Making Money Online » Making Money Online

$100 in 3 Hours? The 7+1 Easiest Ways to Quickly Make Money Online

Matt — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 22:01:51 +0000

If you’re a frequent follower of MakingMoneyOnline.com, you know that generally we advocate legitimate, sustainable approaches to generating passive cash flows on an ongoing basis. But sometimes you just need to make a little money fast.

One of the most common questions we receive is: “What’s the easiest way to quickly make money online?” As in, by tonight?!

The Scenario: Faithful MakingMoneyOnline.com reader Walter has a problem:

Dear Making Money Online,
I know that slowly building my reputation, giving value before I take, focusing on a niche, etc. etc. is the right way to go about making the big bucks online in the long term. But what about today? I don’t have the cash or the time to spare building my online empire: I just need to put some ka-ching in my pocket NOW. Please hook me up with some suggestions for things I can do today to earn a little extra cash without having to wait for months?
Muchas gracias,
~Walter

The Solution: Can we help Walter earn $100 in just 3 hours working online? Can we help you make $100 in just a few hours? For each technique, we’re going to assume that you have access to a computer with internet access, basic writing ability, and a healthy dollop of enthusiasm, but no existing website/ blog/ or mailing list with 10,000 subscribers (which, by the way, would make this whole endeavor quite a bit easier!).

Our Suggestions for the Easiest Ways to Get Started Making Money Online:

Become an Expert

Everyone's an expert in something. Might as well get paid for it!

Just Answer is about as simple as it gets: someone posts a question they need help with, and if you can answer it you’ll earn anywhere from a few dollars to $25. Perhaps the only downside to Just Answer is that it is difficult to get accepted as an expert (hence the 2 stars out of 5 for “chance of success”). If you’re interested in trying it out but would like help getting accepted as an expert, use the form to contact me and I’ll send you instructions for how to get in.

Ether.com is a similar service focused on helping you sell your expert advice over the phone.
MiNeeds allows bidding on a variety of tasks that need done.

Earning Potential: $$$$
Chance of Success: **
Create the new Viral Sensation

If you're going to embarass yourself in front of millions of people on the internets, you might as well get paid for it.
The bad news is that online video advertising is still relatively young, and with most revenue sharing programs you’ll only earn a fraction of a cent every time your video gets viewed. The good news is that some videos can get a LOT of views. Viral hits like the JK Wedding Entrance Dance or “LonelyGirl15” rack up tens of MILLIONS of views, which means those pennies could add up pretty quickly!

YouTube only offers revenue sharing once you get big, so instead you might want to try http://revver.com/ or http://www.break.com/.

Earning Potential: $$$$$
Chance of Success: *
Do 20 Tasks on Fiverr

A measly five bucks and she can be your (fake) girlfriend (on Facebook)
Aye, these are desperate times, my friends. The things that people will do for a mere five bucks simply blows the mind: PSD to HTML website conversion, Joomla setup, even be your Facebook girlfriend. At rates like that, my advice would be to skip trying to earn money doing tasks on Fiverr, and instead set up some sort of task arbitrage scheme whereby you accept jobs from Craigslist for $25, and then hire someone from Fiverr to do them for $5. Yeah, now we’re doing it making money online style!

Earning Potential: $$
Chance of Success: ****
Test 10 New Websites

You can get paid to test websites, as long as you can make a pensive face.
Usability testing is when companies hire random people to tell them what they think of their website. Think you could be that random person? If so, you can earn up to $10 a pop by completing a few simple tasks on the website, and filling out a report on your experience. Each test should take about 10 to 20 minutes, which means that this may be one method where you actually can meet our goal of $100 in 3 hours (while still having time to make a sandwich).

Some sites to try include:
http://www.usertesting.com/betester.aspx – Appears to be the most generous, and the most professional.
http://www.usabilitysciences.com/contact-us/recruiting
http://www.testarmy.com/app/view/more-tester/
http://www.userfocus.co.uk/panel/index.html
http://www.usabilityexchange.com/uehowitworks5.php – UK based, for disabled users

Earning Potential: $$$$
Chance of Success: ****
Pimp Out Peoples’ iPads/ iPhones

This one is inspired by a story on the founder of HungryPod, who (at least at one point) was making over $100,000 a year uploading CDs to peoples’ iPods. In my mind there’s a similar opportunity to profit from the iPad and iPhone craze: who has the time to wade through the Appstore to find all the most useful bits? If you know iPhone backwards and forwards, why not offer a “Pimp my iPhone” service to get peoples’ iPhones set up with the very best apps (along with music, photos, videos, or anything else the customer wanted on there). This one might be easier to work if you live in New York, where people have a lot more money than time.

Earning Potential: $$$
Chance of Success: **
Come up with 4 Cool Domain Name Ideas at PickyDomains.com

A good name is hard to find– and especially so when you need to find an available .com domain name to match. If you’re one of those people who just has a way with names (eg, you’re so clever your cats are named “José” and “Hose B”), then you may find your money-making niche at PickyDomains.com. All you have to do is come up with name ideas, and if your suggestion wins you’ll earn somewhere around $25.

Earning Potential: $$$
Chance of Success: **
Flip a Domain Name

OK, this one might be difficult to pull off in just 3 hours, but you also have a good shot at earning a lot more than $100. Here’s the gig: every day thousands of domain names expire and are auctioned off at sites like NameJet.com, SnapNames.com, and TDNAM.com. Although some auctions go in to the tens of thousands of dollars, most start at $60 (or just $10 at TDNAM.com). Since we’re just interested in making a quick buck, rather than getting serious about domain investing, you just want to find an opportunity to flip a domain for an easy profit. The best way to do that is to look for domains that offer a better version of an existing website’s domain. For example, if my website is YogaDVDs.net and you grab the domain YogaDVDs.com in an expiring auction, there’s a good chance I’m going to be willing to pay you something for that domain. Ditto for singular/ plural combinations, and hyphenated/ non-hyphenated domains. Most small businesses and website publishers don’t even know that expired domain auctions exist, so you’re actually doing them a favor if you sell them the domain at a fair price and prevent it from ending up as a permanent parking page in a mega-domainer’s collection.

PS: Make sure you only apply this strategy for generic descriptive domain names, not brand names like “Yahoo” or “Microsoft”.

Earning Potential: $$$$$
Chance of Success: ***
Help 10 Students at StudentOfFortune.com

Textbook Rockstar? You can make money online helping out students.
I saved one of my greatest finds for last. There are many variations on the “get paid to answer questions” theme, but StudentofFortune.com seems to be one of the more promising ones. After all, who is more desperate to answer questions than students? It might help to be a bit of an academic, but hey when questions pay up to $150 each, that’s a lot of inspiration to hit the books!

Other sites where you can earn money online by tutoring students:
http://www.ehomeworkhelp.com/tutors.cfm
http://www.tutorandmentor.com/careers.html
http://www.tutor.com/apply/why-tutor-with-us

Earning Potential: $$$$
Chance of Success: ***

Now Go Get Started Making Money Online!

Did you find any of these suggestions helpful? Any additional ideas that you would like to add? Please let me know if you found this tutorial useful or how you would like to have seen it done differently, and next time will be even more valuable for you!

Making Money Online with Your Passion

Mark Smith — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:54:26 +0000

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?

Guest Blogging on Making Money Online

Doug Dillard — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:58:41 +0000

When it comes to making money online there are a million different ways to do so, and more being created each day. Now I have been in the internet marketing business for a little over 10 years now and I have tried many different money making endeavors over those years. Some have worked really well, some just ok… while others have totally failed, so I do know a little bit about of what works and what doesn’t when it comes to making money online.

But one thing’s for sure… neither Mark nor I know everything there is to know about making money online, and no one else does either. So what Mark and I have decided to do since there are so many different ways of making money online out there is… we need to look for other people that would like to share their money making ideas with our viewers by allowing “Guest Bloggers”.

So if you have any making money online tips or related ideas you would like to share with our readers, we would love to post them on our site. Now we are not looking for people to just write a great big ad promoting their products or services. We are looking for tips, tricks, ideas, how-to tutorials, etc… on different ways to make money online. This would include (but not limited to) things like; affiliate marketing, network marketing, selling on Ebay, advertising, memberships sites, SEO, traffic generation, site design, online and offline marketing, networking, copywriting, blogging tips, etc…, the list could go on and on.

So why should you consider writing a guest post for MakingMoneyOnline.com? There are many reasons why you should, but here are a few:

Expose Your Name and Blog to a Whole New Audience – Guest Blogging is one of the best ways to get your name, as well as your blog exposed to a whole new potential group of viewers.

Generate More Traffic to Your Site – Writing a Guest Post for our site will definitely drive more traffic to your site as readers are always interested to learn more about the person writing the post. I know when I read posts from guest bloggers on other sites I almost always visit the author’s site to see what their site is about. I have become a loyal follower to several blogs that I have found through them guest blogging on other sites I frequent.

Build up Your Reputation – It is hard to build your reputation when you are first starting out blogging… and writing a quality guest post can only help quickly build your reputation as an expert in your field.

SEO Benefits – Guest blogging on this site or any other blog for that matter is a great way to help with your search engine optimization. You will be creating a relevant, high quality, keyword-rich one-way link back to your site which search engines love!

Free Advertising – This actually encompasses everything I mentioned above, as this is really a great way to advertise your business for FREE on our site. Yes, it will take a little work writing the post… but it won’t cost you a dime. Also, the click-through rate from a guest post link is far superior than purchasing a banner ad on this site or any other site. So if you don’t have a lot of money to advertise your business, this is a no brainer.

HOW TO SUBMIT A GUEST POST TO MAKING MONEY ONLINE DOT COM

If you would like to write a Guest Post for our website, please contact us first so we can let you know if it is something we think our viewers might be interested in reading. Simply go to the Contact Us page and send us an email with the following information.

Your name
Your email address
What topic you would like to write about
A sample of your writing (a link to an article is fine)
The URL(s) you are planning to link to in your post

If we feel your idea for a post is something our readers would be interested in, we will send you an email with instructions on how to submit your post.

Also, before submitting your post… PLEASE FOLLOW THESE RULES:

Your post must be completely original and not published anywhere else.
To be accepted the post should be well written with no grammatical errors, so please run your post through a spell checker before submitting it. We also suggest you have a friend or associate read it over to see how it sounds before submitting it.
We reserve the right to make any corrections and modifications to the post(s) that we feel necessary.
We may not accept all Guest Posts that are submitted to us for one reason or another. If we decide not to accept your post we will let you know why we didn’t, and we will give you the opportunity to make the necessary changes to get it approved, but we cannot make any guarantees.
We reserve the right to modify these rules at anytime.

So if you would like build up your reputation, drive more traffic to your site, help with your SEO rankings, or just feel like sharing your knowledge… PLEASE contact us today about writing a Guest Post for Making Money Online Dot Com.

Making Money Online Swiping Ideas

Doug Dillard — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:42:46 +0000

When it comes to making money online, there are literally unlimited ways to go about accomplishing that goal. But the smart internet entrepreneur is always keeping a close tab on what other successful online marketers are up to with their business. That is where the “Swipe Files” and “Idea Files” come in extremely handy.

What is a swipe file? It is basically exactly what it sounds like. It’s a file full of content that you have swiped from other sites, magazines, newspapers, etc…. Swipe files are usually used by copywriters, and whenever they see a great ad, sales letter, headline, etc… they make a copy of it (or cut them right out of a magazine or newspaper) and put it a file for future reference. Then when they are getting ready to write an ad or sales letter, they can browse their swipe file to get ideas. People have been creating “Swipe Files” forever and there is nothing wrong with it, as it is a commonly used practice. Just know that the content in the file is used for inspiration and ideas, not for copying and pasting as that would be plagiarism.

Like swipe files, I like to visit my favorite sites and take notes on what I like and don’t like about each site and save that information in what I call my “Idea File”. My idea file is similar to a swipe file, as it is a place to draw inspiration, but it is different because I am not saving actual content. I am creating a list of things that I like about different sites I visite. Here are just few examples of things you might find in my “Idea File”.

SITE DESIGN – When surfing the web (which I do a lot of each day) I love to take note of each site I visit’s overall design to see if there is something that I really like that might look good on one of our sites, or future sites we have planned.

For example, this site’s design was created from a cool site I saw that was using the WordPress Church theme from StudioPress. So I purchased the theme, customized the color layout, added a logo, uploaded it to Making Money Online Dot Com’s server and I thought I was done.

Then a few days later I found another theme that I really liked called the Ultimate Blogging Theme from Carl Ocab. I loved the theme, but I really liked 2 elements of the design a lot (the 3 boxes on the top of my index pages and the footer layout), so I purchased that theme too, and extracted those 2 elements and added them to my site.

Then there was one more thing I really wanted, which I had in my Idea File for months before ever opening Making Money Online. John Chow and Zac Johnson both have this cool way of displaying their featured posts on their index page with a scrolling display plugin. So I sent a few emails to the guys over at Unique Blog Design (the company that designed both their themes) asking them what they would charge to create that for me. Well I never heard back from them, so I just went to Elance and found someone to create it for me there.

Of all the things I keep in my Idea File, “Site Designs” probably has the most in it. Not only do I have just a whole bunch of URL’s in there, but I have taken hundreds, if not thousands of screen shots over the years of sites where I like some part of their design.

COOL PLUGINS – Since this site is built on the WordPress platform there are just TONS of plugins out there to enhance your visitor’s experience. Whenever I see some kind of cool function on sites I visit I try and find out if it is a plugin, and if so… which one they are using.

Also, many bloggers nowadays run posts each month (if not several times a month) listing their favorite plugins and/or any new plugins that have just come out and let you know exactly what they do. I have a HUGE LIST of plugins now and what they do in my Idea File for whenever they might come in handy.

PROMOTIONS – Everyday website owners are coming out with new promotions for their sites, as well as running contests to get people coming back each week (or if you are lucky each day). The first contest we ran was a result of a post we read from Dan Keller over at TycoonBlogger.com. It is a Comment Contest which we are still running now.

Another example of a promotion I have in my Idea File is Shoemoney’s “Free Shirt Fridays” where each Friday Jeremy promotes a company that sends him a shirt. It is an ingenious idea, and he gets a ton of free shirts to wear (or do whatever he wants with) as well as other products sent to him each week. We have a cool idea planned for this site that I am sure you are all going to love, and the inspiration for it came from that promotion.

WHAT THEY ARE PROMOTING – It is hard to stay on top of every new product, eBook, service, etc… that comes out in your niche each week. A good way to find new products is by visiting other websites and see what they are promoting. Of course everything your competition is promoting might not work for your current site(s), but it might work down the road, so I like to keep a list of things people are marketing. This really comes in handy when you are writing a post, as one of the products you saved might be perfect to promote in that post. Also, if you are short on ideas of something to write about… you could always do a little research and write a post on one of the products in your file.

NEWSLETTERS – Do you have a subscriber list for your site, or are planning on building one? Before we ever added our first sign-up subscription form to one of our sites, I literally signed up to hundreds of online newsletters, and I kept a copy of my favorite newsletter layouts in my idea file. Not only did I keep a copy of the layouts (which helped a lot when designing our newsletters), but I also kept notes on how each webmaster’s subscription process went. Many have cool “Next Step” pages that explain the double option process so the subscriber knows they have to do one more step before they are actually subscribed. Others have thank-you pages that are designed to get you to do something else. I really like the fact that every newsletter is different and you can learn something from everyone you sign-up for. With some you will learn something that you want to add to your newsletter, and with others you will learn things you do not like and want to stay away from.

If you are ever planning on creating your own subscriber list, I suggest you sign-up for as many newsletters as you can and see what others are doing. If you don’t like receiving a bunch of newsletters in your current email account, I suggest you create an email account just for newsletters. Then you can check your account once a week, or whenever you feel like it.

There are several other things I keep in my Idea File, but you get the basic understanding of how it works. There is nothing worse than seeing something really cool and saying to yourself, “I need to do that on my site” and then a little while later totally forget what it was. If you are good about keeping an Idea File, then you won’t have to worry about that happening.

Remember… Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, so don’t feel bad doing something similar to what your competition is doing. Just don’t copy them exactly or you might offend them a little, and you don’t want to do that either.

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

Doug Dillard — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 01:07:56 +0000

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
$2
$4
$8
$16
$32
$64
$128
$256
$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!

Custom Banner Package Giveaway Winners

Doug Dillard — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 21:48:08 +0000

We have a winner of Making Money Online Dot Com and 20DollarBanners Custom Banner Package Giveaway! Actually, we don’t just have one winner, we have 3 winners. Mark and I have decided to buy a couple custom 125×125 banners ourselves to giveaway in addition to the grand prize which was supplied by Tuan over at 20DollarBanners. So in addition to pulling out one grand prize winner, we also had our bikini models pull out 2 additional names to give each one a “Custom 125×125 Banner” as well.

Take a look at the video below to see the actual drawing of the winners!

If you want to cheat without watching the video first, you can scroll down and see the winners below, but it is more fun to watch the video first and be surprised, especially if you were entered in the contest…

Well hopefully you watched the video and you know who the winners are, but here they are anyway…

GRAND PRIZE WINNER – Kristi from DoFollow.info
Kristi won a custom banner package (valued at $109) from 20DollarBanners courtesy of Tuan.

BONUS WINNER 1 – Jared from TheMoneyCult.com
Jared won a custom 125×125 banner from 20DollarBanners courtesy of Making Money Online.

BONUS WINNER 2 – Lee from MyBlog2Day.com
Lee also won a custom 125×125 banner from 20DollarBanners courtesy of Making Money Online.

The winners will be contacted by email in the next day or two with instructions on how to claim their prizes.

We want to thank everyone for participating in the contest and congratulate our winners. Also, we want to send a big thank-you out to Tuan for letting us interview him, as well as for the awesome banner package he gave us to giveaway.

Now if you didn’t win and would still like some custom banners created for your site (you know you do), simply go to 20DollarBanners and place your order. Tuan is giving our readers a 10% DISCOUNT on any individual banners purchased. Simply use the coupon code: “mmodotcom“ when you are checking out. The discount cannot be applied to any of the package deals, as they are already deeply discounted. But if you just want one or two, or even a few… the coupon code will save you some money.

Making Money Online Promoting Affiliate Products in Your Blog Posts

Doug Dillard — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 07:11:10 +0000

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…

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!
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.
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.

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.
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.
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

Doug Dillard — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 05:02:46 +0000

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!

Win an Awesome Custom Banner Package

Doug Dillard — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 08:40:37 +0000

This is part one of a two part post. The second part will be posted tomorrow. Today I am just writing to let you know about a contest we will be running starting tomorrow, and about a discount code that can be used to save you some money on getting custom banners created for your site. If I tried to cram all this information, along with the interview into one post, no one would read the entire thing, so I had to break it up.

Tomorrow’s post is going to be our second “Spotlight Interview”. This time we will be interviewing Tuan Nguyen of 20DollarBanners fame. It is a really good interview, so you definitely do not want to miss it. Tuan has been making money online for many years now and you will learn how he got started and some of the secrets to his success, as well as some of his future plans.

When I asked Tuan if he would do the interview, I also asked him if he might be able to throw in a prize that we could give away to one of our readers, maybe a banner or something. To my amazement, not only did Tuan say “YES”, he went way above and beyond my expectations. He actually gave us a complete banner “Starter Package” ($109 value) to give away, which includes the following size custom banners…

1 – 468X60
1 – 120X60
1 – 125X125
1 – 120X600
1 – ANY SIZE

I totally wish I could enter this contest, as I would love to win that prize package. If you haven’t seen his work, make sure and visit his site, as he does an amazing job and his prices are awesome! I think everyone that owns an online business should consider having some banners created for their site. I am actually going to have Tuan design some banners for MakingMoneyOnline.com. We are just trying to decide exactly what we want.

How does this contest work? It is going to be a simple raffle where we pull the winner’s name out of a hat. I think we will even video tape the official drawing and find a sexy model to pull the name out of the hat to add a little excitement to the event.

Here is what you need to do to earn raffle tickets. The more actions that you take from the list below, the more raffle entries you can earn.

You need to leave a comment on tomorrow’s Spotlight Interview post of Tuan Nguyen, which will earn you one entry in the drawing. This is the only mandatory thing you need to do to be entered in the contest. Please leave a comment that shows you actually read the Interview and hopefully have visited his site. Just saying “Great Interview” really doesn’t prove that you actually did either of those things. (1 Entry)
Twitter this post. (1 Entry)
Twitter the interview. (1 Entry)
Stumble the interview. (1 Entry)
Vote for the Interview on Blogengage (1 Entry)
Write a post about the contest and interview with links to both. (4 Entries)
Subscribe to our newsletter. (3 Entries)

That’s it. To enter the contest all you HAVE TO DO IS LEAVE A COMMENT ON TOMORROW’S INTERVIEW, and if you would like to earn some extra entries, you can do any of the actions above. So if you do all the actions mentioned above you would earn a total of 12 entries, which is the maximum available per person. Doing any of the actions more than once does not earn you any more entries, but if you would like to, we wouldn’t mind it

Contest Ending Date: This is important as well. The contest is going to last 1 week, so it will end on Wednesday, September 3rd at 11:59 PM (PST), so you have that long to complete any of the actions you would like to do. Any actions completed after that time will not count as an entry. IMPORTANT: You also need to make sure and let us know all the actions you took in the comment section of this post. We will announce the winner on Monday, September 7^th. So that is everything I believe you should know about the contest. If you have any questions… ask us in the comment section below.

As I mentioned in the beginning of this post, I also have a coupon code to save you some money. Not only did Tuan give us a great Prize Package to give away… he also is offering a 10% discount to any of our readers on individual banner creations. Unfortunately, you cannot use the coupon code for banner packages, as those are already deeply discounted, but if you want to get one, two, or three custom banners created… you can use this code to save yourself 10% on your order. Just use the code “mmodotcom” when you are checking out and the discount will be applied.

That’s it for today. Make sure you read tomorrow’s interview and get entered into this contest, as that is really a great prize package. Also, if you are in need of some banners for your site, head over to 20DollarBanners and order some. Just make sure you use our discount code.

MakingMoneyOnline.com’s First Big Milestones

Doug Dillard — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:25:45 +0000

Wow, I can’t believe this site has been live for 2 months now, and not only that… it has grown way faster than we could have imagined (which is a great thing). We owe it all to you out there who stop by and read what we have to say, so we want to say thank-you very much! Also, we would like to send an extra great big THANK YOU to all of you out there that leave comments regularly, which makes this a very interactive site and really fun for me and Mark to run.

Well here is a list of the milestones we have accomplished here at Making Money Online Dot Com in our first two months…

Post number 50! – Well… this is actually post number 52, but 50 sounded like a better number to celebrate! I know this probably does not sound like a lot compared to a lot of you bloggers out there, but it is great for us. Also, this number should be increasing faster in the upcoming months, as we only used to post to the blog once a day, Mon – Fri. Soon we will start posting on Sundays too, and eventually we might write posts on Saturdays as well, but we will have wait and see.
Over 1000 Comments – This one truly blew my mind. In less than 2 months we have received almost 1200 comments on this site, not including pingbacks and trackbacks… which is AWESOME! Of course many of the comments were probably written by me and Mark, as we always like to reply to as many comments as we can… but the number is still great! Again… thank you guys for all the comments and all the help you have given us!
Listed on Page #1 on Google for the Keywords “Making Money Online” – Okay, I know I said receiving over 1000 comments blew my mind, but making it to the first page of Google for the search term, “Making Money Online” in less than 2 months REALLY BLEW MY MIND! We are on the bottom of the first page (and it jumps back and forth between there and the top of page 2), but we are on the first page as I am writing this post! This was definitely one of our main goals for the site, but we did not expect to make it to the first page for like a year or two… so this is an incredible milestone! Someday we hope to grab that #1 top spot.
Somebody Asked to Interview Me – This was really cool as well. To be honest, it was a buddy of mine, Jared Little from TheMoneyCult.com who I met through this blog that asked to interview me. But an interview is an interview and I felt honored he asked… and it was fun to do. You can read the entire interview here.

Well that’s it for notable milestones! Again, we want to thank all of you for visiting our site and hanging out and interacting. Without you guys, this site would be pretty boring.

Now we have lots of big plans for the future of this site with interviews with successful online business owners in all sorts of niches, lots of fun how-to tutorials, money making ideas, case studies, quick tips on how to do all sorts of things, and much much more. So please keep coming back and follow us on our journey.

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