Million Dollar PortfolioReal Strategies for Making Money Online

I guess nobody likes getting free stuff. Maybe you didn’t need a mousepad or a squishy stress-relief ball. Someone, however wanted a rubic’s cube. I’ll be sending that off as soon as I get the postal details.

Congratulations to Tracy Kehr who was the only one to comment on the post and won her choice of prize.

I haven’t heard from anyone at the expo if I have won any iPods or other gear, but I’ll keep you posted if I do win. For those of you that are into podcasts, Episode 6 of my movie review/gaming podcast is up now and you can download it or subscribe via iTunes. Go to http://eastwingpodcast.com for more information.

April was a busy month for me at work which is why there haven’t been a lot of posts here about making money online or making money by blogging. Sometimes there just isn’t much to say and I would rather not say anything than fill a post with meaningless banter.

I will be experimenting again with another affiliate marketing foray but my past trials didn’t fare so well. Unfortunately, most of the products offered from affiliate programs like ClickBank are things like “Warcraft Riches” or believe it or not, make money programs…it all seems so silly. I can see the scenario now. I write a post about making money from affiliate programs by advertising a make money from affiliate programs program? That makes my head hurt.

I’m trying to find tangible assets to make money from not just ebooks about making money, that never really helps anyone. Also, after the fiasco with Joel Comm (I almost ordered that $9.95 adsense book) before I found out he had an auto subscription for a monthly fee. Previously I purchased the Google Assassin package which also has a monthly subscription fee but after using it for a month solid and making only $15 and spending an additional $125 in advertising costs, I cancelled it. Maybe I’m not cut out for affiliate marketing or maybe I just haven’t found the right niche market yet, I don’t know. I understand that it takes some money to make money but I think for now I’ll stick with what I know works.

What are your experiences in affiliate marketing? How do you advertise your products and do you get a good ROI?

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Popularity: 19% [?]

If you are new to the Entrecard game and want to get a massive head start on advertising on some of the most expensive sites out there (like JohnChow.com) now is the time.

John Chow is giving away 10,000 Entrecard credits to some lucky blogger.

I use entrecard as a way of doing some free viral marketing. Some have argued that the traffic isn’t high quality enough because most people drop a card an move along. I disagree. I think any traffic is good traffic. Think of it this way, if you got 1,000,000 hits in one month and even 1% of that 1,000,000 stopped to read something you said and then 1% of those readers subscribed to your blog, you would have 100 new readers that month. That’s pretty darn cool.

Head on over to JohnChow.com and enter the contest and then if you don’t want em you can give them away yourself.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Today is the one day a year we all decide to celebrate this round ball spinning through space. It’s Earth Day. You should try to do something green today. Instead of eating at McDonald’s or some other fast food chain, bring a sack lunch. Instead of driving to work, ride your bike or walk or take a bus. There are some amazing statistics out there regarding energy and consumption that basically state if we all could focus on doing something like not driving for one day it would save millions in gallons of oil used.

So let’s all do something to keep the planet healthy today!

Popularity: 16% [?]

I got some free schwag from the Ad:Tech show floor that I am giving away. Although nearly every booth was giving away an iPhone or an iPod touch, I won’t know if I won any of those until they announce it either through email I guess, or if one just magically shows up on my doorstep.

I am giving away the following prizes as you can see in this picture. Yeah, sure it’s not much but hey, it’s FREE.

There’s a mouse pad from AdShuffle which had a pretty large booth with multiple displays around and also a Rubic’s Cube from the same company. Clickbooth gave a deck of cards with their logo on it. WebJamAds was forcing everyone to take one of these stress globes, you know the kind you squeeze to relieve stress. And last but not least a winking mouse pad from userplane.com

All you need to do is comment on this post to be eligible to win. On Friday the 25th I’ll pick 5 lucky winners. You can only win one prize so it won’t matter if you comment multiple times, you still only get one entry. I’ll let you know if I won any iPhones or iPods if/when I hear about it.

Popularity: 18% [?]

John Chow isn’t the only one going to Ad:Tech. Although this will be my first time going, I’m no stranger to conferences. I used to attend the annual 3D Design conferences held every year in the bay area. I try to go to MacWorld which is also held in San Francisco but I hate that they charge you just to attend the exhibit floor. After all, the vendors have already paid for they booths, why should I have to pony up extra dough just to see them hock their wares?

This week though, I will be attending Ad:Tech because if you registered by today you could get in for free. Otherwise, it’s a $125 entry fee for the exhibit floor.

The coolest thing about attending any exhibit hall is all the giveaways that happen. Usually they scan your badge for each drawing and in return they get your email or mailing address to send literature your way. It’s a good system.

I’m looking forward to meeting John Chow if I can find him at all in the crowds on the floor. Best of all, if I win anything in any drawings it’s likely I’ll just be giving them away on the blog so stay tuned. I’ll take what photos I can and post them so you can see what you are missing if you aren’t attending.

Popularity: 19% [?]

In the world of blogging, there are very few who become superstars. Those that do got there by being consistent and following their own rules they set out with. These successful bloggers also build a reputation with their content and quality posts. These are important if you are going to sell space to advertisers or at some point decide to sell  your entire blog.

One such individual is the Irish owner of JohnCow.com. The blog started as a parody of the JohnChow.com site but quickly grew into its own. A lot of early traffic can probably be attributed to misspellings of people trying to get to JohnChow.com. It was a brilliant move in registering a domain name so similar and then putting a twist on it by writing from the point of view of a cow.

What started as a parody has become a well followed blog. Now, it’s up for sale. According to the site’s owner, the blog currently makes about $3500 a month from advertising revenues. The site is listed for sale on sitepoint for a minimum of $25k USD. Its a decent price if you consider long term you are going to make that back in less than a year and if you wanted to break into the blogging business with guaranteed income, this is the way to do it. By the way, if you end up buying it as a result of reading this post, make sure you let the ol’ cow know.

Find out more here.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Today marks the first day of the new system in place for advertising with Entrecard. There’s a blog post about it here.

Today I logged in and my investment blog now costs 512 credits to advertise on but with the new system, once an ad runs, your price halves.

This is actually pretty cool because it will keep the flux of advertisers coming where it had stagnated before because only the super wealthy EC droppers could afford to advertise on the most expensive blogs. I think this is going to even that out. In comparison, John Chow’s blog costs somewhere in the 16k credit mark right now…wow.

Popularity: 17% [?]

It’s been work work work around here lately. My full time job has me completely swamped which has had a bit of a negative effect on my blogging as you can tell by my less than frequent posts. I also haven’t had a whole lot to talk about lately. Although last month’s earnings report was less than stellar, I’ve already made more money from Text-Link-Ads this month than I had last month. That’s progress. There’s still spots available. As soon as they fill up, the price is likely to go up as a result of supply/demand.

John Chow made a post today about selling private ads and he has some really good points. The main one though is traffic. No matter what ad revenue stream you are going to go with, the most important thing to keep in mind is advertisers are looking to get the most “bang for their buck”.  This blog gets around 1000 hits a month right now and that figure is growing. I know that seems like very little but consider the niche market I am in and consider the content of my posts and I think this is a pretty solid figure.

I know I sound like a broken record, but content is still king. Your readers are only going stick around if you write about things they are interested in. I don’t read blogs unless what is written is interesting to me. Ironically, if you write what you know about, your readers will find you because i guarantee you aren’t the only one interested in the things you think, do or talk about.

Now, blogging can be fun or it can be work, how it feels is up to you really. I write because I enjoy it. I also enjoy other things and I find time to enjoy them. Take gaming for example. I like Role Playing Games. For the past 7 years or so I have been running around hacking and slashing things in the world of Norrath. For those that don’t know, the game is Everquest or its counterpart Everquest II which is the same world, reimagined.

I enjoy this game because its an escape from my every day life and I don’t have to devote inordinate amounts of time just to get anywhere. If it feels like work, then it isn’t recreational. Keep it fun. I also don’t bring work home. I work FROM home two days a week but when that clock hits 5pm. I’m done. I give 40 hours a week to The Man and that’s all I give.

Have some fun, you know? All work and no play…

Popularity: 14% [?]