Carpenters Rock (Music Group)

I've been coding up some code. My play list ended up on the carpenters, I haven't listened to them for a while. Awesome tunes.

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Office Rearranged

I've finally got all my hardware organized. I bought a used full rack and some extra hardware. I had to take the door frame apart to get it in.
It looks good and keeps things amazingly quiet.

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Making Money Online -- Update!

I've left them alone for a few days. You can see an updated chart here.




Program 1 finally panned out. Not bad for spending a few dollars and leaving it alone. Program 3 seems to be struggling a bit so I'm tweaking the keywords. (Turning some off and so on).

For Program 3 it really seems to be more profitable when people are at home (not 9-5). Too bad my PPC program doesn't support turning campaigns off during certain hours. However there is an easy fix to that. Just write a program to log in and turn them off for me in the morning. Then have it log in again in the evening to turn them on. I won't do that till I'm certain of a pattern.

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Making Money Online -- Done!

In this experiment I broke just about all of my rules hoping to put something together quick. And you will find that some rules are more important then others.

First rule I broke:
I used a direct to vendor landing page. I fixed that with a cursory website and saw success.

Second rule I broke:
I didn't build a full on site (or mini site) around the offers, I just threw them up on some existing domains I already had other offers on. This affects some offers more then others.

Third rule I broke:
I did a halfway job on my keyword research. I found a winning combination anyways (this is due to a combination of luck and experience).

Fourth rule I broke:
I didn't use ANY of the big three PPC places for traffic.

Results:
Before you see these, note that I actually ran more then three offers but these three are the only offers that got any sort of significant traffic.



This is as of 15 minutes ago. (15 minutes because I kept fighting firefox and blogger on pasting a table from excel. I found a compromise ;) )

Program 1:
It was an offer for long term care insurance information. I think program 1 would do better if I built a full fledge website around it instead of just a landing page AND used a different traffic source. I'm still running it since it is on very low traffic, I may hit something long term. So I am leaving it alone for a while.

Program 2:
This is one of those fill out a form and complete some offers and win a free $500 gift certificate/ipod-xbox/etc offer. It didn't do as well so I just shut it off till I can find some traffic that converts how I like.

Program 3:
This is ALSO one of those fill out a form and complete some offers and win a free $500 gift certificate/ipod-xbox/etc offer. Except the landing page was very different and I was able to tweak the keywords to a winning combination. Then I tweaked the keywords again after looking to see what words weren't performing well and now I am just watching it.

That is it. Find some offers, build websites around. Drive traffic to them and concentrate on ROI. Rinse and repeat.

But wait?! $20 a day isn't much. Yeah but $20 a day * lots of different sites and offers is a lot.

Next up... PPC :)

PS. This was just a small sample. Sometimes I lose a lot more before I find something that works. Usually I lose less then $100 before finding a winning combination (of site, keywords and traffic) or I give up and move on. The most I ever lost before I found a working combination was $750 in the hole; and when I did get it profitable, it was (and still is) only pulling about $4 profit a day. I have 160 days left before that project is in the black :)

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Where Ron Paul Stands On... just about everything

There has been a lot of buzz about Ron Paul going on especially with his 4.2 million dollars raised in one day from over 30,000 individual donars.

Some of you are wondering where he stands on your key issue. You have heard that he wants to eliminate many various government entities and many other things. I'll summarize a few key points from his statements but you can watch the video in its entirety here to make up your own mind. He decided to run for president because he saw our foreign and monetary policies are hurting us while we are losing civil liberties at home. He calls himself a constitutionalist and feels that the executive branch of our government has taken too much power upon itself. This man cured my apathy and gave me someone in politics that I can support. I won't say I support him 100% on every issue. But I think he is the best hope for a positive change in our country.


Direct Link

And if you just want to watch a short "feel good" video you can look at this one:

Direct Link

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How To Make Money Online - Stop Talking And Start Doing

Instead of talking about how to make money online, I'll just do another site.

I've already found an offer with ABC Leads. I'm going to put together a quick web page and start promoting it with PPC. I'll let you know how I do :)

I'm off to make some cash.

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How To Make Money Online 5 of 11 (Search Traffic)

Search Traffic

Search traffic is #1. It is the best. Period. It does not come over night. Search traffic is reserved for quality sites with good information that has steadily been built up over time (hint, hint). Spammers and so called Black Hats can also get plenty of Search Traffic but it is only temporary-- I'm in the quality content and site will be better long term camp.

You can search and find all sorts of tricks and link strategies for getting higher search engine ratings. They are fine to give you an idea of what you need to do for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Some basic things:

1. Use ALT tags on your images
2. Use meta tags (doesn't hurt you but some say it isn't as important anymore)
3. Use descriptive title tags on each page. Don't use same title tag for every page on your site.
4. H1, H2 tags are important, use CSS to change the size of them
5. If you have a menu on the left of your page, use your code to display it last and then use css to rearrange it. You want the search engine to see your content first, not your menu
6. use strong tags instead of b for important content
   
7. Have content that doesn't suck and isn't just a copy of someone else.
8. Link to good sites (stay away from "bad neighborhoods"/link farms)
9. Press Releases are good-- prweb is free (or was last time I used it)
   
10. Writing articles and posting them to quality article banks with a link back to your site is good. (google for ezines)
    

Thats all for now, there are LOTS of other tips you can find. Remember to take it all with a grain of salt, and don't just jump on the bandwagon of every SEO "tip" you see. Being creative and ethical will take you a long way.

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How To Make Money Online 4 of 11 (Combining Offers)

Combining Offers

This one is pretty straightforward. You are essentially hedging your bets.

1. AdSense + Affiliate Offers
   Lets say you are promoting hair care, but you are worried that you will have someone on your site that is not ready to buy or is not interested in the particular item you picked. There is where a combination of AdSense + Affiliate Offers comes in to play.
   
   Put them both on the same page. Put which ever thing you want looked at the most by users in the top left of the content of your site.
   
   
2. Comparison Sites
   I've seen this done many times as well. Lets take Blockbuster + Netflix. Make a site comparing them (and the other competitors in that niche). Make sure you are signed up with their affiliate programs ;) This way no matter what the consumer chooses you win. Some will prefer blockbuster some will prefer netflix some will prefer some other 3rd party DVD/Movie rental program you found. Don't just stick with the top 2, unless you can't find anyone else.
   

Here is where you get to be creative. Give people a reason to come to your site. Don't just slap a bunch of ads on a web page and think you are done. Whatever you pick aim to be the best.

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How To Make Money Online 3 of 11 (Finding Stuff To Sell)

I received a few complaints that I didn't finish. I took a few days off. Lets move on to part 3.

Finding Stuff To Sell

This one can be a little overwhelming, I'll narrow it down to four basic things you can sell. These are usually called CPA (Click/Cost Per Action) campaigns. You will get paid when you refer someone and they do a specific thing. Fill out a form requesting a mortgage, buy some soap on amazon, subscribe to a newsletter, etc.

1. Clicks/Impressions (See Step 2)
   
   
2. Leads (Forms That People Fill Out)
   
   
3. Products
   
   
4. Services
   

Ask 10 people and you will get 10 opinions on which is the most profitable. It really depends on how well you are able to make your pages and campaigns convert. (This will be covered in the future).

I personally like numbers 1 and 2 for beginners, although I have seen some success with 3 and 4.

Here are a few places you can find products/services to pimp out promote. This list is just from memory and is by no means conclusive. Hint: If I have made money from them (and it is not a private program) I remember them ;)

InsureMe
LeadPile
CJ
ShareASale
Azoogle
LinkShare
Amazon

Hint #2: You can find more profitable programs with better payouts if you go direct to a smaller company. Lets say you are finding success promoting widgets on Commission Junction. Look around for places that are selling those widgets but aren't on the first search page of google, yahoo or msn. Check to see if they have a direct affiliate program. Most of the time their program will pay more then you will get through a large program bank (like cj or linkshare).

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