 doesn’t seem like much at first, but it adds up. If you spend $2500/month, you’ll get back $25. While it is small, this adds up to an extra $300/year plus interest if you use this method. (If you don’t want that, Da Hustler will take it!)
• To make things easier, you can setup your PayPal account to automatically take the money from your checking account in case your PayPal balance is too low to cover a charge. This way you can still have the money come from your main account while getting the benefit of the 1% cash back.

Once you do it a few times, you’ll start to get the hang of it, and it will be a transparent part of your day. Keep Hustlin’!

Hustle Hoarding: Presidential Cheapskate

Five dollars.

It’s so many things to so many different people. It can be the amount of tax on a purchase, it is the average cost of a meal at a fast food place, and it is the amount that we’ll have to start placing into vending machines in the airport for a 20oz soda in about ten years, not to mention a gallon of gas.

Five dollars.

When I think about what I do with this seemingly insignificant amount of money, I cringe. I ate lunch yesterday @ Burger King, the total being $3.21. Since I use the Keep the Change program w/ Bank of America, they round that up to $4, so in my mind, it’s basically five dollars. When I go to eat at a restaurant, this miniature Abraham Lincoln in my pocket represents so much more to a waiter or waitress. My night of splurging is their livelihood, and some of them definitely know the value of that particular dead president.

Five dollars.

We know what five dollars is, but let’s take a look at what it isn’t. A regular ticket at a movie theatre. An appropriate contribution to church for a 45 year-old Wall Street broker. The cost to wash your car at a full-service location. A parking space in a downtown area. Five dollars is a lot of things to a lot of people, but in these examples it just doesn’t cut the mustard. So why is Da Hustler so stuck on this one denomination of money?

Quite simply: because it holds power.

You can change your life five dollars at a time, every day. When I started thinking about the power of Abe, I realize it was time to use it for my benefit. The simplest way I could think of was just to save it. Don’t spend it. Hoard it. It works for you a lot better when it is close to you, and you can’t be close to something that you are always giving away.

Da Hustler is doing just that – save my five dollars – and you can too! Just think about what you spend this money on every day: sure you have to eat, but do you absolutely need to eat those meals that cost, well, five dollars? You can eat healthier and simpler by using the dollar menu at a lot of places, and getting water as your beverage. Now you’ve just cut $2.00 or more from the cost of your meal, and you’re nearly halfway to the goal. What else can you cut? Morning coffee? Jelly doughnut? An unhealthy midday snack? That pack of cigarettes? Take a look at what you spend your money on each day, and I bet there is something that you can do without.

Voila! You’ve just saved your five dollars! Now what are you going to do with it? Well, unless or until you have built-up enough discipline to place yourself on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly savings plan, I recommend you place this five dollar savings in a jar, piggy bank, or transfer it to a savings account daily. Da Hustler does this, and I’ve found that it forces you to really examine what you spend your money on, plus gets you in the habit of saving your own money more regularly. The caveat is that you cannot touch the money that you save! You have to basically forget that it is there. Let’s look at the savings that you can realize after a whole year of this:

$5 day ~ $150/month

$150 x 12 = $1800/year

Not too bad, but even this doesn’t exactly inspire a lot of people to save on a regular basis. Let’s do what hustlers do and make this even more attractive: keep the same formula for saving, but add an extra five dollars the next month to your daily savings plan, and another five the month after that. Not only will you have to save more money, but you may have to also make more as well! But of course, that’s what hustlers do! Now here is the earnings with the revised example:

Month 1: $150 saved

Month 2: $300 saved that month

Month 3: $450 saved that month

Month 6: $900 saved that month

Month 12: $1800 saved that month

Over the course of the entire year, you would have saved $11,700! That’s a small car! (can you say Kia, Civic or Scion?) Not only will you save a boatload of money, but by the end of a year’s time you will be in a totally different mindset, because you would have forced yourself to find ways to make more money to save! Can you imagine being able to save $60/day? That means you would make a whole lot more than that to be able to put back that much and be comfortable. And one thing Da Hustler knows about money: the more you have, the more you really don’t want to spend it. This is why you rarely see millionaires going on extravagant shopping sprees; when you know you have the ability to purchase or do something, the appeal is that much less. Make this kind of thinking your goal, and you’ll be amazed at how much your life can change.

Five dollars at a time.