How To Write A Book

This is something I have been thinking about for a little while.

Should I write a book that goes into greater detail then what I post on my blogs?

Now this book will not be about making money online or anything like that. It will be on one very specific topic. As with all books a great deal of research and effort will need to be put forth as well.

I'm probably not going to get picked up by a major publisher, but with POD I can self publish and manage my own ISBN if needed.

Best of luck on all your money making efforts. Take some time to take a break, you know what they say about all work and no play.

Michael

You Never Know Until You Live It

I read the book 30 Days to Live not long ago. Many of the chapters I read quickly because I felt my life was in order.

I picked up a few tips and even made a few adjustments.

But then my world turned upside down.

30 Days to Live became a reality. My world had completely done a backflip and I was delivered a truckload of lemons.

Fortunately I had the recipe for lemonade and my friends came to the rescue. My life is changed and I plan to make the change a positive one even with the truckload of lemons.

So when you sit back and think if something happened this is what I would do. It probably isn't. Because until you have lived it you have no idea how you will react.

If you noticed that I don't blog here as much as I used to you are right. Posting on this blog will be 3 times per week when things clear up. I will post once a week until then.

The schedule on my other blogs will stay the same as I was only updating them a couple times a month anyway.

As for my sites. I got rid of my virtual server to save money. It doesn't make sense to manage 20+ websites for the amount of money they were making.

From now on I will stick to free blogs and use my free hosting from Wealthy Affiliate. More on WA in my next post, but that is one expense that I am not going to give up!

Michael

The 4 Hour Work Week

I am going to have to cut my work week back to 4 hours a week. This is something I wanted to do before. But I always figured I had to wait until I made it big to cut back my hours.

At this time I need to focus on my family and spend less time on the computer. I am in deep sorrow that I did not recognize the need to do this much sooner.

That said I will continue to run tests and update all of my blogs. But I will be cutting back on things that cost money like site memberships, Aweber and probably my server.

If I cut out most spending I should be able to go for days without worrying about an advertising spend explosion.

This does mean that it will take longer for comments to get approved if I take a few days off in a row.

I am going to try 30 minutes a day and see how that works. If I have to I will start cutting back on some of my test blogs and just work on the ones that interest me most. (like this one)

Michael

My 2 Cents on The Economy & Tax Rebate

I got my Tax Rebate notice the other day. Most of it will be spent in a few weeks when we go on vacation.

I will spend the whole thing and watch to see if the Economy gets stimulated. That is said tongue in cheek as it could take years for the economy to improve.

What else can be done to stimulate the economy? Keep in mind credit card debt and gas prices continue to rise. Add in Health care and the cost of groceries and there is barely anything left to stimulate the economy with.

Fortunately in addition to my day job I make some money on the internet too. A little money for entertainment, nice dinners out and a car payments.

There are many benefits to making money online compared to my real job, but there are downsides as well.

Time to get back to work on my online business to see if I can make more money to spend.

A little disclaimer here. I am not saying that you should spend all your money. In my real job I have a great retirement plan, so that is where I save my money. That way I can spend all the money I make online (after taxes). Your results may vary and if you don't have some savings built up, please do that first.

Michael

Stand Out In A Crowd

Where I work we are raising money for "Make A Wish". The goal is to raise enough money to fulfill a wish for very sick children.

Each of the departments came up with a different idea.

So now when you get on the elevator you are inundated with small posters promoting a departments fund raising idea.

I love the ideas, they are great.

But the problem is that none of them stand out. When you walk in the elevator there are so many it is hard to focus on just one.

There is one poster that has some standout stuff, but no memory factor.

So, the idea isn't just to stand infront of your customers. But to stand where they can see you and clearly recognize you.

Michael

How to spend Entrecard Credits

As mentioned last week. I love Entrecard. More so now that I figured out the best way to use Entrecard.

Spend your credits by advertising on other blogs.

Very simple and very effective.

I always drop my card on the blogs I like to read. I also mark them as a favorite and often advertise on them as well.

Some days I drop more cards then others. My drops inbox always shows me new blogs to check out.

I'm more picky about placement then I am anything else. If it is an above the fold placement like I have here on my blog then I am willing to pay more to advertise on that blog.

Once a week I spend most of the credits in my account. I get advertising all week long.

Michael

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all. Even if you don't have kids you may have given motherly advice to a child in the past. So to all I wish a Happy Mothers Day.

Yesterday was jam packed with outside work. Hopefully today I will have time to work on the project I mentioned yesterday.

I also have to practice for my big poker tournament later this month.

Take Care,

Michael

Interesting Testing Results

I had a nice surprise yesterday. I checked my stats on shareasale.com and noticed that I had a sale. But not just any sale, since I often have sales promoting their merchants.

The surprise part was that I had a sale for a merchant that I was planning on testing. I was working on a landing page and was going to promote using AdWords. But I didn't start advertising yet.

So the page was found with a natural search. After checking the page stats it doesn't get much traffic.

I may have found another winner. Now I will have to use the tools over at Wealthy Affiliate to figure out the best keywords to use on AdWords.

I could just load a campaign with 100's of keywords, but I found that using the tools at Wealthy Affiliate save me time and money. Now I only need to have 15-25 keyword phrases in my AdWords campaigns.

Have a good weekend.

Michael

Buy One Get One Free

Why run a special to Buy One and Get One Free instead of offering 50% off?

I don't know the answer to this question and would imagine that it is complex and varies by business and purpose.

Could it be to reduce stock on hand. If the product is consumable will the customer have to also buy more of another companion product. For example shampoo and conditioner.

There isn't an easy way to buy one and get one free with ebooks. That is unless you have 2 ebooks and are selling them together as a set where one is free.

Could this be a new way to joint venture. Buy my product and get Mr.x's product free? Well I guess that wouldn't be too new, but not common.

What are your thoughts on this as it relates to selling digital products online?

Michael

Tax Rebate & Why I Love EntreCard

First an update on the Tax Rebate for those of us in the USA that qualify. Always be thankful, it isn't much but it is better then nothing. In the end all we have are memories anyway.

Now on to Entrecard. I am starting to like EntreCard more. At first I thought the work to results ratio was not worth my effort.

But then I made a slight change and now I don't have to work as hard. I was dropping over 100 cards a day. But now I drop about 20 and because I like to see who the new blog are that visit me and I drop another 10-20 on blogs that I like to read. So I am down to about 40 from over 100 (close to 150).

Want to know what the big change was that I am so happy about ... keep reading.

When I first started I was dropping and visiting blogs. But I wasn't spending my credits.

The true power of Entrecard didn't kick in until I started spending my credits.

Now I earn more EntreCard credits per day when I did over 100 drops with much less effort.

More bloggers see my ad on other blogs, visit my blog and purchase an ad worth their EntreCard credits. It is a win-win for all involved.

There you have it. To take full advantage of EntreCard you have to regularly spend your credits.

Michael

Update on my Projects and Tax Rebate

Today I thought I would give you an update on my projects and answer a few comment questions.

Poker - Yes, I love to play poker. If you would like to play poker with me, just go over to Club WPT and sign up. My name is localpoker. Feel free to add my name localpoker in the referred by field. The cost is $20 a month to play and it is legal in the USA. They operate under a sweepstakes format, so you play with points instead of money. I love it, later this month I will be playing in a tournament with a $10,000 prize pool.

Wealthy Affiliate - Don't forget today is the last day to lock in the lower monthly membership rate. Where else can you get one-on-one mentoring for only $30 a month? Sign up at Wealthy Affiliate today to lock in the low rate.

Tax Rebate - While the plan was to only spend 1/2 of our tax rebate on vacation and apply the other 1/2 to a credit card, we decided to spend the whole thing for vacation. But here is the deal. Before the Tax Rebate the plan was to skip vacation and focus on our debt. So we are still paying down our debt, but at the same time taking a vacation. As for if my spending $1500 is going to stimulate the economy, no, I don't think so. There is something smarter that could have been done instead of the tax rebate, but there isn't enough time to discuss that right now.

$170 Project - I did not invest any of the $170 from my $200 prize. I donated $20 to MDS and $10 was for the PayPal fee. The research is started, but I never finished it. Like much of what I do, I start something, let it sit for 2-3 weeks, then finish it. So look for an update on how I invested the $170 later this month.

Blogging - I maintain about 12 blogs and a few websites. Most get a weekly update. Income levels are slightly below normal. Maybe the tax rebate checks will stimulate the economy to buy some of my ebooks?

Social Networking - I am getting close to 10,000 contacts on MyBlogLog. That is the easy part. My almost 800 community count for my Blog on MyBlogLog, now that I am proud of. Not many blogs can grow and maintain above 600. My goal is 1,000 within the next few months.

There are a few more items to give updates on, but I have to get ready for a meeting on the other side of Lancaster. I don't care for the long drive to and from, but the meetings are great. I serve on the Outreach Department for the Donegal Presbytery.

Michael

Tax Rebate Check

What are you going to do with your Tax Rebate Check?

I was going to pay down some debt, or make a few advanced car payments. But then we decided to stimulate the economy.

Looks like we will be taking a vacation this year. We were going to skip taking vacation. But thanks to the relief payment from the government we decided to plan a vacation.

More on that later.

I have a poker tournament in 10 minutes, other then that no work tonight.

Michael

Use Tools To Help You Make More Money

The best way to make a hard job easier is with tools.

It will hake hours to cut your lawn with scissors, but a lawn mower will make the work easier and produce better results.

The same holds true for making money online. That is why I use the tools at Wealthy Affiliate.

Big things are happening at Wealthy Affiliate and in addition to the tools already offered, more are on the way.

I use the competition spy tool to help me spy on markets before I start promoting within a niche. Works great and saves me a ton of time.

If you are serious about making money online now is the time to join Wealthy Affiliate. The price goes up on Tuesday, but you can lock in the current low price if you join now. Thats right, join now and pay the same price for as long as you are a member.

I don't know what the new price will be, but the tools alone are worth 3 times the price of membership. They also offer free website hosting for 3 sites and have free tools to help you build sites quickly.

Join today before the price increase and start using tools to help improve your online income.

Michael

How To Schedule BLOG Posts

The blogging platform I use now has a feature to schedule posts.

So now I can write up posts for when I am away and they will show up daily as if I were able to write and post them that day. This is a great feature for vacations and travel. Other then that I prefer to write and post at the same time.

To do a future post in Blogger all you have to do is click on the Post Options link. Then under post date and post time just set it be when you want it to post.

Simple as pie.

Many things going on right now, so I better get back to it.

Michael