Money Schemes - Learn How To Make Money Online

Google, can’t live with them, most of us wouldn’t survive without them! You’d think with all that’s been written about Google that they are the tough task masters of a private members club that sees junior members whipped and punished for the slightest indiscretion. Are they really that bad though?

We interupt this blog because a very proud dad wants to post about how great his daughter is! Maybe not so great at blogging but when it comes to ballroom dancing she’s fantastic!

Seeing as how I’m still waiting on my first payment from Bux.to and My HomePages Friends* I thought I’d give an update on another of the programs I signed up for last year, TrialPay.

So what is TrialPay? Put simply it’s a payment alternative to Paypal, Google Checkout etc but with a MAJOR spin. Instead of having the end user pay for your item they just have to try another service (e.g. sign up to eBay) and the company that they sign up for pays you instead. In real terms the person gets your item for free but you still get “something” for it.

It’s becoming hugely popular for those people giving away free software and this is how I use it. Have you ever heard of Ad-Aware? They are now also giving away the full version via TrialPay. It is growing all the time and has a lot of developer support.

How Much Can I Make With TrialPay

I guess what most people want to know is the real nitty gritty, exactly how much can I make with TrialPay? The truth is it all depends on the quality of your product and how much traffic you get. If you’ve got a half decent product then it should not be too much trouble to see high hundreds, low thousands each month. As a guide my software converts at between 5%-10%. The amount per “sale” varies depending on which offer the user selects to try and where they live. It can be as low as a couple of dollars or in some cases as high as $70! As a rough guide you can see my last years figures below:-

As you can see from 856 transactions I made $13067 or on average just over $15 per transaction. When you think that this was software that I was just giving away free you can see just how much potential TrialPay has. I’d hate to imagine just how much Ad-Aware are taking using this!

Do I Need To Have A Software Product To Use TrialPay?

Whilst the majority of TrialPay merchants are using it to give away their software there is no limit on the types of product you can “sell” this way. For example one of my friends has started to sell a book he recently wrote (in physical form) using TrialPay. By setting a minimum payment amount he knows that he will at least cover his costs with each transaction. Other things I’ve seen include e-books, subscription services, discount vouchers. Pretty much anything that you sell using a normal payment processor like Paypal could use TrialPay as an alternative. Also as I’ve mention in the past they do have an affiliate program where you can promote other people’s TrialPay products for a percentage. If you’re struggling with affiliate marketing it’s a good place to start. The 2 products I promote are my biggest affiliate earners month on month.

My last 12 months with TrialPay has been a pleasure. I’ve made over $13k, they always pay on time (the 15th of the following month) and the payment options ensure that I get to keep as much of my earnings as possible. If you’re in the software business, even at a freeware level, then TrialPay could be the godsend you’re looking for. It has helped me turn my software from something I just give away to something that contributes significantly to my overall income.

*Come on Bux.To and My Homepages Friends. I should be due payment now and there is going to be a whole lot of bitching it it aint forthcoming

I own quite a few computers, 7 at the last count (oops 8). It all helps with testing but because I own so much hardware I don’t tend to spend a huge amount on each individual PC, usually no more than £500.

However by going cheap I’ve always had a little problem with my main work PC, well ever since I upgraded the monitor anyway. I knew I needed more screen real estate but because I’d only paid for a bog standard onboard graphics card I couldn’t have 2 monitors. So I did what I thought was best and bought a bloody great 23 inch widescreen monitor. It works at a ridiculous resolution, BUT (and it’s a big but) it didn’t actually help that much with my productivity. What I really needed was 2 monitors in one so that I could have for example my text editor and web browser open side by side, I can do it but it involves a lot of resizing and manually moving windows. I couldn’t be bothered most of the time and was just using my applications maximised as usual.

That was until last week when I came across a little application called Split View. It’s freakin amazing. It’s a nifty little windows application that lets you split your monitor into separate regions. You can then simply position applications to appear in whichever region you want. If you’ve got a widescreen monitor it is exactly like having 2 monitors in 1. Any window can be simply snapped to the left or right portion of the screen (you can decide how many pixels you want for each). I can’t over emphasise what a difference this makes to multi-application tasks.

A lot of people say that it’s the little things that can make the biggest difference to how much money you make online. Personally I’m not a big believer in that (give me big things like a lot more traffic any day!) but with this application I can honestly say that if you’re using a single widescreen monitor it will save you a shed load of time moving and minimizing windows. It’s not very often I come across a new program that changes the way I work but this does it for me, it’s an absolute little belter. There’s a fully functional free demo available so I’d suggest you go and give Split View a try.

Welcome to the second in my series on alternative to using Shoemoney tools. This time I’m going to show you a free way of finding expired domain names that have valuable backlinks/traffic that you can buy up for cheap and use to your advantage. Shoemoney gives you the domain marketplace for this, essentially a list of domains that his scrapers find that you can then buy the name off. It’s then up to you to decide whether or not you want to purchase the domain.

In my opinion there are a couple of flaws with this. For a start you don’t know what niche the domain you are buying relates to. Relevency is everything! Secondly you can’t check how valuable the links actually are. For example the Domain Marketplace may indicate that a domain has .edu backlinks. Whilst that sounds great it might not be so great if the actual link comes from a domain blacklist on one of the university bulletin boards! You won’t find this out until you’ve paid your money to Shoe.

Now what I was going to do here was show you how to use a couple of websites to extract that same information and find valuable expired domain names. However in reality I wrote a little program for myself. I figured it wouldn’t be too much of a job just to touch it up a bit and let you guys use it so that’s what I’m going to show you how to use.

First of all you can download the Find Good Expired Domains tool using this link. You’ll also need the .net framework version 2 or better to use the software, you can download that from here.

OK. Now that’s done start the program and you’ll be greeted with a nice simple screen. Your first job is to decide what keyword you want in the domain name (see the advantage this has over the domain marketplace already?). Type in the keyword and hit the “Get Domains From Source 1″ button. At this point DO NOT CHECK FOR DOMAIN AVAILABILITY. This causes the program to go off and find domains that have expired at one point or another, they may not be currently expired but we can check for that later.

After a little wait you’ll get a popup telling you how many domains are available. Press Yes to go and get all that extra info about each domain. See if there is any lingering Page Rank, back links, .edu.gov.mil back links, any Alexa traffic etc If there are thousands of results you may want to narrow your search.

Depending on the number of domains this process can take a while. Also note that if you were to check for availability it will take a hell of a lot longer that’s why I recommend not doing it at this point. There is no point checking for a domain being available when it might not be of any value right?

Once it’s finished checking all the domains (or as in my example you get fed up waiting and hit stop) you’re left with a list of domain details. Now I recommend that you order the domains by each column (Links, DMOZ Listing etc etc) and switch tabs at the top to the Check Domains tab.

You should now be able to copy and paste the domain names that are of value into the box on the Check Domains tab. Do that for each column, so for example if there are 11 domains that have some backlinks highlight all those domain names and copy them to the box. Then order by DMOZ listing and do the same for any domains that are in DMOZ. Carry on doing this for each column (domains that have edu links, domains that have some Alexa ranking) and don’t worry about copying the same domain name twice.

Once you’ve got your complete list of domains that have some value you can then go ahead and check each to see if it’s available. On the Check Domains tab hit the “Check Domains” button. The program will go and check each domain to make sure it is 100% available to buy right now. This will take some time, roughly 5-6 seconds per domain.

Now that’s complete you can order them by availability and see if there are any domains worth buying. In my example below the best domain is probably a2zmakemoney.com but with only 4 links would I be bothered to spend $8 a year on it? That’s your call! Of course if I would have left the program to run in the first place I may have found many many much more valuable domains

It’s also worth noting that just because a domain isn’t currently available doesn’t mean it’s not worth persuing. In my example the domain 101waystomakemoney.com is not available to buy right now BUT if you check the URL you’ll find that no website exists. The owner is doing nothing with it. Who knows, doing a quick whois lookup and contacting the owner might land you with a domain with 287 backlinks and some traffic for only a few dollars!

So that’s all fine and dandy but how do you get value from these domains. The easy approach and the one that the great Shoemoney himself advocates is to simply 301 redirect them on to one of your existing content sites. Those links then get credited to your existing domain. Does this work? Yes it does. When originally writing this program I was checking for Thailand related domains, I found one for an insurance company that had 30-40 links. I 301′d this on to my Thai related site and within 2 weeks was in the top 5 in Google for certain insurance related searches. It’s a ranking that has held for months and brought some nice traffic. An absolute bargain for only $8 a year domain registration!

The other way is to buy the domains to build quality content on. That’s obviously a much longer term game than just forwarding but again that’s upto you to decide!

So that’s how I go about finding valuable expired domains, use, enjoy and let me know how you get on. Now here comes comes the disclaimer:

By all means use my Find Expired Domains tool but please be aware that this is free software. It’s not to be bundled re-packaged in any way and sold. It’s also worth noting that that is a very early release and is bound to have bugs, whilst it shouldn’t cause your computer to burst into flames if it does it’s not my fault! Use it at your own risk. Just one final point, some of the API’s used may have usage limits, for example the Yahoo back links check has a limit of 5,000 checks in any 24 hours. Just keep it in mind.

Amongst the various financial doom and gloom that is abound at the moment there is a large ray of hope for internet marketers. The second dot com bust doesn’t look like it’s going to happen just yet! Online marketing figures are still growing. However I have a word of caution for you.

I live on an Island that has a booming economy. No signs of a recession here, inflation is still running at over 6%, unemployment at less than 1.8%. In the last 12 months our ministers have come out publicly and announced that the current world crisis “will not” effect us. They were in fact full of crap. Of course it would effect us, the financial crisis will be affecting us all in one way or another. They have now changed their tune and admitted that things will become difficult over here. A local bank went under and the shit hit the fan. The final result of the current controversy could destroy our number one industry. Not bad considering it “will not” effect us! If I was you I’d be planning for things to get worse online at some point as well.

Adsense is my biggest earner and it is the easiest way for me to see changes. Several changes are already starting to be seen. If you visit any of the webmaster style forums you’ll see that there has been a huge increase in Google banning domains from showing Adsense. Many many more publishers are getting warnings. This isn’t anything to do with a change in Google’s policies, it’s just a case of them enforcing them so that they are seen to be giving the best possible value to Adwords advertisers. After all, Adwords advertisers are what drives Googles whole business. When you and I get an Adsense payment, it’s not Google paying us, it’s the Adwords advertisers who have paid for the adverts that show on our sites. If these advertisers (businesses) don’t think they are getting the best value then in times as hard as these then it’s an easy decision to consolodate their spending and pull back.

I’m already seeing some signs of this pulling back. I operate in a number of top end business niches that easily attract high value adverts. $1-$3 per advert click is quite normal and has been for years. However in the last couple of months I’ve noticed that the value of these adverts is not the same. The advertisers are obviously cutting their bids and that affect both me and Google. However I’m not really too worried by this. High value services like this don’t attract huge amounts of traffic so in turn the actual revenue isn’t that high. And this is where I’d like to mention the good news. At the lower end I’m not really seeing any difference. Niches that attract $0.10-$0.50 per click have remained steady. In fact I had one of my better Adsense days just last week, topping out at well over $300 for the day!

I don’t think there is any doubt that the credit crunch is affecting online advertising although we’ll probably not see the full effect quite yet. We are down the line and it will take a while to filter through to the lower end businesses. But it’s not all doom and gloom. Marketing online has become so popular because it provides businesses with an amazingly good ROI. As long as Google carry on doing what they are doing, filtering the wheat from the chaff then as long as you’re playing by the rules and creating quality/useful content then I don’t think we’ve got anything to worry about. Certainly not in terms of your Adsense earnings.