Earnings Exposed

I am going to tell you a story about a girl who wanted to blog.  She wanted to make a blog because she saw me doing it, having fun, and making money while I did it.  She so desperately wanted to see the same success.  So, I sat down with her and I looked her in the eyes and I said, “if you want to do this, you need to find the niche that works best for you.  You need to not do it for money, but do it because you love every word that you are going to write and every sentence that you are going to form.”

After I said those words, I got up and I walked away.  I wanted her to really let those words sink in.  I wanted her to really appreciate what I had said because it is something that most bloggers do not appreciate.  Even those that make a living from this great thing called blogging, some don’t appreciate what they do.  It’s just a business to them and frankly, I don’t agree with that.  To each his own, but John Chow said it best with his video about the Dot Com Lifestyle.  The most important thing to him (and I agree because it’s the most important thing to me) is his ability to have an outlet where he can talk about anything he wants.

My friend tracked me down after I had left the room to go take care of some things and she told me that she so desperately wanted to make a blog about how to help people.  So, I sat down with her again and I said to her that she needed to pick something that she loved.  I stressed that because if she didn’t love it, it wouldn’t work.  She said, “helping people is what I love to do.”  So I nodded my head and I started to help her set up her blog, get hosting, a domain, all of that.

Now…What am I trying to say with this story?  She’s now having success with her blog.  Traffic is rolling in, the earnings are starting to come (which most people don’t ever get) and most importantly, she’s starting to connect with her readers.  She could have done the same thing with a different niche, such as health, and tried to make money.  But instead, she found her niche.  She really thought for that little bit of time about a topic that she was passionate about.

That was the best thing she could have done.  Because she really thought about what she wanted to do, she was able to create the necessary idea that would make her blog grow.  She found her niche.  She found what she was passionate about.  For me, I am passionate about politics, biology, and money.  I own a blog on each of those topics.  Politics, biology, and money.  I own other blogs on other passions (I could write a post on my passions alone), but those are my biggest passions…

What am I trying to say?  Find your passion.  Be the blogger that found his or her niche.  Once you have it, you’ve conquered one of the hardest parts of blogging.  It really is a great feeling when you know people are coming back to read your writing because you are giving them something they need.  Trust me.

The following post is going to be a step by step post on how you can create ten content sites with a budget of only $250.  Now, you may be asking yourself why you’d want to create ten content sites.  A lot of ways that people make money is instead of building up one huge site to make thousands of dollars, they make a ton of small sites that make only a few dollars a day.  There are people out there that own hundreds of these little sites that make a few dollars a day.

So, how do you make ten of them on a limited budget of, say, two hundred and fifty dollars?  You’re going to find cheap domain names and then you’re going to find cheap content.  The content does not need to be exceptional like it would need to be on a blog like this.  The content just needs to be good enough with the right keywords that the ads show that pay the good amount.  So, here’s where you begin!

You’ll need to find a coupon that takes a nice bulk off of your orders of domain names.  So, find a company that gives the best coupon and then order all ten domain names in bulk.  So, we’re looking at about $10 a domain name.  I use GoDaddy and there’s a coupon (catalog1) that takes $20 off a bill over $75.  So, you’ll spend a total of $100 and then take $20 off.  So, for eighty dollars, you’re getting ten domains.  I’m going to assume that you already have hosting, but if not, go ahead and throw in another $10 and get some host gator hosting.  Cool. So, now you have spent $90.  That leaves you with $160.

Now, don’t waste your time writing the content.  Go to Digital Point and find one of the writers that is willing to write a 300 word article for $1.50.  I know, it’s really chump change, but there are writers willing to work for that and, since you’re going to contract only one or two, they’ll like it because the bulk rate is good.  So, you’re going to order $150 worth of content from people and they’ll jump to write it.  Now comes the actual sites.

Use WordPress for your sites.  Creating custom content sites is really not that great honestly because they take time and if you don’t know HTML, you’re screwed.  If you want a good template to use, I suggest (and it’s only a suggestion) these themes created by a friend of mine.  The way she makes her money is the way I am describing and these themes are months and months of research of good places for ads that gets clicked most.  So, this will definitely help.  If you don’t like them, try and find something a bit more custom to the actual site topic.

So, you have ten dollars left over.  If you want, throw it in to one of your content writers as a bonus to keep him or her happy.  You can do whatever you want really.  In the end, what you are looking at are ten different content sites on ten different topics that all are going to start earning you money.  And, the truth is, you did no work until the final part and this is where it gets a little more difficult.  As each set of ten articles is finished and put on the web, start building links and try ranking on Google.

When push comes to shove, I don’t particularly like this style of making money because I like the idea of owning something big that really makes a difference such as this blog.  But, regardless, this is a real way to make money online and it is proven to work.  So, go ahead and try it out.  If you’ve got the $200, get the sites made and try to make your few dollars a day.  Think of it this way…If each site makes $1 a day, that’s $30 a month.  Each site only cost you $25 to make.  So, by the end of the first month, you’ve made a profit of $5.  But, you can definitely push the site to making $5 a day and hell, try for $10.  But, $5 is a definite possibility.

If it works, let me know.  I’d love to hear a success story of one of my tips making you a ton of money.  Tomorrow, I’ll give you some tips on what you can do to promote the site in the right way and a way, if you want, to really grow the sites and make them go to perhaps a $50 a day website.  Now THAT is a profit, huh?  Stay tuned.

And let me tell you, taking a break can be incredibly disastrous. Both Nomar and I, simultaneously, and without discussing it, took short vacations. And rather than being prepared such as with a time stamp post or whatever, we just let the blog go for a bit. That was bad news on our part and to our faithful readers, we apologize. But now that we’re back, I thought I’d fill you in on some things.

First and foremost, I intend on getting into a bit more of the nitty gritty stuff behind making money online. You all can read a blog and understand that blogging about your passion is important. You want to know secret ways to get traffic. You want the earnings exposed. And because of that, I want to offer you all of that information. I want you to come back time and time again and really know that you’re getting the information.

I don’t want this to be any other Make Money Online blog. That’s why I am throwing information about stock and forex and all of that. But more importantly, my biggest complaint with other blogs is the fact that they don’t provide real information. It’s sugar coated. What right minded individual gives away their SECRETS to making money? Well…I guess I am crazy because that’s exactly what I intend on doing.

So, what to look forward to in the near future:

• A few give aways. Just some small things that Nomar and I feel might be good for you to have.
• A big contest. The contest will run in place with something we’re working on that might really be beneficial.
• More informational articles about things you don’t already know. Let me give you the secrets.
• And so much more…

I could ramble on forever, but let me just say that I am really excited and that I hope you are as well. Consider subscribing to our RSS feed so that you can stay up to date on all of the information that is coming in. And, remember one thing…The best reporters in the world try to expose everything. And we’re just another type of reporter giving away information for free. Honest, true information. Try it out.

I am going to be starting a new section on the blog and try to expose some more secrets when it comes to making money, but this time, in regards to the stock market.  It’s going to be a once a week series that I will post on Fridays (it’s Friday evening now) to give you something to look into and think about over the weekend before the coming week.

I’ll post one stock or ten stocks or any number of stocks; the number isn’t important.  What I will be posting are stocks that I suggest looking into and if you have the money, investing in.  But, please understand that I am not a stock broker and I don’t have any trade secrets.  I’d go to jail if I did.  But, I spend a lot of time looking at stocks and reading some papers on the stocks.  And, I look at trends and try to see what looks good and what doesn’t.

So, without further ado, here are three stocks for this upcoming week that you might want to look into.  See what you think and maybe you’ll find yourself investing some money into the market to try and make some more money.  Here they are:

1. Intel: I own shares of Intel and have for a while.  Intel (INTC) opened this previous week at $22.24 and closed this Friday at $24.23.  That’s a sizeable increase in the cost per share in one week.  But, more importantly is the trend of Intel.  The first half of the year, they appear weaker.  But, as the second half of the year comes along, they suddenly buckle down and that’s where the shares start to increase fast.  My prediction is that it will be over $30, if not higher, by the end of 2008.  Buy now and sell at $32 or $33 and the profit could be nice.
2. Microsoft: This is a company that I don’t own anything in, but am looking into investing in.  In this one week, the stock (MSFT) has risen over $2.  Like Intel, it is having a very strong drive, but there are some rumors about Microsoft looking to buy up their shares.  When a company does this, it is their way of saying, “We think our company is worth more than the current share suggests.”  But, by doing this, the cost per share increases.  There are rumors that it could pass $40 by the end of the year.  If you bought Monday morning, that’d be over a $10 a share profit.
3. Freddie Mac: Now, this is one that people are probably thinking, “Alright, this guy is stupid.”  But, hear me out.  Freddie Mac (FRE) is in a mess right now because of the housing and mortgage crisis.  Their shares have dropped a ton in the previous year and they are really low right now.  Really low.  If you were to pick up this stock in a big bulk and hold onto it for a year or two before selling, by then, the market would have recovered and the profit you’d make would be tremendous.

They’re not short term investments.  I am keeping my Intel until it hits about $35 a share.  It’s a lot more than what a lot of people would do, but I think that if it gets there, I will dump and then reinvest in something cheaper to get more bulk.  I’d love if Intel got to $35 in the next two weeks.  I’d dump and then buy up FRE.  But…That’s just what I’d do.  Regardless, I suggest looking into those three stocks for the coming week.  Stay tuned for next week’s edition of “Stocks to Look Into.”

Last week, I brought up how putting adsense on your blog could actually have a negative effect on your potential earnings.  What I meant by that was that you can get so used to making that slight, passive income that you won’t take the necessary risk and jump to private advertising.  So, it brings me to my basic point from that article.

The goal when monetizing your blog should be to make your money from private advertisers.

Voila…That’s it.  That’s what your goal should be.  Now, people are going to say: “why should I spend my time trying to get private advertisers when I can just put up Adsense and programs like that to make money?”  The answer is very simple…Why should you rely on any other company to make you money?  Why should you give them anything?

I’m not a proponent of greed, but I am proponent of making as much money as humanly possible on your website.  If you have the opportunity to sell your advertising space to a private advertiser, you’re cutting out the middle man.  The goal of a middle man is to make a profit.  If you get rid of that middle man, the profit is gone for them and you get everything.  Why give your money to someone else?

Getting private advertisers, though, is difficult which is why these programs are nice.  But don’t rely on them.  Use them as a secondary form of earning.  Having Adsense on your site is not bad and it can definitely make a nice, residual income.  But, you want to try and sell private advertising as well.

What’s better?  Getting a quarter a click and hoping to get 100 clicks to make $25 a day?  Or, having the ability to sell a single ad for $750 on your blog?  Which will make you more money?  Well, you’re looking at $750 for each of those ads.  The Adsense one will make $750 a month and the private advertiser will make you $750 a month.  But, let’s ask a question…Are you guaranteed to get 100 clicks a day?  Are you guaranteed to get a quarter a click per click?  No.  But you are guaranteed to get $750 if that’s the cost of that ad space.

Do you see now why I am a strong proponent of private advertising?  You get all the money and you’re guaranteed this money every month.  You’re not paying commission to someone else and you’re not fluctuating day to day on your earnings.  You know at the beginning of the month about how much you’ll make based on how many advertisers you have.  That gives you the ability to invest correctly.

Your goal should be to get private advertisers when your blog gets to the point of achieving that success.  It’s tough, but possible.

As I said in my article about link building, there are two types of traffic I refer to.  The first is organic traffic which is the traffic that comes from search engine and the other is the type of traffic that is referred to from another site, whether it be direct traffic, social networking sites (like stumble, digg) and or just another website.  Obviously you can break the traffic down into more specific types, but those are the two real generic types.

Each one has its own benefits and each one has its pluses and minuses.  But, mostly importantly, each one is necessary for your site to really grow big.  You won’t have the best success possible if you’re lacking in one of those departments.  Have only organic traffic and you’ll be missing out on a huge market in the social bookmarking area and have only that and you’re missing out on a huge market in organic traffic.  So, strive for both.  But, here are the pros and cons of each.

Organic Traffic:

Pro: It converts best when you’re using Adsense and the such because they are very targeted readers.

Pro: Because the traffic is very targeted, you are sure to get people to subscribe to your feed.

Con: It is very hard to get indexed on the front page where most of that traffic is going to come.  For very competitive terms, this can take forever.

Con: You’re relying on very few places to get you your traffic.  If you’re banned from one, your traffic can die.

Referred Traffic:

Pro: The amount of work it takes to get front paged on digg or to get a bunch of stumbles is a lot easier than that of getting on the first page of Google.

Pro: The exposure from all those sites means that if a link is removed from one site, your traffic won’t suddenly collapse.

Con: It isn’t as good at converting in comparison to organic traffic.

Con: The traffic is not always the most targeted, especially when dealing with social media sites.

So, as you can see, there are pros and cons to both.  Which is better?  I’ll leave that up to you to decide.  However, I will tell you that from my own experience, a mix of both really is the best bet.  Getting some good organic traffic with some good ‘referred’ traffic will mean that you are taking from all the different pots and that’s where the ultimate success comes in.  But, if you had to choose, which would you want more?  Leave a comment letting us know!

After the first search engine news post we will continue with more editions of SE news! It is always interesting to know what is going on in the search engine world! That is why today we bring you edition 2!

Industry click fraud rate holds at 16.2 percent

The overall industry average click fraud rate was 16.2 percent for Q2 2008. That’s down slightly from the 16.3 percent rate reported for Q1 2008 and up from the 15.8 percent click fraud rate reported for Q2 2007. The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks, including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, was 27.6 percent.

Google Knol is open to everyone

The key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. It’s their knol, their voice, their opinion. We expect that there will be multiple knols on the same subject, and we think that is good.

New Google toolbar PageRanks coming

Matt Cutts is letting us know that a new toolbar PageRank values should become visible over the next few days. He also expects that in the next few days some older penalties on websites will be expiring. This might be good news for guys like David who got heavily penalized a while ago!

You have probably heard numerous times that you don’t want to throw all your eggs in one basket and earn only from Adsense.  I agree with that.  But, forget the fact that more and more people are getting frustrated with Adsense because of the decrease in the amount of money we’re making per click and look at the ease in which Adsense can be added to your blog.  More importantly, though, look at the problem that can come from that ease.

Signing up for Adsense is as easy as one, two, three.  Hell, I don’t even remember what is required.  If I can remember, they actually approve you and it’s not an instanteous approval.  But, I might be wrong.  Regardless, signing up is basic and before you know it, you’ve got your ads and you are plugging them on your blog looking to make a ton of money.  Suddenly you realize that you’re not going to make as much as you had first expected.  What happened?

You thought Adsense was your ultimate solution to success.  I’ve found, unfortunately, that Adsense is not the most productive when it comes to blogs; however, it is effective when your blog is small and you’re just looking to make a little money everyday.  So, it’s ideal for those small bloggers that just want to see some money starting to come in.  Unfortunately, the dream of money can corrupt us and we don’t see the bigger picture.

What happens when your blog finally becomes bigger?  How do you know when to expand?  If you rely entirely on Adsense, that thought of easy money will get in the way of you making that necessary jump from using a company like Google to doing your own private advertising.  As you can see on this blog, we don’t use Adsense.  Why?  The real money is in private advertising.

The point I am trying to make, in a weird sort of way, is that while Adsense can be effective on your blog (if you use it correctly), you cannot get comfortable and you cannot settle with whatever Adsense earns for you.  If you want to earn more, experiment.  Try different things out.  Go ahead and throw up an affiliate offer.  Try and sell some 125×125s.  If you start there and begin to grow, you’ll see your earnings grow a lot.  Don’t be sucked into the thought of easy money with Adsense.  The money is much better when you use Adsense only as a compliment to other earnings.

So, we’ve created this killer blog or forum or content site or ecommerce site or…Well…That’s a lot of or’s.  Let’s just say, we’ve created our website.  Cool right?  Good.  Now, there are two types of traffic I want to quickly mention what each type is.  The first is organic which comes search engines.  The other is referred traffic (as I call it) which comes from another site like Digg, Stumble, or even just another blog.  The most beneficial traffic you can have is organic.

Because of that, we want to target it as much as we can.  When you see these people saying their site makes $100 a day from Adsense, it’s not because of return visitors, it’s because of that organic traffic.  They are click happy and they are the ones you want to target if you run a site where Adsense is big.  This blog is different…No Adsense.  So, we target traffic in general.  But, if you were looking to get that organic traffic, you need to get ranked in the search engines.  How?  Build links.  So, I’m going to take you into my head and let you see what I do when I am link building.  Come along on the journey.

Step One: Find Same Niche Sites

The first thing I do is go out and look for the blogs that are in a similar niche.  Therefore, on this blog, I went in search of: JohnChow.com, JohnCow.com, ProBlogger.net, etc, etc…But, don’t just stick to the big blogs.  Find the little blogs as well.  Why?  They’re links to.  Put together as many of these sites as you can.  If you can only find ten in your niche, write them all down in a word document.  If you can find fifty, write them down. You want to have as many as you can so you can prepare your campaign.

Step Two: Find High PR Directories

Look, I think page rank is ridiculous…Unfortunately, a ton of people think it is the WORLD.  Because of that, you want to have it.  To get it, you need to find directories that have good page rank.  Try to find directories that are going to let you deep link as well.  Having a high PR home page is great.  Having page rank on your inner pages…Even greater.  If you can find about ten of these, you’re pretty good.  Granted, more is better, but in one day, stick to ten.

Step Three: Get to Work

This is where you begin commenting and submitting your blog to the directories.  Make sure your comments are good.  Whether they come from a do_follow or no_follow blogs, make them good and link back with the keyword you want to rank for.  According to a test by Jon Waraas, Google still indexes with no follow links.  So, get them.  Comment with good comments…I’ll write a post later on about what makes a good comment and a bad comment.

The next step is to submit to the directories.  Since you’re going to hopefully be deep linking to a few of your stories, do some research and find what keywords are searched a lot that correlate to that story.  If you can get those keywords to rank well for you, your stories will bring in more traffic.  There’s nothing better than a deep linked article getting traffic for you.  That’s money in the bank, baby…That’s money in the bank.

Watch and Enjoy

The truth of the matter is this…Link building sucks, but it’s effective.  In any given day, I am building links for any of my five different websites.  Why?  Links are necessary.  If you spend a total of six hours working on ONE blog, spend a good bulk of that time writing content, but spend at least one hour a day commenting and building links back to your blog.  You won’t see it today…You won’t see it tomorrow.  But in six months or a year, the benefits of you building all those links will be tremendous.

Is it full proof?  Of course not.  But, as you can see from the strategy I use, it does build links.  The blogs will appreciate it because they are getting comments.  The directories will appreciate it because they’re getting submissions.  And you’ll love it because you’re ranking for the keywords you want.  It’s effective, but it can get boring.  So, try and find that discipline to get the work done.  Links will bring traffic.  And links will get you indexed and ranked better.  It’s really as simple as that.

A new search engine with the name Cuil.com launched yesterday. Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge and it is pronounced “cool”. Could Cuil be the new Google killer that so many companies tried to build?

What’s special about Cuil?

During the past few years, many search engines have tried to be the next Google. None of them has succeeded. The difference between these companies and Cuil is the team that stand behind the project:

* Anna Patterson: worked on Google’s search index
* Russell Power: worked on Google’s search index
* Louis Monier: founder of the AltaVista search engine
* Tom Costello: worked on IBM’s WebFountain project.

The team behind Cuil knows search very well and they have worked behind the scenes at Google and other major search providers.

Why does Cuil think that it’s better than Google?

Cuil has four major claims with which it wants to distinguish itself from Google:

1. Cuil claims to have the biggest index

Cuil claims that its index is bigger than Google’s and that this is necessary if you want to return relevant results for topics that aren’t very popular.

2. Cuil thinks that popularity is not as important as Google says

If Cuil’s concept of indexing succeeds, PageRank and linking might be a thing of the past. Cuil thinks that popularity is useful but not for very complex searches. According to their website, Cuil tries to analyze the content of web pages and to put it into a greater context.

3. Cuil uses a new results page format

CuilInstead of a long list, Cuil returns the results in three columns and it adds images to the search results when possible. Cuil also offers roll-over definitions and offers ideas to refine your search.

4. Cuil does not collect user data

In contrast to other search engines, Cuil does not log any personally identifiable information. IP addresses, names or cookies are not stored.