$75 Valentines Day Ideas Contest

Time for another contest. The prize this time is a retail account from Send Out Cards. The retail account comes with 10 cards and US postage, full use of the 10,000 greeting cards in the system. Value of the membership, cards & postage is $25. Open only to residents of the USA.

I decided to have 3 winners for this contest and each will get the prize described above. Winner chosen by me.

Before I give the details of the contest I just wanted to point out how cool Send Out Cards is. I filled out my wifes Valentines Day card back in January and set it to be mailed a couple days before Valentines Day. I use the site often to send Thank You for small stuff. Like telling the manager at Longhorn Steakhouse how good our service was. Or telling someone from a forum that their answer made me some money. Great way to make friends with the big names on forums. You can even set it up like an autoresponder sequence if you want.

Ok, now about the contest.

The theme for this contest is Valentines Day Ideas. Outside of the normal candy and flowers, what would you consider to be an outstanding gift or unique thing to do for Valentines Day. To enter just post a comment on this post with your idea and your email address. If you have a blog or website include a link. If you want to include a photo, then please email me --> meekel [at] yahoo [dot] com. Use "OPP Valentines Day Contest" as the subject.

I will post the 3 best ideas here and include a link to your site. Contest ends Thursday February 7th at 9pm.

If you blog about this contest, post here to let me know. I have a special gift for everyone who writes about this contest and links to this post.

Comments to this post are open, but will not display to protect your ideas from getting copied.

Good Luck,

Michael

Live and Die by Traffic

Earlier this month one of my sites hit a search engine air bubble.

What I mean is the natural search position of this site was page 2 or top of page 3. Then earlier this month I noticed I was making at least one sale every day.

I wasn't advertising the product currently because I am in the process of updating it. But natural search was out of my control. I was excited to have at least one sale every day with no advertising.

Then the bubble popped Friday. After checking my search position, I am now on page 4.

If I want to generate sales I know all I have to do is start my advertising again. But I have to tell you I really loved having that free traffic convert so well.

So it is worth the effort to work on SEO when the search engines can lift and drop your site within the listings however they want. Or is it better to understand paid advertising and be more in control of your traffic.

Michael

Learn the right way to advertise at Wealthy Affiliate

Get Involved in a Group Project

Over on The Internet Marketing Inner Circle forum we are currently working on a group project.

Working on a project with a group of successful people is a great way to learn and get noticed. If you are just starting out or stuck and want to improve your business participating in a group project is a great idea.

You get the benefit of participating with a group of experts. And the exposure generated by expert marketers selling the product. Depending on the project contributors get to sell the product too.

The members of TIMIC got a copy of the first product and were allowed to sell it. I think the commission was around 80%. With a limited number of TIMIC members that meant limited competition to promote the product.

Imagine having your link seen by thousands of people who purchased this group project. Those visitors my be more inclined to purchase because it is known that they made a purchase online already.

I didn't participate in the first group project, but I sent my info in for this project. Last night when I checked we still need about 50 people to submit for the group project.

The only way to participate in the group project is to join it. And the only way to join the TIMIC project is to join The Internet Marketing Inner Circle.

There are many benefits but the two that keep me visiting the forum every day are the connection to successful internet marketers and to check on the projects in progress.

Take Care,

Michael

Free BLOG or Hosted BLOG

This past weekend I had to upgrade my server operating system.

The OS I was using will no longer be supported after March 15th. Not that I care much about support, but my provider where the server is running from required the upgrade for all customers.

I am a computer geek, so doing the upgrade did not scare me. What I was worried about was the downtime for my sites and BLOGs.

Overall the process went well. The upgrade took a couple hours and I spent the rest of the weekend getting my main sites back online and running. The rest get very low traffic so I will do them over the next couple days.

One thing I forgot to do before the upgrade was to stop my advertising. That should be listed in the steps to do. I didn't waste that much on lost advertising.

So after doing the upgrade this weekend I can tell you that I have a new appreciation for free BLOGs.

Michael

The Saturday Newsletter

I don't have anything planned for the Saturday newsletter this week.

I was busy working on my Squidoo Lense last night. I used the set-up as described over at Wealthy Affiliate for best optimization.

Now I have to figure out where I wrote down my password so I can check my Squidoo stats.

Back to the Saturday Newsletter.

I won't have time to make a video this week. But I will try and whip up a nice PDF with some juicy info to help you make more money blogging. Hmmm, let me re-think that. I won't have time to whip up a make more money PDF either.

Have no fear. The Saturday Email newsletter will be delivered on time and have something useful that you won't find here on the BLOG. If you are not already subscribed, the form is in the upper right.

One thing I cannot stress enough. If you are serious about making money with your blog and not just AdSense pocket change, then you seriously need to look at Wealthy Affiliate toady.

Michael

Squidoo Lense Optimization

Today on Wealthy Affiliate they posted a tutorial on Squidoo Lense Optimization. It totally blew me away.

There are people making $1000's a month with Squidoo Lenses. Some of the topics in this tutorial include.

1. Make sure you have the following


2. Landing Page Optimization Tutorial


3. 3 Days On Google Front Page With 30 Mins Work + Proof


4. Dominating The SERPS with Squidoo! For the Bums


5. How to Monetize Your Lenses

That is just some of the topic headlines. There are plenty more and pictures too.

My plan for tonight is to finish the Squidoo Lense Optimization tutorial and try it for myself.

If you are serious about making money online Wealthy Affiliate is the membership site to get the job done. The $30 a month fee is now free for me because I make more then that using the techniques I learned from their tutorials, forum and use of the tools.

Michael

Keyword Research Tool

Tonight I used the keyword research tool over at Wealthy Affiliate. One of the niches I am selling in isn't converting well.

So I used the keyword research tool to look for other keywords that might convert better. Now that I have some new keyword phrases to target I have a few choices.

I can use Google AdWords and buy some advertising to see if the new keyword phrases convert or I can work on SEO for that phrase.

In the long term SEO is the best choice, but there is no guarantee I will ever make first page. I know that I can hit first page or top 3 if I want when it comes to AdWords.

I love SEO, but most of the time I start with PPC to help guide me as to what keyword phrases to target in my SEO efforts.

Thanks to the tools at Wealthy Affiliate I save a ton of time doing research.

Michael

Work For Traffic or Buy it

When you are only making a $2 a day it is hard to justify spending money on advertising.

That is why I posted yesterday about the importance of selling your own ebooks. When you sell a higher valued item and make more money, you have more money to advertise.

There are hundreds of ways to get traffic to your website. While some of the free methods can be fun, they are all a ton of work.

Buying traffic still involves some work, but I would rather spend 10-20 minutes a day monitoring my advertising, then 2 hours a day doing free traffic methods.

Using the tools at Wealthy Affiliate helps reduce the time I spend working on my advertising. Heck, Wealthy Affiliate is loaded with tools that I use to make money with my websites and blogs.

Michael

Send Out Cards Webinar

There is a Send Out Cards webinar this Sunday.

If you are interested in learning how you can make money with greeting cards this is a must attend event. I joined after watching my first webinar.

Here is the link for this free webinar. Use VIP code 34440 on the form. http://greetingcardshow.com/

There are multiple ways to make money with this program. Not only can you make money with it, but the system is awesome. It is like an autoresponder for greeting cards or postcards. Don't tell my wife, but I filled out her Valentines card 2 weeks ago and have it scheduled to be sent a couple days before Valentines Day.

I will give out 3 Annual Retail Accounts out to the first 3 people to post a comment here. The only rule is you must live in the USA. Value is $25 and that includes annual membership to use over 10,000 cards and points and postage to send 10 greeting cards. Just leave a comment to this post with your name and physical address. You will get a greeting card from me with a gift card in it that you use to activate your account and get the 10 cards & postage that I purchased for you. Don't worry your comment won't be displayed.

Michael

p.s. Don't forget to register for the webinar. :-)

Make $20 Instead of 25 cents

I mentioned this a few times before, but I am going to bring it up again.

Many site owners and bloggers check their AdSense stats every day. I too was guilty of doing this.

Do you have days where your income is below $3.50? Or worse, below $1.

Because of the Google $100 limit, in order to get a check every month you need to average about $3.50 a day. Why focus so much energy on $3.50 a day?

But what if instead of checking AdSense every day for pocket change you instead check your email for $27 (more or less) payments. Imagine the feeling of seeing payments in your email every day and not caring so much about AdSense.

Keep in mind when selling your own products you don't have to wait to be paid. you get paid right away. This is something you don't get with AdSense or most affiliate products.

That is why I prefer to promote my own products or products I own the rights to over trying to make a buck with AdSense.

I would rather have my visitors buy from me instead of tossing some change as they click on an ad to leave my site.

For those not ready to create their own information product, read my post from yesterday about PLR products. These are high quality ebooks that you can modify and put your name on and sell for 100% profit. The package includes a sales letter and all the stuff you need to start selling right away.

If you are ready to create your own information products, the 8 week course at Weathly Affiliate will teach you what you need to know.

Michael

Stop Giving Away Money That Belongs To You

I was thinking about doing a video for my email list and not mentioning this on my blog. But this can't wait until Saturday because it might be too late.

If you promote affiliate products, you are loosing money that belongs to you. The product creators are only paying you a percentage of the income and you did all the work to generate that sale. Not to mention that seller will try to sell again to the same customer you just sent him, but this time you won't get ANY commission.

I have and still do promote a few affiliate products. But the real money is in selling your own products.

Last week I found out about PLR Products and knew this was going to be HOT. PLR products are ebooks that you can modify and put your name on. Not public domain crap, but real useful information.

The site I joined puts out one PLR product each month and that includes a sales letter, download page, the ebook that you can edit and put your name on, a squeeze page, bonuses and much more. These are not crappy products.

I make 100% profit

I build MY list

I re-sell & up-sell MY CUSTOMERS

For a limited time you can join the PLR Products Membership for a $1 trial. Yep, for only $1 you can try this membership out for 7 days. But there are only 87 spots left as of this writing. Take action now before they are gone.

Here is how you can get started right now.

1. Join PLR Products for $1 7 day trial

2. Go to the downloads page and download all the files

Note: if you need help with this there are instructions on the download page

3. Sign in to your paypal (or other merchant account) and create a new buy now button. Enter in the price you want to charge and where you will host your download page. If you don't have hosting, then you will have to email the file to your customers after payment.

4. Copy the code from the PayPal screen and paste it where the button is on the index.html file included. Then replace the img="paypal image" with the image file name of the button on the sales letter.

5. Upload the index file to your hosting or copy the sales letter and post it on your BLOG.

Thats it, you are now selling your own product.

If you are ambitious, you can edit the document and put yout name on it. Set-up an autoresponder and use the included squeeze page. And so much more.

Don't wait too long to get in on this program, there are only a few spots left.

Stop Giving Away Your Money

Michael

Make Money With Facebook

Last month I was thinking about developing an app for Facebook. Something small to test the waters and see if I could make some money.

Then I saw that they offer PPC and CPM advertising. Not just any advertising, but very targeted niche advertising.

Google AdWords works great and I gladly pay them every month. But Facebook is going to give Google a run for there money.

If you are not advertising on Facebook, click here to read the right way to advertise on Facebook.

The best time to get a good position is in the beginning and advertising on Facebook is gust getting started. Take advantage of being an early adopter and check it out now.

Michael

January Product Launch Madness

Are you getting all the email messages from the big Internet Marketing Guru's?

Seems like everyone who made more then 10 cents last year is having a launch this month. Sorry to group everyone in the same bunch. There are a few good products launching and one that will be ending soon.

My theory on why there are so many product launches right now.

1. Christmas is over and a percentage of people will have received money as a gift. Obviously more money to purchase a launched product.

2. The credit card bills for purchased Christmas presents has not arrived yet, leaving more money to purchase a launched product.

3. A percentage of people will set a New Years goal to make more money, or to make some money online. An opportunity to sell a launched product.

4. Your thoughts?

As I mentioned before I do buy information products and join membership sites. If you see me talk about it here or advertise it on the BLOG, then I own it or am a member of it.

I am anxious for February when the product launches will die down a little.

Michael

Building Your Blog Community

I am only 2 away from hitting 600 members in my One Penny Project MyBlogLog community. It is an honor to have so many people choose to join my community.

Instead of writing long posts and constantly promoting the next big thing. I prefer to write small easy to read quickly posts and only promote the stuff I use myself.

I work hard on SEO to get more people here and hopefully subscribe to my RSS feed or my email newsletter.

More projects are in process right now. Email subscribers get to hear what is going on first before I post it here. Plus I do videos from time to time for my email subscribers.

Give people what they want and they will keep coming back.

Michael

SEO For Your BLOG

Writing for a blog takes more then just research and writing up some content every day.

There are a ton of things that need to be done offsite to keep traffic flowing to the site. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is very important if you want free search engine position.

Often times I will spend hours working on offsite SEO. SEO and networking are 2 very important parts to blogging that many readers aren't even aware of.

The video I posted to my email subscribers yesterday showed a new SEO method I tried. It was based on something I learned and put to use earlier in the week. I thought everyone would be interested in seeing my results from the test.

Michael

Did You Get My Email?

This morning I sent an email to my list. It had a link to a video I made the other day.

The results of my latest test were very interesting so I decided to make a video instead of writing an article.

Next Saturday is going to have an even bigger test. I was doing some testing on CPM advertising. Very cool stuff when done right.

I will make a video later this week and send it out to my list next Saturday.

If you are not on my email list, the form to join is in the upper right corner.

Michael

Special Video For Subscribers

I just recorded a video for my email subscribers. It is something I just tested that you will enjoy. It is a great way to get some free traffic and right now not many people know about it. No black hat stuff, all normal and very easy to do.

The video will come out in my normal Saturday email.

If you are not already a subscriber, join now so you don't miss this video. The form to join is in the upper right corner of the right column. Most weeks I only send out 1 email and I will never sell, rent or give away your info.

I'm off to a meeting!

Michael

If It Were So Easy, Everyone Would Do It

You know the saying. If it were so easy, everyone would do it.

Imagine that you open your email account every morning and see 100 payment notifications. Then you check your Network Marketing accounts and see that you made another $2,000 over night.

If it was easy for anyone to do this, how would the internet look? Webpages would have little content and thousands of ads. Instead of a couple hundred emails we would have hundreds of thousands a day.

The challenge to making money online is part of the game. If it were easy, the market would be overcrowded.

Learning is a continual process. As marketers we must constantly learn and follow the trends. We have to read the latest business & marketing books and network with other marketers. We have to test and re-test and then start over again.

I saw this in a Donald Trump book Monday. "The harder I work, the luckier I get". I love it.

Michael

How Often Do You Test

I am constantly in a state of "Test Mode".

Even when I have a system in place that works well. I still test and tweak to see if that system can be improved.

What do you test?

Everything I can keep track of. I also listen to all the big names in internet marketing. Often they will provide some good stuff that I can use in my own tests.

This Saturday I will let my email subscribers in on the results of a Test I ran last night. It was from something I picked up from the 30 Day Challenge, but was too lazy to try at the time. By lazy, I mean real lazy. It only took me 10 minutes to set-up this test.

Subscribe to my email list with the form in the upper right to get all to good stuff that I don't post here on my Blog. Its free and for the most part I only send 1 email a week.

Best of Success!

Michael

Where to Find Public Domain Information

Did you purchase the Public Domain tools I mentioned the other day?

One of my favorite sources for public domain info is not online. Yes there is some good stuff online and you need the tools mentioned about to help turn that info into a product you can sell.

In about 2 months garage sales will start again and auctions will pick up. Right now there are barely 10 auctions on Saturday. But in the spring and supper that will jump to almost 40.

Save time and money by using tools to make things easier.

Michael

Getting More Traffic To Your Blog

Where does your blog traffic come from?

I use Feedburner to keep track of my RSS & BLOG traffic. The ability to see both numbers in one place and look at the data is important to me.

A percentage of my traffic comes from search engines. Somewhere near half. The rest comes from multiple sources. MyBlogLog brings in some traffic and those visitors often leave comments too. I like comments.

Now for getting more traffic.

Driving traffic to your site or blog is hard work. More so depending on the source.

Not only do you have to manage your onsite content, but also your offsite SEO. Not an easy task.

With my project goals of $200 a day in 2008 I will be doing plenty of work on driving traffic.

What is your favorite method for driving traffic and what is your highest day?

Michael

Google AdWords Loophole

This is something you won't see anywhere else on the internet. Or at least for the next 30 seconds when someone else copies it.

I tested this idea for almost 3 weeks. It worked for me. That doesn't mean it will work for you. Test it for yourself.

You know how there are some words you are not allowed to use in your AdWords text. Like "Best".

Well you can use those words in your domain name.

So I use Wealthy Affiliate to find a profitable affiliate product to promote. Then buy a domain name that is "best" for that product.

For example Merchant Accounts. I would buy a domain name BestMerchantAccounts.com and use that as the link in my AdWords ad.

My test produced a nice CTR and I will continue to use this method in the future. As for the product I am promoting on my "Best" site, sorry can't tell you. That is why I made up an example instead of the niche I am marketing.

Michael

p.s. Stay away from promoting Merchant Accounts. I used that as an example. The Merchant Account niche is dominated by providers, not affiliates.

Chipin - A Widget For Visitors to Chip In

Have you tried Chipin? It is a service that allows you to raise money online. I created a widget to raise money to get a new template designed for this blog.

If you like my content and would like to chip in a couple bucks towards my new template design, that would be cool.



Michael

Buying Websites Instead of Real Estate

Have you seen those shows on TV where people buy a house, fix it up then sell it for a profit?

Fixing up websites for profit is much cheaper then fixing a house.

How to buy a website without getting scammed or cheated.

Buying a website is fun, but if you don't know what you are doing you could be wasting you money.

For example scammers use tricks to inflate traffic numbers. That is why you always look at the source of the traffic and confirm those numbers with the source.

Michael

Friday - Goals & MyBlogLog

Today is Friday and we are now 4 days into 2008.

Have you given up on your goals yet? Hopefully not. And if you did, start over. Don't wait until 2009. Start Today!

I have big plans for 2008. $200 a day is a big goal and they will only get bigger as the years go on.

In 2008 I am going to stop doing the stuff that doesn't bring in money. I tried this back with the 4 hour work week. Many of the systems I put in place at that time I am still using.

But I eventually replaced my time savings with tasks that were also a waste of time. Or at least not worth $40-90 an hour.

I figured that to reach my goal of $200 a day I need to make between $40 and $90 an hour. Why the big range? Vacation, hours worked and future goals. Its a long story, but one you will understand when I reach the $200 a day goal.

Last night I maxed out my contact adds on MyBlogLog like I do every day. I am 1 away from having 8,000 contacts. There are very few people who have as many contacts as I do. Robin & Eric do because they work for Yahoo. But other then them I only know of 2 people that were at one time getting close to me. As long as I keep doing my 15 a day I should be able to have the most contacts of any person not working at Yahoo for MyBlogLog.

Michael

How Much Traffic Do You Need To Get Rich

How much traffic do you need to get rich?

Well that depends on the value of your visitors. For example if you sell a $1 Million item and the first visitor to your site buys, then you only need 1 visitor.

But in reality that will never happen.

Selling clicks for 5 cents (or lower) will take a ton of traffic to make even enough money to reach a payout.

That is why I focus on the longer term visitor. I use reasonably priced ebooks and services and in turn promote those items.

For example you see me mention Wealthy Affiliate here on the blog at least once a week. That is because I am a frequent user of the Wealthy Affiliate tools and forum. They offer so much I have not even used all of the tools and free services they offer.

I won't ever get rich promoting Wealthy Affiliate, but I am using their tools to help me get rich with my business.

That said, lets look at eCPM. That is how much money you make for every 1000 page views (not unique visitors). What is your eCPM for your AdSense income? Low, isn't it.

Wouldn't you rather sell a higher priced item to fewer people?

Lets do a little math here.

Say you earn 5 cents per click with AdSense and have a CTR of 4%. This is just an example. You might get lucky and have a higher CTR, but when you see the final numbers you will see how that doesn't matter.

So to make $200 you need 4,000 clicks. And with a 4% CTR you would need 100,000 visitors. How many people do you know that get 100,000 visitors a day?

But this is still poor. How many people that do get 100,000 visitors a day are only making $200? See where I am going.

Lets do the same example, but this time promote an affiliate product. The goal is still to make $200.

We find an affiliate product that pays out $40. That means we need to sell 5. Selling is harder then optimising a page for clicks, but stick with me.

With a conversion of 1/2% we only need 2000 visitors to make our $200.

Wait, it gets even better. We now also have a list of 5 people who bought this product. So in reality we could sell something else to this list of people who we know bought a product in the past. Something you can't do with AdSense.

How much traffic you need to get rich depends on many factors. Personally I find AdSense a waste of time. I would rater focus on building value then waste time testing how best to get someone to leave my site for 5 cents.

Michael

Advertising on Facebook for Marketers

I was looking around FaceBook and found their advertising section.

Being an internet marketer I decided to look around and give the system a try.

I love the market details for targeting your market. In under 5 minutes I was able to narrow down from 16 million FaceBook users down to 6 thousand. Talk about targeted.

The CPC price was close to 80 cents. More then I care to spend on a test. The CPM price was closer to $2.

After reading the guidelines I decided to skip testing advertising on FaceBook for now. The list of things not allowed was way too long with tons of grey areas. Not worth loosing my account over a simple test.

My sites and blogs make money because people visit and buy something. So the more visitors I get the more money I make.

Michael

Successful Blogging Income Report - John Chow

I figured it would be nice to review the income of some highly successful bloggers. Since John Chow is very open with his numbers I will start there.

In 2007 John Chow made $180,305.94 from blogging.

The breakdown of income sources percentage shifted as the year went on. John started out with traditional income sources like AdSense, but shifted to private ad sales and affiliate income mid year.

Shifting to private ad sales was a smart move for John's wallet and is working well for other bloggers too. The second thing that sticks out is affiliate income. It would be nice to see the breakdown of the product sources, but I do understand the need to keep this a secret.

In late 2007 I started using Wealthy Affiliate to help me find and improve my affiliate income. I will continue to use Wealthy Affiliate more in 2008 and hope to triple my affiliate earnings in 2008 from using their tools. But enough about me.

At $450 a pop, John makes a good bit of money doing reviews for ReviewMe. To get this kind of money for a review you obviously need a ton of traffic. Looking at Johns stats he is getting around 4,500 unique visitors a day.

John does spend some money on advertising each month and this is something I highly agree with. To make money you have to spend money.

Michael

Make Your Own Products with Public Domain Information

As I mentioned in my 2007 Income report, most of the money I made last year came from info products I created or owned the resell rights.

While owning resell rights to a product is better then being an affiliate there is also more competition then creating your own product.

That is why for 2008 I will be creating even more info products to sell.

One great way to get started is with Public Domain information. These are books, movies, etc that are no longer protected under copyright.

By enhancing information in the public domain you save a great deal of time. The research is already done and a bulk of the content is already written for you.

I say a bulk of the content is already written because I like to add my touch to public domain information. This gives me the copyright to the new work I created.

To success in 2008!

Michael

Get Started with Public Domain

A Look Back at 2007

This is the first post of 2008. Wow, it seems like only yesterday that we started 2007. Time seems to go faster every day.

Looking back at 2007 I learned many things and made plenty of mistakes.

My AdWords spend for 2007 was $1,616 from all sites and blogs I own including the ones not counted as part of the One Penny Project.

Total AdSense income from free blogs was $207.71 and $847.95 from my hosted sites. Again including blogs that are not part of the one penny project. $207 is a fair amount of money from free blogs. Hopefully in 2008 I will bring this up to $1000 or more.

ClickBank income was $470.81 from all sites and blogs I own. This amount is much lower then I would like, but not bad. My goal for 2008 is to increase this to $2000 or more.

Income from ShareASale was 321.93 from all sites and blogs. This was mostly from 2 network offers. I may do some direct promotion of ShareASale offers in 2008.

MaxBounty accounted for $389.15 of my income for 2007. The offer I was promoting that generated most of that income is no longer on their network. If I had the time I would probably promote more MaxBounty offers.

PayPerPost brought in $220.36 from paid posts. While this is more then my AdSense income it was also much more work.

To round out income I sold a bunch of ebooks that I wrote myself. This by far is my biggest earner for 2007. As for how much income that was, I'm not telling. Sorry some things are private.

Other then some advertising expenses I paid $35 a month for a shared server, $20 a month for Aweber, and $30 a month for Wealthy Affiliate. That comes to about $780 not including the advertising.

Working towards my goal of $200 a day in 2008.

Michael