1. Quit wasting time with things that are never going to produce. This is the hardest one for me. I have a couple of web sites and Squidoo lenses on topics that I’m very passionate about. Some of them have even made it to the first page of Google search results. Unfortunately they don’t get much traffic. After doing some research on search terms and keywords I figured out why – not very many people are interested in the subject.
2. Get serious about Adsense. A lot of people think you can’t make much with Adsense – I certainly haven’t made much. However, today I found a site with some excellent writing on the subject of making money with Adsense. I will be doing some serious work this year on it, with the goal of making $100 a month from Adsense by the end of the year.
3. Get serious about Squidoo. Squidoo pays their lensmasters in a tier system. A tier 3 lens makes $0.13 per month and a tier 2 lens makes about $2.68 per month (this doesn’t count sales through affiliate modules). I don’t have any tier 1 lenses, but if the numbers Squidoo shows are accurate, I figure a tier 1 lens should pay at least $125 per month.
4. Get serious about EBay Partner Network (EPN). My earnings with EPN started being regular in October. I have just 1 site in a very small niche and it looks like it’s shaping up to be a reliable $25 per month or more. I’ve been doing a little research and I’ve found a couple more niches that should do much better for me.
5. Implement Pot Pie Girl’s One Week Marketing Plan. I’m ashamed to say (but not too proud to admit) that I’ve gotten suckered into buying several Ebooks that purport to help you make money online. With one lone exception all of them were/are PURE CRAP. The one exception is the One Weeek Marketing Plan by Pot Pie Girl. It has a lot of solid information and tips, and I think it has a lot of potential. Last year I didn’t make the effort to implement her plan. This year I definitely will.
6. Learn a lot about keyword research, keyword terms, and SEO. More importantly, taking the time to practice what I learn. For my main sites, for example, I want to add 1 quality inbound link per week. At the end of the year, each site will have at least 52 good inbound links.
7. Write about all of it here, so anyone accidentally finding this sight won’t waste time and money making the same mistakes I’ve made.

If I actually do all of these, I figure there’s a pretty good chance I’ll be making a steady $600 per month on line. Not a lot, maybe some would call it a pittance, but it would be enough to let me cut 1 day a week from my job, giving me an extra day a week to be with my family. That’s enough for me.

Sincerely,

Xiaohua

If you want backlinks (and you do), you need them to be good backlinks. You can’t beg, borrow, or steal good backlinks, but you CAN build them. There are many free platforms where you can post about whatever topic your page is about. Squidoo has been very good to me. I’m also experimenting with HubPages and multiply, both of them look promising.

I have two sites that get the majority of my traffic. Both of these have click rates of around 0.4%. One of them is an Alumni site for my old High School and the other documents my activities in one of my hobbies. Putting a lot of time into the High School Alumni site is probably a waste of effort. Even though it’s in the first position of Google search results for a certain term (high school name alumni), the content doesn’t lend itself to targeted Google ads, and the people visiting the page are interested in connecting with former classmates, not buying something. My hobby site also ranks well for certain search terms, but the vast majority of the traffic is to one specific page that happens to have EBay listings (more on that next time). I don’t want to mess around with it too much and screw up my EBay earnings.

The two sites with fairly good click rates don’t rank well in Google but still manage to draw a fair amount of traffic. They are also about subjects that have better potential both for traffic and well targeted Google ads than my other sites. It would be better to optimize these sites according to Adsense guidelines and try to increase traffic. I also just launched a new web site that has excellent potential for traffic and targeted ads. I’m anxious to see how it does over time. It would be nice to earn $100 each month instead of $100 every 28 months.

Sincerely,

Xiaohua

Sincerely,

Xiaohua

Put husband’s sci fun site online Friday, he needs to start filling in with actual content. Not a monetized site, he says he just wants 100 to 150 unique visitors a day. Worked on Categories for this site, starting today I’m also tagging all my posts as well.

1. Pick a subject you’re passionate about
2. Choose and register a cool domain name
3. Pick a hosting company and install your blogging platform (WordPress for example)
4. Monetize your blog with Adsense, affiliate products, etc
5. Start blogging and wait for all that money to start flowing in

Easy, huh? Yes it is, and it’s true that just about anyone can do it. It’s cheap to get started, too. Registering a domain name only costs about $10, and a hosting plan that is more than good enough to get you started can be had for less than $5 a month. What are you waiting for? You haven’t made your first $million yet? Well, not so fast…

Unfortunately the devil’s in the details. First of all, what are you passionate about? Are you passionate about making money online? If that’s what you’re planning on blogging about, you’re starting out at about 42,000,oooth place. Are you passionate about toe nail fungus? Yes? Well, that’s nice but it will be a pretty difficult subject to monetize. Then there’s the matter of traffic. Just because you put up a blog on an amazing subject and fill it with wonderful information doesn’t mean you’re going to get all kinds of traffic. Without traffic, you won’t make money. Period. Blogging isn’t any easy road to riches and it surely isn’t a get rich quick scheme. Don’t believe me? Check out what a successful blogger has to say on the subject.

Does this mean you shouldn’t blog? No. In fact it doesn’t even mean that you shouldn’t try to earn money from blogging. What it does mean is that you shouldn’t get suckered into spending your hard earned money on books, EBooks or “marketing plans” that promise you the moon and deliver nothing. Most of the information you’ll find in a $47 EBook (which of course comes with wonderful product x, y, and z, a $500 value included absolutely free) is a rehash of information you could get for free on the Internet. There are exceptions, but they’re few and far between. I’m working with one right now that looks promising, if it pans out I’ll tell you about it here.

Sincerely,

Xiaohua

On June 11 and 12, I created 2 lenses. One is just a small lens about a park close to my house, Bodega Park. It’s a fun little lens but it doesn’t have a whole lot of information. It has been indexed by Google, and if you Google “Bodega Park,” my lens is in 3rd place on the first page of the search results. The other lens is one about the health benefits of walking to lose weight. It’s a much longer lens with lots of good info on the health benefits of walking, tips on where to walk and how to find the time, etc. In other words, it has a lot more information than the Bodega lens. Also, I’ve put links to it on several other sites I have. The result? Google knows about it, but it’s stuck in their supplementary index.

My other 3 lenses are a little more recent. On Sept 29 I made a fun little cooking lens on green fried tomatoes and another lens on my VitaMix blender. The third lens is about how to choose a web hosting plan. All 3 lenses have been pinged, submitted to Feedage.com and Feedest.com, and have at least one back link. So far, Google has not indexed them even though it has visited the sites with the back links. So, I’m a little confused. All of them have good content, I guess I need to work more on link building.

<!– begin footer –>

<div style=”clear:both;”></div>
<div style=”clear:both;”></div>

<div id=”footer”>
Copyright &copy; 2007 <a href=”<?php echo get_settings(‘home’); ?>/”><?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?></a> &bull; Using <a href=”http://themes.performancing.com” >Modernpaper</a> theme created by <a href=”http://performancing.com” >Performancing</a>
</div>

<?php do_action(‘wp_footer’); ?>

</body>
</html>

In Desk Mess’ footer.php file, the line in red is missing. Because of that, Wordpress doesn’t process the footer correctly and the Analytics code isn’t added in as it should be. Adding the missing line to footer.php causes Wordpress to correctly process the footer, and Analytics tracking is working correctly again – problem solved. If only they were all so easy…

One easy way to get started making money on line is by signing up for a Squidoo account. Is it really possible to make money through Squidoo? The answer is an emphatic YES. My husband is a Squidoo addict with about 20 lenses, none of which have really heavy traffic – his total traffic for all lenses averages about 8 visits per day – in other words, the average traffic per lens is only about 1 visit every other day. Yet, for the month of August he earned $63.79. Granted, about $40 of that was from a single expensive purchase from an EBay affiliate link on one of his lenses. Still, that means he earned over $20 for the month just from traffic to his lenses.

There are 2 ways (actually more, but that will be the topic of an upcoming post) to earn money from Squidoo – Adsense and Product modules. Any Squidoo lens you build will have Adsense ads, and Squidoo shares its Adsense revenue with the “lensmasters.” The amount that is shared depends on each lens’ “lens rank,” a ranking determined by several factors, including popularity, earnings, and traffic of each lens. The second way to earn money is through optional Product Modules that you can put on your lenses. Squidoo itself is an affliate of many on line vendors, including Amazon, Cafe Press, EBay, and others. Any revenue generated from Product Modules on your lenses is shared at 50% no matter how low or high the lens rank is.

One of the nicest things about Squidoo is that the payout threshold can be set as low as $1.00 which is much lower than most affiliate programs. They pay directly to your Paypal account (so you’ll need one of those), and you can choose to donate some or all of your earnings to charity. The other nice thing is that it’s absolutely free to sign up. Nothing to buy, no credit card required, etc. It is also extremely easy to set up a lens. I mean if my husband can do it…

If you’ve been thinking about making money on line, it is certainly worth a try, especially considering there is absolutely no cost (other than your time) or risk involved. All you need to do is sign up for a Squidoo account and start cranking out lenses. I’ve dabbled a little myself, and while I don’t have any earnings yet (but then I’ve done nothing to promote my lenses) it is a lot of fun.

Cheers,

Xiaohua