Quick Tip – Where Not To Display Adsense Ads

Today’s Making Money Online “Quick Tip” is going to real quick. When selling your own product or promoting affiliate products, DON’T put ads for your competition on the same pages you are trying to promote those products on.

I purchased a course online today, and I was having some issues downloading the product in the membership area… so I sent the merchant a support ticket. Well I have been interested in buying some type of Support Ticket Software for the last few months, but have never really done much research yet. The software the merchant was using seemed to work pretty well, so I decided to check it out… so I clicked on the referral link on the bottom of the page.

When I got to the Support Ticket Software site and read the features, it had all the functions that I desired, and they offered a FREE 30 Day Trial Version… which I liked. Once the 30 day trial was over it would cost $39.95 to purchase it, which I found pretty reasonable for this type of software.

I actually liked everything about the website; the design and graphics looked very professional, the sales copy and features were great… it just contained one “SALES LOSING” feature. It had Adsense ads across the top and down the right side of their sales page which displayed links to a lot of their competitors. Every single ad was for some other Support Software. To me, that tells me that these guys don’t really believe in their product, so why should I? I was planning on mentioning the company here, but I really don’t want to give them negative publicity, as their product does seem pretty good. I did however send them an email telling them why I did not purchase their software, and it will be interesting to see if they make any changes.

I have seen lots of people that are selling stuff online do this over the years, and it just doesn’t seem very smart. Sure, they are making a little bit of money if someone clicks on those ads, but they are losing the potential of so much more. Not only are they going to probably lose a sale, but they are also going to lose the ability to sell that person anything else in the future… which everyone knows is where the real money is at.

So my making money online tip is…. Don’t display Adsense or similar type ads on pages or posts where you are trying to sell a particular product, as you are just promoting the competition.

Would Love Your Vote for the “Rookie Blogger of the Year” Award

Hi everyone. This is be a quick post asking for a HUGE (but easy to accomplish) favor. This site Making Money Online is in a contest to win the “Rookie Blogger of the Year” award over at TycoonBlogger.com and we would love your vote if possible. We are actually up against several great blogs, so if you think one of them deserves it more, we totally understand if you vote for one of them. But if you really like what we are doing here, and you think we deserve to win… we would really appreciate your vote.

To vote, simply go to http://tycoonblogger.com/featured-articles/vote-now-for-the-rookie-blogger-of-the-year and make your selection. We are listed in the sidebar on the right side. Just check the circle just above our thumbnail and select “Vote” and you are done.

We would like to thank Dan, (the owner of TycoonBlogger) for all the hard work in putting this contest together and honoring us with a chance to win Rookie Blogger of the Year!

Also, we would like to send out a BIG THANKS to all of YOU! We really appreciate all the support you have given us so far and we hope you like what we are doing with this site so far. If you ever have any suggestions, we would love to hear them!

A Newbies Journey to Making Money Online (Part 4)

“Getting Started Series” (Part 1d) – A Newbies Journey to Making Money Online… Lessons Learned!

(…continued for Part 1c which you should read first)

I am sure that story ended a little abruptly for many of you, and I am sorry… but I know more than a few people that have had very similar stories to Johnny’s, and that’s how their making money online journey ended… they just gave up. I have spoken with lots of people that have started online businesses over the years, and many of them have had very similar experiences to Johnny’s. Some of them made it to a year or more, while others gave up in only a month, but their stories each ended the same.

Now I did not write this to discourage you from starting an online business, but I wanted to show you the fate of a large percent of the people that start out trying to make money online. Hopefully you can learn from Johnny’s mistakes (which we will go over) and that will “hopefully” help you in starting your online venture. So let’s go over some of the things that Johnny did wrong…

He jumped at the first thing that came along – Johnny did no research whatsoever when he started out. He typed in the search term, “Making Money Online” into Google and clicked on an ad saying he can earn $25,000 a month sitting on the beach… and he was sold. If Johnny were smart, he would have done a lot more investigating before jumping into any business. He could have visited blogs and forums to see what other ways people are making money online to see what the best fit for him was. There are lots of ways to make money online, and if you are looking to make a lot of money fast… it most likely will not happen as a blogger. I’m not saying you can’t make a lot of money blogging, because it is definitely possible, but it takes time and a lot of work… and it’s not for everyone.

He chose a niche he knew nothing about – Here’s a big mistake a lot of bloggers and internet marketers make, and Johnny did as well. Johnny chose a niche that he thought would make him the most money, even though he knew nothing at all about the subject. When starting an online or offline business you want to start one in a niche you really know well and hopefully love. One of my favorite quotes is, “Do what you love, and the money will follow”. Why not start your online venture in a business you are passionate about, so you can enjoy the time and effort you put into it?

He put no time or effort into choosing a domain name – Choosing a good domain name is a very important step when starting your business and Johnny put no time or effort into it at all. There are many factors to be considered when selecting a domain… which we will go over in more detail later in this Getting Started series. Let’s just say that Johnny’s way of grabbing the first domain that he found available probably wasn’t the best way to go.

He had unreal expectations – Okay… Johnny was a little mislead by the blogging course’s sales page, as he thought he would start making money online right away. He and every one of you just starting out (on your online adventure) needs to know that making money online takes time and effort on your part. There is no getting around it. There might be that one in a zillion person that stumbles across some huge money maker with not much effort, but the odds of that happening are like you winning the lottery. So before you get started you need to know that it will take a while until you start making a lot of money online and you will have to work to accomplish it… and not everyone will. As for me, I would recommend giving yourself at least a year before you see any significant amount of income coming in… especially for you bloggers out there.

He had no kind of schedule – When Johnny started out… he started with a bang. Some nights after he got home from his 9 to 5 day job he would stay up until 3am working on his online business. The next day at work he would be tired all day… which would make the job he didn’t like even less enjoyable to be at. What happened to Johnny happens to many new internet entrepreneurs. They start out working super hard, (putting in a ton of hours) and when success doesn’t come fast… they slowly start getting discouraged, and each week start putting in less and less time and effort into their business.

The smart thing to do is to create a schedule for yourself right from the beginning. Decide how many hours you want to put into your online venture each night and what days you want to take off… and try and stick to that the best you can. Maybe put 2 – 4 hours a night aside to work on your business and take the weekends off… it is totally up to you. Just don’t burn yourself out!

As a blogger you might want to put certain days aside to write posts and other days to leave comments and work on other tasks. It is a good practice to publish your posts on a consistent schedule, so your readers know what days to expect a new post from you. You can post once a week, every day of the week, or any amount in between… just try and keep it consistent each week.

For the internet marketers and the rest of you… you also want to create a schedule for your business activities. If you have a project that needs to be completed on a certain date… divide it up in manageable sections and give yourself a certain amount of time each night to complete each task. That is way easier then trying to get as much stuff as you can do… done in one night.

Throwing in the towel too soon – You hear these types of stories all the time… where someone was just about to give up on their business and it finally becomes super successful, and then others that gave up just before their businesses was about to take off. Now in Johnny’s case, could he have made his business work? Probably… but it would have taken a lot of time and a lot of effort on his part. I think it was better that Johnny stopped working on that particular project and hopefully he finds something to do that he really enjoys.

Hopefully you learned a few things from this story. I didn’t write it to discourage anyone from doing whatever they want to do to make money online. I wrote it to help you avoid some of the pitfalls that many new and old online entrepreneurs fall into when they start their online ventures.

Next in my “Getting Started” series I will go over some of the basics things you will need to know to get online business started like; how to choose your niche, registering a domain name, getting your domain hosted, what type of website you should start, some simple techniques to start making money online, etc…

A Newbies Journey to Making Money Online (Part 3)

“Getting Started Series” (Part 1c) – A Newbies Journey to Making Money Online

(…continued for Part 1b which you should read first)

So Johnny steps up his commenting. That night when he gets home from work he gets on his computer and starts searching for every making money online blog he can find. On each blog he writes well thought out and useful comments, as that is what it recommends in his blogging course. Before he knows it is 3AM and he has to get up in a few hours to go to work. So Johnny heads for bed, but this time he is so tired he has no problem falling asleep.

The next day at work he is dragging all day, but he is excited to get home to see if all his hard work from the night before has brought him in some cash, as he has still not made any money yet. When he gets home he sees over 20 new comments in moderation ready to be approved, so he approves all of them.

He then checks his Adsense account and affiliate accounts and he has still not made any money whatsoever. Now he is starting to get a little bummed, as he has been doing this for almost a couple of weeks now with nothing to show but some nice comments on his blog.

Well Johnny (though a little frustrated) continues following the same steps for the next couple of weeks, as he is at least starting to build some traffic. He has also learned from reading a lot of other blogs… that in reality it takes a while to start making money online.

During this time Johnny actually starts earning some money with Adsense. Nothing much though…. 17 cents one day, 40 cents another, even one day he made over a dollar, but most of the days nothing. By the end of his first full month Johnny made a grand total of $4.89 from Adsense and nothing from his affiliate programs. Not the kind of money Johnny was hoping for when he first started.

Johnny is really getting frustrated now, as he is putting in way more time than he thought he would when he started, and he is really having a hard time coming up with new things to write about. He thinks to himself, “This blogging thing isn’t as easy as they said it was in the blogging course, and it really isn’t that much fun either”. Also, his day job is getting even harder to go to… as he is so tired from putting in all the long hours into his new Internet business.

Now Johnny’s really thinking about throwing in the towel (only after a month), but he decides to stick it out a little while longer, as he told all his friends and family how rich he was going to become making money online. So Johnny continues running his blog, but with a lot less enthusiasm than when he started. He starts posting less often, and he pretty much gives up on commenting all together as it takes him too much time and it isn’t making him any money.

Finally after 3 months from when he started, Johnny has had enough. With a total of just over $10 in his Adsense account and no other income to speak of, Johnny says to himself… “This blogging stuff sucks” and he calls it quits.

THE END OF THE STORY, BUT THE BEGINNING OF SOME VALUABLE LESSONS…

(Click Here to read what lessons have been learned by Johnny’s first online venture. There are MANY!)

A Newbies Journey to Making Money Online (Part 2)

“Getting Started Series” (Part 1b) – A Newbies Journey to Making Money Online

(…continued for Part 1a which you should read first)

Well after a night of no sleep whatsoever Johnny heads to his 9 to 5 day job with a new bounce in his step, as he knows he will be turning in his resignation any day now.

Later that day when Johnny gets home from work… he rushes to his computer to start his journey to making money online.

He starts doing the things the course recommends… step-by-step! He chooses “Making Money Online” as his niche, as it seems like all the big successful gurus are making money blogging about it (even though he knows nothing at all about the topic). He then registers some “just okay” domain name, as he could not find any good ones available (in the 10 minutes he spent searching) for that particular niche.

After that… Johnny signs up for a hosting account, points his domain name to the webhost’s nameservers, installs WordPress (the blog platform) to his server (all things I will go over later) and he is ready to start blogging.

Johnny thinks to himself, “Wow that was a lot easier than I thought. This blogging stuff is easy!” Little does Johnny know.

So Johnny starts on his blogging venture. Since he doesn’t know much (okay… really nothing) about the topic of making money online, he starts reading all the blogs he can find on the subject and starts writing about similar topics for his blog. Once the site has a little content, he applies for a Google Adsense account as recommended in the course he purchased. A couple days later, after he has been approved, he starts adding Adsense code to his site. Again, he does exactly what the course says… he adjusts the color of his ads to blend in with his blog and he places the ads in just the right spots to get the maximum amount of clicks.

He then searches to see what affiliate products and services other bloggers in his niche are promoting on their sites, and he signs up for many of those affiliate programs as well. He then adds a bunch of the banner ads the affiliate merchants provided him to his blog. Now Johnny website is really starting to look nice, and he is getting more and more excited about all the money he knows he is about to start making.

It’s late and Johnny still has his 9 to 5 job to report to in the morning, so he heads off to bed. Again, he has a real hard time sleeping as he can’t wait to see how much money he has earned while lying in bed. He knows the cool thing about running an online business is… you can earn money 24 hours a day, even while you are sleeping!

Fortunately, he does manage to get a few hours of sleep this time. When Johnny wakes up the next morning… the first thing that he does is he hops on his computer to see how much money he has earned. He signs into his Adsense account and looks at his numbers and sees he didn’t even make one penny last night. Even worse, it looks like only one person visited his site while he slept. He quickly logs into his different affiliate accounts and he sees that none of his banner ads got any clicks either. He is a bit disappointed, but he figures most people are on the same schedule as he is and his site would probably do better during the daytime hours. So back to his 9 to 5 job he goes.

When Johnny gets home later that day from work… the first thing he does is he gets on his computer to check and see how much money he has made so far that day. Again disappointment hits Johnny, as he has still has not made any money, and it looks like he only had one visitor all day long. Johnny thinks to himself, “How can this be? I have a beautiful website, with a lot of great content… why aren’t people visiting?”

Johnny decides he probably should do some of the “Traffic Generating” techniques (which he was hoping to avoid) in his blogging course. So he visits other blogs in his “making money online” niche and starts commenting on other blogger’s posts. He also starts visiting different forums and leaves replies on different thread posts with a link back to his site in his signature file. He also wants to try guest blogging and article marketing… but he really doesn’t know that much about the subject (Making Money Online), and he barely has enough time to write 2 or 3 posts a week for his blog, so that is definitely not going to happen. He figures he will getting around to those other traffic generating techniques sometime down the road when he is not working his day job anymore.

Amazingly, right after Johnny started commenting on other blogs and replying to forum thread posts he starts to see some traffic to his site. People are actually commenting on his blog as well. Johnny is really excited now, as he thinks he has found the secret to success!

(Click Here to read what happens with the rest of Johnny’s first online venture)

A Newbies Journey to Making Money Online (Part 1)

“Getting Started Series” (Part 1a) – A Newbies Journey to Making Money Online

In part one of my “Getting Started” series I want to share with you one of the key secrets to making money online. Seriously, if more people knew this secret and followed it each day, there would be so many more people making money online. The great thing about this secret is it actually works in anything you do in life, but unfortunately (for some reason)… even if people know the secret, most don’t use it on a consistent basis.

Now many Internet Marketers (but not all) don’t want you to know about this secret, because… if everyone knew the secret, there would be a lot less people buying their “Get Rich Quick” products, and they would be making a LOT LESS MONEY.

So are you ready to know what the secret is? The secret is… “MAKING MONEY ONLINE TAKES HARD WORK AND DEDICATION, JUST LIKE ANY OTHER BUSINESS”. That’s the secret!

That is an important lesson to remember, as I have known so many people (over the last 10 years that I have been doing this)… that thought making money online was suppose to be easy. Let me give you an example of a typical unsuccessful online entrepreneur’s journey, so hopefully you can avoid a similar fate.

For this example I am going to give this “wanna get rich quick entrepreneur, without much effort” the name… Johnny.

Johnny has been reading lots articles and seeing news stories lately on how all these people (young and old) are getting rich online by starting these simple Internet businesses. Well Johnny wants to get rich too, and he hates his regular 9 to 5 job, so he decides to investigate what people are doing to make all this money online.

So Johnny jumps on Google and does a search for “Making Money Online”. Well there are just a ton of results that pop up, but one catches his eye. Over on the right side he sees an ad that says, “I make $25K a Month Blogging on the Beach with My Laptop and so can You!”. He thinks to himself… “Now that is the kind of business I want to have” and he clicks on the ad.

He is taken to this great looking website with a picture of this guy sitting on the beach, with a Mai Tai and a beautiful woman next to him, and a computer on his lap. Also on the page is a photo of his multi-million dollar mansion, with a few of his exotic 100K-plus cars parked out front.

As Johnny reads the long sale-page, he becomes almost in a trance on how easy and fast it was for this guy to start making 25K a month, and Johnny knows he is a lot smarter than that guys is, so this should be easy. On top of that, there are a dozen testimonials telling Johnny how great this course is and how they are all making a ton of money too, as a result of taking this course.

As Johnny scrolls down the page farther he comes to the “FREE Bonuses” section where they are offering over $1400 in free eBooks and videos (10 extra products total) if he purchases the course by midnight tonight. Now Johnny is really intrigued, as all the bonus products sound AWESOME and he really wants each one.

Finally Johnny makes it down to the section with the price of the course, which is only $47. “Wow”… Johnny is thinking. “The course is only $47, and it is going to teach me how to make over $25K a month online, plus I am going to get over $1400 in free bonuses, which are also going to help me make even more money online. Then on top of that, they are offering a 60-Day “No Questions Asked” Money Back Guarantee. How can Johnny say “No”?

So Johnny clicks the “Buy Now” button, pulls out his credit card and places his order. In most cases this would not be the end of the ordering process. Most of the time when buying these types of products Johnny would be introduced to several up-sell promotions before he actually ever gets to the product download page, but we will save that story for another day. For this example Johnny is just going to purchase the “How to Make Money Online Blogging” course (with the free bonuses), and that’s it.

Once the order has been completed Johnny is taken to the product download page. Since everything is in digital format… each product needs to be downloaded individually. So Johnny downloads the course and the other 10 bonus products to his computer one by one… which seems to take forever!

Finally all the products are downloaded and Johnny can open his making money online course on blogging. As Johnny reads the course from front to back he grows more and more excited on how easy it sounds to start making money. He actually reads it twice to make sure he doesn’t miss a thing. That night while he lies in bed, there is not a chance he is going to get a wink of sleep… as his mind is just racing with different thoughts of how he is going to be so rich, and he envisions all the cool things he will be buying in the next couple of months when the money starts rolling in.

(Click Here to read what happens with the rest of Johnny’s first online venture)

Making Money Online Dot Com’s “Getting Started” Series

We have been receiving a lot of emails here at Making Money Online lately asking us why we don’t explain the basics of how to get started online. For some reason when we started this site, we kinda started in the middle, instead of the beginning… as we assumed most of our visitors were somewhat experienced internet marketers and/or bloggers. From reading the emails, it appears many of our visitors are brand new to the Internet (who are known as newbies or noobs), so we are going to shift gears a little to let everyone catch up.

So for the next couple of weeks (at least), we are going to go over a lot of the basics when it comes to starting an online business. Topics like how to choose your niche, registering a domain name, getting your domain hosted, what type of website you should start with, some simple techniques to start making money online, etc… We are going to call this our “Getting Started” series!

Once the “Getting Started” series is completed… we will organize them on the site in some way so everyone will have easy access to them.

After that series is done we will start focusing on some more advanced techniques of making money online, as well as show you some other projects we are starting to work on to generate a nice monthly cash flow. Hopefully, not only will these projects help you with some ideas on how you can make some money… but we are hoping that in sharing what we are doing, you guys can help us in making these sites better and more profitable too.

Also… we eventually plan on making a video collection to go along with “Getting Started” series, but that probably won’t be happening until the end of this year or the beginning of next… so you will have to wait for those.

So stay tuned for Making Money Online Dot Com’s “Getting Started” series…

Pareto Principle: The Idea of Getting More through Less Effort

We have been taught, trained and possibly ‘brainwashed’ with the concept of in order to get what we want, we have to do more than the day before. For example, to get huge incomes through Internet, there are a lot of tips and advice… especially through ‘make money online’ blogs’ authors who consider themselves as experts, are also telling us the same thing.

However, there is one question for you – are those advice and tips are absolutely accurate?

I do always believe that there are always alternatives in everything that exist in this world as long as we keep looking for those alternatives and keep pushing ourselves to think outside our box.

There are always two sides for a coin, right?

What is Pareto Principle?

For me, there is an alternative for the idea of  ‘work more to earn more’. This alternative is called Pareto’s principle – a principle that was first introduced in 1906 by Vilfredo Pareto. This principle has also been called other various names such as; the Law of Vital Few, the 80/20 rule and the Factor of Sparsity.

Pareto invented this principle as the result of his simple observation – 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of population and vice versa. Through this, he realized that X amounts of efforts will not necessarily create X amount of good results – the result can be more than the X value or lesser than what we expected. He discovered there is the existence of imbalance element between the input and output equation and this element existed in the observations that he carried out in other countries through different situations.

The key of this principle is there is existence of imbalance element in the ‘input and output’ equation and if we can identify for the 20% portion of input that will create 80% of the output portion, we will able to work in more effective and efficient way. This is because we will not waste most of our time for the 80% portion of input that will only create 20% output portion.

However, the accuracy of the percentage is not the main idea – the imbalance element that matters. The portion can be turned to 1% into 80% or 40% into to 60%.

How can you integrate this principle into your site?

The first step that you must take is to install and integrate in any statistic plugin or toll that will help you to identify the efforts that generate the most returns in terms of incoming traffics or sales. The tools that I recommend are Google Analytics for incoming traffic statistic and MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate for affiliate sales tracking.

Through these tools, you will able to track the performance of your site.

My case study - Huzzer Magazine: WordPress Seems So Easy!

I have also integrated into the idea of this principle. This is because I know that only the small portion of my contents will attract huge traffic and due to this reason, I have used a few ways to push the articles that belongs to the ‘20%’ portion of input that will create ‘80%’ of output i.e. traffics for my blog to gain more exposure especially for the first time visitors. These are the steps that I have taken:

• Put up Most Popular Posts widget at the sidebar as this widget will help to push the best content of my blog as only the articles that most of people read will appear.
• I installed Yet Another Related Posts plugin and put it at the end of each articles as this will ensure that other articles that are less popular will get notified by my blog visitors and not just ‘died’.
• I will only focus in limited number of social networking buttons such as Twitter and Facebook which give me the most incoming links by putting their buttons in the beginning and end of my contents. By putting a lot of buttons, they definitely don’t have the amount of time to hit all of the buttons. We are asking for them for a favor – so let it be quick and easy!
• I use minimalist design approach for my site as it will help to retain readers’ attention. With ‘messy’ design, it will keep distracting our visitors as there are a lot of things to be seen rather than only our contents. Let our blog have proper structured so that our readers can read the article first, then see related articles that they may find interesting, hit the social networking buttons and finally leave comments. It is better if we do not change this standard flow.
• I have only minimal amount of sidebar widgets in my blog’s sidebar which are value added to the visitors. Our visitors’ main intention to come to our blog is to read the content that they are interested in – not to know what is our blog’s Alexa ranking or amount of spam that we have captured.

Pareto’s principle is a very flexible concept as it can be applied with anything and at anywhere. The most important thing that we must know is there is imbalance element in this world and if we can identify the factor that contribute to us more, we will able to earn more with less effort as we will know and possibly stop doing the stuff that consumes most of our time, but brings less returns.

I believe that great life comes not necessarily through a lot of effort. It comes when we take the right actions and consistently focusing on them.

This guest post is written by Helmi Asyraf Abdullah, the author of Huzzer Magazine – Wordpress Seems So Easy! He believes that there are always two sides of a coin which is the main reason he is supporting DoFollow commenting movement.

At the moment, he is offering 5 internet marketing tools and special gifts through his collaboration with Obox Design, premium themes developer for those who subscribe with Huzzer Magazine.

Best $1.95 I Have Spent on Making Money Online in a While

This probably isn’t breaking news to many of you out there, as many of the people that visit this site are bloggers and are familiar with Darren Rowse from ProBlogger.net.  He is one of the top bloggers online and provides tips on how to make money online blogging. His blog has been around for quite a few years now and he is one of the leading authorities on blogging for profit.

Darren just recently opened up a blogging forum for members to learn and discuss blogging issues like; blog design, content creation, finding readers, how to make money with your blog, social media, etc…. Unlike a blog where you usually can only ask questions in the comment area about whatever the blog post is about… in this forum you can ask any question you can think of when it comes to blogging. The other members, as well as the moderator and administrators are there to help answer any question you might have!

One thing that is different about this forum is… it is not free. It is a paid membership forum, but the price to become a member is only $1.95 per month… which is the least expensive thing I have ever paid for online so far.

Why is he making it a paid membership forum versus a free forum like many other forums? Listening to Darren, it totally makes sense. Here are some of the reasons…

1. The first reason he is going to staff it with a paid moderator (which is really cool) and administrators that put time a side to make sure it is a valuable community.
2. Another reason is he wants to put a small barrier (the $1.95 per month fee) to keep out spammers and people that are only visiting the forum to promote themselves. He is all for being able to promote yourself to the community, but he doesn’t want that to be your primary focus. The goal is to be able to promote yourself while helping others… which I am totally for!
3. He doesn’t want the community to get too big. He is looking for a more intimate community where members can get to know each other and hopefully collaborate with one and other on different projects.

Now I could go on and on about this community, but I will give you the results I have had since I joined just a few days ago.

Since I have joined Darren’s forum I have met several bloggers that I am sure I will be working with in the future on projects, I have also received ten new subscribers to my newsletter from members of the forum, plus I have been contacted by four very good bloggers that are writing Guest Posts for Making Money Online right now, from a simple request on the forum. So I would say I have gotten way more than my money’s worth so far… and I think it is only going to get better.

The only negative thing I could say so far is there are not that many members on the site when I visit, which is to be expected… as he just broke the 1000 member mark a few days ago. But there is usually a few members viewing each section of the forum and most of my posts have been replied to very fast… which I really like. As the forum continues to grow this won’t be an issue to me at all.

So if you are able to afford an extra $1.95 per month, I strongly suggest you give Darren’s blogging forum a try.

If any of our readers are already members, I would love to hear what you think of the community so far in the comment section below. I know there are least a couple of you that have joined as I have seen you in the forum

One Bloggers Strategy For Making Money Online

Try To Remain Positive Even Though Your World Is Rocked

Not so easy to do even though it is said that there is a bright side to every dark moment in your life if you look hard enough. However, only a strong person or a true believer would be able to view the loss of a bunch of money in the stock market as an opportunity rather than just a flat-out disaster. I mean we are talking about money here, a substantial amount of money, gone, poof! Just like that.

It’s what happened to me several years ago and it’s one of those life-changing events that, even if you are so deep in self-pity that you can’t recognize it at the time, has a positive spin on the rest of your life. As it turned out it’s the thing that set me firmly on  the launching pad to the blogosphere. You see, it was at that moment that my wife and I decided to invest our money in ourselves, not in a place, where, if you don’t know what you are doing is more like gambling than investing.

As just your average investors it was a financial set-back that at our age was going to be tough to recover from, strictly from a standpoint of limited funds to invest and the time it takes to ripen any investment. But worse than that, it made us feel helpless and stupid.

Baby Boomers On A Short Leash

So where does a baby boomer couple looking at trying to retire and quit the grind put their few and hard-earned investment dollars, a place where their investment would not only be safe but would go forth, be fruitful and multiply? Why, the Internet, of course!

That’s not to say the decision we made to yank all our money out of the stock market and invest it in an Internet venture was an easy one, in fact, everyone thought we were crazy! But where else but the Internet, would an opportunity exist for two people in their mid-fifties, to have any kind of chance to make up their losses in time to enjoy a secure retirement?

If We Build It Will They Come?

I had some basic computer skills back then and a desire to write for a living, however, a best selling novel was beyond my capabilities. As Dirty Harry used to say, “a man’s got to know his limitations” and after being burned by investing in something I knew literally nothing about I decided I needed to write about those things that I  did know – first-hand, and from personal experience, things that interested me and that I had a passion for.

Ok, so based on that idea I decided to build a network of blogs and websites where I would post original, keyword loaded material on a regular basis, get noticed by the search engines, sit back and wait for the cash that advertisers would throw at me to have a presence on one of my nichey little blogs. After all, it’s the reason I became a blogger in the first place, I hoped it would be the strategy that would result in income that would subsidize whatever retirement income I could salvage from bad investing decisions. I suspected that one blog making a ton of money was out of the question as I am not a Huffington kind of person, but a hundred websites, each making a dollar a day, was more than doable. Oh, was I about to learn a valuable lesson in making money online.

Making Money Online Is Doable But…

In reality, making money online is not about those “Secrets to Internet Wealth” programs out there that want to tell us all how to get rich for only two easy payments of $39.95. I am sorry to be the one to say it out loud BUT making money online, really making money online is about patience, it’s about an investment of incredible amounts of time, it’s about dedication and a belief in yourself, and it’s about doing things the right way, no shortcuts, no scammy little schemes, just hard work. There are those who do not want to hear the truth about what it takes to make money online, they would rather dream that making money online is easy, just a few measly hours a week will have you making thousands a month. Uh huh, us real bloggers grounded in reality know better.

I’m here to tell you that making money online is definitely doable, I’m making it as we speak. Maybe not the big dollars that everyone thinks us bloggers make but every day is encouraging. I learned early on from a webmaster that I have much respect for that if you follow best practices and build your blogs with the reader in mind, that is, make your blog the best it can be, you can believe that the rest will follow.

Now with 70 plus websites I am on the road to making even more money online and you can do it too! Just pay attention to the valuable information that the guys here at MakingMoneyOnline.com are happy to share and what the people within their circle of friends can teach you about blogging just by reading their posts, articles that are chock-full of the kinds of blogging tips that will help YOU become a successful blogger and how YOU can start making money online!

Revenue Generators

Here are the revenue generators that have been contributing to my bottom line with steady (not yet spectacular) income:

Google Adsense

Text Link Ads

Amazon Affiliate Programs

Direct Ad Sales

Featured Links on Link Directory

Other Affiliate Programs

In-Text Links (Kontera)

Each of these revenue generators contributes daily to my goal of reaching $1.00 per day in ad revenue per site. I am encouraged each time I check my stats and it’s really gratifying to see the hard work starting to pay off with actual cash in my pocket!

My network is my legacy, it’s debt free because I didn’t get ahead of myself and only introduced blogs or stores to the network as I could afford to do so, one at a time. So, every penny of profit goes right into my pocket!

My advice to you, step away from the TV set and get in front of a computer! Blogging is fun and profitable, it’s still in it’s infancy, anyone can do it, and it’s FREE! Start your own legacy by building YOUR own blog today!

This guest post was written by Dick Schaefer AKA, the Boomerblogger. You can see more of Dick’s work on some of his blogs: My-Baby-Pet.com, BoomerRVer.com,  or contact him via his hub site: LeisureAdvertising.com

Interested in Guest Blogging? Click Here for details.

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