Writing Efficiently

If you are serious about making money the internet, then you will need to do a lot of writing. If you want to make money blogging, then you will need to create a lot of content. A LOT of content. Decent and focused content will get your site noticed by search engines and earn the respect of your readers.

You will need an efficient program to generate all of that great content that is easy to use. Most people start out simple going to the online editor offered by their blogging program at blogger.com or within their wordpress program and type away. But are these editors the best ones to use? Are they efficient? For me, no they are not. So where do you turn? Write the article in MS word and cut and past it into the blog editor? Well this is not so good because MS word uses its own formatting and adds a lot of cruft to the HTML code. I generally avoid using MS Word.

There are a couple of offline word processors that offer good stability and allow you to cut and paste without messing up your written content.

The most well known and popular by far is Open Office. This program comes pretty close to doing everything that MS Word does. The best part is that it is free! Since Microsoft has tightened the availability of MS Word with Windows 7, Open Office is seen a jump in usage over the past year. It is available for download here.

Another lesser know free and open source program is known as Abiword. Abiword is much lighter than Open Office or MS Word. It can run on Windows or Linux. The feature that I like most about Abiword is that it will calculate your document statistics in real time. I do not like writing anymore words that I have to for some writing assignments, and once I hit that word limit, I cut the post or article off and wrap it up.

Google Docs offers another way to write your posts. Simple sign up for an account at Google.com and add it as a part of your Google applications. Google Docs is nice because you can access your documents from anywhere. I have found that it will add a little bit of HTML cruft when cutting and pasting.

So think about how you write your content, and how you can become a more efficient writer when it comes to creating content. Fell free to add any of your ideas as a comment. I would love to here them!

Make the Most of your Vacation

Christmas and New Year's vacation provide a great chance to create some content for your make money blogs and websites. Your real job takes a considerable amount of time, and time is a commodity you need most if you want to make money on the Internet.

Once vacation starts, you suddenly have tons of time on your hands. In addition, if you travel to new and exotic locations, you can dig up plenty of new ideas to help populate your site. Be sure to bring along a notebook, or small computer that will allow you to jot down a few ideas as you travel.

Interact with your fanbase

Social networking within your blog comments section is a big part of making money with blogs. If you write interesting content, and readers begin to actually believe some of what you say, then you will start to develop what I call a "blog fan base."

What is a "blog fan base?" Well, its return customers. People who subscribe to your newsfeeds, leave comments, leave you threatening e-mails, or praises, etc.

People may love what you say, or they may hate it. It really does not matter. If they are visiting your site, then they are making you money. The best way to make money online is to write about controversial topics, or take an adversarial role. People will be bound to leave comments. If you do find yourself getting comments, be sure to respond to them! You want to keep it going, because all it does it get you more hits.

Some the best money making websites out there are forums that deal with specific topics. If you get your blog to be a sounding board for topics, then you are in business.

The Magic 100 Post Threshold

I run a couple of blogs that are centered on specific content. These are all located on blogger.com, so I do not pay a penny for them, other than the time that I spend posting on them. Hence the name of this blog, penny blogging.

I chose a specific topic are that I am interested in, or interested in learning more about, and use the research that I use to create blog posts the gain more knowledge about the topic area.

Or, if you are fan of a particular celebrity, you can use that person as a platform to spout your views on his or her behavior in the limelight. I myself am not particularly fond of that method, since I do not wish to take advantage of other peoples fortunes or mis-fortune. But it one of the easiest ways to build traffic, especially if you watch google trends to develop your content.

If you want to increase your google page rank (If you are reading THIS blog, then YOU ARE!), it is important to use labels and link back to content that is located within your site to the targeted content. I do not practice this a whole lot here, but if you want to make money online, then you should put this into practice. See, I just did it!

There are also other ways, like getting links from high rated sights. Some MMO bloggers make you pay for the link backs from there higher rated sites to help boost your sites rankiongs. I will not waste my money paying for a link, but if someone were to make an offer, I certainly would take the money ;). On the whole, the whole link back method that MMO bloggers use is a pretty big pyramid scheme, on a grand scale, and on the Internet.

The best way to get page rank, is content. You need at least 100 good quality posts, that contains useful information. This takes time, but can easily be done of you sit down and jot a few notes centered around a specific topic. Then develop a list of titles for your topical posts and just write them down. Title 1, Title 2, Title 3, etc. Then create a series of articles of about 100 to 200 words each.

The great thing about most blogging software like wordpress and blogger.com is that you can write all your articles on a Saturday afternoon, and then schedule their release over the next week or two. This way it looks like you are an active blogger. Your blog newsfeed is kept up to date and your readers will keep coming back for more throughout the week.

Before you know it, you hit 100 posts. Once you hit that 100 post threshold, you will start to see your daily hit count go up!

Making Money Online

Well this 'ol blog is still kicking. I am going to resurrect it and give it a new name to expand it out to not only include penny blogging, but also mention some posts about making money online.

Get rich schemes do not work and it really is a waste of time to try to scam the system. I will see if there is anything that works with only time as an investment, and them post the results here.

I have several other blogs as well as an account at Associated Content. They pulled in a couple of hundred bucks in advertising revenue over the past year. There were times when I put a lot of effort in the sites. A few times I took a couple of months off. It is really hard to gauge if it was worth the effort.

Like Most Make Money Bloggers...

I guess I am like most make money bloggers... when the bucks don't roll in, you quit after a couple of months. It really is silly to think that there are actually people out there that make money writing crappy blog posts. Well, I have been pulling in about $2 or $3 dollars a month, even with this crappy blog, a website, and a few other blogs that I have paid absolutely zero attention to. The website has been totally on the back burner, but it still gets 30 or forty hits a day. The other blogs do as well.

So, I guess with a little bit of attention, you can pull in a few more bucks.

Cash report for February and up through Mid-March

Adsense cash flow was pretty steady for the month of February, with income at around $3.85. Not too bad, considering there has been zero marketing done with any of my blog sites, other than an occasional Entrecard plug. It is certainly not great either. For these sites, I have been relying solely on search engine hits. So far for the month of March, I am on track to make about the same amount as February's result.

Last month, I did devote considerable more time to writing for Associated Content. I made about $70 of of 20 or so articles. The cash return for Associated Content is not bad considering you do not have to spend any time at all marketing your site. The visitor's just come and you get paid.

Making Money Process is Slow

I have put off make money blogging this month and cut down the number of posts I have made this month to all of my make money blogging sites. It is not that I have given up. It just because I started looking at other ways to make a few bucks online. Most "make money bloggers" last about 2 months and then close up shop after they fail to pull in the big bucks.

I am not really looking to make big bucks, but have a much more realistic approach, looking to make some pennies. So far my income for February on my "penny-blogs" is about on the same track as it was back in January, despite cutting the number of posts drastically.

So what distracted me? Well, I started writing a few more articles for Associated Content, and have looked to them as a revenue source. AC is a content driven site that pays its users to post articles, videos, audio, and pictures. AC then takes your content and places their own advertising and pays you a part of their revenue stream.

For pre-paid articles, you can be paid up to $1 to $8 bucks, based on their keyword content and then get a continuing performance pay of $1.50 per 1000 page views. The key to success is to write content that is optimized for search engines, and will get high advertising income. So far I have made about $100 bucks by posting various articles.

AC is a quicker way to make money then penny blogging, and I will keep at it and keep you posted.

January Numbers

I took a short break from blogging. To be honest, I have not stopped searching for ways to make money blogging, just trying a few different things. One was through trying Associated Content. This sort of a pay for blogging site that concentrates a little more on the news side of things. I'll have more on that in a later post.

I have been a little discouraged by the numbers (aka Money!) coming in via Adsense. I know it has only been a few months, and I always talk about persevering and setting goals, but it has been tough to keep motivated.

I guess I am at the point where all make money bloggers reach, and quit! However, I do not plan on quitting just yet. I made numerous posts through the first half of January to my various blog sites. However, my numbers consider to decline in terms of money with Google Adsense.

My hits have also declined a bit as well. Not sure why this may be happening, but I will get back in track and keep at it.

By the way, here is the money I made for January: $3.62

Down a bit from the $4.00 I made in December. I made tons more money on Associated Content. More on that later.

Return Traffic

Traffic is the most important aspect for any blog that you wish to monetize. A blog is basically a searchable database that is indexed by Google or Yahoo, and your goal is to populate that database with as much juicy information as you possible can. You want your content to rank higher than others so it is important to center your "data" around a few popular terms that will get noticed. There are certain techniques that you can use to get your rankings higher, that may be covered in a later post.

There is another aspect to getting traffic that cannot be ignored. That is the idea of return traffic. To get return traffic, then your "data" must be presented in a coherent form that the reader will understand. If you sprinkle in the right kind of humor into your post, then they just may bookmark your site, subscribe to your feed, or subscribe to an email from your site. This is probably the toughest part for theblog publisher. The writing part takes a lot of practice.

Also, do not be bashful about asking people to subscribe to your feed, or email updates! So here goes, if you like what you read here, go ahead and sign up for my feed here, or subscribe for automatic email updates! Thanks.

Penny Blogging and Google Page Rank

The BlogSphere has been abuzz about the recent Google Page Rank update. The Google Page Rank occurs several times a year, usually about every quarter. Your Google Page Ranks affects how your blog pages appear in search result and generally runs on a scale from 1 to 10. There are several websites where you can go and check your results.

After the recent update I went out and check several of my blogs. Most are too young to even appear in the results. They came up as N/A, including this penny-blogging site. I do have a couple of blogs that are a little older, and did not notice any change in their numeric value.

One of my more established blogs (well not really established) has a rank of 1 and its value remained unchanged. However, even though the value has not changed, I have noticed that the number of searches that I get from Google on this site has dropped precipitously. This is not a good omen. I still am getting pretty good traffic on this site due to RSS feed readership.

Not sure if blogs in general have just got an overall downgrade in rank from Google perspective, and I would be interested in any comments. Therefore, there is a little poll for you on the sidebar.

Waiting for Blogs to "Mature"

For new blogs, you are going to see a limited income. In other words, you are probably not going to make squat the first couple of months. You need to build links, posts, and traffic .

Most affiliate services will turn your blog applications down since you lack Google page rank, and have a limited presence on the web. I have set up a bunch of different blogs that are focusing on certain keywords, and I am going to try to make a little money. So far, I have one pretty well established blog, and the others are slowly coming along. Some have made more progress than others. Since they focus on a variety of different topics, I have only found certain time that I have been interested in posting to them.

Waiting for sites to mature can be a long agonizing process, because you are not seeing any fruits of your labor. This is why it is important to stay focused and remain positive. Another key is to remember your goal, and keep posting.

In addition, the time will come to start to market your site. So far, I have done very little, other than adding the sites to Entrcard.

Short Breaks from Making Money

Trying to make money from blogging or online marketing is tough.  Sometimes a short break is needed to re-group your thoughts and get back on track.  The important thing is to not let that short break put a crimp in your money making plans.  You let things slide, and then eventually completely forget about what it is you want to accomplish.

This is why it is so important to write down your goals.  Then place them in a prominent place to remind you to get back on track.  

I took a week off, not because I was tired.  It was because I got busy with my real job.  This too, can put a crimp in your money making plans.  But remember, your real job is your real source of income.  Blogging, and making money online are fun hobbies, that really should take a back seat. Unless you find that you have hit a home run with your site!  But face it, you will likely not get rich with something like a make money blog or a blog farm.  That is reserved for the select few, that I doubt even make a third of what they state they do. 

When you take a break, your readership will drop off fast.  In addition, the daily hits will drop fast, especially if you are relying on current events to drive the traffic to you blog.  It is an endless cycles, that may seem hopeless at first, but if you keep at it, you will succeed. 

Make Money Learning a New Skill

You can make money online and learn a new skill online! It is very easy, simply start a blog about the topic area that you are interested in learning about. Your blog can be your self-help guide, and reference database when you need to look up information. And you know something? It will also become a reference database for others as they as the perform searches on the Internet! So why not place ads on your database, err blog, as people come to look for information.

For example, I am interested in learning how to program in Java, which is a very common computer language that is used for programming software applications to run on your computer. I know a little about Java from reading books that I borrowed from the library. I even know a little about how to write simple programs with Java. But, I want to take that idea, to learn more Java programming, set a goal, and then accomplish the goal. In order to reach that goal, I am going to start small, by learning about a specific part of Java programming: Graphical User Interfaces.

I am interested in learning how to write programs that use Graphical User Interfaces. This is known as GUI programming. Sounds complicated right? It really is not. A GUI is simply a application, like for Internet Explorer or Firefox browser, of say, something like the Google Earth program.

The applications that I would like to create are not quite as complicated as those programs, just simple programs with menus, buttons, and checkboxes. I probably will not create anything specific to start, I just want to get the basics down.

I could spend a ton of money taking a class at a local college, or I can even do it for free by reading some books at the library. But, time is money, and every minute spent doing something is money spent, if you are not making money. So, I decided that I wanted to make money learning Java GUI programming. I am going to set up a very specific blog centered around this very topic!

This blog will contain everything I learn from reading and testing. It is going to be very specific as well. That way, it will key in on certain search words naturally. The adds will go up and then other users will find the very same information as they search for it on the Internet.

Becoming a Consistent Money Maker

If you want to make money blogging, the fist core skill you will need to develop is writing. You do not have to be a good writer, just a consistent one. Ideas need to flow from your head and right into your post. It is kind of like spontaneous writing, although you will need to go back, do a little proofreading and fact checking. I think some spelling errors are OK though, more on that later.

The only way to develop this skill is to practice at it. The best way to practice your writing is to get on one of your blogs and start posting. Sounds easy right? Usually, it is not, because you want your post to have something to do with the topic area that your blog is centered around. You need to put a little though in your key search terms. Remember the search terms that you want to key in on and make a few links to previous posts or topics that are covered those terms.

I have a lot of blogs. On certain days, I came across something that hits one of my subject areas that I am interested and BAM! A post is born. Not every blog gets a post every day. I do try to hit them once or twice a week. A variety of blogs, helps keep your extemporaneous writing juices flowing.

I have a bunch of blogs, that cover a wide variety of topics that I have a little bit of knowledge in. These center around hobbies, or sports teams, and other things that I am interested in learning more about. Usually, I need to perform a little bit of research to fill in a little factoid, etc. because I want to get it right. Nothing turns away a reader faster than inaccuracies. I may not get it right all of the time, but I make an honest effort.

But, as I said before, an occasional spelling error is OK, I have gotten quite a number of hits on posts that I have that rank high for mis-spelled words. For example, in one blog entry I mis-spelled Plaxico as Plaxco, and got a tone of hits for Googlers looking for Plaxco. By the way, Plaxico Burress is a member of the New York Giants who recently made some headlines in the United States.

Anyway, to bottom line is you need to be consistent in your approach. Write something every single day and post it somewhere. If you do not have a place to post it, then simply start a new blog covering that subject area!

Other ways to Make Money Online

Starting a blog online with blogspot, and serving up your readers with ads can be one way to make money online. There are other Internet sites that take care of a lot of the middle work that is involved with setting up adds, worrying about SEO, and getting readers to see your articles.

For example, Associated Content takes care of a lot of this legwork for you. All you do is submit your article, and they take care of advertising your post to the search engines. They also place the advertisements on your post. You can write about anything under the sun. Their payout scheme is a little complicated through as there are several ways to accept payment. In general, they will pay between $1 and $15 per individual 400 or more word article, plus you get $1.50 per 1000 page views. I have just about 20 articles written and posted on AC, and pull in a couple of bucks per month. I made about $75 writing the articles, and accepting their initial payout offer.

This may seem small, but on average with my blog farm sites, I have been getting about $2 per 1000 views. It probably could be improved with more posts, and with a little work that is what I plan on doing. If you are not a dedicated blogger, and not willing to do the footwork to market your site, then Associated Content may be the way to go.

One Honest Money Making Blogger

There are a lot of money making bloggers out there that make up numbers to show how rich they are becoming by blogging. The truth is that most of them are full of it, and the ones that do actually get big incomes, spend nearly as much promoting there site, or paying others to promote their site.

This is going to be a no BS money making blog. I will not make stuff up, and you will get the straight and honest numbers. There will be some experimentation involved, and I will tell you what is working for me, and what is not. I have little experience at this, other than what I have read and learned from others.

My main technique for making money on the Internet will be through blog farming. I will create a bunch of blogs centered on several keywords, to increase their Google page rank, and hopefully derive revenue through the search engines. I will spend no money hosting sites, and will do it all through free blog services like blogger, and its derivatives.

At a few of these sites, most likely maybe only this money making blog, I will do a little more promotion and possibly paid review and postings. I have not decided yet if I should do this for this money making blog. If things are going badly, or possibly as a little experiment, I will take this aspect on.

I will spend just a dollars per month using Project Wonderful, but that is it. Only what I make through Project Wonderful will be eligible for being spent on advertising. To give you an idea of the numbers so far, I make about $0.10 a day from Project Wonderful. Thus,I will spend about $0.10 a day. Yep, that is just 10 stinking pennies. I will be adding a few more blogs to my Project Wonderful account in the near future, so I expect those numbers to come up.

All other revenue will come through the Google Adsense program, unless something bad happens and I am banned. This has happened to some in the past. So far this of month of December, I have made a few dollars of income. It is up considerable from what I made last month. Each month I am going to try to improve my income. I will officially start posting income reports beginning near the beginning of each month. Since there really was not anything for November, I wont bother. It was a little over $5 if you really want to know.

There are many different methods one could use to attract web traffic and keep them coming back. I am not worried so much about drawing an avid readership on any of my blogs, but if you keep coming back then THANKS!

I have a core group of about 10 blogs set up, some are more mature than others, and the stragglers will catch up soon. Just got to keep posting and plugging away.

Make Money Online with Family Commitments

Trying to make a buck online is not easy. It takes a lot of time and commitment if you want to succeed. The best way to succeed is to write your goals. But just writing goals is just the start. To succeed you have to put in time, and this is where the trouble starts.

If you are married, and have kids, then making money online can be a real detriment to your family life. But if you use a little smart time management you can make it work. Time management and using your time wisely once you have it managed correctly.

For example, you can say to yourself, I am going to wake up every morning at 6 AM to work on my blog for an hour while every one else is asleeep. You get up the next morning to work thinking you've got your time managed, and then spend the next hour surfing the web looking for ideas, and end up with nothing to show after an hour. This is not using the time that you have managed wisely.

I have found that ideas come to me at all hours of the day. I now carry around a little notebook, and if something pops into my head that I can use in one of my blogs, I jot it down. It can be anything, and sometimes that idea grows.

Go out and get yourself a little pocket notebook and a mechanical pencil. Not a pen, because you can not erase, and not a regular pencil because they always need to be sharpened. Make sure it is a mechanical pencil with 0.7 MM lead. 0.5 MM breaks too easy.

Once you start writing some stuff down in you notebook, when you sit down to actually write, you will have a bunch of ideas to draw from. You will look like a nerd walking around with a notebook all day, but who cares, you are making money!

Set Goals to Make Money Blogging

When you start something new, you want to have a feeling of accomplishment. The best way to do this is to set a goal for yourself. The best way to do this is simple: Write the goal down. It may sound complicated but it really is simple. Come up with and idea, think of how that idea can be brought to life, and then right down what you want to accomplish.

The idea for this little venture had very simple beginnings. I recalled all all those depression era articles that I read that explained how people work a little on the side to make money. I knew that I was not going to sell eggs or take in boarders, or paint houses on as an extra business. I needed to do something that did not take a whole lot of time, was fairly easy, and most importantly: ACHIEVABLE.

When you achieve at something you gain confidence. You also get motivated to take it to the next level to accomplish more.

The number one way to put you idea in motion is to write it down, and then write down the goal on a piece of paper and post it something that you will see every single day. This can be something that is just a sentence or two long. But it should be visible to you every single day.

For my make money online venture, I have a simple idea: Use blogging to make a little extra cash with multiple blogs, centered around keywords.

The goal is simple: Make $1 a day on these blogs.

Next you need to take your idea and goal and WRITE IT DOWN. Put it on a sticky pad next to your mirror in your bathroom. You will see it every day and you will be reminded that you need to do something that is important that day! Achieve your goal! Writing it down almost guarantees success. If you do not write it down you will forget about it in a week, and never achieve that goal.

This may not seem like a lot of money, actually it is a pittance and will make no difference in my income, as I already have a high paying job. But it is something that is achievable. Once I reach that goal, I can move on to the next level, say $5 a day, then $10 a day, etc. There is nothing wrong with updating your goal. Just make sure it is expanding, not contracting.

I already am about halfway to my goal. Through Adsense I am pulling in about $0.50 a day in visits and clickthroughs. This is just with a few blogs and posts, using Entrcard and BlogCatalog to promote. Soon, I will be ready to move on to the next level.

First You Need A Couple of Ideas to Center Blogs Around

My strategy for making money here on blogger is to create a "blog farm" with blogs that are centered around ideas and interests that I have. I already started doing this and have a couple of blogs that are already starting to earn a small readership. On gets close to a hundred hits a day, and still has less than 100 posts. There are others that I have have just started and still have under 2o posts, but I see that they are starting to get searches from the search engines.

This "make money blog" is also a member of this blog farm. Here are some of the ideas that I have centered, or will center some of my other blogs around: meteor showers, linux, weather, astronomy, current events (strange news), and people behaving badly. I also decided to write about some of my favorite sports teams, so will derive a couple of blogs from those ideas.

I think that I by multiplying the number of blogs I have, and monetizing them all will help enhance my income potentional.