Million Dollar PortfolioReal Strategies for Making Money Online

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Making money online isn’t easy and I am always looking for new ways to make some extra cash which is why I was excited to learn that IZEA CEO Ted Murphy unveiled his newest money making venture, Sponsored Tweets.

Sponsored Tweets is a new Twitter advertising service that allows advertisers the opportunity to leverage Twitter users to hock their wares. The idea is simple. Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networking tools available and big name stars like Ashton Kutcher, Lance Armstrong and others are using it to reach massive audiences keeping them up to date with what they are doing.

Bloggers and everyday tweeters can make money by signing up with Sponsored Tweets and allowing advertisers to use their twitter stream to advertise products and services. You have the option of writing the ad copy yourself or letting the advertiser do it. You can also set your own price.

If you are looking for a new way to generate some ad revenue without clogging up your blog space and you have a decent amount of twitter followers, this may be just the thing you are looking for.

Already, a lot of top name bloggers and celebrities have signed up to use Sponsored Tweets. Names like Neil Patel, John Chow, Holly Madison, Sister Hazel should ring a bell.

You begin by putting in some basic information about your twitter account, setting some keywords, a price and how you want to be notified of new ads pending.

Then you just sit back and wait for the cash to roll in, right? Not exactly.

Your success with this tool is going to depend on several factors. Your twitter followers (the more the better), the content of your tweets (keep in mind this is about networking) and the frequency of your tweets are all going to contribute to your success. In essence, the more followers you have, the more conversations you carry on, the more people you reach, the more you can charge advertisers for leveraging your account.

Is Sponsored Tweets going to change the landscape of twitter advertising and making money using twitter? Maybe. Am I going to be testing it out, definitely. I’ll keep you posted and let you know what kind of success (or failure) I find with this tool.

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In an ongoing effort to offer publishers the best tools for making money online through advertising sales, Text Link Ads (which is the biggest money maker for this blog) has made some significant changes to their user interface.

Now when you log in you get a breakdown of which sites you are selling ads on are active and what kind of links you are selling, notice the small blue or red icon next to each listing. You can also see how many ads are sold on each of your sites.

They have also made it much easier to find your projected earnings for the month. On the right side at the bottom of the main page is a box that shows your projected earnings.

Text Link Ads really is one of the best ways I have found to make money online. The bottom line is, if you can drive traffic to your site, you can sell advertising the easy way by having someone else do it. Less work means more time for blogging and getting other things done. Sign up Today!

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I spent all day yesterday installing a new hard drive and getting my old data onto the new drive. Thankfully I had backed up all my data beforehand onto an external drive. As many complaints as there are about Windows Vista, the backup utility is amazing.

With the Windows Vista Backup Status and Configuration Tool (Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Backup Status and Configuration) you can make a backup of your entire computer which can be restored at a later time should something happen to your main hard drive.

You can also set up automatic backups to run at specified intervals so you can be sure your data is safe on a regular basis.

In my case, I had to purchase a new Hard Disk Drive because my old drive was showing a SMART failure and imminent death. Running the backup tool allowed me to capture all my data in one file and restore it directly to the new drive without any hassle.

The only problem I found was that EIDE drives take precedence over SATA drives in the boot order so I had to also copy my second, smaller drive to my external drive as well. Copying that data to the new drive was a snap once everything was up and running again.

The main point I am trying to make here is you should be always backing up your data to one or more external devices so that in the event of a failure you are ready. In my opinion, Vista has one of the best backup tools built into the system (ultimate edition in my case) so you really have no excuse for lost data.

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Summer is finally here in California and to celebrate, I want to give one lucky person a case of XS Energy Drink. Entering the contest is easy, but let me explain what you could win.

What is XS Energy Drink?

XS Energy Drink was created by a southern california duo that wanted a healthier alternative to the sugary energy drinks and sodas that are everywhere in stores these days. The main competitor is Red Bull (which now has a sugar free version, mainly due to XS!).

In September 2002, XS made an exclusive distribution agreement with Amway Global that changed the future for this energy drink which now generates $120 million annually in sales. Read the FAQ here.

Why Am I Giving Away A Case?

I drink one or two of these drinks a day to help me get going in the morning and  keep me going throughout the day. I don’t drink coffee and I don’t drink sugary drinks like Monster or Red Bull because I hate the “coming down” effect all that sugar has. Most people call this a “crash”. XS is also loaded with B-Vitamins and amino acids which help your muscles and keep you alert. As a by product, XS is a natural bug repellent because of the B-Vitamins.

I am so sure that you will like these drinks, I’m giving one case (12, 8.4oz cans) of your choice away to a lucky winner (approx retail value up to $35).

There are several ways to enter.

1. The easiest way is to comment on this post which earns you 1 entry.
2. The second way is to follow us on twitter and tweet the following: I just entered to win a case of XS Energy Drink (http://bit.ly/5DLtB) from @flagusco. Read about the contest here: http://bit.ly/kYDJZ.
   This will earn you 2 entries.
3. The third way, and in my opinion the best way is to order a case for yourself, and you’ll earn 5 entries. To qualify for the 5 entries and to verify you have actually ordered, you must use the contact form on this site and paste your order receipt in the body of the form. All orders must be verified.

You can earn a total of 8 entries if you use all three methods above. All entries will be placed into random.com and one winner will be chosen on July 1st so enter today!

On a side note, if you are interested in making money selling XS, contact me about becoming an Independent Business Owner with Amway Global.

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I want to show you a way to add hundreds or thousands of targeted Twitter followers to your account in just a few days, but before I do that, I thought I would explain why.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networks today because it is simple, straightforward and it works. Twitter allows you to communicate what you are doing in 140 characters or less. If you are already following me on Twitter then you already know this and I’m preaching to the choir. However, if this is new to you, it’s time to look at what Twitter can do for you and your online business.

I use Twitter to not only get news on topics i’m interested in, but stock trading ideas, marketing and information on making money online and other business related ventures I am involved in.

Just as you want to have multiple streams of income, you need to have multiple avenues of information gathering and dissemination. Although I don’t follow every single one of my own followers, I do follow those ones that I feel contribute to the topics I am interested in or need to keep track of.

Why Do I Need Followers?

Your efforts to make money online are only going to be as successful as the number of people you can reach. You may have discovered the greatest money making opportunity ever but if you can’t tell others about it, you could be losing hundreds or thousands of dollars in revenue.

What you want to do then is get as many people following you as possible. There’s one tool on the market that does this better than any other tool i’ve seen. It’s called Hummingbird and you need to buy it today if you are serious about making money online.

Hummingbird works the same way a human would if they were adding followers in Twitter. You search for followers by keyword or hashtag(#) and then using the tools in the Hummingbird interface, add all those followers.

That’s the first part, but there is more. What will happen is your account will get to a point where you can’t add any more users. You wait one day and then unfollow all those people that haven’t followed you back. Hummingbird knows who you have followed an unfollowed and will prevent you from following the same person you have unfollowed so you won’t seem spammy to the Twitter servers.

When you are able to add more users, usually a day or soe later, you just repeat the same process. It’s not uncommon for someone to be following thousands of others and have thousands of followers.

My goal is to have as many followers as possible so that my marketing efforts have the highest impact with the least amount of effort. Download Hummingbird today, it’s the best tool for the job.

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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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It’s been a while since I’ve found anything I thought had great potential for making money online. I’m working on one product that I think is going to be huge but it’s not quite ready for prime time. In the meantime, I’ve discovered something that just launched today! It’s called TweetBucks and could make you a lot of money if you use Twitter, Facebook or other social networks.

The basic idea behind TweetBucks is to pay users a commission on clicks through to links or products. You shorten your URL using bit.ly and an affiliate code is automatically inserted into the link if it matches one of the merchants in the TweetBucks database.

So if you post a link to Twitter or Facebook that goes to Amazon.com, Best Buy or any of the other 1000 or so merchants, your affiliate code is automatically added and you earn a commission on the sale. It’s that simple. You can sign up for a free account today.

There’s also a great article about TweetBucks here. ProTwit asked a great question in the article:

Protwit: So what if the link I want to shorten is not part of your list of supported Merchants?
TweetBucks: That’s the best part, you can still make money on every click using our customizable ad-frame!  This optional feature inserts a leaderboard (728×90) ad unit on top of the site you are sharing.  We pay you for every click.  People are earning anywhere from $0.5 to $1 eCPM.

So, if you aren’t on Twitter or Facebook you can still earn money using an ad-frame. The potential for making mone with this is unlimited! It’s much the same as everything online. Drive traffic, convert clicks and make sales and you’ll find success. If aren’t doing so already, follow me on Twitter and keep up with what I am doing.

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