This is the first monthly earnings post I have done because I have simply not been earning very much.  Some of the things going on in August are an adult affiliate site I started with my brother-in-law.  This is a site that sells adult products and I was a little reluctant to get involved in.  It has not produced any income but we will see how it goes.  August was a decent month for Adsense as I repositioned some ads and experimented with them a little bit.  My Amazon affiliation is making some money as well with only about 3 sites that promote Amazon products.

Enough of the rambling, let’s get into the numbers.

Adsense:$11.15

Amazon:$11.49

August total earnings: $22.64

It sounds like chump change but I am excited to have made some progress.  I am currently starting a new blog about PC and Mac computers as it is one of my biggest interests.  You can check out that blog at http://www.pcvsmac.net.  I am also diving a little deeper into YouTube marketing, so we shall see how September goes.

So how are your earnings going?  Please feel free to comment on this post!

As I have been building and maintaing websites, I have found a few tools that I think are almost a necessity to me now.  These tools are things that you wish you had but wasn’t sure if it existed.

Let’s start with the basic background color of a website.  Have you always wondered what the color code was on a website but didn’t know how to find it?  Well ColorZilla allows you to find the color code for anything on a website by simpling hovering over it with your mouse.  ColorZilla is great if you are trying to mesh colors, create Adsense ads or just looking for a color that you have found on another website.  ColorZilla is definitely a great tool for any webmaster.

Another tool that I recently found is called Measurelt.  It is a ruler that allows you to measure anything on a webpage.  This comes in handy when you’re measuring ads, ad space, columns or anything else you always wondered the measurement of.

The third must-have tool that I use with FireFox is called Font Finder.  This tool allows you to highlight any text on a page and analyze its size, font type and other font face information.  I personally use this for blending my Adsense with the content on my website.  Blending your Adsense with your site will improve your conversion rates and will improve your website esthetically.

Let me start this post with a disclaimer.  I am not an Apple Fanboy.

Back in March of this year I bought a 21.5″ iMac only to return it for the 27″ iMac (no regrets), and I have absolutely nothing but good things to say about it.  It never freezes, doesn’t hesitate, it’s ready to use in less than 15 seconds from the time I push the power button, and is just an awesome computer.  In fact, I love my iMac so much that yesterday I splurged and bought a 13″ MacBook Pro.

I always thought that Apple was a pretentious company with over-priced products and out-dated hardware.  To this day, I still believe that Apple has dated hardware, in terms of laptops and desktops anyways.  However, their software and quality control is nothing short of amazing.  It is now surprise that the desktop market dropped significantly, that is of course except Mac, who has actually seen growth in their desktops in the past few years.  I owned an iMac back in 2002, which was one of those CRT (tv-like) computers.  I’m sure you remember them, they came in blue, green, orange and red if I remember correctly.  It was alright, nothing to brag about.  I had the hardest time finding a printer that was compatible with it.  I eventually ended up getting rid of it and buying a new HP desktop.

After using my iMac, I found myself hating my laptop (Sony Vaio).  I don’t know what it is.  Maybe the [not responding] message that I get randomly using Firefox, or maybe that 5 minutes it takes for the computer to start up before I can actually start doing anything with it.  I just hate it.

Me, the wife, and my 2-year old daughter decided to go check them out at Best Buy yesterday and I eventually decided to go with the 13″ MacBook Pro.  I would have liked to have had the 17″, but it wasn’t worth the extra cost.  After all, I do have a 27″ iMac I can use for more elaborate tasks.  I asked the sales man about OSX Lion as I seen that the box said it was loaded with Snow Leopard.  He pulled out a sheet of paper, buried underneath what looked to be important documents and figures.  As he handed me the piece of paper, he replied “Go home, boot up your new Macbook, go to this site and download your free Lion update”.  “Awesome”, I said.  $1200 and several hundred double-reward points later, I was home downloading my free update for Lion.

The site I went to was www.apple.com/macosx/uptodate.  There I put in some of my purchase information and I was sent to the App store to download my free copy of OSX Lion.

As I waited for Lion to download, I thought to myself, “I wonder if I can download this on my iMac since I am using the App Store”.  I went downstairs, booted up my iMac and logged in to the App Store.  There it was “Mac OS X Lion”  with a “Install” button next to it.

So there you have it, I was able to download Mac OS X Lion on both of my machines (since iTunes and the App Store are Apple Id specific) absolutely free.

So if you have bought a machine recently (After June 6th I believe is the cut-off) you can download the update for free and if you have other Mac’s with OS X Snow Leopard, you can update those for free as well.

I happen to believe that Google Plus One will have a huge impact on the way that the Google search engine will display search strings in the future.  Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that Google is the number one search engine and they play a huge role in the internet experience.

What is Google +1?

Google plus one is equivalent to a Facebook “like” in terms of user interaction.  It has been said that Facebook “Likes” play an important role in the popularity of something on the internet.  And not necessarily the popularity, but the priority.  Let me explain.  Just because something has 10,000 Facebook Likes doesn’t necessarily mean it is the bee’s knee’s.  In fact, if you were to search “buy facebook likes” in Google, you would find dozens, if not hundreds of sites that offer clicking a like button for X amount of dollars.  In fact with the recent announcement of Google +1, you can probably find some sites already selling plus 1′s to people.  So what does all this mean?  It means that is is still difficult to judge something based on this kind of “like” and “+1″ criteria.

Is Google +1 Different than “Likes”?

Yes and no.  Google is moving toward a social internet much like Facebook.  It wants to create a better user experience by providing information that you are looking for, while weeding out all the junk.  The difference is that Google plays a much larger role in the internet than Facebook.  This may shock you, given the popularity of Facebook, but it is true.  Google can have a much larger impact on the internet than Facebook.

How Does Google +1 Work?

It’s simple really.  A website installs the Plus 1 button on their website and when a user decides that they like the site, they can click the +1 button.  Rumor has it that these +1′s will be implemented into Google’s algorithm in order to provide a better internet experience.  If you have created a user profile with Google, then you can click the +1 button on any page.  Depending on who you are friends with, it may dictate what sort of results are displayed for something they searched for.  For example, let’s say you +1 a website about cordless drills.  If one your contacts in Google searches for “cordless drills”, the site that you +1′d may take priority over other sites.  This changes the SEO business quite a bit.  Unfortunately, there are ways to cheat the system and pay for these “+1′s”, causing some reliability issues with search method.

I believe the internet experience is going to change dramatically in the coming years.  With social networking taking over the world and the implementation of HTML5, the internet as we know it will soon change.

What are your thoughts on the Google +1 and the future of SEO?  Please leave me a comment!

My first strategy in SEO was to outsource everything. I spent $190 for a months service of SEO. I went from no where in Google to top 5 for a not-so-competitive keyword.

Turns out that even if you are on the first page of Google for a keyword, it doesn’t matter if no one is searching for that term. Figure that.

I have posted jobs on elance.com and searched for linking services online but I can’t seem to find anyone who is reputable and affordable. I awarded a job on elance only to be set up for failure when the person sent my website to the Google sandbox. Needless to say, I requested a refund for that failed service.

There are several websites that offer backlinking services but amazingly enough, there are no real reviews on their work or reputation.

I decided to give a website that I have never heard of  shot.  It’s called Fiverr.com.

Fiverr.com is basically a cyber pimp.  It pairs people that can provide a service for $5 with people who are willing to pay for a service for $5.

$5 for a backlinking service is definitely worth a shot.  Especially since the person I paid has such great feedback.  You can’t hardly go wrong with $5.  The service I paid for was as follows:

“I will create 3300 backlink pyramid for high rankings for $5″.

What’s more interesting is the things that people are willing to do for $5.  For example “I will write anything you want on my cleavage for $5″.  Now that’s scary.

As far as the backlinking goes, I will keep you posted on the results and if this service was worth $5.  This is either an unbelievable deal, or total rubbish.  For $5, I will give it a go.

Building a website takes time, skill,  and patience.  However, it doesn’t require much money at all.  In fact, you can build website for under $60 a year with Bluehost.

A website requires little money to start up.  This is why it is a great business model.  The money you can make from a website far surpasses what you spend on building it.  This allows a greater ROI than most, if not all, other businesses.

The challenging part of building a profitable website is that there is much more competition than a standard business might have.  On the flip-side, it is easier to beat the competition with a website business model.

The first steps in starting a business are decide who, what, when and where are you targeting?  Who is is the audience?  What are you trying to promote or sell?  When are wanting to sell it, through the site or take them somewhere else?  Where do you want to be seen?  Are you looking for search engine rankings, Facebook rankings, or maybe you’re just wanting to be seen within an online community.

It’s now time to do some research.  How stiff is the competition?  You should never go investing time or money into a highly competitive market.  A less competitive “niche” is more ideal for drawing in traffic.  Think of it in terms of numbers.  If you enter an extremely popular, but competitive market, you may never be seen.  If you enter a less popular market and dominate it, there may be less traffic but at least you’re getting the majority of it.  All of nothing is still nothing.  A majority of something is still….well, what you want.  I think this particular step is where most make their mistakes, including myself.  I still struggle picking the best keywords and wonder how stiff the competition really is.  If you can find a low competitive market which is high in demand, you are golden.

So now all you have to do is create a domain name and get started.  Be very cautious when choosing your domain name.  Try to include the keywords you are targeting in your domain name, this will allow for better rankings when Google crawls your site.  I personally have been buying my domains at 1and1.  Cheapest place I have been able to find domains with free privacy listing.  I am currently paying $4.99 per domain. Not bad eh?

Next you’ll want to find a good host.  Like I mentioned earlier, I prefer Bluehost.  You can research and find anyone you want to.  They’re all over the place.

The next step is start dishing out all your wonderful and unique content.  Try to write naturally and keep a good flow with what you are presenting.  Over time, your content will be picked up in Google and you will start to rank well with the information you have shared.

After you have a site full of all sorts of good content, you can now start to monetize it.  This can be done in several different ways.  Whether it be products you are selling, products you are selling for someone else (affiliation), and even Google Adsense is also a great way to monetize.  Google Adsense puts advertisements on your site that are related to the content.  If a visitor clicks on the advertisement, you get paid.  Neat huh?

There are so many ways to make money through your websites that the possibilities are almost endless.  It all boils down to topic and content.  Let the SEO come naturally.  After a few months you will find you are receiving visitors (which is more exciting than money, to me anyway) and then money will soon follow after.

This is why a website is such a great business model.  Anyone can do it, it costs next to nothing to start up, and if you are good at it and pick the right content to share, you can make a ton of passive income!

All of my websites are hosted through Bluehost.  Don’t get me wrong, Bluehost is great.  I love them.  However, when I go to buy a new domain from them to add to my hosting account it always ends up costing me right under $20.  This is for the domain, which I think is $9.95 and the privacy listing which is another $9.95.  This gets pretty expensive when you have NSID (Niche Site Idea Disorder).  I knew there had to be a cheaper way.  I went to GoDaddy, whom I’ve used before but they weren’t any cheaper.

I finally found a better way to buy domains at a better price.  In fact, I bought 4 domains for what I paid for my 1 at Bluehost.  They were $4.95 a piece and came with free, yes free, privacy.  This means that if you look up the domain name on WhoIs.com, you won’t find all my personal information.  I’m new to all of the DNS forwarding and such and it was actually pretty simple to set it all up.  Hell, I saved $60, so even if it wasn’t easy…I don’t care to take an extra 10 minutes to figure it out.

I’m pretty sure I am an idiot for not finding this provider before now, but I’m sure there is someone else out there who can benefit from this so I decided to write a post about it.  The site I got these cheap domains from is 1and1.com.  The reason it ended up being so cheap was because the privacy listing is free.  So not only was the domain name almost half the price, but I got the privacy for free, which at Bluehost cost me $9.95.

If you’re reading this and new to hosting and domain names and all the other jibberish, as it seems to you, let me explain how this works.  You can host your website anywhere you want.  I personally like Bluehost because the hosting is cheap and they have great customer support.  That is why I would recommend Bluehost for hosting services.  However, as I mentioned above, the domain names get pricey.  The host is where all your files are kept and where the information is loaded from when someone visits your site.  We’ll call it your home.   The domain is simply the address to your home.

You can buy domains from anywhere and add them to your Bluehost account by simply pointing the domain to the Bluehost servers.  This sounds complicated but it’s really not.  You can have it all set up in less than a few minutes.  The benefit?  Well, it’s a lot cheaper!  If you’re like me, you want to cut out every expense and get by with the least amount of spending as possible.  That is why I bought 4 domains at 1and1 for the price of 1 at Bluehost.

You may be wondering what the $9.95 privacy listing charge is for.  That is so that when you go to WhoIs.com, a website that shows who owns a particular website, you are listed privately under the company that handles the domain name.  For example, if I didn’t have the domain privacy and I went to WhoIs.com and searched for motivatedtoearn.com, all of my personal information could be found listed for the website.  Such as my Name, Address, Phone number, etc. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not some creepy hermit guy with 10 satellite dishes attached to my roof and tin foil over my windows, but I’m not entirely comfortable with listing all my private information online for anyone to see.  If I had my own business and it was listed under my business, I probably wouldn’t mind; maybe some day.

This is why I would add the privacy to my Bluehost domains.  Fortunately, the domains I bought at 1and1 come free with the domain.

In hindsight, I guess I can be considered a fool instead of an idiot.  This recent revelation is going to save me money domains, if  I were an idiot I would have continued buying them for $20.

Please let me know your experiences with other hosting sites as this may not be the cheapest place yet.  I am curious if other people are spending as much as I was for domains or if bluehost was only getting rich off of me.

If you’re interested in buying domains from 1and1 or hosting services from Bluehost, I recommend them both.  These are affiliate links and if you decide to use them I will receive a commission, Just remember that I don’t promote anything that I don’t personally use.

Thanks for reading and remember to leave a comment below!

~Matt

I told myself that I wouldn’t buy any sort of affiliate marketing guru ebooks or programs, but I have fallen victim to circumstance.  I recently found Chris Guthrie through the Smart Passive Income blog and after listening to some podcasts, I eventually started following his blog.  I can definitely appreciate a halo-fanatic blogger.  Little did I know that this would send me down a windy, but successful road.  Let me explain.

It’s funny how one small post on a website can segway into something much bigger.  You’ve been there.  When you start conversating on a subject and soon it turns to something totally different, “how did we get on this subject again?”.   Let me take you down the path, as I remember it.  First I saw a post/podcast by Pat Flynn on the Smart Passive Income Blog with guest Chris Guthrie.  After listening to it, I went to Chris’ Make Money on The Internet blog and found some fresh information.  The post that caught my eye was the post with Joel Comm, the creator of the iFart app.  A friend and I coincidentally created an iPhone fart-sniffing app (Diaper Checker w/ Bonus Fart Sniffer) which was inspired by the iFart app.  Okay, stop laughing now.  Like I’m the only one to be drawn to such a post?  Anyway, I listened to the podcast with Chris and Joel and learned about a website that Chris sold for six figures, netbookreviews.com.  This site is netbooks reviewed by the blogger and monetized with Amazon links.  This led me to the Amazon affiliate program, which I joined.  Then I started to research some more information about the Amazon affiliate program and I found a theme that Chris Guthrie was selling for Amazon affiliates.  I love the theme.  It’s very crisp, clean and looks very professional in terms of a product review theme.  I looked into buying the theme, but then realized I could join the Niche Profit Course (affiliate link) and get the theme free.  The prices were almost equal in value so it only made sense to buy it all together.  This is where I bought my first internet marketing course (the thing I said I’d never do. Thanks Chris).

After collecting my free theme I decided to check out the course (since I did buy it).  And I was really impressed.  It was very informational and the fact that Chris seems pretty down-to-earth made the videos more interesting.  No fancy radio voice or exaggerated comments.  Just straight-forward information in a video format.  I put the information into action and I am really excited about the results.

I found a niche that I wanted to pursue that returned high search strings and a fair amount of competition.  After deciding on a niche I bought a keyword-rich domain less than 10 days ago.  I won’t disclose the niche entirely but it’s in the electronics category.  Electronics are something I am passionate about and follow closely, so this only made sense to me.

I installed the theme and began writing content and creating links and tinkering with the site until I had it the way I wanted it.  My first post was on July 2nd, which was the day I bought the site.

I checked my Google Analytics on Sunday July 10th and discovered that I had some new visitors.  Now this is exciting!  I haven’t even done any SEO work!  After coming down from my new-visitor high I logged in to my newly created Amazon affiliate account.  I believe my reaction went something like this: “Holy Crap I sold something!”.  Sure enough, I sold an item (not yet shipped).  I couldn’t believe it.  The next morning, before work, I logged back into account to make sure the Amazon affiliate theives hadn’t removed my sale, and the item had shipped and finally credited me $6.  Whoo hoo!  Here is a screen-shot

This is amazing to me.  This is equivalent to starting a diet and losing 20 lbs the first week, without even changing your diet.  Yes, definitely equivalent.  After all, this site was less than 10 days old, sure it was indexed by Google, but certainly wasn’t ranked.  I’m still astonished.

The next course of action is to get this site ranked.  I am on the fence with SEO strategy.  I’ve had some luck with outsourcing but I’m looking to control my costs more going forward.  I am debating just building back-links with social bookmarking sites as mentioned in the course but working a 48-hour a week job doesn’t allow a whole lot of time for such things.

I think the Niche Proft Course is a great tutorial, but my initial reason for buying it was for the free theme.  After purchasing the package, both are individually worth the price in my opinion.  I believe my Amazon affiliate niche sites are going to be a great way to earn a passive income going forward.  I’ve purchased 4 more domain names to build up in the coming weeks.  I will keep you posted on the results.

Be sure to check out some of my other PI strategies as I further my quest to make 6 figures online and quit the job that swallows me up.

Thank for reading and please feel free to comment!

~Matt

I’ve been blogging now for 2 years and I finally reached my goal of earning 6 figures.  Not all of the money I earn comes from my blog but from several niche sites and other miscellaneous passive income streams.  It wasn’t easy getting to this point, in fact I have been discouraged on several occasions.  All the time and hard work that I put into this site has finally paid off.  My commitment to myself was that once I earned six figures online that I would quit my full-time job.  So this will be my last week of work.  I truly enjoy the time I spend learning and sharing information on the internet.  Who would have though that a simple guy like me, with no more than a high-school education, could earn 6 figures online.  I receive the same question day in and day out, “how do you do it?”.  Well it’s simple.  I am motivated.

I debated on scheduling this post two years from now but I decided it would be more unique to post it now.  I haven’t earned a dime from blogging.  In fact, as of right now, I am in the hole.  I spent $50 for a year of hosting from Bluehost, and the premium theme (that I really love) cost me over $100.  The theme is a reusable asset, so I’m good with that expense.  I can’t help but ask myself if this time next year I will be able to renew my hosting with confidence or reluctance.  There are so many things that I have done in life that you would have never been able to convince me of just a few years ago.  And for that I know that I can reach my goal.  I can reach my goal and set a higher goal.  I can take huge strides on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.  I can do this because I am motivated, and that is the full intention and aspiration of this blog.

Even if this blog becomes dormant and I never create a new post, I can always reference it for future endeavors.  Future money-making adventures.  My passion for making money online will never die, which means there will always be a pulse remaining in this blog.

It will be a difficult two years.  I fear I may give up and find myself defeated.  I fear That none of my experiments or strategies will earn me a dime.  I fear that I will have spent more than I made.

I can’t help but think back to the day I joined a little site called eHow.  That was the road that started this journey.  Writing a simple article and earning me 9 cents.  I hit the ground running and didn’t look back.  I didn’t listen to my conscience telling me that it was waste of time, that it would never pay off.  I kept writing and writing.  I was relentless.  When I told people what I was doing, they laughed.  They somehow thought I was wasting my time or somehow I was involved in some sort of scam.  That 6 months of writing earned me a lot of money.  I am motivated, and it’s time to find another road to travel down.

I’ve recently found some new inspiration in passive income.

First let me start by saying that I believe that I have a creative side to my personality.  Unfortunately, my short attention span swallows it up.   I was the kind of kid in school that started several clay pot projects but never actually finished one.  They all had great potential and I put a lot of time and effort into shaping and throwing them.  In the end, I always had another idea that I could not let go and soon enough it took over me and I had to start another project before finishing the last.  That’s what creativity does to me.  And by the way, I am doing better these days to control my short attention span.  It is much more difficult for me “strap down” on focusing on these passive income streams.

Moving on with the passive income streams for creative people.  I recently stumbled across a few sites that are great for anyone with a knack for creativity.  I liked a few of them enough to join them myself.  I will be sure to post success stories (or lack there of) in the future.  Here is a breakdown of the different sites

Zazzle.com

Zazzle is a print-by-order company that prints t-shirts, mugs, hats, shoes, you name it.  Simply create your own store and create your own products by using their custom product builder or upload your own art and place it on shirts or mugs.  It’s quite fun and a nirvana for artistic people.  How cool would it be to have artwork worn by people all over the world?  Nice.  So how do you make money?  Well it’s pretty straight forward.  First you pick a product.   Next you customize the product using your artistic talent.  Finally you set the price based on your royalty percentage and sell the product through your online store.   To be come a member at Zazzle is completely free and is surely a great way to earn a passive income.  In case you’re wondering, I created a custom iPhone case with “Toilet Blogger” printed on the back.  Now that’s art.

FineArtAmerica

FineArtAmerica is just that.  It’s fine art, created by you.  You can upload photography or drawings and sell them at a fair price.  Your store comes equipped with frames and other customizations picked by the buyer.  Again, you set the royalties to make whatever profit you feel you are deserving of.  Me being a wanna-be photographer, this is definitely on my list of things to try.  I enjoy taking pictures and capturing rare moments and this is a great way to share your creativity with the rest of the world and make a passive income at the same time!  Can you imagine…your photo on someone else’s dining room wall?  There is something much greater than a passive income about that.

CafePress

CafePress is very much like Zazzle.  In fact, comparing the two, I think the only difference is the amount of products you can actually create.  Zazzle has a larger selection of products and I have heard some mixed reviews on the quality of the products being produced.  This will have to be at your discretion but is definitely worth a visit.  It is after all, another means of passive income.

Bukisa

Bukisa is for people who enjoy writing, teaching or telling a story.  I got started in the passive income arena with eHow.com.  I did very well with eHow.com and after the closing of the Writers Compensation Program, I have not written for another site with the exception of infobarrel, which we will talk about later.  I remember reading in the eHow forums about members writing for Bukisa on the side.  It isn’t eHow, but eHow is gone.  There is more freedom with Bukisa in that you can write about whatever you want without being in the “how to” format.  If you are skeptical, there is much money to be made in writing articles online.  I feel compelled to share some of my eHow earnings to motivate you.  Unfortunately, all I have to share is the PayPal deposits from Demand Media, so here they are.  These earnings are not to boast, but to motivate anyone who doesn’t believe they can make money writing.  Making money online is possible.  Note that the smaller deposits are from my 4 or 5 of my wife’s articles that she had written using her account.  Prior to Nov 2010, I was making roughly $600-$700 back until my first 4 months were right around $200.  January of 2011 was great for me (February payment) and was by far the most I ever earned.

Infobarrel

Infobarrel is very similar to eHow in that you write articles about various subjects that people are searching for.  Using your existing Adsense account, you make money from the advertisements on your articles.  I am completely new to Infobarrel, in fact I only have two articles that I have written for Infobarrel.  However, I will be starting a 90-day challenge to drive a passive income using Infobarrel.  This is similar to what I did with eHow where I wrote 5 articles a day, 4 or 5 days a week for several months.  In order to make a decent amount of money, it is all about quantity and quality.  Some of the simplest things I wrote about made 3 and 4 hundred dollars a month on eHow some months.   My 90-day Infobarrel challenge will consist of writing 2 articles a day for 90 days.  That’s 180 articles in 3 months.  That is about 3/4 of the articles I had written for eHow over the course of 2 years.  I am very motivated to get started with this.  You can follow my progress on my 90-day challenge when I add it to my PI strategies page.  Feel free to join the challenge and start earning a quick passive income.  I’ll even share some tips on how to target keywords.

I’m still exploring other means of creative passive income, but the above mentioned should be noted as credible and definitely worth trying.  Check out some of these sites and share your success stories with me.

All passive income is possible through a little bit of motivation!