Need Money! The Need Money Challenge

Okay, so the Need Money Challenge is more a make money online challenge for me, but it should be interesting to watch.

I picked up a few domains recently and decided to do a very public demonstration on NeedMoneyBlog on how to start from scratch and make money online.

Here are the rules:

1) The site has to be brand new and have no existing traffic.

2) I have to build a site myself, no outsourced work.

3) I have to market and brand the site.

4) No AdSense templates or canned websites. It must be as original as possible.

5) The site can be a blog or a traditional website.

6) The site must make money online within 30 days.

7) I can use any means to make money online including AdSense, affiliate sales, banners and text ads.

I will announce the specifics of my make money online challenge this next week.

It should be fun! Who knows? If it goes well, I might create a contest open for anyone to challenge my results!

Need Money! More Making Money Online

There has been a lot of press and email flying back and forth regarding "AdSense optimized web sites".

Basically, an AdSense optimized site is "generally" a template site with generic content and strategically placed AdSense ads designed to pick up quick, regular revenue for the web site owner.

After AdSense was first released, this seemed like a good idea. With automated web site building software, an individual could throw up literally hundreds of sites over a weekend. With a low expectation of say, $1-3.00 AdSense dollars a day, one could potentially make $100-300.00 a day. Good money.

The problems are multitude to this approach.

1) Most web sites, even good ones, make very little money from AdSense, (when compared to other revenue sources). John Chow - Make Money Online for instance, who regularly reports all of his web site revenues, recently reported he made about $700.00 in one month from AdSense; a little over 20.00 a day. Mind you, this is $700.00 out a monthly take of over $10,000.00. Please note, John works constantly on his site, posts regularly and has thousands of hard core readers. Yet his AdSense revenue is moderate at best.

Now think how this will apply to your boilerplate web site with nominal and infrequent content updates. You would be lucky to earn $1-3.00 a MONTH with this sort of site. (Believe me, I know from first hand experience).

2) Google regularly "hunts" down and delists AdSense template web sites in the name of "improving users Internet experience". Basically, Google, the world's number one search engine, sees template sites as garbage and by delisting them, removes the possibility of a casual surfer from finding your site (and your AdSense ads).

3) With the above in mind, Google has been known to remove AdSense accounts from holders of template web sites. There are legions of stories of AdSense account holders with hundreds of dollars in pending payments finding their accounts disabled and their revenue gone.

4) Template web sites are by trade, boring. Internet surfers expect more from a web site and your make money online web site is not what they are looking for.

Solution: You are better off registering a few domains with subjects you are actually interested in and knowledgeable about.

Another note: There are many programs and advocates of building "free" AdSense optimized sites using Blogger, Squidoo, Wordpress and other Web 2.0 web based products. A word to the wise, these generally fail and look worse than any AdSense template site.

Better to stick with a tried and true method rather than the short cut to failure.

Until next time, make money online!

NeedMoney - Making Money Online (pt 2).

Yesterday, I noted several means to making money online which are quite popular today.

One strategy I mentioned, but did not fully explain, was the concept of "domain real estate".

If you are familiar with the Internet, you know what domains are - something.com.

Domain real estate takes the idea that a domain name is like a neighborhood. Some names, like neighborhoods are worth more than others. An thus, like real estate, there are plenty of speculators who gamble that a name might be worth more than the cost of registration.

How does it work?

First, research keywords. Take a topic, or niche market and check for websites and search terms using Google. In our case, let's use the ever popular weight loss.

Now add the long tail. quick+weight+loss, winter+weight+loss, fast+weight+loss.

If any of these terms have significant searches or related websites AND a version of the term is available as a "dot.com" extension, we run over to GoDaddy and register the name.

At that point, we can use a free hosting account with GoDaddy or we can set up a Wordpress blog.

Build some thoughtful and well done content and put up your initial site.

At this point, you can start building traffic to the site, say for 30 days, or you can put the site and domain up for sale on EBay. Obviously, sites with traffic and ad revenue have a higher value than a new site without a Google PR or traffic.

However, with the work you put in, you are looking for a $100-200.00 sale or more for the site. Some domain real estate flippers are happy making as little as $40 or 50.00 per sale because they move so many sites and their costs are offset even with this small amount of profit.

As they say in the make money online business, if it works, rinse and repeat with more domains and websites!

A successful domain real estate flipper can earn a four figure income monthly income if they are fast and good at research.

So, just when you thought you had your arms around the make money online thing, along comes another great idea!

Confused? Don't worry, most of us are and will continue to muddle through this quest until we have joined the ranks of the superstars who truly, "Make Money Online!".

NeedMoney - Making money online

For over a year, I have immersed myself in the online money making industry. Let me describe what "online money making" means.

1. Affiliate sales - primarily e-books, but open to other products. Popular choices are video game, MP3, and movie download sites. E-books are popular because just about everyone markets them and the sales landing pages are really good (well sometimes). Plus it is easy to get caught up in the hype of Day Job Killer, Step By Step Profit and others. Other popular sites market products found on Amazon or Commission Junction partners. Day Job Killer author "Chris" uses this as his primary means of income (besides writing e-books) which he claims earns him a six figure monthly income.

2. AdSense sites - really, these are blogs or website optimized for AdSense CTR revenue. Most of the boilerplate sites are being systematically hunted down and delisted by Google in the interest of "improving users online experience". Blogs are a better bet to me because they are updated frequently, contain user interaction and draw return visitors and traffic.

3. Blogging for dollars - This is the concept of building a blog and using it as a vehicle to make money on a regular basis. The best and most notorious example of late is John Chow . His blog is about making money online with his blog and he does just that - to the tune of US$ 10K per month. Most of his money comes from affiliate sales, referrals and text advertisements, but it proves that it can be done in a relatively short time. In his case, he built his readership of several thousand daily readers over the course of the past year.

4. Arbitrage - The same basis as AdSense sites but heavily uses AdWords PPC to drive targeted traffic to a website rather than stumbling across it organically. The problem is two fold; cost of traffic is less than revenue of site AND building a quality site which does not end up delisted by Google as a boilerplate described above. Personality Joel Comm is a big advocate of this online money making plan.

5. The Holy Grail - Build an empire like Shoemoney AKA Jeremy Shoemaker. Shoemoney has literally thousands of domains pointing to a few dozen websites which generate him, allegedly, six figures a month. However, the cost of reaching this plinth is high and includes several thousands of dollars in PPC marketing, hours of keyword research and the skills of website developers and writers. Can it be done? Yes, but plan on spending years, a small fortune and hundreds of lives. (that last part is a joke).

So what I have tried? Just about everything except for number 5, of course. And that is the problem that I think most "make money online" participants.

We read about someone making 7000 dollars a month with 47 AdSense sites and we jump on that bandwagon.

Then we get an email about the latest e-book and how much revenue we can make off "just two sales a day!" and we start building sites, blogs and lenses devoted to "AutoBlogProfitKillerSmack" hoping to pick up a few deals.

Next comes an arbitrage deal, then a "domain real estate" play and before you know it, you have nothing but a hard drive of half completed websites, a stack of unread e-books and a credit card payment overdue.

So what can a "make money online" prospect to do?

First, focus on one thing. Pick one thing you know, do well and are willing to commit to.

First instance, take blogging. Are you willing to commit an hour or two to write good posts, publish and market them?

Are you willing to write and post related articles to article directories under subjects which will drive traffic to your blog?

Are you willing to research and try products which you would be willing to market and promote on your blog?

Are you willing to make a commitment to your readers to post regularly and respond to their comments and questions?

If so, then perhaps you can turn blogging into a several thousand dollar a month pursuit.

Apply the same rationale to any other "make money online" ventures you are considering. Be ready to make the commitment and start today. And stay focused.