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

February Blogging Income Report

February was much like January. Direct sales of products I own the license to were my biggest earner. I did have some other money come in, but only 3 affiliate sales in February.

Expenses were unchanged, but advertising was a little lower. I didn't get to test as much because of going to New Orleans.

I have a few PLR products that I want to start promoting in March. I'm also going to start testing a landing page for a few niches I found on Wealthy Affiliate. I used the competition spy tool and found some products that must be selling well. All I have to do is make a landing page and promote the same product.

Later this month I am going to write and give out some free reports. I may develop an info product for one of my niches, but probably not in March.

Michael

Over 500 BLOG Posts

Yesterday I did the 500th BLOG post for the One Penny Project BLOG. I didn't notice until I signed in today that I had done this.

So I hit 500 MyBlogLog members and 500 BLOG posts all within about 7 days. Now if I could only get 500 email subscribers and RSS readers. :-)

That reminds me. I have the email and PDF ready for my email list on Saturday. This is the only way you can get the details of my current project.

Time to focus on my business.

Take Care,

Michael

Project Updates and $100 A Day

The project update email is in the email system. You should get it by 9:45 if you are a subscriber. If not then please consider joining my email list.

I am very excited about the next project. It is from the 20 ways to make $100 a day ebook.

This is a part online and part offline business. I love the idea and can't wait to start marketing it.

Thanks for the comment on making $500 a day. Yes at some point I will have a goal of $500 a day. But as you mentioned setting a goal of $500 a day often translates into actual results of $200 a day. This is because an arbitrary goal amount without a solid backing is destined to fail. My target of $200 a day for 2008 is a goal that I will reach because I have a solid plan in place. In 2009 I hope to move up to $500 a day.

I will probably update the project balance, but have not decided yet. I don't know if it is worth my time to keep tracking the "Project Balance" if readers don't care. I feel that my time would be better spent working on projects that bring in money.

Or I might just do the project balance to the email list, don't know yet.

Michael

Research Data on the RTTALDT Project

Tomorrow morning I will send out an email to my list that includes some of the research data from the RTTALDT project. As always the more detailed info about my projects goes out to my email subscribers. If you didn't join yet, here is the form.

Name:
Email:

The plan for next week is to prep for the $100 a day project. Details to follow in the December 1st email to my subscribers.

I am considering converting one of my special spreadsheets into a web based form. If that is completed by end of week I will include a link to that as well.

Much work to be done, Take Care.

Michael

Project Updates - BLOG Version

Hello All,

This morning I sent out an email to my list telling them of my project updates. This is the light version. To get the full scoop with details you need to join my email list. Just fill out your name and email in the upper right corner and hit subscribe.

Here is the blog version of my project updates.

Mid week I made some adjustments on the RTTALDT project. As of last night I have the business model set to a start phase scale. When the first phase is complete I will start adding the other parts of the model to the business. This is if the initial test provides enough profit to make it worth continuing.

Saturday December 1st. I will be releasing my plan for 2008 to build my business to $200 a day. This will go out first to my email list (see above) and then I will post an edited version here on the blog about a week later.

As for finances, my seed money is getting spent quickly. I purchased another website and did a little advertising. Income for the month is on target with last month, plus a little extra.

My 30 Day Challenge blog had a few huge days, then went back to trickle traffic. I know what needs to be done to improve my ranking, just never have the time to do it.

Don't forget to subscribe to my email list so that you get the more detailed stuff.

Take Care,

Michael

Project Updates

I made a video on the RTTALDT project. It will be sent out in an email tomorrow morning. If you are not already subscribed, so so now. Us the form in the upper right side of the blog. That is the only way you can get the "Good Stuff".

I'm lovin doing video for the internet. Next week will be another heavy week. I did about 20 hours of research this week as mentioned in the video. There is a pdf included with some of that research.

Time to run some errands.

Take Care,

Michael

October Make Money Project Balance Update

The numbers are in for October. But first. If you entered the Halloween Photo contest, check your email. I sent an email to the winner yesterday and am waiting for a reply.

Now to what you are waiting for.

Net for the month was $11.79 from $86.41 revenue.

The Expenses are up because of joining Aweber, but this is a good thing. I am already putting Aweber to use on 2 of my sites and profit has increased on these 2 sites.

Wealthy Affiliate is another membership expense. I love the Wealthy Affiliate tools and there is hosting included so my next site will not increase my monthly expenses.

I also spent some money on advertising and that is what drove the expenses so close to income this month.

As stated earlier this month I stopped doing paid posts. So income from PayPerPost for this month was only $16. I'm going to keep my eye on any changes they may offer, but for right now there are easier way to make money. I'll explain in a future post.

Text-Link-Ads income was very poor this month so I removed the links from all of my sites. Income total from TLA was $6 for October.

AdSense was the biggest earner this month at $46.66 total for all blogs and sites.

I just started using Hydra Media for my blogs and sites last week and so far income from that is $3.75.

$14 from an affiliate product round out the income to bring the new project balance to $370.20 as of November first.

The new project for November has started code named RTTALDT. Subscribe to my email group in the upper right corner of the blog to get more info on this project. Instead of discussing this project on the blog I will send out an email every Saturday with info and updates on the project. The only way to get info and updates on the RTTALDT project is to subscribe by email (above right).

Michael

My Project Updates

I haven't had the time to start my 1 Hour and $20 project. This weekend we are spending a couple days in Philly. I will start the 1 hour and $20 project when we get back.

In the 10 minutes a day project I have done nothing. There are some notes I made that I need to do a post about, but overall that project will be cut back to 30 minutes a week.

The 30 day challenge blog is still going strong but I have lost interest in updating it. If you are interested in purchasing the Jello Shots blog post a comment here with your offer.

I have to catch up on my Wealthy Affiliate reading and use one of the software programs for some project research.

Michael

September Blogging Income

Profit for September was $5.67 after all expenses were paid. Not a huge amount, but not bad considering I didn't do as many Paid Posts as I did in August. Here is the breakdown.

Online advertising accounted for the largest expense at $41.06 from various sources. Other expenses included my Wealthy Affiliate membership and website hosting for the websites in this project.

Top income source was once again Pay Per Post at $30.80. I could have easily earned $300 last month, but just didn't feel like doing paid posts. Affiliate and Text Link income was $32.76 combined. Adsense was a fair amount at $21.51.

My new cash balance is $358.41 but that will change quickly.

Tomorrow I will let you in on a project that I am going to start today. I'm planning on investing $100 into this new project.

Michael

Taking A Mental Vacation

We are planning a weekend get-away to Philadelphia in October. I love planning mini vacations.

It is great to take a 9 day vacation once or twice a year. But the 3 day mini vacations are just as much fun and usually not as expensive.

I really wanted to go to the beach, but with the limited time we decided on someplace a little closer.

Philadelphia, PA.

We are going to spend a day shopping and a day at the Philadelphia zoo. Shopping in downtown Philly is so cool. I love the outdoor restaurants and watching all the people.

Now the countdown begins. Mini vacations are so much fun.

The 10 minutes a day project is going to start heading in the make money phase this week. Assuming my traffic plan works I should have some income by Friday.

The blog I created for the 30 Day Challenge is still going strong. There was a week of slow numbers, but things are starting to return to normal. I'm going to post once a week and do traffic building once or twice a week.

Michael

Today I Found an Awesome Affiliate Tool

This is a screen shot of the tools listing on the Wealthy Affiliate website. I had to blur most of the screen. And I can't show you the tool itself.

But I can tell you that I just used it for the first time and I now know what I will be doing the rest of the night.

Have you ever wanted to know what products sell well? One way to identify what sells is when you find ads that have been running for a long time. You see an advertiser will stop spending money when it isn't profitable to advertise.

This "Research Top Listings" tool helps you monitor advertisers. Just enter in a search term and it will show you the Google ads for that term. Then save your results as a project. Finally you just re-run the search in the saved project and it will compare your previous results with current results.

It would take me hours to print out Google Ads and manually compare them by hand. I am amazed at all the tools and resources included in my Wealthy Affiliate membership. This was the best decision I have made in a long time.

I'm off to use the "Research Top Listings" tool to spy on more competitors. Looks like I will be taking a break from the 10 minutes a day project again today. :-)

Michael

Make Money Online Project Updates

I decided to take a day off from the 10 minutes a day project. So instead of working 60 minutes this week, I will work only 50. I will probably cut back on my other projects today and for the next few days.

Like I mentioned the other day I joined Wealthy Affiliate on Tuesday. They have an 8 week training program in addition to all the tools and resources. Absolutely amazing! The tools alone are worth more then the membership price. They even include website hosting and some very cool templates so you can get started quickly.

I could probably skip the first 3 or 4 weeks of the training since I already have experience, but I like to start from the beginning. You never know when you will learn something new, even if you think you know it all.

My active projects within the One Penny Project portfolio include. 10 Minutes A Day, One Wealthy Affiliate project (more to be added soon), one user generated content site, my 30 day challenge blog that is still making money even though I only update it once a week and a few other blogs that I have been testing stuff on.

An update on Pay Per Post. Last month I was thinking about doing $10 a day worth of posts from PayPerPost. I have since then changed my mind. I am going to only do posts that pay at least $10 for 200 words or $20 for 300 words. The smaller posts are just not worth my time.

Time to get back to tools at Wealthy Affiliate. I will report on the 10 minutes a day project tomorrow.

Michael

10 Minutes A Day - First Day

Today starts my 10 Minutes A Day project. I was shocked at how fast the 10 minutes passed. Good thing I had a timer to stop me otherwise I would have kept going.

The task for today is to look for products to promote from networks that I belong to.

I started with CBEngine and looked at the new ClickBank products. All I did was scroll down the list and write down the titles of product titles that looked interesting to me. I will research more about the products later. I'm not going to use ClickBank as a starting point for research because there are too many products to go through.

After that I went over to MaxBounty and looked at the new offers, then did a search of open offers. I made a note of the titles that looked interesting to me and will research more later this week.

I was getting ready to start a third network when the timer ran out. Tomorrow will be much like today, gathering a list of products to promote. The key is to pick products that interest me, not just any product with a high payout.

Michael

Thirty Day Challenge Project Update

Today is Project Update Day.

The 30 day Challenge is going great. I added a physical book as an advertisement to the blog. So far I only made money with AdSense.

Traffic is starting to improve and I will continue to add some of the cluster as mentioned in the podcast today. I'm dreading writing an article to publish, but it looks like I will need some extra popularity to improve my search position.

I started a new blog this week and posted a job to have someone write a few posts for me. This is a gamble, but if it works the seeding will give me time to work on traffic. That reminds me of another project I an planning.

Tomorrow is the weekly recap and once again I have a big topic planned for next week.

Michael

Saturday Project Update - Awesome Income Report

Today is Update Day.

The 30 Day Challenge is going well. Thursday and Friday we set-up our free blog and started to learn about social networking. Those who read my blog regularly know that I am already a heavy user of social networking.

As of right now the only traffic I got to my new blog came from Stumble Upon. I will give Google until Monday then start working a little magic to get noticed. I want to use the AuctionAds program, but it does not appear to be working so I have Adsense on for now until I can create my Amazon link. I should be able to make my goal and beat my co-worker.

As for Income in my projects, Pay Per Post continues to be the biggest earner for me. Right now I am making between $25-30 per hour. Keep in mind there is a limit to how many posts you can do in a day, so that limits how much you can make in a day. I will tell you how to improve your offers in a future post. PayPerPost calls people who get paid for posting reviews "Posties". If you are not already a "Postie" for PayPerPost, now is a great time to start.



I will update the amounts at the end of this month. The project chart image will change as well. I'm going to switch to a format that seems to be more popular with bloggers reporting their income.

The theme for next week is a very hot topic. I know you will either love it or hate it, so stop back Monday and let me know what you think.

Michael

Saturday Project Update

Today is project update day on the schedule. Here is an update on the projects I am working on.

Thirty Day Challenge - Wow, day 8 was an eye opener. I started with 25 ideas. Then one day last week Ed said to pick 7, so I did that. After we started doing research I realized some of my markets would not meet the requirements so I swapped a couple out. But on day 8 I wad to come up with 7 NEW MARKETS. Yes, that is right. I had to figure out 7 new ideas because the ones I had did not generate enough traffic or had too many competing sites. In day 9 we were taught a little more market research and had to cut out list down to 2 markets. By the end of the week, I had to find 2 new markets. Now the learning phase begins.

$1,000 by Thanksgiving - This is going to be a tough one. When you read the More Traffic section you will see why. My Text Link Auction ended yesterday. Current projected income for the month is about $100. (I will respond to comments on Sunday) The project balance will be updated September 1st when all the figures are confirmed.

More Traffic - Earlier this week I got a huge burst of traffic. Not from StumbleUpon or anything like that. This was real traffic that was very targeted to my niche. Even with this extra traffic my AdSense income did not go up. But all is not lost. Traffic continues to break new limits and rise. The work I did to get that traffic will yield results into the future. I also developed a new utility that streamlines how I got this traffic and that will continue to save me time every day.

Blogging Schedule - Following a Blogging Schedule has made my life so much easier. Other then the occasional mention I will probably not bring this up again on the project updates. This is working well for me and if you try it I would love to hear how it works for you.

Michael

Put Your Blog on a Schedule

A couple weeks ago I mentioned about the benefits of planning your blog post schedule. At that time I was thinking about the week ahead.

Yesterday I started a blog schedule for the month. Again, not set in stone, just a rough schedule.

In doing this I realized how I can actually make blogging easier for me and reading easier for you.

Instead of just planning my posts I am going to have a theme for each day of the week. So the post for that day will fit into the theme.

Here is my weekly blog theme.

Sunday - Weekly Recap - This is where I will recap the posts from the past week and make a few comments about the week ahead.

Monday - Pillar Post - On Monday I will post a large pillar post. This is a longer more researched post. For example see How Much Money Do You Make Blogging.

Tuesday - Blogging Tips - This one I have an abundance of topics that I am anxious to discuss.

Wednesday - How To Do ... - On Wednesday I will show you how to do something. The topic will vary but be blogging related based on your comments and questions.

Thursday - About Me - This will be something about me. For example I downloaded 2 new audio books from Audible, so I will discuss one of them this Thursday.

Friday - Question To Readers - On Friday I will ask a question to my readers.

Saturday - Project Updates - For project updates I will provide some info about what I am currently working on, test results from website or advertising changes and stuff like that.

Having a theme schedule and then planning a posting schedule should save me time and help keep this blog on topic.

Michael

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Project Balance Update as of August 1, 2007

July was a great month for the penny project. Current project balance is $140.15 as of August 1st.

The website I purchased in June is doing average. It is a user generated content site so I don't spend more then 10 minute a week managing it. Income is lower then I would like and I will probably not recover my cost until early 2008. I need to spend time testing other offers to see if they convert better, but have been too busy on my other projects.

The website I started from scratch is not doing so well. Again, my fault. I did very little promotion. The design isn't working well for advertising exposure so it will need a slight re-design too. This will probably wait until early 2008.

Advertising income was up $35 this month. Traffic is on the rise and I expect advertising income to continue to improve with the traffic increase.

For now I am not going to work on any Ebay auctions. I do have plans to sell digital products on Ebay, but August and part of September are already booked solid with projects.

With only 110 days left to reach my next goal I need to make $7.82 per day. I was going to take a break from the project between Thanksgiving and New Years, but if I don't make my goal by Thanksgiving then I will have to work. So my incentive to reach the goal is time off. If I do reach the goal I will need a few guest bloggers. Post a comment here if you are interested.

The plan for this month is to complete the Thirty Day Challenge, work on getting more traffic and start posting more frequently on my other blogs that are part of this project.

Michael

Make Money Project Status

The 2 spider code books I ordered arrived yesterday. This should help me improve what I already know. Hopefully I will be able to write some more efficient code. I have some big ideas planned.

I'm glad I switched my stats tracking over to FeedBurner. The interface is so easy to use. I find myself checking the search term stats a couple times a day. It is interesting to see the terms people use that find my site.

Last night I played a little poker and surfed the net. I was going to get ready for the 30 Day Challenge. Then I figured I should take some time off and relax. Tonight I have 2 meetings.

The second set of books from my Ebay auctions was paid for yesterday. I shipped them out this morning. It looks like I am about $2 in the negative after all the Ebay & PayPal fees. There are 4 more books listed. If two sell I will be very close to break even. For this project I am done buying stuff at auctions to sell on Ebay. I will stick to digital products instead.

Michael