Tag: passive income 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
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
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
Online Business Passive Income

Slope Stability, Earthquakes and Passive Income

Big Pit, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia

You may not know – I used to be a Geologist and even know useful stuff about how to make sure your house didn’t fall down a hill in rain storm or earthquake  (here’s a hint you probably need a 3D slope stability program to do the calculation!)  Having a science degree in real physical science has always been extremely useful – even long after I left the profession – because it taught me about cause and effect – and  that just because something happens at the same time doesn’t mean they are related.

Big Pit, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia
Its predictable whether this slope will fail or not - it won't because the right slope stability calculations have been done on it!

Where am I going with this – and does it relate to making passive income online? Well it does relate – we mix up cause and effect all the time: we think life is more dangerous for kids these days then it was in the old days – but most children survive to the age of 5 in developed countries now – something that would have been beyond imagining  even 200 years ago, and unfortunately still is in some parts of the world.

We think that working hard on a site should see Google loving the site, sending us heaps of traffic and making us lots of money. We get mad if it doesn’t happen inside a month, most of us quit – and most people quit Internet Marketing just before they start to succeed at it.  We chase the dream – but miss the obvious – starting your own business is about risk and reward – but first comes the risk. Building a passive income online is always about building a business: in might be a rental property business or an active share portfolio. Don’t get me wrong you might not be actively managing that business –  my tenants don’t call me when the hot water breaks – they call my property manager – that’s his job –  I pay him to work work for me – but I own the business – I take the risk – no tenant, I still get to pay the mortgage.

Its a lot like building a passive income business online. There are heaps of different models out there – unfortunately the most common one is parcel up shiny objects and sell those to the beginners – and persuade them that the more they pay the more likely they are too get rich overnight. Make no mistake someone is getting rich – but its not the person buying!  At the end of the day – it doesn’t matter really how many make money online products your buy or how many membership sites you enrol in. Unless you are actually building a business i.e. creating some income producing assets e.g. websites – then you are just dreaming.

On that note –  yes I have still been doing not very much to make  passive income  online – I mentioned in a previous post that life had been getting in the way. Well its pretty been going from bad to worse and now back again – I wrote off the car (me v.bus) – not sure whether I was in the wrong or not yet but have the pay out and am not much the worse for wear. Slightly annoying but as the 10-year-old car which we’d stored for 3 years while overseas had been running well until it impacted said bus.   We have also bought a new house and weathered a health scare (that’s all it was a scare not a reality) – I am really looking forward to getting back to some level of normality next week!

Oh and the title – well hopefully most of you will know why the term “slope stability” needed to be in the title – the earthquake was the personal kind not the real deal and the passive income really has been just that for far too long now!

Categories
Making Money Online Online Business Passive Income Passive Income Australia/NZ

Passive Income Ideas

Snorkeling, Turquoise Bay, Exmouth, Western Australia
Snorkeling, Turquoise Bay, Exmouth, Western Australia

I’ve been playing with the new “Niche Refinery” tool inside of The Keyword Academy and found some new keywords for this blog – I shouldn’t have to tell you which one I am targeting today. Its not worth a million dollars or anything – but the current top ranking posts for “passive income ideas” – all leave a whole lot to be desired. As usual  content really doesn’t matter that much – its all about using the keywords in the right place and domain authority in the Case of the current top ranker’s – so I figure with a bit content – and some backlinks I too may get to page #1 and provide some useful information.

What is Passive Income ?

Passive income is income you receive which is not related to how you spent you day – well that’s my definition of it anyway! I might have spent the last week doing this (I wish!)

Snorkeling, Turquoise Bay, Exmouth, Western Australia
Snorkeling, Turquoise Bay, Exmouth, Western Australia

but meanwhile I made over  NZ$2000 – passive income. That income happened with no discernable activity on my part – I don’t think I made any decisions to with last week – but the invoices paying me showed up today – being the first of the month and all.

Passive Income Ideas – Its the Business Model That Matters

Many people will ask how  did I make that passive income last week – the answer is  property investment. Now not all property investors have themselves a passive income business – we do – we hire professional property managers and have never met any of our current tenants – none of whom know that we spent the last 3 years out of the country. Now it doesn’t make us a fortune – there are a few mortgages involved – but we have  had a good capital gain – more than can be said for the stuff in the share market!

The point is -you will find endless arguments of whether an asset class is a passive income or not – the  question should be – do you want it to be? Neither my partner nor I enjoy fixing plumbing or dealing with tenants – so our residential  property is set up so we don’t have to, we chose to do it that way. Alternatively I know people who have created themselves a full-time job looking after their tenants and their property – neither approach is wrong just different.

Top 5 Passive Income Ideas – If You Do It Right

  1. Property investment – its been my top earner to date so I have to put it #1. In New Zealand its tax efficient and low risk. The downside of course is that its only low risk if you have 50% or more equity. Its only passive if you pay someone to manage and maintain properties for you.
  2. Bank Deposits. Yeah really – I can earn over 6% on New Zealand bank deposits and over 5% on call in Australia. I pay no advisor fees, I do pay tax – its the best cash rates in the world  (well anywhere in the world that you have good chance of getting your money back)- anyone around here who pays advisers to put them into a money market “product” is nuts. Overseas investors should think about it – obviously you will carry an exchange risk (which is far from trivial) – but banks in this part of the world  do not fail.
  3. Stocks/Shares/Managed Funds/ whatever you call them.  Primarily I use these for capital gain rather than passive income – but I know this works differently overseas. Again if you chose to be a day trader this will be far from passive income – if  you chose the right advisor long term stock picks- should work for you.
  4. Develop a business which doesn’t require you to work all the hours of the day to make you money. Tim Ferris’s Four Work Week is the ultimate guide to this approach. Most entrepreneurs desperately need to work IN their businesses – Tim points out how you can arrange the business so it pays you without you doing much work at all. You still need to set the business up – but potentially it can cost a lot less than using the first 3 approaches to passive income
  5. Marry a rich partner – well there is some work up front but … – unfortunately no personal experience on this one! Fundamentally if you have enough capital you should never have to work for an income again – money doesn’t fix your life – but it does give you choices.

Those are pretty much the only ways of generating passive income – but as I said above you can still get it wrong – and end up working full-time on a so-called passive income stream .Which brings me to  irony of this post – I write about developing passive income online here – I am trying to develop niche sites which will pay me passive income on a regular basis. Its definitely possible – but I haven’t got it to the scale that I relax yet. Passive income is about timing sometimes -working hard for  a few years so you can take the rest of your life off…. And please no one tell me that freelance writing is a great way to make passive income – tips like that are worth what you paid for them!

Categories
Back Links Passive Income Plan Review

Passive Income and Backlinks No Fluff

Waitangi Park, and Te Papa, Wellington, NZ
Waitangi Park, and Te Papa, Wellington, NZ

Backlinks are key in this business – I hope most of you know that already! I could go on and on about backlinks – particular backlinks for DIY sites which make lots of passive income with Adsense. But  I won’t – mainly because my mate Allyn is on and on about it – he seems to have morphed from the stroppy beer-drinking persona – to a nice non-fluff teaching bloke without a budget to afford a chair in his new fancy videos – and I do find the black background pretty dull compared to his DIY kitchen.

Waitangi Park, and Te Papa, Wellington, NZ
Waitangi Park, and Te Papa, Wellington, NZ

Anyway he has this post up which is all about backlinks – and if you understand nothing else about making a passive income online – backlinks are the #1, important thing to focus on – yes more important than the number of  twitter followers you have, more important than the number of stumbles you have and more important than the content on your site. Good content is quite useful – in fact the only reason I linking to Allyn is because he has put together the definitive post about everything you need to know about backlinks So now every time I get asked about what is a backlink I can just point to this post – handy eh?

In fact  iwas a little sore at Allyn calling me “missy” so I was sorely tempted to link to him with a click here but I thought if I gave him a good link – he might build some links to my post too. That’s something that Allyn doesn’t mention – but is worth pointing out I think – that apart from backlinks the 0ther thing that is helpful in this business is having friends.  I suspect that a lot of people who are trying to make money online are quite solitary by nature – but the reality is that having friends online is a lot easier than having them offline – you just start linking out to people you genuinely like (pssh want to see a cool picture of Ur’s Ziggurat?) or even that you think may eliminate some confusion from your readers (online cash and info domains) .

So headon over and listen to Allyn’s rant about backlinks and think about what my link from here is worth to Allyn   Am I Donald Trump or  just some Kiwi Missy with a Website? Am I Bob Villa or Jane Doe (you will have to watch his videos to figure it out!) And Allyn  WTF is a green screen –  are you going to be doing Avatar 2 next ? And dude you need a chair – or more comfortable pants I reckon!

Meanwhile back with me – January has been complete crap – its a bit better now that I figured out what was wrong. I was on a big downer about being home again. It happens every time I come “home” – I get as closed to depressed as my normally fairly bouncy personality can manage.  Whatever the opposite of being a homebody is – I am it!  This time I didn’t even really want to come home (crises in my partner’s family) – so its been worse.

And running your own business and being pissed with life is not a good a combination – even  my improved version of time management hasn’t helped. This has though – More Time Now – I don’t know the author or his blog – I found the link while aimlessly surfing the web (no TV at the moment so surfing  online instead of channel surfing) – and its quite a useful – I think – well it gave me something to think on anyways – which is unusual for my cynical self -its free -no affiliate links that I can see – worth a read if you struggle with time management

Categories
Making Money Online Online Business Passive Income

How Can I Make Passive Income Online?

We were talking last night, my partner and I, considering what we want to do in 2010 when his current contract comes to an end  and the obvious question came up – do I make enough passive income online for him not to work anymore.  The short answer is not quite – but we are getting close. What’s more I am definitely now of the opinion that it would be a huge financial risk for me to go and get a job now compared to my making money online – and here’s why.

Earning Passive Income while crossing the Nullarbor
Making Passive Income while crossing the Nullarbor

Passive Income in the Real World

Every month no less than eight groups of people pay me – they are tenants in various properties we own in New Zealand.  I hire a property manager so I count that income as passive – every month money goes into our account at home. There is a catch though – every month money goes out of that account too – usually just a little more than went in – all going well it will balance – but if you have a month where you need to replace not one but two hot water cylinders – it does not!

We didn’t plan it that way – but we couldn’t control all the variables – the most important variable is having a tenant – we have an excellent occupancy because we bought the right houses, tenants aren’t the problem. The issue is interest rates.

We bought the last time the interest rates were low – and have weathered our floating rate go from 6.9% to 10.45% and now back to 6.45% –  when you multiple that out with borrowings of just shy of $1,000,000 – it turns out to be quite a few thousand dollars a month – small in the scheme of things but large in absolute terms (BTW if the figures look wrong to you I am talking New Zealand dollars and interest rates).   Yes I know fixed rates reduces your risks but in NZ you can only fix for a maximum of five years – so over the 9 years we’ve owned most of the properties the low fixed rates ran out on us.

So in the real-world property is a great way to make passive income – but it has its risks, and for us the main risk is the leverage that you need to use by borrowing money.  The main way to control that risk is of course to pay some of the mortgages back. So its likely now that when we go home we will downsize our home and also sell our worst performing rental to reduce our outgoings to be comfortably less than our income – we will drop from a LVR of 60% to about 30%.

So what on earth does my adventures in  property investment have anything to do with

How to Earn Passive Income Online ?

Well its about not just the basic question about how to earn income online.  Well this is no secret:  my preferred method is to build silly little niche sites and make money while I sleep, drive the Nullarbor or sip gins by the beach!

Because really that’s the only way I know that you work now – get paid later. Sure there are lots of other ways to make money online – I’m looking at building a Legitimate Online Business to help with the expenses – especially if my partner chooses to stop working – but that sort of business does require a bit of customer service and support – not too much, but some.

Obviously there are lots of ways to make income online which aren’t passive – but are still better than a) working for someone else and b) having to get dressed in the morning. Into this category I put activities such as freelancing (be it web design or writing), selling things (either by drop shipping or from your back bedroom), and building a flagship blog in order to become a Trust Agent and kick start your book deal or speaking career.

But if you chose the right keywords (properties) and have more rather than less (diversification) you can make a very nice income from silly little niche websites.

But some people will even say that its almost impossible to build a significant business with just passive income. I disagree. The main reason people end up as tied up with their own business as they were when they worked in corporate hell – is quite simple – personality.

You Need The Right Personality To Earn  Passive Income

Let me explain, I used to think one of my strong personality traits was a negative thing, in fact so negative it wasn’t something I ever mentioned at job interviews – even when prompted to list my failings. It was a big secret, which I kept quiet – but now I’ve come to realise this personality trait of mine is in fact a huge advantage.

So what is my deep, dark secret? Well I’m lazy – yup bone idle. Give me the choice of working or playing I’d rather watch TV, or sleep, or go swimming.  You see my main motivation with this online income thing, is the actually the same as it was with the property investment. Its to make passive income, because I can’t be arsed working.

With property its easy – so long as you have a good credit record, a mortgage free valuable home and two secure jobs – the bank will offer you three times what you are asking for (good thing we didn’t take it we would have been in serious trouble with the interest rates). After a few years lots of people get out of rentals: its too much hassle – the tenants ring up at all hours complaining about broken light bulbs or leaking taps, the houses need painting etc. etc. But being lazy I had set it up right – I’d found a property manager first, found out what sort of property they had the least problems managing – and bought properties that fit that criteria.

We’ve never had the problem – the tenants don’t call us – I doubt they know who we are – they deal with the property manager. Property is entirely passive income if you have the right property manager, the right properties and the right level of debt.

Online income is similar. You can make yourself a slave to your online income business as easily as you can a real-world business. For a long time i.e. 20+ years I said I didn’t want a business. I’d worked for small businesses where the owner took less out of the busienss than he paid me, worked longer hours, never took a day off. I wasn’t delighted about working for someone but at least I chose the right profession, got well paid, normally had a choice of jobs and really should have had it made.

But I couldn’t outsource my real world job – so it was still an issue with my laziness – I still had to get out of bed in the morning and get dressed – that wast he problem.  Obviously I needed to own my business – but I didn’t want to work stupid hours – in fact I wanted to work as few hours as possible.

So now I need to set up a genuinely passive income online. That’s an income where the customers don’t call me – they don’t even kow who I am – they buy from me and they move on. That’s what I like about making passive income online. Some of the A-listers dont’ really believe that its possible – but they have a disadvantage – you see its important to them to work hard in a driven manner – but that’s not important to me at all. I don’t need to work to be important – I need to work to make money. If I won $5 million tomorrow in lotto – would I keep on building  websites – LOL don’t be stupid – I’d put in the bank and live of f the interest! Well I might keep this passive income online website going just to have fun calling out the scams, but that would be purely for entertainment – not work or anything.

Other Lazy Onliners

Phil @ I Need Money Now

Roland @ Online Income

Shane @ Freelance Writing

agrande @ MLM Leads Guide

Categories
Rants

Spammers Send Me Post Ideas!

Its really fun sometimes this blog – I enjoy the fun we have in the comments – and quite often I get an idea for a follow up post on the subject of  passive income and online scams. But rarely do I get an idea from spammer – until today. Now this wasn’t just the usual brainless –  “please write more on this topic” comment spam. This was a real life email sent to me via the contact form – and this is what it read – in its entirety:

spire-club

From:
Ruth
email : ruth.gonzales@yahoo.com

subject: http://www.spireclub.com

message
Can you please add the spire club to the list of making passive income ?

Thanks

Hmm – that will be a NO  love. In fact I think I have deleted at least one other of these – obviously I am showing up somewhere in the serps again for “passive income” – cause guess what – the site mentioned above is a passive income opportunity – seriously folks – all you have to do sign up, pay $10 and wait for the dollars to flow in. In fact as they state on the front page:

As a Spire Club member you can even make money doing nothing

Yeah right – I don’t really have to tell you its a classic pyramid scheme do I? I’d suggest you stay a long way away – unless you want to waste $10 and tell the rest of us that you have lost you money – I’m certainly not wasting my cash on it – so this is yet another sloppy, slack review from Lis – who hasn’t even bought the product LMFAO! Nice  graphics though

Oh and they don’t know any SEO either – 4 backlinks for a site registered 9 months ago – way to go guys!

More Scams ForAmusement

Dirk over at his Make Money for Beginners Blog is into a bit of shit fight with those objecting to his Monelis review – this is a classic pyrmid shopping opportunity. Dirk’s also less than complementary in his New SpiderWeb Review which lost him a lot of cash. Be careful out there folks!

Categories
Affiliate Marketing Paid Tools Tools

Online Income Tips: Managing Affiliates

How do you manage your affiliates? My management has evolved, primarily by accident I admit, but a recent post over at Passive Family Income got me thinking. PFI manages his affiliate links manually – I don’t and here’s why.

Whats the Problem with Affiliate Links?

In short an affiliate link is what pays me online income, it includes the code that says “pay Lis” to the vendor. There is a problem with affiliate links too, in fact two problems:

  • first they are ugly – would you really want to click on a link that looks like : http://47b252e70zsw9sdoja39pbvq2r.hop.clickbank.net/ Many people don’t.
  • often you don’t know if anyone is clicking – clickbank comes to mind they don’t provide any stats on home many clicks you get – just how many people buy.

Here’s the kill though: what if the affiliate changes the code? Yes it happens – and it just happened to me with one of my more successful affiliate earners. You have to change the code, everywhere you used it? Maybe you can remember every place you used an affiliate code – good on you – I can’t!

I use a product called PHP Link Cloak. What a Link Cloaker does (and no its not shady though the name is a little unfortunate IMHO) – is change the link I quoted above to something more user friendly in this case https://lissowerbutts.com/recommends/PHPLinkCloaker If the affiliate changes the code on me – I have to change it in one place – it took me longer to login than it did to actually change the code!

Its more useful than that – it tells me how many clicks I have had on that particular link.  As I can have as many links as I like for the same program I can track how many people click on links on my blog compared to my HubPages, for example.

Its simple to install – you do have to install it on a host that has the following available:

PHP 4 or PHP 5
MYSQL 4.x Database

Hostgator works just fine, apparently GoDaddy does not.

Once you have uploaded the software onto your hosting account you can use the links anywhere you like: email, blogger blogs, on Web 2.0 sites like Infobarrel and HubPages – so for many people will only need to set it up once. However as far as I can tell you can install it as many times as you want if you do want to keep websites separate – for example I wouldn’t use a lissowerbutts.com/recommends …. link on a site which is run by one of my other personas.

And I should probably point out that there are other products out there that do the same job, maybe even for free, but this one was recommended to me by a friend and it worked so I didn’t see any point on wasting any more time on what to me is an online income admin funcition.  The instructions worked just fine and there is a free demo site where you can try before you buy and the standard 60 days money back guarantee from ClickBank. And it costs less than $20.

How do you manage your affiliates? Do you ever forget which products you are promoting? Seriously if you are not using anything and are starting to make some passive income from affiliates check out PHP Link Cloaker Its much easier to put these systems in sooner rather than later!

Categories
Rants

A Perfect Passive Income Opportunity?

This is absolutely brilliant as a way to make passive income – in my opinion anyways. There are already websites up and running which will tell your online friends if you die – a worthwhile service in my view and very much in its infancy.
addressesmatter This site takes it one step further though. Some Christians  believe in the imminant arrive of the so called the “rapture” – which is the end of the world when

the signs described in the Bible that foreshadow the return of Jesus Christ are becoming all too clear. Not all who live during coming Great Tribulation will be spirited away to be with God. The Bible tells us that only those who repent of their sins and follow the teachings of Jesus Christ may enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

The problem is of course is that the saved won’ t have much notice of this event so they may not be able to make arrangements for canceling day care for little Jonnie and adopting out the dog.

That’s where Post-Rapture post comes in. They offer the service to deliver letters for the saved. You write the letter now – they deliver after the rapture – you see they are atheists so are confident they will be able to deliver – really,  honestly truely.

I personally thought the “I told you so card” at $7.99 was a little unchristian – but the class 3 message of up to 30,000 characters on patchement paper and handtied with ribbon for $799 is just perfect.

Just perfect for making passive income that is,  payable now via paypal  – as they clearly state no items will be delivered until after the rapture!