Earn Extra Cash

Earn Extra Cash with Speed Content Secrets

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 03:13:00 +0000

Even if you love to write, there are times where it can feel like taking blood from a stone. Hey, I know what that's like; part of my day job involves writing about just about any topic under the sun - many of which I have little interest in at all. Unless you're a professional freelancer that can write a topic on almost anything at the drop of a hat...chances are you work best when you write about something that you know and something that you're passionate about.

Part of the reason you can write that content quickly is because you don't have to spend a significant chunk of time researching what to write about. I find that's where I get bogged down. I can write faster than 60 words per minute and yet I can take close to an hour to write a 400 word post because of allowing my research to get the better of me. I often lose track of time and just have the sense that I don't know enough about the topic to converse intelligently about it...so I take way too much time researching.

Has that happened to you as well? If so, I hope that these little speed content secrets will help you improve your writing time; they definitely shouldn't hurt.

1) Just Start Writing - I don't know if it's from my journalism background or just some buried sense of insecurity but for some reason I'm just not comfortable writing without doing some research first. However, unless you're writing a highly technical or specific topic that you've never written about...chances are you can start writing with zero research. If you're like me, you'll find it hard to overcome the urge to research, but try it and keep trying it until you can see the results. Relax and don't worry about what you write, just write what you can for as long as you can - sometimes I surprise myself and the article practically writes itself. Even if you know very little on the topic, what you write at this stage could be a skeleton to form your article - you can even write down questions that you have and use them to plot out the way you want to construct your article and save yourself some time later.

2) Use a timer - Losing track of time is what happens when you don't have a system in place to keep you honest. I heard about a free piece of software online called the "cool timer" and I downloaded it. You can punch in whatever time you want and it sounds when the time has run out - it's really annoying too - so you don't want to hear that sound if you can help it. I found by using the timer I remained focused and got more done - I recommend you try it for yourself.

3) Speed things up by recording with audio - this is a tip I recently learned and I'm testing it out for myself. I can write fast at the computer, but I often get distracted by email or surfing the net. Sometimes I just don't feel the inspiration where I can write my best stuff. However, did you know that the average person can speak 150 words per minute? Even though I write pretty fast - that's still double the speed that I type. I spend about an hour talking and came up with potentially 11 article just by recording myself talking. Now I'm going to set up my time and see how long it takes me to transcribe the recording into a blog post or report. Having to listen to the audio will keep me focused....it should be much faster than just sitting there and trying to be inspired at the computer when I'm not (and subsequently become distracted by surfing etc).

Anyway, I'm off to test my transcribing speed and see how well this technique works for me. I hope these tips can help you out - perhaps you have some of your own that you can share with others who want to earn extra cash writing? Leave a comment!

About Earn Extra Cash Writing

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 23:29:00 +0000

Hey, my name's Mike and welcome to Earn Extra Cash Writing. I suppose if you're reading this page that you're interested in learning more about me or this site - so let's get to it!

I'm a print journalism graduate that is currently employed as a web content creator at a significant online publisher of hundreds of websites. Not only am I learning on the job all the time about ways to make money online, I've also managed to earn extra cash by learning from select individuals online that choose to share their methods free of charge.

It took me a while to warm up to earning extra cash online by writing. My limited tour of duty as a print journalist left me thinking that most writers will always be underpaid for their work. I got out of the industry and stayed away from writing professionally for years. During this time the dot com boom and bust happened, and I ran a website for an indie band that I was a member of. While experimenting with html and learning the ins and outs of being a webmaster I discover online forums and incorporated them into the band site. I soon discovered that my passion for writing had returned - in the form of overflowing threads on the band forum.

Little did I know at that time that web 2.0 was just around the corner, and that I could instead earn extra cash from my writing instead of providing free content for others to monetize!

Fast forward to 2007. This was the year that I actually figured out what a 'blog' was. I had heard the term and to be perfectly honest - the word annoyed me. However, when I got my hands on Wordpress - I became a believer. The agony of creating a website from scratch was gone, freeing up time for content - which was my specialty!

Around this time I was researching about how to start up an online business. Like many others, the low cost of starting up an online business was a strong attractor for me. It seemed like a sure way to earn extra cash, or possibly to become a main income stream for me and my family. I learned about Adsense and put it onto one of my new-fangled blogs: I earned 1 cent after three months!

I subsequently forgot about Adsense and earning extra cash with my blogs, I just wrote what I wanted. This was mostly content from my 'old school journalist' mode of thinking: opinions/editorial pieces and interviews. However, when I started writing content that wasn't opinion-based and instead was information or 'how to' based...things started to change. Traffic started coming in, and my online income increased as well. Now, we're still talking about having enough cash for a cup of coffee - but this was still a welcome sign for me.

You see, I love to write. I was willing to pay for web hosting and domain names and not make a single red cent for it. I enjoyed having the forum to express my opinions and write about my interests (mainly bass guitar and indiebands!) and I was willing to pay for the luxury of my own online space. But when the money started coming in I realized - there's a good chance I can write about these things, help people out and earn enough to not only offset my domain and hosting costs, but earn extra cash at the same time! I began to write more helpful content with my audience in mind, and my traffic went through the roof compared to my previous stats.

Around this time I learned more about keywords, SEO and how to write content for the web. I love to read and I researched as much as I could find on these topics. Most of it was garbage and a smoke screen to pay someone money for their ebook or special program, however one site I found gave out info for free and that was make money online for beginners by Grizzly Brears. Griz didn't pull any punches, told it like it was and was able to prove that he went well beyond earning extra cash with his techniques.

I'm still applying what I learned from Griz - which I've also learned has been called 'BUM' marketing (since it requires no cash at all to get started, even a bum on the street can do it). It does involve the right techniques, effort and patience - but you can earn extra cash without having to spend a dime, which was music to my ears.

As a writer, it was also great to learn that by writing quality content with sound SEO concepts in mind, you could drive traffic to your site; targeted traffic of people that are actually looking for what you're writing about! You don't have to impress anyone, you don't have to win any literary prizes with your writing to get people to read your stuff, you just have to show the search engine bots what you're writing about and write often and long content-rich posts. If the topic is right, just about anyone can earn extra cash following these concepts while writing about something they are truly passionate about.

Fast-forward to now. I'm still working a day job, and still working at mastering the techniques to earn extra cash online - but I'm applying them and learn more each day. I've also since come to realize that 'writing' is such a small part of the internet these days. The great advantage of a blog over traditional media is obviously the ability to create and update content easily while being fully interactive with your audience by comments - but also because you're not just limited to words and pictures. Yes - content is also video and audio files - or podcasts.

So while I didn't go to school for broadcast journalism, and I'm a much better writer than dj or tv correspondent - I'm going to enter into these other forms of media as well as the written word. Earn Extra Cash Writing will also delve into the tools that I find that can help you in your quest to conquer the web and bring home some extra bucks at the same time. Not only will these be strictly confined to writing, I'll review books, programs, websites and applications that can make it easier for you to be discovered online and make a few bucks at the same time.

There are no silver bullets when it comes to making money online, but I'll do my best to save you the frustration and help you avoid as many of the scams as possible with this site. There is money to be made and money to be saved from what you read here! In the meantime, I'm providing it all free of charge - this is the business model I've chosen for myself. I'm not much of a salesman, and I hate a lot of the over-hyped sales tactics I've come across online; sure they may work, but they're just not for me.

I'll be earning extra cash purely by Adsense (eventually) and the occasional affiliate link, but I'll never link to anything that I don't believe in 110%. More often than not, I'll provide you with resources that are free or close to it. Anyone looking to Earn Extra Cash isn't looking for an unrealistic large sum of money for little or no work - chances are you're smart enough to know that the universe just doesn't work that way. I'm more than happy to write for extra cash for starters, and slowly build up from there as I gain confidence and momentum in this project - hopefully you feel the same.

Stick around for more info on how to earn extra cash writing (and with content) online!

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Earn Extra Cash with Content

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 23:03:00 +0000

Want to learn how to earn extra cash online for beginners? Think its impossible to make an honest dollar online? Read Earn Extra Cash with Content to find out the truth!

I started out this site as a way to help writers earn extra cash online. The reason for this is that I'm a writer, a print journalism graduate and I discovered how you can make money online by writing about almost anything. Yes, you need to write in an SEO friendly manner, target certain keywords so that the search engines index your site and people using the search engines can find you. Lastly, writing in this manner also ensures that content-matched ads are generated properly for whichever topic you're writing about so you can actually earn some money for your efforts.

The benefits of creating web content online for writers may not be immediately obvious, few people know how to use programs like Adsense to earn beyond a few cents a month. Those that technically 'know' how to earn real cash with precision-matched advertising are often too lazy to put in the time to make it a reality. I'm not rolling in dough from Adsense, I'll be the very first to admit that, but I am taking the 'theories' that I've learned and am slowly applying them one by one on this blog. It is possible to earn extra cash with Adsense or Yahoo...you have to follow a pattern, write targeted content and persist long enough for the eventual payoff of a new residual income stream that can supplement or even replace you day job. You're not going to get rich quick in this manner, but those that can focus and persevere will truly reap the rewards.

What does all of this have to do with earning extra cash with content - this: since I came from a journalism background and writing is one of my strengths I completely overlooked the other types of content that are now available on the web - video and audio content! The more types of content you use in your site, the more chances you have to attract visitors to you - which means a better chance to earn extra cash online.

So even though I named this site Earn Extra Cash Writing - I will be discussing ways to earn extra cash online with different types of content including video and audio or pod casts. In my quest to provide high value to my readers, I'll be sharing the tactics, websites and software that helps me earn extra cash. I won't refer you to any resource that I haven't tried or that I'm not 110% confident in.

Content is what people are searching for, content is still king. Having a range of media on your site can help increase your search engine quality scores as well. So, keep on writing those keyword rich and well targeted posts, but don't be afraid to start using that web camera or mp3 player to record some podcasts. This is what I plan to do and I'll share my experiences with you so you can earn extra cash free of charge - what's not to like?

Thanks for reading Earn Extra Cash with Content, stay tuned for more ways to start earning extra cash online from me in the near future!

Earn Extra Cash Privacy Policy

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 22:54:00 +0000

Privacy Policy

Earn Extra Cash Writing is a site about earning extra cash online. I am sharing the knowledge I've gained through direct experience, along with the information I've absorbed from other sites, podcasts, videos, books and more. I distill all this information in one place and share it with you for free.

I respect your privacy and I am committed to safeguarding it while you’re visiting my site www.earnextracashwriting.blogspot.com. The following information will inform those interested in how I gather and disseminate information for my blog.

RSS Feeds and Email Updates

If a user wishes to subscribe to my RSS Feeds or Email Updates (powered by Feedburner), they need to provide contact information such as name and email address. Users may opt-out of these features at any time. Your personal information will never be sold or given to a third party and you will never be spammed by me.

A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user’s computer tied to information about the user. This blog doesn’t use cookies.

Links

My blog contains links to other sites. I am not responsible for the privacy practices of these other sites and I suggest my users to be aware of this when they leave this blog by clicking onto a link to another site. They should read the privacy statements of each and every site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by my blog.

Advertisers

I currently do not advertise on this site, but may use outside ad companies to display ads on this blog in the future. These ads may contain cookies and are collected by the advertising companies. I do not have access to this information. Please check the advertiser’s website for their privacy policy.

Contact Information

If you have any questions or concerns regarding the above information please contact Mike I. at bassbn5[at]gmail.com. This privacy policy updated March 2009.

Earn Extra Cash with SEO

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 06:16:00 +0000

Let me start out by saying that I am not a Search Engine Optimization wizard. A year ago I barely even knew what SEO stood for, now I know that you can earn extra cash using SEO.

How did I learn about SEO? I did a lot of research online, SEO is mentioned all over the place – often cryptically with people implying that you can get rich using it. However few people actually get to the heart of what search engine optimization is, how it works and most importantly – how you can use it to earn extra cash! I gathered bits of pieces of data together and was getting a foggy picture of what SEO meant, but then I found an important blog written by a man by the name of Grizzly Brears.

His site on how to make money online for beginners was one heck of an eye opener. Unlike all the other sites I’d researched that did a lot of big talk but seemed to fizzle out before you got to anything of substance – Grizzly actually provided the goods. He shows you how to earn money online. He writes his posts in such a way that as he is teaching you how to make money – he is earning money!

While he is the first to put down his own writing, I have to say that he is fantastic at what he does. He cuts through the crap with a laser focus and tells you what works. He’s one of these guys that is constantly tweaking what he does, taking note of what does and doesn’t work. He’s the type of guy that doesn’t buy into anything without checking the merits out for himself. He writes long posts for a reason, he has shared with us that the longer the posts, the more keywords you can put in without being flagged as spam by the search engines. You can also stumble upon long tail keywords related to your main keywords that you may otherwise never have discovered – good to know.

Grizzly Brears is a heck of a guy. Rather than sit on his hoard of gold coming in each week from Adsense, he’s actually helping others to earn extra cash. There are some people that read his posts and think that he comes across as a braggart – because he often shows screenshots of the hundreds or thousands of hits he’s getting in a single day, or the amount of money he’s earning – but I’ve never felt that way. This guy is willing to share his expert knowledge for free – and his screenshots are what he’s using to back up that he knows what he’s talking about. I suppose if you’re already earn extra cash online that you can ignore what he has to say...

I’ve subscribed to his make money online for beginners blog, and I recommend that you do too. This post is about SEO and you might be wondering – hey, how am I supposed to earn extra cash writing using SEO when this guy is only gushing over someone else’s blog? Well the best SEO advice I can give you is for you to get free advice from an SEO master like Grizzly Brears. Check out his site, and like he says grab a cup of coffee and do some reading so you can learn how to make money online for beginners for free.

I’ve taken what I can from Griz and applied it to this blog (you may notice a slight resemblance to his blog after you visit his). This entire blog on how to earn extra cash writing is an exercise for me to apply the principles that Griz has taught me. Where Griz and I part company is that while Griz claims to not like to write much – I do like it. Wherever I can, I will share writing tips and insights over and above the solid internet marketing advice I learn from Griz. Hey – it never hurts to read things twice, I’m putting what I’ve learned into my own words and maybe the way I write it makes more sense to you than what he writes, or vice versa. All that really matters is that you learn the tricks of the trade and apply them to start to earn extra cash.

For those of you that came here to read how to earn extra cash writing using SEO, I’m not going to abandon you. Here are some of the best pointers I’ve learned from Griz on how to optimize your content for the search engines. Griz – if you’re reading this and I screwed something up or the info has since changed – please feel free to show me the error of my ways. Here it goes:

Have your main keyword in your URL
Have your main keyword in your titles for each article (at the start if possible)
Use your keyword in the first and last sentence of your post
Link your keyword in the first sentence of your post to your blog home page
Bold your keyword or use it as a heading when possible (but don’t overdo it!)
Use your keyword around 5 or 6 times per 100 words

These are great ways to further optimize your site for the search engines which will translate to more traffic and higher earnings, assuming you’ve monetized your blog. If so, you’ll be well on your way to earn extra cash writing using SEO as outlined above.

Lastly, I just want to personally thank Grizzly Brears for his site and inspiration. There were many times were I felt like I was either overwhelmed with information and didn’t know what the next step should be; then I’d read something he wrote and feel so inspired that I would get fired up to keep trying. He writes with such conviction about how it is possible to earn extra cash online, there’s not a shred of doubt in his mind because he’s living it. When you’re starting out, there’s plenty of doubt that you’re not going to be able to pull it off – but Griz always managed to give me such hope (with the screen shots of his earnings) that I could also achieve success with writing content online.

While right now I’d be happy to make even a quarter of what he’s making with his blogs, I feel that it is entirely possible for me to one day rank right up there with him. Lots can happen, and with Griz for a teacher anything is possible. The same goes for you too! As Griz points out, there are tens of thousands of keywords out there, and even he can’t handle them all. By sharing his insights with us, he’s not losing anything and seems only to be gaining readers and friends online to further speed up his goals. Griz – you’re a genius!

Thanks for reading how to earn extra cash writing using SEO!

Earn Extra Cash with Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 06:00:00 +0000

Okay, so you’re looking to make some money online but you don’t quite know where to start. You think you need some sort of affiliate product to sell or a website of some kind and are maybe a little intimidated by the whole undertaking. I’ll try to keep it simple, for beginners the best way is to earn extra cash writing with Blogger.

Blogger is a free program online that allows you to set up your own blog with a unique sub domain; like this blog you’re reading right now! You can name your blog whatever you want (ideally after the keyword you’re targeting) and it will end with .blogspot.com. For this site my address is earnextracashwriting – my keywords are earn extra cash– so having a blog with those words right in the URL is a great Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tip! The great thing about Blogger is that it is user-friendly; you don’t need to be a programmer to add or move widgets around – so you can get it set up as you like and be ready to earn extra cash writing in no time at all!

The rest is now up to you – you need to provide the content, you need to write something to build up your blog with good, original, keyword-specific and search engine optimized content to start drawing in organic (non-paid) traffic. Once you have traffic, you can monetize your blog easily in just a few minutes by adding the Adsense widget and signing up for an Adsense account. You can now start earning extra cash for your words – pretty cool eh? You don’t have to pay for anything, Blogger is free and the Adsense program is free. Your only upfront investment is researching how to find the right keywords, how to write posts focused on your keywords and how to optimize your content for the search engines. Once you have a solid grasp on all that, you just have to write, write and write some more.

As I mentioned in my first post on this blog, if you have a passion for writing, and you’ve chosen a topic that you enjoy – this will be easier for you to do. You don’t have to enjoy what you’re writing about, but it helps. If you’re disciplined enough to write about anything that pays, and are willing to write your own content and do some research at times (since you’re not fully knowledgeable about your content) you can earn extra cash writing as well. I can’t think of an easier business to start up besides writing online for cash. Many people are happy to write and never see a dime for their work, while website publishers are using their content to drive in organic traffic and make money from advertisers. The benefits of writing online are many – here are just two reasons to give it a try.

1. Costs nothing upfront – you don’t need to buy programs, and chances are you’re already paying for a computer and an internet connection. Technically, you can get free access to the internet and computers at many public libraries, so there’s no reason why you can’t go into business for yourself and earn extra cash –for free!

2. Create once, get paid for months or years later – how much is your time worth? $15 per hour? $20? $35? Would you rather get paid $35 to write 500 words or get paid $10 per 1000 visits to your site for the rest of your life? I hope you said $10 cents per 1000 visits, because with some effort and patience, you can steadily increase your traffic to thousands a day. You can also improve click-through rate and how much you get paid per click to earn a lot more than $10 a day or even per hour.

These are just two great reasons to earn extra cash writing with Blogger. Nobody can do it for you, you have to decide to give it a shot and go for it. Do you want to just dream of getting paid while you sleep, or do you want to make it happen? You can read all this info 100 times over, but nothing will happen until you actually start to act upon it and start making things happen. Write now – the sooner the better. However, before you dive into this with a hunger to start earning cash, make sure that you have some solid content and traffic before you monetize your blog.

If you put ads on your blog before it has been indexed (located by Google), you’ll usually end up being penalized or sandboxed by the search engines. This means that nobody may be able to find your site online for up to six months or more. Wait until you’re getting steady traffic, have at least 10 pages of content and your site is three months old or so you should be able to start throwing in the ads. Right now I don’t have ads on this blog for this same reason. I want to earn extra cash writing with Blogger by putting into practice all the tips I’m sharing with you now, but not before all the proper groundwork has been covered. You need to be able to walk before you can run. Having patience will serve you well in this business.

While you’re waiting to monetize your blog you should write as much as you can. Even though you’re not getting paid for your time, think of it more as an investment – the money will be delayed but it will come. Once it starts, it won’t stop either (unless you piss off Google!). The other important thing that some may say is even more important than content is to build up back-links to your articles using your keywords as the anchor text for the link. This means that if someone wanted to link to this blog they should use Earn Extra Cash instead of Mike’s Writing Blog. This will increase the quality of your back-links, which will increase your Page Rank (PR) with Google. All this stuff boils down to more people finding your site and possibly clicking on your ads which will allow you to earn extra cash writing, which is why we’re all here.

Back to Blogger; besides the ease of use there is another deceptive fact about using Blogger to earn extra cash– Blogger blogs look ugly and are optimized for SEO. What this means is that it’s easy for you to set up your posts so that the search engine bots can easily determine what they’re all about, and the fact that the blogs are ugly means a higher click-through rate. People that have been online for any amount of time start to get judgemental about the sites they visit. Often, one look at a Blogger blog and people will click on an ad to get away quick rather than stick around and actually read your original and helpful content. This works to your advantage, because if they click on an ad to leave your site than you just got paid. It’s not your fault that they didn’t bother to stick around and read. This puts Blogger ahead of most of the other free blog software out there – it’s easy to use, is Adsense compatible and looks ugly, resulting in a higher click-through rate - right out of the box!

Wordpress is a hugely popular blogging platform in its own right, but the free version that they host for you doesn’t allow you to monetize it. You have to buy a domain name and a hosting package to be able to set up your Wordpress blog with ads to be able to earn extra cash writing. I use Wordpress and like using it – but the lack of the monetization with Adsense is pretty limiting, even if their blogs are ‘prettier’ to look at. There are other free programs out there, so far the only one I know of that easily incorporates Adsense is Blogger – probably because both are owned by Google. You can use Wordpress to make money, but not directly – and when you’re just starting out, earning extra cash by placing ads directly on your blog is the easiest and best way for you to learn and understand the basics. You could build up the authority and traffic of a Wordpress site and use it to point to other sites that you have monetized, but leave that until you have a better grasp on what you’re doing.

Anyway, if you’ve managed to read this entire post you’ve learned the basics to get going with your own online business so that you can start to earn extra cash writing with Blogger. Start up a blogger and adsense account right away and get writing. There’s no time like the present to build up a solid foundation so that you’re earning extra cash steadily for years to come.

Thanks for reading earn extra cash with Blogger.

Earn Extra Cash - Write now

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:08:00 +0000

Still thinking about how to earn extra cash writing? The best advice anyone can give you is to write now!

If you want to earn extra cash writing, you need to write and the sooner the better. The reason for this is that age plays a big part in generating income online. Aged domains are viewed as more credible than new domains by search engines such as Google. That means the sooner you create your site and get some work published and indexed by Google, the sooner you could be earning extra money.

Write now and be patient. A lot of new blogs take time to get noticed by Google depending on their subject matter. The best thing to do is keep on writing, eventually Google will come to their senses and release you from search engine purgatory. If you stay focused and busy, you’ll soon be indexed in Google and have a pile of fresh content to offer the masses, all perfected SEO’d and bringing in more traffic by the day. Once that happens you start to earn extra cash writing.

Also work on back-links, these are links to your site from other related blogs online – where possible get them to use your exact targeted keywords for your blog.

A blog that I find very inspirational and packed full of information is Grizzly Brear’s Make Money Blogging site, infact anything that Grizzly types is worth reading, so check out his other sites as well! Anyway, one article that can help you make the most out of your earn extra cash writing efforts is his Make Money Using Blogs series.

He touches on many great tips in Make Using Blogs lesson 5 including some quick ways to get back-links by submitting content (it has to be unique, not duplicated from your site) to article directories like EzineArticles.com or Goarticles.com. He also points out that answering questions at Yahoo Answers is another great way to get a solid back-link from a source that Google respects highly.

Grizzly also recommends setting up an account with Feedburner, it’s free and has some nifty features that can help you in your pursuits to earn extra cash writing. Feedburner allows readers Stumble or Digg your post which enables you to get indexed faster. It also lets you track the number of hits you’re getting to your page, and to see what your visitors click on to exit your site. Grizzly points out that this later feature is great to tell which (if any) of your affiliate links are converting and to drop those that don’t.

It’s inspiring to see how someone like Grizzly earns extra cash writing – in fact you could probably argue that he’s far beyond the ‘extra cash’ stage by now. But he started out the same as you and me, with one blog that he had to write content for, optimize for the search engines and generate the organic traffic to earn money from Adsense. When you doubt if all the work is worth it – just remember that Grizzly is doing it right now, and with a little time and effort you could be too.

But it means that you need to start right now, not tomorrow or next week. You need to start somewhere, you have to take that first step. You can start for free using Blogger and be making money in a few weeks or months (depending on how hard you soak up these lessons and apply yourself). How many other businesses do you know of where you can earn extra cash for nothing down?

The sooner you start the better you’ll be. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a full grasp on how this entire process works, you learn best by doing. If as a species we all waited until we understood how to do something, we would all still be crawling on the floor in diapers. Only by experimenting, trying and trying again is it possible to grow, learn and evolve. This is what it takes to earn extra cash writing.

I wish I started out with Grizzly’s blogs. Instead, I read from various different sites and took a stab at things on my own. I spent money I didn’t need to spend on domains and on webhosting, and I didn’t earn money for months. But even if you count that as a mistake or a failure I came out of it with two things – two aged domains and experience.

Now as a pupil of Grizzly’s I’m applying what he teaches with a Blogger blog that is free. I enjoy writing and sharing what I’ve learned with others – I hope I can help others in the way that I’ve been helped since I first went online to find a way to earn extra cash writing. Writing your own contentis one major step – so many people can’t do this or hate it so much that if you can do it and even enjoy it you’ll have a tremendous advantage. From there if you can learn some basic SEO concepts and generate backlinks you can go far.

So consider this post a call to action to get you off your arse and start writing a blog so that you can finally earn extra cash; a passive income that requires less and less time and makes more and more money. I’ll be exploring some tips on how to come up with content to write in some future posts as well as discussing some ways to monetize your site to earn extra cash writing.

Thanks for reading earn extra cash writing!

Earn Extra Cash Writing with Keywords

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 22:21:00 +0000

I’ve already touched on the importance of keywords for those looking to earn extra cash writing, and their importance can’t be stated enough. Keywords are what people are looking for online, and are what the search engines count to rank the importance of a page. The more often a specific keyword appears, the higher the search engine bots will rank the page – within reason. Too many keywords (beyond 6 -7% of the total word count) can be flagged as spam, so you have to be careful.

So what is a keyword and why do you want to write about them? Well, if you want to go back to your English classes, a keyword is basically a noun. If you want to write about shoes then guess what? The word shoes is your keyword. Is it a good keyword? Probably not...it’s too generic. Anyone looking for shoes probably is just doing some random searching; they probably just looking for ideas. The thing that you need to understand about keywords is that the more specific they are, the more likely the traffic you get to your site will be enticed to click on an ad and help you to earn extra cash writing.

Keeping this in mind, you wouldn’t want to write about shoes – you want to be more specific so try again. How about “blue shoes”? That’s a little bit better, you’re narrowing down the focus significantly and possibly alienating all the people out there that hate the colour blue at the same time, but that’s okay. Still, we can narrow that word down even more – how about blue suede shoes? Now you’ve just created a laser-focused keyword – people looking for blue suede shoes (the Elvis Presley song not withstanding) will find your site if you mention that keyword enough times while writing. If you use the keyword consistently in your post and your post title, not only will people be able to find you from the major search engines, your ads will also match the keywords in your written text and you can earn extra cash.

Whoa – wait a second, what ads? You need to put ads on your site if you want to earn extra cash writing – it’s the simplest way. You don’t have to sell anything, all you have to do is write using your specific keywords, copy and paste in the code (or add the widget in Blogger) and you’ll have ads geared to the content on your page. The main companies doing this are Google and Yahoo. When people visit your site and click on the ads, you get paid. The amount may vary from click to click, and some feel that Yahoo pays more than Google.

You won’t get paid a lot per click, depending on your topic and keyword you can earn anywhere from .25 to 2.00 or more for a single click. While that doesn’t sound like much, there are two things to consider:

1. Any article you write continues to earn money for months or years afterward

2. The more traffic that visits your site, the more money you make

Getting traffic is key, because the amount of people that click on ads online (click-through) is generally pretty low, anywhere from .5 to 4 percent. I’ve read of some people that get up to 12 percent click-through, but that is rare, so don’t set your hopes too high. The way you get traffic is what we’ve already discussed with this article, writing original content using focused keywords. Ideally the keywords will involve something that you know about and have passion for. That will make it easier for you to produce content. The other part of the equation is back-links – links from other websites that point to your article.

If you have a targeted back-link from a high ranked page in Google, you can start getting more traffic over night. If you use search engine optimization, your pages will gradually rank higher. The more content you create and the more back-links you generate, the more the search engines will find you and rank you higher in the search engine results – meaning that people will find you easier. Instead of having 10 or less people visit your site, you can have thousands in a single day. If even a small percentage of them click on your ads you’ll be on your way to earn extra cash.

Before I talk briefly about how to choose a keyword, let me give you a quick tip on how to count keywords. See, if you had to go back through your post and find every occurrence of the words earn extra cash on this page, it would be a bit of a hassle. However, if you use MS word like I do, you can use the “Find” feature to give you the number easily. Check out this screen shot.

In the screen shot you can see that Word found 4 incidents of the keyword. If you had a total of 100 words in the article your keyword percentage would equal 4 percent, which is decent without being spammy (spam or keyword stuffing happens with 6-7 percent or more). You can use Word to also tell you how many words are in your post – take you keyword count (4) and divide it by your total word count (100) to get the percentage (.04 or 4 percent).

I find it pretty hard to get beyond 4 percent keyword saturation, but I also care about what I write about. A decent rule of thumb if you don’t want to over-think how often to work your keyword into your post is the try to squeeze it in once ever paragraph. As long as your paragraphs are three or four lines long you should be able to rate high enough for your keyword without being flagged as spam.

That is the consequence of ‘keyword stuffing’, you’ll be flagged by search engines like Google as being spam, and you will drop or be black listed right out of the search results. You don’t want this to happen to you because you won’t have a chance to earn extra cash writing, nobody will ever be able to find you – so nobody will click your ads.

Choosing profitable keywords
There is a bit of a science to doing this, and I don’t pretend to be an expert, but here are a few good tips to use when narrowing down which keyword(s) to use to earn extra cash writing:

· Minimum 200 searches per day

· No more than 400,000 competing pages (less is better)

· There are ads for the word

You need to know how many searches are happening for a term to be able to earn extra cash writing. To do this you used to have to either buy or subscribe to special software, now Google shows you how with their keyword tool. It also lets you see an average Cost Per Click (CPC) price (what you get paid is usually much lower) which is another useful tool for determining the keyword worth. Lastly, Google also gives you an idea of how much competition there is for a keyword – the more competition, the more ads and the more profitable the keyword is likely to be.

To find out how many competing pages are out there, go to Google and type in your keyword with quotation marks around it. So if my keyword was blue suede shoes I’d type it with quotes “blue suede shoes” in the Google search – the search results will show only the pages online that have these specific words in the same order. If you type the keyword twice, once with brackets and once without you should notice a big drop in the results with the quotes added on. You don’t want too many competitors when you’re starting out, because it’s easy to get discouraged and give up before you’ve begun to earn extra cash writing. Starting with only 400,000 competitors is fine for starters, once you have a firm grasp of how all of this works you can set your site on more profitable keywords that have greater competition.

Lastly, to check for ads for your keyword is to merely look over on the right hand side of the page when Google returns your search for your keyword. If there are any ads for the keyword you’re researching, they’ll appear on the right hand side of the screen. Generally, the more ads that are there the better your chances are to make money.

This post is starting to get pretty long, so we’ll leave it at that for today. There are more things to discuss in regards to keywords, namely long tail keywords – but I’ll leave that for a different post. There should be enough here to get you started in the right direction to research keywords and begin to earn extra cash writing.

Earn Extra Cash Writing

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:20:00 +0000

How can you earn extra cash writing?

Here are a few reasons. Maybe you graduated with an English major degree and can’t find meaningful employment. Maybe you’re looking for work that you can do easily from home in your spare time, or maybe you’re just plain addicted to writing?

It’s possible to earn extra cash writing; there are many options available to you if you’re open to the idea.

From a business standpoint writing is an attractive option because it is low cost; you don’t need to invest in any special software and you don’t have to rent out an office or commercial retail space. All you need is a computer (which most people have these days anyway), some free programs, some writing talent, the desire and discipline to write regularly – at least at the onset.

Your main initial investment will be time. Time to write; time to read these posts, and time to learn how to earn extra cash writing.

Now, I’m not going to kid you that you’re going to write a few posts, and publish them online and be rolling in dough; it doesn’t work like that. You’re going to have to write quite a bit before you have enough traffic to generate even a few dollars worth of income.

The goal of Earn Extra Cash Writing is to show you how to do this in a smart way – so you don’t have to work as hard to make a greater impact with your words. We’ll touch on topics like Search Engine Optimization (SEO), keywords, Google Page Ranking and Relevance and how (if used correctly) they increase your opportunities to earn extra income writing.

While the tips you get on this site to earn extra cash writing will work for anyone, it will work the best for those that truly enjoy writing, and write about topics they know about and enjoy. Otherwise, the payback for the time invested will probably not be worth it to you. Initially you’ll earn nothing and have little or no traffic; if you don’t have a passion for writing you’ll be tempted to call it quits and lose out on all the initial time you invested. It often takes anywhere from 6 to 12 months to start seeing a definite effect of all your hard work – to actually start to earn extra cash writing.

Have I scared you off yet? If not…read on.

Maybe you’re like me; you enjoyed writing but never thought that you could use it to earn extra cash. I would visit forums and start or reply to other peoples threads, sometimes spending a few hours a week doing this. I felt great each time I posted something that I wrote because I was either helping someone or just writing something that I knew a lot about and enjoyed immensely.

What I didn’t realize is that while I was indulging my writing urge, my words were being used to help someone else profit. The next time you visit a forum, take a minute to look around at the ads that are scattered around the top and sometimes even between posts – who do you think is getting paid for them to be there? Why would someone pay to advertise on a forum? Usually because there’s a lot of traffic, a large community that fits the right demographic for the advertiser. This community is busy posting and replying (just like I used to do) which is content for the search engines, bringing still more people to the community.

I’m not suggesting that you never post on a forum again – they are great to visit in your spare time and learn a thing or two, not to mention great sources for doing certain types of research – but why not get paid to write? Making money writing means that you’re now going to be an owner instead of a free content provider.

There’s a word for you to consider – content - everything that you write is considered content, and if there’s one thing you’re going to learn from me it’s the saying that content is king. People are searching all over the internet for whatever they want using search engines like Google. Every single webpage out there has some writing on it, and someone has to write it. The content that you provide is the way to earn extra cash writing.

Many people are paid for what they write, either by being a staff writer, or by doing free lance articles. I work for a company that is in the online publishing industry – they often have to farm work out to freelancers because they need content fast, far too much content then the editorial department could handle.

So don’t sell yourself short thinking that all you can do is write, that nobody will earn extra cash writing unless you’re Stephen King or work for a famous magazine – think again. Blogging is just one way that is available for you to get paid to write. As I said at the start of this article, you can earn extra money this way - it will take some time - but it is possible. Thousands of people are being paid handsomely for their words, they get paid to write and they don’t have an English degree. They also aren’t going to win any special literary awards either.

They earn extra cash by generating the type of content that people are searching for online. They answer the questions that people have, they write with a clear focus – with certain keywords that people are looking for. By writing this way, search engines like Google and Yahoo understand exactly what their page is all about and can list them in their search pages quickly. How does money factor into this?

Google and Yahoo both have ads that are displayed on sites all over the internet. Go to Google for a second and type in bass guitars and click on the Google search button. Now look at the right hand side – see all those blocks of ads there? You can have ads like that up on your own web page, and each time someone clicks on it you’ll be paid, anywhere from 1 cent to a couple of dollars for each click.

Unimpressed? Earning extra cash a few cents at a time doesn’t sound like a way to bring home real money does it? Well those clicks add up if you have the right content. With laser focused content optimized around a particular key word, you’ll generate ads on your site based on what the content is about. So if you write about bass guitars and say the word bass guitars often enough the ads on your page will display ads for (you guessed it) bass guitars. Since people came to your site to read about bass guitars, they are viewing ads that are geared to them, with a higher chance of them actually clicking on the ads – when they do, you get paid.

The more relevant the ad is to your content (i.e. the more optimized the content is) the better paying the clicks will be. The higher you rank on search engines for the word (in the above example) bass guitars the better the ads will be that appear on your site, the more you get paid per click. The more relevant your content is to bass guitars, the better the chance you’ll have of being ranked highly for your keyword.

Being highly ranked means that thousands or tens of thousands of people will find your content; a certain amount of people will click on your ads and you will earn extra cash. Fifty cents isn’t a lot of money but, fifty cents x 1,000 is good money…especially if that’s what you’re making every day, while you’re sleeping, at work or on vacation.

There is more to it than this, but I think this gives you an idea of how you can earn extra cash writing. The good news is you can own your work, get paid and you don’t have to be a fabulously talented celebrity writer to do it. You just need to write with a clear focus on the specific keywords you know about and have a passion for, and ensure that you sprinkle them throughout your text with a conscious effort. Having a passion for writing will take you farther, making it easier for you to earn extra cash writing.

Thanks for reading Earn Extra Cash Writing, stay tuned for more tips on how to get paid to write.