Top 20 Sites on How to Make Money Online

30 April 2007 - 16:12

Make Money Online - How It's Done
14 April 2007 - 03:33 - It's late again !

[The experiment continues. This is a re-post of a previously deleted post. I deleted a number of posts to try and find out why I was getting no ads. The ads. came back when I deleted six posts, so now I am re-posting them to find out which was causing the problems (I cunningly kept copies!) ]

I’m pretty new to blogging and (not) making money online, so like everybody else I tend to read other people’s blogs to see how they do it or not, as the case may be. On John Chow’s blog he says that there are over 44,000 searches every month on Google for the phrase "make money online" . He asks people to review his blog in exchange for a link from him. This appears to have been successful as he is no. 2 on page 1 of Google, which I presume was the aim of the exercise.

This got me to wondering what the top 20 sites are on Google when you search for "make money online" and whether listing them on my blog would be of any use and if it would increase the number of visitors. This is not as silly as it sounds, as it is a useful exercise to find out how search engines and people's minds function. I’ve got to admit that although the number of visitors to this blog is increasing I still don’t understand how or why people find there way here.

Personally I find blogs generally by searching for stuff on Google and then clicking on what comes up. After that I sometimes click on links. I also find sites in a haphazard random sort of fashion on places like MyBlogLog or LinkReferral. I guess other people are more or less the same but there is maybe a whole universe of more efficient methods for finding stuff that I know nothing about !

Anyway, back to my search for knowledge. Firstly it’s worth bearing in mind that there are in total 1,410,000 pages that come up when you do a search on "make money online", what fun it would be to read them all! At 2 minutes per site non-stop that would take over 5 years. I am tempted but I shall restrict myself to the top 20 which are, as of today (14.4.2007) as follows:-

1. http://www.bidvertiser.com/
2. http://www.johnchow.com/ (afore-mentioned mega-blog - he needs no introduction from me)
3. http://www.problogger.net/ (highly successful and well-known but it beats me why – "you will understand one day grasshopper")
4. http://rsstoblog.com/ (some guy selling some money making software for $247 – hmm I wonder how that works ?)
5. http://www.squidoo.com/supermom_in_ny/ (Supermom scoured the Internet for legitimate money-making opportunities and has listed them on this Squidoo page - she has lots of sites, it's odd that the Squidoo page should show in the top 20 and her 'proper' sites don't - memo to me "put this blog on Squidoo")
6. http://moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com/ (no prizes for guessing what this blog is about – lots of stuff I shall look at later)
7. http://www.canimakebigmoneyonline.com/ (make big money online – one more for later)
8. http://entrepreneurs.about.com/od/homebasedbusiness/a/makemoneyonline.htm (lots of info. looks quite interesting but written too small - one for later)
9. http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/02/22/10-new-ways-to-make-money-online/ (lots of stuff again – but some of it actually sounds like ‘work’ ! yuk)
10. http://www.doshdosh.com/ (actually looks like it’s got some interesting articles I should read that might explain something in words of one syllable I can understand – in the favourites it goes !)
11. http://www.team-schuman.com/ (seems well-organised with a fair amount of information – but again some of it seems like work (typing !)!)
12. http://www.jimsmarketing.com/ (give your e-mail address and get some ‘free’ e-books – I sense a come-on here – make money by selling e-books on how to make money ? – I’m too old)
13. http://blog.usweb.com/archives/a-website-dedicated-to-helping-you-make-money-online/ (well-organised site – Blogitive seems to feature strongly – memo to me "must have another look at Blogitive I think I signed up already but never did figure out why")
14. http://www.plrpro.com/ (Private label rights – for $97 a month people will write stuff for you – big in your face pop-ups aaagh ! - get me outa here!)
15. http://www.instantcashflow.org/ (a page full of info. I couldn’t read ‘cause it’s typed in size 8 or something ridiculous – move on quick life’s too short)
16. http://www.successwithauctions.com/Make_Money_Blogging.php (another blog about blogging - getting jaded)
17. http://www.incomemax.com/ (a directory of directories of directories with ads. – when you get to a page with what looks like useful information it’s typed so small – 7 point this time – I just closed it down - waste of webspace !)
18. http://www.online4income.com/ (standard articles again and standard Adsense ads.)
19. http://www.43things.com/things/view/123501 (part of a site called 43things – too complicated for my taste but there may be some useful info. there if you have the patience to look for it)
20. http://www.how-to-make-money-online.info/ (lots of stuff – but typed too small again – am I the only one who doesn’t have binoculars glued to my eyeballs ?)

Well there we have it, the top 20 sites that you get when you search "make money online", all in all I’ve got to admit I’m pretty disappointed. Maybe I should have gone just for the top 10 as they seemed to be the most interesting – or maybe I should scroll all the way down to page 144,000 and see what the bottom ten are like ! Can you get Google in reverse order ?

There seemed to be lots of repetition and most of it seemed to be "make money for me online" ! mainly through ads., but also some that were selling stuff on how to make money selling stuff to other people who want to make money (you get the picture). Actually problogger doesn’t seem too bad now that I’ve seen some of the other stuff. The good thing is that the competition doesn’t seem particularly daunting – a fair amount of listing of stuff that other people list.

You get the impression that it wouldn’t be too hard to get onto the coveted Google page 1 !
I was surprised not to see TechCrunch there, as he is reckoned to be making $150,000 a month from the site. Also Steve Pavlina wasn't in the list although he seems to be a successful and interesting blogger.

What I actually wanted to see was a site with just ONE money-making method that worked, that is easy to implement, is legal and moral and doesn't involve 'work' - I've never understood why people like to glorify work - if I find it I'll let you know.

One of the points of this exercise of course was to see if there was any increase in traffic to this blog if I wrote a post about what lots of people search for on search engines. So check back in a few days time for the update to see just how many people stumbled onto this blog and if that was more than usual.

A Semi-Scientific Experiment in Cyber Space

30 April 2007 - 03:49

[This is a re-post of a post from 18 April that I deleted to see if it was causing the Adsense ads. to disappear - I will leave it up for a few hours to see what happens - for the full story scroll down and read the 2 previous posts!]

BigString E-Mail

Keep your eyes open for Bigstring.com a cool new email service that allows you to take your e-mails back. The e-mails self-destruct and cannot be printed.

Their e-mail service is revolutionary as it gives back control of e-mails to the sender. E-mails can be recalled and changed ! So if you have ever sent an e-mail you regretted sending, you can get it back ! And you can send your e-mail via the BigString website or a program such as Outlook.

Their e-mails look exactly like any other e-mail, with the difference that as the sender you have total control over all functions. You just need to click on the “Edit Sent Mail” button.

You can recall, add or delete attachments, erase, and self-destruct your e-mails after you have sent them.

As far as I am aware this is a unique development you no longer need to worry about your messages lingering on in cyberspace or someone's hard drive for ever and a day, when you yourself have moved on.

If you have ever sent an e-mail you wish you hadn't or if you think you ever will, then you should seriously consider BigString.

There is a free 1 GB e-mail service similar to MSN or Yahoo etc... except that it lets you expire or edit messages that you have already sent or there is a pay service if you prefer.

Sounds good to me ! To sign up for free today click here - BigString

More Insights into Adsense

30 April 2007 - 00:52

If you are new to blogging like me you may have discovered that Adsense is a weird and wonderful software system, that seems to live by rules of its own devised by a nutty professor.

This post is in the nature of an experiment. Yesterday I put up a post in which I talked about another post made on another blog by a rather famous blogger, who shall remain nameless, and since then, or possibly even slightly before then, Adsense has been displaying the dreaded you know what (asp written backwards, which I don't want to type the right way round in case it displays more of them - paranoia is a wonderful thing).

I am trying to figure out why I am getting the snakes (an asp is a snake) and so I removed the post I put up yesterday to see if it makes any difference, so far it hasn't. The reason I think the post might be causing a problem is because it repeated some of the stuff that was in the famous blogger's original post. At least I hope that's what was causing the problem.

So I am now writing this post about Adsense to see if this will make any difference. If this makes no difference either I will go through all my posts and remove them one by one to see if any of my previous posts have caused offence to the little Adsense creepy crawlies!

Credit Card Upgrade with an APR of 57.8% p.a. !

23 April 2007 - 11:22

A Credit Card with an APR of 57.8% ! How can I refuse ?

Like everybody else, I guess, I am constantly receiving offers through the post from credit card companies and loan companies. Some of them offer 0% balance transfers (with strings attached of course) , which I sometimes take up if it works out to my advantage. The rest usually just end up in small pieces in the bin.

Today, however, I received the good news from a certain Morgan Stanley that I have been offered the chance to 'upgrade' to 'premier customer status' mmmmmmmm 'premier customer status' . You know your in trouble when they start offering you that. They also said they would make my life easier (I wish) and that my new card had already been approved! Cool.

Well, I had a cursory glance at the details on the first page, then quickly turned over to see what interest rate we lucky upgraded customers would be offered. 0% would have been good, less than 5% would have been average, but nevertheless worthy of a swift trip to the bin, 17% would have been exceedingly excessive and would have merited a ritual burning at midnight at my local coven. So you can imagine my shock/horror when I saw proudly emblazoned in bold letters on the back page the 'premier customer' rate of 57.8% !

My first reaction was amazement. I felt like I should reach for the garlic or a crucifix - get the behind me Stan ! My second reaction was amusement, I thought it was a misprint and they had just printed out 50 million brochures with the wrong figures - I thought they probably meant 5.78%. Nevertheless, for the sake of knowledge and accuracy, I decided to delve deeper into the murky world of the small print and discovered, to my amazement, that this rate was incredible but true, due in large part to the £275 fixed anual fee n(i.e. every year as a premier customer I benefit from the privilege of giving them £275 ! (that's 550 US$ if you are reading this from the USA) ) and also due to the way they are obliged to use an amount of £1500 for their calculations. I quote "The typical 57.8% APR has been calculated using the Consumer Credit Act regulations which require us to use a notional amount of £1,500 of credit. The £1,500 limit, coupled to the £275 fixed annual card fee, make the APR fee look very high." You ain't wrong there Stanley !

"The APR in your agreement will be calculated using a greater amount of credit of £7,500 which more accurately reflects the credit limit of an xxxxx Card. The APR in the agreement will be 22.0% APR . None of this changes the actual interest rate that applies to your xxxx Card which is 13.9% for purchases."

So, according to them, the real rate we are looking at is 13.9% (for purchases). Any cash advances get whacked with a hefty 3%. fee. Plus all this costs you £275 a year for the privilege, but at least you can sleep soundly at night safe in the knowledge that you are a 'premier customer' (you can't argue with that logic!) And don't forget of course that if you ever miss a payment you'll need to add fees to your own personal debt mountain and compound interest.

In the interests of balance and impartiality here is one of the 'financial benefits' I will get with their lovely card - 'VIP airport lounge access' mmmmmmmmm donuts ! Unfortunately I haven't been on an aeroplane for almost 25 years, and I have no interest in hobnobbing with mindless VIPs, so I think I can live without that particular premier perk. Their marketing department really did a good job when it picked me out for upgrading !

If you need good information about debt and credit cards have a look at Martin Lewis's site in the links. He does an incredible job keeping up-to-date with all consumer credit issues. Good luck and have a good day !

There's Money in them .tv Domain Names

10 April 2007 - 15:10

There could be big money to be made from registering domain names with the .tv extension

There's an excellent article about Richard Rosenblatt, serial entrepreneur and billionaire, over at DNJournal. After transforming a loss-making company called Myspace.com into a rather well-known social networking site, he sold it to Rupert Murdoch for $580 million. Back in 1999 he sold a company he had created himself, iMall, to ExciteAtHome for $565 million and the same year he became the founding investor and Vice Chairman of GreatDomains, which he then quickly expanded and helped sell to Verisign for $100 million in 2000.

His latest venture is domain names, which he expects to be rather profitable too! With his company DemandMedia he intends to use the .TV extension to allow registrants to build their own "global video channels". He became interested in the domain scene after talking to some domainers, who said, 'We own 300,000 domains, we make $20 million a year, we have just four employees and some servers in the Caymans.' ! Well, who wouldn't be interested! He intends a 'relaunch' of the 'tv extension on May 1 with mucho publicity and marketing hype etc... so possibly now could be a good time to start registering those names :-)

The whole article is a lot longer (and more interesting than my watered-down synopsis) and can be found here DNJournal

Adding a Background Picture to Your Blog Header

6 April 2007 - 02:12

I thought my blog might benefit from a bit of added colour so I decided to see how easy or difficult it would be to add a background image to the blog header. It turned out to be remarkably easy. The picture I chose is of the Millau bridge in southern France, the highest bridge in the world, which is 2.5 km long and about 1000 feet above the floor of the Tarn valley and above the clouds. (Check out the videos in the right-hand column). A quite remarkable feat of engineering and rather conveniently just the right shape for a blog header ! How considerate of them.

I first of all have to thank 'Tips for New Bloggers' a site with a load of useful stuff for tweaking your blog (see link) for describing how to do it

First you need to find an image and crop it to size - theoretically around 660x150 pixels, but I found I had to change the size of the box to adapt it to my image which is only around 580 pixels wide. If you don't have any photo editing software I can recommend Picasa (because it's free)

Once you have found the image you want you need to upload it to a free picture host - I use Photobucket (NB : you can also use Photobucket if you list stuff on Ebay - the first photo on Ebay is free but after that you have to pay around 10p (20c) for every picture and it soon adds up - with Photobucket you can have as many pictures as you like on Ebay for free - so save yourself some money !)

Once you have uploaded your picture to Photobucket or whichever service you decide to use, you need to copy the URL link (in Photobucket this is right underneath the picture). Now back on your blog (this applies to the 'new' blogger) click on 'Customize' then on 'Template' then on 'Edit HTML', in the HTML code scroll down until you find this

#header-wrapper {

width:660px;

margin:0 auto 10px;

border:1px solid $bordercolor;
)

Between the last line and the bracket add the following line

background-image: url(URL address of your image);

except, of course, you need to put the actual URL address of your image in between the brackets and leave the brackets Click on save and have a look at your header, hopefully it will have your image in it, if it doesn't well you've done something wrong !

If you find that the image doesn't quite fit then you can go back into the HTML code and change the width number in the line - width:660px; - I had to change it to 580 - alternatively you can try changing the size of the image or looking for a longer picture.

So that's it, quite easy really when you know how, so thanks again to TFNB. If you want to know how I get the ads. at the bottom of my post you need to read Incorporate Your Ads

New to blogging - don't forget to Ping !

5 April 2007 - 00:15

Ping your Blogs

[Edit: One of the sites I put up yesterday seems to have gone down, - I didn't know my posts were that popular ! :-), so I have put up two different ones.]

Just a quick note to all fellow newbies to say that if you are new to blogging you need to ping, which as far as I understand it means, once you have written a new post you submit the URL to a 'ping' site to autoping a load of other sites so that your post gets advertised in some mysterious way to other folks just like yourself out there in blogoland - I guess it works, because since I've started doing it I've got more visitors dropping by, but it's still a mystery, although less of a mystery than 'tagging' (can you tell I'm new to this?) - Apologies to any seasoned old timers who are reading this, but I did put 'new to blogging' in the title, so you shouldn' t have clicked on whatever it was you clicked on!

So here are a couple of autoping sites for all those who haven't heard of them before - just copy the URL of your post, go to the sites below, and paste your URL into the windows and click ! It's easy (and strangely satisfying) !

http://pingomatic.com/
http://pingoat.com/
http://pinger.blogflux.com