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

Promote Your Business on $4.95 Polo Shirts with Free Logo Setup, Free Embroidery, and Free Shipping… It’s a No Brainer!

Are you looking for an inexpensive way to promote your business? Would you like to get your business name or URL in front of everyone you run into without having to say a word? Mark and I do it almost everyday we walk out our door… and now is a great time for you to do the same for your business, as this is one of the best deals I have ever seen!

I know we have written about this company before, but I just noticed the deal they are running and I just had to let everyone know, as you do not want to let this pass you by.

Right now all New Customers can get (up to 4) Two Ply Pima Jersey Polo shirts with your custom embroidered logos for only $4.95 each. Not only that, here’s what else you get:

• FREE Logo Evaluation
• FREE Logo Setup
• FREE Embroidery
• FREE Shipping
• Backed by 10 Year Unconditional Guarantee

So for around 20 bucks you get 4 custom embroidered polo shirts with your logo on them… and they are shipped to you for FREE! Where are you going to find a better deal than that?

As many of you know, Mark and I have been customers for several years now and love Queensboro products. We have purchased almost every type of apparel they offer with the URL of our community website on them. We also had shirts made for the entire board of our local Chamber of Commerce (which we are both members of) with the Chamber logo on it. Checkout what a great job they did converting the actual logo to the embroidered shirt below (which they did FREE of charge).

So why would Queensboro be selling these shirts so inexpensively? Because Fred Meyers (the owner) is a smart businessman. He knows that once you buy a few of his shirts, there is a good chance you will become a regular customer. I think he is right, as I have half a closet full of his shirts already and we are planning to order some for Making Money Online in the next few weeks.

I have always been one to look for deals, as “A penny saved is a penny earned” is a smart way to live. But I also look for quality in the things I buy, and if I can find both… I am sold.

So what are you waiting for? Order your shirts today and start promoting your business everywhere you go.

Tuan Nguyen of 20DollarBanners Interview

One of the greatest parts of doing these weekly interviews (ok, maybe not weekly yet) is getting to meet (at least by email or phone) some of our favorite Internet Entrepreneurs. The interview Mark did last week with Lee Silber introduced many of you to a great writer, as well as motivational speaker, and maybe some of you will check out some of the books and services that he offers… which might help you to excel in whatever business you are in, or perhaps help you in choosing the right business path for you.

Well today’s interview is going to introduce you to someone who you probably don’t know by name, but I am almost positive you have seen his work many, many times all around the Internet. Today I am interviewing Tuan Nguyen, who owns 20DollarBanners and has been making money online for many years now. He has created banner ads and other graphics for some of the biggest companies on the Internet.

Before I get to the interview, I want you to know that we are running a one week contest (Aug. 26 – Sept. 2) in which you can win a complete banner “Starter Package” ($109 value) just for leaving a comment below. Please click here to read all the rules, as you can greatly increase your chances of winning by completing a couple of other simple tasks. For those of you who read the rules yesterday (Aug. 24th), I have added a couple of things that you can do to earn more entries, so please check the rules again.

Okay, so let’s get on with the interview…

Doug: Tuan, thanks you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule and doing this interview with us.

Tuan: Thanks for having me Doug. You have a great website here, with a lot of information. I’m sure it will be useful to those looking to making a living online.

Doug: Thanks Tuan, I do appreciate that!  So how and when did you open 20DollarBanners and was it successful from the beginning?

Tuan: I started 20DollarBanners back in early 2003 while I was studying. There has been steady year over year growth from the beginning. I started by posting on a public forum that I would design a free banner for 5 different companies, they took up the offer rather fast, and that was where I got my first set of portfolio showcase. After that, I continued posting on the forum offering my service, with my free designs as portfolio, and those companies giving testimonials in my threads, it just started to get busy from there.

Doug: Was this you first online business venture? If it wasn’t, what was your first business and was it successful?

Tuan: 20DollarBanners would have been my 2^nd venture if I remember correctly. I tried starting a web hosting service prior to 20DollarBanners, but that was a flop. It was, and still is, one of the most competitive industries on the internet, with big companies paying affiliates up to $120 per referral, newcomers simply can’t afford to compete. After 3 months, I sold the business along with the website and the few lonely souls that signed up for the service.

Doug: How many banners do you think you have created over the years? I imagine it has to be a lot.

Tuan: A brief glance at my folders, I can estimate that I had created just over 35,000 banners on my own, and in total, over 50,000 have been designed by 20Dollarbanners. You can see some of my work in the portfolio section of my site. I have not updated the portfolio since 2006, so it’s a bit outdated. I’m planning to update it soon (in this case, ‘soon’ means 3 years and still counting)

Doug: Do you do all the designing yourself or do you have a staff, and if so… how many designers do you have working for you?

Tuan: I did all the designs myself up until just over a year ago. Too much work was coming in and 16+ hour day couldn’t handle it all so I got some help. Including myself, there are currently 3 of us working on banners and other design projects.

Doug: Do you have a lot of repeat customers? I see many banners in your portfolio from a lot of the same companies.

Tuan: We do have a lot of repeat customers, in fact, a large portion of our work comes from repeat customers, ranging from those who came back after a year to customers who order on a weekly basis.

Doug: Where did you obtain your graphic design skills… did you go to school to learn them, or were you self-taught?

Tuan: I got introduced to Photoshop in one of the subjects I was studying at Uni. The course didn’t teach us much more other than editing a few graphics for a project we were doing.

It got me interested so I started collecting and reading Photoshop tutorials to learn how to use the program, and created a site call pslover.com along the way.

The so called ‘skill’ is just from experience. Due to the nature of my work, I deal directly with many internet marketers and managers, who know what works and what doesn’t on advertising materials, some would tell me what to write and what to emphasize on a banner ad, some would tell me what colors and call-to-action to use, so from that, I’ve learnt how banners should be designed to capture user’s attention and deliver a message. With this experience, the designs and styles of my banners also changed over time. If I still design the way I did in 2003, I don’t think I would still be in business.

Doug: What other online ventures have you started over the years, and how have they done for you?

Tuan: Through 20dollarbanners, I have received many other work requests, from magazine ad designs to full website development. I don’t specifically promote these services, but I accept these jobs upon request.

I have tried other online ventures, such as affiliate marketing, developing websites, and even domaining, but due to the workload that keeps coming through, I never really have the time to put in the required efforts to see any real results. There are definitely many ways to make money online as long as you do the required research and put in 110%. It’s not as easy as many of the overnight success stories you’ve read.

Doug: How is your Page Peel and eBook Cover design businesses doing? They seem like the perfect addition to your banner business. Do you offer any other graphic design services?

Tuan: The page peel is going great and quite a popular product. We developed a custom backend for our corner peel so all you need to do is copy and paste 1 line of code to your website to get it working, while advanced users can edit the scripts and customize the installation with the provided files.

Funny enough, I get more ecover orders through 20dollarbanners than the ecover site itself. I never promoted the ecover site, except having a link from 20DollarBanners.

We work with some of the big guys in internet marketing, so we do a lot of ecover as well as minisite designs.

Doug: Do you have any big plans for future online projects that you can share with our readers?

Tuan: At the moment I accept all design and development work through 20DollarBanners which is not very efficient or professional. We are working on creating specialized websites for each design service we offer, including website headers, template designs, minisite designs, and website development.

One of the other sides to online ventures I would like to focus on is website development. I currently run a few other web sites, and am looking to launch a few more in the coming months. My goal is to have a network of high traffic sites.

Doug: Any tips for new graphic designers just starting out? It’s a very competitive business, so you most know some secrets.

Tuan: Build your client base and keep them happy. It does not matter if they have a $20 project or $2000 project with you, keep them all happy. The $20 customer could bring in more than $2000 worth of referrals in the end. Your customers may bring you more work and referrals than most other advertising methods, and they’re free and effective.

Doug: Do you do much marketing or is mostly word-of-mouth nowadays? Was it always that way?

Tuan: I only started advertising the last couple of months. But before that, our main source of work is through word of mouth and our organic search listing on Google for some targeted keywords. During slow periods, I would post on some forums offering the service and some discounts. I was never short of work so marketing wasn’t a main focus. I started exploring different marketing methods and still haven’t found any that brings as many customers as word of mouth referrals.

Doug: I noticed you have an Affiliate Program and Reseller program. Can you tell us a little about each, as our readers are always looking for ways to make money online?

Tuan: I’m sure most people here would have an idea what an affiliate program is, so I won’t go into details. We offer affiliates 15% commission for each order they refer, as well as repeat orders from that customer. The program is free to join.

The reseller program is a new offering we are still testing. It is a private label reseller service where as a reseller, you can offer your visitors banner design service through your own website. The customer place orders and manage their banners all through your own website, 20DollarBanners will handle all the transactions and design work behind the scenes. It is ideal for website owners or web services who want to add this service to their existing offerings and make some money on top of it.

How it works is each reseller has a base price, which is what we charge, and a charge price, which is the price they charge their customer. For example, if your base price is $10 a banner, and you charge your customer $15, your profit is $5 for that banner. Because our prices are very competitive, resellers can afford to add some markup to our prices and still give fairly good pricing. Resellers can also target a completely different marketing and charge much more. I’ve seen places charging $95 for a single banner.

Doug: Any last words of wisdom you would like to give our readers in regards to making money online?

Tuan: Despite all the overnight online millionaire stories you’ve read and heard about, making money online is not as easy as it’s made out to be. Avoid too good to be true offers and do your research before committing to any online ventures. Try and find what it is that you enjoy doing and see if you can bring it to the online world. For example, if you enjoy drawing or photography, you can start an illustration service or sell your photos. It’s much more rewarding to do what you enjoy rather than trying to enjoy what you do.

That’s it for the interview. What did you think? To me, Tuan is the PERFECT EXAMPLE of a true Internet Entrepreneur. He found a niche that he really enjoys, and he works very hard to provide a quality product and exceptional service, and is building on his success… which has paid off nicely for him.

If there is nothing else you take from this interview, always remember what the last thing he said was and try and follow his advice… “It’s much more rewarding to do what you enjoy rather than trying to enjoy what you do.”

Last couple things… don’t forget to enter the Contest to win a complete banner “Starter Package” ($109 value) just for leaving a comment below. Please read the Rules first.

Tuan has also graciously offered a 10% discount to any of our readers who would like to get some individual custom banners designed for their website. To get this discount, all you need to do is type in the coupon code, “mmodotcom” when you place your order on his 20DollarBanners website.

Again, I want to thank Tuan very much for the great interview, as well for the AWESOME Prize Package he gave us, and for the discount he is extending to our readers.

*** One last Contest Modification – Instead of listing what actions you took to enter the contest in the comments section below, please list them on the contest page instead . We would like to keep the comments below to be only about the interview. Thanks!

Free Private Label Rights

Here is a follow-up to my 2 previous posts, “What is Private Label Content” and “What Can You Do with PLR Content” where I promised to tell you where you can get a lot of PLR content for FREE!

If you read both those posts, and/or subscribed to our FREE course, “Private Label Secrets”… you know there are lots of things you can do with PLR content to help you make money online.

So where is the best place to get Free Private Label Content? If you do a Google search you will come across several offers, and I have tried many of them. Most of them require you to supply your name and email address and they will give you access to a limited amount of PLR content each month. So why would they give access to free PLR content each month? They do it to add you to their subscriber list so they can send you all sorts of product and affiliate offers each month. Some only send you a few emails a month, while it seems a couple others bombard you almost every day with one offer after the next. I quickly unsubscribed to those ones. Now I am not recommending any of those companies here, and I think you should definitely proceed with caution if you decide to sign-up for any of them.

The company I suggest you join is called Infogoround, as I have been a member there for over 4 years now and I love them. They supply you with a ton of high quality PLR articles each month on all sorts of niches, as well as some complete eBooks. By complete I mean not only are they really well written, but each eBook comes with a customized ecover and sale’s letter, which also comes with “private label rights” so you can totally customize them too.

The cost to be a member is only $24.95 per month, which is an incredible deal for all you get. But I told you could get all this for FREE, and you can, but it takes a little effort on your part. Bryan Winters who started Inforgoround came up with this INGENEOUS IDEA called the “Cash for Content Program“. You can read the entire rules in the image below, but basically it says if you write and submit one good (minimum 400 word) article any month, they will refund your entire membership fee (the $24.95) for that period.

So if you write and submit one article per month you will basically never have to pay anything for your membership. It is truly an awesome deal.  As for me, I almost always write my own articles each month as it is very simple to do… but occasionally I just don’t have the time. In those occasions I usually pay a freelance writer $5 to write an article for me and I submit that. I have probably done that at least 3 or 4 times and it has worked great.

Now there are not too many products or services that I would give my 100% support behind, but this is definitely one of them. Especially if you are interested in making money online. There are just so many different ways you can utilize quality PLR content to build your business and Infogoround delivers some of the best online. They also come with a 30 day money back guarantee… and if you can practically get it all for FREE, it’s a no brainer!

Build a Subscriber List for Free

Everyone knows that to really start making money online you are going to need to build yourself a subscriber list… right?

Well last week I wrote a post titled, “5 Best Bribes to Build Your Subscriber List”, which listed 5 different things you could use to bribe your readers into joining your subscriber list. In the comments section there were some of you that wanted to learn the basics of setting up the entire process of building a subscriber list without having to pay a 3^rd party provider like Aweber.

Well we have been using Aweber for many years now and have never tried to set-up a free service because we love Aweber and their reliability, and there is no way a free service can duplicate their delivery capabilities. But I did say that I would post a way to do it, so I spent several hours scouring the web and asking people for their solutions. I found it amazing that there weren’t more free solutions out there.

I finally did find a solution that should work. It is called, Your Mailing List Provider” and they are actually are a really cool service. They are not a full-blown autoresponder company like Aweber, but more of a mailing list manager and should work for building a simple subscriber list.

The major concern in my search was finding a solution that was FREE, and Your Mailing List Provider is free to start. They are also very reasonably priced when you move up to their Pro, and Pro-Plus version. The only major differences I see in the free version versus the paid ones is you don’t get any of the tracking features with the free version, you cannot manually add subscribers, and it is only free until you get your first 1000 subscribers. After that, you will have to move up to one of the other versions, which run only $3.75 per month for the Professional Version and $5.00 per month for the Professional Plus. Hopefully when you have 1000 subscribers you should be earning a lot more than that per month, so the upgrade cost shouldn’t be too hard on you.

So let’s walk through the steps for setting up you first mailing list. The first thing you are going to need to do is sign-up for a free account. You can signup here.

As this is a follow-up to my “5 Best Bribes” post, I am assuming you are going to want to give away some sort of BRIBE to entice your reader to subscribe. Since this is not an autoresponder service we will have to do it a little differently than we normally would. The way I would usually set it up would be that once the person signs up and confirms their subscription, they would receive an autoresponder message with a link to their ebook, or I might even send it as an attachment in that email. For this site we are actually giving away an entire free course that is delivered over a 2-week perid. Well we cannot do that here, so we are going to need to create a download page where the user will be redirected to once they subscribe. That should do the trick.

1) Create a free account – YourMailingListProvider.com

2) Create an eBook (bribe) and upload to server

3) Create a “Password Protected” Download Page

4) Create a Subscription Box

5) Upload Code to Your Blog

6) Test

To help make this easier on all of you out there, I decided to create a video walking you through the process. After I completed the video I realized that I could have done it a little differently, but I spent SO MUCH TIME creating the video that I didn’t have the energy to redo it.

The one thing that you don’t have to create is the “Password Protected” download page, but I actually like having the ebook protected myself. You can do it that way, but you could also send the link to your eBook in the “Welcome Email”… it is up to you. Other than that step, everything else is fine.

For some reason (which I know why) this video is not as clear as my last one, so I suggest you double-click on the video and watch it on YouTube in HIGH DEFINITION. Don’t forget to click the HD button. (sorry for the inconvenience)

Again, let me say that I have never used this service before, so I make no guarantees about anything. You guys asked for a “Free Solution” and this is what I was able to come up with.

If anyone has used this service and could give us some feedback in the comments section below, that would be awesome. Plus, if you have any better suggestions, we would love to hear about them as well.

Also, if any of you try this, please follow-up with us to let us know how it works

Selling Information Products – Best Ways to Start (Part 2)

I am going to change the order of things in my series on, “Selling Information Products”. Part 2 was going to be on some simple ways to create your first information product, but I am going to save that one for the next section. Instead, I am going to write about the best way I know of to create and sell your first information product and why I think it is the best.

As many of you know I have been making money online (doing all sorts of things) for over 10 years now, and in that time I have purchased MANY books and courses on all sorts of different ways of marketing things online. I believe the most I have ever spent on a product was around $997 which I purchased at a JV Alert Seminar. I probably never would have spent that much money on one product, but the creator gave anyone who purchased it life-time access to all his products and any future products he creates, so it was definitely worth the money to me. Plus he let us pay in in 3 installments, which really closed the deal.

Besides that one, I believe the most I have ever spent was; I bought a few products in the $497 range, many in the $97 range, a lot more in the $47 range and I cannot tell you how many in the $29.95 and under range. Almost all of them were very good products, except a few which I should have asked for my money back, but didn’t.

So why am I telling you this? Because of all the products I have purchased online to help me in my making money online endeavors, the best thing I have ever bought (to this day) only cost me $7.00. SERIOUSLY… ONLY $7 BUCKS! I am sure a large percentage of you out there have heard of this before, because it is definitely not new. But for those of you that haven’t, you should pay attention, as it is still one of the best ways to get started making money online. The product I am talking about is called the “Seven Dollar Secrets”.

What the Seven Dollar Secrets is a short 33 page eBook teaching you how you can make a ton of money online selling inexpensive (ideally around $7.00), short (around 30 pages), content-packed eBooks. Not only can you make a lot of money, but you can also build a subscriber list (who actually spend money online) at viral speed. And I am sure you know that building a list is the key to making money online for the long term.

So let me give you a quick overview of what you will learn, and more importantly what added bonus you will receive that makes the product worth many, many times more than seven dollars.

• You will learn how simple and fast it is to create a content rich eBook
• Why $7.00 is the “Magic Price” to start building your Info-Product Empire
• How you can make much more than the original $7 you charge your customers
• How to quickly build an Army of Affiliates eager to promote your book
• Why your subscriber list of paying customers will build at viral speed
• ADDED BONUS – The actual script he uses that makes all this work. I personally would spend at least $100 to purchase just the script and it comes FREE as a bonus for buying the eBook.

Now is this going to make you rich fast like one of those MILLION DOLLAR PRODUCT LAUNCHES you hear about all the time? HECK NO! What this is going to do (if you apply it) is it is going to help you get started (hopefully fast) making money, and even more importantly help you build a list of people who spend money online which is the most important thing of all. Because once you have built yourself one of those huge lists like the big gurus have, then you might be able to have one of those million dollar launches, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s first get you started making some money.

SPECIAL NOTE TO ALL YOU BLOGGERS OUT THERE: If you want to make money blogging you need to do more than just write posts and paste Adsense and Banner Ads on your blog. If you visit all the probloggers out there like; John Chow, David Risley, Shoemoney, Zac Johnson, etc… they all do more than just write posts. Many of them have other sites that they own which they promote on their blogs that bring them in a lot of money; many have their own products, as well as promote affiliate products in many of their posts. You too need to step out of your comfort zone if you really want to start making money online. I honestly believe that this will open your eyes to a whole new world of income for you, and it is cheaper than the price of a pizza! Click here to grab a copy for yourself.

Ready-to-Go Making Money Online WordPress Theme

I am a BIG FAN of WordPress for creating websites. I love the fact that you can literally have your site up and running in less than 5 minutes and then change the entire look of the site in a matter of seconds with custom theme templates.

Now I have purchased many themes over the last couple of years and have joined several “Template Clubs” to have access to their entire collection of themes. But of all themes I have purchased in the past, there was no perfect one that I had found that really looked great and was already setup to monetize the entire site. Well I finally found one!

Carl Ocab (also known as the Kidblogger) has come out with one of the best WordPress themes I have seen so far. Not only is the look very clean and professional, but it also comes with 6 different color layouts that you can change with one click of your mouse. He did an outstanding job with his ad placements throughout the site as well. You can tell he took a lot of time and consideration figuring out where the best places would be to get the most ad visibility and click throughs.

I am also a huge fan of the 3 box widgets at the top of the site and the subscription boxes he designed. They look great and it is easy for visitors to sign-up for your newsletter and/or RSS feed. He set the entire theme up so it is extremely easy to customize as well.

As for the pricing, it is pretty reasonable. You can purchase the theme for $67 for a single-use license, meaning you can only use it on 1 blog. That’s a “Just OK” price in my opinion. But you can purchase an unlimited-use license for only $97 which allows you to put it on an unlimited amount of blogs that you own. Now that’s a much better deal. That is the option we chose, as we plan on using the theme on several blogs we have in the works.

As for this site, I had the basic layout done before we purchased Carl’s theme, otherwise I probably would have used that one right out of the box. So, what I did was I kept the same theme I had already purchased from Revolution Two and took some of my favorite sections of the Ultimate Blogging Theme and combined them to create Making Money Online Dot Com. I also added a few of my favorite plugins, and that was basically it.

Another cool thing that Carl gives you with the purchase of his theme is a complete video tutorial on how to set your entire blog up. It makes setting up a site super simple. I wish everything came with video tutorials, as it would make like much easier.

If any of you out there have purchased the Ultimate Blogging Theme already and are using it for your blog… please submit your site’s URL in the comments box below so we can take a peek at it, and hopefully send you some additional traffic.