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.

How to Use HubPages to Make Money Online

There are thousands of ways to make money online and HubPages is one of the best ways to get started with it, especially if you are good at writing and new to making money online. Joining HubPages is free and easy and you don’t have to invest anything. You can write about anything you want whenever you want so you won’t be feeling the pressure to keep a posting frequency. And best of all you could be making money while writing about the things you like.

How to Make Money from HubPages

There are some direct ways and some indirect ways that you can make money with HubPages. First let’s look at the direct ways you can make money online.

• Adsense – HubPages is a revenue sharing site, whenever you build a hub (a page about something you like) Adsense ads are automatically inserted to it. They use a service called YieldBuild which calculates the best possible places for the Adsense ads so you can be sure that your Adsense ads are optimized. In your settings you can set your Adsense publisher id and you will get 60% of the impressions from your hub. Now some will argue that instead of getting the 60% of page impressions why not write a blog post about it and get all the impressions to you. Problem is it will be pretty hard for you to rank for those terms in Google and get search engine traffic. HubPages is a trusted site by Google and it’s easy to get good ranking for your Hubs and because of the internal linking structure of HubPages you will get lots of traffic from other related hubs as well. All these benefits mean you have a better chance to make more money from HubPages.
• Kontera – You can also enable Kontera ads in your hubs so you have more chances of earning money. I personally don’t use Kontera in my hubs because I think they get in the way of good user experience but you might want to check them out and see the results in your hubs.
• Amazon Widget – You can also add Amazon widgets to your hubs. You can set your Amazon partner id in the affiliate setting and when a user buys something via your widget you get a commission.

Those are some of the direct ways you can make money with HubPages but there are more advantages to using HubPages which can indirectly help your earnings.

• Creating Hubs for Affiliate products – I have mentioned this before in the article as well, Google places a lot of trust in HubPages and your Hub about some affiliate product can easily outrank your blog post about that same affiliate product. Of course building back links is the best way to rank in Google but because of the internal linking structure and the trust Google places in Hub Pages you have a definite advantage while using Hub Pages.
• To Build Back links – Hub Pages is a great way to build back links to your blog or website. It’s relatively easy to get a good PR for your Hubs and as long as you maintain a Hub score of more than 75 you will get nofollow back links from your pages. My blog about Make Money Blogging is ranked well for some good key words and the links from my hubs played a major role in doing that.

I joined HubPages in the hope of getting some back links… but I got back links, money and a whole lot of knowledge as well. Since it’s free to join you’ve got nothing to lose and I assure you, you have a lot to gain. Check out my hub about “Want one-way back links? Try guest posts” to get an idea of a hub. I’m sure you can find the create my own button in there

This “Guest Post” was written by Nishadha  Silva. You can learn more about  Nishadha at Make Money Blogging.

An Entertaining Way to Make Money Online! (Rated R)

Since this website is about, “Our Journey to Online Fame & Fortune” we thought we should start sharing with our readers some of the other sites and projects we have been working on.

You can help with our latest case study. We are looking for your tips, suggestions, and comments to help us promote one of our more provocative websites. I addition… we would love to hear some of your ideas for creating additional revenue streams for the site as well.

We created an online business a while back that was based on an annual radio bit taken from our favorite local morning show; the Dave, Shelly and Chainsaw Show on 101KGB FM in San Diego. Every year, just after Valentine’s Day, they give the guys a chance to celebrate a holiday of their own which is known as Steak & Knobber Day, or “Valentine’s Day for Guys“. If that term offends you, this is probably a good time for you to switch to another blog for the day.

Still with us? Good. The premise of S&K Day is this; Valentine’s Day is really all about the women. Guys buy flowers, chocolates, jewelry and do the romantic dinner just for their ladies. We are expected to do this, and for the large part we go all out willingly. With Steak & Knobber Day, which takes place on March 20th each year, all we ask for in return is something we all can appreciate (and somewhat deserve): A good old fashioned steak and a well deserved knobber.

Let’s face it, we aren’t looking for a new car, or even the latest high-tech gadget that could put you back several hundred dollars. A $10 steak dinner is all it will cost you, and the second part you can do yourself for free. I guarantee you will get a compliment even if either part doesn’t turn out the way you would expect it to. We are guys, so all you really have to do is show up and we are good to go. You can burn the steak, drop it on the ground, and you will still have a satisfied customer upon completion of Part II of this little known national holiday. For the married guys out there, we are trying to get you one more other than the one you get on your Anniversary if you are lucky. Some would say that was a joke, while others would call that statistically correct.

You can help us to take Steak and Knobber Day from just a great idea and be a part of the success as we try making money online with it. How would you help to promote Steak & Knobber Day throughout the world? What merchandising ideas would you come up with? Do you find it offensive or funny? As we are both family guys, we tread a fine line with this product. We don’t want to offend anyone, or turn this into an X-Rated product. We do think it is a very funny concept, and would like it to go from a local popular holiday that is favorably practiced to a globally accepted holiday for the better of all mankind.

Visit the website at steakandknobberday.com and tell us what you think. What would you do if you were going to be making money online with the Steak & Knobber Day website? We designed several items through our Cafe Press Store, and rely on those purchases for income without having to carry any inventory.

What techniques would you use to promote your products online? How would you encourage others not only to participate, but to wear and promote your products? We are serious about this, so please include sincere comments with your opinions in the comments section. This is a family friendly website, so please refrain from explicit comments.

Making Money Online with Your Passion

At what point does a hobby become a job, and a job become a career? This is the million dollar question that a lot of people are looking for the answer to while combining their passion with a money making career. When it comes to making money online, you should take your passion and match it with a strong business model and make it profitable.

When I was a teenager, my hobby was music. I loved to listen to music, and the greater part of every dollar I made went to the local record store. For those of you under 25, we had to go into a store to purchase our music on these 12 inch vinyl discs called Records. Records gave way to the compact disc, and those gave way to Mp3’s that you can snap up from home on iTunes.

This post isn’t about music, but to some extent it is still relevant. I turned my hobby of music into a job when I became a disc jockey. For five years I made a living working in nightclubs and doing weddings and house parties. I loved what I did, and I enjoyed a great lifestyle while in my early twenties.  Suddenly, I noticed a shift in the marketplace. Night clubs started to close down due to the increase in violence, alcohol related issues, insurance rates skyrocketed, and business owners just didn’t want to take the risk of losing their hard earned gains to a potential lawsuit. I had to make a career change quickly, and back then there wasn’t any way for me to make money online. I didn’t even own a computer.

For the club DJ, this meant that there was a shrinking market with fewer jobs available. Times were changing, and I made a decision to get out of this industry and look for something with a brighter future. I could have easily stayed with it until the company eliminated my position, but what good would that have done me? I look back now, and I realize I made a good move at the right time. The three companies that I worked for have not only eliminated DJ’s from their payroll, but they are no longer in existence. I stayed in the hospitality industry which is something I knew quite well. I shifted into management and succeeded because I took my passion and found a new way to channel it. I still got to make people happy, but instead of packing a dance floor I was packing a dining room.

On the other side of the issue, having a steady source of income before you follow your hobby in the hopes that it will become your dream job or career makes a lot of sense. Pursue your dreams with a passion, and in the mean time do your research. Like the expression says; “Don’t quit your day job” until you know that you can make a living doing what you love to do. For anyone out there that is looking for the quick easy way to riches and a carefree lifestyle, I offer this one bit of sage advice: It isn’t out there.

If you are looking for a way to make money online, I would suggest you find something that you love, and work hard to make it profitable. Solve a problem, fill a need, or share your wealth of knowledge on a particular subject that people will pay you for. Sell a product that serves a purpose or meets a need or desire. This will gain you wealth, and lead to a better lifestyle. Live within your means until you are disgustingly wealthy, and then make sure you have a long term plan to protect your newly found wealth.  It goes quickly, especially if you never had an abundance of wealth to begin with.

One of my favorite sayings is this: “The man who loves what he does never works a day in his life.”  I try to live my life by this motto, and I also feel that when most people say that they have to go to work, I say that I get to go to work. See the difference?

Traffic Monetization Program Beta Test Results

Here is a quick follow-up to my post a couple of weeks ago on a new Beta Traffic Monetization System we are testing out on one of our other blogs to see if it can help us make more money online.

To refresh your memory here is basically how the program works:

The program is basically an advertising revenue sharing program, similar to Adsense, but with a cool twist. With this you place keyword text links that you choose right on your website. You can choose high paying keywords if you like, but for my test I chose keywords I know my readers are actually searching for. When a visitor clicks on one of the text links, relevant ads are then displayed right on your website. The site owner then earns money each time a user clicks onto an advertiser’s link.

Here is how the text ads looks on our website MiraMesa.com.

So for the past 2 weeks the site has been averaging between 200 – 300 visitors per day, with about 75 – 80% of that traffic coming from search engines. Below is the earning’s chart which shows you exactly how much the site has earned with this traffic monetization system so far.

As you can see… not the greatest numbers ever, but not the worse numbers either. If the numbers stay like that, we will ending up earning a little over $20 for the month from those ads… which really isn’t too exciting.

We have decided to let the ads run through the rest of the month, and after that take them down, as we can earn more money selling banners ads to local merchants in that same spot.

Here is a list of the pros and cons we have come up with so far:

PROS:

1. I REALLY like the ability to choose our own keywords, as we could choose all high paying keywords if we wanted too. We didn’t for this test, as the blog is an extremely focused niche and we didn’t have a lot of choices, but I could see where it could work very well on some other sites.
2. I also like the ability to display the ads anywhere and anyhow we like. You could display several keywords like we did on that site, or you can just add a text link in a post and that would work as well. The display flexibility is very cool.

CONS:

1. It is not available in all countries, and many of the countries where it is available… they seem to not have a large ad inventory, so not many ads (if any) display. So a website that gets a lot of worldwide traffic, I don’t think it would be too good a fit.
2. Unlike Adsense where you can login to your account and see how your ads are doing every hour, and get a very detailed report… that is not the case with this program. The report information is very limited (as you can see above), plus the report is always 2 days behind. So if I login today (which is Thursday), I will only see my commissions through Tuesday. I really don’t like that!
3. The earnings per click do not seem to be that great either. The problem I think is… this company is using another company (Hotkeys.com) for their backend system and both of them (at least) have to take a cut of the commissions before it gets to us. I believe with Adsense you are only sharing your commissions with Google (but I could be wrong).

So for the time being (for us), the Cons outweigh the Pros… but that might not always be the case. The company is very new and as they grow… they might be able to fix everything that I have listed in my Cons section. If that happens, I would absolutely recommend this company.

As you noticed I never mentioned the name of the company. That is because they are still in Beta Testing mode and it is not available for everyone to use yet.

If you would like to test out the system yourself, send me an email and I will put you in touch with the owner. The only requirement is your site has to average over 300 visitors per day to be considered.

Making Money Online Promoting a Free Secret System to Help People Earn $300-$500 a Day

I love learning different ways that people figure out for making money online. If I see an ad that catches my attention in Adsense or Infolinks I usually click on them to see what the advertiser is trying to market. So I have decided to add a new segment to Making Money Online where I will search out unique methods that people use to market affiliate programs (that I find interesting) and share them with you. I hope you find them interesting too.

Today I am going to be writing about a way that I have actually seen used on many sites lately, and I am pretty sure it works (for making money for the affiliates), as I have been tempted to sign-up and to test this system myself, and I have pretty good willpower for these types of programs. So I know if I am tempted, I am pretty sure there are people that are actually trying this out and making some affiliates very wealthy.

What the affiliate marketers are promoting on these sites are different Online Casinos, which all pay quite a bit of money. The secret is they are not promoting the casinos directly. What they are doing is promoting a “Secret System” that will show you how to make $300 to $500 a day beating the casinos. This is basically how it works on most of the sites I have seen this on. The owner of the site says they are going to share a method with you to beat the online casinos day after day playing European Roulette with their secret system. What makes this work for me is they don’t try and sell you anything at all. They don’t even ask for your name and email which is really smart.

They reveal their entire secret system to you right there on the webpage. They spill all the beans, as they are trying to make it seem like they are helping you out just because they are nice guys. Not only are they sharing their secret “beat the casino” system with you, they also let you know that they have personally tested this system out on many of the online casinos out there, and they recommend the ones that they have found to work the best for them. Wow, they must be super nice guys I guess. Well they could be nice guys, but there is definitely an ulterior motive to their generous information.

So why would these guys share their secret money making online system with you for free? Do they really want you to make money? They might want you to win some money, but in the long run I am sure they would prefer that you lose money instead. Why would they want you to lose money? Because if you joined the casinos through the affiliate links they recommended, they will earn a certain percentage of all the money you lose.

I checked out several of these sites and many of them recommend the same casinos. When I checked out those casinos, each of them has affiliate programs that pay the affiliate 30% of whatever the people they refer to the casino lose for as long as they stay a member. So as long as the person they referred continues to gamble on that site, they will earn 30% of however much that person loses. So if they lose $100 the affiliate earns $30. If they lose $1000, the affiliate earns $300. Not bad for making a simple recommendation.

So let me give you a short explanation on their secret method for beating the casinos,  and show you that there is a much better chance in the long run that the affiliate will earn a lot more money than the gambler ever will.

Here is the secret formula in a nutshell. They go into more detail on several of the sites, but hopefully this will make sense to you.

I am guessing you guys understand the basics of European Roulette. It is a casino game which is basically a spinning wheel with 37 slots. There are 18 red and 18 black slots and 1 green spot numbered zero. The green slot (0) is what gives the casino their slight advantage, which makes all the difference for the casino. It is important that they play European vs. American Roulette, as American Roulette has 38 slots, with two green slots; zero and double-zero… which gives the house and even larger advantage.

There are lots of different bets you can place when playing roulette, but for this particular money making system…players will only be betting on either red or black which pays even money. That means if you bet $1 on black and the color black comes up, you win $1. If red comes up or the green zero, you lose the dollar you bet. Definitely pretty simple stuff. So here is how this system works.

• Take $1 and bet on red or black.
• If your color comes up you win. Yeah… you won $1.
• If you lose, double your bet ($2) and then bet on the same color again.
• If you lose, double your bet ($4) and then bet on the same color again.
• Keep doubling your bet on the same color until you win.

If you have enough money and you keep doubling your bet, eventually your color will come up. Once your color comes up and you have been following this method you will have won $1.

Once you win, you start over by betting $1 again and follow the same routine over and over again until you win a total of $200. Then they say it is time to go to a new casino, so the casino you are currently playing at doesn’t catch on to your method.

I have actually tested this many times using the “Play for Free” mode at a few different casinos and I have done quite well, but that was with pretend money, so there was no stress on me actually losing my own money.

So let’s break this down to see how this would play out in the real world… at least if it were me following this secret formula for making money online with my own hard-earned cash.

I would start out following the routine… making a dollar here and there slowly building up my winnings. But then I would probably get on a losing streak (at some point) as most gamblers often do. So let’s see how much money I would be down if I lost 10 spins in a row.

1. $1
2. $2
3. $4
4. $8
5. $16
6. $32
7. $64
8. $128
9. $256
10. $512

So if I had 10 bad spins in a row (which is possible) I would be down a total of $1023, and I would be starting to get very stressed out. I am a family guy now and I just hate losing money. I hated losing money before I was married and had kids, but it is a much bigger deal nowadays for sure! I would think to myself, if I lose another spin I will be down $2047. Then if I lost again, I will be down twice that. The fear would probably overcome me and I would probably just cut my losses and quit right then. I’d be down a little over a grand and the affiliate that signed me up would be up a little over $300. So who’s the winner there? Definitely not me.

Now I am not saying this system doesn’t work, but I think if it did all the time… EVERYONE would be doing it.

Actually… if you had unlimited funds (like the casino) and the casino had no caps (the maximum amount of money you are allowed to bet), this system is guaranteed to make you money if you followed it to the tee. But none of us have unlimited funds and casinos do have caps… so if you get on an unlucky streak, you could literally lose your house! That doesn’t sound like a good bet to me!

So why did I write this?

Am I trying to promote online gambling? Absolutely not!

Am I recommending that you start promoting Online Casinos? Nope!

What I am trying to promote in this post is CREATIVITY! I just thought the method they used to market those affiliate programs was very creative and I am sure they have had much success with it.

So next time you decide to promote an affiliate product or service… or even your own product or service… try and think outside the box!

Making Money Online Promoting Affiliate Products in Your Blog Posts

As you know there are unlimited ways of making money online, and deciding what is best for your business model can be really tricky. Well today I am going to be talking about affiliate programs, as they are one of the best ways to get started making money online. Actually I am going to talk about the best way to implement affiliate marketing into your blog as it is one of the better ways for bloggers to generate income.

Below are 6 tips to help you convert more sales when marketing affiliate products on your blog…

1. Market to your niche – Make sure you promote things that are relevant to your readers. If you are running a Martial Arts blog, don’t try promoting a “Guide to Making Money Online” just because it pays a 75% commission. Stick with affiliate programs related to your blog’s audience. I see people all the time trying to sell things that have nothing to do with their blog’s niche and I just don’t get it!
2. Don’t just rely on banner ads, instead promote affiliate products in your posts – I find it amazing that many bloggers still think the way to monetize their site is to sprinkle some Adsense ads throughout their blog, and display some affiliate banners on their sidebar and they are done. You are not going to sell many affiliate products that way. To get people to buy affiliate products you need to write about them in your posts. You can write a whole post dedicated to one affiliate product, or you can write a post on a broad topic and recommend one or more products throughout the post.
3. Know your product – The best way to promote something is to try it yourself first, so you can give an honest review. Not only that, but you know the ins and outs of how it works, and if you have used it a while you can tell people how it has worked for you. If you just can’t afford to purchase the product first, make sure you learn as much about it as you can before you try and promote it.


4. Only recommend quality products and services – Do you want to get a bad reputation fast? Then start recommending crappy products to your readers. That will do it! But seriously, if you want to be successful and be known as a person that people trust… make sure you only recommend really good products. If you do, those past buyers will be much more inclined to purchase whatever you’re promoting next. Plus, they might even write some nice comments thanking you for your great suggestions, which can only help your sales conversions… as well as your reputation as an honest marketer.
5. Try and keep out the competition as best you can in your posts – Usually when I am promoting an affiliate product in a post I try and not have any Adsense ads in the post, as those ads could actually steal your affiliate commissions if clicked on. Sure, you might have made 50 cents for the click, but you might have lost a 50% commission or more if they decided to purchase the product through that link instead of yours.
6. Display ad banners in your post that relate to what you are trying to market – Instead of displaying a bunch of rotating random banner ads (which I did in this post)… when writing posts to promote affiliate products I usually display banner ads that relate to whatever product I am writing about. I like to keep my reader’s mind focused on what it is I am trying to promote. If the affiliate merchant doesn’t offer any good banner graphics, I usually just create my own banner ad and use that. If you are not good at creating banners yourself, you can always use 20DollarBanners. You can save 10% on your order (packages not included) with the coupon code “mmodotcom“.

Those are the major things I think about when promoting affiliate products in one of our blogs. Of course the key to converting more sales is to get more traffic. So if your blog does not get a lot of traffic, don’t expect to be making a lot of money just yet. Hopefully, if you stick with it and your site becomes more popular and your traffic grows… so will your sales.

How about you? Do you have any tips for promoting affiliate products on your blog? I am sure everyone would love to hear what works for you.

Beta Testing New Traffic Monetization Program

First off… I want to apologize for not getting this post out earlier, but I was busy playing around all day with what I am about to show you, and I just couldn’t find the time to write anything.

One of the good things, as well as one of the bad things that happens when you run a business (online or off) is you get contacted by all sorts of people trying to sell you on something… either a must have product or service of some kind.

Well yesterday I was contacted by this guy offering me to beta test their new traffic monetization system. To be honest I really wasn’t too interested, but I checked them out anyway. Since this site is about making money online, I figured I should test out as many different ways as I can to make money online and report back to you guys if they work or not.

The program is basically an advertising revenue sharing program, similar to Adsense, but with a cool twist. With this you place keyword text links that you choose right on your website. You can choose high paying keywords if you like, but for my test I chose keywords I know my readers are actually searching for. When a visitor clicks on one of the text links, relevant ads are then displayed right on your website. The site owner then earns money each time a user clicks onto an advertiser’s link.

When I was asked to test this program, the guy was hoping I was going to test it on MakingMoneyOnline.com, but this site is very new and not much traffic comes from search engines. It gets some, but not a lot and I know programs like Adsense get a lot more clicks from people coming from search engines. I think the reason is they are already in a clicking mood, but I am not sure. I just know that is the way it works.

Now on the other hand, we do have a site that gets a majority of it’s traffic from search engines. That would be our community website MiraMesa.com. You can see in that pie chart that over 82% of the traffic comes directly from search engines… which seems like the perfect site to test this traffic monetization program.

Now implementing the program was pretty simple. Once you sign-up you have to list the sites that you plan to use it on. Since I originally wasn’t planning on testing it on MiraMesa.com I had to wait a couple hours until it was approved.

Once approved it was fairly easy to set up. You need to create your text links for whatever search terms you like. I just went into my Google Analytics and I looked for what keywords people were using to find our site and I used several of those, and then I threw in some more that I knew people would be interested in… like Mira Mesa Real Estate, Apartments, etc…

That’s a screenshot of the text links that we are using on MiraMesa.com. I have them displayed right on the top of our sidebar so it is one of the first things people see when they go to the site, so we are hoping they get a lot of action, but we will have to wait and see.

The one other thing you have to do to make the system work is create a search results page. Unfortunately it is not setup to work with Wordpress yet, so I created a simple html page with basically just a header and then inserted the code that they provided and uploaded to my server. That was it. It is not beautiful or anything, as I just wanted to get it up, but it will work for this test. If it ends up being profitable I will make it look much better. You can see what the results page looks like below.

So does it make any money? I have no idea as I just installed it… but I will let you know in a couple of weeks. I can definitely see it having potential, and I have a few niche sites in mind that I think this will do awesome. I am not sure if it is the perfect fit for all blogs… but I will know more after I run my test.

He did show me some examples of other sites that are testing it and they are actually what sold me on trying it.

• http://workathomecommunity.com (keywords right under the header)
• http://www.totalhair.net (keywords in top left navbar)
• http://www.backyardchickens.com (keywords above the Adsense ads in footer)

If you are interested in testing this out too, send me an email and I will put you in touch with the owner. To be accepted your site needs to be getting a pretty good amount of traffic, otherwise they will probably not accept you. It is still in the beta testing stage so they are not ready for the whole world to sign-up just yet.

So what do you guys think of this? If it ends up paying well, do you think it is something you would consider adding to your site?

*** UPDATE AFTER READING FIRST FEW COMMENTS – PLEASE HELP *** One thing I have found from people not living in the US is that very few ads appear and more often no ads appear at all when someone clicks on a text link. Can you do me a favor and test a couple for me and let me know in the comments section what Country you live in, and if any ads displayed. You can just click on these 2 keywords… Make Money from Home and Mira Mesa Real Estate. I would think Make Money from Home should produce results for everyone as that it has worldwide interest… so I am interested to see your results. I do not want you to click on the ads… I just want to know if people outside the US can see the ads.

THANKS!

I Used to Be a Dotcom Millionaire, Well at Least On Paper!

When I first started out online back in the late 90’s I got caught up in the big Domain Goldrush that was going on online. The big news back then was when some guy sold Business.com for millions of dollars and next thing you knew… domain speculators were buying up every domain name they could create, and I was one of them. At one point in early 2000 I owned over 3000 domain names. Yep… over 3000! I know that sounds crazy, and thinking back it probably was.

Actually the first 2 domains I ever registered were MakingMoneyOnline.com and MakeMoneyOnline.com. Then about a week after I registered them, some guy offered me $1000 for MakingMoneyOnline.com… but I turned him down. For the next week this guy kept bugging me about buying the domain, actually even calling me on my home phone leaving me messages. His final offer was for $35,000, which you can see by this site… I ended up not taking. In hindsight I probably should have taken it and used the money to finance my other domains, but oh well… at least I still have it now. Of course I made sure my wife was on board with me not taking the money… and she was

As for the rest of my domain collection… for a year or so everything was awesome… domains were easy to flip for a HEFTY PROFIT. I was selling several domains a week, many for between $1000 – $2000 each, and some for even more… which was a nice little profit. I believe the best place to sell domains back then was Afternic.com, which is still in business today, but with different owners.

One of the most popular parts of the site was their Domain Appraisal section, where I spent several hours each day. It was a free service where once you registered a domain name you could post it there and then other people would appraise your name for you. In all honesty… it was an absolute joke, as most of the people doing the appraisals were other domain owners, and everybody would give each other overinflated appraisals as they wanted you to do the same for their domains. I cannot tell you how many domains I owned back then, where people appraised them at $100K each. I remember one day I added up the averages of all my domain’s appraised values, and on paper I was worth about 8 million dollars. You can imagine how excited I was at the time… but unfortunately those millions never became a reality.

As I mentioned above… everything was awesome for about a year or so. People were spending crazy amounts of money on domain names to create all these startup businesses ventures with no real business plans, and the venture capitalist kept forking out the cash. At the time I was doing pretty well with my little domain reselling business.

Well as most of you know, those Free-Spending Days came to a sudden halt with the much publicized Dotcom Bust, and next thing you knew it was hard to get $100 for a premium domain name. Well those new darker times went on for quite some time and in the next few years my domain collection dwindled down significantly. Some I sold, and many I ended up letting expire as I did not want to keep paying the renewal fees. To be honest, a large percentage of the domains I originally registered were not really that great, but back then I just registered everything that popped in my head. Out of the original 3000 or so domains that I owned, after selling some and letting others expire… I ended up keeping a little over 400 domain names, and today I am down to just under 300.

So how is the domain reselling business doing in general nowadays? As for me, I have not really been trying to do much reselling lately. I have done an occasional flip here and there, but nothing much to speak of. As from my post last week you can see that I tried to test and see if I could sell a complete website via a post on Making Money Online Dot Com, but have not had much luck with that so far. I am actually thinking of adding a “Domains for Sale” section to our site and try and shrink my collection to a more reasonable amount, but we will see.

As for domain reselling around the world… it seems to be doing great. I am a HUGE fan of the website DNJournal.com, as they always have good articles about the industry, as well as great interviews with top domain resellers. But the main reason I check them out each week is they list many of the top domain name sales from the previous week, plus they keep a running total of the biggest sales for the entire year. Checkout some of the domains that sold last week and what they sold for:

Brazil.com – $500,000

Payment.com – $250,000

ChinaTours.com – $200,000

Payments.com – $150,000

Grafikkarte.de (“graphic card” in German) – $73,828

BookHotels.com – $70,500

iPal.com – $59,000

CouponNetwork.com – $59,000

LMK.com – $58,500

DomainAppraisal.com – $52,000

And if you think those were some crazy prices, checkout the top 10 sales so far for 2009

Toys.com – $5,100,000

Candy.com – $3,000,000

Fly.com – $1,760,000

Auction.com – $1,700,000

Webcam.com – $1,020,000

Server.com – $770,000

Brazil.com – $500,000

Talk.com – $500,000

Top.com – $464,750

Body.com – $400,000

So as you can see, even with this bad economy… there are still people and businesses spending BIG MONEY on premium domain names. Unfortunately, it is a little late to try and get into the game unless you know what you are doing and have a lot of money. But it is not impossible.

One option would be is if you could snag (register) yourself a great domain name that relates to a new industry that is just starting to develop. That might be worth a lot of money to you. One of my good buddies who I have done some domain reselling with over the years (who actually bought MakeMoneyOnline.com from me years back) registered the domain MyBlog.com. He registered it back when blogging just started becoming known. Well he ended up selling that domain a year or so later for $400,000. Now that was a pretty good return on his investment. So there is definitely possibilities out there, you just need to stay on top of the next new and greatest thing.

The Ultimate WP Affiliate Sales Tool on Sale

A few weeks ago I showed you a simple way to cloak your affiliate links using a simple line of php code to accomplish it. It still works fine, but it has some major limitations. I am still planning on using that system on many of our sites, but I am definitely making the switch to Ninja Affiliate (which I bought today on sale) for all our Wordpress blogs starting right now. If you are serious about making money with your blog, you should definitely think about doing the same.

If you are not familiar with Ninja Affiliate, it is an extremely powerful Wordpress plugin that helps turn your blog into an affiliate sales machine. I could go over all the benefits here, but they do a much better job explaining everything this plugin does on their site.

I have always wanted to buy it, but just kept putting it off for one reason or another. Well they definitely got my attention this week, as they are having a sale on Ninja Affiliate. For 4 Days Only (Aug. 18 – 21st at Midnight) they are giving a $30 Discount on the plugin.

(SALE has ended… but still a great piece of software at the price)

So instead of their regular price of $97 (which it is still worth), you can get Ninja Affiliate for ONLY $67.00… but only until this Friday night (Aug. 21st) at midnight! Then the price goes back up.

For me the the $30 DISCOUNT was the tipping point for me making the purchase. I knew I was eventually going to buy it, so when I saw it was on sale, it just made sense to buy it now and save some money.

I know there are many of our readers that already use Ninja Affiliate, as many of them have recommending it to me. If any of you are reading this, I would love it if you could tell us how you like it in the comment section below.

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