Easy (Kinda) Money

I have decided to remove Survey Savvy from my repertoire of passive income streams. It seemed that a Better Business Bureau accredited site would attract more referrals. However, in my instance it has not been up to the task.

I will leave the link up on this blog for another month. I would appreciate any feedback that you can give me as to why this particular passive income stream failed. On its face, Survey Savvy seems to have all the credentials. The Survey Savvy site was  Better Business Bureau accredited and recommended by the radio talk show host Kim Kommando. I have a feeling about what the problem might be… I do know that the surveys are slow in coming, and most people prefer instant gratification. However, I also noted that while my Cash Crate referrals are increasing my SurveySavvy referrals have reached a plateau.

I would like to ask a favor of you, the readers, click on the Survey Savvy link in the upper right-hand corner of this blog, and tell me what you think of the site. Initially I thought this site would be a winner. However,  continue reading…

I wanted to apologize for yesterday. It appears that the server was down for quite some time. Of course It is not a server that I own, however, it is the server that I chose, so I aplogize. My Server is Bluehost and it does have a 99.3 uptime percentage, so this is a rare event. I am talking to the admins to see what happened and how it will be dealt with in the future.

This is a re-print og an eHow article that I just posted. On eHow the title is How to Make Your Blog Better, this is because all the good titles were taken. If you are asking, “Why a reprint?”, read my post Killing Two Birds with One Stone.

Here it is:

How to Make Your Blog Better

If you want to know how to improve your blog, you must first decide on what your definition of improvement is. For the sake of this article, let’s say that improvement is creating great content that people want to read, then driving traffic to your site. After all, what is the sense of creating good content if nobody ever sees it?

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If you think about all the different ways of how to improve your blog, the first thing that should leap to your mind is, of course, great content. continue reading…

I am going to try to rewrite a post that was lost when I had my melt down about two weeks ago. I was trying to add a forum to this blog and I lost two weeks worth of posts.

Micro-lending, often called person-to-person lending or peer-to-peer lending, will eventually make a nice addition to my passive income. The only trouble with it, is that it subscribes to the old adage of “it takes money to make money”. However, if a person has a little extra cash in a savings account or stuffed in the mattress, micro-lending might produce a far better result.

Micro-lending is a way in which people who might not normally qualify for a bank loan can still borrow money. Here is the way it works in a nutshell: if you are the borrower, you would proceed to one of the micro-lending websites to post the type of loan you need. As an example, continue reading…

One of the projects that I have wanted to do for some time is to create an e-book. While standing in the shower I have virtually written the entire thing in my head. However, as I have mentioned in previous posts, I cannot type worth a darn. So now, with the luxury of Dragon Naturally Speaking I am prepared to embark on this next endeavor. Obviously, it is not going to be a cakewalk, but I believe with this assistance I can definitely pull it off. At this point, I am not ready to talk about the subject, simply because it does interfere with my day job.

I have studied many of the passive income streams of other successful people. One of the most successful streams seems to be e-books. My goal is to complete the rough draft be my birthday, August 7. This may be too ambitious a goal; however, I have never been afraid of biting off more than I can chew. Although, it usually bites me back.

I believe the subject matter that I am going to write about will be both interesting and beneficial to many people, particularly in this economy. continue reading…

I realize I have been blathering on a bit much about eHow in my last few posts. I promise I will give the eHow subject a rest in the next few posts. However, I thought that it might be of  interest to you to think about your work in a way that you does not cause you to repeat the same effort.

A few weeks ago, I was reading one of Pat’s posts  from The Smart Passive Income Blog, and it made me begin to think. Pat said that he was going to try to write 150 eHow articles per month for the next three months. Midstream he decided it may not be as fruitful as he thought. There were several comments on how it might be better to post these articles on his blog because his blog following was larger than the eHow following. I suggested continue reading…

 If you read my posts are regularly, you know that I am a big of fan of eHow. I would say is that the vast majority of my passive income comes from eHow. I would like to take a little time to teach you how to use eHow to increase your passive income.

First of all you need to understand that eHow pays you with a certain percentage of ad revenue. Ads will be placed within your article and you get paid when somebody clicks on the ad. The nice thing is that you do not have to place ads; eHow does this for you. In addition, eHow automatically submits your article to the Google search engine; so, now you do not have to worry about search engines submissions.

The first thing you need to do is get in the eHow account. Go to www.eHow.com and sign up for an account. Now that you have an account, make sure that you understand the terms and conditions. eHow is a great way to make extra passive income,  but you must be careful; they are strict about plagiarism, repeat articles, and as spam type articles.

Now that you have an eHow account, it is time to write your articles. You may be worried that you do not have enough ideas to produce in inventory of eHow articles. You would be surprised at the breadth of articles that are written on eHow. You can write an article about anything from the” theory of relativity”… to “how continue reading…

You have noticed it been a few days since I updated this blog. I do apologize for that. I was waiting to receive my copy of Dragon NaturallySpeaking from Nuance software. Therefore, I was too lazy to actually type. I know this is a weak excuse but I hope you were able to bear with me.

This is actually the first post that I have written using NaturallySpeaking. Honestly, I am quite pleased with the software. I believe that I can write by speaking at almost four times the rate that I can when I am typing. This should correlate into four times the income in the same timeframe.

At this point I have no affiliation whatsoever with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. However, thus far I can absolutely recommend this to anybody who wants to create content for the web, or any other medium for that matter.

I have received a few emails from people that want to develop passive income streams NOW because their home is being foreclosed, or they have accounts in debt collections. Of course, passive income is not an answer to these problems because it takes to long to develop. However because of the number of emails I received on the subject, I thought I would reprint one of my eHow articles.

You cannot pay all your bills… and now the incessant calls from the debt collector start. You do not want to answer the phone, but the calls keep coming. It is not the end of the world. Many debt collectors can actually help you, if you give them a chance.

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Answer the phone, or better yet call the debt collections company. Keep calm, collectors have personalities, some can come off as ruthless , while others come off as sweet. If you honestly owe the bill to the collector, try to pay it. continue reading…

When starting a business or making it grow, you must take stock of your strengths and weaknesses.

I know my strengths; I have good ideas, I research thoroughly, Me have good words, etc. (In case you didn’t catch it, that was a joke.) I truly enjoy getting my ideas “out there”, and receiving the feedback. The basis of everything that I do is “content”. It is why you are reading this blog. It is why I have an above average eHow payout. However, to create this content I must bring the ideas from my thoughts into this written medium. Therein lies the rub… I type like a drunken monkey with arthritis.

That is my weakness. I cannot type worth a crap. In my head, I have already written an eBook, but the thought of typing it out is incredibly daunting. I needed to look at this critical weakness and find a solution.

I decided that I need a speech to text translator. The concept is simple. I speak into the microphone and my spoken words are rendered as text. I was in luck… My good friend who writes for the Washington Times uses a program called Dragon Naturally Speaking by Nuance software. I am not plugging it yet, but my friend tells me it is quite good. I should be receiving it in the next few days, and after I give it a week or two trial, I will give you my review on it.

If it works as advertised, I will be able to increase my blog entries. Also, increase the length and depth of my blog posts. I may even be able to meet or surpass my eHow article writing goals. Beyond that, I may be able to start on my first eBook. It has been in the works for months, but I just cannot seem to force the arthritic drunken monkey to get started.