The aftermath of Xfactor - Competition and Saturation

[Bounderby]

Like most on this forum, I followed Xfactor's Adsense thread with interest and followed up by purchasing his ebook. I thought a few people would pursue it hard core, and that most would fall by the wayside as is so often the case. I've been dipping into it, as I have a regular job that I'm not unhappy with and am not desperate for this to be a 'way out'. I didn't think that that many people, relatively speaking, would see it through (how many people read this forum anyway, as a proportion of those putting out websites? It must be small.).

In short, I didn't think competition would be an issue - many, many people have said there are millions of niches out there, far too many for saturation. But lo and behold, sites I have created now have other Xfactor sites, with maybe a .net or .org domain, competing against them. When researching new niches, others already have sites ranking for a lot of the keywords I can think of. Wow! Are others following this model finding the same, and does it worry you if so?

So some questions out of interest - I'm not whinging about the competition, I'm just curious to hear other people's opinions of the field of play.

- How many people do you think are following this business model?
- If you saw a site already up, would you go up against it or move on, knowing that that person is following the same strategy as you are?
- How much money has Xfactor made from selling his methods??

[Black Hat Cat]

[quote=Bounderby;1343901]

- How many people do you think are following this business model?

Who knows? This model was around long before he sold his ebook. Build sites around longtail keywords, and promote them with articles....not exactly groundbreaking info.

- If you saw a site already up, would you go up against it or move on, knowing that that person is following the same strategy as you are?

Go up against "it"? Last time I checked there are 10 spots on page one. Why would anyone surrender the other 9 spots simply because an xfactor pupil has 1 of the 10? Makes no sense.

- How much money has Xfactor made from selling his methods??

I hope he made a million dollars.

[hamburglar]

I have seen about 5 sites for my keywords.

I see them, but I still outrank them.

This concept has been around since adsense started.

Also, never underestimate your competition.

p.s. I hope John made Millions too.

[Fraggler]

If you come across a site that is obviously following the same methods then do a quick check of the sites backlinks and see if they are just doing article resource boxes and the amount. If they are then you can quite easily jump ahead of them with a more vigorous backlinking campaign. If not, find where the links are and just copy or match them - add a few more after this and you should now be ahead of their site.

You can actually use other peoples work to determine the ease it is to get on page 1 for that term as you know what they are doing to get there.

Make sure all the extra effort is going to be worth it though.

[RichFun]

I totally agree with Black Hat Cat.

This is not new, you're just noticing some sites that are using the same template from xfactor, but there are some older sites doing the same thing using other templates.

If someone is one page one, that means it's doable. Why would you skip on it? That'd only encourage me.

Besides, people are following his method like it's the bible. If you just add a little twist to the method, you go into a completely different playing field than people who are following it by the book.

[WareTime]

All the more reason to use your own template.

[warrior123]

First off, as already mentioned, this method is nothing new. It's been around since the beginning of Adsense and there have been many other "Xfactor" type methods sold in the past. One of the biggest a few years ago was the MFA (made for adsense templates) -- Google went after those after they started taking over the web.

I've seen the the template suggested in the book and have come across many sites who have used it. I would HIGHLY suggest NOT using that template and adding much more than 200-300 words on a page like I've seen many of you doing. A manual review by a Google quality member and they will likely penalize it or worse completely de-index the site. Think quality over quantity for long-term. I see soooo many on here cranking out crap articles for ezine just for backlinks to their sites...

[nettech]

Exactly, those are the sites I tend to compete with even more. I honestly hate those because what you're actually telling people & search engines is that they're stupid!

BTW, I also hope John has made a shedload of money as he throughly deserves it!

Originally Posted by warrior123

I seem soooo many on here cranking out crap articles for ezine just for backlinks to their sites...

[Solidsnake]

Don't afraid of competition... Competition makes you work harder and when you are working harden, you are making more money..

[Kelly Verge]

There used to be one diaper manufacturer. Sometime later there were two.

In order to capture a larger portion of the market share, one of these two created a new separate brand. They ended up with nearly 2/3 of the market.

When a niche site works, I have been known to create a competitor.

Just saying...

[warrior123]

Originally Posted by nettech

Exactly, those are the sites I tend to compete with even more. I honestly hate those because what you're actually telling people & search engines is that they're stupid!

What is really funny is how LAZY people have been with this approach after reading John's ebook. John gives a simple 2-sentence example of what you could put in the "resource box" for the ezine article. People literally have copy and pasted that exact example and used it for their articles.

I just found 288 niches that people have built sites around and written articles by simply entering that sentence into Google, lol.

[WareTime]

Originally Posted by warrior123

I see soooo many on here cranking out crap articles for ezine just for backlinks to their sites...

Yup, and then we'll hear the "my recent articles on Goarticles are not getting indexed why is that?" questions start regarding ezine. Hopefully ezine will start rejecting the junk in time.

[WareTime]

Originally Posted by warrior123

What is really funny is how LAZY people have been with this approach after reading John's ebook. John gives a simple 2-sentence example of what you could put in the "resource box" for the ezine article. People literally have copy and pasted that exact example and used it for their articles.

I just found 288 niches that people have built sites around and written articles by simply entering that sentence into Google, lol.

Exactly, who needs MNF?

[John Dales]

Originally Posted by warrior123

What is really funny is how LAZY people have been with this approach after reading John's ebook. John gives a simple 2-sentence example of what you could put in the "resource box" for the ezine article. People literally have copy and pasted that exact example and used it for their articles.

I just found 288 niches that people have built sites around and written articles by simply entering that sentence into Google, lol.

This only shows that many Internet marketers are just plain lazy. The biggest lesson I learned from John/Xfactor is not the small details of how he does Adsense but that he really put CONSISTENT EFFORT into it.

[kislany]

Exactly. Like I mentioned in another thread, I've just discovered somebody copying my site to the letter and layout (and I mean exactly copying) just by buying the net domain of my keyword (yeah stupid of me to let that one pass when I had to change to register it). But anyway, now I'm changing my templates from that of Xfactor, while still using all of his teachings. Many internet marketers are lazy indeed. The guy must have taken a total of 5 minutes to copy and ftp my site to his own domain. But my site is in the meantime different and unique (changed wording too). It doesn't even look like an Xfactor template any longer and the clicks still come...