a view of what i do, know, and think

Monthly archives for May, 2011

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

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Can I Really Make Money Online?



I have been one to frequent a lot of different blogs that have said that you can make money online. I read many people claiming to make thousands of dollars a month or six figure incomes. If you have come here to read one of these reports, you won’t find it. Instead you will find a woman who has made a ton of mistakes. I am hoping to make $100 for the month of May. It isn’t much or a living and when you think about it, it is really sad for the four years that I have been trying to do this. However, I still firmly believe that I can really make money online. What’s more is, I also firmly believe that you can really make money online. Here’s what I know:

In Order to Make Money Online You Must:

  • In order for you to make money you will need to be consistent. This doesn’t mean that you need to have hundreds of hours a week available to sit in front of your computer (though this does help), but it does mean that you will need to write very regularly.
  • You need to set up a website and do your keyword research. You may have hundreds of great ideas, but if it isn’t targeting words that people are searching for or it isn’t a term that advertisers are paying for then you won’t make money.
  • If you don’t backlink you won’t get any where. You need to have dozens to hundreds and in some cases even thousands of backlinks pointing to your site and its articles or you won’t have enough traffic to make money.
  • You have to keep writing. You can’t put up five articles and backlink them and then stop hoping that they will make you rich. Instead, you need to put up five articles and then five more and keep growing the number of articles that you have out there.

Can I really make money online? Yes, but it will take a lot of work and a good plan to get there. I have a lot of mistakes under my belt that I can share with you so that you don’t make the same mistakes. You can do it better and faster than I can!

Web Writer    ,

90 Day Challenge



So, the end of May is almost here and as normal I am horrible at posting. So, here’s what’s up.

-Writing. I have joined another 90 day challenge. The last one I wanted to get 300,000 words written and instead got about 112,000. This time I have set up a goal of 250,000. We are five days in and I am on schedule and have more than 17,000 words written. I really want to make it through this time and kick butt. Of course The Keyword Academy offers great prizes. There will be a drawing that includes the names of the participators in it worth a year long membership at TKA (about $400 value) and there is a second drawing with a prize of $1,000 cash. Of course the real benefits are to one’s earnings and the improvement made on their habits. So I am off and going.

-Of course I slept on my neck wrong right before the challenge began and it has been killing me. I have been pushing through, but if it wasn’t hurting so bad I would probably be farther ahead than I am.

-I want to reorganize (or organize) this site so that it is a much more useful tool for everyone. It isn’t easy to figure out everything that I should be putting here, being disciplined enough to write regularly, and sharing the information that everyone wants to hear. My life seems rather rushed, exciting, and dull all at one time.

I will be back again in a day or two. I really want to offer you guys a wide variety of information. I just hope I am not too dull and that I don’t make anyone want to go to sleep. :-P

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Comments Are Turned Off



I have turned the comments off for now. Nothing is more annoying to me than sifting through spam hoping for a single gem. However, the truth is I am not getting enough traffic for any gems. So…I have hundreds of spam comments. I know some are left by bots because there are more comments than there is traffic. In the end…I just don’t want to worry about it. I hope that this blog has value some day. At this point I know it doesn’t have much to offer…

Earnings…I hope that one day I have the earnings to draw the traffic. Then I hope I am able to share what I have learned. I know that there are lots of people who share how they earn. Some share that they are earning thousands. Others share that they are earning more than that. There is some doubt with some bloggers, but I feel I have something to offer the person who doesn’t have any idea how to make money online.

Other stuff…at the same time I think my life has a few examples. I am working toward turning many of our hobbies into money makers. They won’t make enough for us to live off of, but the idea as a whole is a really cool one.

Anyhow…for now the comments are off. If you have something important to say, would like to ask questions, or are interested in guest posting then use the contact form to contact me. I will get back to you as soon as possible.

Thanks…

Danelle Karth ~ aidenofthetower

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No ‘Poo Update



At the end of February I did a lot of research about the evil of shampoo and decided that it wasn’t worth keeping around. It has now been over eight weeks without shampoo. There are things to know about no ‘poo and how it has worked out for us.

My husband’s hair was greasy at first, but it looked great pretty quickly. In fact, it doesn’t get greasy like it did before. His hair is better than ever and feels good to touch. He also had a really big sensitivity to shampoo so he loves it being gone. He had a little bit of dandruff so he now rinses it with a vinegar and water rinse when he showers.

The kids didn’t seem to notice that we don’t use soap and shampoo anymore. Their no ‘poo experience has gone really well since their hair looks good and is cleaner because my son no longer fights with me about washing it. They are four and two though, so it isn’t like they had a greasy issue anyway. :-P

My situation hasn’t been that great. About four weeks in my hair stopped looking gross. It looked pretty normal or like I put moose in it. However, it felt terrible. In fact, I was wondering just last week if I was going to be able to pull of the no ‘poo thing after all or if I would have to find some sort of natural shampoo. However, this week it looks and feels a lot better! I am definitely hoping that it will continue on this way and it will be all good. I have been using baking soda rinse and then vinegar rinse about once a week. I don’t want to do it more than that because I don’t want to be dependent on it.

As for soap…that one has been easy. Sometimes I do a clay mask for the wonderful feeling of it. However, most of it is just a good sponge, a pair of gloves, and a loofah. I feel cleaner and my skin seems happier.

Other changes we have made:

  • We got rid of deodorant. I made up a mix of coconut oil, baking soda, corn starch, cocoa butter, tea tree oil, peppermint oil, and spearmint oil. I didn’t like it, but my husband did/does. I mixed up water with corn starch, baking soda, tea tree oil, peppermint oil, and spearmint oil. I then put it in a spray bottle. I spray it on and love it.
  • We got rid of toothpaste and mouthwash. Tooth paste was really hard at first. I mixed together  baking soda with tea tree oil. Baking soda is great for cleaning the teeth and tea tree oil kills bacteria. Then I added some peppermint and spearmint extracts for flavor. It taste pretty salty and was really hard to handle at first. However, I don’t mind it now and have seen good results. My teeth feel a lot cleaner and my husbands are a lot whiter. For mouth wash we used hydrogen peroxide and the mint extracts. That didn’t have enough power behind it so this time I mixed 1 part rum to 2 parts hydrogen peroxide and added tea tree oil and the mint extracts. It taste okay, but I think I will actually be adding more alcohol to the next batch. I am also going to look for a stronger alcohol such as Ever Clear later on.
  • We got rid of lotion. I mixed up a lot of oils including coconut oil to start with. This felt great, but dried really fast. Lately I have been too busy/lazy to mix new so we have been using grapeseed oil. It feels pretty good and is really simple. A little also goes a long way.

It’s amazing what you really don’t need in your life and how it works out to be when you are getting rid of stuff. Shampoo is the only thing I really miss and I think I am getting closer and closer to finally being free of the nasty part of no ‘poo. It hasn’t been easy and for me it has taken longer than 3 weeks! I will keep you updated…

I would love to hear your story. Have you gotten rid of shampoo? Do you want to?

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I Am Terrible At Posting ~ Earnings Update



I know from statistics that there aren’t many people who stop by and why would you? I don’t post often or on any sort of schedule and I don’t have a ton of great things to say. This blog got pretty much run off the rail road tracks with my project at 5Currencies and then that fell apart. So, I just haven’t gotten around here much. However, I wanted to share with you my earnings for the year so far and my plans to move that up in the world.

January - In January I made a little over $100. Some of that was from Helium. I have stopped doing the ratings necessary to keep getting paid with them. As they change the rules and make it more difficult to want to stay there I decided I just couldn’t handle it anymore and left. I have also decided that I won’t be counting eHow earnings any more. I like their site less and less, both for information and as a company. So, I refuse to link to the articles I have there. This means that I have no say over how much I make there and since I can’t add more articles…I will just count that as a bonus. Sometimes a nice bonus, but most of the time between $20 and $50 a month.

February – First InfoBarrel got de-indexed because of an update they did to the whole site. Then Google made some algorithm changes that made a huge difference in a lot of the earnings I was making since most of it was from InfoBarrel and HubPages. Top that off with a month of me being sick and it wasn’t looking good with about $60 in earnings.

March – Things still didn’t move forward very fast in March, but I continued forward at a snails pace. I still hadn’t started putting much into my efforts at the Keyword Academy or rather The Keyword Academy method, but I was starting to form a plan and I wrote a whole lot more. Income was about $80.

April - This past month went a lot better. I definitely did better with planning and coming up with an enjoyable, but productive method of doing everything. I am still moving forward at a snail’s pace, but I think I am moving in the right direction and to me that’s what really matters. I made $84.98 from my main sources. Most of that was HubPages with InfoBarrel in second place. However, I have started to make a couple of dollars on blogs that I own and I have worked on getting HubPages income growing rather than shrinking. All in all, it will be moving in the right direction.

I have a ton of things to tell you, but I will be stopping there for today. I will work hard to be back again soon and start growing this blog into one that I want it to be. If you are one of the few that come back and check on me, thank you.

All you Internet Marketers and earners out there…How are you doing? I would love to hear about your progress, your successes, and your failures!

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