Online Earnings - November 2010

Just a quick note for this month's online earning dollars:

Drumroll, please...

$26.58

Up a few dollars from last month. It appears my website promotion is going well. I have hired a woman from TKA to help promote my site and she is doing a great job. Her service is a 4-month promotion plan that I began in mid-September 2010.

That puts us at:

09/10: $7.48
10/10: $18.99
11/10: $26.58

Of course, I continue to add articles from various folks from TKA, as well as trading blogrolls with some other Keyword Academy people. I've grown from very, very few incoming links to around 9,500 right now.

Until next time,

Cheers!

MJ

More SEO Strategies

A few ideas for more SEO strategies, folks.

Once you have your site up and running, start analyzing your Google Analytics. If you are getting search traffic to your site for keywords that you don't rank on page 1 in the SERPs, then you may have found an under-served keyword.

Check scroogle.org to see what keywords you rank for. Scroogle scrapes the results from Google while not counting your own searches. This is good. You don't want google seeing you searching for your own topics and throwing off their data.

This is called low-hanging fruit. Build a link-net to further pump up your ranking for this keyword. A link net can come in a couple of different forms. You could create 5 posts that all point at the original post with varying forms of the keyword.

You can also use a plug-in like SmartLinks that will automatically link keywords that you select to specific pages every time you use them. Over time, as you build more and more posts with different keywords, your posts automatically link more and more.

I've read that internal posts are just as valuable as external posts pointing towards your page. If this is true, you are wasting valuable links on your own site! Using SmartLinks is awesome.

Either of these methods will help to build your authority for a given keyword. Of course, if a link-net post is getting traffic, then make it its own post and build another link-net around it, too.

Some general hings to keep in mind as you write and link...

-As you write your posts, ensure that your exact keyword naturally appears twice in the article. I follow Griz's advice and try to put the keyword in the first and last sentence of the article. Sometimes that's too awkward and I just make the best of it.

-Writing is the name of the game, here. Write lots of different articles using variations of keywords.

-Always keep pushing to beat the sites in front of you... even if they have higher PR. Internal linking and keyword density, etc can work for you. Keep building links and you will beat them.

-Should you be in competition with someone who you are linking to, or who is linking to you? Yes! You are both helping each other. This makes good strong links for each of your pages and sites.

-Link old posts and new posts to strengthen your link-net.

-I use google analytics. This gives google acess that may be unwelcome, but adsense knows everything anyway, so they already have your info, and analytics is good for users.

-Whenever possible add a new post to the site to achieve a double listing. If you are getting traffic... 100 - 200 visitors per day, this will greatly increase your income per site.

-Build authority by building more and more links to your site.

Is there a minimum search target for low hanging fruit? Don't bother unless you are getting 50 visitors per day, but consider your top 10 keywords for bringing search traffic to your site...

-Focus on what is working and always be prospecting on what might work...

-Higher PR sites are worth much, much more than lower PR sites. Finding such sites are the hard part. One place to find sites like this is TKA.

I hope all of you are beginning to put some of this stuff in to practice and see some results. I'm trying to do all the research on SEO strategies so you don't have to.

Cheers!

MJ

Online Earnings - October2010

Just a quick note about my online earnings for October.

I had a quite a spike last month. Between the various online places, I came in just under $19. Pitiful, I know. But I was ridiculously happy about it. These small milestones are what keep us going in the Internet marketing game.

I continue to write pages for my site, and occasionally posting on Hubpages to help with the backlinks. The woman I hired a couple of months back from TKA is also adding links for me (at various social bookmarking sites, I believe).

Anyways, my main site is getting 20-30 visitors per day instead of 5-10 visitors. So I'm going in the right direction. Still small, but my chosen field is quite competitive. I'm not going after 'underwater basket weaving' like the smart folks do.

I recently read that on-site links are just as valuable as off-site links. This gives credibility to the idea of writing strictly for your own site and cross-linking like mad. This will create tons of internal links all pointing at each other.

The problem is that no one really knows the SEs algorithms so its all guesswork. I lean towards writing for my own site because it seems reasonable that if Google could filter out all the link-farms, link-directories (eZine, articlesbase, etc.), they would. But linking internally seems perfectly safe.

Who knows which is right. And tons of people are making tons of money using the article directories. I just don't want to follow that trend right now. If my current strategy fails, I may be forced into trying other means.

I can afford to pay for quite a lot of articles to be written and posted to various directories if need be. Anyways, just wanted to post the most recent online earnings... despite the embarassment of the small amount of money!

Testing BlogJet

I have installed a new application - BlogJet. It's an interesting Windows client for my blog tool. We'll see how well it works. I'm testing it to see how well it can link my pages together. In my brief usage, it seems clunky and not easy to use.

Learn about SEO at TheKeywordAcademy.com.

"Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination." -- Albert Einstein

 

 

Don't Make Readers, Make Money Online

Hi everyone,

I've been re-reading some of Griz's old posts on his "How To Make Money Online For Beginners". He makes it sound so easy! But here are a couple of tips I picked up will be applying soon. Bear in mind this strategy is strictly if you are looking to make money online using AdSense. It may not apply with other methods.

First, make your site ugly. Not terribly ugly, but definitely unappealing. Obviously Griz can't easily define what that means, but he says he is constantly playing with the look and feel of his sites to get just the right amount of ugly. The idea is that people will land on your site and be turned off by it and immediately click on of your exit links to get away.

Generally your most obvious exit links are your ads. They should be very apparent "above the fold". Above the fold just means that it should display when the page first loads. No scrolling necessary. If you go to his blog, you'll see unappealing colors and a very basic layout. I'd follow that strategy here, but alas, I get no traffic already so it wouldn't really matter.

Another of his tips is to write solid, useful content that is also very bland and leaves the reader wanting more. If you answer every question the reader has...then they are satisfied. They do not continue to search for answers - and they don't search by using your ads. Your content needs to be good enough, but not too thorough. I'm sure this is something that can be practiced.

A high CTR (click-through-rate) is related to bounce rate. Your CTR is the percent of people that click your ads . Bounce rate is the percent of people that land on your page and immediately leave. Hopefully by using your ads.

I spent months working to build the best, most useful site I could and currently have a bounce rate of less than 10%. I thought that was awesome. However, I finally realized that as my bounce rate went down  - my CTR also went down. The better my content gets, the more people just sit and read my pages. They aren't looking any more!

If you strictly create sites that are ugly and not helpful, G may put you "in the sandbox". And G continues to get better and better and discriminating between real content and spun content. To avoid

So I'm revamping my main site again. Uglier. Less easy to find all my great information. My ego has a hard time producing less helpful information. I'll report back how its going soon.

Remember, you don't want a bunch of readers... you want targeted traffic that lands on your page, and then keeps looking,

Cheers!

MJ

Search Engine Optimization Strategy

Hey there, folks!

Another week of learning about SEO and Internet marketing strategies, another week of me passing along the SEO strategies and IM strategies that I've learned!

This one comes from another member over at TheKeywordAcademy.com (TKA). There's a total genius over there that is willing to offer everything he learns to the masses. Half of his advice flies straight over my head. But the things that I do understand are pretty awesome.

So here's a tip from an SEO expert, someone that does this for a living...

It helps to rank well for a root keyword if you use a qualifier. So if you wanted to rank for "boats", unless you have boats.com locked up, or a bajillion links pointing at your site, it will be very difficult to rank for your term. Very difficult.


However,  you could create an article named "What Are Boats" - then externally and internally link to it using "boats" as the anchor text. Write a bunch of articles and submit them to the various directories, and you can rise very quickly using this process.


Consider reviewing the articles on your site with the view of writing some "explanatory articles" along the lines of "what are boats". Any qualifier should work. You could do this with "used X", "X for free", "where are X", "X in California", etc. Use your imagination. Don't fear the tough keywords. But be prepared for a fight.

If this works for a guy who uses this strategy to make money from home, and that's all he does -  it's probably pretty sound advice!

Website Promotion Services On TKA

Hi everyone,

I'm sure I have any readers yet, but I'll just keep throwing out things I learn about Internet marketing, and tips about SEO as I run across them.

As it happens, I ran across an awesome deal on the forum over at TheKeywordAcademy.com (TKA). There are various offers for internet business services pretty frequently at TKA. Here's the thing. An awful lot of the make money online game is a waiting game. You build a site, then wait for people to come. You write some articles and submit them to online directories and wait for traffic. No matter what a genius you are, you still have to wait for the various SEs, social bookmarking sites, etc. to put all the information together and send people to your site.

If you are a member of TKA this works to your favor. Since a lot of the member are building their own niche sites and super sites (and many of them are very, very good), they still need income while they wait for their sites to produce enough income to make it their sole source of money. This means you can get amazing people to promote your site with the exact same strategies they've perfected for their own sites.

This is what I've done for my main site just this week. I paid a modest fee to someone from TKA and they guarantee to get me on page one on Google for my designated keyword within 120 days. Not only that - they promised to promote 10 other pages on the site simultaneously!

Of course, I don't know the results yet, but I'm very excited. If it works, I'll apply the same tactic to this site which gets somewhere in the neighborhood of zero traffic as of this writing. That's ok. I understand that I'm a rookie with very little experience to offer as far as making money online. I can only tell you what hasn't worked yet.

As I gain experience (and money!), I'll be able to offer my own insights as to what works and what doesn't. By that time, I imagine I'll have plenty of traffic.

Here's hoping there are thousands of people reading this soon!!

MJ

The Keyword Academy Makes You Money

As my journey to earn a passive income online continues, I can't help but acknowledge where much of that help came from. Though I learned much from Griz (just google Griz and Money if you don't know about this guy...he's awesome but has basically retired by using his own methods), recently I've been learning from Mark and Court over at The Keyword Academy (TKA).

These guys have started up the best site - by far - of any of the other "make money online" sites. The thing is, they have a sound plan for how to achieve the goal of making money from home. Its not just some hazy guide that never pans out. They map it out for you. They lay it out as plain as day how to earn money online. In fact, that's some of what I post here. When I run across a good tidbit of information on TKA, I'll pass it along here.

There are more benefits than I can think of for why you should join TKA. Let's start with the structure. It isn't easy. There may be ways to make easy online money (for short term money), but this isn't one of them. They require you to work...or, at least outsource your work. But that's all part of building an online business that will run with or without you someday. Just imagine, checking your AdSense income from a resort in Jamaica. Sound nice?

Ok, so they give you a detailed plan for how to earn money from home. Part of this plan involves article marketing - writing articles and submitting them to sites all over the Internet. Well, they've started up their own network of sites to facilitate that as well. You can submit your site for folks to write FREE content (yes, I said free content!) for you or you can write content for other sites with links to your own site. A beautiful exchange of content for links; links for content.

Want more? Ok, how about the best keyword software I've ever used! They call it Niche Refinery. They'll show you how to use Google's free Keyword Tool to pull hundreds and hundreds of keywords from the Internet. Then upload your file and they'll process it and show you the keywords that will make the most money with the least amount of effort.

On a side note, TKA will explain to you their formula for finding keywords very freely...it will just take you hundreds of hours to do all the research yourself, and their Niche Refinery software does it all for you. Seems silly to waste your time doing this research when you could be writing content for your site.

Still not satisfied? You're a tough sale, huh?! Ok. How 'bout their brand new offering called Streamline. This is a program for you to track everything you post on your site; every keyword you target; every backlink to your site; and its only just started. They're still adding to it. There is a pretty good formula that says if you get X amount of  backlinks to your site, you'll get to the top of the search engines (SEs). Streamline will get you there if you utilize it.

My goodness. If you are still reading and still not convinced... you may need serious psychological help. My fingers are worn out, but I'll give you one more reason to join TKA. They have got the most awesome community of Internet marketers I've run across. While there are plenty of rookies (like me) asking questions, their are also a lot of people of all experience levels trying out new theories, testing different backlinking websites, reviewing content creation websites, discussing content distribution websites, sharing insights on new programs, etc. 

These aren't the superior assholes you find on some of the other sites who like to talk down the us rookies. These guys are actually as helpful as Mark and Court, the two guys that started TKA. Some of the forum members are even more helpful, giving advice before even being asked. Everyone is sharing strategies and results. Its awesome!

If all this isn't enough... I don't know what is. To be totally honest, if you join through my link, I'll get a small commission. But you can join for free for one month to see how good it is. After that, if you like, you can stay. If you don't like it, go away and I'll earn nothing. What can it hurt to try?

Go to The Keyword Academy right now to begin the process that could lead to your early retirement.

 I'll be a member either way. I just can't help but pass on to you what a wonderful site it is.

Cheers

MJ

Niche Sites or Super Sites?

As my education continues, I find that my journey to earn a passive income from home is like walking on quick sand. The 'make money from home' terrain is constantly shifting under my feet and I'm changing strategies as the landscape dictates. What do I mean by all this?

For months (maybe years?) I've been reading that the way to excel in the search engines (SEs) was to create an obscure niche that would not have much competition. Utilizing this SEO technique would allow the SEs to find my website easier when someone typed in a long-tail keyword. The next step is to create more and more and more of these niche sites, making a few dollars on each one per month.

This may be a strategy that some people follow. It makes sense and has been working for plenty of people for years. The latest in SEO theory, though, is to create Supersites. You may ask "What the heck is that?" I would say "That's a good question". There is no hard and fast definition that I can tell, but it seems to be a focus on using the 'niche website' strategy and applying it more broadly.

Meaning that you should still go for the niche topic, but develop it more rather than slapping up 5 or 10 pages and moving on to the next niche. The reason this makes more sense (at least it makes more sense to me), is that you need to do an awful lot of article marketing to build up a given webpage. Once one of your webpages has been built up to have some Authority (Google calls this Page Rank - known as PR) with the SEs, why abandon it to start a whole new site?

Why not use that page to build up another page on the same site? Why not continue to broaden your niche topic and build up the Authority of every page of the site? High PR pages carry a lot of weight with the SEs and if you can use one high PR page to link to, and build up, another page on your site...good for you!

This path to so-called easy online money takes a lot of education and work. While there are plenty of internet business opportunities, none are without effort. Whether you go with the niche site or the supersite, the main thing you should do is - take action!

Until next time!

MJ

Troubleshooting Google AdSense and Google Analytics

I had so much trouble linking my Google AdSense and Google Analytics that once I figured it out, I thought I should share my knowledge with the world. First I'll tell you how I was set up, then I'll explain the solution. Or scroll down directly to the solution if you're in a hurry. My journey to earn money from home in the form of a passive income is anything but easy!

I started with a single money making website. I signed up for Google AdSense and Google Analytics. I copied the code from Google onto my site. No problem. Then I started another money making website. So I added an account for the second site and added the code to that site. Then I did a third. Still no problem. But I realized after the fourth, fifth, and sixth money making websites that I didn't want to have to check every account separately.

I decided that what I really wanted to do was see a different "profile" on a single account. In my case, each site was a profile on an account. So I went about building a profile for each site. But then I had these extra accounts cluttering up my Dashboard. And since Google has such awful explanations and practically NO customer service to speak of, I couldn't find much help. 

Sometimes the forums had a helpful lead, but as often as not, it was just full of frustrated people screaming at Google for their lack of help. After countless hours (during which I was not creating content for my sites like I should have been), I figured out a few things. There is still a lot for me to learn, but here's what I've got so far. I can always add more later...

Delete An Account

1. After you sign in to Google Analytics, there is a drop down box with all your accounts listed on the right.

2. Select the account you wish to delete.

3. Then, over on the left is a link that says "Analytics Settings". Click it.

4. Underneath the View Reports dropdown box is a link that says "Overview = > Your Site (Edit account settings | Edit AdSense linking settings)". Click "Edit account settings".

5. Underneath your account information is a small link that says "Delete this account".

I missed that last step several times before spotting it. They sure don't make it easy delete a Google analytics account.

Link Google AdSense and Google Analytics

1. After you sign in to Google Analytics, there is a drop down box with all your accounts listed on the right.

2. Select the account you wish to delete.

3. Then, over on the left is a link that says "Analytics Settings". Click it.

4. Underneath the View Reports dropdown box is a link that says "Overview = > Your Site (Edit account settings | Edit AdSense linking settings)". Click "Edit AdSense linking settings".

5. If you have multiple sites, then here you will see them listed. Check the box by each site to link your Google AdSense t to your Google Analytics.

6. Copy and paste the code into the head of your site(s) if you haven't already.

Find AdSense Information in Analytics

• After you sign in to Google Analytics, there is a drop down box with all your accounts listed on the right.

• Select the account you wish to see AdSense data for.

• On the left there is a dropdown box with the title "View Reports". Select a profile (or website) from the list.

• Then, from the list of links on the left, click on "Content".

• If your AdSense and Analtyics accounts are linked properly, you'll see AdSense listed as a report when the list expands.

• You can stop here since this is the display for AdSense. I always add this report to my dashboard for convenience. Just click the "Add to Dashboard" button in the top left of the chart.

If you you are looking to make money online, then there is no question that you need to sign up for both of these programs. Google AdSense and Google Analytics are not very user friendly like you might expect from such a huge company.

Cheers

MJ

SEO Techniques (Part 2)

Yes, Dear Reader, I'm giving you even more SEO techniques to grow your blog or website to new heights. My generosity knows no bounds. Become your very own SEO expert by following a few simple tips.

• Start A Competing Site - If you manage to crack the top 10 with one of your pages (or more than one if you're really good), start another site targeting the same keywords and using the same SEO techniques you used to get your first page ranked. In this way you can dominate the entire top 10 spots for your keyword. Then start up 50 more sites doing the same thing. Own the keyword.
• Add A Sitemap - Having a sitemap can help the SEs find all the pages on your site. Of course they're supposed to craws every link anyways, but giving a little help to the bots can only help you, too.
• Use .Com - It seems to be true that .com domain names get more love from the SEs. The next best is .net. Going after .biz or .tv is much more difficult and often look like scam sites.
• Check Your Links - Broken links on your site piss off people as well as SEs. Make sure they all work.
• Navigation - Some SEs won't even crawl your site without some form of navigation, whether its at the top or on either side of your content. People need to be able to navigate around your site, too, by the way.
• Forget Flash - SEs can't see flash animation. Use it only for your human visitors.
• Label Images - SEs also can't see images. If you insist on using them (and lots of people do like them), use a descriptive label to tell the SE what the picture is of. This can also get you some extra search traffic when people are searching or images.
• Copy The Competition - Go to Yahoo Site Explorer and see what sites are linking to your competition. Then see if you can get those people to link to you, as well. Clearly they don't mind giving out links. Why not give some to you?
• Don't Stop - If you do manage to make to the top of the pile, you can't sit back with a margarita and relax. The SEs are constantly changing their algoritms, new competitors are emerging onto the scene, people are reading up on SEO techniques (like these here) and are moving up the ranks.
• Band Together - Join a group or forum of like-minded webmasters to keep up with the ever-changing search engine landscape. There will be plenty of theories about how the SEs are working. Some will be crazy. But you can see trends when many people share their experiences - both good and bad.

SEO Techniques

Here for your perusal, Dear Reader, are some SEO techniques for performing well in the search engines. There any number of ways to improve your performance.

SEO, or if you prefer the tongue-tying Search Engine Optimization, is all about getting search engines (SEs) to find you. If folks type in a keyword or phrase and don't find you, you may as well not have a website at all. Really.

Ideally you should employ SEO techniques before you even set up your site. If you already have a site, you probably should go back and fix some things. Make it a priority.

Some methods cost money. Some methods cost time. Only you can decide what is your priority. My belief is that you can always earn cash, you can't earn or make more time. So I'm willing to spend a little to help further my goal to make money online.

There are a lot of keyword experts out there, but you don't need an SEO expert for everything. There are some things you should do on your own. But remember, its not like flipping a switch. Performing a few of these SEO techniques won't make your site jump to the top of the list overnight. Everything about the search engines (SEs) takes time.

For one thing, brand new sites haven't been indexed yet, so the SEs don't even know you're there. But even after that its not so quick. For one thing the SEs prefer older sites over new sites. Age is an indicator of a known, responsible site. Think of it like kids. As they grow older they become more trustworthy. The SEs are all about trustworthiness.

• Niche Keywords - Or long tail keywords if you prefer. But ranking for the keyword 'cars' is next to impossible. But 'used cars', or 'used cars in Atlanta', or 'really awesome cars that are also cheap' would be easier. But you're keywords also need to have value so don't pick something that no one ever searches for. I'll write more about keyword selection later.
• Localize Your Keywords - If you are selling a product or service that sells to the general public on the local level, your keywords should reflect that. Savvy SE users search that way. If I'm not familiar with flowers, I might type "flower shops in Detroit" to get a list that I can actually use rather than just "flower shops" which would return results that are less useful to me.
• Don't ignore metadata - Metadata is the part of the html of your site that tells the SEs what your site is about. The keywords you're targeting, your description of each page, and the title of your page.
• Put Your Main Keyword(s) In Your Domain Name - Even if it is a long, clunky name, its better than a domain name that doesn't tell the SEs or your potential customers/readers what your site is about.
• Sign Up For Google Analytics - Its free and its the best. Learn where your web page visitors are coming from and how long they stay. There is, quite literally, more information here than anyone needs, but you do need some of it.
• Placement Of Keywords - Use your targeted keyword for each page in the first and last sentence of the page. The SEs give special importance to the beginning and end of a page.
• Be Aware Of Keyword Density - Too few and the SEs don't know what your page is about. Too many and its barely readable. Don't keyword stuff. Just write naturally and sprinkle keywords throughout.
• Register With The SEs - This one is controversial. The major SEs have a very simple way to let them know that you've got a new site. After all, they can't be expected to find all of the millions of pages that are created every day. But many SEO experts insist that registering with the SEs somehow increase the length of time it will take to be found... Go figure.

That'll do for now. I'll have another list of SEO techniques that you're sure to love soon...

Cheers

MJ

What I’ve Learned About How To Make Money Online

As you know, Dear Reader, my journey to make money online has had only limited success. I’m a year into the process, and have yet to make it big. To be honest though, for much of that time I was working on the wrong things. I didn’t know much about link building or article marketing and I’ve since learned that those are the main things that will make a site profitable.

The mantra "Content is King" was thrown around so much that I spent all my time writing articles that I thought were very useful. But if you don't land on page one of the search engines (SEs), then you may as well not be there. So, while "Content is King" may be true, you must still divide your time between creating new content and building back links.

What are back links?

Back links are when someone links back to your site. To the SEs, they are votes for your site. These votes say that you must have some good stuff, and that people are encouraging their readers to check out your site for more information about a given topic.

I've covered article marketing and blog commenting briefly in a previous post so I won't belabor the point. But how much time should you spend on these tasks? It seems around 80% - 90% of your time should be spent working on getting links. Writing articles and submitting to article directories, or surfing blogs on which to make intelligent, useful comments. Only 10% - 20% of your time is to be spent actually creating content for your own money making website.

Article Marketing Tips

So if you are submitting articles to directories, be sure to use your keyword as the link back to the page that you are targeting. See, the SEs like deep links. Deep links are links to pages of your site that are not your home page. If you only ever link to the homepage, the SEs will think that's a great home page and may rank it very highly, but the rest of your pages will never get ranked. And each page of your site should target a different keyword.

There is usually a place at the end of each article that talks about the author. This is called the bio box. This is where you will be allowed to put your links. So don't put " 'click here' to see my site." Then you'll be ranking for 'click here'. You'll want to write something like, "For more information about 'your keyword', please visit my site 'your site name'. I've made the text blue for where your links will actually be. 

Link Farms

These are sites that charge you a fee to purchase thousands and thousands of back links. I've only heard bad things about link farms. When a web page suddenly gets thousands of links all at once, it is very obvious to the SEs that it is artificial. I've heard the SEs will ban you if you use them. Don't use them.

Link Exchanges

A link exchange is when you and another website owner exchange links. While this is good, its not the most useful of links. The SEs like one-way links much better. One-way links are an indication that one site is voting for another site. Link exchanges look like what it is - two sites trying to promote each other.

Other Links

The best kind of links are also the kind that are woven into the content of an article. These are the most natural-looking to the SEs, and they also carry the most weight. That's why you see various links scattered throughout my posts. These links are pointing to other posts on this blog. It is a way to build links within my own site! Doing too much of this probably isn't a good thing, but sprinkling a few throughout an article is.

I'll continue to share the things I learn about how to make money online as I gain experience...

That's all for now.

Cheers

MJ

Money Making Website

In my quest to earn money from home, I've started more than one money making website. See, my goal is not just to make money online, but to build something that will provide a passive income for years to come. As part of this effort, I'm sharing my experiences with you, Dear Reader, and perhaps you can learn from my failures. Here are some things I've learned.

Blogs and/or websites are the way to go. Writing for HubPages or Squidoo works, but any money your articles produce (by readers clicking on the ads on your pages), you have to split. The tradeoff is that the Search Engines (SEs) know and like the big article sites. They get huge amounts of traffic. And some of that traffic will find your article and possibly click an ad, and thus, provide you with a few cents.

Starting your own website allows you to keep all the money from the ads...provided you can find some readers. Traffic is the name of the game. And trust me, just putting up a site doesn't mean diddly. No one will ever find your site unless you are on page one in the SE pages.

After writing 18 articles for eHow, I decided to go it alone. It is much, much, much harder to do, but I believe the future is brighter doing it this way. Only time will tell, I suppose. Here are a couple of tips I've picked up in my ongoing education.

Link Building

How do the SEs know which sites are the good ones? By the number of websites that link to them, of course! So if I've got amazing, original content and thousands of webmasters put a link on their site telling readers that I've got some really helpful information, then the SEs assume I must really know my stuff. So when someone searches for say, earn money, my site shows up at the top. Almost no one does it this way, though.


Comments

What most people do is to "artificially" inflate the amount of links to their site. One way is to go on other sites/blogs in the same niche as you (we'll cover niches later), and leave a useful and informed comment with a link back to your site. Spam comments just get deleted so don't run all over the internet leaving useless comments. These comments don't carry much weight with the SEs, but they do count.

Article Marketing

A second way is to write articles for various article directories. EzineArticles.com is the biggest, I think. GoArticles.com and ArticleBase are a couple others. I've used all three. The idea is to write an article (around 400 words usually), and submit it to them. They, in turn, allow you to place up to two links in your profile which appears at the bottom of each article.

These are two of the most common ways to promote a website and get backlinks at the same time.

Earn Money - My History

Welcome to my journey to earn a passive income online.

I began in 2009. My wife and I have decent jobs, but both of us would rather be frolicking on a beach in Jamaica rather than slaving away for The Man every day.

I first investigated tons of sites looking for every option that was out there for making money from home. I quickly realized that there are a lot of ways to make money online that require ongoing work to earn money. By that I mean sites like Project Payday or CashCrate. You work – they pay – done. They are legit places to earn money. I'll discuss those more later.

That works for a lot of folks, and if I wasn’t already employed, I may have tried those (or if I suddenly become unemployed, I may yet try them out). But what I really wanted (and still strive for) was a way to earn money while I wasn’t working.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not opposed to working…to build something. I’ve put in tons and tons of hours already – studying, writing, learning, etc. I work on this when I get home from my job. I spend weekends working on this stuff. Most lunches are spent researching or writing. But I believe all the work will pay off someday with an income stream that will allow my wife and I to eventually quit our jobs.

My First Online Payout

So the first thing I did was write an article for eHow.com. It was an article related to my work so I felt pretty confident about the content. It was accepted, so I wrote a few more. Eventually I started earning a few cents a month, then a few dollars a month.

When eHow was bought out by DemandMedia, I quit writing for them. I may write with them again, but I’ve been tied up with other projects in the meantime. I’ve currently got 18 articles posted with eHow. It only generates $5 or $6 per month. But it occurred to me that my content is generating revenue that I’m splitting with eHow. I’m giving away part of my money!

My First Money Making Website

So in January 2010, I launched my very own niche website (also related to my job). It gets very little traffic right now. That seems to be the hardest thing. Everyone on the net gives the same advice “Focus on content. Great content will be rewarded with traffic.” Um… no. They won’t. That’s not enough. Money from this site is pitiful. But I continue to write for it and will post how things are going.

I believe I have very good content, but there’s a whole other thing to this online money-making game. And that’s marketing. Getting your name out there. Getting the search engines (SEs) to notice you and rank you well. Getting back links to your site. And on and on.

My Second Website

Notice that there’s no “income producing” in the heading for this paragraph. That’s because no money has yet been earned with it. And it may never produce income. I signed up with Niche Profit Classroom to generate what I thought would be some real cash. I’ll write a review later, but it wasn’t nearly as helpful as I thought. I’ll probably wind up re-building the site and taking another crack at it.

Squidoo

Ever since my early research, I heard about how great Squidoo was at making passive money online. So I finally put up a few pages recently. Traffic is still the problem. No one has looked at any of my “lenses” as yet. I put them up in May 2010. It is now August 2010.

My Next Income Producing Website

Well, at least I hope it will be income producing! I think niche websites is still the way to go. But figuring out the formula is not easy. Of course, if it were, the beaches of the world would be clogged with all of us Internet millionaires.

Building A Website

When I began my research into websites, an awful lot of “experts” out there insisted that learning html was the best way to go. Their claim was that you only had total control over your site if you understood the underlying code and could change anything you wanted. That’s true, but after a couple months of learning and trying it out, I had a pretty ugly site. It worked…but it didn’t look very professional.

I got a beginner’s amount of knowledge into html and css before moving on.

Website Software

FrontPage 2000 

·         My brother loaned me a 10 year old copy of Microsoft’s FrontPage 2000 to try out. In a sense it was much easier to use. I didn’t have to write any code. I could pick out themes and templates, but the fact that it was so obsolete meant that there was nowhere to get help when something went wrong. And something always went wrong.

I’m told that FrontPage 2000 writes poor code for websites anyway. I don’t know much about that, but lots of snooty programmers on the help forums really tore it apart.

·         Dreamweaver

By coincidence, my wife had recently purchased some software, and with it came a program called Dreamweaver. This was better than FrontPage 2000, but probably required more education than I have. I have since seen that there are classes dedicated only to Dreamweaver. If I had that education, it might have gone better for me. As it was, I somehow got some files corrupted and lost the ability to change any of the pages… it was a mess.

·         Wordpress

I finally found something I like with Wordpress

Blogger

You may notice that this site is says blogspot in the URL. That comes from Blogger, Google's blogging software. I thought I'd try it out and I must say it is much easier to use than WordPress. I haven't used it long so I can't say whether it has all the features, but it sure sets up fast and is made for techno-clueless like me.

Ok, that's enough for now. I'll post more as my efforts to earn money produce some sort of results.

Cheers

MJ

Welcome to Earn Money Journey

 

Welcome to 'Earn Money Journey'. Its an awkward title, but that's one of the things I've learned from all the make-money-online gurus. Get your keyword in the title!

This is another one of those sites that tracks someone's efforts to make money online. Most of us haven't made any money yet. Just a few dollars here and there. You can call me MJ.

If you have questions about how to earn money, please feel free to post your question below. If I can't answer it, I may know a place that can. Let's all learn from each other and earn money together!


Cheers!


MJ