Money Schemes - Learn How To Make Money Online

So here’s the deal, you’re going to be stuck on a desert island for 1 year with a pro blogger of your choice. After that year you are going to be rescued so that you can use all the knowledge you’ve nagged out of your unfortunate island mate to make your fortune online. The big question is if you could be stuck on an island with any blogger who would it be?

Here’s some of the top contenders:-

1. Darren Rowse AKA ProBlogger – Darren is seen as one of the originals in the blogging for profits niche, I’m positive that he was responsible for the whole professional blogging movement. His ProBlogger.net site has enormous authority across the internet as a whole and by taking a successful recipe and repeating it over and over he has built what is possibly the most powerful blogging network on the web today. Darren has a great reputation for liking to share information so that could be a good thing when you’re stuck together for 12 months, he’s also an Aussie so is bound to be a dab hand at cooking sea food so that’s another bonus. On the down side Australians are very competitive so the endless races from one end of the island to the other might get a bit too much. Oh yeah, and it is only me that finds his video blog posts a bit dull?

2. Jeremy Schoemaker AKA ShoeMoney – Easily one of the best content website marketers around Shoe has become a legend in his own lifetime. Unlike Darren Rowse ShoeMoney makes his money by building “real” content websites and using sponsors, ads (Adsense) and affiliate deals to make his money. From the humble beginnings of being a fat lad working at an IT support desk to one of the webs best known marketers the amount of cool info ShoeMoney could dish out in your year together would be enormous. As well as that he also enjoys the UFC and has a bit of a reputation as being one of the lads so that would be pretty cool (assuming you get stranded with some beer as well).

3. John Chow AKA John Chow – John is most famous for his technology website TTZ (The Tech Zone) which was founded when he started to mess around with over clocking processors and writing about it on the net. Nobody knows for sure how much John is worth but as somebody who survived the first dot com collapse and who has came back stronger than ever it’s bound to be a lot! I might be wrong but I think John has been around on the net longer than the other 2, perhaps even as long as me? John’s latest money making venture is johnchow.com, this was his personal blog but has developed into a case study on how to make money online blogging. In just about 1 year he’s gone from nothing to last month when he pulled in over $20,000+ from his hobby blog. Known as Mr Evil the tactics John would share would no doubt be on the edge of what is acceptable, but then again when it comes to quick results maybe the John Chow way might be the best way? On the down side John is well known for liking his food, thinking about it I wouldn’t actually fancy my chances of lasting 12 months without ending up on a BBQ for the very hungry Mr Chow.

I think of those three I’d choose……………..none of them. I’d go for Angela over at Boston Brat and it’s got nothing to do with her being my first ever commenter. Being stuck on a desert island for 12 months is one thing, but being stuck without any chicks to look at* would be 1 step too many! I might not learn much about making money but I’d sure have fun

So who would you choose to be stuck with and why?

* I should probably add that my wife doesn’t blog, otherwise I’d bring her obviously!

I’m sure we’d all like to make an extra $300 each and every day just by sitting at our computers? The Kid over at www.bcmblog.com thinks that he can make this happen, the question is scam or no scam can you resist giving it a go, I know I couldn’t. Whilst I’ve been around long enough to know that making money just isn’t that easy it’s a case of weighing up risk versus potential benefits. The only risk involved to me is the e-mail address I had to give out and the time I’ll be putting into the project, the potential benefits could be zip, on the other hand it could be worth $100,$200 or even $300 a day. When put like that it’s a no brainer for me, might work it might not but either way I’ve got very little to lose (especially if you use a secondary e-mail address to sign up). He’s already given away $100 worth of software to those that are coming along for the ride so if you’ve not already I’d suggest you give it a go.

Tomorrow I’m going to be reviewing the Waterhouse Report, marketed as one of the best must have “How To Make Money Online” products out there. This guy was “Voted the Internet’s #1, biggest selling & most respected tester of Work from Home, Make Money from Home & Internet Businesses” Is it worth $27 or not, I’ll let you know tomorrow.

I don’t think I’ve ever hid the fact that I rely on Google Adsense and Kontera for a lot of my income. These are both pay-per-click programs, i.e. you get paid when somebody clicks on the advert, doesn’t matter if they then go to buy something or not. I’m good with this type of program, I know I am, in fact there are quite a few make money marketers out there that think I was born lucky! I suppose if I was living anywhere else other than one of the most expensive areas of the UK then the dollars I earn with Adsense would be enough to give me a great quality of life, as it is I don’t do too bad! (Damn you exchange rates!)

Blogging Vs Making Money With PPC

The secret I learnt really early was that it’s a certain “class” of visitor that clicks on your PPC ads. There has been so much written recently about attracting readers, readers this, readers that. “My website needs more readers!” Whilst I value each and every one of my Blog readers, a reader is the last thing I want on one of money making content websites. I don’t want somebody whose going to read each word of each page. I don’t want them because I know that this type of visitor isn’t going to click on my ads. Once you’ve spent more than 15 seconds on my content website the chances of me making any money from you via PPC decreases dramatically. What I want is browsers, people sent straight from the search engines looking for an answer to something, scanning pages in a few seconds and then jumping somewhere else. You need to attract these in order to make any real money via PPC. It’s no coincidence that people find PPC earnings going up as search traffic referrals go up. As you can imagine, Blogs are not the best platform for making this type of money.

Some Big Name Examples

Both John Chow and Darren Rowse have recently dropped Adsense from their Blogs. The reasons for each are similar, they don’t make enough money from Adsense, they can make more using that space for other types of advert. John reported on a recent radio show that his Google search traffic referrals accounted for only about 3% of his total traffic. This is very low and maybe something to do with him being kicked by Google. The fact is that both these big name bloggers have huge loyal readerships but comparatively low search engine referrals. Adsense and other PPC mediums do not work in this environment, John only sticks with Kontera because they give him a guaranteed $1000 monthly payment. Blogging is a great platform for attracting “readers” that you can then try and promote affiliate deals to using your relationship as leverage, however if you are looking to make money from PPC you may be better thinking of something else. You’ll notice that John hasn’t removed Adsense from The Tech Zone.

How Can I Make More Money With PPC ?

Stop thinking Blog and start thinking website! Stop thinking reader and start thinking browsers. All of the biggest Adsense earners rely on content websites, be it dating, pets, dancing, dieting or anything else that floats your boat. Take a hobby you enjoy, use a CMS like Joomla to build some original content and then promote, promote, promote.

Totally off-topic today but I’ve got a good excuse. Ever since Halo 3 was released for the X-Box 360 on Wednesday it’s been eating away at my time more and more. First of all I just HAD to complete the single player, 5 hours later and that was done. Next I started on the online game, in being a veteran of Halo 2 I can’t say how much I was looking forward to this. My only worry was how could they possibly improve on it? Well they have, if this isn’t the best video game of all time then I don’t know what is. I’ve been playing games since the very early 80′s and I’ve never experienced anything so close to perfection. Not only that but you can record what you’re doing in all it’s glorious detail and share it with your friends. At last I can get some recognition for “running riot”! My only question is when are they going to make Halo an Olympic sport, surely it can’t be that far away? I will still be playing this in 5 years time I just know it, all I can say to Bungie is thank you, thank you!

If you own a 360 then you need to own Halo 3, if you don’t own a 360 then you should buy one just to play Halo 3. I’m afraid that’s all you’re getting out of me today because I’m going back online to save the universe or at least lay the smack down on a few people. If anybody ever wants a game my gamer tag is “paulb iom” but be prepared to bring it cos I’m on fire at the moment.

ps Back to work on Monday so normal blogging service will be resumed then, I’ll probably let you know how my TLA campaign went, the results might just surprise you.

Mark over at 45n5.com is compiling a list of the top 100 make money online blogs, brave man, I wonder how long until the constant update requests for that one get really annoying!

A great big thanks goes out to him because it looks live I just about managed to squeeze my ample ass into the top 100 at position 95, nice! I think that’s OK considering I’ve only been going not much more than a month isn’t it? More importantly it’s another site to refer visitors here and yet another vital inbound link, it also puts a smile on my face when I see the hassle I went through to get this domain was worth it.

Google Page Rank Update

In other news is anybody else starting to get a little frustrated waiting for the next PR update? For 5 weeks now I’ve been hearing stories of news of the dance going on and PR should be getting exported any day now. Still nothing. I’m not so bothered about my own sites (although it will be interesting to see how this Blog does with its 3500+ inbound links) I’m more concerned for my customers. In my spare, spare time I manage the online marketing and SEM for quite a few large and demanding clients. Google’s PR gives us yet another measurable target to have to hit besides visitors, conversions, time-on-site page views etc etc Many traditional business people aren’t as patient as us and 4 months without an improvement can really test their patience!

So that’s it, I’ve finally made it through my first month of blogging, I hope I’ve managed to put across some useful information? I’ve done my very best to update consistently and to be honest it’s not been as big a struggle as I thought it would be. I think what has helped me is that I never set out with any intention of blogging about making money with a blog. This is my first real attempt at a serious blog, I don’t know enough about blogging for a profit to write about it! What I do know is making money from the internet in general and by sticking to that it’s been quite a smooth ride so far. In saying that I’ve noticed a few things that I maybe could have done better.

1. Blogged as a woman – seriously, in the last month I’ve read dozens of blogs about making money by women that have 12-13 comments per post, a good Alexa ranking yet when you read what they are writing it’s absolutely clear that they haven’t got a clue. Of course there are plenty of male bloggers out there as well but the difference in traffic and commenters is staggering. Plenty will even admit to having only made $20, $50, $150 from the internet (in total!) and they are authorities on the subject?! Stick a picture of a good looking girl up, be a bit flirty and you’re onto a winner no matter what the subject. My next blog I will be a single 21 year old, 32 DD blonde with a dirty sense of humour!
2. The Million Dollar Wiki. I really wish I would have bought more pages than I did. The only page I did buy “Online Money Makers” paid for itself in its first month, mainly thanks to Text Link Ads and TrialPay. There were a few very prominent phrases I was going to buy for some of my money making sites but I bottled it. The lesson here is when you’re onto a good thing don’t be afraid to splash some cash. He who dares, wins.
3. Target the right audience. I think of all the mistakes I’ve made so far this may be the biggest. In the same way that I want to read about people who are making more money than me, I should be targeting people who are making less money than me. I’ve spent too much time getting involved on blogs of people who are out of my league, very few people are going to be interested in my nonsense when they can be reading the nonsense of somebody earning twice what I am. I’ll be spending a lot more time from now on concentrating on making a name for myself amongst the less successful “make money blogging” gang. I might even be adding to the comment counts of some of those young chicks.

So How Much Did This Blog Make?

Of course I want this Blog to make money, I don’t know anything about blogging for money though so as a first month I’m ok with these figures.

Adsense – $8.74

Kontera – $1.19

TLA – $50

Other Affiliate Sales – $17

That makes a grand total of $76.93! Woo hoo, this time next year I’ll be rich! Obviously that doesn’t anything like cover the time I’ve spent updating the blog, but I’m enjoying it. Besides who knows next month might be better?

I suppose what I should add is that my total income last month from the internet stands at a little under $XXXX. Like I said in my about page, I’m not a rich guru type, I just make a nice living from the internet doing exactly what I write about here.

I hope you’re enjoying it and I look forward to writing more bollocks in September.

Paul B

ps It looks like I’ve had my first celebrity visitor:-

Yep, it’s znupy!!!!

When it comes to making your fortune online there are plenty of people who’ll tell you that you “don’t even need a website”. What they are talking about here is PPC affiliate marketing. You pay for clicks using an advertising network such as Google’s Adwords and then redirect the potential lead onto the website of the person selling the product you’re promoting. Sounds easy right? Well I’ve made money that way, but it also comes with it a big risk, you’ve got to spend money to make money, and for beginners I think there is a better way.

If you want a low risk way of making money online then you’ve got to be looking at having at least 1 website or blog. I look at this way, a website is a bought domain with paid for hosting. A blog (what I’m talking about), is a free account on somebody else’s domain e.g. Blogger or WordPress. I know that’s not technically right but from here on in that’s what I mean when I talk about Blogs or websites. Your Blog could be your website (like this site) but that just confuses things

The way in which I decide how to publish my content comes down to 2 factors, how much do I know about the subject and how much money do I think it will make? If I don’t know a huge amount about a subject then I go down the website route. It’s not hard to put together 6-7 pages of content to act as a base site and then maybe add a new page every few weeks when I’ve got something original and new to say. Because I’m not updating every day it’s not a big hassle to add extra content to a static website in this way. But to do this I need to think about roughly how money I’m going to make, a domain name costs me around $7 a year, a basic hosting account on which store my website costs me around $20 a year. Other than my time that’s my total outlay for my new website (I know people who’ve lost 50 times that much on their first day of PPC affiliate marketing). As long as my new website can make more than $27 a year then I’m in profit and making money online, woo hoo! To date I’ve set up 15 websites like this and they all make a profit, some much more than others but they all cover themselves and then some.

If you decide that you know a lot about a subject then a blog could very well be the way to go. A blog is like an online diary, or more specifically a list of published articles stored in chronological order. The thing with a blog is that you need to update it on a regular basis. People read a blog just like a diary, they expect to see something new on a regular basis, people view a website as something less personal and much more static. The main advantage a blog has is return visitors, if you can write a compelling blog your visitors will come back again and again. This is much harder to achieve with a static website. The other advantage is that you’ll find plenty of services that will host your blog for free, and you can’t beat free! Whilst you may not be able to customise every option of your blog there are still plenty of ways to monetise a blog on the Blogger or WordPress systems.

For my money I see a better return from creating websites rather than Blogs, but the potential is there to make serious amounts of cash from blogging, you’ll just need to have plenty to say, update daily and put in the work.