Million Dollar PortfolioReal Strategies for Making Money Online

• What would Lost’s Sawyer call you? http://tinyurl.com/3bhlf8 I’m “Snuffy”. #
• getting my wife hooked on “Legend of the Seeker”. I’m a sucker for those kinds of shows. #
• issue one of Marvel Zombies 3. Love it. #comics #
• For those wondering, the blog that got hacked was http://teamsuperfriends.com which is an aggregation of movie,comic and video game news #
• Anyone read the new Marvel Zombies comics? I just picked them up Wednesday. #comics #
• If you use Wordpress, you’ll want to download the WP-Security plugin to plug vulnerabilities like the 0-day SQL injection that hit my blog. #
• draw with your voice! how cool is that? http://tinyurl.com/b3jats #
• Finished Rome Season 2 last night. What an amazing show. #
• one of my new fav beers. http://tinyurl.com/3e5pwn #
• one of my blogs got hacked yesterday. spent the morning repairing the damage. #
• time for me to catch the baby bullet train back to San Jose. Time for a drink on the train! #
• $WFC up $4 today after reporting 79 cent/share loss but 75 cent/share profit for 2008. Loving my 401k contributions right now. #
• Just hit 200 followers. I’m so special or not. #
• Fresh off a 2 year suspension @floydlands is also racing in the Tour of California. Looking forward to seeing you in Santa Cruz. #
• why does a woman’s haircut cost $50 just to trim it a half inch off the bottom? #
• watching Rome Season 2…its such a shame they canceled this series. #
• after playing GTA IV for hours, I have “Back in the New York Groove” stuck in my head. Thanks Rockstar Games! #
• unbelievable, GTAIV just crashed during the end credits! Rockstar Games Fail! #
• just curious, of those of you that play games, how many watch the end credits? How many of you watch movie credits? #
• just finished GTAIV. Definitely best game of 2008. #
• Just began following Demi Moore @mrskutcher welcome to twitter Demi! #
• Geithner confirmed as Treasury Secretary #
• still one of my favorite videos/bands of the 80s http://tinyurl.com/5zk6lz #
• ooh only 4 more followers to hit 200! woot. #
• note to self: keep all computer equipment purchase receipts. Scratch one video card return. #
• RT @kevinrose My Top 10 Ways To Increase Your Twitter Followers: http://bit.ly/qhBN #
• Order a case of XS Gold Plus energy drink. http://tinyurl.com/5we2ez #
• tumbler full of ice + 1.5 parts Kahlua + milk = adult chocolate milk! yum! and watching new episode of 30 Rock on hulu. love Saturday. #
• heading out for a walk and then Swift Street Courtyard Bike Fest in support of the Amgen/AEG Tour of California. #

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Popularity: 7% [?]

In March, Ad:Tech will once again return to San Francisco. This is the premier advertising and marketing event in Northern California.

Ad:Tech brings together the top advertising programs and producers in one location for you to meet and schmooze with. Last year was extremely successful and this year should be just as good.

Registration is open and the exhibit floor plus all the keynotes are free if you register before March. Ad:Tech SF runs from April 21-23 at the Moscone Convention Center. Register today!

I’ll be there checking out the floor. Let me know if you are going to attend and we can meet face to face.  See you there!

Popularity: 9% [?]

As you may know, one of the social networking tools I use quite often is Twitter. Twitter is a microblogging platform that lets you share ideas, links, blog posts and converse with other twitter users in real time.

Twitter stores posts chronologically from all the people you follow so you can keep up with what they are doing throughout the day or night.

If I am online, you can bet I have twitter open in a separate window and refresh my stream often. It’s one of the ways I get news and information from like minded people and it’s an exellent way to socialize and meet new people. A couple weeks ago I listed my twitter feed on a forum post at Entrecard and since then my followers have increased 50% to nearly 200 followers.

Today I discovered another way to get more exposure through twitter and again through social networking. If you run your blog using Wordpress you can add a simple line of code that will alert your readers they can tweet your post. Adding this functionality can increase your overall traffic which in turn has the potential to drive more earnings your way.

How is this accomplished? I have to give credit to JohnChow for the original code (to which he gives credit elsewhere) and it should be noted that I had to modify John’s original code to make it work for my blog. Thanks for the tip John! One of the reasons is that my installation of wordpress prefers dynamic linkage wherever possible and doesn’t always render HTML links properly. The following code works for this blog:

<a rel=”nofollow” href=”http://twitter.com/home/?status=Reading @Flagusco – <?php the_title(); ?> <?php bloginfo(‘url’); ?>?p=<?php the_ID(); ?>”><img src=”/blog/images/tweet-this-small.png” border=”0″ alt=”Tweet This!” align=”absmiddle” />Tweet This Post!</a>

Notice the php code I have used compared to what John posted. The reason why is because I can copy and paste this code to any blog using Wordpress and the only things I have to change are the URL to the images folder for the little bird and the @name for the proper twitter account I want to reference (of course I only have the one).

Now when you read an article you find interesting you can let your Twitter followers know about it. You can say a little bird told you. There are plugins that do this but then you have to constantly update the plugin when something changes. This code is optimized for any wordpress blog.

Popularity: 21% [?]

• game system decided to give me the KSOD treatment this evening. Installing new vid card and trying to fix the OS now. #
• Thank you Lost. You just won me back as a fan. Great start to the season. #
• 8am on a Friday…first meeting of the day. Ugh. #
• LOL curious case of the undone button http://tinyurl.com/b8shuq #
• just watched Bolt w/fam. pretty good movie, loved the animation and good voice casting. #
• just watched Diggnation 185 and 186 today. @jimmyfallon, @alexalbrecht, @kevinrose you guys are hilarious together, fav episode ever! #
• heading home early, my boy has a fever today #
• shopping for 2 br rentals in Santa Cruz area. Anyone have a 2br house for rent? #
• RT @feliciaday helping @jimmyfallon create a WoW character. funny stuff. http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/ #
• had a blast at the warriors game last night, despite the fact they lost 121 to 120. #
• going to see the Warriors in Oakland tonight with my friend, should be good times. Can’t beat $8 seats! #
• sweet iPhone/iPod touch stand for travelers http://tinyurl.com/a8yodw #
• RT from @tferris learn any new language in 3 Months http://tinyurl.com/9strn4 Love it. #
• Did I mention yet that we are having a new baby this year? Our second. Very excited about that. Due date is August 23. #
• Jebus WTF is going on with $WFC? Feels like mass exodus and fear/panic for no reason. #
• I’m so happy President Obama isn’t trying to be my buddy. I don’t want a buddy for president, I want a leader who can inspire a nation. #
• I like hearing the workds “former president Bush” finally! #
• We are about to become an Obama Nation! Amazing! #
• Just read the Barack Obama edition of Spider-Man which was actually just a small story at the end of “Platonic” gave me a chuckle. #
• whoa, just felt a little tremor here in Santa Cruz. Confirmed here: http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Quakes/nc51215555.html #
• sacrificing myself for the greater good. Seeing Paul Blart: Mall Cop tonight with a friend and his kid. The things I do for my podcast! #
• I could go for some Coldcock malt liquor right about now. http://tinyurl.com/8puzjk #
• $2000 Blog Anniversary Giveaway! Follow @iphoneincanada & Retweet to win a Sony Portable DVD Player & $100 for charity! http://bit.ly/3uzi #
• Just watched Defiance. Despite the criticism it’s getting I think it’s a well told story and deftly acted and well cast. #
• Just finished Role Models. Made me want to go LARPing really bad! #

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Popularity: 6% [?]

This year I have some major life changes that need to be made. In August we will be having our second baby which I am very excited about but it means some big changes around our house and in my life.

Late last year I learned that I had developed Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis which is more commonly known as Hypothyroidism. Basically, the white blood cells that normally fight off infections like viruses and the flu are instead attacking my Thyroid gland as if it were a foreign body.

What this means is my Thyroid is unable to produce enough of the hormone responsible for metabolism. It also means I have to take medication (a small pill) that reproduces this hormone for the rest of my life. That’s not such a big deal since it is one small pill but nonetheless it’s permanent.

Over the past few years I have been struggling with my weight. I’m 6 feet tall and currently weigh between 215lbs and 220lbs. I don’t consider myself obese by any stretch but I could stand to get rid of this gut. Overall my health is good, my blood pressure is good and my pulse is good, I just have too much midsection going on and that’s not something I want to keep.

To that end, i have committed to changing my diet which is a combination of the Men’s Health Abs Diet and the South Beach Diet.

I’ve stopped drinking alcohol now for at least 4 weeks so my doctor can run another blood test and find out what is going on with my triglycerides.

I’m also trying to figure out a workout schedule. Except for Mondays and Fridays, i work in San Francisco and leave my house too early in the morning to do any real exercise. I also get home between 7 and 8 pm which leaves little time for playing with my son, dinner, time with my wife and to somehow squeeze in some exercise.

One thing that has helped keep my weight down is the fact that I walk almost everywhere. I walk an hour a day to get to and from work but what I need to add to this is some real weight training. The problem is I don’t have a weight bench (or room for one anywhere) and I only have a curling bar and a couple free weights to work with.

I’m interested in hearing from my readers what they do for exercise/weight training. In the spring and summer I get my workouts done by mountain biking a couple days a week.

I may just have to suck it up and join a friendly neighborhood gym and stay motivated to keep going but the thought of forking over $40 a month for a gym membership annoys me.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress but I’m interested in hearing your stories.

Popularity: 8% [?]

By Scott Lindsay

One of the prime motivations for Internet marketing is that you don’t want to be in the same place you are right now – in 12 months.

In every business the predominant idea is to set goals that help you conduct business smarter, learn lessons faster and bring more business to your site.

The problem is many entrepreneurs tend to stay focused on their bottom line and to product fulfillment issues. By doing so they may indeed find themselves in the same place 12 months from now. They may also find their business has declined in total sales revenue.

How is that possible?

This is an interesting question especially when, from all appearances, the business owner IS paying attention to their business and that the sales are brisk. It can also seem baffling when it appears that the business owner is busier than they have ever been.

The problem may be that some of the details of business should be delegated to other employees, especially if the business is of significant size.

The sad truth is some business owners are spending too much time in the mailroom and not enough time in long-term strategic planning. Online business grows as new ideas are developed and implemented. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 10% [?]

Every time the new year makes its way into my life I think about all the clutter taking up space around me and have an inexorable urge to purge. I find there’s something about a new year that makes you want to start everything clean. My blog is no different. I go through and examine my template, layout, ads, plugins and figure out based on past performance what is and isn’t working.

During the holidays I changed my template and layout to be a little more bright and reflect the holiday. I may end up doing this for all the holidays I celebrate. It’s fun, and a great way to change the scenery a bit without having to do too much work.

Now that the holidays are over and my vacation is over it’s time to get back to the grind and get back to blogging. This blog exists because I enjoy writing. It simply is not enough to run a blog just to make money because the fact is 90% of all businesses (and a blog is a business or can be) fail in the first year.

Think about that for a second. For every 10 new businesses you see open, only 1 is going to make it over the long run. Online that figure is staggering because there are hundreds of new blogs each day. They keys to being successful as a blogger aren’t cut and dried but here are a few:

• Write original, compelling content – Write what you are passionate about if you really want to make the big bucks. Bloggers who just write about making money don’t make that much money. They hope that you will read their blog and buy into whatever it is they are saying, in turn making them money in the process because you believe they are being honest. If you stick to a topic you really know and love, then you won’t have to worry about making money because it won’t matter.
• Constantly test your advertising platforms – No one advertising system is going to be the bank breaker for you. You need to diversify and test as many platforms as you can until you find ones that work. Google Adsense may work great on one blog but not on another. These can include affiliate programs as well which can really boost your online income. Read more about advertising and affiliate programs here.
• Keep your design clean – This is one of the most important things about a blog. Keeping your blog clean looking and uncluttered (this doesn’t mean plain and boring) will keep your readers around longer. I’ve seen hundreds of blogs that turned me away instantly because of the design/color combination. Blogs that assault your senses turn me away instantly. Think about it, you want people to stick around and actually read your content so make it appealing to the eye.
• Remove useless/unused plugins – This may not seem like something that can clutter up your blog but it can. Many times I read about a new plugin for wordpress that does this thing or that thing and it ends up not working very well. Instead of just turning it off, I go ahead and remove it from my blog. This not only frees up space on my hosting server but it unclutters the plugin page and the tools/settings pages in wordpress which can get pretty crowded with all those plugins. Read my post on essential wordpress plugins to see what I use.
• Ignore everything I say – Look, you are here for one reason or another and either you will find what I have to say helpful or you won’t. The point is, you need to figure out for yourself what works and what doesn’t. What works for me may not work for you but that doesn’t mean you should dismiss it outright. Try out some new things, try out the affiliate programs I mentioned above. Give yourself 30 days in each advertising venture you go after and if it doesn’t work after 30 days it’s not going to work and you can move onto the next thing.

These are just a few of the things that I have read from the most successful bloggers on the planet. Every month I sum up my income statement and traffic statistics so make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed and follow me on Twitter. I’d also like to hear your thoughts on this and what process you go through with your blog to make it successful so comment on this post and let me know.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Well, 2008 has come and gone. I can hardly believe another year has gone by already. We saw some rough times in 2008 both personally and professionally. I lost a good friend last year to Cancer and another friend who battled a short illness in late 2007 but the world, as they say, keeps turning.

These events did give me pause to get my house in order in terms of insurance coverage and the sort so that should something happen to me, my family is taken care of.

All that being said, 2008 was a good year for this blog. I gained 50 new RSS subscribers and 176 Twitter followers!

For those of you that are new, I run two blogs that account for my online income and it should be known that I also report other forms of income not related to blogging but related to making money online. Blogging isn’t the only way to go about earning a living online, nor should it be. Just as you don’t want to use only one advertising system as a revenue source, you don’t want to confine yourself to just blogging.

And now, the nitty gritty.

December was a challenging month. Advertising revenue overall dropped as a result of several factors including our tanking economy. Online advertising in general in all markets is down. Digg.com (one of the largest social networks on the web) still isn’t profitable and they have all kinds of sponsors. I’ve read even some of the best affiliate marketers have trouble in December so I’m not surprised by some of the results. However, as you will see, it pays to diversify your income.

Blogging is my hobby and only one of my many passions in life. I report these earnings to help you, whether new or experienced in the world of blogging, I think there are lessons to be learned everywhere from everyone.

That being said, you should be working on your affiliate campaigns through PepperJam Network and NeverBlueAds to take advantage of any dry spells in advertising revenue. Keep in mind also, more people spend time indoors and (potentially) more time on their computers which means you can convert more traffic than usual during the fall and winter.

Traffic is the lifeblood of a blog and without it, you aren’t going to be able to make much money. Advertisers need eyeballs and that means you need lots of viewers. Then the trick is converting those viewers into clickers and buyers of the products you advertise.

And now without further Ado…

Traffic Statistics

I always like to start out these reports by explaining my traffic. As usual, Google Analytics doesn’t provide the whole picture so I use Webalizer for my stats. These statistics come directly from my web server. Since Webalizer has direct access to the server itself it tells me much more about the traffic on my site including 401 errors, 301 redirects and much much more.

So for the month of December I had 21,627 page views from 6,293 visits. Most of the traffic is from RSS readers, which is actually a really good thing. What it means is people are picking up the feed and reading it regularly. You’ll also notice my visits are down but the page views are up compared to November 2008. This is also good because it means fewer readers are bouncing or leaving the site after only the first page. You always want to go for the “long tail”.

The Proficient Investor, my other blog also has some good statistics. For December, PI had 51,536 page views from 10,603 visits. As you can see PI, which is a financial/investment blog had more page views than MDP which I attribute primarily to the current fiscal crisis facing this country and the number of Twitter followers who read the blog has climed to 176. Twitter has been a great source of traffic and information and I highly recommend you join and follow me.

Revenue Report

The following is combined income for both blogs. I document earnings here for your benefit. I can talk all day about SEO techniques, writing quality content and how traffic is going to make or break your online business but I also want to show that anyone can make money online and i’m not just talking about blogging. Income can and should come from multiple sources. Revenue should actually be higher from TLA but they pro-rate sales to the time when the ad was first bought. So even though my current price is $18, if you bought a recurring ad when the price was lower, you get that lower price month to month.

Text-Link-Ads: $43.97
CafePress: $119.96
Adsense:  $2.16 (anyone still making money from google adsense?)

Total:  $166.09

This is nearly the same amount as November’s income, and Text Link Ads continues to be the leader in earnings. TLA is the easiest thing I have ever done to earn money online. Sign up for their program, slap in a wordpress plugin and then all you need to do is get traffic to your blog. The wizards at TLA take care of the rest.

The increase in CafePress sales is higher because of the holiday season but not nearly as high as last year which was nearly triple this year’s amount. This is certainly a result of the very serious financial crisis facing this country. You may also notice a lack of affiliate sales. I had really no time to spend on any CPA campaigns from any source so there’s nothing to report in that regard.

What you should take away from this is that if my blog continues to produce similar results month after month, it’s definitely worth the time I do spend on it. At this rate, assuming an average of $150 a month, that puts $1800 in my pocket for the year.

Keep creating original content, drive lots of traffic to your site and then maximize the return of that traffic and you’ll have success. Sign up for every single one of the affiliates mentioned here as well so you can find appropriate products to advertise on your site.

Also, if you are looking for really great gifts that let the recipient choose for themselves, there’s no better place than to shop at Ribbon:The Gift Of Choice. Shipping is included in the price of the gift book you buy and they range from $20 to $500.00 including 3 or 4 night vacation packages. If you want to be able to resell these same books, use the contact form and I’d be happy to explain how Quixtar works and how you can make money running a Quixtar business.

There’s no real magic behind making money online but you don’t want the only purpose of your site to be making money…it doesn’t work like that. Find your niche, write what you are passionate about and the rest will fall in place.

Popularity: 9% [?]