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

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