Welcome Back Rosenthal

November 1, 2008

Making Money Online. The Remix

Filed under: Computers and Internet — Tags: — Dave @ 12:15 am

Man this takes me back! Back in the good old days of early and mid 2008 I used to write articles and get regular emails from people asking how to make money online. Eventually I wrote that long 7 part series. And tonight I got one of those emails, so I decided to write my response here so that any new arrivals can also benefit. So without further adieu…
Hello again
You’re right I AM busy, but I have a personal flaw that motivates me to help people. Why would I call that a flaw? Well as you can see I was writing quite a bit on this blog. Then I stopped around June and only started putting the occasional piece up about 2 weeks ago when I got kicked off my host for too much traffic and found myself working on the files for this blog. (In case you didn’t know, they WILL do that if you’re on “shared hosting.” That’s the 5-10 dollar a month deals). So when I moved the blog a few friends asked me to start writing again, since I used to write a LONG piece every single DAY.

But I had my adsense account closed because I was helping somebody who emailed with “just few question.” He was so happy with his results he started clicking on my ads. (And in case you didn’t know, that will get your account closed). So I had to go through tremendous trouble and lost and unbeleivable amounts of money to get set up again. So now I just refer people to those 7-8 post. Almost nobody follows the advice but it’s enough information to make you rich within a year. I gave it away for FREE and people still wont do as I explained. So my warning from earlier, about avoiding arbitrage for now, will really only have meaning to you after you read all the stuff.

Now yes, its long, but as you pointed out-I do write in a relatively natural voice so hopefully it doesn’t seem too boring or complex. Take your time. And take it easy. A lot of people find out there’s money on the internet and teyt want to be making money the next day. Take it easy visit other sites. LEARN. The internet is not going anywhere. Just keep in mind NINETY percent of them don’t know how to really make money. I’ll give you a one paragraph explanation right now.

Stick to adsense, affiliate sales and ebay. Focus on learning and understanding keywords, for adsense learn which ones make money. But for all 3 learn how to build blogs around specific keywords with ebay, affiliate items or adsense on them. Write articles and submit them all over the web with your keywords anchor linked to the blogs. You can try to make money on tbe blog you bought-but that money making model has only so much potential. Which I think you have discovered. My strategy can get you up to thousands and thousands and thousands as you refine your technique and grow from the same model I present. That’s the whole “secret” to making money online.

And Now, a Word From our Sponsor!

The Software I use to Make Money Online.

This blog makes me a few dollars, but it’s not one of my serious money sites. My money sites are set up in a completely different way. This blog is my 1st one and covers issues that are interesting to me personally. No research, no planning and not that much promotion. On the other hand, with my money blogs not one line of code is touched until I know EXACTLY what I’m doing. I’ve researched and tested first.

But the big story here is that I use software. And on top of that, it’s software I bought. So here’s the story on that; my 100$ a day (and growing) income CAN be done manually-no software. There are also free software tools out there, but let me give you a comparison model; I’m a single guy with no kids and for years I washed my clothes at home in the tub. For one guy without that many clothes it was fine. But in any scenario, other than that, it’s NOT a wise use of time or money. So paid software is like a washing machine in the house. Free tools are like trekking to the laundromat with quarters, the crowds and the gas usage. And no software is a tub full of clothes!

Now, the deal about making money is understanding and using Long Tail theory (lots of people use the buzz word “niches” but it’s essentially the same thing). And the way I use Long Tail to make money is through Adsense, eBay stores and affiliate sales. There are probably many ways to make money online, but after months of experimenting and testing those 3 methods are what I found to be a) things I could do b) have no ceiling on income-sky’s the limit c) not have to depend on other people approving me to take action and d) generate the most money with the least amount of costs (money or time). So here’s my junk I advise looking into them, to see if they’re right for you too. I wouldn’t offer them to you if I didn’t believe in them AND use them.

So I use 4 tools. The first one is SEO Elite. EVERYBODY with a blog or website should be using this if they want traffic; for website research. The second is Microsoft free plugin/add-in for Excel called Ad-Intelligence or Keyword Elite. Ad-Intelligence is buggy and you need to have an account with Microsoft Adcenter. Keyword Elite works without any trouble] these are for keyword research. The third is BANS for eBay, and a companion tool that REALLY cuts site creation time with BANS called Niche Store Writer. It’s a way to make an eBay store cleanly and fast. BUT if you’re willing to spend a little time and you like Wordpress, you can turn Wordpress into an eBay store with phpBay. I use that one too, and it takes a little more work but all those theme choices are nice. Just keep in mind; making sites is not where you should be spending your time. Researching keywords, choosing a product, getting targeted traffic and site promotion is where you should put in the time. So you definitely want to shave off hours and hours of tedious tasks. And the thing about DOING tedious tasks is you make mistakes, “oh man I forgot to put in this code or those keywords” and stuff like that. The software speeds up the process and maintains the integrity of your work. I also will tell you that I use HyperVRE for Adsense, but listen very closely; you need to learn the ins and outs of Adsense before you try this software. If you can make $10 a day with an Adsense site then maybe you’re ready-otherwise think twice, and then think a third time. Download the free copy just to play with it and read the manuals, those are very helpful. But I cannot recommend you buy and try to build sites if you can’t already make money with Adsense already. LASTLY, I use Article Submitter, like all the other tools you can look for alternatives on Google, but for the price and the automation this one is the winner. There are submission services but I’m not ready for one yet. BUT this tool is TIRESOME the first couple of uses while you get registered at all the sites. Plan on a day of watching over it while it does its thing. But you need articles out there.

So to recap; you can do it for free. If all you have or want is one site you don’t need to go the software route. Or you can look for free alternative tools. Also if you’re going to buy of you don’t NEED to buy it all at once! Choose a path and learn it. Many of these also have multiple uses; SEO, Keyword and Article work for whatever kind of site you’re making.

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May 29, 2008

Today I Will Make You Rich. I will Help You Make Money Online Part 2

Filed under: Computers and Internet — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Dave @ 10:27 am

So in the title of today’s post is the good news. I am going to spend several hours combining a bunch of fragments, ideas, half post, images and whatever else it takes to make one giant post. I probably WILL break it up later and maybe even eBook it, but since some of you have waited patiently, you get it all! Then I should only need about 2 more post for follow-up and reference links. So if you’re coming here to skim-just leave my fucking blog now. This is NOT the day to halfway pay attention; this is the day before the test, so get your notebooks out. I’m going to give you what I know, and I think I’m right. YOU think about what I’m saying and YOU ask yourself if it FEELS right. Does it coincide with what you’ve seen on the internet, what you’ve tried, and just plain old makes sense. My logic and conclusions both have been reached from my personal research and experimenting. I visiting THOUSANDS of websites and blogs, watched lots of videos, stole lots of software, bought SOME software, tried all that shit to see what was real and what was false. And the results boiled down to what I’m going to tell you right this second. You can actually avoid reading the rest of this article. Learn about keywords . That’s it. If you’ve ever read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy then maybe you know the big joke of that Sci-Fi book series is that the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything is “42.” But the entire planet Earth was created to figure out what’s the question . Because now that I’ve told you the answer you probably want to stick around to figure out what’s the question.

In case you’ve WRONGFULLY skipped reading every part of this series and are just showing up for the “good part” let me recap a few things. My belief at this point is that personal blogs are not the greatest way to make money online . Instead blogs or websites with blog-like qualities built around highly profitable keywords ARE the key to successful income streams. A personal blog CAN overlap with a money blog. And a personal blog can make some money but there will be an income ceiling that will be very hard to get beyond. In addition to that if you’re not a name brand well known blogger that hill is even steeper to climb . So the question is; am I rich from online income? No, but there’s 99% chance I’m in a better position than most people trying to do this (not the people who ARE, but the people trying). And here’s the deal, my car is packed, everybody has gone to the bathroom, the sandwiches are made and the cooler has ice in it. In other words it’s 5 AM and my vacation mobile is ready to pull out. To follow this analogy throw, most people don’t even know yet WHERE they’re going yet for their “money vacation.” I know EXACTLY what I need to do to keep making money.

A Real World Example

This month was a big month for me in Real Estate. I made about $100,000 in tax free money. I bought a house 2 years ago in the month of May. Do you know what happens to a property you occupy for 2 years? Any capital gains (profit) you make is yours to keep. The law used to say you only got to keep the money if you used it to buy your next house. Not anymore. Just sit in it. And people were asking me about selling my house with the recession looming. I told them. I’ll be fine. No matter what I sell the house for will be a profit. Because I bought it right . It was GREATLY undervalued and boarded up when I got it. The DAY I moved in Zillow showed a $15,000 increase in its value just being LIVED IN and not vacant. And of course all the renovations-in a market where the new construction homes that are of the same quality as mine are priced $100,000 more and the old houses priced in my range are other board-ups my place looks like a great fuckin’ deal!

So I tell you this story about preparation to explain the benefits of preparing a money blog . I made THIS blog based on 5-7 topics I wanted to talk about. Things that I have a lot of interests in and can talk about daily without it being a strain. But the truth is, it’s too many topics for making money. That’s what I learned. The Adsense wouldn’t act right, and the traffic is all over the map. Here’s the thing about traffic; even if you make a blog about ONE topic you’ll get a lot of strays there by accident, or bad typing, or people confused about one of your post titles. So what do you think is going to happen if you have topics all over the map? Let me ask you some other questions; what do when you visit Google? Or Netflix? Or your online bank account? You go to those places to do ONE thing. Got the picture? Focus. Focus. And more focus. IF you want money. If you want to express yourself have ANOTHER blog. In a couple of months I’ll start making a movie; you think I’m going to talk about that here? Nope. DaveRosenthalBlog.com. So let’s get down to the nitty gritty. And we’ll start with the bad news that will probably make at LEAST one of my internet friends a little upset. But the truth is what it is-it knows no good, it knows no bad, it just is.

2. PPP and Text Link Ads. The Sin of Omission

“Hey buddy, want a free ticket on a boat ride? The name of the ship? The Titanic, why’d ya ask?” How you make your money is not my concern , but let me tell you why I couldn’t get involved promoting these services. Paid blogging. PPP without no-follow is Google conflict. Did you know this? You must play nice with Google YOU must play nice with Google. Do whatever they tell you to do. You (and I) are not a famous bloggers, YOU (and I) can’t make it without them, not in the long term and not if you want to go further than 1000 people a day. And I don’t have a problem with doing paid post, I might even do it myself. I’ll even help you! Here’s a list I can think of right now:

Reveiwme.com getpaidfrom.us yuwie.com payperpost.com smorty.com blogvertise.com payu2blog.com and socialspark.com (the new that’s supposed to have no-follow).

Now let’s be honest I WANT to use the link service TNA and up until April 30 I DID use TL A. But in early I April I finally did enough reading that made it clear that TLA hasn’t officially been Google smacked but it was too risky. I had 3 links running and then I had 2 and at the end of the month I took out the code. It was few dollars, but for those of you who don’t understand how paid links or paid post work let me explain . Google uses the number (and quality) of incoming links to a site to determine is “acclaimed” PR score. So when you sell a post or a link on your site, even if all you have is a PR1, you’re giving some site more clout. Now let’s look at the paid thing. Lets say you’re a bike company showing on page 7 of Google. You pay PPP 50,000 to hire 500 to a 1000 bloggers with PR2 and higher to do a “review” or your site. You don’t give a fuck if it’s positive or negative-it’s irrelevant. But if you’re lucky and get a higher percentage of positive that’s icing on the cake. What you REALLY want is 500 to 1000 new permanent links to your site. Now you show up on page 1 and you make millions . That 50 grand means nothing in the long run.

But you have made an enemy of Google . Everybody participating; the PPP company, the bloggers, and the site paying for the links. Everybody pays. It’s Google’s ball, court, gym shoes, socks, drawers-every Goddamn thing! So we have to play by their rules. That’s it. And if you can live without them, that’s great. It IS possible to do stuff on the internet without them. Email marketers live a great life. Nobody is contesting that. BUT. If you’re running a PPP ad or a TLA ad on your blog and you KNOW about the Google penalty while advising people to join up-that’s a choice I couldn’t live with. By getting new people into a system that they don’t know will stunt their progress you’re a participant. That’s just a fact. Do you know what old nasty convicts do to the new inmates who don’t know any better? Have you ever met anybody this has happened to? Is this the same as that? No. Not in a million years, but the take advantage attitude is not dissimilar .

YOU NEED TO SEPARATE THE FACTS FROM THE BULLSHIT

Who exactly are you listening to? Are you reading a bunch of bloggers in the Entrecard circle or are you out there learning? Some of the EC people know their shit. Some don’t. But I’ll tell you what I hear a LOT of (or rather what I read a lot of) “I don’t know if this’ll work, because I’m still not making any money, so I’m gonna try this” I read that shit on 75 percent of the blogs I read. “I’m gonna try this” I see that so much it’s a fucking joke. How are people not using Google to do some searches to dig up what REALLY works. I don’t get it. I just kept Googling and pretty soon figure out what had value and what didn’t. You’re reading my stuff today right? And it sounds VERY different form the people putting up stuff that doesn’t work doesn’t it? That’s the SECRET. The real secret to making money online is YOU becoming a better judge of who to listen to. I should not have to tell you who any of these people are if you’re talking about making money online: Rowse, Shoemoney, Mehta, Kawasaki, Starak, Beard, Armstrong (and you REALLY should know her I just wrote about her) Comm and Conn, Chow and Cow. And even ridiculous like Hilton, or whiz kids like Qualls and Vaynerchuk (and of course when I use that expression I don’t mean they’re really good pissers). Do these names sound like some kind of spacey law firm or do you know the methodology they all advocate about money. If you don’t know the top 10-20 money making people you need to ask yourself what you’re doing. IF, you’re out here talking about making money online. Whether or not you BELIEVE and follow the advice of those 10-20 is a different story , but you should know who they are and how they got paid. Does this seem like a bizarre concept or like the right thing?

HERE’S THE DEAL

When I realized I wasn’t making any money I decided to figure it out. Period. No fucking around. I’m not that kind of guy. Read my About Me page, I have failed at TOOO much shit in my life. WAAY too much. And I do not waste time anymore. People come to me when they want shit resolved. That’s it. I resolve shit. One or another. And on March 1 I asked my mother to watch over things for me. I was going DEEP into the internet and I was going to FIND some money.

(By the way let me stop the action here for a second. If you’ve read my blog, you may have notice I’ve mentioned my mom about 3-4 times in the last 6 months. Well I’m not Norman Bates! But I wasn’t in the same city with my mother for 20 SOLID years. I came back-and now we’re BOTH becoming old people. Last year she almost got killed in a car accident on her way to pick up my CHEATING ex-girlfriend, so I try spend time with my mother. I try to incorporate her into some of my activities and visit with her etc., because you don’t know. You just don’t know when somebody is going to go. Not just HER by the way, I’m an ass to people all the time and I don’t mind getting in fist fights on the street here in the ghetto of Chicago. And that can have a pretty shitty outcome-if you know what I’m saying).

TRAFFIC THAT’S NOT TARGETED IS A JOKE

Anyway as I got into my research I did what everybody said you were supposed to do. I “wrote good content.” How do I know it was good. Well are you enjoying this piece? I’m the same guy, I write the same way. So yeah, it was good stuff. I tried all kinds of stuff. Here’s what happened; everybody said get traffic and that means money. So I wrote and wrote and then went out and hustled ups some traffic, DUDE ! I got SHUT DOWN at the end of January/early February for too much traffic. My hosting company said I had spikes and they were not going to stand for that on a shared hosting. They didn’t actually SAY that by the way, 3ix just fucked me over, but I learned that’s what they do to you on shared hosting plans like most of you are on . You can have all this “bandwidth“ in the world (I had only used 19 percent when they shut down my site) but if you get too much too fast they shut you down. So at the end of the month I had a grand Adsense total of $2.89. And just to remind you February had 29 days this year. Want me to do that math for you? 10 cents a day. I figured maybe Google was doing the adding up and I would get my REAL number later. Nothing. That was it. And I said to myself; they lied. These websites and blogs lied to me . I GOT the traffic. So where’s my money?

You can BUY traffic, type into Google and you’ll see 10,000 visitors for about 10$ and up. I did this. And it’s bullshit traffic in terms of conversion. A certain percentage of Entrecard traffic is like this too. But unfocused traffic that isn’t specifically looking for your content is VIRTUALLY without value. It DOES have value if you’re just trying to have fat stats, or see if it’ll make your Alexa jump. Targeted traffic is golden. We’ll cover this in a few paragraphs.

PARASITE STYLE

Oh and by the way I was trying all that shit; Kontera, TLA, Amazon too-I’ve got all that rolling, but at this point it’s just part of my “don’t leave any money on the table” strategy. But after a couple weeks into my post Adsense failure I “went public” and basically joined a bunch of social network sites to see if I could find a solution. Maybe they knew something I didn’t? But I told me mother I noticed something weird. The bloggers were like peanut venders at a stadium and instead of selling stuff to the people in the seats they were selling peanuts to other venders! They were making money off each other’s desires instead of providing any REAL value and product to “customers.” Meanwhile there’re WAY more stadium fans than venders. WHY are they selling to other venders? I didn’t get that! I’m looking and looking and every other blogger is blogging about making money, and VERY few of the other bloggers are focused. Occasionally I’d find a guy like the fruit guy (or maybe it’s a lady). He’s (or she’s) in the Entrecard system and this man or woman is totally into fruit. And there a few other focused blogs out there, but otherwise most are not even as focused as my blog, where I at least tried to create clearly defined categories.

And listen, again, I don’t care how people make their money, but to ME-I’m not trying to make the CORE of my business being a parasite to other bloggers. I DO sell some junk (see below, or in the sidebar) but it’s the stuff I use and actually think you will make you actual money. But in my mind you need to be selling to customers not bloggers, there are more customers than bloggers. YES you can skim off the bloggers too if you’re just fuckign determined to do it, but all you’re doing is living in an Ouroboros (snake eating its own tail-thank you Red Dwarf!).

3. How I’ve Been Making Money, is The Same Way Everybody Else Has Been

Here are the 3 ways I’m making money online. It’s actually a very short “class.” Learn about keywords and strong SEO, apply this information to Adsense sites, eBay affiliate sites and affiliate sites . My success so far is in that same order that I just wrote them. But listen, I was DETERMINED to make Adsense work first because it had “defeated” me. And because Shoemoney had did it. Am I worried about telling you the “secret” and everybody flooding the market? No. First of all; nobody listens. And secondly , most people don’t follow through. And thirdly , 2 months ago before I “got it”, there were tons of people who came before me, and yet I stepped in and STILL see lots of opportunity. There’s room. And I’d much rather people were helping customers find what they want than “internet marketers” feeding off each other. BUT, you’ve still got to do your own research. It’s like me being in NY and emailing instruction for baking a cake and you’re in LA. So you’re first couple of “cakes” might end up being donated to the local homeless shelters, but your third cake’ll be fine.

Your learning process should be about keywords. My suggestion is to take all that time and energy you’re putting into making money off your personal blog and put it into those 3 areas, pick one of those methods I just mentioned and get good, then move to the other 2. Right now I’m doing 1, 2 and 3-but I’m at different stages with all three. I use this blog as a my place to generate 2-3$ a day an Adsense and a few other traditional blog money things, but I do NOT consider this the main money site . It’s my foundation site, for me personally.

Once you understand how to utilize profitable keywords and keyword strings you can interchange Adsense with eBay or with affiliate products. In other words if you know that the winning combination is soil, sunlight, seeds, and water you can GROW virtually anything . And keyword knowledge is what you need. That’s it. That is it. Your personal blog is your hobby, if you make some money on it fine. But if you want a career. If you want BIG money if you want to be able to survive and THRIVE as the economy collapses around you do this. Because your money comes from everywhere on the planet, not just America (or whatever country you happen to live in). There you go. That’s the big deal. But I’ll do a some detail just to get you thinning along the right lines. And chances are whatever you’re interested in is not even remotely related to one of the expensive keyword strings. It’s just abstract stuff. So I do not think it’s wise to gear your main blog toward this strategy. You can do a little light work, but not your serious work.

Take a look at the stats for this week. You can see 2 things. First you can see when I took off for a few days my traffic dropped about a hundred. Then you can see when one of my popular articles caught the attention of a lot of people. I have a story about a Half Tree Half Man guy-and it’s based on a TV program. Every time the program reaches a new part of the world I get a bump. I also followed the original piece with 2 follow-up pieces. I’m pretty much number one in Google for this topic.

And that’s another thing; which thing are you committed to? Making money blogging or making money online? I mean if it’s just an academic, theoretical question you’re trying to solve that’s one thing, but if your goal is to actually make money from the internet then know this; it might include using a blog, and it might not. A money site is a site built to make money. Because here is my strong opinions; traffic from search engines are more likely to be profitable than traffic from other blogs and social networks . It is VERY possible to monetize traffic from blogs and social networks, but you REALLY have to have a strong “fan base.” People have to believe in YOU. But traffic from search engines is a bunch of people LOOKING FOR SOMETHING and far easier to monetize. AND on top of that traffic from Google might be harder to make money from than MSN and Yahoo. Bloggers aren’t clicking on Adsense, Digg people aren’t clicking on Adsense, Stumble users aren’t clicking on Adsene and really Google people aren’t clicking on Adsense. Shit, I’m a Google user; I’ve got ad filters and shit! Hahaha! Seriously these are the MOST hip and savvy internet surfers out there. You want hillbillies! You want people who JUST got on the internet. People willing to see if an cleverly worded ad will send them where they want to go and MOST of time those ads DO take them to a place of more information. But all us jaded computer users figure we’ll find what we want better on our own. AND many of us are resentful about giving some blogger a “hand out” by clicking. But are you running a money blog or reading blog? You’ve got to decide. I even created a little scale to help me determine what I’m looking at when I visit blogs. I don’t know if it’ll catch on but I use it. It’s a 1 -5 scale Read Value vs Money Value. I guess you could call it “The Rosenthal Read Value vs Money Value Measure.” The GREEEAAT thing about being born with that name is that I can slap it on ANYTHING and it sounds better,

The Rosenthal index of lard usage to margarine purchasing

The Rosenthal Correlation of protruding navels to bulbous proboscis

The Rosenthal Factor of anal porn vs female squirting erotica

ADSENSE

Everybody wants the key to Adsense. Well I’ll tell you again; it’s 2 things. Focus and Keyword selection. The reason most bloggers don’t do well with Adsense is because they have the wrong audience; You also need to understand Google WANTS you to make money. All you have to do is provide relevant, original content. Because the big secret is that they GIVE you all the tools , I’m pretty sure they just changed the Adwords Keyword Tool. I don’t remember it giving the money value of CPC last month, or maybe MY MIND DIDN’T LET ME SEE IT. But it’s there know. So you NEED to open an account at Google Adwords or you can use the tools and method I described here . Google wants you to make money, because THEY make money when you make money. But you NEED to do your research and find an Adsense Master. They’re out there. And at the end of this series I’ll include some links, BUT GET SEARCHING on your own now. But I do want you to get started. Try this tool just to give you some idea of how much Google wants you to succeed.

http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends?sa=X

It’s right there showing you what is important to them. Learning how to understand which search terms are numerous and which ones advertisers pay a lot for is CRUCIAL to your online success. And if you’re trying to build a popular blog it’ll help too. I really hope you’ll get a copy of SEO Elite and start experimenting. It’ll help you in the short term AND the long term. There are free tools, about half a dozen, that will do the same thing but it’s a lot work trying to make them all work together. Once you start experimenting with keywords, you should build some Blogger blogs with your keywords. Just one page deals, if your words are good you should be making money. I use PPC to test these pages. The bloggers blogs aren’t good for long term because they’re paper thin and mostly Adsense blogs-they call these MFA’s (or Made For Adsense sites). For the most part REAL MFA sites have NO content, just all ads but YOU at least should have a page of content. Throw the PPC at it to see how good the Adsense is doing, after that you can stay PPC or go to organic traffic. If you go the PPC route you’ll be using arbitrage (spending less than you make). I was spending 5 to make 15, then 5 to make 20, then 4 to make 20, then 4 to make 25 , then 3 to make 25 then finally 3 to make 30. Let me say again DO NOT LEAVE THESE TEST PAGES UP.

I moved on to using HyperVRE , but I’m almost reluctant to advise it to you. Because you really need to understand what you’re doing to use a tool like that . It DOES work. But it works by building sites for you. See the problem with making pages without a lot of content but DO have a lot of ads is they get low scoring from Google. If you’re using Google search this is problem. Although not the case for for PPC. But you ALSO don’t want a TOS Adsense issue, so HyperVRE is good, but you might have to invest in a little PLR. Here we go, see this is what I mean! HyperVRE really requires learning about other stuff. I WILL at least talk about the “duplicate content” issue. When I heard about this penalty I was convinced it meant you might have your Adsense account closed or something else. But what it really means is that you wont be findable. Take a look at this.

I have about 30 articles over at EzineArticles, and after the 2nd page or so, all the sites that have that article stop showing up in the results because Google figures you’ve already seen it enough . De-indexed. And when you’re building sites FOR Adsense, if you don’t want to use PPC, you need to be able to rank high in the Search Engines. Again, even though Google users on the whole are more savvy, Google SEEKERS will click on ads if it’s relevant to what they’re seeking. But those test pages I talked about earlier will tell you a lot about the value of the keywords for Adsense and give you a good idea about the eBay potential Click Through Rate (CTR).

SO LET’S TALK JUST A LITTLE ABOUT EBAY TODAY

As I said what you learn about Adsense translates very well to selling stuff on eBay. Please read the section below where I talk about BANS. I’m getting a little WOOZY writing all this so you’ll learn more by going to their site. In fact I’ll put a BANS link right here . But I also want to show you a different eBay affiliate software. Take a look at this page . Here I was running Adsene, but the kids who came didn’t like the text Adsense, so I put a little phpBay code in there and it made a big difference. BANS works as a stand alone 30 minute eBay building site. phpBay works basically as a Wordpress plugin , so BOTH are recommended because you can do VERY different things with them.

So that’s MORE than enough for the day-now read my ads below….

And Now, a Word From our Sponsor!

The Software I use to Make Money Online.

This blog makes me a few dollars, but it’s not one of my serious money sites. My money sites are set up in a completely different way. This blog is my 1st one and covers issues that are interesting to me personally. No research, no planning and not that much promotion. On the other hand, with my money blogs not one line of code is touched until I know EXACTLY what I’m doing. I’ve researched and tested first.

But the big story here is that I use software. And on top of that, it’s software I bought. So here’s the story on that; my 100$ a day (and growing) income CAN be done manually-no software. There are also free software tools out there, but let me give you a comparison model; I’m a single guy with no kids and for years I washed my clothes at home in the tub. For one guy without that many clothes it was fine. But in any scenario, other than that, it’s NOT a wise use of time or money. So paid software is like a washing machine in the house. Free tools are like trekking to the laundromat with quarters, the crowds and the gas usage. And no software is a tub full of clothes!

Now, the deal about making money is understanding and using Long Tail theory (lots of people use the buzz word “niches” but it’s essentially the same thing). And the way I use Long Tail to make money is through Adsense, eBay stores and affiliate sales. There are probably many ways to make money online, but after months of experimenting and testing those 3 methods are what I found to be a) things I could do b) have no ceiling on income-sky’s the limit c) not have to depend on other people approving me to take action and d) generate the most money with the least amount of costs (money or time). So here’s my junk I advise looking into them, to see if they’re right for you too. I wouldn’t offer them to you if I didn’t believe in them AND use them.

So I use 4 tools. The first one is SEO Elite. EVERYBODY with a blog or website should be using this if they want traffic; for website research. The second is Microsoft free plugin/add-in for Excel called Ad-Intelligence or Keyword Elite. Ad-Intelligence is buggy and you need to have an account with Microsoft Adcenter. Keyword Elite works without any trouble] these are for keyword research. The third is BANS for eBay, and a companion tool that REALLY cuts site creation time with BANS called Niche Store Writer. It’s a way to make an eBay store cleanly and fast. BUT if you’re willing to spend a little time and you like Wordpress, you can turn Wordpress into an eBay store with phpBay. I use that one too, and it takes a little more work but all those theme choices are nice. Just keep in mind; making sites is not where you should be spending your time. Researching keywords, choosing a product, getting targeted traffic and site promotion is where you should put in the time. So you definitely want to shave off hours and hours of tedious tasks. And the thing about DOING tedious tasks is you make mistakes, “oh man I forgot to put in this code or those keywords” and stuff like that. The software speeds up the process and maintains the integrity of your work. I also will tell you that I use HyperVRE for Adsense, but listen very closely; you need to learn the ins and outs of Adsense before you try this software. If you can make $10 a day with an Adsense site then maybe you’re ready-otherwise think twice, and then think a third time. Download the free copy just to play with it and read the manuals, those are very helpful. But I cannot recommend you buy and try to build sites if you can’t already make money with Adsense already. LASTLY, I use Article Submitter, like all the other tools you can look for alternatives on Google, but for the price and the automation this one is the winner. There are submission services but I’m not ready for one yet. BUT this tool is TIRESOME the first couple of uses while you get registered at all the sites. Plan on a day of watching over it while it does its thing. But you need articles out there.

So to recap; you can do it for free. If all you have or want is one site you don’t need to go the software route. Or you can look for free alternative tools. Also if you’re going to buy of you don’t NEED to buy it all at once! Choose a path and learn it. Many of these also have multiple uses; SEO, Keyword and Article work for whatever kind of site you’re making.

0

May 28, 2008

Oh I’m Still Here. I Was Out Picking Fights About Making Money Online

Filed under: Computers and Internet — Tags: , , , — Dave @ 5:01 am

So Hi! Hey. Where’d I go? Well I was having internet problems for a few days. Normally I might take Saturday or Sunday off from the blog and this past week intended to write Sunday night after doing a full day of Entrecarding . Dropping those cards is a full blown once a month type event for me. Because I try to read and leave significant comments on the way. And…it’s a lot of work! So Sunday I did all that stuff and then by evening my internet was out. Lots of calling, complaining, fighting, testing equipment. You can look at any of my Comcast or ATT posts to see how I manhandle customer service people at this stage in my life. I’m as polite as I can be, but I also don’t want to be walked through somebody’s troubleshooting script if I KNOW what the problem is. When it’s on my end I know, and when it’s on their end I know. So Monday was a holiday so I was still out. Then that night this happened.

I really didn’t resize this image well enough for you to tell, but that is a substantially sized branch. Over to the left you can see the wire it brought down, so NOW my internet problems were really serious. And you can also see I decided to go Paul Bunyan instead of Discovery Channel Axeman. I just didn’t feel like chainsaw work; since this blogging thing I haven’t been getting enough sleep and things could get a little messy. One day for my home renovation section I’ll talk about the TWO trees I took down and uprooted so I could build a garage this summer.

Money Fight

Anyway while I was out blog surfing I was involved in some software debates and some money debates. I’m putting one the money debates up, because it relates to the next part of the series-which I WILL do right after I do a TV piece today. But I came across a blogger had written 2 back to back pieces on what does and does not make money. He even drew a pyramid shaped chart. Where Adsense and affiliate sales were at the bottom and sponsored reviews and selling EC credits were at the top. And trust me I do understand how this made sense to him. He’s not alone with these kinds of results, but e also repeatedly used the word “efficiency.” And talked about how much work one had to do to make money and the big thing was his approach. It was all; this is irrefutable fact. No evidence, no information about his experience. So I wrote this…

Hi (NAME REMOVED)

My name is Dave and….I’m not sure what you’re up to over here, I’m not a regular reader, but some Sunday’s I go out into the Entrecard world to see what’s happening. I see on the 23rd you did a pyramid and then did a follow up today. And I’m not sure if I you’re trying to make money or provide information to people about how to make money. I can’t imagine you’ve been at this very long. You’ve mentioned the word “efficient” a few times and I don’t know if you mean least amount of work or quickest. It’s irrelevant really, because I think your model is all wrong. Or rather, very wrong. No money is made by selling EC and to put it anywhere near Adsense indicates you might not know the whole story. Sponsored post of course is also a limited amount of money because you’ll get penalized by Google like you and have a PR0 or gray bar like yours. So you wont show up in Google search very easily.

I’m also not sure why you consider affiliate programs “tricky.” I have ebay and CJ sites and there’s not much tricking going on. I show people the stuff and they buy it. No mysteries involved. And they’re very efficient-an ebay site can be done in half an hour and make 10-100 or more a day. I do the same with Adsense-and make about a hundred a day. So good luck with your method, but I hope you’ll do a little more research for yourself and your readers.

So then he came to this blog, and emailed me, and said I should come read his response. I went over and read it. It was snippy-and, you know, I’m wasn’t surprised, hahaha. But he said he was glad I had come by with some new information. And he talked about his position was based on his experience of losing money I also didn’t understand how he lost “so much money” with affiliate programs, since normally you just slap up a banner and hope for the best. Even though I use it, most bloggers are too scared to use Pay Per Click advertising so I can’t imagine how he lost money. Even a lot of affiliate masters are wary of it. But when I looked at my stats I saw that he was from India, so maybe it was just affording the hosting that broke the bank for him. Or maybe somebody sold him a program. The Reverse Funnel System is one of those 50$ upfront programs and THEN I think you’re supposed to put in $3000. So I don’t know what he did, but if he lost money with affiliate marketing that said to ME he probably didn’t do enough research. Anyway-this second response never made it to his blog…

Hi (NAME REMOVED

Well I’m happy to know you appreciated my first comment cause you’re going to love this one. And I say that with a smile-so I’m not coming at you like an ass, just clarifying my outlook. And my position is that you present things in a way that leave a sort of mixed messages. You sent me an email saying you did some updates and I should come take a look but “it doesn’t matter.” That’s a weird thing to say. And right here you say you appreciate my input but that “it doesn’t matter” just devalues what you just said. Either my opinions have value or they don’t.

And it’s the same with these 2 blog post. You’ve made some titles and statements about income that sound like proclamation of fact. “Fire is hot.” Then I added my 2 cents and you clarified (in fact, my opinion is that your subjective outlook about all this should have been in the beginning) “fire is hot to ME.” You said you designed a pyramid that had the “best methods for making money using blogs” as if it was based on fact. What facts? You didn’t say “man I really lost a lot of money or got confused so I really didn’t do very well, so this is how I’m making money now.” And all I said was, you probably haven’t had enough experience yet to a) develop the skills to learn how to make money with those other methods and maybe you should b) research this issue enough to see some of the dozens and dozens of blogs where people generate lots of money with adsense, ebay and other affiliates programs.

And I stand by my position that selling EC credit makes “no money” that doesn’t mean “any money.” But 5 and 10 dollars seem like a very “inefficient” way to make money-considering all the effort of doing 300 drops a day. And it doesn’t matter if you’ve got 5 browsers with tabs going, Firefox gets swollen and needs to be restarted after all that. So that seems like a lot of time that could be better off building a BANS site that makes $50 a day.

I’m also glad you say you don’t want to “push your readers into thing” because that’s how I feel about sponsored post. I have no problem with recommending that strategy to people AS LONG AS they’re told about the PR trade off. Because once you make that trade off your traffic will only be so big and then it’ll reach a ceiling. And that is a fact.

(NAME REMOVED) we are ALL trying to figure this out. How to get a nice amount of money with a clear road to growing it. I was not doing well as recently as March, but I put my nose down and did some research. I want you to be successful too, and that’s why I took the time to write TWO giant responses so that you can maybe go take a second look at methods that work for people and have nothing “shady” or “tricky” about them at all. Clean, honest, smart work. And as you get better you can cut your time and have this efficiency that you’re looking for. And I did a quick write too, so I might have spelling issues too.

0

May 22, 2008

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Filed under: Computers and Internet — Tags: , , — Dave @ 1:47 pm

Whew! I

0

May 15, 2008

The Truth About Making Money Online. My Jump From $3 a Month to Over $100 a Day

Filed under: Computers and Internet — Tags: , , , , , — Dave @ 12:01 am

Ok, the first thing I’m going to do is connect this string of articles I’ve written together as a series. So this is actually part 1 of a 2 part piece on what I would do to get my blog some traffic , except I wrote and posted part 2 first. Hahahaha! But this post is also like part 5 or 6 of what you could call my making money online series. So I’m going to go over all the things I learned in the last 10 weeks. That’s right. You should know the credentials of the person who’s giving you their findings. And so let me reiterate my experience; bought the server space and domain name April 07, didn’t do anything, then started blogging daily October 07. Didn’t make any money online . March 1 decided to spend every day to uncover the “secrets” of making money online . By the way your first “secret” is right there, Google gives more weight to underlined words and words in bold. Keyword density relates to how often a word or phrase is repeated within a given body of text. 6 percent is the optimal ratio I hear a lot, but you’ve got to be careful not to overuse KWs, or you might get penalized by Google. And speaking of that; you need to know that Google is king . I wrote a piece during the MSN attempt to buy Yahoo, and mentioned the stat for searches per month was like 6 billion for G, 2.3 for Y and 1 for M, so even if M had gotten Y they STILL would only have gotten half the traffic of G. By the way, there’s another “secret” technique; you also have to watch keyword use for Adsense relevancy in content matching; so I’m very careful about which words I repeat in a post.

Personal Blog vs Money Blog

So I’m not going to drag this shit out; I’ll tell you the money stuff first and the traffic stuff second. I’m using software . Having said that, it still doesn’t tell you anything about HOW I’ve learned to do it. I can’t tell you for sure if it’s what the pro "make money" bloggers are doing. Bascically I reinvented the wheel and just taught myself, so you can ascribe whatever value to that admission that you want. Software also will not solve your problem if you don’t have a plan for making money on the internet, but it’ll make it easier and faster to implement-because you’re going to need your time to maintain, refine and GROW. So let’s get into what I think about this industry. Number 1; I don’t think a personal blog like this one can be a big money maker anymore . I think a personal blog like this, after a couple of months can start to generated maybe $50 and maybe peak at around $1000 and maybe even $1500-2000 for a real hustler. But that’s in the “personal blog” category, NOT the make money online blogs (also known as MMO). I have not made this blog a MMO. I sometimes talk about my income experiences because it falls into the “computer/tech” category, but today I wrote about Suge Knight and last night Speed Racer and the day before R. Kelly, so I still talk about stuff that’s not related to blogging or how to make money from my blog.

Conversely, what my 10 weeks of study showed me was that a money blog does NOT have to be full of content. People keep telling you that’s what you need to do. Everybody keeps saying if you make a blog full of content a) you’ll get traffic and b) traffic equates to money. This is a lie. This is absolutely not what I found to be the case . My money blogs are half hour creations. THIS blog on the other hand was blood, sweat and tears of work for 7 months of trying to write every day. Even when I didn’t make my goal of a creating a content rich post every day I THOUGHT about it and felt bad if I didn’t make it. But here’s another fact; you can write the greatest thing in the world, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to get traffic . That’s a fact. If you don’t hustle up some traffic you’ll be writing in a void. Because I DID write in near silence for months. But once I put in the SEO work and joined a bunch of Social Networking sites the traffic came. What you can take away from that is this; traffic is not passive. If you build it they might come (but probably not). And even "traffic" doesn’t mean money. In an upcoming post I’ll talk about the real and the mistaken value of an Entrecard, Stumble or Digg.

A blog like this does have value. Personal blogs serve as a foundation . I’m building thousands of links, and building Google Page Rank, and relationships with other bloggers and general traffic of people who come from the search engines . But again, I only make what I call “expenses income” from this blog (maybe a hundred a month). I got a copy of Camtasia this week, so I’ll try to do a video of my computer screen to show you the various regions of this blog and how they’re monetized. My money blogs? Adsense and affiliates programs . Ebay is an affiliate too, but that slice of the pie is so…powerful that I really consider it a third program. Seriously, Ebay "money site" work is so specific that it really is a science all its own, but it’s not traditional blogging . And that was the biggest hurdle I had to get over, and possibly many of you too. Blogging for dollars is not the same as blogging for readers . Money blogs or simple websites don’t need a lot of content, and they are intentionally created to generate Adsense revenue or affiliate sales. You are trying to help people get from point A to point B. They want X and you are directing them to X and taking a thank you tip like a taxi driver. So let’s recap : if you don’t have an older established blog, don’t have a very focused blog, and/or don’t have an MMO blog, MY BELIEF is that you’re going to reach an income ceiling and level off.

I made this post too long too didn’t I. Ok, I promise this week I will tie all these post together into a series and I’ll do all the traffic stuff and show you which methods I used. But I sincerely think that, if you hadn’t already figured out the ideas I’ve presented here, you need to seriously take a moment and consider the fact that personal and money blogs CAN overlap, but they’re not the same . Any site can make money from Adsense or affiliate programs, but if you try to do it with a personal blog you have to be VERY FOCUSED. Topics have to be streamlined, because the Adsense will be all over the map. Additionally those seekers I mentioned earlier, looking to do “X,” will not find you as often if you’ve got multiple topics. Hope to see you in the next part of this. It’ll be done this week.


And Now, a Word From our Sponsor!

The Software I use to Make Money Online.

This blog makes me a few dollars, but it’s not one of my serious money sites. My money sites are set up in a completely different way. This blog is my 1st one and covers issues that are interesting to me personally. No research, no planning and not that much promotion. On the other hand, with my money blogs not one line of code is touched until I know EXACTLY what I’m doing. I’ve researched and tested first.

But the big story here is that I use software. And on top of that, it’s software I bought. So here’s the story on that; my 100$ a day (and growing) income CAN be done manually-no software. There are also free software tools out there, but let me give you a comparison model; I’m a single guy with no kids and for years I washed my clothes at home in the tub. For one guy without that many clothes it was fine. But in any scenario, other than that, it’s NOT a wise use of time or money. So paid software is like a washing machine in the house. Free tools are like trekking to the laundromat with quarters, the crowds and the gas usage. And no software is a tub full of clothes!

Now, the deal about making money is understanding and using Long Tail theory (lots of people use the buzz word “niches” but it’s essentially the same thing). And the way I use Long Tail to make money is through Adsense, eBay stores and affiliate sales. There are probably many ways to make money online, but after months of experimenting and testing those 3 methods are what I found to be a) things I could do b) have no ceiling on income-sky’s the limit c) not have to depend on other people approving me to take action and d) generate the most money with the least amount of costs (money or time). So here’s my junk I advise looking into them, to see if they’re right for you too. I wouldn’t offer them to you if I didn’t believe in them AND use them.

So I use 4 tools. The first one is SEO Elite. EVERYBODY with a blog or website should be using this if they want traffic; for website research. The second is Microsoft free plugin/add-in for Excel called Ad-Intelligence or Keyword Elite. Ad-Intelligence is buggy and you need to have an account with Microsoft Adcenter. Keyword Elite works without any trouble] these are for keyword research. The third is BANS for eBay, and a companion tool that REALLY cuts site creation time with BANS called Niche Store Writer. It’s a way to make an eBay store cleanly and fast. BUT if you’re willing to spend a little time and you like Wordpress, you can turn Wordpress into an eBay store with phpBay. I use that one too, and it takes a little more work but all those theme choices are nice. Just keep in mind; making sites is not where you should be spending your time. Researching keywords, choosing a product, getting targeted traffic and site promotion is where you should put in the time. So you definitely want to shave off hours and hours of tedious tasks. And the thing about DOING tedious tasks is you make mistakes, “oh man I forgot to put in this code or those keywords” and stuff like that. The software speeds up the process and maintains the integrity of your work. I also will tell you that I use HyperVRE for Adsense, but listen very closely; you need to learn the ins and outs of Adsense before you try this software. If you can make $10 a day with an Adsense site then maybe you’re ready-otherwise think twice, and then think a third time. Download the free copy just to play with it and read the manuals, those are very helpful. But I cannot recommend you buy and try to build sites if you can’t already make money with Adsense already. LASTLY, I use Article Submitter, like all the other tools you can look for alternatives on Google, but for the price and the automation this one is the winner. There are submission services but I’m not ready for one yet. BUT this tool is TIRESOME the first couple of uses while you get registered at all the sites. Plan on a day of watching over it while it does its thing. But you need articles out there.

So to recap; you can do it for free. If all you have or want is one site you don’t need to go the software route. Or you can look for free alternative tools. Also if you’re going to buy of you don’t NEED to buy it all at once! Choose a path and learn it. Many of these also have multiple uses; SEO, Keyword and Article work for whatever kind of site you’re making.

0

May 4, 2008

Join RSSHugger and Maybe You Can Generate Some Blog Traffic

Filed under: Computers and Internet — Tags: , , , , , — Dave @ 5:54 am

Is this pay for post today? I’m not sure. I want to join RSSHugger and the deal is either you write a post or you pay 20 dollars. So I guess we’ll call it a “barter” arrangement. Ok RH is a website that aggregates RSS feeds from blogs and then ivory soap style floats the most popular 100 blogs to the top. Am I done yet? Have I fulfilled my part of the bargain? Nah, I got more to say. The site is run by the MixedMarketArts.com guy Collin LaHay. I’ve actually read stuff on that blog and found it very useful so I think he knows what he’s talking about with RH. The “structure” of RH reminds me a famous 3 sided Egyptian death tomb (hint, hint). See the idea is that a person joins, writes a blog posts which attracts ten people, those ten people join, they write 10 blog post (all in lieu o the 20 dollar fee), and the cycle continues. It’s traditional Multi Level Marketing in that respect. But inside the site you can either browse with the “random blog” button or look at the top 100. The good news is that there are currently only 1675 blog feeds listed. And the today the number 1 blog has 30 views listed. So you stand a good chance of making it up there. And the colors of the sound don’t sound good on paper (gray, brown and orange) but they’re actually kind of soothing and easy on the eye.

So why am I joining. I want to have my stuff read. I work on this blog every day, so since it’s not a private diary people should be reading it. I’ll be honest, when I started I wasn’t really thinking (or even knew) about making money from the blog, I really just wanted to have a website for my t-shirts (see above or below). But then I learned that people were making money and some people were making a lot of money , I thought hey, let’s get in on THAT part of blogging. So then around October 2007 I made the decision to post once a day. I would try to write a legitimate, researched, image included article of some sort. And I did man, I mean I really put it out there. And I started reading and reading and reading about how to get more traffic and/or money. And it becomes this great exercise in filtering; what’s crap and what’s real. Because the content was here. I was doing that part, and still not getting any great regular traffic. As you can see I have a real ghetto fabulous, home made strategy board-well actually it’s two. One “whiteboard” is made from a cleaners bag and the other is like some giant 4 foot dinner mat. But the main thing is they both have erasable surfaces.

And the money thing was just disgusting. So I decided in March 2008 to “solve the problem.” And for all intents and purposes after 2 months I did . I mean I learned that a popular blog is NOT the same as a money making blog. You don’t NEED a popular blog to make money . It helps but it’s not mandatory. This blog is still slightly under 500 visitors a day and I can make about $2 a day with Adsense. The main reason for the problem is the multiple topics confuse Adsense, so some days the ads are relevant and some days not. But I have other blogs and now I make about $70 a day, and I know how to double and triple that. BUT; I still want THIS blog to be read by people. Because this is my personal blog. And so I’m joining RSSHugger hoping to get read…

And Now, a Word From our Sponsor!

The Software I use to Make Money Online.

This blog makes me a few dollars, but it’s not one of my serious money sites. My money sites are set up in a completely different way. This blog is my 1st one and covers issues that are interesting to me personally. No research, no planning and not that much promotion. On the other hand, with my money blogs not one line of code is touched until I know EXACTLY what I’m doing. I’ve researched and tested first.

But the big story here is that I use software. And on top of that, it’s software I bought. So here’s the story on that; my 100$ a day (and growing) income CAN be done manually-no software. There are also free software tools out there, but let me give you a comparison model; I’m a single guy with no kids and for years I washed my clothes at home in the tub. For one guy without that many clothes it was fine. But in any scenario, other than that, it’s NOT a wise use of time or money. So paid software is like a washing machine in the house. Free tools are like trekking to the laundromat with quarters, the crowds and the gas usage. And no software is a tub full of clothes!

Now, the deal about making money is understanding and using Long Tail theory (lots of people use the buzz word “niches” but it’s essentially the same thing). And the way I use Long Tail to make money is through Adsense, eBay stores and affiliate sales. There are probably many ways to make money online, but after months of experimenting and testing those 3 methods are what I found to be a) things I could do b) have no ceiling on income-sky’s the limit c) not have to depend on other people approving me to take action and d) generate the most money with the least amount of costs (money or time). So here’s my junk I advise looking into them, to see if they’re right for you too. I wouldn’t offer them to you if I didn’t believe in them AND use them.

So I use 4 tools. The first one is SEO Elite. EVERYBODY with a blog or website should be using this if they want traffic; for website research. The second is Microsoft free plugin/add-in for Excel called Ad-Intelligence or Keyword Elite. Ad-Intelligence is buggy and you need to have an account with Microsoft Adcenter. Keyword Elite works without any trouble] these are for keyword research. The third is BANS for eBay, and a companion tool that REALLY cuts site creation time with BANS called Niche Store Writer. It’s a way to make an eBay store cleanly and fast. BUT if you’re willing to spend a little time and you like Wordpress, you can turn Wordpress into an eBay store with phpBay. I use that one too, and it takes a little more work but all those theme choices are nice. Just keep in mind; making sites is not where you should be spending your time. Researching keywords, choosing a product, getting targeted traffic and site promotion is where you should put in the time. So you definitely want to shave off hours and hours of tedious tasks. And the thing about DOING tedious tasks is you make mistakes, “oh man I forgot to put in this code or those keywords” and stuff like that. The software speeds up the process and maintains the integrity of your work. I also will tell you that I use HyperVRE for Adsense, but listen very closely; you need to learn the ins and outs of Adsense before you try this software. If you can make $10 a day with an Adsense site then maybe you’re ready-otherwise think twice, and then think a third time. Download the free copy just to play with it and read the manuals, those are very helpful. But I cannot recommend you buy and try to build sites if you can’t already make money with Adsense already. LASTLY, I use Article Submitter, like all the other tools you can look for alternatives on Google, but for the price and the automation this one is the winner. There are submission services but I’m not ready for one yet. BUT this tool is TIRESOME the first couple of uses while you get registered at all the sites. Plan on a day of watching over it while it does its thing. But you need articles out there.

So to recap; you can do it for free. If all you have or want is one site you don’t need to go the software route. Or you can look for free alternative tools. Also if you’re going to buy of you don’t NEED to buy it all at once! Choose a path and learn it. Many of these also have multiple uses; SEO, Keyword and Article work for whatever kind of site you’re making.

0

April 22, 2008

The Increase in Web Traffic and Money Making of My Precciouusss Blog

Filed under: Computers and Internet — Tags: , , — Dave @ 6:58 am

But yeah that’s right, I feel like Gollum when I’m dealing with this blog. It’s my Precciouusss! (but don’t) Keep Away! I put in long hours, I never sleep, I’m always thinking about it, I’ve got tons of backed up non-blog work, and I’m pretty sure I just lost a woman over it. But hey, I’m bloggin’ baby! This post is about what I’ve been doing get traffic or make money. I’m writing one of these MMO pieces, NOT because everybody else is doing it, but (and this is a really big but) somebody actually asked me for my input. ME! So here is some of the stuff I’ve been doing the last couple of months to increase traffic, and what I’ve done to increase Adsense earnings . I get little questions here and there, mostly in the comments section, and the occasional email asking me to clarify something-all pretty standard I expect. So I was surprised to get a flat out “how do I?” type email. I sent an email with the few little tips and told him I’d do it as a blog post too “to share the wealth.” So he got part 1 and you’re getting part 2 and some point I’ll tie it all together.

For me, this blog is just a way to practice writing as I get ready to shoot my big super hero movie in the next year. I’m trying to do multiple scripts. (By the way for those of you curious about showbiz stuff, ALWAYS have more than one script ready). So the blog is a side project of a side project. As the web traffic increased, I started looking for ways to get even more blog traffic. And I slowly learned that people were treating blogs as a business and making money. The blog is also about me experimenting with different tool, software, money options, and then I’ll move what I learn into “niche sites.” So the first thing I’m going to do is show you some money.

For me it’s about quality traffic over quantity

OK. So as you can see I’m starting my presentation off with a display of wealth! Now a lot of people would be embarrassed to show those kind of Adsense numbers off, and some people would be proud to have that much. The important thing here is; the amount doesn’t really matter . The reason I’m showing you this modest amount is so you can see the growth. In March I basically multiplied the revenue amount by ten. The irony is that the traffic didn’t increase by much because I had a crazy amount of blog traffic in February due to my Half Tree Half Man post. So what is the lesson? Targeted traffic is vital for making money , Lots of people talk to me about getting “more” traffic. My own MOTHER, has been talking to me about news reports she hears where people are getting “millions of hits.” And I have to tell her those YouTube dudes aren’t making any money on it, so you know, big deal. With about 500 people a day for the last three months I was able to first multiple the blog Adsense income by 10 , and it looks like I’ll double the March income in April. But I do a lot of experimenting and testing . Below you can see a dip in the numbers for one of my test.

So I’ve only been at this for a while, but it seems to me that making money online with a blog is about getting people to your posts pages and not your “homepage.” That’s why I changed my front page to reflect my content and not just the 5 most recent posts. Ughh, I’m tired as hell and this going to get sloppy. I’m gonna break this post into a two-parter at least.

And Now, a Word From our Sponsor!

The Software I use to Make Money Online.

This blog makes me a few dollars, but it’s not one of my serious money sites. My money sites are set up in a completely different way. This blog is my 1st one and covers issues that are interesting to me personally. No research, no planning and not that much promotion. On the other hand, with my money blogs not one line of code is touched until I know EXACTLY what I’m doing. I’ve researched and tested first.

But the big story here is that I use software. And on top of that, it’s software I bought. So here’s the story on that; my 100$ a day (and growing) income CAN be done manually-no software. There are also free software tools out there, but let me give you a comparison model; I’m a single guy with no kids and for years I washed my clothes at home in the tub. For one guy without that many clothes it was fine. But in any scenario, other than that, it’s NOT a wise use of time or money. So paid software is like a washing machine in the house. Free tools are like trekking to the laundromat with quarters, the crowds and the gas usage. And no software is a tub full of clothes!

Now, the deal about making money is understanding and using Long Tail theory (lots of people use the buzz word “niches” but it’s essentially the same thing). And the way I use Long Tail to make money is through Adsense, eBay stores and affiliate sales. There are probably many ways to make money online, but after months of experimenting and testing those 3 methods are what I found to be a) things I could do b) have no ceiling on income-sky’s the limit c) not have to depend on other people approving me to take action and d) generate the most money with the least amount of costs (money or time). So here’s my junk I advise looking into them, to see if they’re right for you too. I wouldn’t offer them to you if I didn’t believe in them AND use them.

So I use 4 tools. The first one is SEO Elite. EVERYBODY with a blog or website should be using this if they want traffic; for website research. The second is Microsoft free plugin/add-in for Excel called Ad-Intelligence or Keyword Elite. Ad-Intelligence is buggy and you need to have an account with Microsoft Adcenter. Keyword Elite works without any trouble] these are for keyword research. The third is BANS for eBay, and a companion tool that REALLY cuts site creation time with BANS called Niche Store Writer. It’s a way to make an eBay store cleanly and fast. BUT if you’re willing to spend a little time and you like Wordpress, you can turn Wordpress into an eBay store with phpBay. I use that one too, and it takes a little more work but all those theme choices are nice. Just keep in mind; making sites is not where you should be spending your time. Researching keywords, choosing a product, getting targeted traffic and site promotion is where you should put in the time. So you definitely want to shave off hours and hours of tedious tasks. And the thing about DOING tedious tasks is you make mistakes, “oh man I forgot to put in this code or those keywords” and stuff like that. The software speeds up the process and maintains the integrity of your work. I also will tell you that I use HyperVRE for Adsense, but listen very closely; you need to learn the ins and outs of Adsense before you try this software. If you can make $10 a day with an Adsense site then maybe you’re ready-otherwise think twice, and then think a third time. Download the free copy just to play with it and read the manuals, those are very helpful. But I cannot recommend you buy and try to build sites if you can’t already make money with Adsense already. LASTLY, I use Article Submitter, like all the other tools you can look for alternatives on Google, but for the price and the automation this one is the winner. There are submission services but I’m not ready for one yet. BUT this tool is TIRESOME the first couple of uses while you get registered at all the sites. Plan on a day of watching over it while it does its thing. But you need articles out there.

So to recap; you can do it for free. If all you have or want is one site you don’t need to go the software route. Or you can look for free alternative tools. Also if you’re going to buy of you don’t NEED to buy it all at once! Choose a path and learn it. Many of these also have multiple uses; SEO, Keyword and Article work for whatever kind of site you’re making.

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April 6, 2008

I Jumped Over 1 Million Websites in 14 days. The Case for Alexa

Filed under: Computers and Internet — Tags: , , , , , — Dave @ 5:39 pm

Get the Alexa button/widget for your site. It’ll raise your ranking. That’s that short version of this post. The long version will help you see the big picture. Ok I admit it. I’m hording. I’m guy who loves to learn and since March 1st 2008 I’ve been awake nearly 20 of 24 hours a day. That’s like 5 weeks of intense learning. The goal was to try and crack the nut of making money online. I decided after having days of 1200 visitors in Feb. and coming away with 2.81 cents for the ENTIRE month in Adsense revenue, that I was gonna have to take a serious look at what the hell was wrong. On the one hand, content is no issue for me. I can, without arrogance or humility, say I’m an interesting guy! So I’ve ALWAYS got something going on. And I string words together well ENOUGH that people can generally follow what the hell I’m trying to say. So I’m pretty sure I’ve got the “blogging” part of blogging covered. But the visitor retention, commenting, feed subscribing and AD CLICKING part of blogging was just not something I had put enough time in on to get good results. Hence, those 20-22 hour days. Now I’ll be honest; I stopped to watch TV, eat and go pee pee. But mostly it’s been me in front of a computer. Oh that’s right-you don’t anything about me. I buy and renovated houses, so I don’t have a “job” in the sense that I work for some guy-not anymore baby! But I AM in the middle of doing a house. But I totally stopped, to work on this blog issue.

Alexa Ranking March 6

So in 5 weeks l learned a lot. And in terms of money I’m now pretty much on target for at least a dollar a day with Adsense. Additionally, like SEVEN other “revenue streams” have been added. But I’m hording. I learned all this stuff but I haven’t really put all that learning back “out there.” But my thinking is a) there are ten MILLION sites out there with the “how to make money online” thing going and b) another 10 million sites talking about how to “optimize” your site. Some of those people are good and making real money, and some are full of crap. Who needs my 2 cents? (And as I mentioned earlier it WAS literally , like, 2 cents a day I was making for 5 months). But what I CAN do is bring my unique way of communicating, my observations and experiences to the table. So, having said all that, here’s the deal with Alexa: it works.

Alexa Ranking March 10

Most of you know there are 2 major gauges of a website or blog that people pay attention to. The infamous Google PageRank and the Alexa Ranking. It’s NOT like Myspace; where having a lot of “friends” is just kind of a “Look at me, I’m king of the world! I have 2 million friends!” See over there it doesn’t really mean much. But out here in the world with us old crusty working folks. That PR and Alexa ranking determine how much advertisers are willing to pay for some of the real estate on our websites and blogs. What I’m saying is; how popular you are out HERE determines how much money you can make. So that shit matters! But HOW can you change those 2 scores. It’s very hard to figure out the Google math. People know, generally, that the volume of traffic you get the quality of the link pointing AT you are important. But I have to tell; I’ve been to a lot of top sites, and I’m not the correlation I would expect to see. I would EXPECT to see a good PR and a good Alexa but I RARELY do. I see one or the other. Usually I see a pretty good Alexa number and not such a great PR. I rarely see a site that has a good Alexa and a good Google PR. I know Google must have changed something, because back in maybe 2000 I had a dating site and I’m pretty sure I had a 3 or 4 within about 2 months! And now with TONS more legitimate, hand crafted, meticulously researched content all I’ve got is a 3. Maybe they judge overtly commercial sites better than “personal” blogs?

Alexa Ranking March 14

Alexa Ranking March 16

Alexa Ranking March 20

Alexa Ranking March 24

Alexa Ranking March 26

Alexa Ranking March 30

Alexa Ranking April 2

Alexa Ranking one month later April 6

So there are the numbers. Maybe you’re wondering why this works? Well I read about it on several blogs, but possibly one of the most widely known places is Maki over at doshdosh . But from what I can gather, having the button on your site allows people who visit your site and have the Alexa toolbar to sort of “count.” In other words, get the toolbar, so when YOU visit your site it counts. The idea is that traffic from toolbar users gives Alexa “proof” that people are coming to your site. The reason I’m putting stuff in quotes, is because, of course, you’re already getting traffic, but without that toolbar/widget combo you’re invisible-as far as Alexa is concerned. So by using this little strategy you can actually get a more accurate count of your traffic. It’s not a trick, you’re not doing anything “black hat” and it’s not something against the rules. Alexa wants people to have the widget, Alexa wants people to have the toolbar. SO COMPLY ALREADY and get your rank up and make some money!

That last image I don’t have a date for but it’s late Feb, maybe early March. But I’m showing it because you can see in roughly a little over a month I’ve basically jumped over 2 million sites. And I guarantee that if you look over at my current number now, it’ll be lower. Take a peek—>

God DAMN! One final note; the periods at all my bolded sentences are sticking out, that’s not ME, that’s the new wordpress. You should definitely look at my piece about the crappy new wordpress . AND I hope you link to this post to get the word out about this technique, so we can FINALLY get all those penis enlargement websites out of the top 100,000!

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April 2, 2008