Archive for the ‘Tips and Tricks’ Category

Hey guys, I was just thinking about this, and I decided to write something up about it.

In this world, people are lazy. Including me. Everyone grumbles that they can’t make any money, they can’t run a successful website, blah blah blah. But most everyone’s problem is not trying hard enough, or not trying at all!

I know this is more make money online related than blogging, but it really does apply in anything.

I personally have been in this boat. This, “I can’t make money online” boat. But you know what?

I tried. I actually just worked! I found an idea that sounded promising, and I said to myself, “Why not just give it a try? What’s the harm?” And it worked. I made over $500 in 3 days, doing not much work but the start up, and it made me realize that I just haven’t really been trying. Been putting myself out there, been taking a chance. And that’s been my problem. Fear. Fear of failure, losing money, doing something stupid. But when I just tried what I had already been told worked, it worked even better than I could have imagined.

Set Goals

When your trying to achieve something, be it a new computer, a solid paycheck, or just some spending cash, you really need to set goals. You can’t say to yourself, “I need a $2,000 computer and in 2 weeks, I will have the money.” But instead, set baby step goals. Try and make $100 in a month, then $100 a week, and then maybe even $100 a day! But don’t set huge goals without intermittent goals, otherwise, you’ll be discouraged when you can’t reach your goal quickly, or at all!

Don’t Let Failure Bring you down

You will fail. I know it’s mean to say, but at some point in your career, online or offline, your going to mess up, make a mistake, do something wrong. But if you don’t continue on, and persevere, you’ll never get anywhere.

Just DO IT

Enough is enough. Just get out there, and try something. Try your hand at affiliate marketing, outsourcing, whatever! Just try. Because in the long run, you’ll be glad you did. I sure as heck am.

Ok, has anyone seen THIS? Yes, that’s real!

Why in the world is this on a supposed “Make Money Online” blog?

Because A-list are full of Cow Patties. That’s why. (Not ProBlogger though, he’s still top notch.)

It really sickens me how people like John Chow just suck in revenue from their blogs when they don’t contribute at all! I can understand if that’s on a dating blog, but MMO? And yeah, they tried to make the connection that you need to think about human needs not just making money online. But is a whole series on getting a girlfriend fitting? Short answer? NO. Long answer? Still no.

If you are one of the 26k+ Subscribed to www.JohnChow.com and you actually think it’s going to help you make money online, your pretty naive. If your subscribed so you can stay up to date with what John eats for Dinner, then I have no beef with you other than your wasting valuable time reading that when you can be reading a blog like The University Kid, which has helped me make $X,XXX over the months, and can help you too.

Now, I know that this is not the first time JC has posted something like this, nor will it be the last. But I mean come on! This one just put me over the edge. I hate how people flock to his blog, (26069 to be exact) hoping to learn how to make money online, and yet learn nothing, and spend $100s buying products they don’t need through JohnChow’s affiliate links, making him hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from doing nothing of value.

So please, stop reading those huge A-list blogs, (except for ProBlogger, he’s great. ) and start reading the smaller blogs with under 3k or 4k readers, as they will be helping you learn for real, not just fill your minds with crap.

Well, rant over.

On another note, we are progressing greatly. After my injury, I’ve dropped in RSS readers and traffic, but with my return, we’re quickly picking up again!

Also, our Alexa is down to just over 286k! That’s a feat, and soon, we’ll reach the 100k mark!

Also, we have over 3,000 back links and growing. I’ll be talking about building strong, do-follow back links soon as well. Not a new method at all, but the more it’s posted, the more exposure it gets, and the better it works.

That’s pretty much easy, thanks again for sticking around, we’re growing greatly, and will be expanding with some exciting new things soon!

Now, I know I didn’t post yesterday, my apologies, but you know, with my therapy, shoulder, and other things, it’s tough! But rest assured, I’m here. Also, I think for the time being, while my shoulder finishes healing, I’ll be posting every other day, just until I’m back up to 100%. So bear with me.

Now, onto our topic for today.

Should I bribe my readers?

When I say this I mean, do you need to give incentives for every little thing just to get some action on your blog? Do you need to offer a prize to the comment king every month? Do you need to run a contest 6 times a year?

Now, don’t get me wrong, contests and prizes are great, and they do increase activity on blogs, which is always a good thing. But what I’m driving at is this: If you stop bribing your readers, will you have any readers?

A lot of blogs are big and popular only because the people who run them are rich and invest 1000’s a month just promoting it and giving out prizes. This is false readership, in my opinion. Why? Because try and see how many readers stay for the content, which is supposed to be the most important thing. If you run contests constantly, and award readers for everything, chances are things are going to fall apart without those “bribes”, if you will.

So that’s my challenge to you. Yes, I’m talking to all you contest crazy bloggers. Try and take one, maybe two months, and focus on producing the best contests and incentives you can. Then let three months go by with non of that, and see what happens. Then, take one month and produce the best possible content that you could write, or that money can buy, and then take three months normal with non of the fluff or contest, and see how your readership benefits much much more from  the content, than the prizes.

Now, do not take this the wrong way, I love contests, and will run one here soon. But just don’t make it a habit that the only thing you do to keep readers is run contests.

Does it seem like there is always a “thorn” in your side?

By thorn, I mean obstacle. Pain in the rear end. Something that holds you back from what you want or need.

In life, you’ll always have these “thorns” in your “side”. It’s quite inevitable.

You see, let’s take this blog for example. I start it, it grows, it’s doing great, and “Bam!”, shoulder is broken, and my blog is neglected. Now, you may say to yourself at times like these, “It’s just me, I’m an unfortunate person. Nothing will ever go right for me.” Don’t think this way! Why?

Unforeseen Occurrence Befall us All

Yes, I just made a reference to The Bible. It’s so true. If something bad happens to you don’t think God, or someone else has it out for you, that’s just life.

Ok ok, why do I bring this up you say.

Well, when I had this shoulder problem, I was very discouraged. I thought to myself, “Everything always goes wrong! My blog starts to grow, does well and then it’s gone.

But don’t be discouraged. If you give up, like I almost did, you’ll never succeed, be it online, offline, inline, ( had to throw that in there, sorry. ) and you’ll never have a business or blog that means anything.

This is just a little word of advice to all those discouraged ones out there, that you CAN succeed, just never, ever, and I mean never give up!

In other news, I’m back! Regular content will start being pumped out starting tomorrow. So stick around, we’re gonna go places.

Hey all, this is not Mark, but this is Nathaniel from green-flamingo.com. I am filling in for Mark, for as you should know he was injured. I said I would write a guest post about a week ago, but I forgot what I was going to talk about. Now I will tell you how to blog like a monkey and stand out.

Collect bananas - Well, monkeys are associated with bananas right? You have to collect them and then you can eat them. To collect bananas you must stay focused and on the job. Maybe you could have a few of your fellow banana collectors help you out, or you can join programs to help you monkeys get bananas.

In a way you can understand - Making money online is associated with blogging right? You have to make the money and then you can spend it. You have to stay focused, seeing ahead and making sure you are doing things right. You may consider visiting some of these friends which will help you to make the best of your blogging. You might have a few fellow bloggers help you out, and that would help. You can also join affiliate programs to increase and most likely start (unless you have a product or services to sell) you making money online. Some good affiliate programs:

-Google Adsense-

Google Adsense is well known by most, and well recommended. If you want to get the most out of adsense, visit robinhaney.com, maximizing your adsense earnings part one, part two, and recently part three.

-PepperJam-

I myself to not know much about pepperjam, but I hear it is good, and according to the site, they have been ranked one of the top 10 SEO firms in the United States. They are also honored to be recognized as one of the fastest growing privately held business in the US.

-OIO Publisher-

Here you find the tree with millions of bananas, too bad it is not free. You can get discounts though, which is good. OIO publisher is regarded very highly and it would be a good program to join, but make sure you want it before you buy it. What it really does is automate your monetization so you can do what really needs to be done: writing content!

Those are only a very few of some worthwhile affiliate programs, just browse around those trees and you will find many more.

Sell your banana collectors - Now it is time to promote and sell your products. Market well, but don’t be too spammy otherwise people won’t go for it. Carl Ocab can sometimes be a spam seller and spam promoter, which is really annoying. So find the right way to promote and sell your product and done!

Write like a monkey - Stand out, be creative, swing from vines, and from that writing get some bananas. Go ahead and be your fuzzy or fat self. Just be you in your blogging. Write not just in an ordinary way, but write with character and use of the force you must.

After you have those bananas, keep going for more until you have dominated the monkey world. Just to blog like a monkey, work hard, stay focused, be creative and be yourself.