Easy (Kinda) Money

I have been spending the past few hours going through my logs and web traffic statistics. In all honesty, I am more than just confused. There is a large discrepancy between my Web statistics, and my advertising statistics.

 

Let me explain:

 

I will use this month of October as an example. It is poignant because it is only the third day of October. According to my Web statistics, I have had 421 visits this month. Granted, I realize many of these are spammer hits. Therefore, what I have been looking at are the visits that have lasted between 30 seconds and 30 minutes. My assumption was that these were people that were actually reading the blog. If I use this number of 127 people it shows a good readership. However, when I look at my advertising statistics, such as Adsense, they tell me I have only had two hits this month. This coincides with the number of hits that is recorded from Crazy Egg.  continue reading…

Firstly, I would like to apologize for not updating the blog for the past few days. I had a family emergency I needed to take care of. So, please forgive me if I was away from my computer for the past five days.

 

Here are the things that I want to do for the rest of August and into September:

 

1.

 

There are two blogs that I regularly read, and I want to begin to comment on them at least twice a week. These blogs are well worthwhile in reading, and commenting. I just need to make in my priority. This will do two things; first, it will stimulate discussion on passive income and blogging. Secondly, I hope it will bring more traffic to my site, as well as entice you to read their sites. These two blogs are pro-blogger and smart passive income.

 

2.

 

It is obvious said I must hone my website. At times my blog looks clumsy. So I will spend some time streamlining things. I have gotten some great suggestions by e-mail on how to do this. I do not agree with all of the suggestions, but there were several that I plan to implement. I also want to thank those of you that sent continue reading…

As I try to develop my passive income strategy, I think it will be best to use a hub and spoke approach. In a nutshell, my blog will be the hub, with my other projects being the spokes. I think it is important to organize your thoughts in such a manner. Otherwise, you might spend too much time flitting from project to project.
 

 At a basic level this blog will be the platform to guide you, the reader, to my other projects. I will be honest, of course I want you to see and read my other projects. I hope that they enlighten you or stimulate your thoughts. I also hope that you will return the favor, and post your ideas in the comment sections of this blog.

 

Think of it this way, this blog will be the center of my projects. If you want any information, come here first. Each of my projects will branch out from this blog.

 

Now, let’s talk about the spokes:

  continue reading…

 

It has become clear to me that most of my visitors come from a direct links and bookmarks. As wonderful as this is, I want to optimize my search engine ranking. However, this can be difficult with a dynamic front page. As you know, every time I update this blog, the new information is at the top of the page. Then, I read a great post at pro-blogger.com. I am going to begin to use my sidebar header and footer as static search engine anchors.

 

I will explain it to you this way. Because my blog is dynamic, in other words, each time I post to my blog it is at the top of the page. Therefore, every day my search engine keywords change. Granted, it is true that each individual post page has its own search engine ranking. However, I want to be sure that I can rank the main index page as high as possible.

  continue reading…

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?

 

1.

 

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 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…

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.

I realize that blogging is not exactly passive income. Although, the archives should still produce ad revenue. Blogging reached it theoretical peak last year, so a new blog is not that inticing. However, a properly placed blog with good content and muti-media should still do well. I read a very good report on blogging at http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/06/23/get-your-free-roadmap-to-become-a-blogger/ they are not paying me, nor do I have any affilition with them. But this report really opened my eyes to the thought process to writing a blog. I think I must include this into my online income streams. It seems that it will requre a concerted effort, but with good long term results. With the added cash from the adsense program, and the exposure to my other projects, I think even this blog might be a little profitable.

Blogging may not be the end all and be all of my internet income plan, however, I think it can become an intergal part of the machine. One more cog that fits into my passive income stream