Make Money Online With A 13-Year Old

Archive for August, 2007

Poll Results: Why Posting Frequency STILL And Will Always Matter

By Carl On August 27, 2007 22 Comments

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It has been a month since I launched our current poll, with over 250 votes, I would like to thank you guys for the participation. Poll is officially closed! Here’s the result of the poll:

How many articles should a blog post per day?

1. 4+ the more the merrier! – with 38 votes = 15%
2. 2-3 is better – with 69 votes = 26%
3. 1 is fine. – with 154 votes – 59%

As you can see, 59% voted for 1 post per day, 26% voted for 2-3, while 15% voted for 4+. Obviously, the 1 post per day wins and boy I am happy! If I can’t keep up the 1 post per day, what more if the majority likes a blog who can post 2-3 times a day? Or even 4+?!

Anyway, here are the main reasons why I asked you on how many blog posts should a blog generate in a day:

Why Posting Frequency STILL And Will Always Matter

1. What’s a blog if it does not post frequently?

A blog is like a diary (difference is, the public can see it), but not just a diary about your crushes and enemies, It can be a diary about a certain topic, like this one. A blog about making money online, and even though it’s not a blog about your crush, it still needs updating – frequent updating, so more people will get interested and get hooked.

Of course, that’s the main reason you published a blog online because you want people to read it and if not, you shouldn’t be reading this now, you should be in your room writing!

2. Err! When should I check? Darn, I’ll just stop reading this blog!

I check certain blogs (I check blogs not subscribe to them, I love to see a real web page) in a certain occasion, opening blogs can waste me an awful amount of time and what more if they don’t have anything new posted when I check?

That blog ate a minute of my time times 15 blogs because almost all the blogs I check don’t post in a frequent manner :P = a whopping 15 minutes.

You know me, I hate to waste my time. I have a very hectic schedule due to my school, so to be productive, I quit checking blogs that don’t post when I check, so I wont’ go crazy visiting their site over and over again.

3. Google loves me

A post in a blog is equals to a page, the more pages a website generates, the more chances to get more Google love or the so called “Long Tail”?

Long Tail is… uhh… argh! Can’t explain it!

Let’s just have an example. If you search “make money online”? in Google, I appear to be in the first page right? That keyword gives me over 170 uniques a day, which gets the top spot in my traffic chart, second one is “how to make money”? which gives me around 60 uniques per day and the 2nd one in my traffic chart and so on and so on – until it reaches an amount that gives me only a few uniques per day (about 1-3). Those puny amount of traffic per keyword is the long tail, usually long tail keywords are weird, BUT Long tail searches is where you can get bigger conversions because the search is more detailed.

Anyway, long tail is a big stuff to explain. Believe me or not, someone made a book about it! I’ll just explain it further in a follow up post.

4. It’s the challenge of blogging

Blogging is like everyone’s life, you work, you have problems to solve, you have debts to pay, etc…

Life is a challenge, blogging too. That’s why it’s fun, exciting and addictive that you don’t want to lose it. Who wants to lose their life blog anyway?!

Honestly, I still can’t keep up with my daily “posting frequency”? I know I don’t lack time it’s just I lack discipline. Feels good experience the challenge of blogging!

Your thoughts

All of those above are just my opinion, experiences and my ramblings, I know some of you have their 2 cents also. C’mon! Give your say.

4 Ways to Earn from Multiple Income Streams Through Your Blog

By melovillareal On August 26, 2007 4 Comments

Blogging can be an excellent source of income, provided you know how to do it right and which streams of income to use. These days, you no longer need to be limited to just one stream – AdSense. Everyone wants to learn more about affiliate marketing. Why Not earn while you learn?. Here are four techniques on how to increase your earnings from multiple streams of blogging income:

Mix and match ad programs.

There are a variety of advertising programs you can choose from, including Adsense, TLA or Text Link Ads and Adbrite. Not all ad programs will work with your blog, so find out which ones are a perfect fit. Provided you have the right audience, choose the correct link advertisers and write quality content, you can use ad programs to increase your blogging income from multiple streams.

Promote and sell your own products and services.

If you have products or services to sell, why not do it from your blog? You could earn a nice, regular income by simply having a service page as a supplement to your main blog page where your readers can view your products and do business with you. This is a great way to increase your blogging income because all the earnings go to you directly. However, it’s important that your products and/or services complement your blog’s theme or your selling efforts would go down the drain.

Get sponsored.

If your blog contains excellent information and quality articles on a subject that companies can benefit from, you can increase your blogging income through direct sponsorship. Say for example your blog is about digital photography. If you have all the right images, content and traffic, a digital camera manufacturer such as Nikon, Ricoh or Canon might pay you for placing their ads on your site or even joining their ad campaign.

Direct sponsorship can even occur on blog posts, where sponsor companies pay bloggers to write articles on topics related to the companies’ products and services. If you do this regularly, you can earn an excellent income.

Install paid job boards.

Think Darren Rowse’s Job boards and other popular blogs with job boards such as Lifehacker and TechCrunch. But the key to earning a decent income from this method is to build your blog’s traffic first.

Remember, no monetization effort will be successful if your blog does not have enough content and does not receive a significant amount of traffic yet. So, work on your blog posts first and market your blog before thinking of bigger things.

About the Author:

Melo Villareal is a Filipino Backpacker, PhotoJournalist, Netrepreneur and a Blogger. He authors two blogs: Manila Freelancer offers work at home tips, affiliate marketing and how to earn money online while Philippines Travel Blog offers travel tips on exploring the Philippines 7,107 islands.

Help! I Don’t Have Anything To Post Anymore! Things To Do When Running Out Of Ideas

By Carl On August 22, 2007 13 Comments

I’ve been blogging for almost 7 months now and not to brag but, I still have a handful of ideas that I want to post. TONS of people have emailed me about it, and I know some of my blogging friends have this kind of problem at times.

So, yeah, their big question is: What do I do when I have nothing to post anymore?

1. Systematize

Everytime I lack ideas to post, I do this “System”? or so called idea generation that luckily always works out. It’s not that complicated, even a 5 year old can do it. Just remember, anytime can be idea generation time. What I do is:

• Grab a pen – any kind of pen you like.
• A small notebook
• Bring it everytime, anywhere!

When an idea pops out, write it! No, no erasures. There’s no “wrong” in idea generation time because when there is, you stop generating ideas.

*Some leakage* The best place (in my experience) to do this is in the bathroom (while doing something…) peace, quiet and – relief Hah!

No seriously, this works.

2. Gather blogs within your niche

Probably the easiest of them all, I used this on some of my niche blogs, or should I say “MFA”? Made for ads that is (no, not adsense) All I do is find 5-10 blogs in my niche, subscribe to them (Be sure that they are the best ones!)

If you find a great post, rewrite it in your own words and add some of your stuff and thoughts, leave no trace behind! A little greyhat technique though because you’re stealing someone’s hard earned ideas.

3. Forums, comments and e-mails

Talking, chatting, instant messaging, etc… Socializing is the main reason that keeps the web alive and moving (Just imagine how many people are in MySpace!) and when there’s communication, information are being shared, when there’s information, then definitely you can generate MORE ideas.

Forums, comments and the people who email you are true goldmine.

4. Open your blog for guest bloggers

Let’s just say you’re a make money online expert. You know a lot of things about making money online blah blah blah. But still, it’s just making money online in YOUR own perspective. A person’s mind is limited to what he can imagine and others got their own imagination too!

Even though 90% of guest bloggers in the make money online industry just blogs for the exposure that they will get, it’s still great way to let other people’s perspective flow through your blog and give you some fresh new ideas.

5. Drilling down

When I say I know internet marketing, it does not mean I know affiliate marketing, it does not mean I know blogging but it may also mean I know how to market websites.

So if you have a post about AdSense tips, and you have there ad relevance and ad positioning. You can make another post and concentrate on a specific topic like “ad relevance”? that discusses about how to section targeting.

Some Ramblings

If you really can’t make a post, then you’ve made a bad decision about your niche. Better hire your own writer or better yet, sell your blog.

Grab Your FREE Copy Of The “This is Quick” Report… And Some More Site Updates

By Carl On August 20, 2007 17 Comments

There’s something wrong with you if you didn’t see that big sign-up box up there (except for the feed readers obviously), so yeah I made a report about making money online but before I continue blabbering about some site updates here, I wanna see you fill up that form, check your inbox and download the 9 pager report.

I won’t tell you what the report all about so I can be sure that you download it, anyway it’s FREE!

Ok, about the site updates

For the past few days I’ve added some minor changes in the site because I got some design issues that – definitely sucked the heck out of my blog. So yeah, I added and changed:

Obviously that big box above – On the left box, I listed some articles that can help new bloggers on their money making journey, on the other hand you’ll see some aff links (Oh, evil me!) And in the center – no need to explain it :P

Installed the top commentators again – Wohoo! I know some of you missed it and got embarrassed, I saw a great decrease in comments when it was removed. So I decided to install it again to gain the big “community”? feeling of this blog.

Some Design Issues – Actually, I haven’t finished the design issues but anyway, thanks to Michael of Pro blog design for giving me a FREE whole site design review! You actually get these design reviews for $$$.

What has to be changed:

• That feed button on the sidebar – Michael commented that the 2 feed icons wasn’t clickable, that it makes subscriptions harder.
• The Nav Bar – It blended with the background color that can be pretty annoying, I can’t figure out a good color combination though. Any suggestions?
• Blog stat’s smiley – It’s just a little smiley, but it really wrecks the “cool”? footer. *Fixed*

That’s it, not much site updates eh? Again, Special thanks to Michael for giving me the design review. You can also request a review of your blog’s design but be sure that it’s unique and or customized. Oh yea, shout out to those readers who haven’t commented on my blog before, c’mon, tell me what you think about my blog!

Credit for KonradS for the Pic :)

How Paris Hilton Taught People to Earn Money Online

By kirbitz On August 19, 2007 6 Comments

This article is another post from the intuitive and assertive mind of Kirby. He started a blog about making money online without spending anything more than shear effort and dedication? Check out his money making mission on Kirbitz.

Paris, Paris, Paris. . . What a sweet name.

Now, I know I’ve been quite late for the hysteria she buzzed around the internet for quite sometime, but id like to share something to you.

This heiress to a share of both the Hilton Hotel fortune and the fortune of her father Richard, has more than just looks, talent and well, no need to mention the tape that made her an icon (oh, c’mon. . . tell me you didnt watch it). And before i get lost about this topic at hand, let me just say it this way. . .

She taught me, and A LOT of internet marketers a thing or two about making money online.

And this is a fact that not a lot of people are aware of. And let me break it down for you. For one, paris created a buzz big enough to stay on the top searched item on Google, Alexa and Technorati for quite sometime. Heck, even technorati haven’t even has her name on the top 13th three months after she was sentenced to be jailed. And what has this caused? to put it plainly, a Big Bang! She was the content of every gossip columns, celebrity sites, bloggers couldnt stop talking about her and searches for her provocative videos skyrocketed. I could just imagine where the people selling her vids are right now. Chilling in the Caribbean? or splurging in London. Who knows? they just found their goldmine and it is all theirs to dig.

There are 3 insights that i want to impart about this BigBang. And a fundamental fact you have to note here is that, more traffic means more money.

• People itch on Controversy – People just cant get enough of controversy. Answers to basic questions like what, how and when keeps on escalating to why, to whom, and to what extent. Answers that people get just leads to more questions and your task is to get this why and to whom questions because this needs analytic and opinionated point of views. Just give the what, how and how to the industry giants. If your opinion just stand above the rest, you might just be a step closer to your goldmine.
• Be on the road less traveled – A couple of days after her conviction, two petitions arose– Save Paris and Jail Paris. Guess which one had the most signatures? Yes, you guessed it right, Jail Paris got more sympathy from their readers. This simply tells us that shear opinion and will earns more empathy and pays more money.
• Don’t miss out the misspelled – That may sounded a lil bit like a tongue twister but it sure does work. Google Adwords relate that there are quite a few of misspelled words for the whole duration of the buzz. Some were “Paris Holton”, “ParisHilton”, and “Paris Hilyon”. Heck, I’ve even found myself misspelling her name when i did my research rituals prior to making this post. This tells us that we should be watchful for the next BigBang for these money opportunities and look for possible opportunities.
• Get the whole Picture. The broadest possible - Now this is one of my personal observation about the why and to whom questions i was talking about earlier. Now, people knew background of Paris, her notoriety and some of her Passion. One of this, is her love for Dogs. Ah, tinkerbell! that nasty little brat that got publicized herself as being the “dog who drinks the most expensive water”. Yes she drinks H2O Bling water which costs more than my weekly allowance per bottle. Darn that dog! Going back, readers just want to learn the most of Paris so after they find out her background, they search for things special to her and tells more about her personality, her dogs for instance. Yes! this is true. “Paris Hiltons dogs” keyword had a fair search volume but stood uncontested on google for the month of July. If i had a blog about dogs, I should’ve been enjoying my adsense paycheck by now. Go check out Google Adwords and find out for yourself.
• Get your share of the Controversy. Get a Firebait – I always been wanting to do this and everytime i have the opportunity, this is one of the most effective ways to get free backlinks. If you say something controversial like “Paris: B*tch above the rest”, “Paris is more famous than Jesus”. Notions like this just sets the alarm of readers and bloggers alike. You might just get a backlink to your site or blog for saying such. But do note that you should do this with caution. Some of the Paris loyalists might get you in trouble which would be detrimental to your blog. This strategy might just backfire. So, take an intelligent risk.

There you have it ladies and gentlemen. This is how Paris taught people how to make money online. Just remember, be informed with the next BigBang and get your share of it. It doesn’t have to be of quantity but more importantly, of quality.

Why Make Money Online Is Easy, Yet Many People Failed!

By Charles Lau On August 18, 2007 6 Comments

This article is guest posted by Charles Lau who liked to be known as a business blogger.

While many people want to know about the “How”? in making money online, I have written my blog more towards “Why”? which I think is more important to understand so that you can execute all the tips and tricks out there in the market! Visit my blog at Charles Lau dot Com.

Introduction
While many people are convinced to start online ventures, most of them actually failed and stopped trying to make money online. Why is this so? Let’s find out below.

Making Money Online Is Realistic!
Making money online seems to be a more realistic way of getting rich quick than any other way of doing business. Why is it so? Two reasons below:

1) Because physical business comes with a lot of burdens such as

• Business partnership problems with your suppliers, fellow business partners, as well as cooperative companies.
  • Your partners and you may have your own individual ideas of doing business and couldn’t agree with one another.
  • When business is not making money, the partners are working happily without complaining or talking about how to share their ownership. But when business is making money, the partners start to talk about their individual efforts being greater than the other and hence deserve a greater share and profit.
  • When you just started out, you might be getting “free”? helper somewhere to get your ideas realized. But this helper actually used your idea and make it even better with his own business! Non-disclosure agreement wasn’t made and hence you can’t sue him either. There is such a case happening right now with Facebook’s legal woes.
• Unsellable Goods is yet another problem if the turnover rate of the goods is too low, causing the companies to face some losses. Yet they have to foresee how much goods will be wasted and hence they have to gauge the production supply versus demand.
• Delivery of goods is also a very big problem too. Things like how much time it takes to deliver your goods to your customers, is there any damage during the transportation, when you need to start delivery, the quantity of the goods being delivered and also how fragile the goods are so that they need extra caution during delivery.
• Captial Startup Cost is also a factor not to be missed since you might need to buy your goods, employ staff, renting an office, marketing budget, and even renovating costs and packaging costs.

2) And also because online business can be a real least burden you can take to start up, such as:

• No inventory of goods. You could start by affiliating yourself with the manufacturers. Simply earn the money from the referral fees, and your manufacturers shall do all the fulfillment of the goods and delivery.
• Can start a business easily on your own. Partners are usually meant for leveraging for work and skills. Depending on the nature of your Internet business, all you need is to project your single most powerful knowledge and market it out on the Internet.
• Marketing budget is measurable in real time. We can choose to continue or stop an advertisement if we found out about the effectiveness of traffic conversion after ads clicking. This is not as simple when we put up an advertisement on the television where the cost of production and ad placement are already been paid for.
• Production of eBooks can be a real attraction. Now, all the project papers you have been doing for your universities can be converted into ebooks to sell on the Internet without the upfront cost of book publishing! Internet is always a place for digital goods transactions, and ebook is going to be one of the most expensive transactional goods when you can imagine how profitable those publishers and bookshops out there is…

Just think about this realistic step-by-step scenario of a typical making-money-online method:

1. So many people are coming online everyday.
2. Google Adwords is the fastest way to get your word out to the mass out there.
3. Creating Your Pre-selling pages to aim for a click-through to the sales pages.
4. Sales pages are there to convince the prospects into customers.

It is no wonder many people are convinced to make money online, but only a few managed to make it…
Why Making Money Online Is Not As Simple As Being Realistic

1. While Internet business seems so simple to do, there are yet so many people out there not making money. Many of them have even burnt their hands paying too much money for advertisements in the hope of getting them a few click-throughs.
2. Did you realize that making money online requires the same amount of perseverance as doing physical business? The very big picture about ALL businesses (online or offline) is that they need to learn how to market products out to the outside world. Without an effective marketing strategy, your products are nothing. Without a good marketing strategy, not many people will know about your products even! Let alone to buy your products! Or in the scenario of affiliate marketing, nobody will get to know your website to be referred to your merchants!
3. Did you also realize that you need to do sales as well? Sales means to talk to your prospects who are by-passing your shop, convincing them to buy something. Same goes for your website. Your website is the sales copy. It is known as the landing page from all your marketing effort to let everybody know about you! Your sales copy is your ultimate 24-hour salesman standing there ready to talk to any prospects who are interested to find out more about your products. You have to keep testing the capability of your “salesman”? or else all your marketing effort is useless! For blogs, the sales page is your About Page, and in additional you might want to show an introduction of some of your best posts! This will give a better conversion of prospects into readers!
4. Many people have been wanting to make money online. They followed step by step, and yet they couldn’t find success. If you do realize, it is not about following the rules that is going to make you successful… It is about having a feel of the market, then modify your marketing strategy and execute it accordingly with all the various analysis tools available on the Internet which is not so possible to be done when we do TV advertisements! We have to keep trying, keep modifying and keep trying till it works!
5. As I have mentioned in my blog about making money online being more feasible with children than adults, online business is very similar to doing physical business because both need a lot of perseverance and creativity to keep trying until it works. (The major difference is with the heavier costs to bear with the physical businesses.) Many adults are simply getting used to leveraging their burdens by paying money to get them and are less likely to work more, while the children will always think of ways and means out there to get what they want. Just imagine if they were to do a business where they are not being restricted because of age… It’s going to have tremendous results even if it is too hard to work on!
6. As a result, the adults who have become less and less creative because of their environmental affection, will tend to use money as their only tool to buy more ebooks and packages to learn how to make money online which leads to the marketing feel problem explained in paragraph 4. Buying ebooks and packages are actually good for anybody who want to learn strategies that work. But they have already missed a lot of “lessons”? where the experts have gone through all the processes to arrive that formula. And by following step by step blindly, they are simply having no care about what really does work and what does not work.

Things to note when You Are Going For An Internet Affiliate Opportunity

1. Find out who the target market is. The more specific that you define your target market, the better marketing strategy you will be able to adopt. Don’t believe in any Internet opportunity that tells you about easy money and not to worry about the traffic… If traffic is not to worry about, probably you might want to ask how you are going to get your traffic to buy or refer products because it might be a scam.
2. Find out how your marketing strategy is going to work. Most likely, you will be asked to do Pay-Per-Click campaigns. If that is the case, you might want to drop the whole idea because the author doesn’t care about your marketing costs at all when he is promoting a product which he probably claims to sell very well and hence you will have a very tough competitors bidding for the converting keywords! This leads to a very high cost per click, and might not be profitable.
3. Find out how effective your landing page is in clicking-through. How many percent of your visitors are clicking through to see the products? If it is not that much, you might have to do lots of tuning until it works!
4. Find out how effective your merchant’s sales page is. Are you convinced to buy the product yourself? If not, you might want to drop the idea.
5. Find out how good the product is. It is very important to know how good the product is for the customers. Just imagine all your hard work going down to drain when the customers are busy doing refunds for bad products.

Conclusion
The mentality of doing Internet business is about the same as doing physical business. The main difference is with the entry barrier in the areas of startup cost and the monetary responsibility you have to bear for every action that you take. Internet business is definitely a realistic business, but it is not simpler than any physical business. Where you might have burnt your pocket for that Google Adwords, just imagine those businessmen out there who have bought TV advertisements which don’t work… The cost might be a difference of five figures!

And when you burn your pockets, you might have thought that Internet business is not for you and go off till you go for another Internet Marketing seminar again! One thing about Internet business is that the exit barrier is very low, making everybody jump out so easily without any burdens whereas physical business left you with no choice but to continue to find ways and means to get rid of the remaining goods!

One last thing to mention about making money online: It is all about taking action… Don’t focus too much on your theory while not taking your steps to implement it. Some people out there are simply paying so much on education and not implementing any at all…

Thank you for your patience in reading until this far. Probably you are really interested in this lengthy article that has made you so far in your read. Do join me and give me some comments on how to improve myself in my business endeavors working online.