Categories
Blogging Making Money Online Online Business Passive Income Search Engines

Passive Income – There Is Such a Thing – Who Want’s a Business?

Passive Income - New Zealand Style

Had to engage in the conversation here – Leo – says there is no such thing as passive income he argues that we all should be developing businesses not just relying on SEO to climb to the top of the rankings.

Funny how my name has got associated with passive income – as friends pointed out to Leo (and not saying  Leo isn’t a friend  – merely wrong 🙂 )  I would be in for the argument.

Not Passive Income

OK so lets step back. In the dark times pre-passive income – I used to be a highly overpaid IT consultant – I was paid a nice hourly rate by companies who wanted to upgrade or replace software. I used to work on a salary – a “safe” job right. Yup, it was –  I never got fired from a permanent job – but it was huge, huge millstone around my neck.  You see turning up 40 hours a week – even if the hours were somewhat flexible – meant that I could only travel in the holidays-  I only got 4 weeks annual leave so even with creative use of leave without pay, public holidays and anticipated leave – I could only get away for 6 weeks ever couple of years.

I could afford the travel – but I didn’t have the time – the rules around my presence at work were  my definition of hell.

Business or Passive Income ?

I looked at options – buying a franchise is a popular one around here – but it sounded like buying a job to me (told what to do – lots of bosses (clients) and high overheads (franchise fees)) – no thanks.  Plus, again – you have to be in the country to run the business.

Starting my own business – I never considered it to be frank – I  not only couldn’t sell, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to risk my capital and the failure rate for small business in New Zealand is pretty high (and usually that takes your house too).

I started to look at other options. When I started researching my options I came across the concept that you could invest now and get paid later. I could buy property and get paid rents, I could buy shares and get paid dividends (rarely in my country but the principal is still there).

Passive Income Take 1

This was promising – I did quite a bit of research. In the end we invested in property (my partner was already in shares) – and its worked  for us and continue to do so.

Now some will argue property investment, particularly residential, free-standing, older wooden houses, in earthquake prone countries,  is not passive. They will say houses need to be maintained, tenants need to be  found, managed and got rid of.

Yup – and you can outsource the lot! Case in point – house we own in  small town New Zealand.

Passive Income - New Zealand Style

Here’s the rough figures (all NZ$ – NZ$1 = US$0.75 at the moment – but relatively it doesn’t matter).

Purchase price 2003 – $77,000

Currrent estimated value 2011 $150,000

Unrealised capital gain 6.4% a year

Original tenant left a few weeks ago – yup same tenants for 8+ years – never missed a payment – $140 to $160/week for 8 years.

Gross rental  income: $8320 or 10%  cash yield

Gross yield 16.4%/year (yup that’s why we don’t focus on shares very much).

Now the property does have expenses, we  use a property manager,  pay Council rates and insurance, and of course we borrowed the purchase price so there is mortgage interest as well – but time wise its cost us about  2 days when bought the place (one day deciding to buy the place, one day due diligence, signing papers) and now – eight years later we spent 1/2 day, inspecting the property and arranging for someone to give it a good tidy up.

Is that totally passive income? No

Is it bloody close, the way we do it  – yes.   And even we maintained and managed the properties ourselves (and plenty of larger landlords do) – we would have a business giving a us a ful-time income for a very part-time amount of effort. But we don’t that because between the two of us we are crap at DIY and are too soft to deal with ratbag tenants!

Will this property  be passive income for us for the next 10, 20, 30 years?   Should be, likely to be, unless there is a major earthquake in the region – when it won’t be a total loss – but we will probably get paid out and have to walk away at that point.   Is passive income guaranteed – nope.

So if property investment is so great – why didn’t I stick with it? Well we did – but we stopped buying – why? Risk, to make good money on property you need to gear up (borrow) – to do that you are layering  risk on risk – we got to the level of borrowing against asssets that we were comfortable with – and stopped.

Property is an as passive or active income as you design it to be.

Passive Income #2

My second attempt at passive income you are  familiar with, as documented right here. I rank websites at the top of  the SERPS and make passive income from the advertising on them.   Frankly I never started off to build a business online  – a wanted a passive, long term income – and I have that now. Some of my income is from fairly new sites, some of my income are from sites and pages that I haven’t touched for three years.  Last year I inadvertantly demonstrated that I could do little work for several months have not affect my income.

What’s long-term income though – will my websites still rank in 3 years, 5 years, 10 years? Maybe, maybe not – but every indication to date is that older sites rank and hold their rankings better than new sites. But one of the reason I have many websites is the same I reason I own 5 rental properties in smaller, cheaper places, rather than just 1 or 2 in the fairly expensive city I live in – diversification. If one of my houses is destroyed or untenanted – it hurts but its only part of my portfolio. If one of websites gets out of favour with Google or that particularly niche falls out of fashion – the others are still producing.

Now from what I am seeing – nothing much has changed on the last Google update – my sites are still ranking in the same place more or less, my Hubpages may be a little down  – but that could be coincidence/seasonal too.  February didn’t match my record January month – but I know my pattern is that once I hit a new income record it takes 3 to 4 months to match it again –  in short I am seeing nothing out of the ordinary in my business.

Leo argues that I really should build a business online – a real business with real clients – but nothing has much changed for me – my freedom is still the most important thing for me – and having to be available to clients cuts into that freedom. Having a few clients is fine (and I do) – but ramping it up seems to be just trading freedom for income – a trade I’m not really prepared to make.

Leo argues that SEO will get more and more competitive over the coming years – it could well do – though I wouldn’t overestimate the ability of corporates to adapt – pretty bloody slow in my experience. He argues that I should establish a “real” business which has real followers and therefore not be dependent on search traffic.  I know a little about this – because this blog gets “real”  visitors not just search traffic.  As far as I can tell though -the people who convert are the search traffic.

What I know is that with my silly little sites – I can make a little money – not a huge amount – sometimes $1/day – sometimes more. But even at $1/day lets look at the rate of  return:

Initial purchase of site: (all prices US$)

$8 for the domain

$10-$15 for content on the site Ti

Total: $23

Backlink articles at say $1/each – maybe 30 -90 articles – say $90

Annual profit $243 … annual costs say maybe $20…

No mortgages, no property managers, no rates, no insurance, no risk of earthquakes…

Passive Income – Is It For You? Maybe Not If …

If You Want to Make a Difference

If you want to make a difference in the world – then blogging ain’t where its at – go become a health worker, or a volunteer in a country that needs the help. An engineer bringing clean drinking water to kids in Africa, a researcher finding a cure for cancer is making a difference, me – not so much.

If You Need Money Now

As I have advised many people – if you need money this month, or next month – or even in the next 6 to 12 months – this won’t work for you – it may, but for most beginners it won’t work. It didn’t work for me – I got a job – it paid, it was a crappy job but it delivered what I needed at the time – cash.

If You Have Huge Income Requirements

I remember when I wrote about making $1000/month with Adsense – that it seemed like a lot of money (I hit that milestone almost exactly 2 years later) – $1000/month is a lot of money to me – its not enough to live on – but I could live on it if I had to – its pretty much what the NZ government pays as a pension for the over-65’s and most of  them seem to do just fine.

About US$5k /month would work just fine for me – but I see people making $10k plus in the TKA forums – frankly that’s nice – but its unlikely to ever be me – because I don’t really need the money I will probably never persue it!   If you really need to make a 6-figure salary – again I’d say get a job – just make sure you have the right skills.

Categories
Adsense Online Business Passive Income Search Engines

Farmer Update Fail? Why Google Hasn’t Changed

Tourist Hoards waiting to go up the Eiffel Tower, Paris, France

Looking for headless chook image – could only find hoards of  tourists (close enough I think)! Thought I would do a follow up on my what is a content farm post – as the fall out continues on Google’s recent update – and just point out that human psychology is quite intereting and I am thinking that maybe Google has a number of psyc PhD’s amongst their software geeks.

Tourist Hoards waiting to go up the Eiffel Tower, Paris, France

Google Farmer Update – What Was It?

On or about 1 March in the US results (but will be rolled out worldwide) Google changed their algorithm – they made the unusual step of annoucing  what they had done and Matt Cutt’s is quoted as saying:

This update is  designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.

Google claimed to affected nearly 12% of the search results – but a number of us found either nothing had changed, or nothing bad had happened to our sites. As I said in my last post – I wasn’t see much evidence that they had succeeded.

The problem is of course the age old question:

What the Fuck is Quality?

Some people think this site is quality – some don’t –  but I have no qualifications in making passive income online. In fact  I didn’t even make much income when I started this site – but people thought this site was quality – because I was writing about my own experience.

Here’s another site which is really useful: http://www.cure-back-pain.org/ – the site introduces itself with:

I suffered with crippling lower back pain for 18 years of my life. I know what you must endure everyday while living with back problems. I have empathy for you. I understand because I was there myself. I have found my own cure. I now know how wonderful life can be without the huge burden of chronic pain. It is my most sincere wish that you might find lasting relief, as well.

I found the site because Google has started a thread asking people to report if their site has been adversely affected and think this is unfair – the owner of the site above wrote this:

I am so devastated.  My main site and my life’s work, cure-back-pain.org was drastically affected.  I am not a learned webmaster, I am a back pain patient and someone who writes to help others recover.  My site is 5 years old and has often led in the rankings for my topic, back pain and back pain treatment.  I was let go from my “dayjob” in the economic decline of 2008 and found a savior in the fact that I could make a living helping those who needed it most, so I turned to my site full time and found it very rewarding.  I write all my own content and work my site 80 hours a week+. I do everything myself.  I do not syndicate or outsource anything.  All one has to do is read the letters in the Q&A section to see how much I am dedicated to my cause… I could not figure out what I did wrong to suffer such a decline in ranking and then started to research what may have happened and found that many excellent sites (and many not so excellent content farms) were affected. Eventually, I found some advice from my webhost and checked my site for stolen content.  Guess what? I found TONS of sites stealing my 100% original and self written content!  I am shocked and appalled.  This probably has something to do with my dismissal as an authority in the topic I know so well…

I double checked the US SERPs for back pain treatment. At position #4 I found a news result – like who gives a shite if you are looking for treatment why would I care if Barcelona’s soccer coach has back pain??? I found results from webmd and emedicinehealth (also webmd I think), I found an about.com page which quoted scientific results. And I found this little gem on a classic Made For Adsense site:

The quest for effective back pain relief has thrown up some challenges in the modern world. As we move through the early years of the new century, the pace of life is becoming ever more frantic. With every passing day, there seems to be more to do than there ever was before. At the same time, there is little doubt that the pressure …

If I was the owner of back pain treatment I wouldn’t just be “devastated” I would be utterly and totally pissed off and disillusioned. Now we could have a debate about the sites not that pretty – its a standard Site Build It! template, but its the guy’s only income – and he has actually been giving Google exactly what they want – and the kick him in the nuts.  But all is good – in this self-satisfied interview with Matt Cutts and another Google Engineer apparently:

However, our classifier that we built this time does a very good job of finding low-quality sites. Wired.com

In the words of the Speights Ad – Yeah Right. But of course I wouldn’t want to running off and saying that Google had stuffed up – that wouldn’t be scientific or anything -right? So I went to the home of all in-depth research in things of a darker nature in Internet Marketing – and found that the owner’s of splogs and autoblogs  were very, very happy about the latest update.

I could spend hours going through that Google support thread and finding examples – you may have seen that even sites which are quoted as exemplars of Adsense publishers got slammed included Ask The Builder – page 2 of the thread.

On a skim – the sites I saw that were penalised were:

  • large and generally old (5 + years)
  • had had consistent rankings for quite a while i.e. their owners were comfortably making an income from them which they were pretty dependent on
  • some were general sites but most were specialist
  • most had good original content written by either experts or by someone with a passion for the topic
  • high PR (5 and above) sites were affected

Now I hope, and this is sincere, that in many cases the sites in this thread will get reinstated – but the state of chaos currently gives us one clear point:

Google still can’t distinguish original content from scrapped content. If you are are an old, well-ranking site with content your content will get scrapped, copied and re-written – as of today – this may well result in your rankings dropping.

If those sites do get reinstated it will be manually – not algorithmically.

Some are already asking whether this Google update mis-fired and Leo points out the winners from the Farmer update are in fact the scrappers (at least short term). I agree with his recommendation though to build niche sites to fill the gaps. But as Griz points out – fly beneath the radar

So can you still make passive income online? I think so – from where I am sitting – actually looking at the facts, rather than the hype, Google is no closer to cleaning up its search results than it ever was. If I was starting today what would I do? Avoid the niches Griz mentions in his post, avoid having one huge site on lots of different topics, I’d build a bunch of niche sites across a range of topics, build back links to them – and see what worked.  If I site started producing I would seriously look at taking Adsense off it and finding an alternative monetization strategy.

On the other hand you might just be so scared off by the latest furore in our little corner of the Interwebs – that you decide that you really should go out and get a real job and contribute to society of something – go ahead – but consider this – that’s probably exactly what Google wants you to do …

Categories
Online Business Passive Income Search Engines

What is a Content Farm and Why Does Google Hate Them?

Matt Cutts has the best job in the world. He writes one little blog post and puts the whole of the Internet Marketing community into a tail spin – and his latest is a good one – in fact when googling “what is a content farm” the first result was a news result – indicating that the term is hot, hot, hot at the moment.

But WTF is Google doing? Are they trying to destroy all of us who want to make a few dollars of passive income a month? Is the era of making a living online gone forever? Google search is failing – and what Google is doing is a public relations exercise in order to recover some credibility – and the evidence is in the results of the above search.

So what is a content farm I thought? I asked Mr Google (using US results via the nifty Chrome Google Extension tool) – and Google told me –

News results: according to joisic.com:

The term “content farm” is commonly used to describe these sites that add pages and pages of unoriginal, useless information to the search engines database.

and gigaom.com thinks that:

Companies that do this have come to be known — somewhat disparagingly — as “content farms” because of the low rates they pay the people producing their content and because of the factory-style atmosphere of some ventures.

They then go on to quote examples of such companies as including:

Demand Media, Associated Content, AOL (with Patch and Seed), About.com, HubPages, Examiner.com and Suite 101.

Odd list – hubpages.com doesn’t pay me a cent – I get paid from a share of revenue from articles on their site- my biggest payout comes from Google’s Adsense… BTW I never heard of either of these sites I was thinking maybe LATimes or TechCrunch – its not like the discussion is not being had…

But getting on to the very, very best results for my query:

wikipedia: the entry is somewhat shorter than the list of references and says precisely – nothing …
seotheory.com asks What is a content farm and offers an opinion based on personal experience – rather than rehashed content – odd how its coming in at #4 behind the nonsense in front of it.

Next we have the site called – yup – “The Content Farm” – and yes you can find really useful stuff like how to talk to a child (hint first check if he is wearing priest’s clothing …) or how to determine the weight of an Oscar (TM) Statuette – hint – first win one … In fact its a lot more amusing than the usual stuff on ehow and good luck to them I say – and it just goes to show the Exact Match Domain (EMD) bonus still works ..

At position #5 we have a 2009 post from readwriteweb.com age and authority will allow you to rank with little effort at all…

Many people know how to rank in Google’s search results – and Google doesn’t like it. If you missed the broadcast mesage – to rank content in the search results it is easiest if:

  • your domain name matches the search term;
  • failing that the term you want to be found for is in your url and within your article using the basics of on-page SEO
  • build links to your site – some of those links should be anchored using your search term or near relatives to it.

Google is trying to rank quality – but frankly – it can’t.

Lets take a topical example. Christchurch New Zealand has suffered 2 damaging earthquakes in the last 6 months. In September 2010 there was a damaging earthquake which didn’t kill anyone, on the 22 February and aftershock of that quake may have killed as many as 240 people (figures still unconfirmed at the time of writing). So I am in NZ and I know that this story is so big that it has played in primetime on CNN, BBC and elsewhere around the world. There was non-stop media coverage (without ads) for the first 48 hours in New Zealand in TV1, TV3 and Radio NZ – my point is that there is an awful lot of information on the topic – a lot of new information – which can’t have been gamed by the clever SEO’s. So what does Google.co.nz come up with when I ask it the question many have asked me (an ex-Geologist) in the last week:

So in order we have:

  • a bunch of very useful official sites – any query about christchurch and/or earthquake is displaying this in New Zealand at the moment – fair enough but not contextural search.
  • news results from legit  daily newspapers – though it seems a little bit unfair that the UK telegraph  showed up an the NZ Herald didn’t – NONE of these results relate to my actual query –  the cause of the quake.
  • now the first actual search results is from – Yahoo Answers – yeah font of all legit qualified opinion that is – at least the answers on this particular listing are not too outrageous – but its hardly at a technical level – or even a good English level.
  • next we have a pretty awesome photoblog from MSNBC – nice article – nothing to do with the question.
  • the next two  – yup – two results are from suite101 – one of  the supposed farms – the first article has a sub heading which matches my query – but it doesn’t relate to the most recent event – thought Google was better than that – the second article – does relate to February’s quake – was written several days ago (I can tell from the estimated death toll) and there is nothing really about the question I asked in my query. These articles are reasonably well-written but obviously not by anyone who is either anywhere near Christchurch or knows much about Earth Science.
  • Wikipedia is up next – but the link is to the 2010 quake not the 2011
  • Wikianswers makes it into the top 5 with a  little gem – we don’t know in about 300 words.

But maybe that’s the best there is – so I dug a little deeper – here’s a good explanation and another one here and here – of course I only found those because I know that earthquakes are explained by the science of plate tectonics: obviously no one told Google.

Summary for those who skipped the preceding 993 words:

  • Google can’t make a judgement call about “quality” – all it can try and match search terms with content on a site and the authority of that site. It doesn’t understand even the most basic LSI – plate tectonics goes with earthquakes like cheese goes with wine – go figure.
  • Google is doing a bit of smoke screen exercise designed to scare the f*k out of some SEOs.
  • Google can’t even really distinguish between original and copied content  – I wish they would because I am bored with the scrapers stealing my content – but I certainly haven’t seen it improve in the last few days.
  • Google can’t even pick up grammar –  not should it – Christchurch’s mayor has been widely quoted as  “However it is bad news for one of the city’s key sewage facilities. “Our main sewer truck is seriously munted,” Mayor Bob Parker told TVNZ.” – in my mind the quote of the event and exactly right if you are of a certain age and grew up in New Zealand.  So don’t bury it in the results because its not grammatically correct!
  • Google trusts older sites more than newer sites – and PR has almost nothing to do with it.
  • They have (almost certainly) temporarily – reduced rankings for some large content sites. Apparently including hubpages – I say apparently because my long-standing well-ranking hubs are still exactly where they were in rankings.
  • From forum comments it appears those with affiliate sites promoting Amazon/eBay type products have been slapped down and the affiliate site promoted above them. I remember now why I gave up on promoting eBay and Amazon.
  • From my own figures – niche sites with unique but hardly stellar content are still going strong.
  • Go read Allyn for his take on Content Farms for Google to Zap
Categories
Catalyst Paid Tools WordPress

Catalyst Theme and SEO Options

From time to time I mention the theme I like de jour – but my most abiding love affair with a theme is Frugal Theme – now replaced with Catalyst Theme – and I like them both! (Well sort of replaced I haven’t got around to doing this site yet – its still in the “not broken – haven’t fixed it yet”) pile. But with the release of Catalyst v1.1 I am pretty darn impressed and even WordPress 3.1 is appearing to be stable enough to upgrade to – so here’s my first Catalyst Theme Tutorial.

So how is Catalyst for SEO – well its pretty good – its flexible, it won’t do it for you – but you can set and forget it. First if you are already using a plugin such as All-In-One-SEO or Platinum SEO – then you can keep on using them, they play happily with Catalyst 1.1. However if you are starting a new site – you can probably skip the plugins and just use Catalyst’s built in SEO.

Once you’ve installed Catalyst and the Dynamik child theme – you will have a Catalyst Sub Menu on your main WordPress menu and under that three options: Core Options, Dynamik Options and Advanced Options.

Go to Core Options and Chose SEO (if you are using a SEO plugin at the top of the page will be a warning telling you that anything you do will be ignore).

Setup Site Wide SEO Options in Catalyst

That’s how I do – it but you have got some options:

Title Tag SEO

Title Tag: – you probably want to append the  site description to your title tag – but on the right – (words nearer the left are considered to have more weight in SEO)

If you have a keyword rich site name then you should probably append it  on inner pages – if however you have a general brand name then don’t bother.

You only want ONE H1 tag on the front page – your choice whether its title or tagline.

Robots Meta SEO Options

I  vary on this but I never check NOINDEX on tags or archives – I find them in the SERPS too often. The author page is irrelevant on a single author blog –  so I do check NOINDEX on it and sometimes on Category.

If you want to have comments do-followed you can uncheck this option rather than installing the do-follow option.

I don’t Noarchive anything.

HomePage SEO Options

Generally I use this blank and use the site title (under Settings/General menu)

Homepage metadescription – is helpful friendly, something that may make someone click thru – but has lots of keywords in it too!

Obviously put your keywords in the homepage meta – it probably doesn’t do anything but…

Homepage Robots Meta – all unticked.

Canonical paginated archives sounds like a good idea – to be honest I’m not exactly sure what they are though!

Up to now these options will apply site wide.

In addiition on every page and post in Catalyst you have another bunch of SEO options (under the main editing screen) these include

Catalyst page title

Catalyst description

Catalyst keywords

You can also noindex, nofollow and/or noarchive the post or page.

 

Interested in learning more about Catalyst – HONKING BIG AFFILIATE LINK HERE

Categories
Adsense Free Tools Tools WordPress

Can’t Integrate Adsense and Analytics? FINALLY SOLVED

Unbelievable! I am doing OK with Adsense. And I am not stupid technically, and I’m a woman so I can follow  instructions. I have several degrees, and  I can connect a TV to a digital box and a DVD player, I can waltz..   But I have never ever  been able to integrate my Adsense and Analytics account until today. I have followed the standard instructions, I tried them again, I have changed themes,   I have deleted and reinserted code ad nausaeum, I’ve used plugins for WordPress – nothing bloody worked!

If you have never tried to integrate your Google Analytics and Adsense accounts – you will probably get directed – to this page and if you have multiple domains running Adsense and a single Analytics account this is the relevant part of the page:

This scenario is for people who want to track more than one website in their Google Analytics account. For each website, you may have one or more profile assigned to it.

  1. On the ‘Getting Started’ page, you’re prompted to select either ‘Create my free Google Analytics account’ or ‘I already have a Google Analytics account. Please link it to this AdSense account.’ Select the second option. Click ‘Continue.’
  2. At Step 1, select the profiles you want to link to. Click ‘Continue.’
  3. Step 2 asks you to select a primary domain. Designate one of your websites as the primary domain. The primary domain requires no code changes, so if you have a site that’s large, complex, or difficult to update the code for, that would typically be the site you should designate as your primary domain. Profiles for your other non-primary domains will require a modification to the tracking code.
  4. In Step 3, you’ll see that there are no code changes required for your primary domain. For all other non-primary domains, there is an extra code snippet, the AdSense Analytics Code, to add. The AdSense Analytics Code should be added to the top of any non-primary website that contains your AdSense ads.

For many, or even most of you – this will work – but it never had for me – and I know I’m not the only one. As my Adsense income keeps going up I was getting more and more annoyed at not knowing exactly which pages and which keywords were making me money – how hard could this be, how stupid could I be?

Well after yet another thread of frustration over at the TKA forums RJ from Search Engine Whisperer stepped up and said he would help – he logged into my laptop  played around – changed my primary domain – and bingo it worked… but only for that domain – still couldn’t get Adsense in any of the other Analytics account.

But he prompted me to look again and I found the answer – buried deep in the support forums. If you can’t get analytics / adsense integration to work – try this: (this would probably be better as a video but  I don’t know how to blur bit out of video.

1. Go to your Adsense account and make sure that they “should” be connected ie you have the same user permissions etc – if you are correct in Adsense account you will have a button to click through to Analytics like this:

2. Click through to your Analytics account.  On the main screen – the one that lists all your sites – find the site you want Adsense integration on.   You will need the UA code later – highlight it and hit ctrl-C to copy it (or write it down if you can read your own writing).  Click on the Edit button:

Figure 2

Now you are on the Analytics profile for your site

Figiure 3

Now if you have the problem I had; note how the details say you are NOT receiving Adsense data – that’s the problem. Click on the really tiny edit button in the grey bar just below the check status – yup the one you never noticed before and you will see this:

Figure 4

Yes last paragraph you DO want to receive Adsense data!

If you already had the codes installed on your site – then it will all work now! You probably don’t need that code  provided but you MUST click on that box that asks about Adsense and you MUST save changes on this screen!

How to Check if You are Receiving Adsense Data in Analytics

Obviously you will only see Adsense data as its collected – but as soon as you have done the above change correctly – go back into your normal Analytics reports – under Content on the left side menu you will see Adsense $$  !

How to Install the Adsense/Analytics Integration Code in WordPress

1. I’m using Catalyst Theme which like its predecessor Frugal – has a place to add header and footer scripts. Add the code from the last screen above in the header scripts and your standard analytics code in the footer and  you should be good to go.

2.  Alternatively (and independently of your theme which can be handy) – use a plugin such as Google Analyticator – this is really fast:

  • go to Plugins/Add New and search for “Analyticator”, install the plugin
  • go to the Analyticator settings page (from the main plugin page)
  • click the drop down box to enable the plugin,  then use  ctrl-V  to add the code you selected way back at the top of this tutorial (UA-XXXX-X) into the Google UID setting AND the Adsense ID setting as well – hit save.

Now I know I am not the only one to have had this problem – hopefully this will help some of the rest of you…  If you find this useful please promote the post using the anchored text “can’t integrate Adsense and Analytics” or similar! I’ve wasted hours and hours trying to solve this problem so lets help someone else  to safe that time!

Categories
Making Money Online Online Business Passive Income Plan Review

We Don’t Need No Stupid Badges!

View From Our Hotel Window, Royale Chulan, Kuala Lumpur

The Keyword Academy has this absolutely infantile, ridiculous scheme where you can apply for badges to match your (verified) income – I mean its like pre-primary school right? Except for some odd  reason it does seem to matter to me – and today I made it – I made the next badge up – in the last month I earned $2500 in passive online income and I have nice pretty badge to prove it. Half of that was from Adsense and that figure represents a 50% increase over December’s Adsense figures. So how long does it take to make at total of $4000/month of online income? So in answer to the question “Can You Make $1000/month with Adsense”  (written almost exactly 2 years ago) – is YES, I DO. And yes at the time, I really didn’t think it would be ME that did!

View From Our Hotel Window, Royale Chulan, Kuala Lumpur

In fact I blame Mark Butler (from the Keyword Academy – yup you can get a personal consult for free within the Academy – its smart move by them – but unbelievable good value for members) – I had a consultation with him a few weeks ago – and I wrote on my white board – make $2500 by April 2011 (my anniversary date with Keyword Academy and my birthday). Oops looks like I will have to revise that LOL. Even my long-time goal of US$5500/month is starting to look reasonable – that would mean about US$4000/month in passive income. I can now see that happening this year – so long as I stop my obsessive stat’s checking and go back to work! Especially when I consider that my income has jumped while I’ve been on holidays – I thought  I might resent working while I was travelling but instead

Why that figure – it would cover all our regular household expenses (so long as the US$ doesn’t completely collapse). That’s called freedom – for both my partner and I. Coincidentally it would also be about what I earned as a highly paid, bored, stressed out, IT professional – that would be sweet revenge!

So How Can You Make $2500 / month in Passive Income?

I don’t flipping know – I don’t know you – but I can tell you what has made a difference to me:

  • understanding I wanted a business not a job. Freelance writing is a job. Developing websites for other people is a job. Developing your own websites which produce more income even when you are on holiday – that’s a business.
  • outsourcing. Hiring a writer not only freed up my time – it made me become more organised because I had to tell him what to do – like duh!
  • having a range of sites in totally unrelated niches – sites I thought would be winners – no traffic. Sites I thought no one would EVER buy THAT online – they buy – go figure. I’m too stupid to figure this out in detail – my fool proof method of knowing if there is traffic for a keyword – get to page 1 and see if there is!
  • learning to believe my own stats – rather than what people are saying about the death of SEO, Google changes, Supersite, niche sites are dead, etc, etc. The best information on how to grow your business will always be found in understanding your own statistics – maybe I should write a post on that!
  • I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a paid placement – but I really do credit the forum over at TKA for being part of my success – I really don’t think I would have have hung on this long without the help support and I get there. I rarely ask for it – but just seeing people going thru the same stuff as I am is so incredibly useful and encouraging. Lets face it – few of us have anyone in the “real world” who understand why we play on the Interwebs all day – its nice to have some online friends who do.

Thanks for listening – now I have a lot more work to do…

Categories
Online Business Passive Income Passive Income Australia/NZ

Making Passive Income, Record Keeping and Online Income Taxes

Managing Tax Records Across Two Currencies with GST (VAT)

There was a recent thread in the forum at TKA regarding managing your Internet Marketing income which I added my 2c to. I then got quite a number of PMs from people asking me follow up questions – given the thread wasn’t even mine – I guess my commonsense approach to record keeping and taxes are not so common. So here’s what I think is important – your mileage may vary.

My approach is quite simple – I’m not an accountant – though I did pass ACCY101 a million years ago. I have never found a “system” which manages multiple currencies the way I need to – so I developed my own. I use an OpenOffice spreadsheet – but any spreadsheet program which can sum figures and do the odd bit of multiplication will do just fine. The system has evolved over the years – but I’ve never had to start again. If I didn’t have some complex real estate investments I could do my own taxes off these figures – as it is I give them to my accountant.

Having a system to record your expenses and payments is what’s important – once you have that you can do your taxes – or give the figures to someone else to do. But either way you need to provide the basic figures.

Online Income and Record Keeping
Ignoring taxes to start off with – the first thing you need to have in place is a way to manage your online income. Long before I was making enough to worry about tax – I used to track my monthly income – it kept me sane and motivated. If you don’t know what you are earning how do you know how to improve it?

Tracking Income as You Earn it.
So my first spreadsheet was very simple: each column across the page is a month – and ever row was a source of income. As a I got more sources of income I simply added more rows in.

My Original Earning Income by Month Spreadsheet

I split my income three ways:

  • truly passive – ie advertising and affiliate sales
  • not at all passive income – freelancing – one row per a client plus some more general one off stuff I do like hosting other people’s site and generic SEO consultancy.
  • one-off income – from selling domains or websites – which tend to really be windfall income while the other two groups are more ongoing.

Initially I thought that my three biggest earners would be Adsense, Amazon and eBay and that’s why they are highlighted – its never really worked out that way – I generally suck at eBay and Amazon – but I keep the highlighting …I don’t really know why 🙂

This spreadsheet is dead easy to maintain – near the start of the month I login to all my major affiliates and check what I earned for the previous month – note I won’t have been paid yet by most of them – but I look at the earnings.

Managing Passive Income in a Foreign Currency
American readers can probably skip this section. I don’t live in the US but most of my income is made in US$. I decided early on to manage all my income for planning purposes in US$ – I have my goals in US$ I worry about whether my income is going up or down in US$. Now this is different to whether my income is going up or down in my local currency – but I can’t control the exchange rate so I don’t worry about it to much – I focus on the US dollars. Note my paypal account is in US$ – its my cheap foreign currency account really.

To come back to the currency that matters to me – ie the currencies I pay taxes in and spend money in – I have an conversion line to my local currencies. I use a conversion published by my local tax department to keep thing consistent

Tracking Income as You are Paid It
The above spreadsheet worked for several years. Yes I didn’t track expenses (they were too low to mention, as was my income) and yes I recorded income when I earned it not when I was paid it (again something I couldn’t control). But then I started earning more passive income – and I needed to add a second sheet to my spreadsheet – to record income as I was paid it (this is what the accountants call an cash basis). Certainly in Australia and New Zealand if you are a small business or individual you can chose to pay taxes only on what you have been paid – not what you have earned – that’s what I do.

So I added a second sheet to my spreadsheet it looks like this:

Managing Tax Records Across Two Currencies with GST (VAT)

Although most of my income is earned in US$, Adsense then pays me direct into my local bank account i.e. in NZ dollars – where I get a payment (or make a payment) in NZ$ I account for it as such. The US$ payments and expenses have to be converted to NZ$ for my tax records.

I also do work for local clients – who obviously pay me in NZ$. We have a local tax (GST, like VAT or other sales tax) which I need to apply for local clients but not for overseas income.

My local tax department allows you to chose my own conversion rate – so long as its believable and consistent – they also publish monthly figures for major currencies – I use their’s – fewer room for arguments. Whatever you do – be consistent – for your own sanity if nothing else.

Of course if you are earning enough to earn tax you really need to start tracking your expenses – after all why pay more tax than you have to?

All of my direct business expenses are paid via Paypal in US$ including domain registration, membership site subs, backlink services (Advertising), software etc etc.

However there is also the whole other bunch of expenses which are at “home”. These include both paying my contractors (when its from a local bank account), books I buy locally, electornics and furniture for my home office, a percentage of my ISP expenses, my house insurance, my Council rates, home maintenance, power, parking (for local clients) paper and printer supplies – it adds up – and it all comes off the profit BEFORE I pay tax.

I keep records – well I keep the receipts and throw them in an envelope a month – if I needed them I could prove these expenses. (I do expect to be audited one day by the tax department – my business is so “odd” in terms of amount of overseas income and low local expenses I am sure it will blow an automatic whistle at some point).

At the bottom of the page I do a couple of things – I project my annual profit – I take the last 4 months of my NZ$ profit/loss – divide it by 4 and multiple it by 12 – thus projecting an annnual income – its useful a) to shut up those who still think I just play online and b) it gives me an idea when I will have to start paying provisional tax.

The YTD NZ$ is just my total net profit for the tax year. Our tax year end is 31 March – so at the end of March I use the blue column to total all figures for the year and for the tax return.

Online Income and Tax Residency
Tax residency is not always the same as where you live. Often it is – but not always. For example if I – a New Zealand tax resident – decided to move to somewhere with very low taxes (e.g. most of the oil rich nations) – I may be resident in Saudi or Dubai – but I would still be a tax resident of New Zealand. That’s because New Zealand taxes me on my income – wherever in the world I might live. You can in fact be tax resident in two different countries at the same time – but that’s rare.

The above spreadsheet takes me about an hour a month to maitain. I download the figures from my affiliates, I download the month’s data from PayPal and allocate it to the various expenses/income categories that I use in the spreadsheets. I look up the figures on the household bills and use a separate sheet ot itemise them and work out the % that I am claiming.

Categories
Making Money Online Product Reviews Rants

Site Build It Review – Griz and Ken Evoy Best Friends?

I have been pretty much off grid doing the holiday (vacation) thingy. But I am beyond angry so I need to blog about it – if you don’t like bad language – back button now!

A few days ago Grizz made an interesting post about how he became one of the good guys in the Make Money Online niche – and why he walked away from it. Go ahead and have a read – a genuine apology – even though many of us considered it completely unnecessary – after all I’ve never paid Griz a cent and he’s partly responsible for the decent online income that I make these days.

To be honest his original post freaked me out a bit – maybe I was delusional that my little mini-sites with lots of links would make me money. But Google keeps sending money to my account – the evidence told me that his original methods work just fine – for me anyway. Griz’s business has changed – he appears to have found a way to combine golf with making loads of cash – good on him – but no amount of money is worth learning golf as far as I am concerned.

He wants to change the direction of  his business and has decided to share that info with the rest of us. For free as usual – as I said Griz owes no one an apology.

But I am not angry with Griz.

What has been out of the pub in Ireland and online is the comments on his post – specifically several comments from Ken Evoy. For those who haven’t been around for a couple of years – you may may not know who the hell Evoy is – he’s the owner of Site Build It!

For the back story – Griz summarises it quite nicely here: Site Build It Review.

I wrote a post a review of Site Build It – it wasn’t a good post (I’ve tidied it up a bit over the years) – it wasn’t well researched – hell it wasn’t spell checked. I would have been turned down by 1/2 of the owners of Postrunner sites!

That post ranks #1 for “site build it scam” to this day.

It ranks because of the backlinks to it – the back links orchestrated by Vic and Grizz. The entire exercise taught not just me, but many others the strength of relevant backlinks to promote content on the web.

Evoy’s initial comment was congratulating Griz for turning to the “content is King” side – whatever you want to believe, but everyone should note carefully what Griz does and read very carefully between the lines. (Note I have my own views but the Guinness is calling so that will have to wait).

I’m not furious at that comment.

What I am furious is his his next comments (well more like essays really)- which rapidly turns into a defense of SBI’s outrageous pricing structure ($300 per a Website/year).

The justification for the pricing is – (much paraphrased) – this is how Site Sell makes it money. My business model requires it. Yeah make your own choices about supporting Evoy’s lifestyle. (Oh and yes they do fire people who don’t get on in the group hug of the forums – as mentioned by Evoy).

I could debate this again – but frankly if you aren’t prepared to learn how to install WordPress on a hosting account – then you really should probably look for a different scheme to make money online.

Its not just that this is the same old, repetition of the SBI! marketing ptich – its the fact that all of this is happening on Griz’s apology post! That’s why I am not debating this on Griz’s post – its not appropriate. So Ken Evoy – here are some simple blogging etiquette hints – you may want to incorporate them into your training manuals – I am sure you can expand these into at least 2000 words of content.

  • commenting with and disagreeing with the post is fine – so long as its not abusive;
  • taking the comments totally off topic and promoting your own financial interests is not. Yes I know you didn’t start it but you sure has hell escalated it;
  • shorter is better – writing essays on other people’s blogs is the equivalent of being the grandstander at the wedding reception who won’t shut up after a 30 minute speech when 10 minutes would have been more than enough.

Enough said  I think – I’ve seen outrageous comments before – but Ken you beat the lot of them – and you claim to teach people to build a business – that’s just tragegic!

If you found this post because you were googling “sit build it review” – then please consider what Ken’s own online behavior tells you about him and his company ..

Bugger   – didn’t work still angry – more Guinness is the only answer . Find my original Site Build It Review here

Categories
Online Business Passive Income Rants

Passive Income and What People Think

Prague Castle, St Vitius, Praha in the Snow, Czeck Republic

Making an online passive income from Internet Marketing is the strangest thing. When I had a job as a geologist few people understood what I did – but no one doubted that I was well-paid for it, when I worked in IT even fewer people understood my job, but they took for granted that I made money. Now I do something really simple – I put up websites, based on topics people search for, I use SEO techniques to rank my sites and I make passive income.

And even now that I make enough passive income to go travelling for 2 months they don’t understand how I make money. That’s OK – I’m used to that. What kinda of amazes me  is that – they don’t believe that I make money either! Now frankly I don’t give a shite whether they believe me or not- my partner believes me – he sees me pay the bills, my bank manager is happy, my accountant is advising me to make provision for tax – but the other people – they seem to think I’m delusional.

Prague Castle, Praha in the Snow, Czeck Republic

If you are starting out this game – here’s some advice. Don’t expect anyone to be supportive or believe in your dream. In may be nice to think those closest to you will be your greatest support – in fact from what I see on the Keyword Academy forums – that’s very, very rare. In fact anyone who has a financial interest in you making some money will probably be loudest in their calls for you to get, retain or focus on, your “real job”, Or an education to the one.

I haven’t seen that many people fail in this game – but 95% plus of people who start don’t make more than $10. They don’t fail though because they never put enough work in to have even have tried. I know –  I wasted at least a year – not  working – at the end of it – I’d acheived very little.

I’ve been around long enough to see who succeed and who fail in this game. This is utterly subjective and totally unscientific – but I am convinced that most people that succeed with making a passive income online – do  share some common characteristics:

  • they are bloody minded;
  • they don’t give a damme what anyone else thinks of them;
  • they are out of other options – because of age, skills, location etc they couldn’t get a “real” job even if they wanted one;

If you are worried about what your family/friends/partner thinks of making money online – get a job – this game is not for you.

Now I have some very boring things like goals and objectives and plans to achieve the same.  I have business .

Categories
Making Money Online Online Business Passive Income

Passive Income and Travelling

This picture is a fake! Its really me, and its really Ko Lipe, Thailand - but there is no way I could use the screen in the glare!

I had actually had doubts about whether having my own passive income business would ruin travelling for me. I have a full-time writer and a number of my sites have suddenly decided to rank just before we left home so I decided to buy a 10″ emachine netbook and keep an eye on rankings and progress while on the road.

I was worried about the practicalities though. I know quite a number of people who do this successfully – for example Kirsty from Nerdy Nomad, Matt from NomadicMatt, and Dave from GoBackpacking – but they all have a common characteristic – they are all single and travelling solo.

This picture is a fake! Its really me, and its really Ko Lipe, Thailand - but there is no way I could use the screen in the glare!

I’m not single – I have a partner, who having just done 10 months of contracting was definitely in holiday mode. So how is it working out – do I resent that I get up early to login while he sleeps on, that I hide out in the aircon room while he scouts out the local town? In a word – no – its working quite well. Just as I’d read that people with kids are more efficient online when they can’t be online 24/7 – I think I’ve become more efficient too. We are travelling more flashpacking style than cheapo backpackers so my need for WIFI seems to match his strong preference for aircon.

The main difference though is that I’ve lost that dreadful “tick-tok” of the count down to go back to work – the feeling that you have just used all your vacation time for the next 2 year, 8 months and 25 days. More I am thinking along the lines of – we could afford to come here for each November and still have change from what we spend at home…

Some tricks for being connected to your business on the road:
Nebooks are the go – the smartphone has proven useless really – but the netbook is easy to connect and much easier to use. Although I think its now impossible to buy a netbook that isn’t auto-sensing for voltage – you will need a plug adapter. I found finding a single plug adapter rather than one for Europe, one for the UK, one for Asia etc quite hard (but your mileage may vary) – finally getting one in duty free on the way out. My little 10″ only has a battery life of 3 hours – ideally I’d want something with twice that and a non-glossy screen (really doesn’t work well anywhere you can see the sea – the glare makes the screen unusable).

Warn banks and paypal that you will logging in from strange IP addresses. In the process of booking this trip I had several calls from credit card providers checking out if I had really been booking flights online to and from countries I didn’t live in. That got me thinking and emailed paypal – saying I was going to be travelling and please don’t freeze my account. They said it may still freeze with their automatic systems – but the would file my email and unfreeze the account if required.

I think this makes it obvious why roll-along luggage is a BAD idea!

Remember you may loose the netbook – it may get stolen, more likely it may go swimming on a speed boat transfer or be bounced from the roof of a tuk-tuk. Losing the netbook would be inconvenient – loosing my work, my passwords, my photos is what would be the really tragedy. I am using SugarSync to backup my files and I am using the portable version of RoboForm on a USB stick for my passwords – so that if I do need to use another computer I have those as well. (They also have an online copy for customers which is a second line of defence).

Categories
Making Money Online Online Business Passive Income Plan Review

Passive Income: 2010 In Review and The Two Day Work Week

eMachine EM350 1.66GHz N450/1GB/160GB/Windows XP

Yeah I know – there are nearly 2 months left until the end of the year – but  I am about to hit the road for a spot of independent travel so I will probably have more important things to do than to consider my business position – like spending the loot! Yeah I now make $1,110,223.21 a month in my sleep – and could too – if you would just sign up …

Anyway about a year ago I had some passive income goals for 2010. By the end of March I reported an income of :

Total income of around US$3000/month – of which about 1/3 is passive;;

In the last 6 months (May – October) I earned an average of US$3500, the 6 months before that $3200, and the 6 months prior to that US$2156. My all time record was last month, October, where I was just $8  short of US$4000.  The individual months bounce around but the general trend is definitely in the right direction. Still short of my US$5000/month goal – but not so far off as to be depressing.

But the really exciting bit is that in the last 6 months I have never had less than 40% of my income from passive sources (Adsense and affiliates) – the percentage jumped to 60% in October.

I’ve taken to looking at a rolling 3-month and 6-month average to predict my income and tax liabilities – it seems a much better indicator than just looking at my monthly income.

But there is downside. I don’t live in the US – I can’t spend $US – I have to convert them into NZ$ – and NZ dollar is now pushing 80c to the US$ – it  at around 65c at the start of the year 🙁  . I can’t do anything about my Adsense income which is direct deposited at the day’s rate into my NZ account.

I can use my PayPal account as a US$ account – but I hate leaving too much money in there – I have heard way too many stories about people having PayPal accounts frozen for no good reason and they are not a bank so there is no protection for my money there (and yes there are protections for people’s bank deposits in my country).

Internet Marketing While Traveling or a Full Time Income While Working Two Days a Week

As I mentioned we are going travelling. Now I’ve thinking  quite a bit about how I was going to manage the whole thing of working while I am travelling thing.  Lets face when faced with a warm beach and cheap eats and booze in Thailand – what would motivate me to be working? Well yesterday I found that motivation.

Every week or so I run Market Samurai to update the rankings on my sites.  I also keep an eye on Google Analytics to see what keywords people are using to find my sites.  I haven’t put a new site up since April – but I wasn’t getting anywhere ranking most of the sites either.   At the start of November I spent half a day finding the sites which were anywhere in the top 100 with a focus on the sites which were showing me nice cost per a clicks or where  I was getting traffic but wasn’t in the top three yet.

In October I made record figures (for me) with both Adsense and eBay. Yesterday I ran the same sites – I saw green (meaning rankings had improved) almost everywhere.  Now whether the links I build with Postrunner or the more recent  links I’ve built with Build My Rank I didn’t really care. The result was I was seeing an awful lot of “nearly there” sites rankings on the 3rd and 4th pages. I couldn’t just assume that the keywords I thought would work – would be OK for over two months. I needed to be more in touch. I needed to be able to run Market Samurai while traveling.

I thought about it for an hour or so. I did a happy dance,  and then went out an bought a netbook To be exact an eMachine EME2501915 10.1, 1.60GHz Intel Atom N270, 1GB Ram, 160GB Hard Drive, Windows XP Home (Actually mine has this year’s processor which is slightly faster – but it was as close I could find for my American readers – NZers – head down to Bond&Bond or Noel Lemmings NZ$398)

eMachine EM350 1.66GHz N450/1GB/160GB/Windows XP

(For size comparison purposes its sitting on top of my HP ProBook 4510s – lovely laptop but way to large and heavy to travel with.)

Seeing all those  nearly there keywords meant I suddenly was motivated to factor in working a couple of days a week when on the road. Well that’s the plan – how its actually going to work in practice when travelling with a guy who is definitely in holiday mode because his J.O.B finishes on Friday – not sure, I’ll get back to you on that.

I hadn’t meant to post this today – some other keyword is higher on my priority list – but I found myself, having just reviewed last year’s tax returns from my accountant – sitting there with a big smile on my face. I had just redone my projections for this year – I was in the money – I was going to owe the government so much tax that I’d have to pay provisional tax too – YEAH!

I see people on the Keyword Academy forums asking when? When will I make money? How long will it take? The answer is – it depends – and really you do need to just plain do the work for 6 – 12 months.  Then as you start to see the results (and remember making your first affiliate sale or hitting your $100/month Adsense payout amount is absolutely the most difficult part of this whole business).

Carpe Diem

Seize the day for the non-classicists. If you have been thinking about signing up for Build My Rank cause I am not the only person reporting great results from it – you may click thru on this link an then be disappointed to notice that its closed for new sign ups, but you can sign up for the wait-list.  The owners seem to be making a genuine effort to keep the quality of the network high my not  having too many posts get posted to each site a day. They will reopen again – but whether the price has gone up then (and frankly it should – they could easily be charging at $129 or $149 or limiting the number of domains you can link to) – I don’t know. Sometimes its just not a good idea to hesitate too long – I have a policy of buying fast and canceling/getting a refund fast if it doesn’t work out.