Million Dollar PortfolioReal Strategies for Making Money Online

You may have noticed a lack of posts lately and the primary reason is my wife has been pregnant with our second child. About 12 days ago she gave birth to a 9 lb. 10 oz boy. We are overjoyed at his arrival and as you can imagine, caring for a toddler and newborn takes time, patience and a near constant lack of sleep.

The past two weeks have been a blur of sleepless nights, delirium and joy as we adjust to our new life with two boys in the house.

That said, I hope you have found other articles on this site and continue to read on and search for information about making money online. My efforts haven’t stopped and I continue to see revenue from the same sources I have been telling you about all along. You can find these on the Make Money Online link at the top of the blog. I recommend every single one of the links you find on that page because I use them all.

The best thing about having children is all the time you get to spend with them on your time off from a regular job. It gives you a taste of what John Chow calls the “Dot Com Lifestyle”. I live in a seaside town in Northern California and man is that lifestyle appealing. Walking to the amusement park and hanging out at the beach without worrying about work and meeting deadlines. I tell you, it’s why I do all this.

I know for a fact you can make thousands of dollars a month through blogging, affiliate marketing and online sales. I’ve seen the results firsthand. So if you haven’t done so already, go here and sign up for every single affiliate program listed.

Incidentally, this new tool just came out and it could be the best keyword tool every for your affiliate campaigns. It’s called Keyword Elite 2.0 and is being endorsed by all the big name bloggers like John Chow so you know it’s no joke. This is a serious tool to get ahead of your competition and shatter them. Download it today!

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From the man who brought you the famous Shoemoney SERP tool comes another awesome product which is also free. Jeremy “Shoemoney” Shoemaker is giving away a 12 week Internet Marketing course. If you think it’s just fluff you are mistaken. People like John Chow are reading this guide to add to their arsenal another set of tools to help them succeed online.

I always say cheap is good but free is better. You can get your copy of this guide by following this link or clicking on the 125 banner at the top of this blog.

The course is designed to teach you everything you need to know to succeed in online marketing and make some serious money. It’s free, there’s no catch, so what are you waiting for?

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Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, StockTwits, LinkedIn. These are social networks. They exist to connect people together based on friendship, business connections or similar interests and they are here to stay, folks. Some are mistakenly calling this “Social Media” but that’s a misnomer.

As explained in this post, Social Media is a contradiction in terms. Media by its nature can’t be social if it can’t be controlled by a single source. That being said, social networking in all forms is here to stay. Read this post by Howard Lindzon, creator of StockTwits and the wildly popular internet stock show Wall Strip.

Howard states, “I don’t think you can set out to build a community. I think the best communities just happen.” and he’s right. The best, most creative and interesting communities stem from a common understanding or goal and happen out of necessity. Birds of a feather, if you will, flock together.

I use social networks to communicate to my friends, family and twitter followers the things I am doing or want them to know about. By keeping them in the loop, they can pass that word on and do more than I can do on my own to get my information out there. This is what I love about blogging and the internet. What you have to say is always going to be interesting to someone, even when you think it isn’t.

One of my friends, who is very cynical (and 10 years younger than me) told me one day that Twitter is a fad. I had to wholeheartedly disagree with him. That’s like saying Craigslist or Ebay are fads, implying that eventually they will stop being used and disappear into the ether. I assure you, he is dead wrong.

Twitter is being used for much more than just a venting ground in 140 characters or less. Real information is being exchanged thorough Twitter, gathered, disseminated and used for business purposes. I get more interesting information from the folks I follow on Twitter than almost anywhere else on the web. It’s a powerful platform when leveraged correctly.

StockTwits is a perfect example. Users post short messages about the stocks they are trading or about other trading information and by using a specific symbol (the $ in this case) before a symbol, the StockTwits engine will pick up the feed from twitter and add it to its own feed. This kind of intentional aggregation has created a community that is going to flourish and profit.

So next time someone tells you social networking is a fad, you can put them in their place and let them know that there’s much more to it than just 140 characters.

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Normally in this place you would find an earnings report but I’m starting to feel like this is unnecessary. Though in the past I have recieved some comments on these posts, it doesn’t seem like most people are interested in hearing about it.

The main point of posts like these earnings reports is to illustrate that literally anyone can make money online and it doesn’t have to be limited to placing advertisements that are gaudy and distractive.

In fact, to that end I eliminated much of those kinds of ads on The Proficient Investor because after upgrading to a new format and new blog design, the ads were just getting in the way. I may eliminate the 125×125 ads you see on this blog in the sidebar as well because they just don’t seem to be performing like I would like to see.

I read an article a few weeks ago about how this magazine columnist attempted to prove that you can make money online. He proceeded to register a domain and began prolificly writing about everything he could think of. He wrote several articles a day and added some Google Adsense blocks in “high visibility” areas. After a month he had made only a couple dollars from the Adsense ads and tried out another ad platform only to be disappointed with the results and subsequently decided it wasn’t likely anyone could make money blogging and that only the rare exception (noting bloggers John Chow and Darren Rowse) could really make it.

I won’t give you the link to this article because it was crap.

First of all, let me tell you why this guy failed and why you shouldn’t follow his example in any fashion.

The most successful forms of media always stem from one thing. Passion. Writers who are successful become so because they are truly passionate about their craft. Every film, book, television show, newspaper, magazine, web site or blog that became successful happened because the person or people behind it truly care and are passionate about it. They eat, sleep, live and breathe their creation.

If your only goal for doing something is to make money, then I guarantee you are going to fail. 9 out of 10 businesses that start up fail in the first year. You know why? They fail because the owner gets bored or because they chose something they aren’t really into but picked because it seemed like a good idea. Or maybe, there just isn’t a market for that particular product or service.

With blogging it is only slightly different. You don’t have the same overhead as a traditional brick and mortar business but you also don’t have the same kind of public exposure so marketing yourself can be a little tougher. Kevin Rose has a great post on his blog about how to market yourself and I try to do every one of the 10 steps he talks about. It comes down to your ability to sell yourself whenever and wherever possible.

Making money from blogging shouldn’t be your primary concern. You first need to generate quality content based on something you actually know about and then drive traffic to that content. When that is working, you can implement some kind of money making strategy if you so choose but your primary purpose is to write. I do this because i love it. I love sharing ideas and writing about what I know. I also do a podcast about topics I am passionate about. Maybe that will turn into something that makes money and maybe it won’t but it isn’t going to stop me from doing it.

So, I hope this post has been helpful to you even though It’s not really about the money I made in February which was to be honest, less than $200 but Text-link-ads revenue was up as my ad spots filled up on The Proficient Investor and I sold a few new ad spots on this blog. If you haven’t done so already, you really should sign up. It’s free and all you need is quality content and a lot of traffic and TLA will sell itself.

PepperJam Network paid out $30 last month in referral fees which was very nice. I run PepperJam ads in the sidebar of this blog as well as some ppc campaigns. I’d like to see more revenue from PPJ but it’s hard finding the right products to promote and I won’t promote something I wouldn’t actually use myself.

I won’t even talk about Google Adsense. It’s been a terrible performer for over a year and I barely put any effort into it anymore. I’ve found that the quality of ads placed on my blogs just aren’t very good but at least they don’t cost me anything in the process.

I’d like to hear about your blog success. Comment on this or any other related post and join in the conversation. I read every single comment and respond when appropriate.

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Making money blogging can seem a lot like high school. Of all the bloggers out there, very few are really making money because of their popularity. Like high school, popularity has a lot to do with how successful a blogger is. The more popular your site, the more likely it is that people are going to read it and the more people reading it, the more popular it becomes. It is essentially a self fulfilling profecy.

Blogging about making money blogging is narcisistic at best. You can only say the same thing so many times before you sound like a broken record. So how do you get that traffic that leads to popularity?

It’s really pretty simple.

• Talk about yourself and your blog everywhere.
• Bring it up in conversations.
• Give people business cards with your site on them.
• Find forums related to your niche and comment making sure that your blog address is in your signature.
• Create a twitter account and tweet about your niche.
• Use a service like Entrecard and promote your blog on other blogs.

The options are endless but the bottom line is you gotta get out there and publicize yourself.

One of the new things I am considering myself is a video blog. I haven’t figured it all out yet about what I want to do but I’m working on it. I also have another project in the works that I know you are going to want to participate in because the income potential is huge and the initial investment is really small.

In fact, right now I am looking for a business that is still doing things the old fashioned way writing checks to their employees. I have something that will blow your mind and make your payments a lot easier. Use the contact form and email me.

We’re a month into 2009 and I things still look pretty bleak out there but it’s going to get better. Heck, it can’t be any worse than the last 8 years have been.

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January is behind us now and a lot has happened. We have a new president, it’s nearly tax season and it turns out that California is delaying all refunds until the state can figure out their budget problems. This last point frustrates me because as a taxpayer my money is borrowed throughout the year by the government and now they say they don’t have it to give back? It’s shameful and wrong and yet there’s nothing I can do about it. Good thing I have some extra income from my blogging. January was fairly productive and my twitter followers increased to 202.

For those of you that are new, I run three 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. You should always diversify your income sources since you never really know how things are going to go from month to month.

January was productive. I started a new blog that aggregates news from several sources and have monetized it. This should produce some extra income over the coming year. Advertising revenue increased overall as advertisers renewed ongoing ads and I gained some new advertisers. Online advertising in general in all markets is down but things around here stay steady.

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’m using Awstats for my statistics. These statistics come directly from my web server. Since Awstats 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 January traffic looks like it’s decreased but in reality, views and visits from bots have been filtered. I had 8,870 page views from 2990 visits. Most of the traffic is from my feed, which is actually a really good thing. What it means is people are picking up the feed and reading it regularly.

The Proficient Investor, my other blog also has some good statistics. For December, PI had 8,287 page views from 2,022 visits.  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 all 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: $53.81
CafePress: $17.00
Adsense:  $.37

Total:  $71.18

This is much less than December 2008, 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.

Cafepress sales dropped but I have been selling more of my Tour de France design which is very cool since Lance Armstrong is making his comeback this 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.

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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.

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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 »

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