How to Make Money From Your Blog

Now, there he goes again. I'm really liking this Steve guy. His writing is inspirational.

For instance, I'm already planning on buying a full-on domain name to write my posts in instead of using this blogger thing. Also, on one of my websites I'm re-building, I plan to put up a pixel wall (much like the one on milliondollarhomepage.com) for the community. This way, instead of donations, people can actually get something out of contributing money to the website -- they get traffic to their blog or website or whatever. Great stuff!

Of course, as I get more ideas from this guy and any other place (including my brain), I will pass them on to you.

Anyway, check out Steve's post on How to Make Money From Your Blog and let me know what you think of his ideas.

More later!

How to Build a High-Traffic Web Site or Blog

Good God, I'm just finding so many interesting articles tonight. I've skipped my normal routine of working on my websites and I've gone to just finding valuable articles for the night.

At the moment, I've found a fantastic blog by this guy Steve Pavlina and I'm making my way through a couple of his articles.

Right now, I'm reading through another post that I'll link to in a few minutes but I just finished the one that this post is linked to (click the title or click here).

Basically, he goes over exactly what you have to do in order to bring in a bunch of traffic to your blog. What I got out of it was basically this: create quality content to help people and traffic will come.

I guess the key is just having the patience and faith that people will find what you have to say useful! :)

21 Surefire Tips for a Successful Blog Launch

For those of us just starting out with blogs and wanting to make a great impression on our readers and our neighbors in our chosen niche, it is extremely important that we take the right steps to ensure that our blogs are launched correctly.

To ensure a good income stream and additionally ensure that we will write excellent quality content that people will actually pay attention to, it is key that you launch your blog properly.

Jeff over at Aviva Directory has written a fantastic article on just how to do that. Make sure you read this thoroughly, as it will have a huge impact on the success of your blog in its infancy.

You can click on the title to this post or click here to read the article.

5 Skills To Teach Your Kids

There's a lot my parents never talked about with me and my school never covered that I had to learn on my own, especially when it came to finance. I wish that my parents had helped me to develop good habits when it came to money but unfortunately, I had to learn the hard way. This article will give you a few great ways to help your kids get a head start on money management.

1. Manage Checking/Savings Accounts
   Most guides will tell you that teenagers need to know how to manage their checking/savings accounts, but I firmly believe that you should start teaching your kids about these things at an even earlier age.
   
   Every child should have an account for their own good and learn how to keep it balanced.
   
   
2. Managing Allowance
   I recommend starting your children early on allowance, no matter what your financial situation. I also believe it should be set up according to their age.
   
   If your kid is 12 years old, give him $5/week to spend and don't pay for him. Let him figure out how valuable money really is when it comes to paying for even small things.
   
   
3. Goal Saving
   On top of teaching your kid how to manage their allowance, throw in the added complication of saving up for a goal. No matter what the goal is, this will teach them money management that will help them for the rest of their lives.
   
   
4. Price Comparison
   Comparison pricing at the grocery store is a fantastic way to teach children how they can save money to reach a specific goal and still buy what they need. Start with cereal comparisons and work your way up to clothing. They should know that brands aren't necessarily everything.
   
   
5. Time Value of Money
   And finally, your children should know that money saved over time can amount to a lot. Start your kid up with an INGDirect or HSBC account and let them put their own money into the account and watch it grow. Make sure they know that whatever goes in gets locked in until they're older. This will inspire them to save as much as they can. Run some numbers with them to help them see how easy it will make their lives later on, especially if you show them how they can actually become millionaires at an early age.
   

Hopefully you use these tips to guide your children on the right path to financial freedom. They'll thank you later for the lessons you hard-code into their little brains.

Raise Your Credit Score

If you're looking into buying a house anytime soon, then you've probably heard the word "credit score" more times than you can count. Trouble is-- not all of us have the best scores and that can mean high interest rates on loans or sometimes no loan at all. For anything you want that involves a credit score, here are a few tips to increase yours quickly!

1. Pay All Bills On Time
   Before you pay anyone, it should be yourself first. Most experts will tell you this and they are 100% right, but it should only apply once you can pay yourself AND your bills. You should never let the colors on the bills change and credit scores are a great reason to avoid this with a passion. A great way to avoid late fees is to set up automatic payments with your online bank, if they offer it. Services like this generally range from $5-10/mo and are well worth the peace of mind they bring. By the way, payment history makes up the bulk of your credit score at around 35%.
   
   
2. The 30 Percent Rule
   The rule states that you should never let your credit card balance go over 30% of the limit and also about 30% of your credit score depends on how much credit you have access to versus how much of a balance you actually have on it. Personally, I never use credit cards but for those of us that do-- it's important to remember that these should only be used for money we already have. If not, make sure you pay your debts are all paid off on time. Don't ever pay the minimum, either!
   
   
3. Don't Make Your Credit Cards History
   Credit history makes up about 15% of your credit score, and the longer you have a credit account, the better your score will be. Always keep a credit history of at least a few years!
   
   
4. Quality, Not Quanitity
   Having a few credit cards with a good history and no late payments is golden compared to a bunch of credit cards with no history. The latter indicates that you are in need of credit and are headed down a treacherous path of debt consolidation. Also, pay attention to how many times your credit report is requested. Around 10% of your credit score depends on this very factor and less is better in this case.
   
   
5. Secured Credit = Good
   Loans such as mortgages, car loans, etc. are considered secured because they involve a good source of collateral (usually the object that you're taking the loan out for). Unsecured loans like credit card debts, student loans, etc. are like poison because they involve a variable collateral (your income). Make sure you get rid of unsecured loans as soon as possible. The type of credit you use also makes up about 10% of your credit score.

Use these tips and you'll be sure to increase your credit score and banks will love you. Good luck!

5 Easy Ways To Save Money

Here are 5 easy ways to save money that don't involve a high risk or even a lot of effort on your part:

1. Get Your Cash In Gear
   After you've set aside more than enough money in your checking account for bills, food, etc., make sure you set aside a good portion of your paycheck to put into a high-interest account (money market, high-interest savings, etc.). Places like INGDirect and HSBC are great places to do just this. You can earn a nice 4-5%+ APY on your money which is tons more than your bank will pay you.
   
   If you have a bunch of money just sitting around gathering dust, think about CDs (also offered at the aforementioned banks) which will most likely offer a higher rate if you keep your money in for a long period.
   
   At ING's current rate (4.4% APY), if you just left $1500 laying in your account, you'd have $66.00 extra at the end of the year. HSBC offers higher amounts for balances over $25k!
   


2. Go Solar
   If you have the money, I suggest you front the cost of getting a solar powered home. The tax breaks and money you'll save will pay off in the long-run. Plus, your home value will go way up.
   
   If you don't have the money, then you may want to go with an alternative money saving method. You can get up to 30% off of a solar hot water system with the federal energy tax credit. Systems are in the neighborhood of $3500.00 installed. Depending on which state you are in, you can get a rebate of up to 60% off of the rest of the cost.
   
   You can save around $500.00 in your first year alone going this route, and even more as time goes on.
   


3. Raise Insurance Deductibles
   Figure out what you can afford to actually pay if you get into an accident with your car or had to do repairs on your home. Once you have a number, discuss it with your insurance agent and ask them how much you can save by increasing your deductible.
   
   You can save in the neighborhood of 15-30% off of your monthly payment by raising your deductible a few hundred dollars!
   


4. Save Your Change
   Spare change always adds up! Make sure to consolidate all of your spare change in a central place. It might not seem like much at first, but at the end of the month you will probably have a good amount.
   
   According to MSN Money, most people have $30.00 in loose change every month. That's not a bad dinner night once in a while!
   


5. Skip The Theater
   If you're like me, you LOVE the theater but those tickets aren't getting any cheaper. For the price of a movie ticket for one, you could afford at least two rentals from your local video rental place.
   
   For a little more than the price of the theater every month, you can subscribe to a great service like Netflix!
   
   You can save around $6.00 every month by staying at home and watching a movie!

So the total savings add up to an average of $84.00/mo, including the interest you'll gain on your high-yield savings accounts. That might not sound like much, but at around $1000.00 every year .. well, you can see for yourself. Not bad for a few minor changes, huh?

Social Bookmarking on Blogger Beta

Social bookmarking will bring plenty of traffic to your blog. Sites like Digg, Furl, Delicious, Reddit, etc. are ways to post bookmarks to your favorite websites with short descriptions so other people can find them. Typically, there is a voting system involved so that once a submitted website gets enough votes, it shows up on the front page of the social bookmarking site. Once sites make it to the front page, they typically experience something close to or the actual "digg effect." Essentially what this means is that you'll get thousands of hits and possibly your site could stall, or in some cases even crash.

We all pray for that much traffic!

One way to help potential bookmarkers Digg or Furl your site is to give them a single-click link from a blog entry. The problem for a huge amount of people now is that Blogger has switched to a different code format with its recent upgrade, and it was aggravating me that I could not find the answer. Once I figured it out, it was glorious. Any, for all those of you who are where I was, you can now rejoice.

While in your "Template" section in Blogger, go to "Edit HTML" and make sure your "Expand Widget Templates" option is checked. Then do a search for anything in the following sequence (sans the code in red). It's easiest to search for "post-footer-line-2" I think. Once you're there, find the section in between the and the at the bottom of this

tag and insert the code, as shown here:

      <p class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'>
      <span class='post-labels'>
        <b:if cond='data:post.labels'>
          <data:postLabelsLabel/>
          <b:loop values='data:post.labels' var='label'>
            <a expr:href='data:label.url' rel='tag'>
<data:label.name/></a><b:if cond='data:label.isLast != "true"'>,</b:if>
          </b:loop>
        </b:if>

<br /><br />
<strong>
<a expr:href='"http://digg.com/submit?phase=3&amp;url=" + 
data:post.url' target='_blank'>Digg This!</a> |
<a expr:href='"http://del.icio.us/post?url=" + data:post.url + 
"&amp;title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'>Add to Del.icio.us</a> |
<a expr:href='"http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=" + data:post.url + 
"&amp;t=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'>Furl It</a>
</strong>

      </span>
      </p>

Once you're done, hit the "Preview" button to make sure you haven't broken anything and it should work flawlessly. If not, comment and let me know but otherwise, great job! You are now one step closer to getting super bookmarked!

- Scott

Happy Thanksgiving!

Dear Readers,

Just want to wish you a happy Turkey Day, no matter who you are or where you're from.

Have a great one!

Scott

The Getting Rich Store

The Getting Rich Store, hosted on Amazon, is a collection of books I've personally bought and found useful in my endeavors. Feel free to browse it and let me know what you think!

Here's the link if you want to paste it into your browser:

http://astore.amazon.com/gufoo-20

Amazon has come up with a great way of placing all of your recommended books into an area where you can view them and purchase them. Essentially, this is my own online store!

Don't worry, if you want to do something similar for money making purposes on your own blog/website, the setup is quick and easy. All you do is find your favorite books, add them in and choose the layout of the store page. Once that's done, you can hand the link out to friends, family and all of your awesome subscribers!

The best part is that Amazon handles all the payment processing and just sends you a check (or you can choose a number of other options with which to get paid).

Anyway, I just thought I'd let all of you know about this fantastic feature and in the meantime, give you a place to view all of my recommended reads. So check it out and tell me what you think:

The Getting Rich Store

Thanks,
Scott

This Week's Earnings

Okay, since I started this blog 11 days ago, I've been using various promotional techniques to try and get it linked up on similar blogs and get some revenue going. So I thought I'd give you the progress and growth on a regular basis just to show you what you can expect if you put in about an hour a day.

I checked today, and Adsense earnings are up to $3.71 ($0.34/day average) for the duration. This doesn't seem like much at all, I know but give me another 10 days and I'm sure I can make that number grow at least by two if not more. Hopefully once the site is linked by the search engines, it will grow on its own. I checked ClickBank and I'm up to about $17.98 ($1.64/day average) for the duration.

So making around $1.97/day isn't anything huge to speak of but it is something, and that's what I'm after.

The goal is to make the blog generate about $25.00/day with a minimal investment of time. This way, I can show you fine people that it's quite possible to make money doing this. Hell, I'm already set to make around $700.00 this year from this blog alone and that's if it flatlines at $2/day. Trust me, it won't.

As far as visitors, I'm using Google Analytics to track everything and so far I've gotten 557 visits and 763 page views.

My top referrals have come from BlogMad, Digg, Reddit, Blogger and myLot.

In other news, I've just signed up with BlogsVertise. If you haven't heard of this service, I'll brief you on it. To start out, you can sign up as either a blogger or an advertiser. Bloggers are paid to mention advertisers up to three times in a post and they submit the article to the service to be paid. Advertisers obviously pay to get mentioned in blog articles and so the cycle goes.

I haven't received any writing tasks yet, but once I do, I will definitely let you know.

I will follow up with this post in about a week or so.

- Scott

Getting Free Traffic to Your Blog

Getting free traffic to your blog is what stands in the way of you getting real money for your work. One huge thing that the 'Get Rich Blogging' guides don't really go into is the actual promotion. They seem to go into a brief summary but it's a very crucial part of making your blog a success. I'll jump right into my own methods for getting traffic to any website.

Digg-ing For Traffic

If you haven't used bookmarking sites such as Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Netscape and Spurl, etc., you should definitely start. Not only are they great for creating back links (incoming URLs) but they could potentially bring you a ton of traffic. Some websites are lucky enough to experience what is called "The Digg Effect," which basically renders them unusable due to such a high volume of traffic. When something new and cool pops up on a social bookmarking site, users swarm it and in doing so, put a huge load on the web server. In some cases, the web server will even crash. Some people believe the very wording of your posts to these sites will determine how many people ultimately view the link. Typically, the way these sites work is to give a vote either up or down for a particular link and this will determine the popularity of the story. So you want to appeal to people as much as possible!

Forums

Another great way of generating traffic is to place your link in your forum signatures. Not only does this automatically generate back links, but it will also give your blog URL a much bigger chance of being seen and clicked on by other people.

The trick here is to blog in forums that relate to the topic that you're blogging about. This will increase the likelihood of someone clicking on the link by a bunch.

NOTE: The more back links (links from other websites to your own) that you have, the higher your rank will go on search engines for keywords they find in your blog when they index it. So for me, the more links I get from similar websites, the higher my rank will go for keywords like "Getting Rich."

Link Exchange Sites

Before I go into link exchanges, I'd like to make special mention of websites like myLot.com because I didn't want to dedicate a whole section to it. This is one site where you can go to generate a little cash while posting your link into relevant articles. You can even make posts regarding your blog and how well it's doing and this will generate not only traffic but also revenue from the website, as they pay you to discuss things. It's a really fantastic idea.

Link exchange websites like BlogMad, BlogFlare and BlogExplosion are a wonderful resource. They operate on a 1:1 ratio system. You look at someone else's blog, and you get a credit for someone else to look at your blog. They have their own special ways of providing the service, but they're neat because you can look at 100 other blogs and get a guaranteed 100 people to your own.

The side benefit is that people will find your blog easier because they'll most likely be browsing by category. Speaking of which, there's also a little thing called StumbleUpon which is a browser plugin that a LOT of people use to just find random websites. I get a good amount of traffic this way as well.

Exchanging Links

If you find a website that has a topic similar to your own, it's probably a really good idea to ask the owner if they'd like to put their link on your blog in exchange for your link on theirs.

This increases your ranking on websites like Technorati (blog search engine) and Blogshares (fantasy blog share market), which will thus churn out more traffic for you. It's a beautiful thing.

Search Engine Submission

This is a no brainer, but some people still overlook it. Submitting your blog to as many search engines as possible all at once is a fantastic idea. SubmitExpress is a great tool for doing just that. You don't even get spammed; they just ask for a back link in return.

After submitting your blog to a search engine, your blog will probably get index within a couple of weeks by each service and you will be getting new hits to your blog all over the place from people just using your website's keywords.

Word of Mouth

Finally, word of mouth is most likely the best way to spread the word about anything. This term isn't limited to just audible sound though. It also refers to chatting about it, emailing about it and commenting about it. Any way possible you can spread the word, do so! If you employ these techniques diligently for three weeks, then the rest will be a piece of cake. Just do your best to get your website chuck full of back links and into the search engines!

Conclusion

It's a shame to see that so many blogs are still just floating out there in cyberspace, not shining any real flares for the rest of the world to see. The above methods are those that I have employed to make this blog successful as well as the rest of my blogs, collectively. If you use them all diligently, you should have no problem getting free traffic to your blog!

Creating a Home Based Business Online

Creating a home based business online might just be the encapsulation of the American Dream, at least through my eyes. A huge reason for this is the amount of flexibility you could have in your schedule, which translates to more personal/family time. There's also the added benefit of cutting work travel down to virtually nil (depending on your business, of course). Not to mention, you aren't limited to working a number of hours-- hell, you don't even have to work full time to make what you can make in the job world. You might even decide to have more than one business and that would be fine, if you have the dedication.

The Business Idea

Having the dedication and discipline to actually build a business in the online world is only part of the struggle. You also have to have a good idea with your own little twist. Sure, you could potentially just steal someone else's idea, slap a new logo on it and let the ship sail and you would get a small part of the pie. If that's fine for you, go for it! For people like me, we want to create something new and fresh or at least put a spin on an already-existing product that will draw people in.

If you have an idea but don't know all there is to know about the business side of it (or any side of it), then do some research! Call people who are already in the business and ask them a few questions. Look over their websites and scour for hints at functionality and how they perform the business. Register an account and look at the usability. One thing that I find personally glorious is when a website has too many functions or options. Things like this give people choice overload and they go into a brief coma. Doing more with less is what will draw people in, in the end so focus on that. That could even be the spin on your product. Your product might be better because it has less features and is, therefore, easier to use. It's really up to you what you choose to market, but make sure you research what you're doing and it will be easier to bring people aboard. Speaking of bringing people aboard...

Advertising

That's what advertising is all about. It's what clearly states in your face and in your ears what makes my product different and therefore better than the next guy's. Keep in mind, advertising comes in many forms: word-of-mouth, billboards, magazines, tv, radio, Google maps, bus benches, internet banners, etc. What the internet does for us is make this not only cost effective but simple.

You can do a simple press release online for under $50 and in some cases, for free. Online advertising systems like Google Adwords, MSN adCenter and now Yahoo! Search Marketing are very cheap to use. From experience, I know you can have a limit of $1.00/day on Google Adwords and your banner/text ad will get shown a decent number of times. It's the cost-per-click you specify that makes the difference in placement.

The Website

Face it, you've got to have a website for any business these days whether it's online or not. Not all of us are programmers, designers or graphic artists. This is why it is a smart idea to hire someone else to build a website. Just make sure that there is an actual team working on it. From my experience, when you hire one person to get a project done, it takes much longer and not because they're working more; it's because they have no one to hold them responsible except the customer and that shouldn't be the customer's job. It's also an intelligent idea to hire someone who is close to you geographically so that you can have an in-person meeting to express what you want out of your product.

Being a designer/programmer, I am well aware that customers love the "just build something and I'll tell you if I like it" approach. Not only is this just a bad idea, but it's also horribly frustrating when you take the end result to the customer and they say "that's nothing like what I had pictured." No matter who you're dealing with, just be honest and forthright. I absolutely love customers who tell me when they don't like something-- it makes my job 1000% easier. It means I can get rid of what they don't like quickly and continue processing what they do like.

The Business Plan

This is why it's also an incredibly excellent idea to have an actual business plan. Yes, this word even makes me cringe because pictures of lengthy formal documents flash into my brain. When you actually think about how much of a headache it will save you in the future to actually have a defined business that you can hold in your hands and describe to other people, one day of coming up with a business plan is not actually a bad idea. So go to your local bookstore and pick up a book on business plans. Here are a couple I recommend:

• Business Plans Kit for Dummies
• How To Write A Business Plan

Trust me, having a business plan will pay off for you tenfold in the end.

Self Discipline

When it comes to working on anything, we become our own worst enemy. If you haven't gone through at least basic training camp for the military, chances are you haven't figured out how to get yourself to finish tasks efficiently. Neither have I! I do find, however, two things that work out great when I need to get something done:

1. Organizing the work into tasks ranked from most important to least
2. Finding some way to reward myself when I finish them

Once you've organized your work into tasks, you've already worked through a huge part of the problem which is thinking your way through it. At that point, you can focus on the end and work will fly by.

Now when I say "reward," I don't automatically mean food. The obesity epidemic is no laughing matter, especially in America where it's something like 1/3rd of the population. Find something simple, like a game and give yourself a set amount of time. I like to give myself a straight hour of playtime for every three hours of work (a nice 1:3 ratio).

Obviously you have your own ideas about how these things should be accomplished, but keep in mind that these are just suggestions from my own experience that have helped me to build a successful business.

Knowing What You Don't Know

You're probably thinking "how can I know what I don't know?" Well, you can't know it specifically but you can know it in general. For example, I know I don't know anything about accounting or sales. I'm fully aware of that fact! So what does this gain me? Now that I've been honest with myself, I can do one of two things:

1. Take the time to thoroughly learn the subjects I'm not good at
2. Hire someone who knows the subject

Now for me to actually go out and learn accounting and sales would take months, if not years. So for my money, I'm going to hire these tasks out to other people. It's why I have an accountant and it's also why I have a friend at an advertising agency. They both have all the knowledge I need to make my business work and I can hire them for cheap! And the best part is, there are probably a hundred things I don't know about business that can all be hired out. It's beautiful. Another great example is payroll. I can hire this function and all that it entails out to a company that will do it all for me, for a fee. It's a great way of removing headaches.

Conclusion

So I think that the picture we all have in our heads of just starting a business and letting it run itself is almost out of the question for the first, say .. 5 years. By then, you just might have a decent system worked out where you can take long vacations but you will always have to run your business in some way. This article is about starting your business. After that, it's up to you to figure out how to run it efficiently, but efficiency is still the point nonetheless. That, and profitability but those things will come in later entries.

If you have anything to add, please leave it in comment form and let the people know!

Until next time...

-Scott

P.S. I wish you great luck in creating a home based business online!

How I Make Money Online

How I make money online is not very complicated at all. In fact, I'd like to tell you how you can make a killing by just working a couple of hours every day.

One of the methods is, of course, blogging. You might think that just because there are millions of blogs, you can't jump in and still profit. I'm here to tell you that the water is still warm, my friends.

Blogging For Money

Most people think blogging is all about what you write, but I would have to disagree. A very important part is how you blog. What I mean by this is that you can't just start writing and expect people to come to your blog automatically. There are ways to advertise and ways to organize your posts that will not only draw in more of your intended audience but also get more search engines to index your blog and faster. Just think, the faster and easier people can find what you're writing, the faster your blog will become popular and people will link to it.

First and foremost, a surefire way of getting search engines to pick your blog up in their spidering is to make your posts keyword friendly. Notice how I titled this section 'Blogging For Money' and I put it in bold. Search engines target key phrases like these and use them as matches to search queries. So if a random bloke goes to Google, MSN or Yahoo! and types in "Blogging For Money," my chances of getting a click have just increased because I used that specific keyword in my post. It's also not a bad idea to use specific keywords throughout your entries in general, either.

Now here's a rarely discussed little secret. If you want search engines to pick your blogs up quickly, you might want to try a little thing called "my." Haha. No, I'm serious. I'm talking specifically about things like Google's "personal page", MSN's "my.msn.com" and Yahoo's "my.yahoo.com." Each of these areas have something valuable in common-- you can add syndicated content (a.k.a RSS) to each one of them. All of them have a place where you can "Add Content" to your personal page, and typically you want to point them to your RSS feed. In fact, for each of my blogs I've done so on all three of them. If you have a Blogger blog, you would just type in http://yourbloggerblog.blogger.com/atom.xml and it should fetch your feed automatically for you. Leave it there for a couple of days and you should be in business. MSN is typically the fastest to spider web pages, so check for changes there the soonest.

Oh and don't forget pinging services. Where would we be without them? Make sure your blog is set up to ping at least Weblogs.com. In fact, if you go into your Blogger settings in the "Publishing" section, you should see the option to Notify Weblogs.com when you post. DO THIS! Every time you update your blog, it will get posted to several other similar services and whammo- you've just created backlinks to your blog. This is is probably the easiest way to get your blog into the search engines.

Before I forget to mention it, a great way to ping a bunch of services all at once is to use the Feedburner service. Not only are they great at making your RSS feeds easy to manage but they're also great at pinging (I think) up to ten services all at once. They also have a bunch of other great features and promotional tools, so I recommend that you check them out.

One more thing I can't stress enough for you to do to be successful is to make blogging friends. In other words, put their link on your blog and have them do the same in return. You will be helping each other out. Just make sure their content is similar and not questionable. Always make sure your content is not .. adult in nature. In fact, if your website has too many four letter words and such on it, Google may flag it as an actual adult site and you do not want that.

Speaking of Google, you gotta love Adsense.

Making Money With Google Adsense

Once you do get a lot of traffic to your website, you're going to want ads placed tastefully so that people can click on them as they please. Then you'll notice that since you've made keyword friendly posts (as mentioned earlier), Google will pay you more per click. If you don't have one already, you should go sign up for an Adsense account. You can do so by clicking on the Google Adsense button on the sidebar.

Probably the best thing about Adsense is that they pay well and then give you detailed statistics, divided by "channels." An Adsense channel is simply a category name you give to a specific group of ads you create. If you want a "Blogging" channel, you can create that and use it on all your blogs OR you can create a channel for each blog if you want to track them individually. It's really up to you how you use it, but it is powerful.

CAUTION: Under no circumstances should you ever click on your own Google Adsense ads as they will remove you in no time flat.

Making Money Using Affiliates

If you're not using Affiliates to grow your money, you should start. Websites like Clickbank (click for link) will pay you a lot of profit for selling their eBooks for them. Does that sound difficult? It's not. All you do is sign up (which is free) and then from the main page, click on the "Promote Products" tab at the top and then click on the "Marketplace" link on the subtab. All you have to do then is type in a keyword like "fish"and up come a bunch of eBooks! When you find one to your liking, just click on the "create hoplink" hyperlink next to it and type in your username. It will generate the link you need to use to sell the book and all you do is use the link in your posts to promote the material. If you're honest and give a good review, people will most likely purchase the guide. You don't have to but I like to verify that these eBooks actually work and aren't full of crap before I tell people to go buy them. Besides, it keeps people coming back when you help them out.

Speaking of reviews, it's a great idea to use whole posts to do reviews on relevant eBooks. Not only does this push you up in the search engines, but it's a great way or promoting the material. In general, you want to write like a 400-500 word post and include links to the product throughout.

Another thing you can do using Clickbank is create eBooks and have other people promote them in their blogs and websites just like you would. If you're good at writing and can export a word document to PDF, you're in business. Just make sure you read their requirements before you jump on it. I do know there is a $50 activation charge to become a publisher with them, but once you do there is big money in it if you speak the truth. Again, it's all about really helping people.

Blogging To The Bank

Now, I know I was just telling you to push products but here is one I honestly recommend. If you're serious about making money on the internet and you liked what I had to tell you here, then you will love Blogging to the Bank by Rob Benwell. I actually did a review on it a few posts ago. It tells you what I've described to you here in more detail and a bunch more. Too much to mention here, in fact. It's really a great guide. In fact, it helped me to get started here and it will help you as well.

Make Money With Good Content

And finally- I can't stress this enough. Don't write entries just to write them! Put some character into them and make them enjoyable to read. Read them out loud if you must. In fact, if you do read them out loud, you'll find it makes the reading flow much more nicely even if someone is reading silently to themselves. Make sure to help people and give them good, honest information but do keep in mind that blogs are like columns. You get paid to write your opinion and that's exactly what you should give the public.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them in the comment box.

Thank you,
Scott

P.S. If you like the article, don't hesitate to tell people about how I make money online!

Rental Properties In Hard Times

Rental properties in hard times are a fantastic solution to a growing problem. As a market becomes a Buyer's Market, home prices begin to drop and even so, some people just aren't able to sell their houses.

I know a couple who is trying to sell their house in southern California and move to northern California, but their house has been on the market for two solid months and still nothing. Don't get me wrong, people come in and check it out. They must have had at least five open houses by now, but the owner keeps telling me that he will probably have to start renting it out. The same thing was happening to his next door neighbor and his neighbor decided to rent out the property and is now in a new house, while someone pays him good money to live in his own. I think my friend will wait another two months and if nothing happens, he'll put his property up for rent.

The Trouble With Renters

Trust me, renting out your property is not worry free. There are any number of things that can go wrong: plumbing leaks, stove malfunction, garbage disposal malfunction, property damage, etc. Yes, there are a lot more possible problems but this comes with anyone living in your house and using the house normally.

Sometimes it is impossible to find a renter. There will be a month, maybe even two where you won't have anyone to fill a vacancy and you will have to foot the bill yourself. It is important that you have enough money where this isn't a problem. The same goes for replacing appliances and having the plumber show up. You should be able to pay for these things.

Rest assured, you will get that call in the middle of the night that the toilet is backing up and you need a plumber, stat. Now I'm not necessarily saying that will be the topic; you may have very nice pipes and an uncloggable toilet. What I'm saying is that things happen and never on your schedule, so just be prepared.

Rental Management Companies

So because there are the pitfalls of an unfilled vacancy, payments that don't come in on time, having a fair rental payment for the home's value, unscreened residents and all the time it takes to actually manage a property, a place for Rental Management companies was born.

For a percentage of the annual lease amount (typically around 5-10%), you too can have the peace of mind that comes with having a management company.

These companies will do essentially everything there is to do, they will do:

• Advertising
  
• Rent collections
• Tenant Screening
• Eviction
• Preparation of Vacancies
• Maintenance
• Accounting
• 24-hour Paging
• Lots more, depending on the agency.

Basically, after you hire these people, you can relax about the overall situation of renting but you can also kiss 10% of your money goodbye. In my mind, it's a small price to pay for the peace of mind they bring.

Renting For Profit

If you've decided to buy a rental property for profit, kudos to you. You may not be making much profit, but the point is that you're taking some crucial steps to financial independence.

Let's say you find a house for sale for $75,000.00 in a nice little neighborhood and decide to put a $10,000.00 down payment on it. On a 30 year loan at 6%, the monthly payment for the house would be around $400. Let's say property taxes come out to $100/mo. So your monthly payment would be somewhere around $500/mo, so just to be fair, let's hike that up to about $650/mo after all the fees are paid.

Now let's say you find a renter for around $700/mo (not a bad price for a whole house), and you take a nice deposit of $1400.00 (not to be spent, of course, but used as interest). So you're profiting $50/mo and your mortgage is getting paid off. Not bad.

Two years pass and you start getting offers for the house to sell at $85,000.00. Do you sell? Well, feel it out. If you honestly feel that the house is worth more, tough it out. Wait for the property value to go up some more. Even though your initial investment has doubled its value in only two years, it might be smarter to instead take out an equity loan.

What is an equity loan? Basically, you are borrowing money from the bank using your equity. So now that he house appraises at around $85,000.00 and you've paid your house down to roughly $49,400.00 using the renter's money, you would be able to take out a nice ~$30,000.00 loan. Now, you can pocket $15,000.00 of that (your initial down payment plus profit) and use the other $15,000.00 as a down payment on another property. Now you've made your money back and you still own the asset. Plus, you'll be gaining another asset with another renter with around the same monthly profit of around $50/house or $100/mo total profit.

You can repeat this process a number of times and make a killing. Your net worth will grow, plus you'll be re-investing the money you earn in a high yield savings account like INGDirect or HSBC where you get around 5% APY, so you'll be profiting in that way as well.

Before I close up, I'd like to take a second to recommend this eBook to you fine people. It's called How To Get A Home, Rent To Own and despite its webpage, it really is a good guide. So check it out and let me know what you think!

Please leave any questions or comments you have in the comments section, and tune in tomorrow for more on finance! Until then, hopefully you have no more problems with rental properties in hard times!

Using ClickBank To Make Money

Using ClickBank To Make Money is not as difficult as it might sound.

If you are getting into the business of blogging for profit or even if you just really want to recommend a great book you found, you should definitely check this out. First and foremost, ClickBank sells eBooks and informational guides. Secondly, they pay you by referring other people.

eBooks and Informational Guides

When you want expert advice it's usually pretty hard to find, especially when it comes to making money online. If you can find an expert, great! But for those of us who aren't so lucky, we like dummy guides or eBooks that can give us step-by-step instructions on how to get money flowing into our accounts.

So if you wanted to become a profit blogger, you would probably want to go out and buy "Blogging To The Bank" by Rob Benwell. If you found that book interesting, you'd probably want to tell other people about it in your blog. So if you're going to do that, you might as well make a bit of profit from it, right? Of course!

The hardest part is getting people to believe you, but just make sure you recommend things that don't suck and people will naturally trust in you to be the middle man.

ClickBank is the middle man's best friend in this case. All you have to do is sign up and find the particular guide(s) you want people to purchase and put the correct link in your blog and voila! You are generating income by helping people. What better way to spend your life?

You can earn anywhere from 1% to 75% commission on a single sale at a maximum of $100 commission per sale. Typically, people will offer 75% so you're okay here.

Referrals

As I stated earlier, ClickBank is also a referral service. If you want other people to have similar success with their blogs and you help them out, why not profit from that, too?

According to ClickBank's FAQ, you will get 20% of the activation charge (20% of 49.95 or $9.99) and you will get 5% of the markup on any sale they generate in the future. You get enough of these babies going and you won't have to worry about much.

Conclusion

ClickBank is very simple to use and best of all, it's no risk to you or anyone else so people will trust it just like I do. So give it a shot, and start using ClickBank to make money!

Using myLot To Generate Income

Using myLot To Generate Income

Now, there aren't many sites out there where you can just fart around and make money but if you're a fan of MySpace then you'll love myLot.

If you were to combine MySpace, Digg and Kazook, you would get myLot. This site combines the social networking of MySpace with the fierce competition of Digg and the payouts of Kazook. In fact, you can make more money on this website than with Kazook.

In the first few hours I used it, I made between 10 and 20 responses and started about 3 discussions. The next day, I had $0.20 .. which I admit is terrible. Today, I upped my responses to about 100 and started about 30 discussions to which some were heavily replied and I'd imagine I will get closer to $1.00 or perhaps $2.00.

That's great and all for someone who likes to comment a lot and get a lot of feedback from people, but this is a serious blog it has a specific purpose- to show you how to make money.

The real secret here is in referrals. If you can refer 50 people like me to the site who generate about $1.00 a day and you get 25% of the earnings (which you do), you're going to get around $25/day for doing nothing. ~$750/month is nothing to sneeze at and would be a great addition to your passive income and your asset column. See, the best thing here is that there is no limit to how much people can generate on this site ... sky's the limit. So potentially, you could refer 100 people and get twice that. It's all about the math.

Aside from all that, give the site a try and see what you think for yourself:

myLot - Money For Social Networking

When you do, let me know what you think and what kind of vibe you get. Success stories are welcome as well!

-Scott

Using myLot To Generate Income

Using Kazook To Generate Income

Using Kazook To Generate Income

I just started using the Kazook service, of course, to give the good word to you great people. I thought I'd review it and make a bit of cash in the process.

The idea behind the service is that searches you'd normally just do on a search engine would probably be lost money to someone. Simply put, Kazook wants to be the someone it doesn't get lost to. By using their search tool, you get paid $0.01 per search you do and there's a limit of 200 searches you can do per day (or $2.00 per day) max to get paid for.

The secret to this site is referrals. If you can find a way to generate referrals, you get 50% of their commission. So if you refer 50 people and they all max out their paid searches per day, the site says you'll get $3,000.00 but I think you'd get more like $1,500.00 (50 * 2 * 30 / 2), plus your own commission.

What's cool is that if you can train yourself to search using only Kazook, and you max it out daily, you can pay for your cell phone or something like that. Not a bad trade-off for just searching on their website, I think.

You can test it out by clicking here:

Kazook.com - Search and make money!

Anyway, I've been using it for about 15 minutes and going search crazy. I've already made $1.00 but we'll see. Keep me posted with your earnings.

Using Kazook To Generate Income

The Richest Man in Babylon

(Review) The Richest Man in Babylon

Through a series of parables, George Clason manages to teach us some very important lessons about finance and the rules we must follow to attain wealth.

It starts out describing how a simple chariot builder wants to be rich, and so asks the richest man in babylon what he must do to make money. Once they find this man, he doesn't just give his secrets away all at once. Instead, he teaches them things like "make money your slave."

What he means by this is that money should work for you; you should not work for money. People often take what Clason calls the "children of your savings" and they spend them all.

There are tons of lessons like these in the book and I invite you to download it and read it. It just might open your eyes to a very strategic way of thinking about money and how to make it work for you.

The Richest Man in Babylon

(Review) Blogging To The Bank

Blogging To The Bank

Okay, okay- so I gave the last eBook a good review because of its great organization, so you're probably going to think I'm just dishing out good reviews, but no-- what I'm doing is only writing about those with which I am truly impressed. After all, I did shell out the $27.00 to buy the thing to see if it's worth its salt.

Rob Benwell's "Blogging To The Bank" is a great example of what an eBook should be. Benwell is short and concise with this quick guide to generating cash with blogs. In fact, he is giving his very own secret away.

I followed his steps and in about an hour I had a blog up and running with code from Google Adsense, a ton of incoming links and a couple of articles up. In fact, that is exactly what he details how to do- research a market, create a blog, place ads on the blog, put content in the blog, get targeted traffic to the blog and a nice network of blogs to push your ranking up on the search engines.

Not only does he use a step by step method, but he also includes screen shots of what your process should look like as you go. If were to stress one thing to anyone looking to create an informational guide on making money, it's actually showing the reader what to do and screen shots are an excellent way to do so.

Benwell's screen shots detail how to go about setting up your blog and all the correct settings to make it an almost overnight success. If you follow the program guidelines, then in about a week you will be generating income and that's no joke.

Downs

The author could have gone into much more detail on some key sections where he tells us to visit his website for more information (an obvious plug) when he discusses things like "voodoo blogging."

Grade

I honestly give this eBook an A and I highly recommend that you shell out the $27. You will earn that back within the month if not less and you'll keep generating more income if you just do what the guide says to.

Blogging To The Bank

(Review) Rich Jerk: I'm Better Than You

Rich Jerk: I'm Better Than You (eBook)

Five years ago, there were a few choice eBooks out there describing how you could become a millionaire just by buying their book and following their instructions. The trouble was that there were no clearcut instructions on getting rich, they offered no real assistance and instead told you (with a lot of words) basically what you already knew. Today, there are probably millions of eBooks out there that are exactly like those and you should be very careful when paying good money for informational products.

I heard a lot of good things about the Rich Jerk's eBook. Despite his crude approach, I found him to be very informational myself so I decided to give his book a try just to review it for all of you good people. The book itself is $39.99, which seemed steep at the time, but later I found out it was actually a steal for the information he doles out.

Once I had the eBook, I opened it up with Adobe Reader and was greeted with a short intro that promised me a short read and a nice table of contents, properly linked to all the information. It goes over creating affiliate websites, pay per click strategies, search engine optimization strategies, selling informational products, buying on ebay and even goes into detail for beginners.

Now, normally when you buy an eBook you expect the worst and that's what you get. It took me about 45 minutes, but I read through the whole thing and found the instructions to be accurate and with just enough detail. I like to actually follow along and test these things for reviews just like this.

A main theme I noticed throughout the guide is that you have to actually get up and DO something, which is a problem for many people starting out but I agree fully. If you're not prepared to do *anything*, this will NOT work for you but if you're prepared to do a few things on a semi-daily basis, this is perfect.

Of course, I can't go into much detail as that would be copyright infringement but I will say this: This is one of the few good informational products you will come across and even if you're not good at making web pages, you can still make a lot of money using the Rich Jerk's techniques.

So to summarize- great book, solid information and I recommend it. Go grab yourself a copy.

Rich Jerk: I'm Better Than You (eBook)

Kids, Start Getting Rich

Kids, Start Getting Rich

For anyone who lives with their parent(s), it’s time to take advantage of the situation for both your good and the good of your parents once you’re taking care of them. All too often, I talk to people still living at home (some in their 20’s) and I envy them. I think to myself: had I known earlier what I should be doing, I would be even richer than I am today. Think about it, if you start saving $25/mo at age 13 in your savings account, by 18 you’re going to have about $1500 (pre-interest). And that’s if you don’t get a job first!

Now, for the kid who gets a job at 16 and saves even a quarter of his paycheck, he is already preparing himself to be a wealthy man. Let’s say Jimmy makes $6.75/hour (California minimum wage) and works 20 hours per week. Now let’s say he keeps about 80% of that after the government takes its slice. Jimmy keeps about $432.00 and wisely decides to save half in his bank account. Each month for a year, Jimmy saves $216.00 in his bank account and soon he’s saved $2600 with interest. Not to mention, since Jimmy is such an excellent worker and hasn’t missed a day in a year, he gets a 50 cent raise and now earns $7.25/hour. For another year, Jimmy works 20 hours per week and saves half his paycheck. At the end of that year, Jimmy now has about $6100.00 in savings and could still afford to buy himself food, gas and clothing.

Wow, $6000.00 and only 18 years old. Even if this were only $5000.00, you’d probably still be impressed with Jimmy’s savings. Imagine if he had saved 75% or even 100% of that. My point here is to take advantage of living rent-free while you can, especially if you stay after high school.

The Richest Man In Babylon

Before continuing, I’d like to urge you to read this free eBook: The Richest Man In Babylon (eBook) by George Clason. In the book, Clason gives several very important lessons in the forms of parables. One of the most important of the lessons is to have your gold (money) work for you like a slave, and that’s what we’ll talk about next.

Make Your Money Work For You
Money is the best kind of worker; it doesn’t require food, sleep or bathroom breaks. It will work non-stop, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. The trick is getting it to earn more as it does work. This can be done in a number of ways:

• Interest on savings
• Earnings on stocks
• Profits from a business
• Many more…

Let’s talk about interest on savings, the most basic way to get your money to work for you. It’s very easy to understand: you put $10,000.00 in the bank and the bank gives you a 2% interest rate on your money, you earn ~$200.00 in interest. While you were sleeping, your money was making you a nice $16.67/month just for placing it in the bank. You can imagine having $100,000.00 in the bank and getting $2000.00 in interest or even $1,000,000.00 and getting $20,0000.00 in interest. Not to mention, that’s only at a 2% interest rate. Banks like INGDirect and HSBC offer accounts with 4-5% interest.

That is power. All you do is put your money in and let it grow. If you need $40,000.00/year to live comfortably and you have $1,000,000.00 in your HSBC account earning 5%, you can take out $40,000.00 that year to live on and leave $10,000.00 in there to grow. It really is a beautiful thing.

The same goes for stocks, only stocks are a fair bit riskier as they have the power to quickly lose value. On the other side of the same token, they also have the power to gain value extremely fast. Just think about all those people who invested in companies like McDonalds or Microsoft. They were either extremely lucky or paying close attention. In either situation, they were prepared to take that risk and it paid off for them, immensely.

I am friends with a couple who invested in McDonalds before its boom some time ago. They are now multi-multi-millionaires and do not need to worry about money. Talk about having your money work for you!

Now if you own a successful business (doesn’t fail within 5 years) and it grows at all, you are now earning money and it is working for you. Don’t confuse owning a business with running a business; I am speaking strictly of owning a business someone else runs. It’s a beautiful thing. This can be anything from a furniture store to renting out apartments and receiving money. I’ll leave that part up to you.

Surround Yourself With Rock Stars

Laugh all you want but I’m dead serious. I don’t mean rock stars as in just people who play fantastic music for a living. When I use the term ‘Rock Star,’ I’m talking about people you aspire to be like. If you aspire to be a football player, go make friends with the best football players. If you aspire to be a mechanic, go find the top notch mechanics and make friends. Or if you aspire to be rich, surround yourself with people who make more money. Why would I want to surround myself with these people, you might ask. Simple. Knowledge is contagious. If you hang around these people with open eyes, you will learn what they do through osmosis.

Football people talk about football, mechanics talk about cars, rich people talk about being rich. It’s all part of the game. People talk about what excites them.

But don’t stop there– if you want to know about anything, find the expert and interrogate them. You’re thirsting for knowledge and they have the elixir. Experts not only have experience but they’ve also had the experience of watching others fail and make big mistakes. If you want to be truly successful, you must learn from other people’s mistakes.

OPM - Other People’s Money

You can make a lot of money by working hard for a long time and saving. In fact, that’s the traditional thing to do and I wouldn’t be surprised if your mother or father told you to do so.

Imagine if you didn’t have to work so hard to get the same amount of money though. “Where would this money come from?” you might ask. Well, the same way your father probably got the loan to buy his house and got into 30 years of debt that took money out of his pocket, you can put money into yours. Banks, credit unions and various other loan agencies are willing to loan their money out for profit (as I’m sure you’ve heard).

Let’s say at 26, you have a decent credit score and are able to get a $300,000.00 loan to buy a condo duplex. You find a duplex for about $250,000.00 at about 6.5% interest. Your payment comes out to about $1850/mo after tax. Now let’s say you get two renters at $1300/mo each. Now you’re making an extra $750/mo for managing the apartment complex and you’re doing two things:

1. Profiting $750/mo for doing virtually nothing, therefore increasing your net worth passively.
2. Buying a piece of property but having other people pay for it.

So at the end of 30 years, you will not only have $270,000.00 in profit but you will also own a duplex which could be worth much, much more.

Now let’s say it’s two years later. You’re 28 and have built up extra cash from the property. Nothing has gone wrong yet, so you’re free and clear. Now you qualify for bigger loan since you’ve established that you can pay on time. You qualify for a bigger loan of about $325,000.00 so you find a house for sale at about $300,000.00 and snatch it up at 6%. After taxes, the payments come out to a nice $2000.00/mo and you’re able to find a renter at $2500.00/mo.

Now you’re earning $1250/mo passively and buying two properties. Imagine if you had 10 properties, or 20. You can see where this could go. Once the bank trusts you with their money, you can make money intelligently. You’re also working smarter instead of harder.

This is no secret, but more so a popular way to become wealthy in both money and assets.

Kids, Start Getting Rich.

Getting Rich

Hello and welcome to my blog about getting rich and staying there!

If you aren't already, you should be thinking about getting rich and doing so with as little effort as possible because if you're like me, you're lazy and don't like people in general. For me, getting rich was simply a matter of being honest with myself about this and working around it.

From this point forward, I will tell you how I started getting rich and how I keep doing it.