Blogging Goals for 2010 – Make Money Online

Last year turned out to be an OK year – the first year I actually made money on line. I made a little over $20 on Squidoo, about $30 with Google Adsense, and $97 from EBay Partner Network (counting December earnings I made $128 for the year, but December earnings don’t payout until Jan 25). Not too bad considering that most of it was accidental. Well, I did work hard on my Squidoo lenses without much result to show for it. Now that I know it’s possible to make money I’m ready to put a lot more time and effort into it. My online money making goals are:

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

Tags: Adsense, Blogging Goals, EBay Partner Network, EPN, MMO, Squidoo

Building Backlinks

When it comes to building backlinks, some ways are definitely better than others. Buying backlinks is probably the worst way. Not only will it cost you money, but it might actually hurt you ranking with search engines. IMHO, link exchanges aren’t much better. What you need just as much (maybe more) than quantity is QUALITY. So, how do you get QUALITY links? With work. You may have heard that making money online is easy. Probably the person you heard it from is a:been doing it a long time (so of course it’s easy… for them), b:lying, c:trying to sell you something, or d:both b and c are correct.

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.

Google Adsense Earnings

Is it possible to make money online? You bet!!! In fact, I have several sites set up with Google Adsense, and I’ve made… about $32 total since last February. Since their payout threshold is $100, I figure I only have about 19 more months before my big payout. Actually, that’s not fair to Google. None of my sites are optimized, and most aren’t even about topics that would lend themselves to doing well in an Adsense campaign. Most of the sites average about 0.4% to 0.5% click rate on the Adsense ads. One site is around 2% though, and another is almost at almost 3%. The question is, what should I do to increase my earnings? Obviously I should work at increasing traffic, but what is the best use of my time?

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

Make Money Online

What does the phrase “Make Money Online” mean? Many people, when they hear the phrase “Make Money Online,” think of blogging. Googling “blogging for money” returns over 42 million results. Many books, EBooks, etc are also available on blogging for money. In order to sell, many of these books make wild claims about how easy it is, how much money you’ll make, how soon you’ll start making money, blah blah blah. Most of it is a bunch of crap. The one thing they’re correct about is yes, it’s easy to set up a blog for making money. To save you from wasting your money, I’ll give away the secret for blogging your way to riches right now:

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

Make Money On Line with Squidoo

One of the problems with a affiliate programs is that unless you have the money to buy the product before you selling, it’s hard to promote it with any credibility. After all, how can you honestly promote a product if you haven’t actually used it? Another problem is the need to give up your SSN in order to sign up for some affiliate programs, though this problem can be avoided by obtaining a Taxpayer ID number.

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

Tags: MMO, Squidoo

Making Money with Affiliate Programs?

Do you want to make money on line? Thinking of signing up for an affiliate program? Maybe you want to sign up for several of them, or a lot. Everyone is making money, so why not you? Not so fast… Yes, it’s true, some people are making money on line with affiliate programs. Most people signing up for these programs aren’t making money though, and may even be exposing themselves to a very high risk of identity theft.

“Make Money On Line.” It sounds so easy, doesn’t it? Just buy our product, sign up for our affiliate program, create a web site with our pre-built templates (a $500 value included absolutely free), and sit back and watch the money start rolling in. Who wouldn’t want to make money like this?

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. There are several problems with this “plan.” The first problem is that you’re spending money on a product you know absolutely nothing about (except for what you read in the ad copy). Second, you have no way of knowing how to generate traffic to your sales site, especially when your site is competing for page rank with the sites of the thousands of others (supposedly) selling this product successfully. Finally, you may be exposing personal financial information to a company you know little or nothing about.

I believe it is possible to make money on line, but only if you plan – not just for business, but also to protect yourself. Your fisrt step should be to obtain a Taxpayer ID number from the IRS. Obtaining a Taxpayer ID number will allow you to sign up for affiliate programs without disclosing your Social Security number. This is important to help prevent identity theft.