Back to the grind
Well the garden is all covered with snow. I miss it so much. This was some kind of brown-eyed susan that bloomed almost all summer. Every morning before going to work I'd stop and admire it. Now everything is white, sometimes the sky, the ground, and the siding on all the walls of my courtyard are white too.. color is gone. It kind of drives me a little nuts.
Anyway in a previous blog entry I was excited about trying to sell an electronic product listed with clickbank without having a site to sell it on, just using an adwords campaign. Well that was a bust - I didn't sell one and of course spent money. It was a gamble, oh well.
It's all been a good experience. I've learned so much about search engine optmization and using DreamWeaver that I've started to create sites for other people. So this is all bringing about a second income afterall - not much as yet - but then I don't really have a lot of spare time to take on much.
I've also come up with a couple of business ideas that I want to try out. Maybe one of these will pan out by the summer. I think eventually I will hit the mark, just have to keep trying. I know I would not be able to even visualize my goal if I hadn't tried all the things I have so far.
I'll keep you posted.
Mo' money.
ciao
Making Money with Google AdWords and No Site
Hi,
I still haven't got my newest site up. The garden, kids, work - if only I could be fine with two hours sleep a night.
Well, since my newest website is on hold, I decided to try something quick and easy to make extra money. I've got two tests running now and I'll keep you posted on the progress. Let me explain what it is... you'll be surprised.
Have you seen those advertisements telling you that you can make money using Google AdWords and no website? They are selling ebooks usually, and some are selling software. What they are selling is the explanation and instructions for you to run Google AdWords campaigns to drive traffic to a site for whom you are an affiliate.
I am trying two right now. First I searched for two online products that I think are of good value, whose sites sell very well, so well in fact that a cheapskate like myself is thinking of buying or have already bought from them. Also I looked for negative feedback in discussion forums etc. There's no point in searching for positive feedback because it would've probably been written by an affiliate.
Now that you've found your product, you register as an affiliate with the site, or if it is Clickbank you register with ClickBank. ClickBank has many electronic products that you can be an affiliate marketer for. I personally like the self-improvement and business categories.
Then you go to Google and click their Advertising Programs link, then their Google AdWords link. Create an account for yourself. Do the create a campaign tutorial to give you an idea what you're in for. It is not difficult and you can have a campaign started in a manner of minutes. You will need a credit card, because you are spending money but you can set your maximum expenditure per day so you can follow the progress without spending too much money. Use the keyword tool and Estimate Traffic feature. Read all the instructions on creating keywords; for example a keyword surrounded by quotes means something totally different that a keyword surrounded by square brackets. Don't forget that a keyword is not necessarily one word but can be a phrase. Think of how you would search for the product you want to advertise: ie "car"+"how to change oil".
To create your advertisement read Google's rules and follow them. If you are getting good impressions but no clicks, try changing your ad, especially the first line. Do searches on Google and take a look at the sponsored ads down the right side - think about which ads catch your attention and why. Use action words. You can save your advertisement and go back and edit it anytime. Surf the net and see if you can find some tips on 'writing advertising copy'. Google gives you a line for the 'display url' and the 'destination url'. The 'display url' is the one the user sees, the 'destination url' is the same url but with your affiliate id so that if you get a click the user gets to the destination site with your affiliate id, you will get credit for the sale. To get the url with your affiliate id tagged on - follow the instructions to the letter of the site you are becoming an affiliate for.
Google allows you to bid a minimum per click. I chose a higher amount per click because I got better positioning - you see the positioning when you use the Estimate Traffic feature. The position is where you are in the list of ads that will likely get generated should a user key in that particular keyword. You don't have to be in the number one position to get clicks - there is a debate going on amongst the community about which position gives the better clickthrough rate. Also, you won't necessarily pay the click rate you chose for your clicks, most often you will pay less. You will only pay per click and you can set a minimum amount of dollars to spend per day. I am testing under the assumption that for every 100 clicks I should get at least 2 sales - pessimist. My average cost per click so far is low. For 100 clicks that is not excessive. One of the product's sale value is $100, and my cut is $65. That is $50 profit. Of course, this is a test, I may make absolutely nothing. This is why I am going slow to start so I can keep a handle on it. I may be a bit over cautious but I don't want to blow it.
Google helps you by putting on 'hold' automatically keywords that perform badly - but even still log on each day to see the progress and how many clicks you get per impressions, ie. your click-through rate.
It all makes sense - I hope I've explained it clearly enough for you to try it out. I'll let you know how it goes.
Later My Blog
Mo'Money
Maybe It's Summer
Ha! Lol! Get work done tonight!! I have gotten nothing done for almost two weeks on my home businesses. Working full time, kids, house to clean - I think I have a good excuse. It has also been so nice out that I would rather work outside in my little yard than work inside on the computer. The fresh air really poops me out and I sleep so well.
In the meantime, I've had another business idea that I've added to my list. I've found a dropshipper of some furtniture that I really love. The dropshipper lives in my city so I can take up any problems I have with customers directly - face to face. I'm comfortable with this type of arrangement. Dropshipping is where you have an online shop - you take orders, but your orders get sent to your dropshipper, who then sends the product to your customer under your name and logo. You pay the dropshipper who has of course given you a great deal and you keep the profit. This is an excellent way to have an online store to make extra money - you've learned about search engine optimization - you've learned about Google AdWords - you can sell. You're dropshipper is usually a manufacturer or wholesaler. In order for this to work you need to find a reliable dropshipper. You get your product descriptions and pictures usually, though not always, from your dropshipper.
If you're going to try this, I suggest researching your dropshipper the best you can.
I can't wait to get this one started. I love my job but I have to say I'm more excited about my at home businesses - time, time, time.
Ciao my blog.
Mo'Money
Gardening instead of Working
Well, I didn't meet my target, www.123WebMoney.com is not up yet, but I have a really great garden. Yes, I spent Saturday and Sunday gardening. I don't have a huge area to garden but I made the most of it. It is a very shady area and so I can only plant shade-friendly plants. It looks awesome, lots of greenery waiting for flowers, driftwood, river-rocks... it's very nice.
This week is a bust work-wise because there is too much going on with soccer and karate and of course my regular job.
In a previous post I had spoke about how you can make money by having websites and advertising for others (affiliate marketing) and that the more sites you have, the more money you will make. Well, I'm hoping to have ten up by the end of the summer which seems alot to me. You can imagine how bowled-over I was when I read about someone who has several hundred sites!! I was happy to read that it's done but daunted at the thought of the work ahead of me.
I'm inspired and I'll see if I can't get some work done tonite.
ciao Blog
mo' money
Mo' Money - Am I Obsessed?
Hi y'all,
Another day another dollar. Having a break at work to express myself. I love blogging. All I can think about is my business. I have too many business ideas at this point, enough to keep me going for 10 years I think. I write them down and will try to get to them one by one. I am trying to collaborate on some of them by partnering up with good people I know. It's sooooo exciting I can hardly contain myself.
I love researching the web, in the past colleagues have said that I can find anything quickly on the internet if it's out there. So combine research with writing and I'm in heaven. I wish my kids were into this. Actually I'm going to encourage my boys to start a blog, one of them will I'm sure because he loves to write and debate and well, stir up the pot.
I'm exited to get my new site www.123WebMoney.com finished I think it's better than my first (www.familyvariety.com). I should be finished at the end of the weekend, but will have a lot to add in the coming weeks. I have to keep updating because as I find out more about making money on the internet and try different things out and discover what is successful and what isn't I want to update the site to include everything I find out.
My target is to have 10 sites with valuable content by the end of the summer. Not huge sites but I want to have at least 15-20 pages on each one. I want one to be related to lite gambling and I'm going to write a small fun program which will be fun to incorporate into it; one to be a shopping site, t-shirts of a particular niche; one to be a travel site not a booking site but informational; one to be a children's site, and on and on. Wow... do I have my plate full or what? I also want to try out syndicated content, RSS, and incorporating blogs into a site but I have to learn about how all that works still.
Shall I ramble? I hope to get 100 visitors per day on each of 10 sites by end of December 2005. I'm targeting between $10 and $15 per hundred visitors as income.... calculator puh-lease.... at $15 that's about $4,500 per month.... at $10 that's $3,000 far out... it just takes more time. I've already proven it works.. I just have to persevere.
Wish me luck because if I succeed and you're reading this, then you can succeed, because everything is going into my www.familyvariety.com and the new one (hopefully up by Monday).. www.123WebMoney.com .
Ciao
Mo' Money
123WebMoney - Making Money Online
Hi All,
What I want to talk about:
I've started my own business online as an advertiser, and found it works and I'm making money. So I've decided to create a couple of sites devoted to the topic of making money online. I've also discovered that I love to write and the two sites I'm working on give me a chance to talk about the business but it is more structured, blogging is much more fluid.
My site and site to be:
Guide to Internet Income at http://www.familyvariety.com is the first one which is more like an intro to making money online with a website. The site is not selling anything by the way, it is just giving an introduction to internet marketing and search engine optimization. The second site is not up yet but it's looking great. The domain name is parked right now ; I'm really happy about the domain name; http://www.123webmoney.com.
What I want:
I'm interested in hearing from other people who have been making money using the Google AdSense program.
I'm also interested in hearing from other people who are using RSS feeds and their Blogs for content and how that's working out.
Who am I:
I'm an almost-fifty-year-old single parent of three who works as a programmer for a living. I've been struggling with money issues for years it seems and am totally breaking free with this new business. It is time-consuming though and I'm struggling to squeeze enough work on the business in the evenings and on weekends, it's pretty tough. I'm pooped, once I reach a certain level, I'm going to go into a holding pattern for a while, but I don't expect to reach that for about another 8 months. It's 3 a.m. and I have to get up at 6:30 a.m., see what I mean?
My Experience:
It's so funny when I think back to when I started searching the web to find a way to make extra money from home, I was coming upon all kinds of ads, ebooks, software, so many pitches and so many of them tempting. There's a lot of sites out there with blue down the left and blue down the right and white in the middle with centered text - short statements - often in red, that are usually selling some ebook or other.
I ended up affiliate marketing with a combination of the best affiliates I could find, which didn't necessarily mean they paid the best, it just meant I knew they delivered or I'd bought from them before and had a good experience. I've found that I like to write and research, lucky me because that's what the web is about really, so this business has turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. After a time, I decided to concentrate on Google AdSense - let me just say the numbers made the decision.
The most difficult part about this whole business is getting ranked, getting found, which is the most basic, necessary part of the business. I'm starting to doze off right here. So arrivaderchi my new blog!!
Mo' Money
