Ideas To Make Money Online

Happy Winter to Everyone!

As I sit here, I'm staying home from work due to yet another snow storm. At lest that gives me time to write about how to make money from home. This is a topic that I am endlessly interested in since I am hoping not just to make extra money, but to completely earn a living from it.

If you've read any of my other posts, you may know that I'm a Griz follower. In my opinion, he's the master of MMO. Very basically, his strategy is to write long rambling posts that would naturally accumulate all manner of long tail keywords by the search engines (SEs), most notably Google. He advocates posts that reach into the thousands of words. Loooong.

The second part of his method is to get the best backlinks using proper anchor text that you can get. If you can't get good backlinks (meaning high Page Rank and from your niche), then focus on getting as many other backlinks as possible. Always with good anchor text.

This is also the method taught at The Keyword Academy. I'm a member and I encourage anyone that wants to make money blogging or any other online venture to join as well. They're good people.

In fact, there is a competing theory over there that indicates you should strictly focus on writing content for your own site. But the trick is to write about extremely long tail keywords with almost no competition. You will thus rank very quickly for these obscure keywords.

I'm thinking of experimenting with this second theory as I'm not a prolific writer and writing such long posts does not appeal to me AT ALL.

Cheers!

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

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