How to be a Fool: Post Links to Useless Websites

You know how I know a website is great? When it links to Agloco. Not only is the description of it flawed, i.e. it says 'get paid to surf online!' because we all know Agloco paid nobody, but the website doesn't even exist still.

If you run a website, you must always keep in mind that people can still come to your site to view old posts. Try doing a spring cleaning of your older posts to remove dead links or links to places that are of no use to your readers nowadays.

There are several practical reasons to do this. First of all, on an intangible note, you will be annoying your readers. When you give a link, the only thing that should matter is whether it's useful to your readers. Too many times do bloggers give links to pages that benefit themselves over their readers.

Secondly, you reduce the number of links that leave your blog. This can help boost your PageRank in the next update. Why bother giving a link to Google Adsense? They really dont need the PageRank as much as you do.

Thirdly, if they're affiliate links or partnerships that are no longer of use to you, you increase the chance of losing a customer. If you don't have an affiliate program in your money making plans then you're best to stop giving them traffic and PageRank. If you really feel you need to keep a link up for relevancy, then at least add the nofollow attribute (look it up) to it.

Do you even look at your old articles? Have you ever thought of spring cleaning your website in these ways, or is this a calling? Share your thoughts with us.

How I Plan on Making Money With Facebook

Just a note: I have gone to China for a business internship, and won't be back until mid August. With me luck! I am fairly sure that I will not be able to access my blog while I am over there - blogs are for the most part banned.

At first glimpse Facebook appears to be a tough place to access users – after all, the only information Facebook provides about their users is whatever users are willing to give up – which often is as little as possible. Over the past year, Facebook has continued to develop their application platform which has been an effective way for advertisers and users to click.

However, if you’re reading my blog, you’re probably not in dire need of basic marketing tips. If you have the money it is entirely possible that Facebook will do most of the marketing work for you – they know their website best. As I have found, it is entirely possible to market on Facebook with no money and little knowledge of who your customers are.

These tactics may not be entirely effective, but they are worth a try. I will also say that the tactics I am trying with Facebook are in a moral grey area.

I have noticed, in discussion with friends of mine who use the service, that an overwhelming amount of men randomly add women. They simply flock to the search feature to find attractive women and add, then message them. Therefore, I see no fault in taking advantage of this as an invitation to be advertised to.

If you were to create a facebook account with an attractive – but believable display picture, and join a few networks, you should be able to have several people add you every week. If you make several of these accounts, you will have an even larger and ever increasing pile of contacts.

Unlike email, people who are contacted over facebook read everything sent to them. I am going to experiment, once I have my lists in place, of trying to refer my ‘contacts’ to websites using affiliate links, and see what happens. This is just a theory at the moment, but I like the fact that it’s a free of investment method of creating a list of people to advertise to.

According to many marketers who have tried to use Facebook’s advertising platform, it isn’t the most rewarding, and only works as a way to build an identity as a company. With the potential Facebook has, I’m going to try something new.

I will keep you all posted if it does or does not work – and I’d love to hear what you think.

Annual Review Part 2: Big Changes and Earnings Breakdown

If you haven’t Read Part 1 of the Annual Review, go back and check out my annual earnings report.

In this part, I talk about how I will steer my blog in the right direction, and how I plan on boosting my earnings. I will also release the ways I earned money this past year.

Big Changes Coming

When I start Peter Morrow’s Online Money 2.0, I plan on making it a place to chronicle other money ventures. As I mentioned previously, I am starting a business in sports betting with a friend and I should be getting that going at some point this summer.

I want my blog to look cleaner, and this should be possible with a Wordpress template that I have more control over. That will give me and my sponsors confidence in my image, and would make it something I can be proud of and share with friends.

Hopefully I will post more, and the second year around, have more valuable information to share. In all of my posts in the course of year one, the ones that got the best responses were the ones that came from the heart and were completely original. I have had trouble posting a lot and although I have considered posting more, I feel I can’t keep it up with the busy life I have. For those who don’t know me too well, I go to university and I’m 19 years old.

I am gaining enough confidence to invest money into the blog as well. As the earnings go up, I will pool more and more into marketing. I don’t rely on the money I make from this blog, so a vast majority of it will go back into the system.

Breaking Down The Earnings

I’m not going to break down my earnings in dollars and cents (more the latter!) because they’re all pretty small. I don’t want to talk too much about monetization because I feel like I can do that part pretty well, even while I’ve been with Blogspot. Using Wordpress I should see a marked improvement, almost certainly. I’m still going to tell you how I made the small amount of money I did this year.

My biggest earner was AdSense. That’s because I used it from the very moment I started my blog. I wasn’t very happy with my AdSense earnings anyways, as I wrote about before. My second biggest earner was from private sales, which was my best earner in recent months. Following that is Project Wonderful, then a little bit from ReviewMe and Kontera.

Luckily, the one thing which has been fairly steady has been my RSS readership. Even when my PR got dumped (due to changing domains in April), my subscribership was left in tact. I’m hovering around 45 readers at the moment, which I’m at least satisfied with. Like blog monetization, that is something I can deal with easily and not overthink, because most of my focus should be going to creating good content.

I know there’s a lot of hope in making my online businesses a success. I’ve already demonstrated that I’ve got commitment by staying on board longer than many beginners would. Making it to one year is a big mark for me. Here’s to number two!

Goals, Goals, Goals

I’ve estimated roughly that if I were to keep things going the way they are right now, I would be on pace to make roughly 250-300 dollars next year. While this sounds alright, I’m going to be earning in the kiddie pool forever unless I step it up.

That’s why I’m going to set a firm goal and really go after it. In the next year, I plan on earning 600 dollars online.

In order to achieve that, I’m going to need to make around 50 dollars a month. As the graph showed in previous edition of this report, I’m on pace to make that much in two years. Let’s try to cut that in half.

Of course, if things go well, I won’t need to make these small goals. If I surpass them, I will celebrate for a moment, and then set the bar even higher. Wish me luck.

Annual Review Part 1: Earnings Report, Year One

Early happy birthday to Peter Morrow’s Online Money! It has been a year of learning, patience, excitement, failure, and to some extent, success.

When I began this blog on July 12, 2008, I will have to admit that I saw it as a means. In fact, I can’t really tell you why I started it on this vast niche which is making money online. I think it was because that’s what I wanted to do with my time, and make it a hobby of mine.

In year one, I didn’t achieve financial success. I’ll explain in this article why I think that is, and what I’m going to do to change that.

First, I will show you how my earnings looked this year:

On average, I made $ 11.47 a month, and in total, I made $ 150. What a nice, round number.

Yes, the earnings are grudgingly trending upward, but let’s look at my projected earnings for the next two years:


After three years of blogging, I would be earning 50 dollars a month only. Is it worth the commitment?

Not at that rate. Not with that little to show for.

First, I will break down why I think I couldn’t kick-start my earnings:

1. I didn’t know a whole lot about my blog topic when I began, and couldn’t provide knowledgeable information on a regular basis.
2. I didn’t care enough about my blog topic.
3. I didn’t post enough.
4. I didn’t invest any money into marketing the blog.
5. I wasn’t confident enough about my skills or brand image.
6. My technological skills were, and are suspect at best.

So how can I steer this ship in the right direction?

Well, this post should help me reflect upon the year as a whole, and it’s already helping me decide what I want to do.

The first step will be a fresh start. I am going to learn Wordpress and then make the transition away from Blogspot, eventually. I would appreciate any help from fellow bloggers who know how I can maybe transfer my blog over. Blogspot was a good way to get started but it doesn’t cut it, and I expect more at this stage.

What’s the next move for me?

It continues in Part Two, which will be posted in a few days from now.

Working Online Means You Need A Way To Accept Credit Card Payments

Today Debbie Dragon will be sharing with us some of her expertise on accepting payments from your clients.

I've been watching Peter's blog with interest. As an online freelance writer for more than five years, it's always great to follow the journey of new people entering the world of online businesses and blogging for money.

Whenever you enter the industry of working online, though, it's important that you understand at some point – you'll need a way to accept credit card payments from your clients. Most people rely on paypal these days as their primary way to accept payment; but there may be instances when the client refuses to use paypal for one reason or another, and it's a good idea to have a back-up plan for accepting payments. If your business explodes, and you start receiving payments regularly from clients, you may also consider other ways to accept credit card payments to reduce the fees you pay.

In the past, it was really difficult for a small business to accept credit card payments. Not only was it expensive to get set up, but the fees per transaction were quite outrageous and the typical small business owner couldn't see the benefits of it when compared to the cost of it all. Now, thanks to e-commerce and the internet, small business owners and independent contractors can easily and affordably accept credit cards from their clients.

Third Party Providers for Credit Card Processing

Paypal is your typical third party provider. These providers handle the processing of the credit card and deposit the funds into an account that you can access online. Once the money (minus the provider's fees) are deposited, you can transfer it to your normal bank account (or in some cases, withdraw it from an ATM or shop with a debit card).

Merchant Accounts Through Banks

For people who have been in business for awhile, you might consider an actual merchant account through a bank. There are both positives and negatives associated with processing credit cards with a merchant account. Advantages include the security and dependability that coems from working through a bank, and the fees are quite low if you have good credit. If you are looking to accept credit cards from clients online, or have less than great credit, you may find it difficult to get approved for a standard merchant account, however.

Getting Your Money From Credit Card Payments

No matter which way you decide to process credit card payments from your clients, you can pretty much get the payments transferred from the processor to your own bank account within a few days. The processor takes their fees from the credit card payment before passing along the balance, so you'll want to consider that when setting your rates and just charge a few dollars more to help offset the fees.

Debbie Dragon is a writer for CreditorWeb.com, where she writes about credit cards, rewards programs, credit card processing and general personal finance.

Back From Vacation; Money Updates

This past 10 days I went to Northern Ireland to visit some relatives. It was a nice little trip. I had limited internet access but I was able to maintain my earnings on this blog.

I can't believe it's already been a year since I started this blog. I wasn't sure from the beginning if I would keep it going or not, but I've grown an affection for blogging and the more I learn the more I realize the potential I have to develop it into something really special.

As always, blogging takes up a lot of time. I plan on making money on the internet in other forms. That is why I'm proud to announce that shortly I will be starting my first major website project. A programmer and I have been working on a sports betting website and it is hopefully going to make a huge splash sometime this summer. Once that gets going, the real money making begins for me and my associates.

As for this blog, I plan to keep it going. As I start having more to "rave" about, this blog will become my journal of how I am making money online - because who doesn't want more money making ideas?

July 12th, 2007 was the start date of this blog. Since that time, I have learned a great deal about blogging. I know what it takes to make a living out of blogging, and it sure isn't easy. The people who read blogs are well informed folks, and its awfully hard to sell their eyeballs! I don't expect much income out of this blog, but maybe that's a good thing, because I'll never feel disappointed.

This July 12th, I'll post up my earnings for the year. I've contemplated giving monthly earnings, but they really aren't much worth talking about on a monthly basis. Maybe once things start moving along nicely I will do so. Stay tuned for the July 12th year in review!