Wanna make a few bucks? Then work it!

If you're looking for some get rich quick scheme for online wealth, let me be the first (or hundredth) to tell you: It ain't happening! But, if you have a passion for something, anything, and you're pretty much willing to pursue that desire even if you don't make any money---you just might make some.

Here, I'll share my research, ideas and empirical stories about what I've done, what I do and what I'm planning.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

If you want to make money on the internet you need a web site - even a free one like this

There are so many different ways to (allegedly) make money online that I'm sometimes overwhelmed as to which ones to explore. There are dozens of affiliate programs, ad programs, content locking programs, pyramid schemes, ebooks, and the list goes on.

But, there is usually one constant: you need a website that offers something. It could be entertainment and the way to make money is through AdSense ads or funy products from Amazon or other affilliate programs. You could review a particular type of product and have links so the visitors can actually buy them. You might have naked pictures of your best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's cousin that people will pay to see. But, ya gots to have a website of some type.

The easiest website to get a "website" is to start a blog like this one. You just jump through a few hoops and you will have a spiffy interface at which you can learn to create page after page after page of content about whatever the hell you're trying to share.

But, ain't nobody coming.

So, you have to promote. And after that, you have to promote. Then you need to go into promotion mode. After which time you get back to promoting.

If you have basic web design skills and html knowledge you are a bit ahead of the game because you can implement your ideas and have more control over the meta content and SEO factors that you have with blogging or free website programs. In that case, have both. That's what I do.

One of my websites which does pretty well in its pretty large niche market is Hooked On Droid. This site basically reviews apps for Android, iPhone, Blackberry and other Smartphones. Sometimes I write about what the companies involved are doing, like Google buying Motorola Mobile and such. A little revenue (and I emphasize the "little"). Virtually all of the content can also be found at the Hooked On Droid blog. Both of which are promoted extensively on all of my Twitter accounts including the Hooked On Droid Twitter account.

See what I just did there? I created backlinks from this blog to three of my Hooked On Droid pages. As you know (or should) backlinks are huge.

After you create your website and/or blog, you must spend as much time as possible fine-tuning the page content, meta content, searching for places to list your site, comment in forums and on other blogs, always inclued a link to your site in your signature (sneaky but effective backlink), visit competitors, check out their meta content, ask to be a guest blogger at related blogs, the list goes on and on.

Get started right now! Choose a niche, and if you can't create a website (yet) go make a blog. Get the feel for sharing your passion or idea. Add appropriate, relevant labels (tags) and tell all of your Facebook friends and Twitter followers. (If you don't have FB and Twitter accounts you gotta go do that right now too).

You're gonna be busy.

Then, stay tuned, because we'll be looking not only ways to earn money from your website or blog, but also learn about many free programs to check how you're doing (keyword analyzers, meta tag analyzers, viewing backlinks, etc.).

Okay, get to work. And keep me posted.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Can you make money online with adfly and does it affect your Google traffic?

Review of adfly (adf.ly): The url shortening service that pays!

As I am always on the lookout for new ways to generate income from my web sites and blogs, I was intrigued with adfly (http://adf.ly/). They have a number of ways to help publishers make money from their blogs and web sites, and you can even generate revenue from content that isn't even yours.

Shorten url's

The first way to make a little money is to use their url shortening service. In a nutshell, it works pretty much like tiny url and bit.ly in that you can put in a longer web address, and it will shorten it to a more Twitter-friendly address.

Example: I recently put up a comedy spoof page about online dating. Essentially, it's just a little javascript which types in what I want, while you're typing in what you want. (I know, that doesn't make a lot of sense, but just try it and you'll see what I mean.)

So, I took the long url for that page, logged into my adfly account and shortened it. Adfly then gives me a shorter url which, when you visit it, forces you to see an ad for five seconds before you can skip it and go to the page your originally intended. Here is the

adfly url: http://adf.ly/3FolD

The actual page you are being directed to is: http://interactivelunacy.com/FindPartner2.html

Since you do not host the shortened url, the way that you generate money is to promote that address. The most common way that can be done is through your social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, etc.). However, since the final destination is a page which I do own, I'm not really comfortable with forcing people to wait five seconds to get to my page, so except for a little testing, I don't think I want to play this game. Actually, the main reason I don't want to engage in this activity is that the amount of money that you make is very small.

However, if you have a gazillion followers on Twitter or a bazillion friends on Facebook, this could generate reasonable extra money for you.




If you own websites
Adfly has two methods to make money if you own your own web site(s):

When you log into your adf.ly account you'll see a link which says: Do you run a website? Click on the link and you'll be taken to a page which will provide you with some javascript code to add in the body of your html. There are two types of ads you can insert: the first is just like the url shortening feature where, when the visitor enters your site's url, they must wait five seconds before they can skip the full page ad. The other is called Top Banner and requires that you change one line of the code so that the featured ad only appears at the top of the screen.

The Top Banner is the least obtrusive ad, and also the worst paying.

I played around with all three of these methods on about ten of my moderately trafficked pages. My traffic on the hosted pages was down, probably because most people are like me. If I get to a page which displays a full page ad that I have to wait to skip, I just hit my back button and get the hell out of there.

On one occasion the full page ad which was displayed required that I click on the advertiser's little javascript annoyance 30 times before I could actually leave the damned ad page. Not acceptable.

The oddest thing, and I don't really know if there is any connection, but as soon as I started adding adfly ads to three of my domains, my overall traffic went down big time. Like five times less traffic. And, consequently, I made a lot less money from my bread and butter Google AdSense ads.

For my purposes I don't think adf.ly is a good additon to my roster of ways to make money with my online endeavors. After using adf.ly on about eight or nine of my pages, I only generated a little over 20 cents. Not to mention (wait, I just mentioned it) that my AdSense revenue also diminished five times.

Nice try adfly, but not for me.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

How to generate traffic to your blogs and web sites with Twitter - and make money

I didn't get Twitter right away. I mean I "got" it (as in set up an account), but I didn't really see how it could be a beneficial business tool at first. It just seemed like a way to discover what your friends, family or favorite celebrity had for breakfast.

I sort of get it now.|

What follows is an overview of some of the ways that I use Twitter accounts to build not only Twitter followers but also readers of my blogs and visitors to my web sites.

As is always the case with social networking applications, one of the keys is to not toot your own horn too much. If every Tweet or blog posting is nothing more than links to your own stuff, your followers may get tired of your shameless promotion and Unfollow. (I still break this rule a bit too often, but just mentioning it may help remind me to knock it off.)

If you have multiple interests and more than one blog and/or web site, then you should also have multiple Twitter accounts. Some of my Twitter accounts are related (ie: humor oriented), so I have the additional traffic generating opportunity of Retweeting my own Tweets. More on that in a bit.

So, by way of example, let's start with my http://jokingsmoker.blogspot.com blog. Initially, this blog was to consist of primarily cigar and smoking accessory reviews and information. But, as it turns out, it's the one I use to rant and write whatever is on my mind, so I want to reach more readers than just cigar smokers.

So, my initial Twitter account, which was connected to this blog is http://twitter.com/cigarponderings. Whenever I would write a review of a cigar or smoking accessory I would log into my cigarponderings Twitter account and post a blurb about and a link to the blog. This informed my followers that I posted something new (since I don't see a lot of blog subscribing these days), and also alerted the search engines that my blog had another backlink (which helps improve rankings).

Once this initial process is complete (writing the blog and linking to in from Twitter), it was time to further promote the blog post.

First stop, Facebook.

Since there is a whole community of cigar smokers and afficianados on FB, I make it a point to visit a number of FB groups and post a link to my new blog entry. (Yay! More backlinks.) Of course, this is after I post the same link on my wall.

Then, back to Twitter, where, one by one, I log into my other Twitter accounts and Retweet my twitter post. Since I have a whole bunch of Twitter accounts for all of my varied interests, this does increase (although not dramatically) the interest and traffic to your Twitter account and the blog.

If you follow my Twitter accounts and check out the postings, you'll see that usually each of them Retweets the others.

There is a slight advantage to creating a completely different posting for each of your Twitter accounts (as opposed to Retweeting), but it's much more time consuming to do each one separately. However, if you only have a couple of accounts, this does afford you the ability to add different #hashmarks and @ information at the end of your message so that different Twitterers may find it when searching for different keywords.

Here's an example of a jokingsmoker Twitter post:

"Spitball gun confiscated in algebra class cuz it was a weapon of math disruption. More puns: "
Now, since I have another account (http://twitter.com/comedygary), I have two choices: 1) log into that account and RT (Retweet) the spitball posting, or 2) rewrite the posting with different hashmarks and at signs:

"Spitball gun confiscated in algebra class cuz it was a weapon of math disruption. More puns:  #funny @comedycentral"

You get the idea.

And of course, when you do click on the link to see more puns (on my http://interactivelunacy.com/ web site), you will also see banner ads to some of my other web sites and blogs and maybe visit them as well.

Additonally, if you're lucky enough to attract readers to your Twitter account because they searched for something you posted, this also gives them an opportunity to click on whatever links you may have in your Twitter profile, further promoting your web sites and blogs.

In my case, the main purpose of most of this is to generate readers, traffic and hopefully revenue from visitors clicking on the ads on my pages.

Perhaps just checking out a bunch of my Twitter postings on my Twitter accounts will help it make more sense of this:


So, if you haven't yet created a Twitter account, do it now. Even if only to observe and learn. And make sure you search for others with similar interests and follow them. There's a good chance they'll return the favor and follow you.

Then all you have to do is come up with something to say.