TKA or The Keyword Academy - Worth the Money!?

I am a member of The Keyword Academy since roughly the 5^th April 2010 so I thought I am now seasoned enough to write a bit of a review about them ;-) This has become a rather longish piece, so feel free to scan around to the points that interest you most! And, if you liked it and found it useful, feel free to give it a thumb up or to share it. And yes, I am using my affiliate link here when I am linking to them, costs you nothing to use it, but helps me to feed the cat!

Summary for the impatient ;-)

Is The Keyword Academy worth the subscription fee? You can answer this question for yourself by simply signing up for The Keyword Academy and trying it out for free. This free trial will last for 30 full days and only after that time, you will be charged a low, monthly membership fee. So, if you don't want to take my word for it just

>>Sign up here to The Keyword Academy<<

and make sure to watch all the videos and read all material and try out all the tools. Have fun and bye!

Very Important Disclaimer: TKA is a tool and like with every other tool you have to work with them. If you are looking for yet another super internet scam that 'forces Google to put money in your wallet' or what similar trap is in fashion at the moment, then TKA is not for you. TKA is for people that are willing to put in a considerable amount of initial work in order to earn passive income down the time line. Still here? Fine, lets get to the nitty-gritty details:

What the heck is The Keyword Academy?

I like to think of TKA as a sort of very sophisticated tool box plus a library of manuals for said tools, all of them helping you to build low-maintenance internet projects that will make you passive, recurring income after you have finished building and decorating them.

In less flowery terms: TKA is a membership site, that teaches you, at your own pace, how to make money online by finding profitable niches and building sites around them. And it helps you to achieve this with a variety of useful tools (all included, no further purchases necessary), an extremely helpful forum populated with a lot of successful (proven to be successful!) internet marketers plus videos, webinars and Q&A live sessions. To illustrate to how this work practically, here the workflow I use to write and build successful hubs, Infobarrel articles and niche websites of any size:

• Use the free Google Adwords Tool (not the beta, the previous version!) to create a huge amount of keywords and download the respective csv files.

• Upload these csv files into the Nicherefinery (one of the awesome TKA tools) and see after a few minutes which keywords have the best earning potential combined with the lowest competition.

• Build a useful, Google compliant, hub or website around your chosen keyword and monetize it with Adsense and / or affiliate products.

• Use the semi-automated Postrunner (Another awesome TKA tool) system to write and post unique guest posts that all contain links back to your site or hub.

• Use spreadsheets and other tools provided to keep track on how you are doing and what to do next.

• Enjoy your steep increase in Adsense and other online earnings.

• Rinse and repeat with next keyword.

How much does The Keyword Academy costs?

As mentioned before, the first 30 days of membership are completely free. If you decide that TKA is the right program for you, the membership fee is only $33 / month (there is a slightly cheaper option available that doesn't include download rights and forum access) for as long as you are a member. And yes, you can cancel your subscription anytime with one click. And no, nothing bad happens if you do so, your sites and hubs are completely independent from TKA, you just loose a lot of useful tools but not your projects as such. This is something what distinguishes TKA from a lot of other programs that tie you to them by many means. If you set some time aside you can download, read and research everything for free during your trial month and then cancel your subscription. You will have by then acquired all the knowledge that it takes to make money online, you now only have to do the tasks you need to do without the time-saving tools of TKA, but that is perfectly possible. It will take you more time (and time is money!) but yes, one time you have understood the system, you can do it on your lonely own ;-)

What do you get at The Keyword Academy?

Most importantly, you get all at once, nothing hidden and nothing only released after xyz months of membership. All knowledge and tools are immediately available to you during your free trial. And this is what you get plus a list of things that get continuously added to the site:

• First of all you get a clear road map on how to get started in form of core videos and transcripts of these videos. Even if you are a complete beginner when it comes to websites and making money online, the videos and transcripts will take care of you. And if there is still something unclear, you can always ask in the forums (just make sure to use the 'search' first ;-))

Now, when you actually understood how it works and which of your ideas have the biggest chance for success, you can use the other tools to actually build your first website. The tools are two main ones and a few additional ones:

Nicherefinery

Remember, if you are trying to make money online since some time, how tedious keyword research is? Even if you use other tools, the initial keyword research is still a pain in the backside. Now I use Nicherefinery for this initial evaluation of possible, profitable niches. The system is as easy as to generate a bunch of keyword spreadsheets with ye ole Google keyword tool set to display only: Keywords, Estimated Avg. CPC and Global Monthly Search Volume and match type set to 'exact'. These spreadsheets I then upload to Nicherefinery and let the magic work and after a few minutes I am presented with a color coded list of evaluated keywords. Without going into too much details, the color coding is based on the traffic light system, green is 'go', orange is 'be careful' and red means 'no way!' Nicherefinery provides a very simple grading of the keyword competition based on the pagerank of the first four pages that rank for it in Google. Now that is not fool proof, but it provides a great starting point and saves a lot of time. Now, after that is done, you can download the spreadsheet, fine tune it and process it further, i.e. converting it into websites and hubs

Postrunner

Postrunner is actually two applications in one. It is kind of a guest post distribution point. I explain: One of the few ways Google actually approves of when it comes to building backlinks is exchanging content for links. That is also called article marketing or --- guest posting. If you have a blog and do accept guest posts then you know that this can be a highly emotional process. And a time consuming one to boost. The typical way is something on the lines of:

• Guest blogger contacts blog owner.

• Blog owner tells guest blogger their particular (or peculiar?) guidelines.

• Guest blogger sends guest post.

• Blog owner reviews it and either accepts it or sends it back for a revision.

• Or rejects it outright ;-(

I have been on both sides and I tell you, I don't know what is worse, being a guest blogger or the owner of the receiving blog, simply because both sites are setting, very often, their heart into it. I only want to publish great content on my blog and I, obviously, believe also that everything I write is so great that everybody should be honored to be allowed to publish it! I think you understand the underlying issue – it is called EGO. Now, compare this scenario to the following one:

• One set of guidelines for everybody (minimum 300 words, maximum 2 links, only unique content that was written by a human is allowed).

• You copy and paste your article into a web-based wordpress dashboard and select an article directory you want to publish it on.

• The article directory (only Wordpress sites supported at the moment) reviews the blog post and accept or rejects it.

And from the viewpoint of the blog owner it works like this:

• Installing the Postrunner plugin.

• Getting an email when a new blog post is in the queue.

• Review it and accept or reject it, all directly from inside your blog, semi-automatically via the plugin.

• Enjoy the free, keyword optimized content.

Note how the simple fact of having a plugin between blog owner and guest blogger reduces the EGO effect and makes the whole process not only faster, but also less emotional. And if you are an internet marketer of any length of experience the idea of getting free, unique and keywords optimized content should make you droll ;-)

Streamline

Streamline is the newest baby in the TKA family, just 'born' beginning September 2010 and it might be a bit early to pass judgement on this one. So far it connects Postrunner and Nicherefinery and will replace the spreadsheets sooner or later. It basically tells you what you have already done in terms of backlink building and what needs to be done next to make your website a full success.

Wordtracker

An accountability tool that helps you to concentrate on the one main task on hand, creating great content! By putting your daily, published word count into this little web-based app you see for yourself how much you are actually working on your sites and how much time you are wasting. A great motivational tool for lonely, self employed internet marketers. It really helped me to push my boundaries when it comes to publishing content.

Spreadsheets

They will be phased out as Streamline advances, but for the moment fully configured spreadsheets are available and help you to keep track on things. As for the Master of All Spreadsheets, look out for a guy called Josh B on the TKA forums he is a wizarding ferret or a ferreting wizard when it come to them. You have to join the TKA forums to understand this insider joke, sorry.

Forum Access

Love them or hate them, forums are a great way to get questions answered more quickly and up to date. They are also a great way to waste time, so use carefully! TKA forums have two ways implemented to give you same advice on how experienced a member is. Karma and earning badges. Earning badges are voluntary, karma is not, as Sameer discovered to his great pain, rofl. OK, enough of the insider jokes, earning badges you can, if you want to, apply for. You simply submit your proof of earning and once it is verified by support a shiny, new medal appears together with your forum avatar. This, together with karma ratings helps people to judge a bit who knows what s/he is speaking about and – who not.

Do you need anything else apart of The Keyword Academy?

Yes and no. You can use the system by finding grass-green keywords and write your content on free websites like blogger blogs, Hubpages hubs or Infobarrel articles. But to make the most out of this, you might want to buy your own domain names and have your own hosting sooner or later. For this I recommend:

• Godaddy for Domain Names

• Hostgator for Hosting

Are there any bad things regarding The Keyword Academy?

The internet is an ever changing beast and internet marketing even more so. TKA has parts like the forums, webinars and live Q&A sessions that reflect that very well and are up to date and accurate. The core videos and other more 'stable' content could do with a bit of updating and re-organizing. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with the content per se, but it could be better structured and organized to make it easier digestible, especially for people that are completely new to this game.

The only real problem I ever run into whilst using TKA was getting one of my sites to accept Postrunner articles. No problem with publishing them on other blogs, but setting up one of my sites to accept free content proved impossible for Peter, the resident coding geek from TKA ;-( The funniest bit is that a) I seem to be the only one that happens to amongst over 1000+ blog owners and b) another of my sites, one that is set-up exactly the same way works just fine with the plugin. Seems just to be one of those freak accidents of the internet ;-) But, as I write a real review here and not just a fan girl report I thought I mention it! So, no, apart of a small need for re-organizing and presenting the content and a freak, isolated incident with one plugin, no negative points to note on my part.

For whom do I recommend The Keyword Academy?

Absolute Beginners

It is simply a great way to learn the ropes of making money online and you can always start with using the keywords you find to write great hubs here on hubpages before investing in your own websites and hosting.

Internet Marketers that have already some experience but want to improve their results

You will love especially Nicherefinery to find more profitable keywords and Postrunner to build more backlinks to your content. Just remember, having backlinks from a variety of sources is one important bit of seo hosting!

Super Internet Marketers that make already a full timers income

To you I only say Postrunner and Postrunner and you know what I mean: Free, targeted content and, nearly unlimited possibilities for creating backlinks. Plus awesome networking possibilities.

For whom do I not recommend The Keyword Academy?

The following group of people will not benefit from a membership in TKA

• People that want to get rich over night without putting any work into it. Honestly, that is the only group of people that I can imagine to not to benefit from a TKA Membership ;-) Like I said, TKA is a tool, or better said, a whole toolbox, but you have to use them in order to built your money making internet project(s).

Summary:

Congratulations! You proved your perseverance (one indispensable virtue for everybody that wants to make money online) by reading until the end ;-) Now, if you are ready to try the TKA out for yourself, feel free to use my friendly -and very discreetly placed -

>>The Keyword Academy Sign-Up Affiliate Link<<

and after that, don't forget to hit me up at the forums over there, I go by 'SY' as my pen name. See you and thanks for reading my hubs! Any questions and suggestions? Please leave a comment and I will get back to you asap.