There I said it. I’ll say it again. Making money online is easy.

It’s true. There are so many ways to make money online using a blog or website its as if anyone can do it.  I make money on several things I do online. The kicker is that it takes a little time, some effort and yes, sometimes an investment of your own before you reap the rewards.

I can already hear you disagreeing with me. You’re thinking…I’ve tried all kinds of things and nothing has made me rich yet. Hold on there, pardner! (in my best cowboy accent) I didn’t say nothin’ ’bout you gettin’ rich. I didn’t even say gettin’ rich online were easy.

I think you might have misunderstood me. Anyone can make money…even a few pennies, but hey that counts. Getting rich…now that’s the part that takes work. If you are anything like me you’ve probably bought some affiliate marketing programs thinking they had all the answers. After all, you saw those sales and that huge paycheck…it must be true. While there are a handful of bloggers, entrepreneurs, website owners and affiliate marketers that have made money and yes, some are even very wealthy (rich is always subjective). The truth is, you, yes you in the blue t-shirt are more than likely to fail.

Did you know Thomas Edison failed 1000 times before he successfully created the light bulb. When asked how he could fail so many times and not give up, he said “I didn’t fail…I discovered 1000 ways not to create a lightbulb.”

You understand what he meant? He turned his negativity into positivity. So before you roll your eyes at me and start rebutting, think about how many times you have failed at making money online. Have you gone over your plan? Have you tried another method? Are all your eggs in one basket? I mean, is Google Adsense the only monetization method you have? Truth be told, i’ve only made about $130 from Adsense in the last year from all my blogs and sites combined. It just doesn’t pull in the numbers it used to. I think this is mainly due to the recognizable format Adsense has become. In fact, it’s pretty much expected that if you run a blog you run Adsense ads. I read somewhere the most successful method of pulling in Adsense revenue was to create essentially a garbage site and put Google Adsense ads in the “hot spots” hoping someone would get there from search results, not find what they were looking for and click an ad that was what they were looking for. Clever…and just a bit evil but hardly practical.

If you’re still reading this, you probably want to know my secret for making money online. That’s what this is really about right?

This blog is coming up on a year old in about 3 months and when I started I had a few very clear goals. First, I wanted to see what kind of effort it would take to create a brand new site, get traffic to it and build some base readership. Boy was that a tough hill to climb. The second thing was to monetize it in such a way that it didn’t detract from the content itself but could still have the potential to make a lot of money. Third, I had to like what I was doing with it.

So, have I accomplished all those goals. Yes, and no. Remember earlier I said making money online was easy. Well it is and it isn’t. If you approach it right, it should be easy because there are thousands of ways to go about it. I’ve even refused a couple offers for advertising because I couldn’t accept the amount of money being offered for the length of advertisement being placed. Meaning, I was being totally low balled and I knew it.

So what has made me money?

Here’s a small list of what has made me money over the past year. This list isn’t strictly about this blog though because if you know anything about doing business, you know you need multiple streams of income to truly be successful. Just look at John Chow. He has many ways of making money and they don’t all have to do with his blog in particular. Now without further ado…the short list.

1. Number one on the list is Cafepress.com. I run a store called Cramer Tees and every year it makes about $350-450 a year…mostly around Christmas time. I created a few designs, uploaded them and put them on some shirts, did some creative keyword creation and Cafepress does the rest.  I never see any inventory and the store runs itself. All I pay is a monthly fee which comes out of my commissions each month. This is an ideal way to make money online and how much easier can it be? Make a design, put it out there and watch the cash roll in.
2. Making number two on the list is Text-Link-Ads. I run TLA on 3 blogs and one of them does far better because it’s a niche blog. Unlike this one which is a little more broad in what topics I cover, my other blog has already sold 3 text-link-ads this month and one rss ad. That’s easy money if you ask me. It’s not going to break the bank, but it pays for my hosting. If you aren’t running TLA, you should be. The bonus is for every referral you get, TLA pays you $25 cash. If you need proof, use the contact form and I’ll send you a screenshot of last month’s referral payment.
3. Coming in third is actually an affiliate software collection that I recommend if you are going to do any kind of affiliate marketing. Google Assassin – forget the Rich Jerk! He’s already bankrupt, you need this more than you know if you are going to venture into affiliate marketing. This incredible set of tools gives you the edge in your Google campaigns like you wouldn’t believe. I made money on my first campaign, but I will warn you…if you aren’t careful with your budget it won’t matter if you have the upper hand because your costs can spiral out of control quickly.

So there’s a short list of what makes me money. While I can’t compare it to the likes of Shoemoney, Darren Rowse or John Chow. I am making money and it’s not hard. I do my share of marketing this blog and others and try to build organic traffic by writing what I consider quality posts. My ultimate goal is to make a million dollars or more through blogging and marketing and even gaming online. Then I can get out of the “rat race” and start living the way nature intended; sitting on a beach in Hawaii soaking up the sun and surf and sipping mai-tais. Join me, won’t you?

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