OK, the title of this post isn’t going to gain me any search engine juice, but it’s how I feel. I’m again sitting in my favorite dive with my netbook, sucking bandwidth from the Day’s Inn next door.
I’ve embarked on yet another plan to get to my $100 a day goal before Christmas, 2010. I just launched a new site, a review of Whisper Wind Generators. It’s an Adsense-heavy one page blog. My plan is to slowly get it some link juice, pull down some clicks, create another review page, rinse and repeat dozens of times. If I can create a page every day or two, it should go a long way toward increasing my daily average income (which is now up to $4.76).
What are you doing today to increase your income? Please share.
In his new ebook, Geek-Free SEO, Jonathon Leger cuts through the crap and gets to the meat of Search Engine Optimization. There’s not a lot new here, just the facts that weed out the clutter and help you focus on the things that will actually increase traffic to your site.
The ebook is completely free, with no email opt-in or signup.
Here is the Table of Contents:
●What is search engine optimization?
●Seach Engine Optimization in one sentence.
●Determining what you want your web site to be found for.
●What are people typing into the search engines that’s related to your web site?
●Are people who search for those keywords looking to buy something?
●How much competition is there for those keywords?
●Advertiser Competition
●In-Depth Competition Analysis
●Getting links to your web site in order to rank for your keywords.
●Things to be careful of when link-building.
●You don’t want all of your links to be exactly the same.
●You don’t want to build links too fast.
●Write articles that other web site owners can post on their web sites for free.
●Create effective “link bait” content and submit it to social networks.
●Join link networks.
●Don’t freak out if this all seems like a lot of work.
If you want all the “good stuff” in one place, this short read is for you.
(Here’s the link to get your free copy of Geek-Free SEO.)
Tags: choosing keywords, free ebook, link building, seo
Over the past year, my brother and I have had several discussions about fundraising for a charity. It’s something we both want to do, but neither of us are in a position financially to do much about it, other than talk. My theory has been that when I reach some of my financial goals, I won’t feel guilty about taking time away from my projects to do something for others. But I recently came up with a project that may let me help others while I help myself.
I have accumulated a virtual stack of e-cookbooks for which I own resale rights. I thought about creating a website to sell them, but there are so many free recipes online, I didn’t think they would sell very well. So, I thought maybe I could create a market where a market didn’t apparently exist. What if I sold the cookbooks really cheap and donated part of the price to charity? I could market them to people who cook as being cheap cookbooks and I could market them to other folks as a way to contribute to a charity while getting something of value in return. That’s how eBooksforCharity.com was born.
Originally, I was going to try donating to several charities, just to widen the potential target audience. But, since I am selling the books so cheap, I would only be able to give a few cents to each charity. So I decided to begin by focusing on a single charity. If the site is successful, I’ll add another charity or two. I chose the Grant County Animal Shelter in Williamstown, KY because I have personally adopted a dog and a cat from them and I know how hard they are trying to provide for the animals in their care. I hate to say anything bad about them, but there was a time when they were a terrible animal shelter. They were basically a place to take unwanted animals to be killed. But, with a change of personnel and an awakened community awareness, they have completely turned things around. Last year they processed about 1,500 dogs. Fewer than one percent of healthy dogs were unadoptable and had to be euthanized. They are working small miracles on a very limited budget.
So, we’ll see how it goes. Hopefully, I’ll make enough money to pay for the hosting, the Grant County Animal Shelter will be able to buy some much needed supplies and my brother and I will feel just a little better.
Tags: charity, cookbook, ebook, grant county animal shelter
Did I ever tell you I LOVE my netbook? Right now, I’m sitting in my favorite little hole-in-the-wall restaurant, eating a cheeseburger, connected to the wireless network of the Day’s Inn next door. While waiting for my food, I uploaded a new website that I just received from a content-building site. I made some changes to its templates and now I’m writing this blog post. The bonus of all this is I could ignore the argument between the waitress and whoever it was on the other end of her cell phone.
This morning, I checked all my sales figures from yesterday. Two straight “good days” has nearly doubled my 30-day rolling average income to a little over $4 per day. So, all in all, I’m having a pretty good day.
At least it’s a good day when measured by my old goals. I got into the habit of getting excited about every little sale. A 39 cent AdSense day was normal; a $2.39 AdSense day was reason to take my wife out to dinner. Four dollars a day doesn’t even pay my Cracker Barrel breakfast bill. Actually, it doesn’t pay for the gas to drive to Cracker Barrel.
So, gone are the days of being satisfied with a “good day”. Now, each “good day” reminds me of how far I have to go and motivates me to do more today to reach my goal. How about you? Are you happy with your good days? What have you done today to move closer to achieving your goal?
Tags: adsense, daily income, goals, netbook
(Note: The purpose of this post isn’t to promote ebooks. I’m just relating my experiences.)
For the past 18 months, I have been spending 70 – 90 hours a week sitting at my computer trying to make a buck. Nobody can say I’m not motivated or that I’m not putting forth enough effort. Last month, I stumbled upon (yet another) ebook that claimed to know how to change my $2 a day into $20 or even $200. I checked out the guy’s blog, and something really hit home. Unless he’s a really good scam artist, his story closely mirrored mine up to now. To make a long story short, I bought his ebook (Confessions of a Lazy Super-Affiliate). On the very first page of Part 1, I had an “aha” moment. He said “I believe the easiest way to pull down massive (easy) commissions is by targeting people who are already on the verge of buying.” I had spent thousands of hours trying to produce good content to attract interested visitors to my websites. Once they got there, I had to convince them to buy something. All along, I should have been focusing on providing something people need, then targetting buyers. How could I have overlooked something so obvious for so long?
Anyway, here’s a partial list of some of my activities since reading that ebook:
- created 2 mini-sites (auto insurance affiliate links)
- Created 6 Facebook pages promoting Clickbank products (1,200 ‘fans’ so far)
- Bought 4 gigs on fiverr.com to promote one mini-site and 3 FB pages
- Added my own gig to fiverr.com selling an ebook I got for free
- Made an agreement with a website owner to provide content in exchange for selling my (upcoming) ebook
- Created an FBML landing page for another FB page promoting a Clickbank product
- Wrote some posts on other FB pages with links to my FB product pages
- Working on a deal with an ebook seller to rebrand his products with my name
- Created an online storefront on an existing site using GoldenCAN.com
- Posted about a competing product on one of my FB pages (both are my Clickbank products)
- Kickstarted this blog
- Set aside an hour each day to edit a cookbook I am going to sell
- Parked an unused domain name at Sedo.com
- Added comments to a dozen .edu blogs with links to my mini-sites
- Bought 2 targetted gigs at fiverr.com to promote my FB pages
- Purchased domain foverr.com
- Downloaded a free Clickbank storefront and installed on foverr.com
- Discovered the lying SOB that created the storefront neglected to tell me it was a “limited” storefront that only displayed 3 products from one category (but I could buy the complete package)
- Created my own landing page for foverr.com promoting some Clickbank products and some AdSense ads.
- Spent $49.95 to have a complete 200-page mini-site built (they’re working on it now)
- Built a deck, built a raised flower bed, attended a funeral and helped my brother launch and promote his own FB group.
One of the benefits of buying the LazyAffiliate ebook is that the guy sends out really useful newsletters each week. Some are sales pitches, but the rest are just very inspirational advice. This week’s reminded me to make sure I do something every day that will directly result in profit. So, while studying and looking for new revenue streams are important, they don’t directly lead to profit. On the other hand, promoting a site, adding content or starting a new promotion at least have the potential to lead to income.
That’s plenty for today. Just because I appreciate what I’ve learned from the LazyAffiliate, here’s a list of some of his other ebooks (with his description). I haven’t read most of them yet, but I can vouch for his sincerity and common sense:
- The Conduit Method is a hot-selling report that has truly changed a lot of people’s lives by showing them the simplest possible way to earn a full-time income from affiliate marketing by repeating an easy, “zero guesswork” strategy over and over again.
- The Reverse Niche Selection strategy is also one of our hot-sellers, as it clearly explains the simplicity of how, for the same (or less) effort, anyone can literally just “mimic” their way to a full-time online income, and beyond – instead of trying to forge their own path.
- Site Layouts That SELL is the ultimate, must-have toolkit for any serious affiliate wanting to tap into easy, inevitable commissions with free search engine traffic.
- The Rapid List Profit Formula is the complete blueprint to building opt-in email lists and making a fortune in the process.
- The 24 Hour HOT Product Formula is the definitive guide to creating & launching a digital product in as little as 24 hours.
- The Visitor Value Multiplier Manifesto is hands-down the most powerful strategy for making a massive impact on your results (and income) right now, with very little effort. The report also contains an actual example of how I more than doubled the earnings of one of my sites from $2000/mth to $4600/mth just by changing 2 small things on the offer page.
Please, share what you’re working on and tell me how you’re doing. It gets lonely sitting in a home office all day, every day. Surely there’s many more of us out there.
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I’ve decided to take this blog in a new direction. Of course, if you’ve read this blog, you know it has no direction now.
I am going to begin documenting my various attempts to make some money online. From time to time, I will even disclose here how much money I am making.
Right now, I feel like I’m running in 100 different directions. Some days I’ll think of a dozen different ideas I’d like to try. Other days my reservoir of ideas dries up completely. My real hope is that if I take a few minutes to write down what I’m doing and where I’m going, an actual plan of attack will become clear to me. I once worked at a place where several people had attended the same time management class. After their class, I noticed that each one had a small, round sticker on their monitor that simply said “What’s Important Now?” I’m hoping that writing down my criss-crossing paths will force me to focus on what’s important now.
As to the title of this post, one of the dozen things I’m working on right now is a domain I registered named foverr.com. This is my first venture into the shady practice of typo-squatting. It’s just a single page, loaded with AdSense ads and affiliate links. I’m not planning to promote it. The only visitors it will ever see are folks who meant to visit fiverr.com, but type like me. Hopefully, the few that stumble into it will be entrepreneurial types who may be interested in the links there. I figure if I can squat on a few dozen sites like this, it may pay me back more than the registration fee. Then again, I’ll probably learn (again) that I shouldn’t jump into a market until I’ve done more than 5 minutes of research on it.
Each day, I record the income for all the various ventures I have going. I then add up all my income from the past 30 days, divide it by 30 and, voila, I have a rolling 30-day average that helps me chart where my ventures are heading. Last month, the chart showed a disturbing plummet as my two best affiliate programs dropped out of the affiliate business. As of today, my daily income is $2.66. But I am full of hope and drive. That’s a quarter more than it was 5 days ago. I guarantee that average will be over $100 by the end of the year. (I may have to knock over a couple of liquor stores on Christmas Eve to do it, but my guarantee stands.) Watch this space!
(Why don’t you join me? Use the comment area to share your journey with this blog’s readers. Maybe we can help each other out. With a bazillion entrepreneurs out there and a gazillion Internet users, it isn’t like we’re fighting each other for the quarter somebody dropped on the street.)
Tags: adsense, affiliate programs, foverr.com, make money online
One of my favorite websites is ClassicSchools.com. They are passionate about old, closed high schools.
When a high school closes, it is frequently a big loss to the community it served. The closing of small town schools, especially, leaves a big hole in the hearts and lives of its alumni and citizens. ClassicSchools.com tries to gather information about these schools and posts what it finds in either an article or a blog post. They currently have identified and listed over 3,000 closed high schools.
To pay the bills, they also create and sell “alumni apparel” or “reunion apparel” for many of the schools. They sell them through a third party, but ClassicSchools sets up the apparel by specifying the school colors and mascot. Imagine how much attention you would receive if you showed up at your next alumni gathering wearing a Johnson Tigers shirt or jacket.
ClassicSchools.com also has pages where you can find old high school yearbooks. They have a list of all the yearbooks available from Amazon as well as access to online yearbooks you can view for a fee.
They recently started an online store where you can select from hundreds of thousands of products for college and pro teams. They have a button on the home page to take you to the store, so the store doesn’t interfere with the main goal of providing information about closed high schools.
They have a unique, informal partnership with illinoishsglorydays.com. Illinois High School Glory Days has a page for each of hundreds of closed Illinois high schools. Rather than duplicate their efforts, ClassicSchools.com links all of their Illinois schools to the respective pages on Illinois High School Glory Days. They are also working on an informal arrangement which will allow them to link to and promote the Indiana High School Basketball History website.
Check them out and send them your memories of your closed high school.
Tags: closed high school, high school apparel, high school reunion
(If you didn’t read my previous post about how to learn guitar online with Guitar Superstars, you might want to check it out, too.)
I checked around the little town where I live and found three guys who give guitar lessons. The cheapest one was $30 per hour and he didn’t really have a lesson plan. He said “We’ll just see where you are each week and go from there.” That approach has its merits I suppose, but it didn’t really give me much confidence in him.
Learning guitar by using online lessons seems to be the approach that will fit me best. I can practice what I need to practice and still have the flexibility to try something more fun whenever I want to.
The unbiased reviews I found for online guitar lessons seemed to all agree on one thing. Guitar Superstars is great if you have any background playing guitar at all. It will even work for total newbies if they have the desire to experiment and stick to it. But if you’re learning guitar from scratch, you can’t beat the approach and the “basics” provided by Jamorama.
The Jamorama courses cover everything from buying your first guitar, to strength and agility exercises, to how to play with others in a band. They teach guitar playing concepts that will help you understand what you’re doing, rather than focusing on boring, repetitive drills.
Here’s what ReviewsNest.com said about Jamorama: “These are without a doubt the best guitar lessons courses below $150, and Jamorama Acoustic Guitar is the best dedicated Acoustic guitar course around. In addition, assuming you read this before the expected price rise, these courses are also the best buys of all tested guitar lessons courses, in improvement-per-dollar terms.”
Like Guitar Superstars, Jamorama throws in a bunch of “freebies” along with the lessons. Among other things, they throw in some “games” that help you play by ear and learn chords and chord progressions. They also provide extra video exercises focusing on certain skills and specific types of music.
The Jamorama website throws out this teaser: It’s a year from today (or a lot sooner), and you’ve become the impressive guitar player you’d always dreamed of being — with a lot less effort than you expected. Even better, you know for a fact that you have the skills and resources to become an even better guitarist. Now, stop and look back on today. Considering that you’ve now become a fantastic guitar player, what price tag would’ve made it a good investment?”
I can’t tell you the price because it’s scheduled to go up and I have no way of knowing when you are reading this blog post. I do know it’s a lot cheaper than the local guys who wanted $30 – $50 an hour to teach me their way of playing. Jamorama also has a money-back guarantee, so you’re not really risking much.
If you click the image above, it will take you to the Jamorama website where you can read all about it. If you buy Jamorama, please leave a comment here in a few weeks and let me know how it’s working out for you.
