a view of what i do, know, and think

How I am Earning Money Online



I don’t really make much money offline these days, but I have had a lot of people ask me how I am earning money online in the first place. Most people have the idea that there are a lot of scams online and there aren’t many real ways to make money online. This comes from commercials promising great wealth in short periods of time and a lot of scams out there. It’s true, you can spend $99 on a book that doesn’t actually teach you how to make money online. In a lot of cases, that book will tell you that you then need to go out and buy $167 dollars worth of software, a program that you will pay a low rate of $29 a month to belong to, and another e-Course (supposedly bigger and better than an ebook) that will cost you a one time fee of $628. However, in the end, there are some ways to actually make money online.

My Original Method.

I tried a lot of silly things that cost me a lot of time. I did what’s known as PPC for awhile. The PPC programs are set up so that you click on a link and are supposed to make money for that link. Then the screen ad is up for a certain amount of time and then you can exit. The idea is that you could make 1 cent or 1/2 a cent with each of these clicks and have it add up. It does add up slowly, but surely. However, from all the programs I joined I never got paid. So, it didn’t really matter and it took a lot of time.

I did some pay to post forums. I found these fun and loved the idea of making some money to do something I enjoyed. However, at two or three cents a post you have to do a lot of posting to get paid. Plus there were rules about how long your reply could be, whether or not it was adding value, and all that. So, by time you hunted down a thread of interest, replied nice and long, and were on your way your two cent post took you awhile. In the end, I dropped these as well.

I settled on writing for money. I joined what is called a revenue sharing site. They do all the website design and provide an easy way for you to publish articles. In turn you write and post on their sites. You get a portion of the earnings depending on how they share revenue. I did pretty good with this and in the fall of 2009 I earned as much as $900 a month. However, I wanted more and was tired of it taking so long and being so much work to make money. So, I started freelancing. This was a ton of work and I burned out after about 7 months. I dropped all my freelancing and didn’t start writing again until October of 2010. I went back to writing at another revenue sharing site. I was only making a few bucks a month having lost several sites. I worked hard, but didn’t get very far.

My Change.

I joined TKA in January and started moving toward owning my own websites. This is something I have really put off because I didn’t want to deal with the website part of it. I still don’t like the website part of it. I didn’t really work hard to start with and that has made a slow go of it. I have been working hard since mid May and am starting to see results. I think it will be a few years before I get where I want to be and where my earnings and what I have to say really wow people. However, until then…this is how I am getting there. :-P

  1. In all those years I wrote articles for revenue sharing sites one of the reasons that I didn’t make it big was that I never did keyword research. This process has to do with making sure that the words you are using in your article are ones that people are searching for online. While I worked hard to write good articles, people weren’t searching for them. The keyword this article targets is “earning money online” which isn’t really a “word”, but it is searched for a lot online. In fact, in the last 30 days there have been about 4,400 searches using those three words and just those three words. I hate doing the research to pick out words and topics, but it makes a huge difference because people actually find my writing.
  2. I write articles. I always try to write my best. I am sure there are people out there who read my writing and say, “She calls that good writing?” But I do my best.
  3. I post articles to backlink. This is another part I hate. I really just wish I could write about whatever I wanted to write about, put it out there in cyberspace and lots of people could find it. However, this doesn’t work so well. So, I write articles for other sites with backlinks to my site and away we go. I am not rich nor are my sites getting loads of traffic. However, I now have two sites with more than 1200 visitors each.

This is the basics. It is an easy concept, but there is nothing easy about earning money online. It’s a pain and anyone who tells you it isn’t work and it can be done quickly is making money by selling you something that won’t really help you out. I am earning money online and one day I hope it is enough to get excited about. :-P

Well…I enjoyed writing this, but for now I need to head on over to another site of mine and write another article. I have a lot more writing to do so that I can see the results I am longing for. If you have any questions feel free to contact me. Have a great day.

Make Money Online, Web Writer   

I Haven’t Used Toothpaste In Four Months!



I am one who has always enjoyed oral hygiene. I actually remember how this happened to me. When I was six and seven my dad’s friend would come visit us. The sad thing is that he visited more than my dad in those days. We called him “Uncle Duck”. To this day I don’t really know what his name is, but the special thing about “Uncle Duck” is that his teeth were rotten and nasty. Every time he would leave he would tell us, “You need to make sure you brush your teeth or they will look like mine!”. That definitely did the trick.

My mom had me do some research for her to find out if toothpaste could be making her sick. The answer was yes. Fluoride just isn’t very good for us. It does help protect the teeth, but if you eat a balanced diet and especially if you live in areas that add fluoride to the water. You don’t really need it in your toothpaste. Plus the glycerin that gives toothpaste such a great texture is really bad for your teeth.

So…me and my family stopped using toothpaste. The great thing…I love it! This doesn’t really mean that I (or my family) have stopped brushing their teeth. In fact, our teeth look better than ever before.

My recipe for tooth powder:
I made a recipe for tooth powder that we have been using instead of toothpaste. I take 1 cup of baking soda and add 1 teaspoon of tea tree oil. The baking soda is good for cleaning and it also helps to kill germs. The tea tree oil is an anti-bacterial. To that I had 1 teaspoon of mint extract and 2 teaspoons of vanilla for a more pleasant flavor. I stir it all together and bag it up. I keep a plastic bag in the fridge and then scoop out a small dish full of it.

At first the toothpaste taste really salty and it is hard to get over. However, brushing your teeth is important so you can get used to it. After awhile it is even enjoyable and with a good mouthwash (I make our own, but I have nothing against Listerine other than the cost) you will probably come to enjoy it even more. I know I do because there are many advantages:

  • Cost…Okay so toothpaste isn’t really expensive when you consider how long a tube lasts. However, baking soda is really, really cheap.
  • Healthier…I really like the fact that I feel it is healthier.
  • Teeth feel great…My teeth feel really smooth and clean.
  • Less worry…My kids brush their teeth a lot and love tooth powder. I know that if we used toothpaste they would also love it. However, I don’t have to worry about the fact that they don’t spit well. Instead, I just let them brush their teeth and make them shiny as my five year old would say.

In the end, I definitely don’t regret getting rid of toothpaste. I like my tooth powder and will keep using it…probably forever. :-D

Crazy Woman!    ,

Making Money Online – July 2011 Income Report



I feel really pleased with where I am this month. I have been working hard on my websites and I am starting to see an increase in traffic and in earnings (as small as it may be). I am really excited about the whole thing and look forward to making more money online then I have ever done before. My highest earning month (other than freelancing which I will never do again) was $900 in a single month. I am no where near there this month, but am hoping to be sometime this year.

InfoBarrel

Last month I made a whooping 17.29 off of my articles at InfoBarrel last month. This month I made 21.23 and I have seen quite a jump in traffic. The cool thing about this is that I have posted one article there, but it was for backlinking. Other than that, I have not added links to any of the articles there, done any editing, or done anything in the community to increase my traffic.

HubPages

I haven’t done anything with my HubPages either. This month I made $17.65 on Adsense from them and $39,91 with their ad program. The total is $57.56 and is a nice boost from the $48.21.

My Own Sites

What I am really excited about isn’t what HubPages and InfoBarrel made this month, but what my own websites have made. I have been working really hard on them for about six weeks now. Last month I made $2.26 on my own websites. This month I made $16.35.

Triond

I also made a huge amount on Triond this month. Wait for it…wait for it…$0.24.

Amazon Earnings

My Amazon earnings for last month were $6.89. This month was a disappointing because I only made $1.20.

The total earnings for this month were $95.58. The total for last month was $75.52. While I am definitely not rich yet and few people will be really excited about my earnings, it is a nice boost from last month. I will take a $20 increase, but I am hoping for more next month. :-P I don’t know if it is too much to ask, but we will see. One thing is certain, making money online is hard work and slow going.

Web Writer    , , ,

The Blue “Lobster” Disaster



Awhile back I shared with you the little electric blue “lobsters” or crayfish that we purchased at the pet store. These cute little blue crayfish did a lot of molting and got to about 4 – 5 inches. Their color became a deep blue with green and purple highlights. They were beautiful and I wanted to breed them.

I had done a little work on figuring out which type of crayfish we had on our hands. Here in America there are two types of crayfish commonly called the “electric blue crayfish”. One is the P. Alleni and the other is the P. Clarkii. I used this knowledge to decide that we had two female P. Alleni. They had the characteristics that people use to identify the P. Alleni.

So I talked to a seller on Aquabid and planned on trading one of my girls for one of her P. Alleni boys. One arrived and he looked a lot different then my girls. I was very worried that he was a P. Clarkii. To this day I still think that it is possible that he is. However, I really started digging into it and found that our “girls” were really Cherex quadricarinatus. I say “girls” because females and males in the Cherex crayfish look very different.

The problem is pretty simple. Here in the state of Texas you can only own crayfish that are native to the northern hemisphere of the world. The Cherex quadricarinatus are from Australia. They were illegal in the state of Texas. In fact, the fine if we should be caught having them it could have a $200 to 2,000 fine, up to 180 days in jail, or both (per specimen). I was planning on breeding them! :-P On top of the fine and the risk of jail time, my husband works for the police station and would also be risking his job by doing/keeping something illegal.

So we had to get rid of the electric blue “lobsters” crayfish. We have purchased a few self cloning crayfish, but these girls are a whole different story. Actually it is rather surprising that they aren’t on that list of illegal species here in Texas. They may become on that list some day…

Well…lots coming up. I will tell you more about those self cloning crayfish, I will be talking about earning money online, I have a post planned (in my head for whatever that is worth) for a Keyword Academy post, the end of the month is quickly coming and I will be posting an earnings report, and I have a lot to share on my “no poo” experiences. So, check on back…

Crazy Woman!    , , , ,

You Could Fix Your Problem If You Weren’t Whining For Attention



An interesting, at least mildly, thing happened today. I have been working hard on developing a number of sites. With all of my sites I get a lot of bogus comments. Yes, I know that most people who comment are seeking links. Some don’t know better than to add spam to my sites and others are too lazy to use real linking methods. Most of these at least humor me a little bit. Some frustrate me. Maybe it really depends on the mood I am in.

Anyway…one in particular caught my attention today. It said, “I am very disappointed. All you are doing here is whining. You could fix your problem if you weren’t whining for attention.” This too me back just a moment. Now I will be the first to admit that I, like many if not most people, have had my moments falling into the whining and maybe even whining for attention stage. Sometimes life, problems, and times get you down. It’s hard not to whine for attention.

However, this particular comment was left on a post about curing plantar warts. “Mmmmhmmmm, I knew you commented without reading my stuff, Mr. Comment Leaver Number Six!” So, anyway…apparently if I write an article trying to help someone and post it on one of my sites it’s just me whining for attention. :-P

So…I have a lot of “real” posts coming up. I want to tell you how I am earning money online, I would love to share an update in earnings which is really exciting to me (though I might be the only one excited about it), and I even have an update on what it is like having gone four months without soap or shampoo. Plenty of good reasons to stop back coming up. I am also going to try and update twice a week rather than periodically when I steal a moment in time. Maybe if I had more stuff to whine about…although I tried writing a whining blog once and I wasn’t very good at posting to it either.

Crazy Woman!    ,

Making Money Online



I realize that everyone and their brother take the time to write a blog about their making money online experiences. Some call themselves affiliate marketers, others internet marketers, and some just want to show you that you can make thousands of dollars online. They usually then turn around and try and sell you a product. However, what all of these blogs have in common is useful information and a great personality. Unfortunately…I lack on the personality. I don’t think that it really is that I don’t have a personality. I think that my personality is a great one, but it has dry humor that highly relies on sarcasm. This sort of thing doesn’t come across very well when you aim for showing your personality online. It tends to come off as rude. So, it just doesn’t show up much.

However, it doesn’t really have to because that’s not how I go about making money online. The truth is that if you decide to jump in and make money online then it isn’t likely that that will be how you make money either. You see, I write a lot of articles on things that I know. It is true that personality isn’t a bad thing to have in your writing, but when I write an article about pruning a weeping cherry tree, all I really need to do is show that I have the knowledge that you need and then present it in a way easy for you to read.

Break It Up
To make money online with my articles I write ones that can benefit readers. Then I break it up because there is a very good chance that I have a lot more to say then you really want to take the time to read.

Make Sure You Know What You Are Saying is True
If you are writing articles then you want to make sure that you know what you are talking about. Often this means doing some research even if you know about the topic. After all, you want to make sure that what you think you know, you really know to be true.

Don’t Steal It
There is a fine line between doing research and taking what others have said. This fine line is one that will be argued for a long time. What you have to know is that you can’t take the information and copy and paste. A lot of people do this hoping to make money online quickly. They glue together a sentence from here and one from there and so forth. Instead make sure that everything is said in your own words and if you need to give credit make sure that you do just that.


I have over 2000 articles on the Internet. Because I chose to put them in the wrong locations, I have really suffered for it and haven’t made as much as I could. However, the truth is that if you are going to make money online then you will need to do a lot of writing. It isn’t easy and some days it is downright exhausting. However, it is worth it in the end. You will be building up something that will only require a little time to maintain it and you get to reap in the money month after month.

Making money online can be done whether you are boring like me, or you have some spice. You will have to figure out the best methods for you to do just that, but in the end it will be worth it. It will take time and loads of work and there will be days that you feel like giving up. That is what I guarantee. But if you keep at it and do things right then you will make money.

Make Money Online    ,

Being a Michigander at Heart



Not too long ago in the scope of time, I was born in a small hospital in a small town in Northern Michigan. Now for those that know that Michigan has an Upper Peninsula and a Lower one, this town or city as some would call it is in the upper portion of the Lower Peninsula. It is the biggest “city” within an hour and a half drive with about 12,000 people. It’s called Cadillac and many people in Michigan don’t know where it is, so if you don’t you certainly don’t need to feel bad.

I then went to college in a small town in central Michigan (at Central Michigan University). Mt. Pleasant was busy and bustling during the school year and a bit of a ghostly kind of town in the summer. I lived there for almost two years.

After that I moved to Grand Rapids. I moved there to live with my mom because I had no more money for school, lots of debt, and a few other issues to be concerned with. It just happened that my mom moved to Grand Rapids in March and I needed a place to stay in May. Before that I had met a Internet friend and we started spending more and more time together. In September I married him and in September of the following year we left Michigan behind because we were seeking more secure employment. Really I only lived in Grand Rapids for 16 months, but none the less I found myself feeling excited and even tearing up at the following video.

So…this is the story. In January a site called mainstreet.com (I have never heard of it, but that doesn’t mean much) named Grand Rapids, MI number 10 on their list of dying cities. The harsh thing is that News Week and other sites and news stations picked up the news. Well…Grand Rapids and many of its citizens didn’t really like this. So, they got some money (quite a bit of it) and people (quite a few since it took more than 5k people to put it together) and did the world’s longest lipdub. What’s really cool is that the video is a cool one, artistic, funny, and it shows off a ton of the city. It makes me proud. It also makes me miss home a bit. But such as life.

It took six weeks worth of practicing and a 3 1/2 frame with the roads closed down. However, they have put something together that has people nation wide looking at Grand Rapids, Michigan with their lipdub. Well…I am off to write some more. :-D

Uncategorized    , , , ,

May Income Report – 2011



There have been times when I have written income reports where I am excited and can’t wait to share it with who ever might stop on in. However, this is not one of those times. My income has been pretty pathetic. I made about $100 in January and then the Google updates in February and March really hit me hard because most of my income was coming from InfoBarrel and HubPages. So, this is what this month looks like.

-InfoBarrel – I made $17.29 from InfoBarrel this month. I haven’t touched it since January and I haven’t even had time to make backlinks. So, I am not extremely happy or impressed, but at the same time…it is money that is coming in.

-HubPages – From Google I made very little money at HubPages. I brought in a whole $6.53. However, I also belong to their new add program and in that method I made an additional $41.48 for a total of $48.21.

-From the sites that I own I earned $2.26. This is from two sites that I have been working on. I have many sites that I have been working on and I am hoping that this is just the beginning of great things.

-I also earned $1.10 from backlinking sites. I don’t use these for much these days so that’s good. :-D

-Finally I earned $6.89 from Amazon. Right now that is a combined Amazon total. I don’t know where those sales came from and in the future I should probably work on separating them out. However, for now…it was just nice to see that I sold something. :-P

I finished the month with $75.52 total. I hope that the next couple of months see that increase at least a bit and after the 90 days of hard writing that I will be doing for the 90 day challenge, I hope to see a lot nicer return on my time. However, I suppose that there is no guarantee. :-D

Earnings    , , ,

Blind Faith



When I first started I had this blind faith that I could make it no matter what. I made my first three cents and was determined that I would make enough money that my husband would be able to quit his job because I would make enough money to replace his income by 2011. In that time I have made more money than a lot of people. Passively I have made as much as $800 a month (at one point) and when I did freelance work I made as much as $2800 in a single month. However, none of this got us near where we had to be in order for my husband to quit his job.

That was a hard blow this past year. After all, I had been working hard for three years with a blind faith that if I just kept working it could happen. But it just wasn’t to happen. With hard work I feel I can still make the goal of having my husband quit his job, but it is something that I am going to have to work really hard at. It will also take time. I am hoping that I can get the job done by 2014 or 2015.

Here’s the plan.

  • I want a dozen sites by then and I want them all to have a fair amount of content. I have eight now, but most are still at a couple of articles each.
  • I want all of the articles on the site to be well backlinked.
  • I want to have a good amount of traffic on them. Probably at least 8,000. However, I might want or need even more.
  • I want to have more than one method of monetization. Many people use Google Adsense and that is fine, but I also want monetization through Amazon, affiliates, and eBooks.

In order for my husband to quit his job we need to have accomplished four things.

  1. We need to make at least $4,000 a month consistently.
  2. We need to have at least three months savings so $12,000.
  3. We need to have paid off my student loan off. I currently owe about $12,000.
  4. We need to have 0 credit card debt. That’s about $1,000.

So, while it all sounds good, it will be a lot of work. It will require a lot of time and even more writing. With that said…I am off to write some more…

Web Writer    ,

Make Money Online – The Mistakes I Have Made



I have sat down and identified the mistakes that I have made before. However, because there are so many mistakes it is important to not that you can avoid my mistakes in order to create your own success. You can make money online, but it will require that you avoid making the mistakes that I have made and that others have also made.

  • Consistency? In the last three and a half years there really hasn’t been much consistency in what I have done. Instead I have written hundreds of articles in many different locations, but never really stuck at it. I would write a lot of articles for a whole month and then really slack of for a month or two.
  • Revenue Sharing Sites. I have posted most of my articles at revenue sharing sites. I wrote for eHow, Helium, and howtodothings.com. All of them have made it so that things have changed and I no longer make money from them. First was howtodothings.com. They changed things up and made it so that if you didn’t write there enough they would cut you off. I stopped posting their regularly because a lot of people were having copyright issues. They hold copyright to all of your material. Then I got blocked out of my account and wasn’t able to go back to write one article every 90 days. I was making about $200 a month there before being cut off. It was rather painful to be cut off. Next was Helium. They changed things so you had to work there each month in order to make money. At first this was a pain, but acceptable. The more changes that they have made, the less acceptable it has been. Now I don’t work there and don’t make money there. eHow closed their writer compensation program and made you go through Direct Media. However, I still made money off of them for each month with the articles that I had there. Now they won’t be doing that. I did get a nice compensation. However, the compensation is less than I made last year on their program. It will be nice to have a chunk of money. I used to speak very highly of revenue sharing sites because of the advantages (they do the site work, they do some promotion, they bring in traffic), but I have come to feel that these things are not enough.
  • I started sites, but never really took them any where. Instead, they pittered out with my lack of consistency. I would get decent traffic only to drop the ball and not get anywhere.
  • I didn’t really listen to others. I thought I had it all in the bag and that I didn’t really need to learn from others. I was also extremely nervous about getting taken in and paying money for something that wasn’t worth it. There are so many scams out there and I didn’t want to spend my very hard earned money to find out that someone was getting rich on the Internet from my hard earned money and nothing more.

There are probably more things that I did wrong on my path to making money online. However, I am off to write some articles and backlink them so that I can change my fate. My goal is to make $1000 a month by the end of December which will require that I work a whole lot harder. So…here I go to do just that.

~Danelle

aidenofthetower

Web Writer    ,
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