Make Money Online Building Niche Blogs

If you run in MMO (make money online) circles, you've probably heard of Garry Conn. He is a brilliant internet marketer who shares his love of making money on the internet with anyone who's willing to take the time to read what he's got to say. Recently I stumbled across a post that he shared on building niche blogs to make money. I typically (in fact, ALWAYS) avoid buying anything that promises to change my online money making life, but something in my gut told me this guy was different. It turns out my intuition was dead on. Go intuition!

I got involved immediately by purchasing a 60-minute video that Garry was offering. Much to my surprise, and delight, Garry had his soon-to-be-famous 'lightbulb' moment and started a forum. Already this forum is full of TONS of great videos and documents with tips and tricks to make money online using the power of Wordpress to create blogs and static money-making webpages. Many great people have already signed up and we're sharing ideas and knowledge, and asking lots of questions!

Here's a little blurb from THE man himself:

When I first started blogging three years ago, I had a difficult time. Asking for advice or help from bigger and more popular bloggers was a challenge. It seemed like none of those guys would help let alone even give me the time of day. I am very competitive in nature and when I quickly started to see how things were in this little world we called the blogosphere, I felt more than happy to take on the challenge.

My goal was to make money blogging. It took me around a year to get to the point where I could say, "Yeah... I am making some money, but not a lot" and then about six months later things really started to take off. Fast forward to today, and I have been successfully making a very excellent living being a full time professional blogger. I own literally hundreds of blogs and sites and my monthly earnings have at times exceeded $10,000 / month.

I want to offer you an exclusive opportunity to learn from me. This offer gives you the ability to fast forward and bypass the mistakes I have made and learned from. If you are serious about making a career out of earning money on the Internet, consider joining my private membership site. I am confident that doing so will change your life.

Best Regards,
Garry Conn

I'm here to tell you, it would be of great benefit to you to sign up and get involved in this forum. I've made so many positive changes to my websites over the past few days; things I'd never thought of doing, and access to tools I didn't know existed. Check it out. Basic and VIP memberships available.

Visit Garry's Forum

Take Advantage of Social Networking Communities to Make Money Online

Life is always about give and take. You just can't take forever without being expected to give something back. And if you give and give, you can expect to get back automatically. Making money online works a bit like this as well. Since most of us have by now determined that the get rich quick schemes never actually work, we know that making money online takes some work and some time. However, you don't have to go it alone like you might have had to several years ago. There are whole communities of people online trying to make money using their skills. Get into one of these communities, help out a friend and almost always you'll get the favor returned.

One of the best places for returning the favor is Tagfoot. Tagfoot is a great social bookmarking community. Not only does Tagfoot share revenue from advertising sales, but you also join a group of people who love sharing and helping each other out. Many Squidoo lensmasters belong to Tagfoot, so lots of lenses are shared, rated, viewed and commented on. Whether you create great lenses, write superb articles, want to share blog posts, or some great news you discovered on the internet, friends are there to help you out, and as always with an online community, it's great when you return the favor.



Gather is another fun place to post articles, thoughts, questions, observations and stories. Gather also offers a money making opportunity by giving you points for all your contributions to the site. Points can be redeemed for Paypal cash or other great gifts. There are groups especially created on Gather for commenting and rating other people's posts, images, videos and more. You get out what you put into this social networking group.



Squidoo offers you the opportunity to make money creating webpages, called lenses. Any topic which you find interesting, or for which you have knowledge, you are encouraged to (easily) create a page with images, information, links, videos and more. You can earn money with ad revenue share, plus direct affiliate links with Amazon, eBay, Cafe Press, etc. There are many options to dress up your pages and Squidoo is just a fun place to be. Join groups or browse other lensmaster profiles to make friends. People on Squidoo are wonderful about supporting each other's work. You'll find many of the same people on Squidoo, Tagfoot, Twitter and in other social networking communities.



No matter what social bookmarking or networking group, or groups, that you choose to join - or for that matter, whatever other communities you decide to join - writing on eHow, answering questions on Yahoo Answers, whatever - it is sort of an unwritten rule in the world of the internet to return the favor. If someone leaves you a comment, go and check out their work as well. This kind of behavior establishes long-term internet friendships and you never know who you might meet. There are lots of people with lots of knowledge to share. Take advantage of the knowledge and return the favor to see your own page views, hits, and sales increase.

To add your profile names for a plethora of social bookmarking and social networking groups like Twitter, Tagfoot, Gather, MySpace, etc, visit this page. You will need to be signed into Squidoo to add your link. I look forward to meeting you and swapping stories!

The Best Website Hosting Company EVER!

If you're in the game to make money online then you're probably like me. You probably dream up 27 ideas per day and want to build a website for all of them. I'm finding that places like Squidoo give me a fantastic solution to my want for creating a website for everything I think of. Example: I've managed to create a pretty fancy selection of pages like 80's Pop Stars: Where are They Now, and Squidoo lenses for all my Zany Zodiacs Horoscopes. I'm enjoying the lovely amounts of traffic that come from belonging to the Squidoo community coupled with the amazing Google Rank that Squidoo has earned.

But sometimes....you just need a website! Whether you're just an internet junkie like me, or you want to run a full-fledged online business, I've got your answer for a web host. Look no further. The Design Shoppe offers anything and everything that I've ever wanted and more. And as an aside, The Design Shoppe offers an affiliate program, but I'm not signed up because I just love Julie and the gang so much that it's not necessary...and you know how I love to collect opportunities for cash flow!! But let me just say that I've been dealing with The Design Shoppe for over 8 years now. A hosting account with sufficient space, ample databases, ample bandwidth and a vast array of plug-ins, add-ons, and templates make the $12.95 per month a joy to pay. Of course she offers plans that are more expensive, and a couple that are less expensive, but I always shoot for the $12.95 per month since it offers SQL and PHP. (I like to dig around inside PHP once in a while and impress myself with what I can do!)

Even if you're a beginner to HTML, PHP, Javascript, or anything else that may be necessary to design a site, The Design Shoppe has you covered with amazing templates, a site builder, and even access to Joomla, Wordpress and other great installs through Fantastico.

And the customer service..... STELLAR! I have asked many a question over the past 8+ years and it's never been long before I receive a pleasant and helpful answer from Julie or one of her crew. The Design Shoppe's home page features information for everything available to you, plus don't miss the testimonials. Everyone pretty much says the same thing because it's absolutely true. Get in a bind, Julie will fix it immediately. Need an account, Julie will set it up promptly. Ask a crazy question, Julie will give you the best answer she can find.

Of course I don't have experience with any other hosting companies because I got lucky the first go around. So I can't 'actually' say this is the best web hosting company EVER because I have no experience otherwise. But I will say that I have never, not once, been disappointed in the 8+ years we've done business. Check it out for yourself. You will not be sorry.

The Design Shoppe - Web Hosting Services

SpotWinner - Get Paid to Watch Ads

Now, this 'get paid to watch ads' business is not normally the sort of thing I would go for. To me, there are different categories of 'making money online' and different ways to make money. Websites that make you do things like read ads for 10 seconds each for a penny are really not my cup of tea, though they may work wonders for some people. I think the way that those types of sites probably pay off well is if you can convince 90 of your friends to join. This site is not like that.

SpotWinner is not even a website that I would have tried based on the looks of the ad. To me, it does look like one of those sites that makes you do ridiculously boring things for very little pay. I wouldn't have looked twice. I did, however, hear about this from a friend on Gather, a social networking group that I have joined. She has apparently won a PSP and a digital picture frame, and a friend of hers signed up only recently and has already won a portable DVD player. Now, there's no need for fabrications, as the 5 bonus entries you receive for referrals aren't worth all that. So.....

I signed up, expecting to get an inbox full of spam, and be done with it before I even started. How wrong I was! Though this might not be for everyone, I'm finding SpotWinner to be a whole lot of fun. I stay very busy with all the writing of articles and updating of websites and blogs that I do. I like video games a lot, but I choose not to make the time to get sucked into playing something for hours on end. I have been looking for something that I could do for 10-15 minutes every day, just to give myself a break. SpotWinner does that for me. Basically, you have 5-8 TV commercials (not ads like you're thinking ads) to watch. These ads are super fun, well most of them, funny, original and enjoyable. You earn Spot Cash for watching. You just rate the ad at the end and you're done. If you want more prize entries you stick around and play the short, fun little games about the ads you just watched.

I seriously haven't gotten one piece of junk mail in my inbox. I have this setup on a different email account just for that reason. No spam. And though it could take around 3.5 years to earn enough SpotCash for a $100 Walmart card, (or you can cash out for the $10 Walmart card MUCH sooner!!!), you also get random bonus SpotCash, so it will be fun to see just how soon I can rack up enough for that $100 Walmart prize. I'll likely still be on the internet by then, so you gotta start somewhere. As for the entries for prize winnings, I already know two people who have won, so I'm guessing chances are pretty good. I play all the games I can, and refer anyone who might be interested.

Interested? Click the ad below. I promise it's better than it looks!!!

Turn your blog into a Viral Widget

If you're on the quest to make money at home, it's likely you have a blog. If you're posting away, diligently, at least 3 times per week, you're doing great! Keeping fresh content in your blog will help attract people looking for what you have to say, and people who share your common interests.

Of course, when you begin to get visitors to your blog, you'll want ways to earn money from that blog like Google Adsense ads, affiliate links, and other targeted advertising. If you've got all that, great! Now it's time to make that blog into a viral widget, that anyone can grab and post on their MySpace, Facebook, blog, or other pages. It makes it easier for people to keep track of what you're doing, saying and writing.

Widgetbox has a great little feature that is SUPER EASY to use! This feature creates a very attractive widget with your picture or logo, your headline, your most recent posts, and a GET THIS WIDGET button at the bottom. That means whoever sees your widget and likes it, can grab a copy of the code and paste it wherever is most convenient for them. Let's say JimBob 'grabs' a copy of your widget. He posts it to his MySpace. 14 of JimBob's friends notice it and really like what they see. They grab a copy as well, also to post in the most convenient place. Keep going with those numbers and suddenly you're popular!

The other great thing about Widgetbox is they have a network. You can sign up your blog to be part of that network, in your chosen category, and for the simple price of displaying the network widget on your own blog, you've got free advertising wherever someone else in that category displays the widget.

Example: you display the network widget on your blog. All blogs from your network cycle through this widget, meaning yours shows up randomly. Your blog will also show up randomly on everyone else's blog who has the network widget.

So here are the instructions to get your own viral widget from Widgetbox; called a Blidget.

1. Sign up for a free account at Widgetbox
2. At the home page, on the right side about mid-way down, there's a box that says 'Make a Blidget, turn your blog into a widget and attract more visitors'. Click there.
3. The next screen will ask for your blog URL. Example: my blog url is http://at-home-money.blogspot.com. Click continue.
4. You'll be able to see your widget already at the right hand side. From here you can customize colors, images, text, description, and other exciting details.
5. Click 'Save Blidget' at the bottom and scroll back to the top, read the guidelines and check the box. Click 'Save Blidget' again and you're done. You are now the proud owner of a fancy Blidget containing your blog!
6. A pop up window should now come up inviting you to join the Widgetbox Network. From here, if you'd like to join, and I highly suggest it, you'll click join and select a category on the next screen. Make sure to select the most appropriate category for your blog. You'll get better targeted readers that way.
7. Once you've selected the appropriate category for your blog, you'll generate your network widget and post it to your blog for the world to see. Remember! Everyone else is displaying this widget on their blogs and now your blog will show up all over!

Congratulations. You should receive more traffic now. Plus you still have that fancy Blidget of your specific blog to post at MySpace, Facebook and other places that allow this type of code. (There's a great list inside the Widgetbox code when you click to get the code for your widget. It includes places like Bebo, Wordpress, Blogger, iGoogle and more.)

Here is an example of what my Widgetbox Blidget looks like. Feel free to grab it for your page:


You will also see the Widgetbox Network Widget near the bottom at the right-hand sidebar. This is the widget that allows your blog to be displayed on hundreds of other blogs in your network.

As always, if you have any questions, leave me a comment!

Gather - a Social Networking Grown-up

I LOVE Gather. I hesitated for a little while after joining because I have a tendency to overwhelm myself with too many things going on. As you know, I write a lot of articles for many different sites, as well as Zany Zodiacs horoscopes once a week, so my free time is limited.

Gather boasts the 'best conversation online.' Here is a blurb straight from their website: "Gather's different from other social networks. Instead of talking about "who's hot," members here discuss the day's hottest topics. You can have smart conversations about the world around you, and keep up with friends and family, too."

Gather advertises to the over-30 crowd. It's a great and laid back social networking community with a twist. For every contribution you make to the site, you get points. Points can be cashed in for gift cards to popular websites and stores, or my favorite thing ever...Paypal cash!

Post poems, blogs, thoughts, articles, suggestions, helpful hints, stories, dreams or whatever the heck you want! Despite the fact that I am very new, Gather has a great community of people and someone generally always comes along to leave a nice comment on something that I've written.

Whether or not MySpace or Facebook floats your boat, you'll probably love Gather. I really, really do. This is one of those places that I would enjoy participating, even if there were no points involved. I can post links to my articles, or say a quick goodnight. I can post poetry, random thoughts, ask questions or just chit chat. I can't stress enough how much fun it has been already.

SocialSpark Blog Marketing Sponsored Posts

After venting about the Smorty vs. Google scandal that I discovered recently, I had posted my findings on Gather, a super fun social networking community that I recently joined. I basically mentioned everything that I mentioned here on this blog; the fact that sponsored or paid blog posts = Google PageRank decrease, and that no matter how you slice it, it's bad for the blogger. I received a response from one Carri Bright, an employee of IZEA, the parent company of SocialSpark, another 'pay to blog' website in the mix. Here is a copy of what she wrote:

"I enjoyed your post and think that the decision to participate in sponsored posting is an important one for every blogger and I am glad to see some honest questions and conversation surrounding this decision.

As I work for IZEA, the parent company of SocialSpark, my view on this is a bit different. Obviously, we are firmly on the pro side of the Sponsored Posting argument. We believe that Sponsored posts do have a place in Social Media and that place is rapidly expanding.

If it is done correctly, Sponsored content should ALWAYS be disclosed, should only appear infrequently (a good sponsored to non-sponsored ratio is 1:10) and should fit nicely with the theme of your blog.

I also wanted to let you know that SocialSpark opportunities are all no-follow which makes them search engine (re: Google) friendly and will NOT cause your PR to disappear. In addition, SocialSpark has run campaigns for Sears, Ford, KMart, Dockers, Windows and Coke in the past few months, so big name companies are beginning to see the efficacy of this type of Marketing and we expect lots more in the new year."

I appreciate her response to this matter, however, I signed up for SocialSpark at the same time I signed up for the others. I honestly wasn't thoroughly impressed with what I saw, and therefore never made a post. I've read reviews on other 'at home money' blogs from people who really like this service, and have made quite a bit of money.

Personally, I am going to stay away from blogging for pay. The only thing I can think at this point, having lost PageRank on my other blog, is that if links have to be made 'no-follow' so Google doesn't know what's going on, it's still a scandal. (And I use the word scandal in order to refrain from calling this an outright scam!) It still seems scandalous to me, but I've included the post from Carri so that you may feel free to make your own decisions.

I will continue to gather more information on this topic and forward it along.

The Truth about Get Paid to Blog, Sponsored Posts Sites

Well, well, well... did I learn a thing or two yesterday! When I started this blog, I had signed up for, and had been offering links to sponsored blog post and pay to blog websites that were 'legitimate' and not scams. Well, that little word 'scam' just has a large array of meanings here on the internet, doesn't it?

Though not scams, and likely still a great and satisfying way for some to earn money online with their blogs, sites like Smorty, PayPerPost and Sponsored Reviews really irritate Google. I hadn't been using any of them myself except Smorty. Smorty expressly has a blurb on their website that ensures that Google PageRank will not be affected as they do not require you to admit that you are writing a sponsored post on your blog. Well, I suppose right there should have been my first clue. If you are hiding something, that's a lie, and lying has consequences.

Well, I discovered the consequences of using my other personal blog for Smorty sponsored posts, as well as their fun little feature of post exchange. Post exchanges allow you to write posts for other blogs, and in turn, another blogger writes a post for you. This creates a one-way link into your blog so that 'supposedly' your Google PageRank will increase. To me, at first glance, this didn't seem like anything that could possibly be against any rules. And maybe it's not, but more about that in a moment. Once your Google PageRank increases, you get more sponsored opportunities from Smorty.

Well, I own 3 other websites and the two blogs. I've been obsessing over Google PageRank since I began this journey back in September of 2008. I finally got a PageRank increase to 1 last night on every site, including this blog, EXCEPT the blog that I used for Smorty...which is now back to N/A PageRank. That's even worse than Zero, I think. So, it immediately occurred to me that Smorty was the culprit. Upon a bit of research from other great bloggers, I realized that what I had been doing, and selling to the world as legitimate, is actually a great, big, fat GOOGLE TOS NO-NO!

So, I have officially suspended links to any and all 'get paid to blog' links. I checked out Social Spark and I just wasn't impressed with how they operate either. I refuse to tell you that you can make money posting on your blog for any of these sites because the entire point, besides getting paid, is to raise your Google PageRank. If you start at 0, you can't get any rank when Google catches you, and if you start higher and get lots of paid posting opportunities, you'll lose your Google PageRank when Google catches you. It's a no win situation!

So, I'm back to simply writing articles for the sites that I know to be legitimate. These include Helium, Bukisa, Associated Content, eHow and others. Links can also be found to the right of this blog.

Also, I'm having a rather good time at Gather. Gather is a social networking community that boasts 'The Best Conversation Online.' Not only can you make great friends and find interesting topics on which to comment, but you also earn points for your contributions that can be cashed in for gift cards or Paypal cash. More on this shortly.