How I Started Making $3,000 a Month Blogging About Travel

Filed Under: Blogging for Dollars 47 Comments Tweet

This guest post is by Marcello Arrambide of wanderingtrader.com.

It has been about one full year since I started blogging about travel, and I have started to generate $3,000 or more a month via my travel blogs.

My very first post was published on May, 4th, 2010, and it was nothing but grammar mistakes and partaking in an activity that I really don’t enjoy: writing. I’m telling you this because even though I am a horrible writer, English os not my first language, and I need other people to proofread my work, I’m proof that you really don’t have to be the best at something in order to do make money via your blog. I have started to make at least $3,000 a month via my main travel blog, wanderingtrader.com.

Initially, I started my blog to capture traffic for a day trading business that I was running. I wanted to get more people interested in day trading and, well, get more sales. What it turned into was my own personal travel blog about my passion for travel, and tips about day trading and travel. My whole blogging strategy is based on exposure; you might have read my post about focusing on quantity of traffic instead of quality when you first start out.

There are a million posts on ProBlogger about making money blogging online and frankly almost everyone online makes money the same way. It seems there aren’t very many new ways that bloggers can make money from blogs. Darren wrote a great post on how bloggers make money from blogs if you are interested in learning your different options.

Instead of talking about ways to make money blogging I’m going to share how I managed to start making $3,000 a month via my travel blog in less than a year. I consider it ten months, really, since I took two months off when I got extremely frustrated by a small change in my blog design that crippled the traffic to my main blog. The list below is what I started focusing on, in order of importance.

Exposure

There are some instances where you find advertisers, but for the most part advertisers find you.

Once you have the right criteria you are eligible for a range of money making options with your blog. The most important thing is getting your name out there. You want to try to focus on guest posts, SEO, and getting on every single blog list that’s related to your niche. The more people who see your blog, the more likely it’ll be that advertisers will find you as well. Below are some examples of the travel-related lists that my blogs are listed on on.

Top 50 Influencers in TravelTop 10 Most Influential Travel BloggersTop 100 Independent Travel SitesTop 100 Travel SitesCreating authority

By working on exposure, authority will come naturally. You want to be careful how quickly you build your authority online, because you can’t become an expert in your niche if you only launched your website yesterday.

Creating solid authority for yourself, and advertisers will know that you have a website that is both legitimate and powerful in the niche you’re covering. If you achieve enough exposure, and have good authority, then you may be considered for things like a press trip. That’s a bonus that might be restricted to the travel niche, but you get the idea.

How we measure authority is something of a debatable issue, since most of the lists on the web have some kind of limitation. Either way, when I have asked people specifically about this they have repeatedly given me the same information:

Compete: The lower your blog’s Compete rank, the better.Alexa: You want an Alexa score under 100,000.Google PageRank: Getting above a PR 3 is good.Opensiteexplorer: This service gauges your domain authoritySticking with it

As I explained earlier, there was a time when I got extremely frustrated and just gave up. A redesign to my blog caused me to take a giant hit from Google, and I was extremely annoyed. I just gave up!

If I didn’t take that two- or three-month break, I might have been on my way to making double what I make now. The tactics I’ve outlined so far helped me in the very first month that I started to make money with the blog. I’ve now nearly doubled my income using the strategies I’ll share below.

Getting in with the Rat Pack

When you get started blogging, you have to understand that you are the new kid on the block. There are people I know personally who have been blogging for five to ten years, and I call these people the Rat Pack. They’re the cool kids on the block that you want to get to know and work with.

How did you feel when you met that new kid in your class back in school? The way for them to succeed was to avoid being pushy or asking for too much. They had to be part of the community.

I made the new-kid mistake of approaching people the wrong way, and asking for things I shouldn’t have. Luckily I had a few bloggers point me in the right direction, and that allowed me to get to where I am today. Be engaging, but not demanding. Be interested, but not needy. It’s all about being part of the community and not trying to force your way into the cool kids’ group.

By interacting with the Rat Pack, you’ll open yourself to an extensive group of people who already know how things work and can share best practices. Since these people already have exposure, that may allow you to take a shortcut when you are ready to start making money with your blog. By talking to other bloggers in the field, I went from zero advertisers to having a list of over 60. Use the tools above for exposure and authority to find the Rat Pack in your niche.

Outsourcing what you can

I’m busy, the guy at Mcdonald’s is busy, your kids are busy. I get it, you’re busy. When I first started blogging I was running a day trading business, traveling around the world, day trading, and running my blog. How did I handle all of this? I hired help. I found what now is a team of employees overseas that I pay to do a lot of the admin and back-office work for me.

The old adage is really true: it takes money to make money. While you may not have hundreds or thousands of dollars to invest in getting someone to help you, you may be able to afford, say, $100 a month. Understand that your time is money. By outsourcing mundane tasks

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How Tumblr Helped Put My Site on Top

Filed Under: Blog Promotion, Search Engine Optimization 32 Comments Tweet

This guest post is by Ryan Shell of Fashables.

I won’t even begin to act like I’m some sort of SEO ninja, because I’m not. What I do know is that a particular post on one of my sites has ranked in the top three spots on Google, with a majority of that time spent at number one and outranking a major clothing brand.

Tumblr played a huge part in making that happen, and I’d like to share my almost accidental findings.

The backstory

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3 Ways to Reduce Bounce Rates and Increase Conversions

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Blog Tips 37 Comments Tweet

This guest post is by Gregory Ciotti of sparringmind.com.

One of the many tough obstacles that newer bloggers have to deal with is the fact that many of their visitors, which they work very hard to get, will often “bounce” away from their pages

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Run an Awesome Blog Contest in 5 Steps

Filed Under: Blog Promotion, Blogging Tools and Services 23 Comments Tweet

This guest post is by Kiera Pedley of Binkd.

Running a contest on your blog can be a great way to generate new readership, reactivate stagnant subscribers, and increase the engagement of your readers.

Competitions can be a lot of hard work for little or no results, unless you run them to a plan and have a clear objective in mind.

Here are five tips for running an awesome blog contest campaign.

1. Set a clear objective

As bloggers we love readers, we love engagement, we love community

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Why Bloggers Should Pay Attention to the New Affiliate Tax Laws

Filed Under: Blogging for Dollars 18 Comments Tweet

This guest post is by Yasmine Mustafa of 123LinkIt.com.

The Business Insider recently reported that ten thousand affiliates were recently dropped from Amazon’s Affiliate Program with little warning.

How much income would you lose if you were no longer permitted to use the program?

This is an issue that bloggers in California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Connecticut are currently facing. They were instantly cut from Amazon’s affiliate program due to a new affiliate tax law.

Update: Amazon dropped the ballot fight last week and cut a deal with California on the collection of sales tax. According to CNN Money, they have not stated whether or not they will reinstate their CA affiliates.

How did it happen? What can you do to avoid this law from passing in your state?

All about the affiliate tax law

Online retailers such as Amazon that do not have a physical presence are not required to collect sales tax like brick-and-mortar businesses. Big companies like Wal-Mart who are taxed see this as an unfair advantage and are paying lobbyists to push what is now called the

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Bushido for Bloggers: What Samurais and Bloggers Have in Common

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Blog Tips 39 Comments Tweet

This guest post is by Aman Basanti of ageofmarketing.com.

Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s Hagakure is the most famous text on bushido, the warrior code of the samuari. Written in an era when Japan was obsessed with warfare and martial prowess, the book offers instruction on how a samurai should live and die.

The most famous and misunderstood line in Japanese history

The most famous line in Hagakure is,

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Make an App to Engage Your Blog’s Readers

Make an App to Engage Your Blog’s ReadersProBlogger Blog Tips

Make Money Blogging

HomeBlogForumWorkbooksBookJobsMake MoneyArchivesWritten on 9/22/2011 at 12:03 am by Guest Blogger Make an App to Engage Your Blog’s ReadersFiled Under: Blogging Tools and Services 13 Comments Tweet

This guest post is by Leah Goodman of AppsGeyser.

A few months ago, when I started working for AppsGeyser, a friend asked me if I could turn her blog into an app, to which I responded, “Yes.” Then she asked me the more important question: why would she want to do that?

There are loads of reasons. Here are just a few ways you can use an app to bring new readers to your blog and give more value to your current readers.

Raise the level of engagement

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There Are 3 Thing’s Wrong With This Head Line

Filed Under: Writing Content 42 Comments Tweet

This guest post is by Greg McFarlane of Control Your Cash

As a blogger, you expect your readers to give you their valuable time that they could be spending elsewhere. If you’re going to ask that much of them, don’t they deserve your best effort in return?

When your posts are loaded with spelling and grammar mistakes, you’re telling your readers one or both of two things:

I can’t be bothered to learn the language I’ve chosen to communicate in.My content is so vital and compelling that its form is unimportant.

Democratization has its advantages, and alas, its drawbacks. 572 years ago, Johann Gutenberg was the only person on Earth who could have his words disseminated en masse. (And even he was but the messenger, merely spreading others’ divinely inspired works.) Today, anyone with a Return key and an opinion can search for an audience. Does that mean that you deserve one?

Look at the most popular blogs, the ones with critical acclaim, and/or a large readership. Technorati lists The Huffington Post, Hot Air, several members of the Gawker family, Mashable and TechCrunch among its top 20. Even the inane TMZ is on the list. Regardless of how you feel about left-wing politics, right-wing politics, general snarkiness, social media news, technology or the lives of celebrities, all the blogs on the list have something in common that also-ran blogs don’t.

Proper, comprehensible English, delivered in sentences that you don’t have to reread to make sense of. In 2011, with so much of the world’s knowledge available to any of us, it’s astounding that there exist bloggers who’ve advanced past adolescence yet still don’t know that plurals don’t take apostrophes.

When I decry this (I’m the kind of person who thinks that Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson deserve their own Nobel Prize category), I’m often met with the standard responses. These fall into three categories:

I didn’t have time.Who cares?(No response at all.)

In other words, correct English isn’t that important. My one-word response to that is: garbage.

Unlike most topics of debate, there’s no room for difference of opinion on this one. People on the other side of this issue are like those who defend flat earth theory or who argue that thiomersal causes autism. There’s no reasoning with them. To disagree here is to say that sloppiness and ignorance are of no consequence. That insulting your readers is fine. That the rules of discourse don’t apply to you.

If your defence is that you’re not some fancy-pants academic who obsesses over a set of archaic rules about how to communicate, maybe you should find something to do that doesn’t involve words.

One irony is that non-native English speakers are behind some of the most grammatically sound (and thus most readable) blogs out there. Take Aloysa of Aloysa’s Kitchen Sink. If you didn’t know any better, you’d swear she’d been writing in and speaking English her whole life. English is her third language, after Lithuanian and Russian. I’d cite examples of the opposite, native English speakers who each write like a cat walking on a keyboard, but they’re easy to find. Besides, I made enough enemies with my last ProBlogger post.

My site, Control Your Cash, hosts the weekly Carnival of Wealth. It’s a blog carnival in which I showcase what are ostensibly the best and most thought-provoking personal finance articles of the prior seven days. I need about 30 entrants for the carnival to be of a decent length. If I limited entry to those who spell and punctuate correctly, even if they had nothing interesting to say about their subject of choice, I’d be lucky to run three posts a week. The carnival would be less of a carnival and more of a quiet evening playing chess at the library.

I’m not talking about being able to articulate the difference between the pluperfect progressive tense and the ablative case. I’m talking about, at a minimum, activating and using the spelling and grammar features that come with MS Word, or Apple Pages, or whichever word processor you create your magic with. If you don’t know that you need to do this, then you almost certainly do. No thought is so profound that it can’t benefit from the right presentation. If you can think it and type it out, then you can spend a few minutes making it readable before you decide to unleash it on the universe.

This isn’t about you. It almost never is. It’s about your customers, i.e. your readers. They’re literate enough to have navigated their way to your site, and deserve to be written to in a clear, syntactically correct manner. Otherwise, why should they care about what you have to say?

Greg McFarlane is an advertising copywriter who lives in Las Vegas. He recently wrote Control Your Cash: Making Money Make Sense, a financial primer for people in their 20s and 30s who know nothing about money. You can buy the book here (physical) or here (Kindle) and reach Greg at greg

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Behind the Scenes: How a ProBlogger Product Sales Page is Made

author of The Blogger’s Guide to Online Marketing, and a professional online marketer who’s sharing his tips undercover here at ProBlogger. Curious? So are we!

I tweeted a couple of days ago how wonderfully evolutionary sales page copy can be as it passes between the different people who are working on it. At the time, I likened it to Chinese whispers with a happy ending.

It’s a tweet that culminated from the copywriting process for Darren’s brand new book on DPS, Click! How to take Gorgeous Photos of your Kids. The book’s sales page presented some interesting challenges for me and reminded me of some important lessons that I thought would be good to share with you all.

The process

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50% Discount Ends in 36 Hours on the Blogger’s Guide to Online Marketing Kit

50% Discount Ends in 36 Hours on the Blogger’s Guide to Online Marketing KitProBlogger Blog Tips

Make Money Blogging

HomeBlogForumWorkbooksBookJobsMake MoneyArchivesWritten on 9/23/2011 at 3:01 am by Darren Rowse 50% Discount Ends in 36 Hours on the Blogger’s Guide to Online Marketing KitFiled Under: ProBlogger Site News 5 Comments Tweet

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7-point Checklist For Bloggers Who Want to Create a Profitable Blog

Filed Under: General 42 Comments Tweet

This guest post is by Peter G. James Sinclair of Motivational Memo.

Before I aggressively started to build my Motivational Memo blog at the beginning of this year I had already owned a web design company for over seven years.

During that time I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly in web design, and now that I have entered the blogging industry I continue to see the same mistakes being made by many bloggers.

So use this quick checklist to analyze your own blog.

1. How well is your blog structured?Have you clearly identified your audience?What’s in it for the client when they come to your blog?Do you have a call to action?Is your blog outstanding? What do you do differently from others?Do you sell the right things

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Seth Godin on Blogging and Productivity

Filed Under: Pro Blogger Interviews 24 Comments Tweet

With the launch this week of Seth Godin’s latest book, We Are All Weird, we wanted to share this interview we recently conducted with Seth on productivity and blogging.

Seth’s among the world’s most prolific bloggers, but he’s also a profuse book author and serial entrepreneur.

How does he fit it all in?

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The Science of Blogging

A blog is defined as follows:

A blog is a type of website that is usually arranged in chronological order from the most recent “post” (or entry) at the top of the main page to the older entries towards the bottom.

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How to Get More Eyeballs on Your Affiliate Links

Filed Under: Blogging for Dollars, Writing Content 9 Comments Tweet

This guest post is by Peter Lawlor.

The more articles I publish on my niche websites, the more knowledgeable I become about keywords, and more importantly, the search habits of my target audience.

During the early days of my affiliate marketing business, I would write a post promoting a particular product or service as an affiliate and move on. That was a big mistake, but one that is easily solved.

My “Aha” moment as an affiliate marketer

As I dug deeper into my niches, I realized that people use different search phrases and terms when looking for the same solution.

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How the Power of One Can Take Your Blog to Many

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Blog Tips 23 Comments Tweet

This guest post is by Barb Sawyers of Sticky Communication.

Changing the world, one person at a time. I first heard this expression back in the eighties as the tagline for Apple Computers. Since then, it’s been borrowed my thousands of causes and brands. It’s that good.

But still, people are appealing to market segments, stakeholders and other big-box groups. Bloggers are often advised to know their niches. Though smaller, a niche is still an impersonal group.

Flip your model

If you’re not getting the results you deserve, try flipping your relationship model from many to one. After all, that’s how you make friends.

This individual should be the person you most want to connect with. Not your happy fans, customers or followers, nor the people whose minds are firmly shut to you. Pick the people who are sitting on the fence, just waiting for a gentle push to your side.

Just one

Actually, I should say person, not people, because I want you to think about one person who represents those fence sitters. Maybe this person resembles someone you know fairly well, from personal experience, market research or whatever. Probably you to have to use some imagination to fill in the gaps.

Now ask yourself: What gets this person up in the morning? What keeps him awake at night? Answer those two questions and you can tap into these deep passions and fears that nudge the fence sitter to your side.

For example

Let me use a cause blogger as an example. You blog because you are passionate about helping starving children. That gets you up in the morning. But you wake up in the middle of the night worried that you aren’t conveying the passion or knowledge that will persuade people to donate.

Normally you write for your niche, well-educated, well-off people in urban centres and a list of other stakeholders. Today talk to one person who you have invented, based partly on the woman you enjoyed chatting to at a recent event.

You know that this person, Mary let’s call her, is genuinely concerned about a lot of causes. She enjoys working as a family lawyer, but she loves doing what’s right for her clients’ children. She loses sleep when these kids get caught in tough situations and because her grown children no longer need her. Now write for Mary.

You will not only connect with Mary, but you will attract people like Mary. Your tribe will grow.

Let’s take another example, the blogger selling search engine optimization services. Make me your fence sitter.

I get up every morning excited about what I’m going to blog about, how to connect with more people through writing. But I

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7 Powerful Reasons Why Companies Will Pay for You to Blog

Filed Under: Blogging for Dollars 36 Comments Tweet

This guest post is by Lina Nguyen of Words That Influence.

Influential bloggers are being paid top dollar to write sponsored posts (thousands of dollars per post is not unheard of). They’re gifted with luxury items, cars and overseas trips, and invited to events previously exclusive to A-List celebrities and long-established journalists.

Bloggers worldwide are proving to be fierce competition for mainstream media, as companies decide how to get the best return on investment for their marketing buck.

If you have the following seven things, then your blog and social media networks will be highly valuable digital assets, sought after by major companies.

Even if you don’t quite have the same reach and clout as some of these bloggers, you can still apply these principles to negotiate your own deals with smaller businesses in your niche.

ProBlogger Training Day event speakers Craig Makepeace and Caz Makepeace are travel bloggers who landed a corporate sponsorship deal with a major airline, to cover a high profile international sporting event. At the end of this post, we’ll see these seven points in action, as we take a look at their success in attracting sponsorship from a major brand.

1. Your audience is a profitable niche market

The people in a profitable niche for major companies tend to be decision makers, consumers or influencers in the buying process, for either highly priced items (like cars, technology, travel or finance), or highly consumed items (like food, health products, household goods).

How do you know if your niche is profitable? Just take a look around in mainstream media. If companies are already paying big bucks to advertise to your audience on TV, radio, magazines and newspapers, then you’re in a profitable niche.

2. You’ve built a community

If you’ve created a group of people who gather on your blog and social media networks, then what you’ve created has the potential to be extremely financially valuable.

Companies always want to know where their target market is hanging out and get in front of them. Trouble is, as outsiders, whose primary motivation is to sell, they’re not exactly welcomed.

That’s why they’re willing to pay to get access to your tightly formed online community, which has its very own culture, rules and etiquette. Your intimate knowledge of how your community thinks and behaves has a valuable price tag on it.

3. You have reach

Being in a commercially attractive niche and having impressive reach in numbers (in terms of blog traffic, subscribers and social media followers) makes your community really valuable. A big corporate client will be after the exposure you can give them.

What kind of numbers are valuable? That all depends.

Essentially, it comes down to the demand to reach your niche, how targeted your audience is and what other advertising avenues are available to the company to reach that specific audience.

The more profitable the niche, and the harder those communities are to access, the more money a company will be willing to pay you to get in front of them.

4. Your community is highly engaged

This is what makes a blogger much more appealing to companies for advertising potential than say, television, print media, billboards and flyers.

Bloggers engage with their audience, who eagerly share their thoughts and feelings. In addition, they actively give bloggers permission to communicate with them, by following or subscribing.

Engaged communities also show clear signs of activity, through comments, posts and tweets. This is valuable in the eyes of a potential marketer, because an active community gives the company a way to evaluate and measure a campaign’s success.

An indicator of a successful marketing campaign is one where the target market responds to it, hopefully positively (although a highly engaged negative response can also be seen as successful, depending on the company’s objectives).

5. You have influence

A blogger with a highly engaged and active community is more likely to have influence, which is what’s really going to make a company take notice.

A company will pay for your ability to help get the word out, your referral or your endorsement.

If you can do all three, to an audience who will listen to you and believe you, then you are in a very strong negotiating position to command a price.

A bigger company with a large marketing budget is most likely interested in building brand awareness, exposure and chipping away at a longer-term objective to improve market perception.

The good news for a blogger is that they’re unlikely to expect a huge spike in sales from working on a one-off campaign with you. This eases the pressure off you, relieving expectation that you’ll influence your readers to rush out and buy the product.

Having said that, if you do have the clout to change attitudes, beliefs and market perception about a particular product or service

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What Aspiring Actors Can Teach You About Blogging

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Blog Tips 9 Comments Tweet

This guest post is by Tom Ewer of Leaving Work Behind.

If you were an aspiring actor, and you spotted a famous movie star on the street, would you run up to them and ask them for help? You might, but I’m willing to bet that 99 times out of 100, you would get nowhere. In fact, those odds are probably very generous.

I am willing to bet that those odds would improve if you were to approach them, briefly introduce yourself, compliment them on their work, and ask if it would be okay to write to their agent with a few questions that they might consider answering if they get time.

When you’re dealing with people above your station, the hard sell is almost always a failure. If you were to deal with your fellow bloggers in the spirit of the more polite and unobtrusive aspiring actor, you would establish some highly valuable relationships.

Embrace your “competition”

As Darren explained, it’s wise to embrace the competition. It doesn’t matter what niche you are in

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How to Increase Conversions With Google Website Optimizer

Filed Under: Blog Promotion, Blogging Tools and Services 14 Comments Tweet

This guest post is by Joe Burnett of Who’s Your Blogger?

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6 Tips to Help You Survive Your First 3 Months of Pro Blogging

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Blog Tips Leave a Comment Tweet

This guest post is by Glee of Creative Fashion.

I was a high-school Maths teacher for eight years and for all those years, my life evolved in writing lesson plans, producing teaching materials and worksheets, dealing with parents, teaching some well-behaved and some rude students, and pleasing demanding bosses. When an opportunity came for me to finally be a full-time blogger, which allows me to be my own boss and set my own schedule and calendar, it was a dream come true.

Yet, as it turn out, building a website and establishing myself as an authority isn

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Blogging for Bucks

Blogging with Your Style, Put more Effort :)

Freelance writing is a great way to pursue your passions and make a few extra bucks on the side. Whether you’re looking to get into freelance writing for the first time or you want to expand your current freelance assignments with more work and greater exposure, there are several important things to remember when you’re trying to find work writing online.
First: Choose your subject, and I can tell you from experience that it’s best if you write about something you really care about. Yes, you’re writing to make some money, but you won’t be able to devote your full energy to the business side of things unless you’re committed to the creative side. It doesn’t matter what it is, so long as it’s a subject you enjoy. Knitting? Cooking? Movies? Finance? Technology? Think about what motivates you, what interests you, and what you find yourself reading about online, and then use that to narrow your search until you’ve come up with a topic.
Once you’ve decided which area you want to focus on, it’s a good idea to scour online job boards to see if any established outlets are looking for freelance writers in your field. For example, Examiner.comoften hires freelancers in different cities to write about local trends in everything from entertainment and sports to dining and photography. Online job postings can be a great way to discover openings at outlets nationwide for freelance writers, and they also provide the comfort that comes with knowing you’re working with an established organization. Many freelancers who now work on their own projects started out doing smaller writing jobs for other outlets.
Of course, one of the best ways to get your feet wet as a freelancer and to start to build your bankroll is to just get out their on your own and write. Start your own blog — there are multiple free ones to choose from, including Blogger, WordPress, and more — and begin writing regular posts. It’s a good idea to update your blog frequently, so rather than publish bursts of information that are then followed by periods of inactivity, write several posts at a time and space out their dates of publication. That will let you post a new entry every day, maybe two a day, and build a momentum in your writing. More importantly, it will let readers know that your blog is a reliable one, and they’ll come back for regular updates.
Building your blog is just the first step, though. It’s important to establish yourself as a member of the online community, and you can do that by visiting other blogs and commenting there, adding interesting blogs to your blogroll, or just contacting other bloggers to ask about exchanging links. You’ll soon enough find that you’ve got a small but growing audience, and this is the point when you can start to monetize them. There are many ways to do this. For instance, QueryAds lets you set up pay-per-click advertising for your site. Or there’s Amazon Associates, the affiliate program that lets you earn a percentage of Amazon purchases readers make through your site. Or you can use the Romow Directory Affiliate Program, which pays you for referring readers to their site. And believe me, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. By using powerful but subtle ancillary monetization tools, you can start to earn money on your blog all by writing passionately about your interests.
By following and repeating these steps, you’ll be able to grow your site and also sharpen your skills as a freelance writer, both of which will lead to more work as readers and editors discover your talent and drive. There’s nothing better than making some extra cash doing what you love.
By-line:
This guest post is contributed by Jena Ellis, who writes on the topics of Online Certificate Courses. She welcomes your questions and comments at her email Id: jena.ellis20@gmail.com.

How To Writing And Making Money (E-Book)

The How To Guide to Writing & Making Money from eBooks

The How To Guide to Writing & Making Money from eBooks
Ever since the decline of legacy media, many entrepreneurs have been attempting to cash in on the success of eBooks. While most people have more success marketing an eBook to generate leads for an email list, or as a free bonus to promote special affiliate offers, there are ways that you can cash in on eBooks themselves. However, not every eBook will sell well in an already over-saturated market. You need to be able to identify a solid and useful topic, write a thorough and valuable eBook, and properly monetize it for maximum sales. Luckily, it’s not as difficult as you might think.

How to Write an eBook

While there are numerous scams out there, promising thousands of dollars when you sign up for a useless service that will “help” you write an eBook (then showing a picture of an actor holding a stack of hundred-dollar bills), there are some people that have honestly had a good return on their eBook. Glen of Viperchill.com wrote an extensive article about his successful eBook, Cloud Living. Ultimately, he ended up making $30,000 from his popular eBook, which taught people how to make a living online.
So, before you start on your eBook, there are a few things that you have to remember in order to be successful:

• Pick a topic that you know well, that people are currently interested in, and that allows you to provide the most value. For example, if you notice that the topic “kids costumes that rock” is trending in Google searches, and you have some experience in sewing, you might write an eBook about how to create your own cheap kids’ Halloween costumes.
• You don’t need to invest in an expensive writing and editing program for your computer. Openoffice.org offers a free word processor that allows you to quickly and easily export any document to a PDF file (the preferred format for eBooks).
• Planning is key. An eBook provides the perfect opportunity for you to practice your prewriting skills. Have a plan for what direction you’re going to take, as well as some notes on the information you would like to include for each section (i.e. create an outline). Otherwise, your eBook could come off as being directionless and vague.
• Don’t worry too much about word count. Information is what’s important. While you might not sell many 1000-word eBooks for $19.99, eBooks aren’t usually meant to be 100,000-word novels. Thoroughly and accurately cover the topic in as many words as it takes, but use lean writing to get your points across quickly.

Choosing an eBook Topic

To find a good topic for your eBook, try using some free web tools that can help you find trending topics, or use common sense to time your eBook’s release with an event that should increase interest.
Google Trends is an excellent tool for finding trending topics. However, you must be careful to choose topics with continuing interest – not ones that will drop in popularity after a couple of days. While “Miss Universe 2011″ is likely going to stop trending soon, a trending search like “earthquake” holds some potential for a profitable eBook.
[http://www.google.com/trends/viz?q=earthquake&graph=weekly_img&sa=N]
Looking at the Search Volume Index for the past several years in the image above, you can see that the term “earthquake” has experienced some notable interest spikes, usually coinciding with a major earthquake. You can expect interest to continue with this term over the long run. You might write an instructional eBook on the term using one of the following titles:

• 100 Earthquake Survival Stories
• Earthquakes and Doomsday Predictions: The Historical Link
• The Complete Earthquake Survival Guide

Creating the eBook

Once you have a topic in mind and have performed the prewrite, it’s time to get to work creating the eBook. For the written portion, don’t focus so much on creating a narrative. Instead, focus on providing easy-to-digest and actionable information. eBooks work in the same way as webpage content – white space helps make them much easier to read. Use bulleted lists and headers throughout the content to make it easier to scan. In addition, try presenting information in other ways to help readers get through your work. Charts and graphs are excellent additions to help make information more clear.
For clean and crisp charts and graphs, the program Omni Graph Sketcher is perfect (2-week free trial, $29.99 to purchase) and most eBook creators use it to make their own charts. Although there are some free websites for creating graphs and charts (remarkably, NCES’ Kids’ Zone Creator is probably the best), they lack the customization that programs like Omni Graph Sketcher offer.
Remember that your topic has a lot to do with your writing style. If you’re putting together a study, most readers will expect the information to be scholarly in tone, or written from a position of authority and supported by a large amount of citations. However, an eBook on kids’ Halloween costumes might need to be a little more casual in tone, without many works cited (if any at all).
Finally, no matter what you write, make the investment in a good editor. While your writing might make perfect sense to you, it can be completely lost on the average reader. Spelling and grammatical errors can make it seem like you didn’t put much effort into the eBook, which can cost you future conversions. Hire a good editor early in the writing process, and he or she can help you structure the eBook properly throughout the process. If you have trouble writing the eBook, simply buy a few eBooks yourself to get an idea of what readers expect to see in the content. This can help give you ideas about phrasing and organization as well.

Making Money from eBooks

One of the most important questions you must ask yourself before you begin marketing your finished eBook is whether or not you need an established audience beforehand. It’s almost always better to have a group of Internet readers that already view you as an authority, rather than investing in an eBook that might not return your investment for months. For example, the successful eBook marketer Darren Rowse (Problogger) waited to launch his first eBook until he had been writing for the site for five years. Because he waited so long and acquired a huge audience, he was able to make an estimated $450,000 from a single eBook (priced at about $19.00).
Before you begin marketing your eBook, however, it’s important to make sure it’s protected from duplication. All Media Copy offers a helpful guide on adding password protection to your eBooks, in addition to adding a copyright.
There are a few ways to market your eBook (none of which include just popping it up on Amazon.com and hoping for the best):

• Start an affiliate program: You can contact other bloggers in your niche and ask if they would be willing to promote your eBook in exchange for a percentage of each sale (51%, for example). Most bloggers are constantly looking for ways to monetize their sites, and it doesn’t cost you anything to duplicate your eBook. You might want to use a service like Clickbank to keep things safe and organized.
• Build an interested audience on your blog/site: This really is the best method to selling an eBook. If you really can’t find an audience, you might try something similar to affiliate marketing by contacting a prominent blog owner and setting up a deal where they sell your eBook and offer you a percentage (provided they are willing to put their name on your product). Keep in mind that people who make significant money from selling an eBook get around 75% of their sales from their original audience/email list.
• Organic Search Traffic: You can always use targeted organic search traffic to sell your eBook as well, whether it’s through your existing website or a new one you put up just to sell the eBook. The search marketing doesn’t have to be for the eBook’s exact title. Using our earthquake example, you can set up a website with the domain name earthquakesurvival.com (if that search phrase is searched often) and create a simple sales page designed to sell your eBook.

Creating an eBook is a great deal like creating a long article, but must be very well written and laid out to convince people (who are accustomed to getting valuable content for free) to buy it. Generate a good topic and invest some time and money into the eBook and you should have a quality product. When marketing the eBook, focus on long term conversions for a low rate, rather than pricing your eBook high in the hopes of making some quick conversions for a few hundred dollars.

3 Free Fast Traffic Methods That Work

3 Free Fast Traffic Methods That Work (And 3 That Do Not)

In this post I’d like to share with you 3 totally free traffic methods that work very effectively to drive fast traffic to your blog or website.

In the hope that you can learn from my mistakes, I shall also mention 3 strategies that don’t work and strongly advise you to steer clear of them!
Ok, let’s get started…

Free And Fast Traffic Methods That Work

1. Link Roundup Posts

A link roundup is a post on your blog which contains several links to other blogs. This can be a very fruitful traffic strategy because when you publish your post the bloggers that you have linked are automatically notified by a WordPress “Trackback”.
When the other bloggers see that you have linked to them (in their WordPress Admin dashboards), there is not only a great chance that they will visit your site to see what you have said about them but also that they will link back to you from their site.
One of the best tactics to use is to write a link roundup post which details 10 bloggers in your niche that you really like. When the other bloggers see this they will almost be compelled to let their own readers know that they have been identified in your top 10 list. This can produce awesome results in terms of a link back to your site together with a flood of traffic!

2. Guest Posts

I know, I know, everyone knows about guest posts, right? But can you honestly say that you have used this tactic to its fullest potential?
A great way to find guest post opportunities in your niche is to search in Google with the phrase “write for us”. For example, if your niche is within the weight loss market then start by trying this search:
weight loss “write for us”
I’ve personally found that guest posts deliver heaps of traffic from people clicking on the link back to your site. Not only this, but you also gain an SEO boost from the link itself. And all for one article which might take you an hour or two to write. Massive leverage in this strategy!

3. Video Marketing

Again, this is something that most of us have heard of but are probably not exploiting to its fullest potential.
Instead of just posting videos onto YouTube, try these tips:

• Find a similar video to yours which is very popular and has a high number of views and comments. Next, copy the tags from this video into yours. This will give you a great chance that your video will appear in the “Suggestions” list on the right hand side when the more popular video is playing.

• Find a popular video and post a video response to it. You can do this by clicking on “Create a video response” next to the comments box below the video. Hardly anyone does this so it can be an incredible traffic strategy for just a few minutes work.

At the risk of stating the obvious, make sure that you place a link back to your website in the first line of the description. This is so viewers can see (and hopefully) click on your link without having to expand the description field using the “Show more” button.
I’ve found it very effective to point the link back to my squeeze page which allows me to build my email subscriber list from the traffic generated by YouTube.
Ok, now for some traffic methods that don’t work, or more specifically, don’t work effectively in my experience…

Traffic Methods That Don’t Work

Link Exchanges

Up until around 3 years ago, these worked very well. You link to me and I’ll link to you and we both get an SEO boost from Google, right? Unfortunately, Google decided that this practice was against its terms and conditions which means that at best link exchanges no longer work and at worst you’ll land yourself with a penalty.
Stay away!

Safelists

The idea here is that you get to email other members of a Safelist community and promote your website/blog/squeeze page/product in return for agreeing to receive emails from other members who are promoting their stuff.
Once upon a time this probably was an effective method of traffic generation, however, the problem now is that everyone simply opens their emails and clicks on the link labeled “click here to gain credits” (or something similar). In other words, people just want to get their credits so that they can send out more of their own emails to you! 99.9% of the time they have no interest in actually visiting your site.

Traffic Exchanges

Traffic exchanges are similar to Safelists except that instead of emailing other members you agree to view their websites in return for them viewing yours. In my experience this can generate traffic, but its traffic really not worth having as the visitors simply wish to gain their credits by viewing website after website without paying any attention to the content.
So there you have it 3 totally free traffic strategies that work very effectively (and with rather minimal effort!) and 3 strategies to avoid.
Now, take action and get guest posting, video marketing and writing that link roundup post!

Why Push-Button autoblogging systems are a pipedream

Why pushbutton autoblogging systems are a pipedream

Like thousands of others, I bought into the hype and was persuaded that I could set up a bunch of WordPress autoblogs and have them automatically populate themselves with unique, keyword contextual posts that would attract both human readers and, at the same time, be palatable to the major search engines in general and Google in particular.
I was further convinced that once I had started to attract a reasonable amount of traffic, I could monetize the blogs by putting up a few Google Adsense and targetted Clickbank ads and then would be in position to make a reasonable amount of money from my efforts.
At first glance, once I had done a fair amount of work and research selecting appropriate Niche markets finding the right low-competition, high traffic keywords, it looked like things were starting to happen. I was getting traffic and even the major search engines were starting to send visitors to my sites. Unfortunately, none of this seemed to be converting to any appreciable amount of money being generated.
A little closer inspection of the content being generated and the traffic being attracted highlighted two gaping flaws in the autoblogging model:
1. 80% – 90% of generated content was pure garbage

2. Much of the traffic was spammers trying to post garbage to get backlinks or to steal visitors to my site.
The truth is that much of the Internet has become like our mailboxes used to be a few years ago, ie. crammed with useless advertisements trying to sell us something we don’t want, don’t need and probably can’t afford. As print media has become outmoded and costly, so the Internet is becoming the favourite place for all and sundry to try to hawk their wares. As the marketplace evolves, there will be an inevitable shake out. As hard as autobloggers try to disguise plagiarized content of dubious quality and value as premium, relevant material, so will the search engines try to come up with new and innovative ways to sort the wheat from the chaff.
No matter how intelligent the software of those trying to harvest niche market content using various bots, they will never be able to replace the judgement of the human eye and mind. As long as you operate a WordPress blog that automatically reposts content sourced according to specific keywords, you will inevitably end up with a lot of material that does your blog no credit and may actually harm it in terms of search engine rankings. No matter how you massage and obfuscate to disguise the original source, garbage in will always result in garbage out.
The only real solution seems to be to use plugins like WP-Simplicity to find material and after you have read it through to ensure it is germane to your targetted subject matter, to rewrite it, adding your own personal touch and also strengthening the keyword content. Now you can be sure that Google and the other engines will consider it unique and relevant. This also brings the added benefit that you can insert relevant ads and offers directly into the post as you go along, something again that the software bots often do poorly.
We are slowly converting our own WordPress autoblogs over to this style of content and will keep you updated as to our own progress, so check back frequently.

4 Reasons why WordPress autoblogs dont make money!

So you have put up your Niche marketing, WordPress autoblogs and monetized them with Google Adsense and yet you are not making the money that autoblog gurus like Profit Jackpot or Samurai had promised you. Below, we have listed four of the main problems that give autoblogging a bad name and also prevent blogs like yours from turning a profit. Fortunately, we also offer some concrete hints and tips on how to overcome these shortcomings and maybe also put some money in your pocket
1. Content is not unique.
Google is the main traffic driver and it will not rank you highly as long as your autoblog content is not considered unique.
Solution: Use a content generator like WP-Simplicity plugin, change the title, add your own intro and resource box and run the text through a manual text spinner like Article Demon. You don’t have to totally rewrite the content for Google to consider it unique.

2. Blog Content is not keyword-focused or relevant to your Niche Market – Users will only find your content if you have it based on the right keywords, relevant to both the post content and your overall market niche theme.
Solution: You need to find relevant competition-free keywords relevant to your specific market niche and then use WP-Simplicity to select content based on them. Finally, as part of the rewrite process descibed above, be sure to sprinkle your text with the appropriate keywords. Although autoblog systems attempt to find articles usually based on a single keyword, a large part of the time they miss the mark completely. Spurious content will likely negatively impact on your Google rankings.
3. Autoblog content is garbage and not human readable. Simply having content that is relevant to your market niche is not enough. Most autoblogs go to article sites to get content. Much of this content was poorly written to start with and then further degraded by article spinners of varying quality. Much of it is not readable by any normal person.
Solution: See the solution to #1 above. After carefully selecting recent, relevant subject matter using WP-Simplicity, thoroughly read and edit your text after running it through Article Demon and make sure it makes sense.
4. Poor monetization (Google Adsense alone is not enough). Just because you get traffic to your site does not mean you will automatically make money. Even though Google may do a decent job of placing relevant contextual ads, you will only make a few cents per click.
Solution: WP-Simplicity allows you to seamlessly add relevant Clickbank and Amazon product to your posts. Having contextual advertising strategically placed in your content along with your Google ads will improve your chances of making money significantly.

Make Money Blogging

Do you want to make money blogging? If you do – you’re not alone. More and more bloggers are finding that blogging is a profitable medium. Whether it be to earn a few extra dollars a week to feed their coffee habit, or making enough money to stop them having to get a part time job to get through college, or whether they’ve got it to a point where they are able to make a full time living from their blogging – there are tens of thousands of bloggers who make money blogging.

How to Make Money Blogging

In this page I want to share some information for beginners on how to make money blogging. For a very quick and broad visual intro – check out this Make Money Blogging MindMap which visualizes just SOME of the ways bloggers make money blogging.
First – let me start by sharing my own top Money Making Methods (updated regularly) but below that point you to some great resources and teaching on how to increase your income from blogging.
What follows is a quick summary of my main income streams from blogging. Before you read it though – keep in mind that every blog is unique in how it can make money. Some of the following income streams will work on some blogs a lot better than others – the key is to experiment with as many as possible and see what works best for you.
The following income streams (from a number of blogs) have helped me to earn a six figure income each year for the last 5 years from blogging. I’ve ranked them from highest to lowest.
I hope you find it useful to see the mix and variety of ways that I earn a living from blogging.

1. AdSense

Despite not using it here at ProBlogger any more (here’s why) I continue to use AdSense with amazing effect on my other blogs. I have them all set to show image and text based ads and find that 250×300 pixel ads work best (usually with a blended design). I don’t have much luck with their ‘referrals’ program but their normal ads work a treat and continue to be the biggest earner for me.

2. Affiliate Programs

I run a variety of affiliate programs on my blogs – most of which bring in smaller amounts of money that don’t really justify a category of their own (but which certainly add up).
These include recommending quality products like these here on ProBlogger: Thesis WordPress theme, Yaro’s Blog Mastermind Coaching Program and How to Launch the F*** out of your E-Book (and others) as well as some great products on my photography blog including 123 of Digital Imaging, David DuChemin’s amazing Photography E-Books and Mitchell Kanashkevich’s great ebooks.
The great thing about many of these programs is that they are of such high quality that they sell themselves and I am being emailed from readers who sign up to them thanking me for the recommendation!

3. E-Book Sales

Last time I did a wrap up of how I make money blogging this category did not exist for me – I didn’t really have any of my own products to sell at all. However in the last year or so I’ve released 3 E-books – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, The Essential Guide to Portrait Photography and Photo Nuts and Bolts: Know Your Camera and Take Better Photos. While these products all only sell for under $20 they certainly add up and some months this has been my biggest category of income. The reason they were only ranking at #3 in the last month was that I didn’t do a product launch (I wrote about one launch which brought in $72,000 in a week here). This is an income stream I see growing as I add more E-books to my range (expect 3 in the coming few months).

4. Continuity Programs

This is another newer category for me but one that continues to grow.
A continuity program is a site where you earn a recurring income from people who subscribe to a service you offer.
For me this includes two sites – ProBlogger.com and Third Tribe Marketing. Both programs are membership sites and generate monthly income from the thousands of members that they have as a part of them.

5. Private Ad Sales/Sponsorships

Private ad sales directly to advertisers have fallen for me in the last year (they previously ranked #3 on this list). This is partly due to a change in my own focus but also partly due to the economy as it is. I should note that this area does vary a little from month to month depending upon the campaigns we’re asked to run – we’ve had a couple of months where it actually ranked #2 in the last year.
This includes ad sales of the 125 x 125 ads here at ProBlogger as well as a campaign or two at Digital Photography School.

6. Chitika

Chitka continues to be a great performer for me on my blogs. They traditionally have worked best on product related blogs although their Premium ad units now convert well on a larger range of blogs.
While I’ve focused a little less on Chitika in the last 6 months (mainly as I’ve released my own products and moved a little away from advertising) they do continue to perform well where I use them and over the time I’ve been using Chitika they’ve now earned me over a quarter of a million dollars – as a result I can’t recommend them enough!

7. Amazon Associates

Amazon’s affiliate program has been one of my big movers in the last 12 months. I used to make a few odd dollars from it – however in recent times it has become a significant earner for me (in fact it’s now earned me over $100,000 since I started using it). Christmas time (and the lead up to it) is a particularly good time for Amazon – last December it would have ranked #2 on this list.

8. ProBlogger Job Boards

The job boards here at ProBlogger continue to grow each month in the number of advertisements that are being bought. This enabled me to invest most of the money that they’d earned a while back into getting a new back end for the boards and to redesign them. These job boards now bring in over $1000 a month in revenue which is pretty nice considering that they are so low maintenance to run. They also offer a service to readers and add value to the overall blog.
The only problem that I face with the job boards is that there are so many bloggers looking for work that the demand for jobs far exceeds the supply. On the good side of things is that advertisers are reporting getting amazing quality of applications.

9. Speaking Fees

I get asked to do a lot of speaking and increasingly they are paid opportunities. I’m not able to do as many as I would like (mainly because I live in Australia and most of what I’m asked to do is overseas and I only travel 2-3 times a year) – however in April I did a couple of events and the income was enough to include in this list.

Other Income

In addition to all of the above there are many smaller incomes. Many of these are from smaller advertising programs that I test but none are big enough to really rate a mention here.
The other income stream that there was no actual money from in April was book royalties from the ProBlogger Book. These are only paid every 6 or so months (not in April). It’s probably also worth mentioning that authors don’t tend to make a whole lot of money on book royalties – you don’t write books to get rich (unless you sell a lot of them).

Useful Resources for Bloggers Wanting to Make Money Blogging

A lot has been written on the topic of making money online from blogs. There is a lot of wonderful information out there – but also a lot of hype and sometimes dangerous information.
Below are a number of articles that I’ve written exploring some of the different ways that bloggers make money.

Recommended Reading on How to Make Money Blogging

• A Reality Check on Blogging for Money – I don’t like hype – this post attempts to paint a realistic picture of blogging for money.
• How Bloggers Make Money – a post that I wrote in 2005 (updated) which gives a broad introduction to how bloggers make money blogging.
• Making Money from Your Blog – Direct Methods – bloggers make money from blogging in two main ways – directly and indirectly. This post explores some of how they do it directly.
• Making Money Because of your Blog – Indirect Methods – and here’s an exploration of indirect methods.

How to Make Money Blogging from Advertising

• Advertising Optimization – A series of posts on how to optimize advertising on your blog including posts on Traffic, Ad Positioning, Ad Design, Ad Relevancy and High Paying Ads.
• AdSense Tips for Bloggers – an 8 part series of posts that walk bloggers new to Google’s AdSense (the way I make much of my income) through how to use it effectively to make money on their blogs.
• Positioning Your AdSense Ads - a 3 part series on how I literally doubled my AdSense earnings overnight by repositioning my ads
• How to Guarantee that You’ll Never Make More than 0.14 cents per month from AdSense – 10 points to help you earn more money from AdSense
• How Quickly After Starting a Blog Should I put Ads on it? – one of the most common questions I am asked
• 10 Ways to Make Your Blog More Attractive to Advertisers – an Ad Guy tells all

How to Make Money Blogging from Affiliate Programs

• 10 Tips for Using Affiliate Programs on Your Blog – these tips helped me grow my affiliate earnings many times over
• The Power of Getting Readers in the Door at Amazon - a case study on how linking to Amazon can lead to some surprising results
• 9 Reasons Why I am an Amazon Affiliate – Amazon is one of my bigger earners

Other Articles on Making Money from Blogs

• Principles of Choosing a Profitable Topic for Your Blog – key factors to consider before choosing a topic for your blog
• Should I Blog for Money? – before you rush into monetizing your blog – here is a post on whether you should at all

Page Rank update from Google after Google Panda ongoing and Tonz jumped PR

page rank

Google has started its second Page Rank update of the year after it happened early this year in January. This Page Rank update too seems to take a good deal of time. The last one had gone over just under a week since it started around the 20th of January.

You can check out our then post about the page rank update.

This update was as expected, and is still ongoing. Page Rank changes, and in fact, fluctuations were noticed since 27 June, that is 36 hours ago. Changes are still ongoing.

Tonz.net has gone the positive way this time. My commitment to NO SEO WORK on this site has finally paid off with Google sticking with me. Page Rank servers shows the Page Rank of tonz.net as 2, while toolbar page rank seems to have risen to 1 only, as of now.

Toolbar and server query page ranks are update slightly different times as you know and these fluctuations will finalize in a few days, hopefully. You can notice from Yahoo Site Explorer view of tonz.net that there are not much backlinks to tonz.net that should indicate such a jump in PR, but the fact that those links were natural and contextual boosted the PR in my opinion. Also, taking into consideration the age of the domain, such a jump in page rank was natural.

Page Rank 2 or Page Rank 1, we can soon figure out that.

I hope this update has brought some good news for you, my fellow bloggers. If not, then hold on for a few more days, as the Page Rank update has not finished yet, and anything can take place. I wish the best to you and wind up this small post which was intended to be a heads up on the update in case you guys missed it. Tonz.net will continue to bring up quality content to you, as always.

Page Rank of a site often plays a role in its Search Engine Result Positions. In case you want to read in more depth about the technology behind it, read on Page Rank.

AdSense campaign test on Tonz.net for a week’s trial run

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Contest time as it is the July of 2011 and the best time for a contest for you guys

Contest

Well, what is this contest all about then? This blog is mainly for bloggers, but also caters to people who have technical issues running their systems, for people who need to know that one marketing trick that i used from somewhere to gain that extra edge. All in all, Tonz.net is a blog where i share with you guys the tons of resources that i accumulated, mostly information.

Why such a contest?

Well, this blog is for you, and us. And i thought, why don’t i communicate more with you and get in touch with you guys more along and understand what you want from this blog, more and more. This will enable me to tune this blog’s contents more to your needs and will make this blog all the more enjoyable to you guys.

So, the contest is a way of tempting you to be active in the blog by commenting and also taking up the very small 1 page 5 question survey that we will bring up later this month.

What is the contest then?

The contest involves commenting on the posts of this blog, old and also upcoming ones till the end of July. The comments will be checked and moderated and need to be non-spammy, and must be at least 50 words long. No one or two word comments like ” nice post”, “bad post”, “good content” or like that.

How is the prize decided?

The ranking list is based on the number of approved comments made by the person on this site.

How do i take part?

You can start by commenting on the posts on this site whenever you want to starting now. It is best to create an account on Tonz.net for the purpose, but is not compulsory.

What about the prizes then?

There will be prizes for the top 3 commentors.

1st prize involves:

$25 worth products to choose from our upcoming product site – GadgetMafia.comA free .com domain registered for you in your name or equivalent worth coupon for GadgetMafia.com.A dofollow backlink from this site (PR2) to your site.

WordPress 3.2 upgrade and associated issues to expect

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WordPress 3.2 has been around the corner and it is time to expect a bunch of buddies squeaking at the problems the upgrade brought. i am one the first to squeak at it myself when an upgrade to tonz.net left me like below. The issue could be also due to any of the other reasons, but the most common chance is of a plugin corrupting the organization of the whole wordpress system and causing issues.

WordPress theme transformation for the first time on Tonz.net after launch

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It has been over a year long now that i have been talking to you on Tonz.net/blog in this manner. To be exact, the first of the posts that today exist on Tonz.net is from the 20th of June 2010. Find that first post here – A salute to wordpress.

Many of you might have been with us when this site was first started more than 3 years ago in a different format. I had lost track of all the work due to various other interests that kept me engaged at that time that this blog was literally dead till the 20th of June, the yesteryear. From there, we have grown to what we are today, a second home for you, if i may.

Google Docs supports ZIP and RAR files and now with this Chrome extension you can perform direct opening and file viewing

Google Docs

Have you been wondering Google Docs is not much of a stuff that you can find real use for? First of all, there is not a better backup service for your important files and documents. Google Docs is the ultimate file sharing and if you do not want to share, then the ultimate file storage service.

Any backup service you get online, paid or free is at the mercy of the wit of the employees of that company and at most times you find the hard way that the backup you have with them is not always up, and in most cases secure. Their servers could be poorly managed making these problems evident from day 1 most probably. Google has been running and maintaining over a million servers worldwide and are now experts at it. Their servers are not even rarely down, and hence, there is no better backup service that you can get better than Google Docs.

Now, to the new extension out there – Open ZIP and RAR with Google Docs. What an amazing extension.

Haven’t you always wanted to know what exactly are the files you are downloading when it comes in an archive as in the ZIP or RAR format? I bet you did. There were a thousand times when i was supposed to be downloading word or PDF documents and i ended up getting exe files which are most probably viruses or trojans. Seeing inside the archive and being able to check the files before download would have been superb ability in such scenarios. With this tool, that is now possible. You can view the files and check their extensions even before downloading them via Google Docs.

Get Google AdSense Account Approved easily and quickly

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One of the many questions that you will notice in the comments on this blog is about Google AdSense, and the top question asked always, is -

How do I get my Google AdSense Account Application Approved?

Server down, data lost, me gone mad and now everything back to sanity

Losing my mind

Well, this past one was one of the worst weeks for my online presence. The server went down for all we knew, data got corrupted beyond a point of recovery according to the tech support guys at Burst.Net, and above all, I DID NOT HAVE A BACKUP.

The actual downtime was noted since 22nd of July 2011, and that is about 7 days before today. A week of downtime, and a hell of a downtime.

I am one of the stupidest webmasters in the world – My last server backup was 6 months ago. o.O

Yeah, can you believe it? After all my Top 5 mistakes and stuff posts, i forgot the basic thing in life, especially an online one – Keeping frequent backups. In fact, i haven’t even taken a backup after all this issues and getting them fixed. (Will get to it, after this post. Need to put this first.)

I have a request/suggestion to all you guys – Take a backup of your entire system, NOW! Not tomorrow, not after breakfast, NOW!

I killed my sites through my stupidity.

Make money by building and running proxy servers

Make Money

Making money is always on the top 1 list of things to do for almost all people. DO NOT LIE. It’s even the same for you, otherwise you wouldn’t even be reading this post, right? There is nothing shameful in it, and so we all do it, more and more.

So, how to make money? Making money is not an easy task unless you are a criminal, and there is always hard work involved if you want to earn a legitimate penny. These days you will find hundreds of thousands of make money ebooks and guides all around the web, with a majority of them filled with bs. Seriously.

Proxy servers where once the deal, with one being able to make hundreds of dollars even on a daily basis, and now, they are back to the top of the make money method list. If you had read one of my earlier posts on the make money topic, you would see proxy server business at the top.

As you money online revisited

It has been a while since I have posted new content on the site. It is sometimes difficult to generate new issues with respect to a niche.
Internet marketer a marketer are still using traditional methods has a great advantage over. Because our products in General intangible can apply they are harder to track and therefore competitors a very difficult time trying to imitate our success.

To examine an important variable is the identity. You have the ability, you on the Internet who can be literally dozens, if not hundreds of identities, your marketing efforts do. Why would you are persecuted and copied, if you avoid it?

If you follow the bread crumbs, it's easy to discover my identity. At least it seems so

To make money online

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What it takes to make money online? Some would say it takes money to make money online, but in reality, it takes very little in terms of financial investment.

The main reason why not all to make money on the Internet is due to the fact, that most people are not ready in time and plan to study the trouble, and implement to put their policies on the network.

The biggest obstacles are to know where you go and what to do. There are so many ways, first of all, you have programs like cash crate, treasure Trooper, money on the net, which take advantage of the opportunities that are out there to generate amazing, like a few people
Send result and project payday that are free of charge.

These sites are you immediately paying money without them a dime have. If your goal is, to make passive income online, you will probably investigate creating a Web page. The point is that it takes time, patience and hard work and dedication to make money online, but it isn't very much takes money.

You need to find a niche online to earn in general money and focus on ways to use and profit. Can get started, a good way to sell a product but your product of high quality must be, and it should be clear to a certain extent. Receive revenue from advertising or affiliate commissions is great, but to do this, you must first generate traffic.

It is to note one thing that your visitors will help you only if you specify this with content that they can use to help themselves. If you want your sites to sell only, something that they need what then chances are, that they, that will find out, and I'm willing to bet, that they return on the road won't.

There are many reasons why to have a Web site can be financially profitable. If you think about it, there is not much difference between a physical business and a Web business, but the advantage is that a website is much cheaper to build and manage. If you find a niche that is really profitable, it is possible to create multiple Web sites in the same niche and use on the market.

The one thing that should be taken into account, is that so really grow a website you must have visitors. Getting traffic is not so easy, as it earlier; Now she may require hard work, in particular, if your goal is it, to generate search queries from the major search engines.

The following are some recommended products I have used my business to grow and money:

1WayLinks
AWeber
Linkvana
Vindale research
Cash crate
Treasure Trooper
Send the result
Project Payday

Have any niche, products or services, associated with, so that your job to try to find out the ones that are really recommended. If the product or service without value, think not once, pitching it your customers or visitors, these people feel our product the service from and if you lead them astray, your site will lose credibility.

Programs like 1waylinks and Linkvana can very well, if you want to generate income from free circulation. If your goal is to make money online first to develop a solid business plan and revenue model, then go ahead and the steps required to lead your project to success.

Vindale research

You questions to whether legitimate? Are you questions whether VR is a scam? This evaluation will fill out the details of their GPT site and how you can make money with them.
This company is very new, but many people in the industry, they start as a full-fledged GPT service opportunities project payday, cash crate, treasure Trooper, send similar to recognize the result and others.

Although their marketing pitch may sound a bit sleazy, i.e. "to listen." Share with your opinion. Check products and take simple online surveys. You make a difference, by we your opinion. Get great rewards. "Do think the products that verify." Their service offers some few real opportunities to make fast money.

I have been researching and testing many legitimate

Survey Club

! You have ever by? It is a scam or is it actually worth?

This report talks about the advantages and disadvantages of the program. Essentially, this company offers what many other companies in terms of paid surveys offer. If you ever send cash crate, treasure Trooper, project payday, the result or Vindale research have heard, you have a pretty good idea of what you expect from.

One of the main advantages of the program is the fact that the membership is free of charge. This means that money in your wallet will go i.e. a direction! This company has typically offers, anywhere from 50 cent, a few dollars, but it nicely in the sense that not so very long to fill, each form is a good opportunity, money in your account rack.

Their business model is based on your opinion for various products and services get, then from the companies or marketing firms, manufacturers and dealers are paid for the work. Basically you your thoughts and their forms filling and they give you money, it's really that easy.

There are three main sections or opportunities on their website:

(1) Surveys for cash
(2) Review product surveys
Fokus-Gruppen 3)

Everyone pays differently depending on the length of the questionnaire and the type of product or service, you will verify.

The logon process is extremely fast and membership is free, so that in fact you have to check not much to lose, but their program and their programs.

I went to their site and created an account in about ten minutes. I went to a few of their offers completed. Their system is easy and the reviews on the Web are mostly positive

Make money online in 2010

Since the holiday season is approaching many of us you look back on our efforts in the current year. Make money online this year?

If so, to make the kind of income that significantly improves your quality of life?

I WAN t to pastures not, but I have an outstanding year in residual income generation and Internet marketing success. This website was last year and this year it has one of the most prominent MMO sites on the Internet. If you, look for the main keywords such as residual income, how to money to earn, Internet marketing and many others, you will find on this website somewhere...

This means that my work as a search engine optimization is a specialist it succeeded, I was indexed by all major search engines have and my content applies to Google. This means that the search engines do not consider my article to "spam".

In 2010, I have to create multiple new articles, which guides you through the process of identifying a niche and the most important steps create targeting this niche with a website, a solid revenue model and a force to detect that your competition.

I have successfully to make money online through various methods, a documentation of my trip is more this site rather than my bread and butter. My most profitable websites and niche not here or anywhere else for fear discusses, that you all know, the one presented on this website use, to cut into my earnings.

Fortunately, there are so many profitable niches on the Web who spend to find it not difficult for you, you take advantage of time and effort, and the industry of your choice will be. I find that it is always advisable to diversify your niche, in the event that a the belly goes up… your target industries Search for niche to alleviate a pain or improve that someone's well-being are almost always a sure fire way to generate income on the Internet, so I think its a clever strategy focus your attention in the areas of start on your way to create and passive income.

Internet marketers must measure effectively well on that demand and competition for any particular niche and they need to create the power content or content generation outsourcing, so that they can build a virtual showcase or landing page, which draw in potential customers interested in the products or services you are promoting.

In addition to selling a product, also possible, money to earn as an affiliate marketer, advertiser, and lead generator. I go into detail on these topics in future articles. For now please address you and check out some of the other articles of 2009 on this website and put some of the information in the articles to use.

I would like to good luck in 2010, and we all my visitors, friends and family can continue in the new year to make more money online!

Make sure that your niche make money online

It is I updated for a long time this blog and my readers feed subscribers and e-mail newsletter subscribers, I am suffering. I found this post titled "" as a reminder for me, where to focus my energies. It was my goal when originally created of this site to keep up to, and thus a very valuable resource for Internet marketers. I thought that the make money niche the key to solve the problem, how online money!

Since then other ways originated from this website, and unfortunately these possibilities me have taken from my responsibility for the maintenance of this website. Although not much in the last months of daily visitors dropped, I need my advertisers and visitors to ensure that this website continue to value in the Internet marketing community responsibility.

I'm doing some serious research on keywords and which are the most profitable as of late. As my primary sources of income online, PPC, affiliate marketing, private advertising and a few other methods in future articles I will explain.

I receive on a daily basis with link exchanges, reviews of products and contacted all other types of requests. Most people think that this Web site do a bunch, passive income, makes it to the fact that it such rankings on the most important search terms, i.e. make money online, how one money etc.... In fact, this site is probably the weakest or earn the lowest part of my blog network, that easily and even exchange hours, that I have invested in content generation and distribution for my investment in time.

Certain key factors in creating a successful blog helped me clear, this website however. The first and most important is the niche. Make money online is simply not one of the most profitable niche out there. It must provide one of two things to be a profitable niche:

(1) Ease pain
(2) Assist in personal development

Although many of the texts on this website touch could, on step one or step two, that is simple fact, that this niche is incredibly saturated. The smart Internet marketer remained, from this niche and away while the people that not bright enough to on to catch were jumped into the MMO boat, from the people who knew better create huge networks of niche websites to small and undiscovered areas.

A few profitable niches are:

Credit cards
Acne products
Nutrition and health consulting
Medical information
Legal services
Hobbies i.e. fishing, golf, etc....

These are just a few for you to get going. If you find some keyword research with Google's keyword tool you quickly do that there are lots of keywords in the previous niches that upwards of $1.00 per click to pay. If you can do the math, not too hard to come to the conclusion that the advertisers mean business and you probably hook a few private, could if your website is also the least bit impressive.

The bottom line is that if you want to create a blog or a website that really pays the Bills, the research in advance and in the first place do.

Money is not everything

Your blog is to earn MoneyHow online, Internet marketing, and more!HomeAboutAdvertiseProject PaydayResourcesArchivesPrivacyContactSubscribeMoney is not everything

It is rather long because I have updated the content on this website, the fact of the matter is that money to earn online is not always the top priority in life. Recently, I have more time focusing on the most important aspects of life, fun, new things to try and generally try to focus on self improvement.

Some time will help it, a step back from your online activities and your mind some have new experiences allow the space to generate the next big idea. Making money online is a full time job for many, but it's a part-time job for most. I will not argue with people who say its impossible, a full-time income online to make, but I would like to stress that they try a little harder and absolute minimum throw him another shot before the towel.

Your blog is really money decreased last year, it is often on the first page for "How to make money" a search term with more than 700 million competing pages. In addition, it is also for several other search terms that I offer as quickly to take advantage of competitors, such information is. You want to go head for the term head "How to make money" feel free to it your best shot, I wouldn't be surprised, if you it but I know personally not rank for a term like that stuff so bad to feel, not if it takes you a few months or a few years...

This site is a great tutorial for people, who start on their way as an Internet marketer specifically for those who want with blog advertising and income from advertisers like Google AdSense to be successful. I call not to copy those niche but rather cars are out in an area that really interests you, make it a hobby and less a business, and it takes really out, especially if you focus on people, these are the same people who will help you.

I guess all visitors who found my site and spent the time reading my articles. I very much hope that my content has helped you more success and apologize for all pleasing and raves can, you have had that to views, to reach the "good stuff!"

I have most of my link building efforts for this site, due to the fact that there are many other niche, which is a much better rate of return for link set generation time and energy invested. I have the pages that are larger than this this site has taken out way with only 1 / 10 of efforts. You can use it big in MMO, but you have to really look on the niche and some find, is the missing. The end result is that people constantly, you buy the same information over and over in the hope their worthless book to E-marketing, spit product or service are.

Check out Grizzly, he'll tell you the same thing and probably fills in most of the gaps that address of this site fails. Frankly, without him, I still would have no idea about what is really happening in the world of SEO, and credit give honor to whom. I doubt he has read my content, but the bottom line is that it needs a spark to start a fire, this website is proof of.

I have some content via Google Webmaster Tools prepared, are intended to be useful and are trying to it as soon as possible. Once again money is not everything, take a break, look at what you do, what works, what is not. Do more good, less of bad, rinse and repeat and focus on support, the money will be there when you need it.