Back From Vacation; Money Updates

This past 10 days I went to Northern Ireland to visit some relatives. It was a nice little trip. I had limited internet access but I was able to maintain my earnings on this blog.

I can't believe it's already been a year since I started this blog. I wasn't sure from the beginning if I would keep it going or not, but I've grown an affection for blogging and the more I learn the more I realize the potential I have to develop it into something really special.

As always, blogging takes up a lot of time. I plan on making money on the internet in other forms. That is why I'm proud to announce that shortly I will be starting my first major website project. A programmer and I have been working on a sports betting website and it is hopefully going to make a huge splash sometime this summer. Once that gets going, the real money making begins for me and my associates.

As for this blog, I plan to keep it going. As I start having more to "rave" about, this blog will become my journal of how I am making money online - because who doesn't want more money making ideas?

July 12th, 2007 was the start date of this blog. Since that time, I have learned a great deal about blogging. I know what it takes to make a living out of blogging, and it sure isn't easy. The people who read blogs are well informed folks, and its awfully hard to sell their eyeballs! I don't expect much income out of this blog, but maybe that's a good thing, because I'll never feel disappointed.

This July 12th, I'll post up my earnings for the year. I've contemplated giving monthly earnings, but they really aren't much worth talking about on a monthly basis. Maybe once things start moving along nicely I will do so. Stay tuned for the July 12th year in review!

Park a Domain and Cash In

I mentioned the other week how I bought a domain name and planned on testing it as a way to make some money. If you haven’t already, read that post here.

For those who are wondering how to optimize domain parking keywords, consider these simple tips:

Know your domain's traffic source and quality - by hosting the domains on your own server with traffic analyzer like Awstats. This feature is very common to cPanel. From there you will know geolocation and searched terms of your domains visitors. Use the searched terms as basis for your lander keywords. Know your visits geolocation so you’ll know what language to use for keywords and to what parking program will best monetize a foreign traffic, for non-US.

Keyword Discovery - know what people are really searching that are related to your domain names. Get the top 15 highest searched kw and use them for the lander. It benefits users because you provide them with what they're searching that will result to a high probability for maximum CTR. KeywordDiscovery is also a good alternative for Overture keyword tool (OVT, now that's no longer working). It wouldn't show same result as OVT was providing us but it can be of help do determine rough estimate of domain with extension type-in numbers.

Adwords Keyword Tool - know how much advertisers are paying for particular keywords that are related to your domain name. Get the top paying, most searched that are synonymous to your traffic searches. Use this as "guide" to project possible revenue.

For expired domain traffic, use Google and Archive.org's Wayback machine for background and/or historical research.

Domain parking keyword optimization is easy for everyone by using these basic methods and tools. This is also really helpful for other web marketing campaigns and SEO.

This simple process is very common to most parkers but can be of help to those who are learning and new.

Around the Money Niche – June 18

We’re back again for the second edition of Around the Money Niche, in which I collect articles from around the make money online niche of the internet.

Just a small update: I will have limited access to my computer over the next two weeks, as I will be going to my cottage then off to visit relatives in Northern Ireland, where I was born.

Avoid the Scams: Red Flags
http://www.johnchow.com/avoid-the-scams-red-flags/

Modern Ways of Saving Money: 4 Tricks That Can Make You Rich
http://financeinfos.info/modern-ways-of-saving-money-4-tricks-that-can-make-you-rich

The Internet Marketing DO List: Get Earning, Stop Talking
http://www.conversationmarketing.com/2008/06/internet-marketing-do-list.htm

Five Online Resources For Forex Beginners
http://www.everythingfinanceblog.com/2008/06/five-online-resources-for-forex.html

Why Most People Fail In Business
http://www.shoemoney.com/2008/06/18/why-most-people-fail-in-business/

That’s all for now.

Bought A Domain: Beginning Of An Empire?

Alright, haha. This post isn't to announce the beginning of my online empire, but it is a first in my online carreer.

Last night I bought the domain name blogroled.com. Why? Because there is a new site I see getting popular with the URL blogrolled.com. The idea is that, if someone types the URL in incorrectly they will go to my page, which will have relevant affiliate links on it that I can make some money from.

Any time someone types in blogroled.com, they will be redirected to a 'parked page' as it is called. Many internet marketers have tried this tactic, so I've just taken this wisdom and applied it. It cost me 10 bucks (I'm certain I could have got it cheaper, but too late). As long as I make 10 dollars this year, I'll be at least glad I took the risk. If it makes 20, I'll be alright with it.

But, will it succeed? It's hard to tell. Most people trying to located the BlogRolled website will likely be bloggers, and that likely means that they will be told of the site by a fellow blogger. That means they come via a link, which implies there will be no typo which takes them to my website.

Furthermore, there's always the high chance that BlogRolled won't become a popular website. It is a place for bloggers to sell a link in their blogroll, which may or not be a good idea. Advertisers may not be willing to give money to a low traffic website, and a high traffic blog may not be willing to lose credibility by selling spots in their blogroll. If the website can't catch on quickly, it will likely fail.

Then, if people end up wanting to go to the website and accidentally come to mine, they are likely to realize they're at the wrong place and leave. I need to target what I do on this page of mine heavily towards bloggers. I plan on making it as useful as possible.

I'll let you know how this goes, but as you can tell from my post I've already identified many shortcomings in this plan. Maybe somebody will by the domain off of me. Who knows.

What do you guys think? Am I crackpot for doing this?

Entrecard: We're More Than Glad To Steal Your Ad Earnings!

Just a quick update. For those of you bloggers who use Entrecard, they have just released a way for users to launch their own marketing campaign to buy Entre Credits.

What does this mean?

It means that traffic doesn't count for much - you're going up against those with more money than you. Just like many systems, Entrecard has caved into the demand for the wealthy users to buy their way up the system. That means that normal users have literally no chance to get their ads on websites with high levels of traffic - because now that people can just buy credits, they will blast up the cost for advertising on those blogs.

Google goes in one direction by penalizing those who try to game the PageRank sytem, while Entrecard encourages people to buy their way up to the top of theirs.

What's worse about this horrible, greedy decision by Entrecard is that they're literally saying, if you put a widget on your site, we'll find advertisers and take all of the earnings! Sounds fair!

If you don't like the idea, then remove your Entrecard widget. I've already started thinking heavily about this.

Thanks for selling out, EntreCard!

Update June 4: Problogger drops Entrecard.

Around the Money Niche – June 3

I’m going to start posting some links to useful articles from now on. I find them easily by checking my RSS Feed (click link for more info on RSS Feeds), which puts all of the new posts from my favourite sites on one page, on a daily basis.

I’ve picked out some recent, relevant articles for the online entrepreneurs and the bloggers as well, because I know my readership has a bit of both. Hope you like!

Make Money From Old, Unused Domains
http://www.mrgpt.com/make-money-from-old-unused-domains/

55 RSS Directories to Help You Promote Your Feeds!
http://www.dotsauce.com/2007/06/06/55-active-rss-directories-to-help-promote-your-feeds/

Is it Possible to Earn a Full Time Salary as a Part Time Blogger?
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/06/02/is-it-possible-to-earn-a-full-time-salary-as-a-part-time-blogger/

Make Money Online With Your Blogroll
http://www.johnchow.com/make-money-online-with-your-blogroll/

How to Stop Making Excuses For Why Your Business Isn't Growing
http://www.makemoneyonlinewithejcooksey.com/2008/05/how-stop-making-excuses-for-why-your.html

That's all for now.

Making $100 A Day Without Spending a Single Penny

I found this post on tihomir.org, and found it pretty motivating. He found a great post on Warrior Forum by hemanmaximus that will give you some money making ideas for all of you with low or no budget. He proves that anyone can make money on the net if you think out of the box.

"Like i said we are going from $0 to upwards, which means $0 out of your pocket. When i tell people about how i started my online business with "NO MONEY" out of my own pocket, people just freeze up. Most people think "you need money to make money". Here is how i got started.

Step 1 - How to make money without any money upfront? Its darn simple, Write Articles. I wrote 10 articles about a particular niche at 400 words per article. I then sold those 10 articles at $5 each. Within 18 hours, I had sold the article pack and my paypal account had $50.

Step 2 - Do you keep writing articles? Heck NO !!! I invested my money. I went on to digitalpoint's forum and went to the Voucher section. I bought a varified google adwords account worth $100 for only $20. Thats right. So Now you have an adwords account good for $100.

Step 3 - Signing up for an affiliate program. I chose Azoogleads. The ringtone offers were really HOT.

Step 4 - Keyword research. I used the digitalpoint.com's keyword suggestion tool to pick out around 50 different keywords related to "ringtones". These keywords were getting good amount of searches per day (close to 300-400 per day). I then went to my adwords account and wrote up an "adcopy" similar to my competitors but not exactly same. And i set my spending limit to $50 a day which would ofcourse last me 2 days. After few hours, I checked my azoogle account and surprised to see i had 3 leads converted at $11 each. At this time i knew i was in a good spot because i was in profit. After the two days, my final figures were 34 leads earning me $374 (Minus $20 for adwords voucher). Pure profit of $354.

Step 5 - Do you stop? lol No way JOSE… Repeat and repeat. I repeated these steps, i believe 4 more times then i finally opened my "personal" adwords account with my own credit card. Because i finally knew that this is profitable and i had close to $2500 to back up my spendings…

So all in all, I went from $0 to $2500 within few weeks. Now remember, Its not as simple as it sounds. I researched every part of my system. Majority of my research was on PPC. I researched my competitors adcopy for few days. Then i created my own. Let me give you few tips…

Tip 1 - Write articles about something that you have knowledge of.
Tip 2 - I chose ringtone offers because at that time it was not saturated like right now it is. Research what's hot right now and then go for it.
Tip 3 - Research keywords properly. You do not want to have Ads running for a keyword which has 15 or more competitors. You'll just waste your money.
Tip 4 - Include your keywords in your Adcopy. #1 mistake most of the PPC marketers make is they don't include their keywords.
Tip 5 - Understand PPC, Read and learn about PPC from forums like warriorforum and digitalpoint.

So Now there you have it. Pure foolproof plan to making money online. Now it's your turn to take action.

PS - Please don't ask me to provide you with "screenshots" of the earnings as this was done many months ago.

PPS - This was how i got started from $0. You can do it too, Just take action."

My first reaction when I read this was how irrational it is to not want to spend money at the beginning, and how rational it is to have a sound marketing plan. People don't want to spend money to make money, but they'll spend it if they've just earned it. To me this doesn't make a lot of sense, especially if its still coming from your own pocket.

If you're confident enough to spend your own money, you shouldn't need to do extra work to get it. Just trust yourself.

Nevertheless, I believe the poster has more insight than that, and was simply trying to prove a point. If you go read those forums you will quickly learn that those guys are all business - they want to make money online. You can learn a thing or two from those guys and see what kind of a swagger they have about spending money on the internet to get it back in return.

Once you have enough confidence to spend your own money as an investment (and aren't an idiot), you know you're going to be able to make a profit in the long run.

Have You Considered Forum Marketing?

When you do internet marketing, the first thing you will think is...TRAFFIC! How do I generate traffic? You know that without traffic there won't be any sales.

When there are no sales, the only thing you'll earn is a gigantic goose egg. As an Internet Marketer, you will be looking at every single method to generate traffic. There are tons of methods – pay per click, ezine ads, solo ads, joint ventures and many more. Well, in this post, as the title suggests, I am going to talk about Forum Marketing. Have you ever considered it?

I do not know why some Internet Marketers overlook the forums to get new leads. Do you know that there is a forum for almost every niche? You just visit Google.com and key in "[niche keyword] forum" in the search box. For example, if your niche is about dogs, then key in "dog forum". You will see a list of forums related to dogs.

For example, you have a product talking about dog training. You can join some forums that are related to dog training. Write a post that offers your product as a solution to their dog training problems. Then, leave a backlink to your site. This will be your forum signature. Your forum signature is the thing that will generate targeted traffic to your website. Hence, make sure you create a powerful signature.

Obviously, I am not talking about success overnight. Forum marketing takes time. First, you need to build good relationships with other forum members. Make sure they feel that they can trust you. You must follow the forum rules and avoid spamming.

Before you join a forum, it is advisable to read the forum rules. Once you are familiar with the rules, make sure you follow them. Don't straightway sell your product. Make friends with other forum members. If you know a certain thing, share with them. Then, they will begin to respect you.

Forums is all about sharing ideas and helping one another. That's why, people like those who help them. The first reason people visit forums is to ask for help. Hence, help others when they are in need of answers to their problems. However, don't give the wrong information. That's why it is advisable that you are knowledgeable of the topic.

If you are an Internet Marketer like me, then visit these forums...

- Warriorforum
- DigitalPoint Forums

By joining these 2 forums, you will make more friends and you can increase your knowledge about Internet Marketing. Furthermore, you can sell your products, domains, links and many more at Warriorforum and DigitalPoint Forums.

Therefore, join a forum related to your niche and enjoy the benefits. I am sure that as time goes by, you will see an increase in your website/blog traffic. Before I finish this post, remember one thing - PATIENCE! You need patience to see success. Good Luck in forum marketing!