SeoBlackhat.co.uk

Article Marketing :: $4K Monthly :: EASY!

As mentioned in some of my previous posts, my main income is from PPV and Article Marketing. Now, the majority of my Article Marketing ventures have been done the usual way. Write or pay for articles, submit them to random sites, do some linking and hope for the best. It works, and Ive made a nice amount of money doing it. However, you can always improve something. And, thats what I did.

The top two goals of any marketer are more money and more time. At least they should be their two top goals. That being said, I wanted to integrate both of these things into my Article Marketing business. And, thats exactly what I accomplished.
I developed this method a little over a month ago. However, I wanted to actually test it for a month before I released it. Here are my final results:

$4,300 revenue (Roughly)
4 hours worked (Roughly, excluding time you wont have to spend)

Id say thats pretty damn good if you ask me. Would you work 4 hours (of easy work) for $4k? And, its passive residual. Meaning, it keeps flowing in (passive) and it grows (residual). I guarantee that from the work done in December, Ill keep seeing income from the articles submitted for probably over a year.

This method is going to be a bit detailed, as I dont want any people attempting it coming back and complaining it doesnt work. Even if you dont complain, I still would like it to work for whoever goes and does it. Its definitely worth it. If youre having problems funding PPC/PPV campaigns, this can be your funding money
In a nutshell, youll be getting free articles by splitting your commissions with freelance writers. If youre rich already, paying for articles may be worth it to you. However, most of us arent that rich. And even if I was, I dont know if Id want to buy 1,000 articles at $5 – $15 a piece.

Ive also tried Scamming people out of articles. That doesnt work that well, and is definitely NOT a long term solution. You risk the hot headed freelance writers getting too pissed off at you and reporting you. Trust me, not a smart thing to do for a long period of time.

So, splitting commissions is the best way to go. Everything is free, so this shouldnt be a problem. Youre doing very, very little work.
So, lets get started:

1. Youll obviously be getting freelance writers for classifieds sites. Craigslist is all that is needed, as its a little difficult to work with a large amount of people. I personally only worked with 2 people. However, Ill be developing my own personal system that will allow me to work with over 100 500 people, easily. So, what youre going to want to do is make a Craigslist ad (preferably in your own area if you live in the U.S.). Always, always keep your ad professional. Proper structure, grammar, use of words, etc. Nothings worse than a poorly written ad. Be honest and straightforward in your ad. Im not going to post the exact ad I used, but its fairly simple. Youre looking for a few article writers to write articles for you based on a revenue sharing commission structure. You can lie and tell them that previous writers earn roughly $2 – $5k a month. No cost to get started, and will be able to see their articles published on the web. Keep it short and simple.

2. After the posting, if youve done it right, youll get a few hundred emails. At least I did. Instead of having an auto-responder, I just copy/pasted a pre-written response. All I did was replace their name at the top and bottom. (Eg. Hey ____ and Talk again soon _____) Obviously, the email response will detail the project more and then ask if they have any questions.

3. After theyve responded to the first email response, I have a pre-written 2nd response to go with it. Along with that response, Ill read over their first email and answer any questions they may have. The 2nd response starts with questions they have, and then a Heres a little bit more detail about everything. And again, will ask them if they have any questions to get started.

You may or may not know this, but it can save you literally hours of time.

One thing that any successful CL marketer must have is the ability to create a lot of email addresses and forward all of them to one main account.

This is done to make publishing the ads very simple, all from one central account.

There are a lot of account creators out there, and the one that I use allows me to do about 10 emails every 5 minutes or so.

You could spend nearly an hour of your day just creating 100 email addresses.

Well, there’s a much easier way, and it works the exact same as spending countless hours creating useless emails that forward to your main account.

This will allow you to create those same 100 emails, forwarded to the one central account, in 1 minute or less.

This is to be used with gmail, but I have not tried it with any others, so I can’t say it won’t work.

All you have to do is simply add a plus sign and a number to the end of your main gmail username.

For example, if you choose craigslistmarketer @ gmail.com as your main email address, then you would just need to add a +1 to the end of the username to make it look like this: craigslistmarketer+1 @ gmail.com.

This email forwards to craigslistmarketer @ gmail.com.

If you need 10 emails that are forwarded, you would use craigslistmarketer+1 @ gmail.com through craigslistmarketer+10 @ gmail.com.

Although there is no real email address there with that username, it is set up to forward to the main account.

This will save you a ton of time and works just fine on CL as each gmail is actually viewed as unique.

Eventually, your emails may get blocked by CL, so just use the next set of 10, craigslistmarketer+11 @ gmail.com through craigslistmarketer+20 @ gmail.com.

It is possible that CL would eventually block the root gmail, but it’s really no big deal.

Just take a minute to create a new gmail, and then start over.

It’s that simple, and will save you hours of time in the long run that can be used to actually work on getting your posts to stick.

Well FIRST what you have to know, is when youre getting into the adult scene is, that traffic trading is one of the biggest advantages of adult sites.

What Does That Mean?
Well actually it means that youre just looking around for some trades with other sites, most have automate scripts so you just have to fullfill your mail and site url and will get a trade-link in return back for it.

so you will now repeat that step for your likening. you can add 20 trade partners or 100. its up to you. just check out that the site youre trading with has some traffic allready, as we`re planing to take benefit of his visitors aswell.

so now we have a bunch of sites we can send traffic to and they will send traffic back to us.

one of the most adult trading scripts is “CJ” there are many mods out like cjoverkill and much similiar products. all freeware of course…

now just add the sites to your CJ, add your CJ to your site so if a webmaster is checking your site he is seeing your cj trade and will find his site linked there atleast.

so this is half of the rent.

How does i bring traffic to the trades ?

Well here are 2 possibilities.

If your site allready has traffic and youre lazy just replace some links of your content ( depending on kind of site youre running on a tgp just set a % in your CJ like 50% so every 2nd click will lead to a trade partner of yours instead the original content)

if youre starting by zero i always prefer getting a macro recorder like jitbitts macro recorder
set up a dial-up connection
now recor your macro, start firefox (or any other browser) visit your own site, click your CJ linktradelist. every partner just 1 time so if youre having 30 trade partners every “round” will bring you 30 new visitors in return to your site.

now just close-firefox set your privacy detials high so everything will be deleted after you close firefox and re-dial.
thats it
set your amcro recorder on repeat a couple times or 100 of times

now check how long 1 round will need in seconds. so you can calculate how many real visitors will come to your site.

one other big advantage of this technic is, that you have a trade list with all your partner sites. now we want to monetize our traffic and best would be if we can target it a little atleast and not just send unfocused traffic somewhere were we “guess” it might be good.

so what we do is, we visit every partner site we`re trading with. study her site, look what sponsor(s) they are using. write it down.

repeat this step for every partnersite you have.
it will happen that some sites will have the same sonsor.
in that case write it down.
so on the end you will have
6 sites using adultfriendfinder (for example)
4 using livejasmin (evene example)
and the other 12 have some smaller niche affils

you will now have a good overview which sponsor will be best for you to stuff (but i personally prefer to stuff every affil my list contains on the end. if its to less money or i can remove it later anyway)

now just register yourself to the sponsors if youre not having allready an account there. add the links to your Cookie Stuffer Script.
thats it.

after you did this 1 time successfully you can repeat the whole.
so start a 2nd site. this time you can add your traffic trade links to the CS Code youre running on your first site. as CSG mostly is just doing a “click” on that link it will work for our purposes. even if we “hijacked” CSG a little bit for his normal use. so every visitor on our first adult page will also bring us now a click on our trade of our 2nd site.

dont use always the same trade partners. as there are soooooo many adult sites out mix it a little bit up. even to benefit by more different traffic.

so i hope i might gave you some new ideas / inspirations.

Just a reminder of some SEO basics:

• Be Consistent: Use lowercase for all URLs, including file names and folder names
• Avoid the use of any special characters in your URLs
• Using a HTML based sitemap that at least links to the important pages on your site (this includes your sales/informational pages) is recommended, but no longer required as in the past. Use Google Webmaster Tools with an XML Sitemap to ensure all of your pages you want indexed gets indexed.
• Be sure your robots.txt is formatted properly and is not denying GoogleBot from indexing your important content.
• Provide unique Titles and Descriptions on each page and ensure those tags reflect the actual content of the page
• Use a valid DTD or XML statement
• Use the proper character set meta tag
• Focus on being an authority/expert in your field or market and provide insightful / unique content on your site that can be marketable.
• Choose a web host that understands the importance of speed and reliability in the hosting environment
• Shorter URLs are generally better for spidering purposes

If you are one of the millions of people who have suffered a browser hijacking, you likely know it, and you clearly remember what you were doing when it happened. The best known form of browser hijacking is when a sudden flood of pop-ups, many of them obscene, explode over your screen and you are forced to use the CTRL-ATL-DEL sequence to close your browser and regain control of your computer. Here is a quick guide you can use to identify the different kinds of browser hijackings and how you can rid yourself of them once and for all.

What is a browser hijack?

A browser hijack is exactly as it sounds: an attempt from a third party to take control of your web browser and use it for their own nefarious purposes. Some browser hijacks can be done to spread awareness of a particular website, but arent actually dangerous. In some cases, though, they can be malicious, and they can steal information like passwords you have saved into your browser automatically. Perhaps the most common type of browser hijack is done by a program that installs itself on your computer without you knowing. The program will add several favorites to your list without your knowledge, and it will change the start page of your browser and even some registry keys. When you attempt to reset your browser, you will be unable to do so.

With these types of hijacks, you are also falling victim to keyloggers that record passwords for sensitive sites like online banking and email. How can you tell if you have a browser hijacking program on your machine? Lets look.

What might you notice?

The most obvious sign of a browser hijack is that your start page has been changed and you cant change it back. You may notice a complete slowdown in the performance of your computer since many browser hijacks work as fully functional programs that run in the background of your computer from the time you turn it on to the time you turn it off. These programs are often resource hogs that cause everything else on your machine to run slower.

You may also notice that a whole new set of bookmarks have been added to your browser that youve never seen before. Some websites have been known to add one bookmark (usually one for that particular site), but if you see a whole new folder full of questionable bookmarks, you may have a browser hijacker installed on your machine.

How did it get there?

Just like most malware programs, browser hijackers find their ways onto your machine in a number of different ways. The most common way is via peer to peer software programs like BitTorrent and Kazaa. Often times, the person who you are getting a file from doesnt know that they are sending an infected file to you so your infection isnt intentional.

A second spot where many people receive browser hijacker programs from is bundled with freeware or shareware programs downloaded from sources that arent trustworthy. Thats why it is always a good idea to download your free software programs only from the manufacturers site or from a site that promises that they are virus and spyware free.

Finally, some viruses come from websites that automatically install them on your computer. If you have been visiting some less than reputable websites, it is a good idea to avoid them at all costs in the future. These files simply install themselves without asking your permission or even notifying you that it is happening.

What should I do?

The first step you should take if you feel that you have a hijacker installed on your computer is head to the Microsoft Update site to ensure that you all the patches and updates you need. Microsoft does a great job of stopping many of these.

Once youve updated and restarted your computer, you need to install a reputable anti-spyware program on your computer to run in the background and monitor what bad programs you come into contact with. Two reputable programs are provided by Paretologic and PC Tools Software. Both not only remove browser hijackers they also provide the dynamic monitoring you need to protect you against future hijacks. You can download and install either of their programs in minutes. Run a full scan of your machine immediately. Once youve removed any initial problems, you should run a full scan of your machine at least once per week to ensure that you havent come down with any browser hijackers or any other program that can affect your machine in a negative way.

Finally, make sure you keep your anti-virus and anti-spyware programs updated at all times. If you dont have them installed, you should purchase and install them right away. Even if you have the latest anti-virus program, you should still strongly consider an anti-spyware program since, even though there may be some overlap between them, they generally detect a different suite of programs.

The last I checked, were still in a recession, but despite the recession and the news of all the layoffs, business is pushing ahead. Some analysts state that the news of layoffs is a sign of worse things to come.

Me?

I love hearing about layoffs. Ive been laid off and while it was tough, it was a throw you in the water to see if you will sink or swim experience. People are laid off for two main reasons: poor performance or they make too much.

I have spoken with a lot of people in charge of some big companies, and when you get them in a setting away from their office and the stress, the feedback is nearly the same:

Were going to be just fine. We purged our company of those who didnt want to work for a full day. They felt they were entitled to a paycheck just for showing up. We will still meet production numbers even with 5,000 less on the payroll.

Those are sharp words, but they are true. Back when I was with WordPerfect, we ballooned to nearly 6,000 employees, but due to competition from Microsoft and shrinking margins, there were massive layoffs and three years later we had just over 500 employees.

Why was it with 5,500 fewer people, we were able to sell more packages and release more products than we did before? Seriously, there were 11 buildings to house all those workers and in the end we were in just one, yet we not only met the old production numbers, we out did them.

It all comes down to having the right people, people who want to work and love what they do. Even if you are a consultant, the company who hired you wants the same too.

So what should you do? A Needs Analysis. If you own your own company, you are going to perform one on your company, if you are a consultant, you are going to perform one for them. Might I suggest performing this service for your client free of charge.

Am I crazy?

Maybe. But in these tough times, offering something of value (the needs analysis) to something you value (your customer) is never a bad decision. Plus, your goal is to get more business from your customer, and you cant get new business if your customer goes under.

We all know that you cant help a customer until you know what he or she needs. You cant provide a solution until you actually know what the problem is to solve. Determining what they need to solve this problem is key – and often, the customer doesnt even know what their actual problem is. They might know the symptoms, but they dont know the root.

Doctors diagnose a customer (patient) by asking Where does it hurt and administering tests. Rainmakers diagnose customer problems by asking questions and LISTENING intently to the answers and reading body language (or listening to voice influxion on the phone).

Asking questions randomly is going to solve one thing: wasting everyones time. You must be prepared. Asking general questions such as, What are your goals? or What are your challenges? is also a waste of time. Honestly, what do you expect to get as an answer to What are your goals? If it was me, my reply would be To make more money than I spend.

During tough times and high stress, think like the makers of Tylenol. They are, in a word, brilliant in how they market their product.

Their tag line is a simple, Feel better, Tylenol.

The #1 benefit they have marketed is, Use our product and feel better.

Is there anything more powerful?

Stress, Anxiety, Noise, and life in general all weight heavily on you or your client. If you take those away, what is the outcome?

Exactly. It is the best outcome. Since that is your goal, how do you get there. With one simple question.

What keeps you up at night? or What is your biggest stress right now?

The answer is where you attack with a series of follow-up questions until you know exactly the root of the cause and can formulate an action plan from there.

Here are some questions I have used in the past and make sure you take great notes:

- What have you tried? (remember that just because they tried it doesnt mean it wont work if you try again with a slightly different approach)

- What would you estimate this problem is costing you a week? (never just ask what it is costing them, get it in a time frame everyone can understand)

- If the problem remains unchecked, what will it do to your company in 30 days? (this compounds the seriousness of the issue and gives a timetable every consultant can work in – 30 days)

- What is your timetable? (when do they want a solution?)

- What is their budget for this problem? (this is key, as this is how you get paid. If it is high priority, their budget will reflect this. You also need to compare their budget to fix the problem in comparison to how much it is costing them a week. For example, if the problem is costing them $20k a week and they say their budget is $10k, theres a problem. In 30 days, they will lose $80k. You could propose to fix their problem for half of the loss, or $40k).

- Who else are you talking to? (Find out if you have any competition on this project).

Your meeting needs to be one hour or less. This is why preparation is key and the right questions are asked. Respect their time and you will be rewarded. Spending all day at their offices will just bog down the process. Get in, ask your questions, get out. Formulate a plan of action and win the business.

Q: Tell me more about Google SiteLinks. How do they determine which links are used?

A:

I have tested SiteLinks algo pretty hard and the one thing I have learned is that the algo is NOT easily influenced. In other words, attempts to “steer” Google to the links you want included doesn’t work on a consistent basis.

As far as getting certain keywords to appear as SiteLinks for your domain, it has mostly to do with your site being “the” landing spot for that search. It isn’t as easy as you might think. For example, I am getting a Mac this weekend. It is my ritual, a new laptop every Labor Day, and this year, I’m going Mac … let’s see if it sticks this time.

If I do a search for “Apple” … apple.com has SiteLinks. However, it does NOT have SiteLinks for the following phrases: iPhone, iTunes, iPod, Mac. The only phrase I could get to come up for Apple.com with SiteLinks was “macintosh”, and that was really one of my “last gasp” phrases to try.

So, as you can see, even the large companies have issues when it comes to getting the right keywords tagged with SiteLinks for their domains.

Q: Does the geographic location of the web host matter for search? Organic? Local?

A: I had a great discussion about this with three Google engineers. The actual location of the server does not matter. Even though there is some “chatter” that it does matter, the choice where to host is clearly yours as a business owner. However, where people tend to get into trouble is the TLD (Top Level Domain). For example, if you had a web business in Portland, Oregon, it wouldn’t make too much sense to have a co.uk domain would it? And the same is true the other way around. If you want localized traffic, and you’re in the UK, get both the .com and .co.uk domains. Build out the .co.uk and 301 redirect the .com to your localized domain. This way you keep your brand, but you are far more likely to get localized traffic with the proper TLD than without it.

Tip: If you are in the US, you don’t need a local host to rank well locally. Your “dot com” doesn’t need to be hosted in Portland if you are also in Portland. You can host in Miami and rank just as well in the local search.

Q: What changes is Google working on right now?

A: I was able to get some info when a group of Googlers thought I was an employee by accident. The biggest issues was a new filter they are working on which would “kill half the businesses here tonight.” The individual who said that was pretty young, and I have learned over the years in this industry that young people like to talk and say bold things in order to get attention and have a feeling of “betterment”.

I don’t believe that statement for many reasons, first, he has no clue about the level of people at the party … as SES attracts mainly newbies. And I followed this comment up with a few Google engineers that I am good friends with and they basically laughed it off. I was on the Organic SEO panel with Aaron (he’s on Matt Cutts’ team) and there are no big filters being worked on currently.

Over the last week or so there has been a TON of press about the new Google algorithm change with brands – even some going as far as to saying it is bigger than Update Florida. I wouldnt go that far, because that update literally killed many markets. This one, not so much. But lets break this down as I have had a week to really hammer on it in my testing lab.

So what changed?!?!

Report: Google has flushed their index and rebuilt it again based on brand strength. Last fall Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, was quoted as saying Brands are the solution, not the problem and now brands are shooting to the top of the SERPs.

Reaction: Everyone who is not a brand is freaking out that SEO is now dead again.

What You Should Do Right Now: Sit back, take a deep breath, and know this: the sky isnt falling. And Im going to show you why you dont need to panic. SEO is far from dead.

Lets start out by defining a brand.

Definition of Brand: A company that is well known in certain markets. Examples:

Running Shoes: Nike
Photocopies: Xerox
Tissue: Kleenex
Jeans: Levis
Bandage: Band-Aid
Coffee: Starbucks

The sheer power of brand awareness is when the actual competitors product is called by the name of the branded company. For example, you dont ask for a tissue if you are going to sneeze, you ask for a Kleenex. If you get cut, you dont say, Do you have an adhesive bandage? No. You ask for a Band-Aid. And if youre old enough, making a photocopy was referred to as Making a Xerox copy.

With that out of the way, we can agree that branding is important and nothing will change that. Lets now look at the actual algorithm change. Well use RankPulse to track these changes as it has been the choice tool in all the Blog posts online.

Simply put, Video SEO is the art and science of ensuring that your video content attracts as much traffic as possible.

You have basically two options: You can host the videos on your own site or use Amazons S3 servers, or you can post them on YouTube and embed them in your pages.

Important Tip: If you post your videos on shared service like YouTube, make sure you read the Terms of Use. Often, by posting the video on their server you are transferring ownership of the video to them.

Where do viewers discover video online?

44% – Discover Randomly
43% – Via Sharing
43% – Via Video Websites
39% – Via Search Engines
27% – Via Marketing Email
4% – Via RSS & MRSS Feeds

Fact: 38% of users who search Google in 2008 were served VIDEO as part of Universal Search in the SERPs.

First Generation Video Search Engines:

• Depends primarily on Metadata and on-page text
• Most are moving to Second Generation
• Examples: Google Video, AOL Video, TruVEO, Yahoo! Video, Live Search

Second Generation Video Search Engines:

• Use Metadata, on-page text, UGC (User-Generated Content: Comments, Annotations, etc.), and advanced recognition technologies (speech, visual, facial, OCR, etc.)
• Examples: Blinkx, ClipBlast, VideoSurf, VideoCrawler

SEO Tips and Tricks for Video

• Search Engines cant read the video content, so it is recommended NOT to do a full transcript of the video, but rather a Cliff Notes summary of the content. Why? Instead of just having someone read the full transcript, which could be boring without the visual support. Plus, the summary can be an enticement to view the video, which could lead to conversion.
• Video search engines need to be told what the video is about using Metadata and On-Page text, just as you would a normal page with a few wrinkles.
• If possible, have multiple video formats available: flv, mov, mpeg, mp4, etc.
• Include the word video at the end of the filename along with your main keyword phrase. Use hyphens to separate words.
• Use In-File Metadata which will include: Metadata Title, Author, Date and Description.
• Keep in mind that video search engines arent real good at indexing Metadata right now, but they are getting better at it.
• Use only 1 video per URL and use unique URLs
• Place your videos in a folder just off the root, dont place them many levels deep.
• If you you have a lot of videos, you may consider using a subdomain (i.e. http://videos.yourdomain.com/).
• I dont recommend .tv extensions right now. You may want to register them, but dont use them for video just yet. The brandability is still poor.
• If you want a new domain for your videos, you might consider using your keyword term with video or media
  at the end. (Example: IndiaTravelMedia.com).
• Use embedded players, dont use pop-up players, they are annoying and many have pop-up blockers.
• Make sure your navigation includes a link to your video content.

Tips to Make Your Videos Viral

• Allow visitors to grab your embedded code to use on their sites or blogs.
• Include social bookmarking tool links (Digg, StumbleUpon, etc.)
• Enable comments to invite conversation.
• Allow users to subscribe to your videos (so you can get them back with future video releases) via RSS/MRSS
• Use internal linking to promote your videos
• Use MRSS Feed Syndication

http://www.blinkx.com/rssupload

http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/submit

http://www.reelseo.com/submit-videos-rss-mrss

Google Video Sitemaps & XML Feed

Google has XML Sitemaps for Video. eMarketer projects that 87% of the total U.S. Internet audience will watch videos online by 2011. Guess who dominates in the video search market? Yeah, Google.

If you use the XML function, which I highly recommend, make sure you provide a thumbnail URL so you increase the likelihood your video is included in Googles video index.

• If you want your users to be able to watch your videos on Google video, make sure to set the player to Autoplay so that users will be shown the video after they click on the result.
• When you submit a Video Sitemap to Google, it isnt only searchable in Google Video, but on other Google products as well. This can help you DOMINATE the video landscape.

How can you dominate? Well, think of this. We have all seen the famous eye tracking study of the SERPs, but have you seen the one when video thumbnails are presented to the user?

Now, if that isnt an eye opening experience, I dont know what is. Check out how much more of the page is getting the users attention. This drives the point home that people are heavily attracted to images. This is why you need video to dominate the SERPs.

A Page Layout Example

1. There is plenty of text around the video to give SEO support so the engine will know the theme of the video content.

2. Write an effective and compelling Title

3. The description needs to work hand-in-hand with the Title to gain interest from the visitor.

4. The video should be embedded with Social Bookmarking icons, rating option, Email to a friend, the link code and embed code to allow for the video to go viral.

5. Include a transcript, but not a full transcript. Keep it to a Cliff Notes summary.

6. Allow comments to bring life into the video posting.

7. Use cross linking for other related videos or related content on your own site or network of sites.

8. An option would be to include Vertical Channel Content, but this is optional.

9. Contextual ads can be used to monetize the site, but it is a good idea to have them tucked away to not distract from the real reason they are there – to watch your video content and become hooked.

10. Tag cloud. Keywords are placed here to raise awareness more for the video search engines indexing the page.

More Video Tips

• If you have a long video, break it up into many shorter videos. Visitors are more likely to click the Next button than they are to sit through a long video.
• Adobe Premiere Pro and OnLocation are solid desktop solutions for video editing.
• Link to your video from your site
• Send the link to your new video to your subscriber list on YouTubew

Many members ask me on a regular basis how you can ensure that you have an IP address that is clean, so let me tell you.

You will want to do a deep check on the IP address, meaning you want to check the main sources of the black lists. The following list is what I use to check IPs that have been assigned to me by my host. Before I give you this list please NEVER do the following:

You: Are all of these IP addresses you just assigned to me clean?

Host: Absolutely. We check and cross check all the IP addresses before assigning them.

You: Great, thanks!

This is a huge mistake, never take their word for it. Verify that the IP address is clean by using the following tools:

Open RBL – This program will check against many of the popular blacklists and will give you a quick overview of the blacklist giving you a status of that IP address on the lists.

The following are good separate blacklist checkers, as they tend to be quite trigger happy when blacklisting IPs.

http://www.ordb.org/lookup/
http://www.spamcop.net/bl.shtml
http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/index.lasso

This is another great way of making you feel like you are in full control of your business and allows you to ensure that you are given exactly what you have asked for. Webhosts give away dirty IP addresses on a regular basis so take the time to protect your business and verify that every IP address is germ free.