make money online

Making Money Isn’t Really Hard, It’s Just a Lot of Hard Work

by Melvin · Sep 14, 2010

The hype with making tons of cash from blogging has considerably gone down for the past few years as probably a lot of people have realized that the hype surrounding blogging is all but hype. In fact I’ve seen a lot of people quit blogging to focus on doing more “secure” stuffs like a day job or a real offline business.

I remember when the make money blogging hype is on its peak, people have the mentality of like “I need to put this ad to make some serious cash”. Of course I was one of those people. I had my little basketball blog back then plastered with all sort kinds of banners, CPM, CPC, CPA, you name it. Of course it all backfired for me. The only positive thing then was that I am enjoying running a basketball site. It’s my passion, my hobby.

Eventually and fortunately I said to myself, “bug this! I’m not gonna do any money-related strategy, Im just gonna do what I enjoy, I’d write posts after posts and just do my thing. A kid like me should be enjoying life anyway!” And it was a crucial turning point for me.

After almost a year, the blog started gaining traffic and then money afterwards. The blog was doing good in page impressions that the CPM banners that I used to hate before started giving me respectable daily earnings. Then I started getting private ads from big sports-related companies and it really blew off for me. For some people the money I made back then may not probably be that big, but for an enthusiastic kid like me, it’s an unforgettable experience.

I always reflect back to it and I love telling this story to my friends over and over again. And I’m always amaze when my friends respond to me and say “wow that’s a ton of work. I can’t imagine myself putting that much hard work!”

Looking back, I didn’t really realize that what I did was “a ton” of hard work. All i knew was I was putting up some posts on how this New York Knicks suck, on how LeBron James is the best player ever and stuffs. Heck, I enjoy it so it must not be really hard work.

And oh, what you read above is the elongated version of my about page. 😉

Disparity between Hard and hard work

I used to do lots of programming back in college and so if you know everything about it, you’ll know it’s really hard to be one. As a programmer/coder you need to know a lot of things, you need to have a broad perspective, you need to have superb logic to make things work and you need an immense patience testing and trying different lines of codes. In short, its hard.

Blogging (or making money from blogging) isn’t. Hell, just as long as you know how to read, write, type, copy, paste, act as human, interact, you’re qualified. Everyone does qualify for it but why is it that very few succeed? Yes, lack of hard work. Blogging isn’t hard, its just a lot of hard work. It’s so true. It’s easy to write an article but you need to work hard to come up with 50 high quality ones. It’s nuts to interact but its a challenge to do it with over a hundred of people. It’s tough.

I don’t consider myself a guru and no one of my readers do but I can share here some insights that I feel can be helpful to you:

1. Just do it, stop strategizing!

I usually get a lot of flak when I tell people about this but just from experience (and from observing how big bloggers like Jeremy did), I can tell that this is one key aspect why I’m somehow more successful than some people.

I just do it, if it doesn’t work then I gotta move on! The problem with strategizing too much is that people keep on speculating, lurking, observing that nobody does anything! The biggest problem has and always been getting off your ass. I don’t know about you but I certainly wouldn’t refrain from doing things unless experience tells me that ‘hey this isn’t working’.

The statement “Experience is your best teacher” is corny but its still powerful and proven. You just don’t let people dictate you things, do it yourself. After all you really don’t have anything to lose. Every of our failure racks up to our own education and this is one good thing you will always have.

2. If you enjoy it, just go on! (Passion)

That’s why passion is a key element in blogging. I mean why write about something you don’t enjoy in the first place? That’s probably the biggest reason why most bloggers fail, its because they really don’t feel passionate about what they’re blogging. How can you enjoy talking about making money online if you don’t know it?

It’s always been the same parallels over and over again with all of these successful bloggers. They enjoy just blogging on something that they don’t really expect anything. Why don’t you go on Darren Rowse blog’s archive and look for some of his oldest posts. Its amazing how this guy churned out almost over a hundred of blog articles with over 1000+ words each that never even got any comment/traction? Of course these days Darren can write an article w/any length and still get a heap of comments but the lesson here is that you’re not going to get noticed overnight and if you don’t have passion, I doubt you can last too long in the blogosphere.

3. Stop chasing for shiny golden “secrets” because there’s none.

Ok again I used to be like this one when I was on my early stage of blogging. The scenario is usually like this: A blogger reads a post on some blog that making money is hard. You have to do this, do that, implement this, test, blah blah. So what happens is that this blogger says to himself “No, there must be something better than this, I need to keep looking for one”. And of course the cycle never ends. That blogger would never ever get to work because all he does is chase for secrets.

There’s a big misconception about “premium info stuffs” and secrets. Most people think that these are just the same. The truth is its not. Most info products whether its $9.95 or $999.5 is all about educating people. I’ve consumed a lot of them and I hate eBooks actually all I can say is that the main goal of most of them, if not all is just to organize infos around the web, compile them and present them well. You’re paying them not really because of the “premium stuffs” but only because they’re saving you from getting overloaded. In short, they are giving you blueprints so you never have to find them yourself.

Why not take time to look Technorati’s top 100 blogs? Do you think these guys have secrets? All you can notice is that these bloggers provide massive value to their readers and that alone sums up why they’re popular.

Wrapping it up

As I end this I’ll repeat. Blogging and making money isn’t hard, it’s just a lot of hard work. “Hardwork” is an overly used term but surprisingly not a lot of people value it. From my experience, and from other people’s experience, there’s really no need to reinvent the wheel and chase for something more. Besides if you’re exerting hard work on your passion, then it’s really not hard after all.

I haven’t written a long post like this for a while and I got carried a bit while writing this, lols. But as always, I’d like to hear back from you.

How MelvinBlog Dot Com Really Makes Money

by Melvin · May 10, 2010

I got this request from two people and although they are only two people (lols), I thought I would share here with you right now how MelvinBlog Dot Com makes money.

First and foremost, I would first like to clarify that this blog makes very little to no money at all. Initially when I started this blog, I had in mind bloggers like Shoemoney and Carl Ocab and basically told myself that I’m really going to monetize this blog as hard as I could. Eventually it did especially the past few years where it makes a steady three-figure income every month which I thought was amazing considering I’m not really selling anything except ad space and also the fact that the blog isn’t a high traffic one.

Anyways enough schmoozing, today I am going to break down to you how this blog makes money in the past recent years. I may not totally give you the exact figures or the precise time period but I’d try to detail it as possible.

This blog is nowhere close to a high-traffic site but it’s enough for me to make some money out of it and take good care of all the bills. I also think it’s interesting to let people see how this blog makes money considering a lot of blogs who have much bigger traffic than this blog has been having difficulties with monetization. Without further ado, here we go.

Direct Advertising

It’s no secret and by simple observation you can easily see that majority of the money from this blog comes from selling ad spaces directly to advertisers. I sell several advertising which includes the well-known square banners at the sidebar, I also have text links and the premium spot which is the 468X60 banner space. Initially I wasn’t too keen on selling paid reviews but after realizing it’s totally just fine, I decided to give it a go.

I don’t know but I think I really do well with selling my ad spaces in this blog. I usually get sold out and if not, maybe 1-2 ad spaces were left. One reason is that my ad space is really cheap. I know some bloggers who have the same traffic than me yet they’re selling their spaces for like double of my amount. I’ve talked about it in my how to get that blog advertisers post and it’s all about really letting the marketplace decide for the price tag. Getting 4 $10 placement is always better than one $25 placement.

I’m also keen on giving out discounts especially if it’s on a commitment basis or if it’s a bulk package. Not only I get to be able to get sponsors but also it builds that publisher-advertiser relationship over time which is something that most bloggers don’t do.

And lastly yes I use a very awesome plugin called OIO Publisher. For those who do not know, what it basically does is make selling ad space automated. The advertiser purchases an ad, and then the plugin does everything. You don’t need to upload the banner manually, you don’t need to undergo to those long processes that you usually go into when doing it by yourself.

It also does have some other unique features like geo-targeting and stat-tracking in which it emails the advertisers about all the stats, the clicks, ecpm, and all those geeky number stuffs.

If you don’t have it yet, get your copy now. I know I was like having some pride into myself before and said “I’m not gonna jump into this OIO thing.” I was making good money then but upon purchasing, I almost doubled my advertising income alone because of this plugin. $47 is so cheap since you can use it in as many of your sites as possible.

Direct Ad Sales alone pays for my virtual private network hosting bills and some other couple of outsourcing works so maybe it’s not that dead after all.

Affiliate Marketing

Most of you here know that I’m an affiliate marketer primarily running CPA campaigns through Pay-per click and then Facebook so being an affiliate is usually my bread and butter in terms of making money. But then it’s not really something that is related to this blog so I really don’t count it as part of the revenue.

However, I made some money though with some affiliate products I recommend in this blog. On my earlier days I was promoting affiliate networks like Pepperjam Network and Clickbooth which back then was paying $5 and $10 respectively for every referral. I made a lot of money in that since I leveraged the blog’s traffic and my reputation in forums. Do take note that I was making money as well by promoting affiliate offers within the network so I was not just trying to refer people for the sake of making money.

Most commissions nowadays are from the products that I’ve used and recommend here in this blog. Some of them include the 31 day workbook by Darren Rowse, Elegant Themes, Theme Wars, and of course OIO affiliate program which is one of the lucrative programs out there. Again, I promote products that I use and recommend. I would say stay away from promoting stuffs that you haven’t used yourself.

Affiliate program isn’t really the main driving force of this blog but I know some blogs who do really quite well with this business model. One of them is Michael Dunlop of IncomeDiary.com who doesn’t sell ad space. Instead he leverages his traffic by providing tons of free good stuffs and then recommending products to them afterwards. It’s a great business model as well for the blog so you might as well look at that.

Selling my product

If you can remember I sold a product last year which was called “Make Money Online Blog Monetizer” in which it was my first info product ever. The product was launched for 2 and a half months before pulling it out in the market. I’m not gonna say it’s the best product ever since sliced bread but it did almost raked in a thousand dollars in that period. I know I could’ve done much better had the internship not started killing me back then.

Since then I closed the product down as my goal was really to test the market back then as well as analyze its scalability. Whether I had made $20, $200 or $2000, I would still close the launch for that thing for the same duration of time. Whether it is still going to get launched again or not remains to be seen though.

In the latter part of this year I am looking to release another product so stay tuned for that.

Unorthodox Monetization Ways

I always take blog monetization as a big challenge so I did some unorthodox ways to squeeze money from this blog as well. One of them is through the “put the banner and make money program”. During the past couple of years it was really kicking. I mean you don’t need traffic, don’t need page rank, all you need is to sign up, and then put those ugly looking banners that are made of frames and tables and then receive your 10 Euros (they were usually paying Euros). Some are on a recurring basis and most are on a one time basis.

I really didn’t get the other side of it, all I knew was it’s another way to make money. I even wrote a post about it on how you can money without any sweat at all.

I also did some paid text links in posts thing where I basically was approached by advertisers saying they want this keyword in this specific post to link on their site or whatnot. Probably it’s an evil tactic but is definitely another good way to make money. The buy sell text links forum in digital point was where I was getting most of my clients.

Finally I also tried my luck with CPM-based advertising where I get paid a dollar or more for a thousand impressions. I was a smart ass so all I did was to leverage social media traffic, setup some rotating IP addresses to view my blog and buy cheap traffic. It was a little profitable thing but then I stopped doing it when I switched with this magazine template.

I still have a couple at the back of my mind but I don’t think it’s good to share those things as well as it may probably harm your blog if you implement it. Anyways do take note too that this is what I’d like to call as “desperate monetization measures”. Like I’ve said, it’s always a challenge for me to make money and so even when people see me as trying too hard to make money, I really don’t mind.

Future Plan

As I’ve said I’m going to release a couple of products down the road this year and test the market for it. Since I started list-building last year, I would try to get something from it as well, try to build relationships and then leverage it by recommending some stuffs to them.

The direct advertising model is going to be here in my blog for at least this year since its making me some really good money although I would try to shy away from it probably starting next year once I start getting a more consistent stream of income from other sources

An interesting note to take as well is on how I myself have turned the focus of this blog from making as much money as possible to actually starting to work more on its personal brand and focusing with relationships instead. Although the blog still makes decent money, most of the goals that I’ve set this year aren’t really on the financial side, rather more on building a larger community towards it and bigger readability all throughout the blogosphere. Money is good, but I’d take growing credibility and expertise any time of the day.

Long post huh? What say you?

Can You Still Make Money Online in MMO Niche?

by Melvin · Nov 8, 2009

In this guest post, Simon shows to us why making money in a make money online niche isn’t yet a history.

I was recently reading an article that was asking whether it’s still possible to earn money from the ‘make money online’ (MMO) niche. As we all know, the MMO niche is getting more and more packed, thus increasing competition and making us work even harder to get traffic to out site. And, as we also know, without traffic you can’t make money.

So, can you still make a decent amount of money by blogging in the MMO niche?

Simple answer: YES.

There are lots of make money online blogs around, but at the same time lets be honest in saying that well over 50% are rubbish.

OK, sorry for sounding harsh, but it’s true. Most the MMO blogs I visit have no real potential for earning: the bloggers don’t have a clue how to monetise their blog and are only in the make money online niche because that’s how the big names (Darren Rowse, John Chow etc) have made their name, so they try it out for themselves.

If you’re interested in making “proper” money on your MMO blog, you shouldn’t associate yourself with these blogs. You should really be taking a step to make your blog better than the average, and this way you already have an advantage over tons of other blogs.

There’s lots of ways to gain that extra something that will take your blog above the rest. It could be something as simple as the design (for example, small, ‘not so good’ blogs will often have a free theme, but by getting a custom theme made you can set yourself apart), or something as complex as creating a whole new branch to your website that has never been seen before.

Either way, the thing that is most important is the content. Quality content is what sets the cool blogs apart from those that are quite frankly rubbish. By posting articles that are going to grab the readers attention and then be enjoyable to read, you’re bound to get loads more traffic as people will link to you, and, as we all know, more links means more traffic.

So, how do you make your blog worth visiting? I’d love to hear some of your suggestions, so feel free to leave a comment below!

Simon Rogers is a teenager who blogs at Teenius.com. Also, there is an awesome contest he’s running at the moment which you can find here. It’s easy to enter and has some great prizes!

My Info Product Has Gone Really Far

by Melvin · Sep 1, 2009

Last June I launched my first ebook about monetizing make money online blogs. That was my first ebook and I personally exerted every ounce of sweat and effort to have that book presentable and useful to everyone. Before that, I am always vocal here in my blog about my take on ebooks and why most of them are just waste of time. I also discussed that for every ebook you buy, the risk is always on you, the buyer.

Anyways I took a sneak peak yesterday at my account and am surprised the ebook has sold that good.(click for a larger look)

I know that “experts’ would actually tell me that describing the no. sales as ‘many’ is a big joke, but who cares? When I was just creating this one, I didn’t even expect that it would get pass 5 sales! Do take note that I don’t have a list or whatever. Most of the $10 sales came from this blog from one post while some came from webmaster forums.

All in all I can pretty much say that its a testimony that reputation by far is the best tool to market something. I mean, not that Im saying I am an expert in this niche but I think with the way I maintained the blog, built its community, pissed off people, and shared useful tips. At the end it eventually paid off.

For those who purchased the ebook, I would feel gratified if you send me your testimonials and even criticisms. Use the contact form and I would be grateful to put your testimonials on some page in the future. For those who are interested in buying, please bypass the salespage and go directly here. But still if you’re interested to see how salespages look like, then feel free to visit the boring salespage. And lastly for those who have questions regarding to the product or to why Stephon Marbury is making himself look crazy please use the comment form below. I am in 3 days rest and would pretty much just waste my time in front of my laptop so I can quickly answer your questions. 😉

Monetizing ‘Make Money Online’ Blogs

by Melvin · May 17, 2009

Well reading the title, I am pretty sure you were thinking this one is a long and lengthy informative article but the truth is its not.

Anyway w/regards to the previous post I created about my blog income report w/c got a pretty good response, I’m working on an e-book that would reveal some of the tactics I use to monetize my blog (which somehow got into the mmo niche). I am looking to sell the info for a dirt cheap price for the first few buyers, then eventually increase the price and test the market more.

This is going to be my first e-book so please bare w/me for the use of slang terms. 😉

How to Make Money Outside Internet Marketing

by Melvin · Feb 8, 2009

Although the title looks like that one you have been seeing in email spams and “get-rich quick sales pages, it’s actually not. A lot of people jumping into internet marketing always have this question “How do I start? I dont know anything about internet marketing?” The answer is always read, try to learn, test, then learn again.

But as always there are a ton of ways on how you can make money online if you’re dumb and poor about internet marketing. We all know it takes time before you can completely grasp the whole concept of it, but whats the need on learning it if you can make some cash without it? 🙂 Today I have compiled ways on how you can actually make money online without any knowledge about IM. The only thing you need is the basic read and write knowledge as well as some persistence on your part. I believe all of them costs nothing (although if you have the money, the better) Here they are:

Forum Posting – Forum Posting is basically posting in a forum and getting paid. It’s not really that big but if you can work quick, then you can definitely have your earnings up. ForumsFirst.com is one that pays for it. They are probably the most reliable and better forum posting company. You can also look at some forums like dp and v7n, as normally there are people that look for forum fillers.

SECRET TIP: With this type people often whine “I don’t type fast” While typing fast is a huge factor in this one, it’s not totally the only thing that can give you success with it. Why not use a dicatation software? In my previous stints with doing it, I use Dragon Naturally Speaking. If you’re a Mac user you can use Mac Dictate. What is a dictation software? Basically its a software that converts your voice to text. COol? Definitely! You can make $50 a day easily with forum posting with this type of software. $50 a day? Yeah, something most affiliate marketers cant even reach!

Get Paid To Sites – GPT sites are sites that pay people to complete an offer. Maybe a short survey, or signup to a free site, or maybe something that requires a credit card. Believe me there’s no shortage of this sites. Why? Because some affiliate marketers are incentivizing some offers, thats why they come to these sites, pay them and earn. Win-Win situation for all! Jim of TNF has a list which he personally recommends
Freelancing – Contrary to what most people are saying, freelancing is really a lucrative thing. A lot of people are looking to outsource (including me). They look for designers, article writers, coders, data entry personnels, and many more. I mean Im sure at least you know how to do one of it right? Freelancers are the one whom I often called as “partners in business”. Elance.com is one company which probably is the biggest.
Starting A Contest Blog – I hate doing stuffs like this but basically lets face it, you can actually make some cash/gadgets with contests nowadays. 85% of contests require blogging and doing it costs you nothing. What are you waiting for? Create a free blogger blog, fill it with some content, then start hunting for contests. I know a lot of people making good use of contest blogs and taking advantage of contests.

SECRET TIP: How do you know a contest is live? Easy, just look at other contest blogs and you will know it. Contest bloggers try to find contest as much as they can so they are actually doing the work for you. Search Google for terms “contest blogs” “blog contests” or so and you’ll find a ton.

Selling Photos – Selling photos is something that I have never done and will never do in my entire life. But after countless hours of doing research about it I found out it can really be a good business. If you have a camera, then go into a peaceful place (cemetery?) and take shots. Then sell it to sites like iStockPhoto and StockExpert.

Now with this list, I dont really see any reason why people cannot make any money online. Although it doesn’t make you that big, I believe seeing your first dollars would make you more inspired. And inspirations do a lot. Anyway if you can add anything valuable to this list then don’t be shy to put it in the comments. Or if you have some questions, then ask them. My goal is to get more to add in this list and hopefully share it in some of the local forums here in my country. 🙂 What say you?

The December WidgetBucks Experiment

by Melvin · Nov 29, 2008

When I tried Widgetbucks almost a year ago, I had great hopes that it can make me more money than Adsense. The truth is it really did! 2 weeks after joining widgetbucks I was banned from Adsense for what they called “gaming” them! I made about a nice $31 on one of my sites back then. But well widgetbucks just dont blend well w/my sites. The widgets drastically make my sites slower to load and most people are pissed w/it.

Until November, when widgetbucks made a makeover and they did email everyone about their rvamped network. So I gave it a go to this blog and you can see it running at the right bottom part. Basically what convinced me to put this into it is the fact that we are close to holiday and people are likely interested with holiday/christmas items like Christmas trees and so on. Also companies are giving out massive discounts and fire sales for great products so its easy to have their attention.

Anyway widgetbucks pays on two types. First is for clicks. They pay some pennies per click if the clicks are from US and Canada I believe. They also pay on a CPM basis for most countries I believe but it varies. Say for every thousand impression for US, their’s an ecpm of over $2 while in Asia not even a dollar per thousand mille. Again its on per impression not uniques and i believe me getting 60,000 pageviews and about 40,000 on US traffic, is fair! Let’s see how far this thing will go!

Widgetsucks gives a free $25 on signup but again the thrill is that you have to make $25 more to be into the minimum of $50 payout. Most newbies tend to be attracted with free signups but never managed to get into cashing it out.