Tag: Making Money Online

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Paid Tools Product Reviews Tools

All I Want for Christmas Are Long Tail Keywords – Keyword Researcher Review

Yeah Christmas or whatever you choose to celebrate or not in this happy/stressful/profitable time of the year!  I think its fair to say that 2011 has been a bit of an up and down year in terms of Internet Marketing, maybe I’m just bloody lucky, but really all the bad stuff that’s happened to me has been thanks to the TOS changes with HubPages plus nervous clients. 

Google has been, interesting, but the most interesting thing, and totally bloody irritating part, are their continuing moves to restrict access to their goldmine of data known as the Google keywords tool.

For a long time using the tool direct doesn’t give you real long tail keywords – you only get to about 3 or 4 words: a real long term is longer than that. Its very, very focussed, its not in Google’s best interest to reveal those because a) PPC advertisers would save a fortune only bidding on very specific terms and b) evil affiliate marketers would make way too much money. 

Google’s changes to their API TOS has meant than some previously good tools have gone away – and I am sure I’m not the only one who has found I miss my long-tail search tools 🙁  

But nature abhorrs a vacuum – well Internet Marketers do anyways – so when a tool is lost, and the whinging is loud-  something else pops up to fill its place! 

However because its Christmas – here are three two (third one coming in a day or so – the developer is just sorting out his landing page, and this is getting too long anyways) rather cool ways to work around Grumpy Google: 

Tony’s Keyword Researcher Review 

Easily get all the long-tails that Google provides through “auto-suggest” – really quick way to build out a site or an article.

This cool little tool is based on Google suggest – you know the annoying pop-up that you get when you start typing a query into Google. Its not the only tool that does this – (scrapebox.com is the common one) – but I like this tool a lot more: very, very easy to use, just watch the videos at Keyword Researcher and get on with it! I’ve been doing this for a while and Tony has some different wrinkles I’d not thought of… 

Google doesn’t say how many searchers need to be looking for a phrase before it pops up into auto-suggest, but we can all assume its probably more than a few. 

Now this tool won’t give you the competition figures, but it will give you a pretty long list of suggestions – and you can continue your investigations from there.  

Nice Features: 

  • easy and intuitive to use – doesn’t try to be overly fancy;
  • free download and trial (does everything the paid version does but only on the first 1/2 of the alphabet) 
  • one-time cost and cheap! 

Watch Out For: 

  • the tool is installed on your PC and its scrapping Google results – you’ll get banned (plus anyone else using the same IP) – its not big deal – the tool will point this out to you – wait 15 minutes – try again. 
  • this won’t give you competition or difficulty for your keyword phrase – doesn’t pretend to.  To get these you will need to put the terms through another tool: Google Adwords, Keyword Strategy, or Neale’s No Results Report (review coming this week) – would all work! 

Good For: 

Want some variation on your core keyword – for sub-headings? Want to build out a site? Looking for a few easy pages to rank on Wizzley?  

That evil, self-serving affiliate link again: Keyword Researcher – even if you don’t buy – check out the vids they are worth listening to! 

Tool number two for today (hell a girl’s gotta get her commissions up you know!) is 

Amazon Gold Mine Review 

Provides new lists each week of Amazon products based on their price/popularity/discount/top ratings and lots of reviews. In other words – the products you want to the affiliate for! Also provides a “bargain basement bin” for very cheap products – which I don’t use – but might even save you the fee if you are in the US! 

Lets be upfront – I’m not the world’s most successful Amazon affiliate, I’ve only recently started focussing on it, but I’ve sold enough random products over the years to be constantly amazed at what does actually sell on there (thank you whoever you are who decided to buy $300 worth of textbook and maths teaching guides, and the guy who bought not one, but two $500+ woodworking tools!) And no I am in neither of those niches! That’s the power of amazon-  get the customer to click through on your 99c e-book and suddenly they will remember they need to do thousands of dollars of Xmas shopping – all on your commission! 

Nice Features:

  • the last six week’s reports are available in the membership area – you don’t have to rush to download them. In fact maybe its all the reports since you became a member? Anyways I’m pretty sure on subscription you get the last 3! 
  • sorted by department – so its easy to find your niche. 

Watch Out For

  • to be up front – you can do this yourself – at least the basic query – by using some clever stuff in Google – for me – I can’t be arsed  the easy format and the tagging of which products are “NEW” on the list each week – is worth it for me! 
  • its a monthly subscription – not a huge amount of money – but yeah its money- a pain. Take a note of the sub date and remember to cancel in Paypal if you are not using it – or you have enough results for now. 
  • there’s an up-sell of some AMAZING affiliate system on the front page – I know nothing about it and don’t recommend it – all I know about Amazon I’ve learned from Dave from ZenDuck

Good For 

The criteria for product selection means that its easy for anyone to write a review – so I’m using the list to develop ideas for Wizzley for a new niche. Basically I can try a product related niche out – see if it ranks easily in Wizzley and build out a site later if it works out (and use Wizzley for the backlinks). 

Yeah and here’s that evil self-serving link again: Amazing Gold Mine – or take the criteria they use and develop your own queries! 

THE BIT AT THE BOTTOM YOU SHOULD READ!

I’ve found a cool wrinkle on the hubpages fiasco – but I don’t want to shoot my foot here – I will be saying something to subscribers later this week – so sign up OK – that’s the honking bit form just below here – that one -the big one you can’t miss! 

Categories
Making Money Online Passive Income

Passive Income Online: Best Posts of 2009

An Online Business in 2009

Well this seems to be the tradition at this time of the year to look back at your “best of” posts of the previous year. In fact its not a bad idea because internal linking is really a good idea – and hey some of your visitors may even find some benefit.

An Online Business in 2009
An Passive Income Online Business in 2009

To (mis)-quote Dickens it was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

My optimistic 2009 goals are a fairly embarassing example of now NOT to goal set – they are too vague, not tied to abig picture aim really – but at least I had some. I did at least realise that yes, you can make $1000/month with Adsense

This post was pretty much when I hit rock bottom with my hopes for making passive income online – I figured out that all the options were worse than bad – and oddly enough once I understood that  if I didn’t believe in my business no one else would things really turned a corner – mainly because of one my worst written posts ever!

May was the month of the infamous 100 hubs challenge and although I boosted my hubpage earnings significanty. They have since dropped quite a lot – not without first making me quite a few thousand dollars though! I intend to revive some of my formerly successful hubs – possibly as mini-sites or on Infobarrel

As the year progress I slowly realised that I had to more and more treat this online adventure as an online business (one of my better posts I think). I’d even worked out that I could build a legitimate online business  and sell stuff online without feeling like I needed a shower!

By the end of September I actually had some online income which needed management! By October I had written my first e-book on buying and selling websites

At the end of the day –  Ican’t imagine a better lifestyle than the one I have now – it is definitly worth trying to make an income online.

Good ideas I still use

Keyword Academy – I still use their prinicpals for keyword research – in general – I am not totally convinced on their backlink startegy but if that program had been available a year earlier it would have saved me a year of heartache and made me a lot more than the cost of membership!

An Alternative to WordPress – anyone who has more than 2 or 3 blogs will no that WordPress needs constant updating – not the content the bloody software – Mystarterblog is ideal for easy to maintain, niche blogs

If you can’t be bothered reading all of Grizz’s blog  (allow a week) – then Janet has summarised his methods in her Nomad’s Guide to Make Money Online

Online Backup – this really does work seamlessly – after the initial setup – any file I add or modify is backed up the next time I’m online – for free!

Not such good ideas from 2009

Entrecard destroys your search traffic

Today Blog Scam

So have you done a year summary for your blog? If so feel free to leave a link in the comments below!

Categories
Online Business Passive Income

Making Money with An Online Gold Rush

I had to explain my business to my accountant recently having finally made some online income to declare! Its been a while since I tried to explain my business to someone who, although they had their own website and is very computer literate, really had no idea what I was talking about.  The thing is that people think because the Internet has only be around for 40 years and Google for less than 10 years, maybe making money online is all different and there has never been a moment like this in history before – well I beg to differ  – there is nothing new under the sun and understanding history is certainly useful in avoiding the mistakes others have made.

Sovereign Hill, Ballarat, Victoria
Sovereign Hill, Ballarat, Victoria

The Internet Marketing is like a gold rush people – Klondike, Otago, Victoria, doesn’t matter which country: gold is found, some people make money, many don’t, some companies are made others die, and society changes forever.

For those of you are not familiar with history: gold rushes brought incredible wealth it a few and incredible hard work and death to many more – and I am a firm believer that understanding history can sometimes stop you repeating it.  Your average or typical gold rush goes something like this:

  1. Gold is found – the early prospectors try to keep it quiet but news comes out and the rush is on. Men abandon their families and start walking to the gold fields. Well at least you only have to walk to your nearest broadband connection these days! But try explaining to your spouse that your “playing online” is a serious business – they will think you mad or worse. My partner asked me the other day how many people make a living full-time online – I really have no answer but I suspect very, very few do, doing what I do.
  2. Many start digging the fields – backbreaking work, they go broke, the get sick, they die. Many of those diggers on the fields had been professionals they had never panned for gold in their lives – its hard and dangerous work. There is more skill than is apparent at first glance but basically its hard work, the tough survive. 95% of Internet Marketers give up before they make a $100 – I just made that statistic up, but its probably accurate. There is more skill required than is apparent at first glance but basically its hard work, sluicing a few pans of gold won’t make you a fortune, nor will your first website. Fortunately you don’t generally die working online though many  people do seem to have issues with weight gain and loneliness.
  3. Some of the people who nearly made a strike or made a small strike but didn’t make enough to retire they move sideways and  start to make a comfortable living by selling booze, picks and pans to the miners. A lot of booze was watered-down and some of the picks were of poor quality… The entire “A-list” blogger phenomenon are the the publicans and the suppliers of the gold fields – they sound like they have useful stuff to sell but there’s is not the business model you want to follow if you want to be the one to strike it rich.  How many pubs can one town support (well quite a few from the Australian gold rush towns I may be pushing the analogy a bit here!)
  4. A very, very few of the miners found wealth beyond belief, they built a fine house (a long way from the gold fields), had a family and lived happily ever after.  Most of them did not publish a book on how to make money on the goldfields.  The people who make serious money online you never heard of  -they don’t run blogs for sure!

Well most of them don’t write blogs – but one or two do… So if you really want to know how to make money blogging follow this link on how not to be a better blogger.

The gold rushes were a huge social disruption – they turned society upside down, they substantially changed the way society was forever. They created new towns, the Victorian gold rush stopped deportation to Australia forever. The wealth of Melbourne gave it some of the first municipal  public transport and electric light in the world.

They were a huge chance for people to make money – people who had never had a chance before.  Most people didn’t take the chance – they sat on the side-lines and worried about whether the gold fields were really a way to make money. Once the gold field became established they figured that they had missed the opportunity and stayed home. There are gold mines in Bendigo to this day – 140 years after the initial rush.

A lot of companies disappeared – they failed to realize the opportunity that the gold rush offered – some banks went broke because they didn’t open a branch in the new towns springing up to support the gold fields.  I think that many of today’s newspapers are the equivalent of those short-sighted banks – will newspapers survive? How will they compete with new citizen journalism websites?

Some people dug for a day or two but they didn’t strike it rich and so they packed up and left – or got a job at the pub – selling the watered-down beer. They told everyone who would listen that you couldn’t really make money with this new fangled gold thingy!

Some people got burned – they bought the poor-quality shovels, they noticed they couldn’t move as much dirt as their competitors down the road – the smart ones reinvested in their business and bought better shovels.

Some people dug for gold in the wrong place – they dug and dug and found nothing – until one day! Some people made money on day one, some took 6 months or 6 years, the ones that stuck at it generally did make at least a living at it.

I’m a geologist – I’ve worked in exploration – I can tell you there is nothing quite like the thrill of finding gold or whatever mineral you are looking for. Even today where its all automated, GPSed and computerised there is still a thrill of the chase.

I used to find looking for keywords boring and frustrating – but then I started making money from those same keywords – now I find them absolutely fascinating – mostly the topics I write about are really boring – but I never get bored with watching  the money come in…Gold panning is still back-breaking work I prefer the online alternative…

Categories
Online Business Passive Income

Online Income How To Make $1000 Online!

River Cruise Europe

Well oops – I see I haven’t done an online income post for a while – and now its the new tax year in Australia this is as good an excuse as anything to avoid doing my taxes!

Back in May I had some new goals – so lets report against though shall we – well it amuses me – sorry if you find it boring!

What has happening in the interim is that my passive online income has doubled from May to June.  My overall income including some freelance work was US$1400 – not too shabby really – considering where I’ve come from. OK I’d struggle to live on that amount in Australia, though I certainly could in some parts of the world, but at least its more than I would have earned on the dole! And I figure its just the beginning because certainly the passive component of that (about 50%) will only keep on going up.

Update on Current Business Goals

Get those 10 sites up and running with backlinks built and starting their run up the SERPS.

Hmm not quite – “excuse” below

Build more backlinks to the hubs which make me money- after all they are hosted for free!

Thanks to the hubchallenge income this is where my time has been going – it started working for me so I focussed on hubpages for the last month or so. Yes I know I need to diversify – but I also need to build a winner while its working for me.

Looking to develop another website which will be more focusing on small real world business owners and micro-preneurs who don’t know where to start with ranking a site in the SERPS. Definitly there is scope here – I just need to focus my plan on this one.

Looking to develop a “real world” business of my own. I am considering starting doing some SEO consulting if/when we move back to New Zealand.

Maybe – we are in Australia now until at least the end of the year – I will probably combine these two somehow.

Meanwhile my real goal:

River Cruise Europe
Categories
Adsense HubPages Making Money Online Online Business

You Really Can Make Thousands on Hubpages

As most of you probably already know I have been on Hubpages for a very long time – it will be three years in October actually.  I knew Hubpages very well, I liked the site, the community and my ability to publish there – I thought it was an adjunct to my “real” money sites.  I was wrong.

Over that time I saw it more as a hobby than serious online money making. In fact hubpages has earned me thousands of dollars  -indirectly – by getting me several freelance writing gigs – but I’m not talking about that.

I also used hubpages to jump start this blog as my earliest readers were fans who followed me over from hubpages – thanks guys. Its a good place to build “a brand” – but I don’t mean that either.

I knew hubpages was great for backinks – I have PR4 and PR3 pages there and they were easy to get.

I knew I could make some income on HubPages  – April was a good month it was the first month I hit over $100 in Adsense – from hubpages alone.

But I didn’t realise you could make serious money on hubpages –  I was an idiot.

I started the HubChallenge but used the wrong approach.  I started again focusing on Adsense income. I have, since the 29th May I’ve made $51 from my 40 new hubs.  In fact of those 40 only 9 have made more than $1.  Most of the hubs that have made money I published in the first week …Do the math and you will understand why I am very,very happy.

What was my secret – two things: keyword selection and building backlinks.  What are the details on how to achieve these results?

I’m following Court’s approach as detailed in broad terms on his blog with his final posted titled: Make Money with HubPages Experiment Complete he made $475 in the first month, his aim is $3000/month  – I’m not as experienced as him – I’m aiming for $2000/month to start.

You want more detail? The details are available to Keyword Academy subscribers. Am I going to repeat them here – no I’m not. One because the technique is Court’s IP and two because if you really aren’t prepared to spend a $1 to have a look – you don’t really want to make money online.

Oh and if you have been on the fence – or you still not convinced that you can really make more than hobby money from hubpages then sign up before Thurs 25 June 6pm  MDT because that’s when Court is doing a live webinar on exactly how he made his money on hubpages. (The content will be available afterewards as a video download for subscribers if you missed the date, but you won’t be able to ask live questions obviously). That self-serving affiiate link again: Keyword Academy

Categories
Making Money Online Online Business

Passive Income and Online Friends and Competition

There is a great debate about how much those of us who build online passive income sites as to how much you reveal of your niches. There is every opinion out there – some people don’t care who finds their sites – others go to great lengths to conceal their niches.

1070365_friends_foreverIts at tricky balance in my opinion and part of the answer lies in people’s underlying personalities and some in their business model. Its an issue that anyone doing passive income blogging has to deal with at some point though.

I resisted the idea of having multiple online personas for a long time. Eventually though I realised that I wanted to start a couple of new personas on hubpages for the hubchallenge – having a few more profile pages which I could link to my sites seeemed like a good idea. Then of course if I build backlinks to those hubs from other sites such as article directories then I need the same persona to link there, and so it goes as they say.

Here’s some points that people do confuse themselves with – who are you hiding from Google or your competitors. If you are running Adsense you are not hiding from Google because the sites are linked with your pub-id – you might as well run Analytics as  well and use a gmail address.

If you are monetizing with Affiliate sales or otherwise yes you can “hide” from Google – though if determined they will still track you down unless other people own your sites, as a domain registrar they have access to this information even if you have privacy enabled.

What do you do – do you think hiding your niches is important – do you make a cursory effort to do this – or do you think its really important and you go to some effort and expense to do so?

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Back Links HubPages

Hubpage Challenge 100 Hubs in 30 Days

OK so not a day after I write about diversifying to other Web 2.0 article sites and review  InfoBarrel the great Hubpage challenge blows up all over the Internet. If you have been asleep under a rock and not paying attention it went like the: Court decided to have a new money making experiment: 100 hubs in 30 days. Well Hubpage’s marketing guy Ryan Hupfer noticed this (btw if you are wondering how this sort of thing happens – I have 2 words for you “google alerts” a great way to know what people are saying about you!). Long story short we now have The Great Hub Challenge:

100 hubs in 30 days

Continue reading “Hubpage Challenge 100 Hubs in 30 Days”
Categories
Making Money Online Online Business Passive Income

How To Create Your On-Line Business For Beginners

Follow your dream to an online business

Many people dream of making passive income online  or starting their own online small business, probably home based, how to make money online they ask?

Follow your dream to an online business
Follow your dream to an online business

Let’s face it there are an awful lot of us who dream of firing the boss and working in their PJ’s.  Few succeed though the figures often quoted is that between 95% and 99% of people who start a blog or website fail to make any money doing it.

I guess that’s why some people are looking for the “business in the box solution”. The follow this plan and all will be well. After all most of us who are trying to make money on-line are doing it after spending years as good little employees. You know do what the boss tells you what to do, when to do it by, and then praises you for getting it done correctly – or not.

Business isn’t like that. On-line busines is different from real world business – but not as much as many people believe.

Why Do Small Businesses Fail?

Apart from cash flow issues, most small businesses fail because they can’t get enough customers. There is no demand for their service or product. Think of the local lady who makes beautiful handicrafts, but no one buys. Think of the coffee shop that makes great coffee – but is 1/2 empty because its tucked away in an uninviting backstreet. Or the geek who can fix your computer just like that – but doesn’t know how to explain to potential customers what he can do.

Now consider the on-line business version of these businesses:

♦the blogger who blogs about their passion for Ancient Roman Gladiators  sports – they have a beautiful blog, with lots of great information and pretty pictures: but no one wants to buy anything there because they cam looking for information which they got in spades on the site;

♦the site which provides great baby gear at the right price – but no one can find the site because the site is called “Kute Kiddies Kool”, all the links to the site are by its name – and people who search search for “cheap baby clothes online” or “cheap organic cotton baby clothes”

♦the site which is developed by a design specialist – its full of cute visual effects and great graphics – but the search engine doesn’t know that the site is offering  computer setup support in the Bay Area because Google can’t read flash or images.

Luckily on-line its very easy to work out whether you will have customer for your site or not – we call them searchers.

Simple Steps to Make Your On-line Business Work

  1. Decide whether or not you are in business. If you just want to make a few dollars from a blog – then you are not in business, you have a hobby.
  2. Work out which business model works for you: provide services (writing, technical, whatever) to others,  develop sites which bring you in passive income, or use your on-line business to support, funnel visitors to your real-world business.
  3. Focus your website on keywords which a) get traffic and b) are buying keywords – terms people search for when they are looking to buy something not just for information.
  4. Check that there is not too much competition for your search terms: either use free tools or something like Market Samurai
  5. Decide on your method of monetization: either funnelling traffic to your real world business or getting paid by eBay or Amazon affiliates, other affiliates, promoting an e-book, promoting your own services or Adsense.
  6. Build a website which focuses on your chosen keywords: whether you use WordPress, handcode html, use MyStarterBlog or Dreamweaver – doesn’t matter – just do it -its the easiest part of the process. Make sure you on-page SEO focuses on your keywords i.e. get the keyword in your title, sub-headings and content.
  7. Get your site ranked in the search engines: get it ranked for your keywords by getting backlinks which anchor that term. Get backlinks from article marketing and supporting sites like today, hubpages and squidoo. Submit articles to ezine articles.
  8. Rinse and repeat.

So I have a question for you guys: what bit is so hard and scary that you can’t get started? Which bit makes people search for the simple, one process fits all, turn key system. This is being in business people; its scary, there is no one-size fits all that will work for everyone – otherwise no business would be able to hire an employee.

If you are looking for a supportive membership site which will help you succeed check out my review of Keyword Academy Video Crash Course

Photo Credit

Categories
Online Business Paid Tools Passive Income Tools

Understanding Buying Keywords with Market Samurai

Sorry I am doing a lot of talking about software – and mostly they don’t even have affiliate programs – aren’t I a bad Internet marketer! At the end of the day though you need to the right tools to earn passive income online.

Choices - there are just too many in IM!
Choices - there are just too many in IM!

I don’t know about you but my biggest technical challenge with Internet marketing, aside from the whole “I’m a marketer” mind shift was figuring it out what a profitable keyword is. I’d say its still my major issue!

Its confusing – I start with a good idea – I create 1000’s of associated keywords with Keyword Elite and then try to figure out whether I can take on the competition in SEO Elite. Although these tools are incredibly powerful they also have a couple of disadvantages:

  1. They are slow – and quiet often my IP gets banned from Yahoo or Google for a while – so I have to stop and start again the next day;
  2. There is no obvious workflow – step-by-step procedure if you like. The software’s videos are useless and the best I’ve seen on how to actually use it are Vic’s videos on Bloggerunleashed

Market Samurai has been around since last August (?) and is still in Beta – not all the modules are available yet – but what is I am liking a lot! What do I like about Market Samurai?

A built in WorkFlow for Identifying Profitable Keywords

The way I am using Market Samurai at the moment is:

  1. Keyword analysis: you seed a phrase and it generate options
  2. Filter out the obviously unsuitable phrases and the ones that get not traffic and export the rest to a spreadsheet
  3. Analysis each remaining phrase to see what the competition is.
  4. Categorise my spreadsheet with the high priority (low competition, high profitability) and the medium (medium competition, higher profitability)

Pretty much I am using the approach described in the videos below by Market Samurai’s creators.  I’ve linked the introduction video plus the three detailed follow ups. They are quite long and detailed but I found them clear. You may want to take notes to get your head around it.  They also mention the free tools you can use to do a similar, but far more labour-intensive analysis, so its useful to see these even if you can’t afford the software.

The First Golden Rule: Target Keywords With Traffic

The Second Golden Rule: Target Profitable Keywords

The Third Golden Rule: Target Keywords With Low Competition

I am finding this a really useful approach – and in fact I’m going back through my existing sites and realising that I had made two key mistakes:

  1. Chosen keywords with no traffic
  2. Chosen keywords with no buying traffic.

Like DUH! For example I OWN the search term “internet marketing HubPages”  – I dominate the e-book scammers, for which I am very happy! However I now know they weren’t making any money – because #1 position gets about 1 searcher a day!

Pricing and Free Use Period

You can try it risk free – by downloading the fully functional software (the module that’s aren’t available aren’t available in the paid version either) you have 40 days to decide whether to pay for it.  N.B. the site says 12 day trial – but have a 40 day count down –   so beware that you may only have 12 days to make a decision – can someone leave a comment if that happens to them.

The price is $147 which will no doubt go up in the future – to a subscription model I suspect. If you like it make sure you buy it at the current price before the rest of the modules were released 🙂 Regretably there is no affiliate program yet!

I’d love to hear your comments pro/con this software or anything else that makes it easy to find that elusive buying keyword!

You might want to check out my Free On-Page SEO Series too – starting with What Are My Keywords?

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Categories
Paid Tools Product Reviews Tools

MyStarterBlog: An Alternative to WordPress?

Guys – this is a neat new tool to create websites really easily, from a cool guy Steve McGrath over at McGrath Info  Solutions.

MyStarterBlog is an easy way to create a blog without all the overhead of WordPress – no database required!

An Example of a MyStarterBlog Site: Pink is NOT Compuslory!
An Example of a MyStarterBlog Site: Pink is NOT Compuslory!

MyStarterBlog is a cool little program which allows you to upload a complete website – including content (which you have to provide of course) in one file. There is no database involved. There are a couple of advantages to this.

  1. It takes very little bandwidth or other resources from your host – it will run a lot faster than the equivalent site running WordPress or blogger.
  2. Although there is a comment facility (via email) – and most visitors will think the site is a blog (check out the example MyStarterBlog site here), its not a  blog in the sense of  spammers looking for a place to put their viagra ads in your comments!
  3. Runs out of the box with some themes pre-packaged but you can buy more themes or adapt whats available if you are prepared to hack some php.
  4. You don’t have to update your blog/theme/ widgets every time you login just to make a 5 minute post!
  5. You are less likely to get hacked because hackers target WordPress’s known security flaws – meaning that you have to keep upgrading (see 4. above!)
  6. If you ever need to move host – you just reload the site – one file – DONE! If you have ever tried moving a WordPress blog between sites you will understand that this approximately a a zillion steps less!
  7. You only have one small file to upload – around 300k, rather than the 4MB or so that most WordPress installs involve.

Will It Cost Me? Yes and No

There is a free version which has the following restrictions:

  1. Only supports one blog
  2. Links on pages are no-followed

Download it had have a play -a the end of the day – if you hate – you have spent – nothing!

If you upgrade to the registered version – currently $17 now $7 – can’t beat that price!, then you have:

  1. Unlimited blog support
  2. Ablity to import posts from text files
  3. Ability to import from existing WordPress blogs (using the XML export format)

If you like product then write a post about it on your blog within 15 days of your first purchase. Email Steve with your details and he will refund $10 to your PayPal or AlertPay account. You don’t need to do the review anymore  the software will cost you $7 – that’s not free – but its bloody close to!

And that includes free upgrades for life to!

Bottom Line: Do I Recommend MyStarterBlog

Yes I do if you have specialist blogs that you don’t update so often I think its ideal – because frankly for most blogs WordPress is waaaay over the top.

It would also be idea for a beginner blogger – you don’t have to learn about widgets/themes/upgrades etc etc

I recommend it to because you can try it before you buy  – and I like that in software.

What You Will Need to Use MyStarterBlog

You will need hosting, a domain name, an ftp program (to upload your files).  See my recommendations for these and other software here on my Software I Use page

Disclaimer

I’m going to get my $10 for this post – but you don’t have to write a postive  post to get that $10 – Steve just wants to get the buzz going on a new product, so rather than an affiliate program which bumps the price of the software up he has come up with this innovative approach. This is a limited time offer – so give it a go and if you want to get MyStarterBlog for $7 rather than $17 – do it now rather than later!

I tried to find something not to like about this product – but honestly I can’t. I am not a developer myself but I’ve worked with programmers for many years in my real world job and I know how much work goes into creating a cool little tool like this! For the price, even $17 – its a steal.

It may not work for your business so try the free version and see if you have a use before paying.

Categories
Passive Income

Passive Income Online – How Much Does It Cost To Start

Passive income – to my way of thinking is the best income to have. Why? Because I’m bloody idle that’s why!

Labradors have the right idea! Oh and because I know its possible to. My partner and I own several rental properties in New Zealand, we bought them several years ago and every month we get paid the income from them. Is it passive income – sure it is – we’ve never met our tenants, we don’t mow lawns, we don’t take calls about broken toilets at 2am – my property manager does.  Property investment can be as active or as passive as you want to make it – but you have to pay someone to do the work for you.

Property investment is not risk free either. Our rental properties are exposed to interest rate risks, tenant availability, natural disasters, property manager going bad etc etc. If we’d borrowed the amount the bank was prepared to lend us a few years ago we would be in a nasty position now.

Making passive income online, to my way of thinking is a much better thing than making passive income from property investment. Why? The risks are lower much lower. The investment required is much lower. It’s not zero though – this is what I think it takes to start making passive income online.

BTW I am not talking about working from home jobs here or freelancing – that’s not passive income – if you are unclear about the difference check out my analysis of what’s the difference between passive income and work at home jobs.

Personal Attributes

  • be teachable – that’s it really if you can take on new attitudes and learn new skills – you’ll make it. That’s it really I listed a long list of skills I’d developed working online, previously – but if you are teachable none of this will be an issue.

How Much Money Do You Need

  • if you don’t have a reliable computer you need one. You don’t need anything fancy though and my 4 year old 14″ laptop does just fine.
  • you need a fast broadband or cable internet connection. I really don’t think you can do this with dial-up though some may disagree, the time you waste on a slow connection more than justifies the cost of a faster one IMHO
  • you need enough money to support yourself for the first 12 months and enough to subsidise your expenses (assuming you want to live about the poverty line ) for the next 12 months. Or a helpful spouse/partner/SO who will do same.

That’s it so basically the right attitude and 18 months worth of living expenses. That’s a pretty low cost entry point for a business. If you can’t afford the time without cash coming in you can always start part-time while working a “real” job

But you say – what about special software? what about hosting ? what about domains? what about paying for links? what about  mentoring programs? what about e-books?

What Software Do You Need to Earn Passive Income?

The first software I  bought for this business was Dreamweaver its a very nice piece fo software and I used it to build my first site- nice software does the job – but so does WordPress and its free.

I use OpenOffice to write in and often a simple text editor called Q10 – both free.

Yes I use other tools – I use SEOElite, Keyword Elite for research and other services and tools to create links for me – but you don’t actually need any of them.

Do I need Domains and Hosting

Nope – but I would probably pay for them before I paid for software.  I buy domain names from time to time – like this one, I have a reseller hosting plan with Hostgator which I recommend.

But you don’t need any of it – you can create money making sites of free hosts such as blogger.com

But How you ask – well for that you will have to buy the e-book – but because you are my valued reader I’ll give it to you for a special price…Well I’m a beginner at this so I’m not going to tell you.

Instead I can point you over to Frank Carr’s blog and check out his post on how to earn online cash with a niche blog. His method is not original, in fact its similar to how Grizz makes money with Adsense – but it works – its not sexy, it may be differnet from what the A-listers tell you about list building – but it works. Oh and it won’t cost you any money either! And Frank doesn’t even want to collect your email address – and neither do I!

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