How to earn money online

How to monetize a blog

2012-05-30T19:33:00.004+08:00

Blogs are essentially one of the hardest thing to monetise. In this article, I will look at some popular ways to make money with a blog and why they are not suitable for aaronchua.com. Hopefully, this analysis will help you to understand how monetisation works and why you might be making more money if you choose the right option.

Just to be clear. A blog means it is personal and it has to be updated regularly. It is not to be confused with a niche site where the owner of the site typically is unknown and there are no real engagement being done.

Blogs typically don't work well with ads unless your blog has a large source of search traffic. Even so, a blog is normally configured to attract long term readers and not to send them off via the ads. As a result, they are not optimised to earn ad revenue via clicks.

I did an experiment using a new ad network called intentclick from Kontera. Below is my earning for May.

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I make a miserable USD0.22 for the month of May. You can see why ads is not an option here. Of course, I can earn more by using a better ad programme such as adsense but the point here is there a blog is not designed to push people away through ads so they are never the best monetization option

Affiliate offers

Using affiliate offers yields a much better result. The below is the earnings from clickbank. I made about USD100 in about 7 months, which comes to about USD13 per month. Still not going to be rich.

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Promoting something to your readers or search traffic coming to your blog or selling something that is not value adding makes me feels dirty. Unlike other marketers, I can't really promote something unless it really gives you a positive ROI. This is why I only recommended keyword researcher as I believe it has helped me save lots of time doing research about long tail keywords.

Selling ebooks

I am thinking of writing a book about business. However, I don't like a general business book. What I did was to look through the table of content for some of my favorite business or startup books and see what is the process of building a business. This is what I found:

Finding your niche
Test your assumptions
Build the product
Get your first customers
Scale and optmise your customer acquisition

The above is essentially the steps in starting your own online business. Among them, I have the most difficulty with Step 1 and 4. So, if I am going to write a book, it will be about these 2 sub topics.

If I am to do this, I would want to create something like an ideas book where I list out 100 niche ideas for the future. You guys remember I always get traffic by targeting emerging niches? Instead of keeping all the goodies for myself, maybe somebody will be to pay to read these new emerging areas.

Beside each idea, there will be suggestions on how to create a value adding niche site around these ideas. A good example of this format is what I did on this post here on how to build quality sites. Look at how I analyze the peer to peer loan market and you will get a glimpse into what this new book will be all about.

The downside of doing a ebook is that you might spend lots of time without getting any significant results. Of course, I can always do some market validation tests but the risk is definitely higher when it comes to creating and selling your own product.

In conclusion

So, I am throwing this challenge out there to my readers: if you owned aaronchua.com, how would you monetise it?

My take on Singtel buying HungryGoWhere for 12 million dollars

2012-05-23T09:57:00.003+08:00

The biggest news for today is that HungryGoWhere is bought by SingTel for 12 million dollars. For readers who are not familar with these companies, HungryGoWhere is the biggest food review site in Singapore while Singtel is our predominant Telco. From a blogger point of view, does this signfy that Singapore companies are starting to take content seriously and there is a chance that our blogs might be bought for a good sum of money?

I think there is.

In my post on creating financial blogs for Singapore, I already mentioned that the local business environment typically lags US for a few years. In the next few years, we will start to see more aggresive SEO plays and content marketing by Singapore companies. When that happens, the possibility of either engaging these companies as advertisers or potential buyers is very real. However, you need to stake your claim now and the good thing about Singapore is that there is so many wide open areas.

In the directory business alone, I am seeing portals developed for properties, food, cars etc. How about directories for the rest of the industry? Spa, pets stores, bike shops, cosmetic surgeries etc. All these industries are now ripe for some directory sites to come and organise them so that consumers in Singapore find it easier to get information and reviews on the products or services that they desired.

I hope this news can created awaresness for what is truly possible online. If you don't leverage it now, you might never get another chance in your lifetime.

Funny keywords about making money with adsense and keywords

2012-05-22T10:16:00.000+08:00

I know my readers came here to learn about new ways to make money or to know something useful. Today's post has nothing useful so don't bother reading. This is a light hearted post meant to show you why you cannot predict keywords based on keywords tools alone. Learn about how the conversation really happens in your niche and you will have a nice and never ending stream of keywords to write about.

Here is some of the most amusing keywords that have brought traffic to aaronchua.com.

1. I am banned from adsense and I want to die

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Who ever type this in, take it easy man! Adsense is not the end all or be all of how to make money online. As long as you know how to gather traffic, it doesn't matter whether you lose your adsense account or your site disappeared from the SERPs. You have acquired a skill that nobody can take away from you. What you need to do is to skip all the shortcuts and start fine tuning whatever you have learned. I have lost many adsense accounts (plus amazon too!) and I can still make money. I am living proof that life doesn't end after adsense.

2. Will I lose my serps after 2012

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Every traffic source has its downside. Instead of worring about losing your serps, do what is necessary to ensure that your traffic sources are diversified so that your business doesn't end when you lose your search rankings. Personallly, I never practiced what I preach. I am still a search traffic guy but I devote 100% of my attention on how to do advanced SEO.

After the penguin update, tonnes of internet marketers swore off Google, saying that they will explore social media for traffic. I took the opposite direction. I studied Google more and more to understand what is the value they are looking for. In the end, it is relatively simple. Seek value first and search traffic willl follow. Every successful site I saw that endured through Penguin had this common deominator. They cared more about the value than about keywords. The end result is that they do get search traffic and mostly for the terms that they never intentionally target.

As a person who practices SEO, my sites should be better than them. I should be able to provide value and practice some form of SEO to see faster and better results. At least that is where I am going.

So, don't worry about will you lose your serps after 2012 or whether your website disappeared from Google. Algorithms will always change but as long as you keep to the fundamentals of being a good webmaster, you have nothing to worry about. In the worse case scenario, you can always rebuild another site with new insights.

3. Key competition tips and difficult to find low competition keywords

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The people searching for these terms obviously haven't read my master pieces of how to find low competition keywords. In that case, I better provide you some references to these articles:

Low competition keywords: my guide on what do we really mean by competitive keywords. Read this first!
Why you should do keyword optimisation and not keyword ranking: learn to combine what I said above with this article and you will start to see how advanced SEO worry about the amount of search traffic but not individual keywords.
How to find low competition keywords: talks about using market segments to dig out keywords that cannot be found in google adwords tool.
Trend keywords: uses the penguin update as an example to show you how to pull traffic for new keywords that emerge whenever there are changes announced in your niche.
Keyword competition tips for amazon products: discusses how to judge the difficult of a product based keyword

4. Passion for nature online income

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I have absolutely no idea what does this mean. I know I have passion for online income but what is nature online income. Is the searcher referring to nature based site or natural online income?

5. I earn 30k a month and am not satisified

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I loved this one. How can anyone make 30k a month and am not satisified? Unless you are earning tat 30k from a corporate company that eats away your human soul the minute you step into office. If that is the case, 30k is not a lot to compensate for the loss of your humanity : ).

Seriously speaking though. If you are already earning 30k, expanding your online business is super easy. Investing 30k to buy websites and you can easily double your income by the end of the year. Perhaps you should read my new blog on how to make money by investing in websites? (to readers: url of this new site will not be revealed yet).

I have lots more keywords to mine but I think that is enough for today.

Important make money lesson

I hope this fun exercise shows you how to mine your keywords and create ideas for generating new content. Every query is a question and if you do your best to answer them, you might be on your way to building a useful and relevant site.

How to backlink after the penguin update

2012-05-16T11:10:00.000+08:00

Finally, an update from me on a blog that nobody reads, LOL.

Anyway, lots of things going on so I kind have to leave this blog for a while. Today will be talking about how to backlink your website after the penguin update. Frankly speaking, the best way is not to do too much backlinking. Learn to pick emerging topics that you have an interest in. Write interesting content to solve problems in that niche. Round up a couple of links from your own blogs or from your friends to 'prime' the website. That is all the backlinking you need to do.

However, a common question you might have is the use of anchor text. Do you still use anchor text or just your website url? The answer is both but you need to be smart about where to use what. In the past, we all used anchor text for maybe 80-100% of our backlinks. That is what got many people into trouble with the penguin update. After the update, does it make sense to continue to use anchor text? Well, there was a mention by Google about eliminating one of the linking algorithm. Here is a good summary of what link alogorithm might be changed. Based on the article, it seems the use of anchor text might still be relevant.

Hence, since we don't really know how important anchor text is going forward, here is my suggestion. Use brand and nonsense links such as website url, aaron's blog, click here etc but for the links on authority sites, use anchor text. This means your anchor text usage might only be in the 10% or less region but they will come from the most powerful sites. For the rest of the links, just use other types of anchors.

Does this make sense to you? So far, I have been doing this before the penguin updates and none of the sites got hit. The ones that do are those that rely on the old and updated method of endless anchor text backlinks. If you are still insisting on building backlinks for your SEO effort, then do consider what I have said as an suggestion. For the rest of you who wants to get out of the backlink game, I suggest you reread my second paragraph again. That is all you need to build a real online business that doesn't come and go as Google changes its algorithm.

An update on our early retirement blog. I managed to squeeze about 14 articles for that site. Traffic is dismal of course and I am still finding my way in terms of identifying the key problems faced in this niche. The only good thing is that I have started to have a drip of search traffic and this is quite encouraging at this early stage of the project. I do hope you guys have started your own authority or passion site. You need prime virtual real estate going forward if you want to make serious money online.

Financial aspect of buying cars

2012-05-15T10:04:00.000+08:00

Buying a car is not something that is easily affordable. Many people would love to have a car that that can call their own but unfortunately finances tend to be a major hindrance for them. You need to have this in mind when you approach nissan dealers. You need to be well prepared when it comes to financing your car. This is what has made the financial institutions introduce some auto loans so as to make the process and the financial burden lighter for anyone who desires to have a car.

There are so many options where you can get such services that will help you in getting a good car. Unfortunately, most of these financing agents have set the interest rates so high which still makes it quite unrealistic for those who need the loans. You cannot blame them since they are also in business and need to make some profit at the end of the day. Therefore, when you consider getting a loan to finance your motor vehicle purchase you need to look for a financial institution that does not charge very high interest rates.

If you are one of those who have a bad credit score and a negative credit history, this may narrow your chances of securing an auto loan. If you have a bad credit, you should make every possible effort to make it appealing before approaching anyone to finance you car purchase. There are also some financial organisations that are said to be in the business of taking advantage of their clients. You should be very careful when dealing with such and be sure of the company that you deal with. There are also some that have partnered with nissan los angeles dealers which will save you all the hassle of having to find a financing company by yourself.

How to create a passion site

2012-04-28T23:57:00.002+08:00

With all the turmoil in recent days, people are finally willing to listen. When a person is making good money from creating 'not spam' niche sites, it is pretty hard to tell them to do anything else. With most of those income gone now, I am sure people are searching on how to make money after the penguin update.

This is not going be a full blown post on how to create a passion site. Rather, it is a journey. One that I am starting now and one that you can follow on with a real example. Before all these algorithm changes that Google has introduced, I was already thinking about creating passion sites that can last. After considering deeply on who I am and what I really like to write about, I finally created a couple of authority sites. This case study is one of them.

Let me introduce to you: http://earlyretirementdiary.com/

This is a blog about a topic that is very dear to my heart: early retirement. After all, what is the point of making money online? It is to retire early and enjoy a life of financial freedom. So, if that is your dream, I welcome you to the new passion blog. However, to make this case study real, please don't link to it as it will skew the results.

Why create a passion site and why not to do it

Creating a passion site has its pros and cons. I am not here to tell you what you should do. It is my personal choice and I am laying out all the stuff I was thinking about before deciding to embark on this journey.

Pros of creating a passion site:

Promote your site openly: In niche sites, we need to hide our keywords because that are usually our only defense. If other folks knew about our niches and what kind of money they made, you can bet that they will come after it with a vengeance. This severely restricted our marketing choices as we need to hide their tracks.

Explore other sources of traffic and diversify away from Google: Passion sites are driven by interests. You are genuinely interacting with others within your community to discuss issues, interests, news etc with regards to your common topic. You means you can openly market your site through all the social media channels and other relational marketing.
Content creation is much easier: You are writing about something that you either have some expertise or interest in. It is so much easier to write interesting content when you are passionate about it.

Stronger motivation: Maintaining a passion site is not as easy as watching TV but it is a hell lot easier than having to write for something that you don't care about.

Cons of creating a passion site

Niche restriction: With a passion site, you choose what you are really interested about, not by keyword traffic and how much money you can make.

Crowded: Whether you believe it but most of us have similar interests. This is why there are so many blogs that talked about fashion, finance, parenting etc but very little blogs really talked about crime scene, industrial repair etc. So, choosing a niche means you are entering into a crowded field.

No obvious monetisation: some passions are very easy to monetise. Space is an great example. Only with huge traffic can a site such as universetoday.com make any form of significant income if your passion is not commercial by nature.

How to overcome the cons of a passion site

Weighing the pros and cons, I still decided to go with a passion site. Despite the problem of limited niche selection, crowded marketplace and no immediate money making route, there are two ways that I THINK can make a passion site viable:

Method 1: learn to spot where the problems are in your passion niche.

Every niche has its own set of problems and issues that are not obvious to people outside the industry. Take early retirement as an example. On the surface, it seems that every possible topic has been covered but upon reading and learning all the different retirement blogs, I realise there are a couple of things that existing blogs are not addressing.

You see, a common early retirement method is to reduce your spending to around 30k per year and start aggressively saving 50-75% of your salary. Using such an approach, a normal middle class person should be able to save enough money and retire early. This money should be able to yield 5-7% interest and be sufficient to cover the 30k living expenses.

There are two problems:

5-7% is not that easy to achieve consistently if you want a low risk investment
what if your wife or family doesn't want to live on 30k per year budget?

These issues represents opportunities for my early retirement blog to make a headway. Of course, there will be other issues that need to be addresses as I continue to work on the site. However, the main point of this whole rambling is this:

Knowing the problems in a market means you can overcome the cons of a passion site:

Niche restriction: The niche is not as limited as you think as there are always new problems (just like there are always new keywords) due to a changing environment bought on by technological, economical, political and social changes.

Crowded: By identifying the problems in your passion niche, you are already differentiating yourself as you will be writing about something that is missing in your niche. This becomes your unique selling point and is something that you can market to other folks within the community.

No obvious monetisation: The problems you identified become a monetisation path because people always pay for solutions to their problems. Whether that solution can be solved by content is problem specific but at least you know that is a pain there waiting for some smart guy to remedy and profit from it.

Method 2: Attack emerging niches

This has become a recurring theme for my blog but a new niche represents lots of untouched areas where good information is needed. I already mentioned a couple of such ideas in my post on how to build quality niche sites. The basic point, however, is that a new niche means unlimited sub niches and a non crowded marketplace. There might still be problems with monetisation but it is not a insurmountable issue as revenue models can be copied from existing niches.

How to know your passion

This is the hardest part but unfortunately it is also the first step. Think about it. If you are passionate about something, you will already be doing it. The fact that most of us are not pursuing anything in our lives means that there isn't anything that we feel strongly about. We are just living from day to day with no passion.

I though about mine for a long long time. After much soul searching, I realise this is what I am passionate about:

Creating online income so that my wife and I can retire early, and I want to enable others to do the same.

The above captures what my passion is. In that statement, there are a couple of niches that fit well into who I am.

Making money online: already doing it with aaronchua.com and I love the results so far.
Retire early: click that one off as well with my new blog
Enable others: still thinking about that one but I might start a new blog that attempts to give readers 1000 blog topics that are emerging and have income potential. Aaronchua.com does this to some extend.

Anyway, you should think hard about what you really want and who you really are.

I hope you guys reading this really start a passion site. One where you can continue to work on after 5 or even 10 years.

Penguin update affected your site? Time to consider the alternatives

2012-04-27T22:40:00.002+08:00

Ever since writing the 2 posts about why my sites are not ranking after April 25 and how to recover sites that disappeared from the SERPs, it is time to rethink how you have been getting your traffic. The drop you have experienced should serve as a fine warning that no real money making ventures should ever rely on one traffic source, especially one that has no real challengers.

By the way, this latest algorithm change has been termed the penguin update by most folks so I will call it as such from now onwards.

You see, ever since the Panda 2.6 update that caused my adsense earnings to drop from 5k to USD600, I have leaned that there are more than 1 search engine. My sites that got affected by Panda never recovered from Google but most have gotten their traffic back. How? By optimising for other search engines.

I know Google is the biggest search engine. However, Bing and Yahoo (despite the smaller share) still command more than 300 million users. That is still a very very large number. While every IM and his dog is going after Google, I learn to optimise for other search engines that are happy to give my sites the traffic that they need for my earnings to increase again.

How to optimise for Bing and Yahoo

Almost everyone I talked draws a blank face when I mentioned that they should learn how to do SEO for Bing, Yahoo and other search engines you never heard of. Everyone seems to forget that we are doing search engine optimisation, not google search optimisation. A good SEO will learn to get traffic from all search based engines and not just from Google.

So, how do you actually optimise for Bing and others? Well, it is the same process:

Keyword research
Content
Promotion
Feedback

The main difference lies in which data set you pay attention to. When you are optimising for Google, I bet you only used Google tools such as Google keyword tool, Google trends etc. Now, you need to know what keywords are being searched by users of Bing, Yahoo and other search engines. There are a couple of ways to do it but definitely not using Google's tool to estimate other search engines' keyword volume. That is just plain stupid.

While Bing and others doesn't have an equivalent of a keyword tool, they do offer things such as auto complete, related searches and trending topics (See Yahoo trending tool as an example). Learn to dig out sources of how people search on these other engines and you are on your way.

Feedback is a problem as google analytics and other Java script based analytics programme don't offer a complete view of your traffic sources. These make it hard for you to know which search engines are really sending you traffic and how you can create more content to draw similar traffic. Server logs are the best but you need to know how to retrieve the keywords from there and used it.

I have still lots to say about optimising for Bing and other search engines but the key takeaway here is that you should never reply on one traffic source alone. Learn to optimise for other search engines and you are already miles ahead of other SEOs and Internet marketeers.

My sites disappeared from the SERPS after the latest Google algorithm called webspam algorithm

2012-04-26T10:29:00.005+08:00

There is a name for the latest Google algorithm change. It is called the webspam algorithm change. The name really says it all isn't it? Google is out to clean up the SERPs by removing all the webspam that is either onsite or through manipulating the rankings. However, within this change, there are many factors that might caused your site to disappeared from the SERPs. The following observations are what I can learn from my network of sites.

Why all my keywords lose rankings after the April 25 algorithm change?

The reason is nto clear cut and I see 2 major factors:

Observation 1: Big brands are moving up

It is natural to see brands moving up. If Google wants to remove webspam, the first logical thing is to give greater weight to sites with more trust. That means branded sites will get a leg up on our niche sites. I see this happening across my niches where big brands such as amazon, webmd etc are occupying top spots in the SERPs.

Due to the above, your niche site will be pushed down. If you experience a few ranking drops and see big brands above you, then the good news is that your niche is not penalised by this latest webspam algorithm. It is just that your site doesn't have the necessary trust and authority to outranked those branded sites above you.

Observation 2: Sites with links from private blog networks are losing ranks big time

I mentioned about a Google patent that might be used for this change. Here is the paper. Basically, it is an algorithm that attempts to determine the quality of a linking cluster and draw conclusions on whether the articles are manipulated.

In layman terms, it means that the algorithm is trying to analyse the backlink articles and see if the links placed are relevant with relations to the articles and the entire site. If the backlink articles are deemed to be manipulated, the linking destination (which is your site) will either drop in rankings and be completely deindexed.

From my own network of sites, this pattern is very obvious. Sites which had backlinks from only private blog networks such as BuildMyRank are dropping rankings like flies. Sites which had a more diversified backlink profile dropped less. Sites which had no artificial backlinks are unaffected and some even gain in rankings.

So, the message is loud and clear. If you want backlinks, do it the right way. Create great content and network with other webmasters to get them. Forget about trying to outsmart the webspam algorithm because it will only get better at detecting unnatural backlinks.

For me, I don't do the backlink game anymore. I focus more on identifying undeserved niches in up and coming markets and create content to serve those needs.Very often, you will find that you can indeed get search traffic without backlinks.

Look at all these terms I can traffic for when I wrote the latest google algorithm change yesterday. I couldn't build backlinks fast enough to rank for these terms even if I try.

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So, if your site disappeared from the SERPs, understand whether it is because you being outgunned by the brands or you have been building too many links from private blog networks.

Time to clean up and move on.

Why is my sites not ranking after google algorithm changes on April 2012

2012-04-25T23:02:00.000+08:00

"Why is my sites not ranking after google algorithm changes on April 2012". I suspect this might be a popular query after Google rolled out their latest algorithm changes. If you think Panda has caused damages, wait until you see the massacre bought by this latest change.

Across the websphere, I see forums filled with online money making folks declaring the reduction of their traffic by more than 70-90%. The ranking drops experienced by these folks is much worse than what Panda has caused. It is not uncommon to see terms that you are ranking for totally disappeared from the SERPs.

When did the latest Google algorithm changes rolled out

If I am not mistaken, the changes were rolled on 24 April, around 5pm. The effects were rather instant. Once your sites were affected, you can see the effects sinking your sites faster than the titanic.

What kind of sites were affected by this algorithm changes

Nobody can tell you this now. In fact, nobody can tell exactly what is going on in Google's algorithm. There are too many factors to consider and none of the SEOs have any insider information to have a full understanding.

My own humble opinion is that this algorithm is targeting sites that used manipulative links to control their rankings. I saw a Google patent that states that it has the ability to understand the source of your links and whether these documents have been manipulated or are a part of a larger network whose sole purpose is to give links.

How to recover from this latest Google algorithm changes

The immediate reaction is typically to take some actions in hope that your sites can recover their rankings or to get their traffic back. My advice is to sit this out for a couple of weeks. It is common for Google to roll out their algorithm, see how the SERPs are affected and then rolled back some of the changes if the outcome is not ideal.

More importantly, asked yourself this: is my sites worth saving? I have been changing my thinking these days. When building out lots of niche sites that are neither spam nor high quality, I will always be affected by these changes because I am limited in my ability to draw different traffic sources.

Whether your sites deserves to be recovered is a question you need to ask yourself. Don't have the mentality that the site outranking your site is spam or have lower quality so your site that is not spam deserves to be at the top. You need to be honest. Does my site deserve to be at the top?

For me, I can tell the difference between aaronchua.com and my minicupake site. As best as I can try to make the mini cupcake site useful, it will never be as personal or relevant as aaronchua.com for the simple fact that I don't have any personal experience with baking or have any interest to learn.

How to build sites that avoid Google penalties

Start with passion. Create a site that you are passionate about or have a deep interest to find out more then. Then use that passion to find out what the community is missing. Create a site to help them solve the problem.

This is how to build a site that will not suffer under any Google penalties.

Passion sites don't take shortcuts. They need your tender loving care to blossom into something that will give you good income for many years.

The tough part is to figure out what you are passionate about. Believe it or not, most people have no passions, which explained why they are happy to let life pass by.

Treat this latest algorithm changes as a wake up call. Time to build something that is useful and long lasting.

Make money by selling wordpress themes

2012-04-19T21:55:00.003+08:00

I mentioned last year that I got my first sales being an affiliate of elegant wordpress themes. Ever since that first sale, I have been writing more content using long tail keyword software. I used to use keyword strategy but that tool becomes too complicated to handle. What I need was just some software that gave a list of long tail for particular phases and off I go, which is why I choose to stick with keyword researcher. It doesn't hurt that this is a one time purchase, compared to the monthly membership.

This is how I used the tool. I keyed in * wordpress themes and see what comes out from the suggestion. I then pick the one I liked and round up a bunch of nice looking wordpress themes that people might want to buy.

The great thing about the wordpress theme niche is that it is so large. The number of longtail keywords in it is mind boggling. Anyway, by mining all the longtails and creating content, my wordpress affiliate earnings shot up. I have never disclosed this earnings in my income report. As I have mentioned in my first online income report, I only want to include certain earning sources as I am not comfortable with full disclosure. Well, I am in good mood tonight so I like to share my wordpress affiliate earnings from a new source: themeforest.

This is my April earnings so far:

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The point is not to boast but to convey 2 messages:

There are so many different ways to make money online that it is not even funny. The common theme is that you need targeted traffic who needs something. If you can build a quality site that gets such traffic, there are so many different ways to earn that a Google adsense ban becomes a non issue.

Work hard. Believe in the work you put in today will put off someday. Trust me. Even if the site itself does not make money, the lessons you learn from each failure will make you stronger for your next project. The worst thing is not to do anything as you will never learn anything. The cost of failure is so small because of the Internet that you really have no excuses not to execute your idea.

I hope you find this inspirational. Making money online is not a hoax but you need to put in the work and dare to dream big.

The power of trend keywords

2012-04-17T10:27:00.002+08:00

My previous post on niche pursuit's Spencer Hawks being banned from adsense was done not to spread rumors but to show readers what I meant by trend keywords and how much search traffic you can generate from them. More importantly, it proves my point that SEO is not only about backlinks. If you know how queries rise and how to capitalise on them, you can still get search traffic without any major backlinking.

A recap here. SEO is about

keywords research
content
links
feedback

I do most of my work in 1,2 and 4. Backlinks have always been boring for me although everybody talks about how important they are. To me, these folks are just link building folks. They are not real SEOs.

This experiment was to show you how new queries are invented all the time. I saw the news that Spencer Hawks was banned from adsense. Immediately, I knew there will be new searches for that so I quickly wrote a post and published it. Guess what, this is the amount of traffic I have received today for doing a 10 minute article. Not only that, there were some that actually read my content and thus gaining me some potential readers in the future.

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The point of this exercise is to not laugh at Niche Pursuits but to show you what can be done if you understand keyword research. This is an example of trend keywords and can be applied to any industry. I do it all the time to my product sites and it works. No backlinks. Just an understanding that new queries are invented everyday. We can tap into this growing traffic if we spend less time finding backlinks and more time understanding where the source of these new keywords can be.

Some of you might say that this is temporary traffic. I agree for this particular instance. However, for new products, some of them tend to stick around as they take off among consumers. Because of the fact that you are first to cover this area, you will gain un advantage. Of course, over time, you might need to protect your advantage with more content or even links but I have found out that for some products, no real competition ever show up.

SEO has to look forward all the time. Using keyword tool such as your major source of keyword research is limiting. It also forces you to play the backlink games since everybody is looking at the same tool. Learn to see where others are not looking and you will come out stronger than ever.

Niche pursuits just got banned from google adsense

2012-04-17T00:02:00.000+08:00

Spencer hawks from niche pursuits just annouced on his blog that his adsense account got banned. There is really no surprise here as far as I am concerned. It is in fact a bit freaking weird because I just told my wife earlier that he will be banned sooner or later.

For those who might not know who spencer hawks is, he is the guy that teaches folks how to create niche adsense sites. He has over 200 such sites himself and was clearing over 13k per month. He even confessed that most of his new sites are one page wonders.

With such characteristics, he is prime target for a google ban because:

He Make Google Look Stupid.

The number one rule in any SEO work is that you never make Google look stupid. Spencer hawks did.

Worse of all, he teaches people his method, meaning he make google look stupid in front of more people. If I was Google, and I want people to stop making thin sites, I will target him first.

In my mind, this was inevitable and I kept telling my friends and my wife that this will happen.

The sad truth is that Spencer is a great guy but he should have protected himself more. The good thing is that his sites are not deindexed which means he can either use a Google adsense alternative such Media.net or convert his sites to affiliate sites.

However, one thing he must do is to reverse his entire thinking of niche site making. To him, niche sites are nothing more than low competition keywords. I think that era has passed. If you want to make money online with niche sites, you must learn how to create value.

If you don't know how, please take a look at Part 1 and Part 2 of my serious on making good quality niche site:

keyword optimisation vs ranking keywords
how to build quality niche sites after Panda

History always repeat itself. Spencer Hawks is not the first guy that I saw who got his adsense banned because of thin sites. Don't repeat this mistake. Start your websites right and you will get to enjoy a long and fruitful online income.

Updated: please read this follow up article on the power of trend keywords to understand why I did this post. It is not to laugh at the mis fortune of other folks but to show my readers how proper keyword can bring you search traffic without backlinks.

How to build quality niche sites after Panda

2012-04-12T17:46:00.001+08:00

A lot of people search for this answer as I was looking through my search referral logs. It is something that I want to talk about as well since this thing has been on mind for long periods of time.

Niche sites do not mean crappy sites. They just cater to a smaller group of people, which actually makes it easier to create a good quality site. In this post, I hope to drag everyone who is still doing the 'non spam' content sites into this area so that you guys have a shot at creating something that will last and not be penalised by algorithms or the whim of third party ad or affiliate networks.

This is what I will covered in this long winded post. If you liked it, please share it so that I can finally see those so called natural links that matt cutts always talked about. If they exist, they must be hiding in somewhere that even Indiana Jones can't find them because I sure don't see them appearing in my backlink logs : )

Benefits of quality niche sites: going beyond Google
Types of quality niche sites that you can learn from
How to find new topics that lack information so that your niche site has a role to play

Before going into the content, do note that what you will be reading is just my experience so far. They are not the holy Bible where everything inside must be the truth. I am not God so I am allowed to be wrong : )

Benefits of quality sites

The obvious benefit is a good site is that, hopefully, it will be less prone to any algorithm changes. This might not always the case. Sites will good content still needs exposure to attract natural links. For those who are not social in nature, that means you need to reply on those long tails to bring you those early exposure and fans. Without the quality, any amount of exposure will not have a compounding effect for the site.

I hate saying the obvious so now, I will touch on other less known benefits of having quality sites, using aaronchua.com as an example.
-Creating your own keyword query space that is stable: Despite all the changes in the algorithms, you will find that 'branded' queries don't change much. aaron chua is a small example of a branded query. Despite all the panda changes, I still ranked number 1 for aaronchua because google knows this is my brand. Beyond names, you can also create your own search queries such as "amazon site challenge". If these topics become popular in your community, your site will suddenly draw in a large number of search traffic because you own this query space.

With a quality site, you are in a position to tell readers about new keywords terms because they will listen to you. Let's say Frank have a gardening blog and he decides one day to try a new gardening technique called "frank's secret tip" or "soil ecology treatment" or whatever. The point is he can use a unique, and newly created term and keep on repeating them in his content and to his audience. Over time, if his technique works, people will know and will start searching about it. This is a powerful way to draw traffic that few IM folks are taking advantage of. You don't always have to chase generic and known keywords. With a quality site, you can invent your own branded keywords and be king of that hill.

-You cut off their dependency on one traffic source. With a quality site, you can create traffic funnels from the communities that you serve. It is not uncommon for quality sites to have about 30-40% of their traffic from referrals. That is a major traffic diversification benefit that you should think of. Aaronchua.com for example has only 40% search traffic. The rest are direct navigation and referrals. Even if i lost 100% of search traffic, I still have 60% of traffic that is independent of what Google or other search engine thinks.

- Sell your products: only a quality site can earned the trust of readers to open up the most profitable revenue source, which is selling your products. "non spam' content sites can only let you reply on third party networks. Any change in their policy that is not in your favor and you are toasted. Owning your product is the only way to minimize this risk and you need to have a quality site to do this. Without real engagement or trust, it is impossible to sell your own stuff. On this site, do you know how many people have emailed me to try and give me money so that I can coach them? This happens because I try my best to provide info that is missing from other make money blogs, which happens to be quite a lot of things. If I want to start selling my own stuff, I think there will be buyers from this site but I am too lazy for that : ).

Types of niche sites

Now, we are getting into the real meat of the post.
One reason that people resist or struggle with quality niche sites because the definition of quality is loose. What is quality content? Must it be personal? Must it be written by the owner of the site? Blah blah blah.

To me, quality niche sites can be manifested in different forms. As long as you know what is the value you are bringing to your targeted community, there is no single way to build a niche site. So, below are what I think are different models for quality sites and the kind of value that they bring to their audience.

- News niche site: Any industry needs a news type of site where the latest happenings are reported. There is no need for original reporting as the value it brings is aggregation and awareness. People are lazy to search all the news so they want a single place to browse through what is happening in the markets they care about. General news site will not be able to compete with a niche news site because they serve a much wider audience.

Even within news sites, you can break it down further to a couple of different models:

An analytical news site: For any niches, there will always be people who wants a deeper analysis of subjects and topics. For the technology scene, there is business insider which takes in all the news and analyse their impact on the current industry or players.

Hand curated news niche site: The druge report is a classic case of hand curated news. Another example that I liked is http://fragerfactor.blogspot.com/. This is a domain blog where the guy curates the best news that is relevant to the domain industry. Most tech and gadget sites also fall into this category as they merely take the hottest news from different sites and put them in one place. The difference separating a 'news driven content farm' and a quality site is that the latter takes a lot of editorial effect. The perspective and the message that the editor wants to share to the audience becomes an important part of the value creation.

Algorithm based news niche site: Techmeme.com is the best example in the tech scene. For the domain industry, there is domainville and domaining.com. These sites display the latest news and stories from sources that they trust. Presentation here is important as well as being able to use filters and rules to surface the most widely read news of the day. Again, the focus on creating meaningful filters and presentation separates these sites and a spammer that merely pulls in content.

Community drive news niche site: Reddit, Hacker new etc represent this group of sites. All the latest stories and news are submitted by the community and the most voted ones surfaced as the top news. I actually try to buy a site called the designbump.com which also works in this model. Again, the value, despite having no original content on its own, is in bringing out what the reader should read for the day. The work involved here is being able to attract enough users to make it interesting. At the beginning, you probably need to do all the work yourself and hopefully over time, there will be other members of the community to help you in submitting the stories and curating them.

- Aggregation sites: Beside news, there are also sites out there that aggregate resources for their readers. Design blogs, for examples, typically aggregates tutorials, free resources and examples from across the web and present that to the readers. You can do this for any niche. A collection of relevant resources is always welcomed by a reader.

- How to sites: Behind any market exists a need for how to do things. These sites are well appreciated by the community as they solve the problems faced by the community. The biggest how to site includes the likes of lifehacker but there is one in every niche. From design to home making to gadgets to marketing, there is always a site that serves the informational needs of people.

Hence for any niche sites you are building, think about all the how to problems that people will face. In my mini cupcake maker example, I could write articles such as how to clean a cupcake maker, how to oil it so that the mini cupcakes don't stick, how to repair it etc. All these how to content might not lead directly to sales but they established trust with the users, which in turn might make them more likely to buy from your site.

- Reviews sites: This the favourite model behind many affiliate niche sites.

- Personal experience sites: A site filled with personal examples and experiences is always welcomed. The make money market is the most obvious example of this as bloggers will share how they make money online. Below are some tips that you can use if you want to use such a strategy.

Create a goal or a challenge. These are always interesting to read and they give you materials to have a regular content series. People like series. Once they are hooked. they will always go back for more. Why do you think I create the amazon 50 niche site challenge? The power of this technique is applying in to niches that are not used to seeing such public goal setting. For example, "tasting 50 different Indian curries" if you are in the food niche, "accumulate 100k of air miles within 2 years" if you are in travel, "create 50 looks with the same jeans" if you are in fashion, "throw away 50 items to reduce clutter" if you are in home making etc. See? It is easy to create such challenges that other people will find relevant, interesting and even inspiring.

Share bad experiences: In this strange world of ours, bad news seem always to get more responses from the audience. I don't know why that is so but it is what it is.

Interview the experts: Domainsherpa.com has used this tip to great effect. One of the most common complaint about starting quality sites is that you don't have enough expertise or experience with that niche. This tip will allow you to create quality content even when you are not the expert. Just start interviewing people who have done it and you will be perceived as a valuable source. At a good hard look at domainsherpa.com and apply that in your niche. Domain blogging is a very crowded industry but this tip still works. Imagine applying it to boring industrial niches. If you want to try this, always go for the second tier experts first because they are more likely to accept your interview request.

A final segmentation you can do is to take the model above and sub divide them into different segments such as beginners vs experts, women vs men, kids vs adults, rich vs poor etc. This will leave you with an even great option of creating a quality niche site that is unique.

The models I have listed above is not exhaustive by any means but they can be a start. You can also combine them to create your own unique voice. If you just take the time to think about it, niche sites can have its own appeal as well even if you don't have the resources that other companies have.

How to find new niche ideas or topics

To be really successful, you need to marry the format of the site with a niche that has not seen such a format being applied. Unfortunately, for established niches, most of the format will already have an established site. The easier route is to look for new niches whereby many of the formats have not been established. This is when you niche site can become a quality site for the new market and might even have a chance to grow into an authority site.

Below are some of the ways that I used to look for new niche ideas:

- Technology startups:
Startups at always at the forefront of technology. They aim to disrupt existing markets and pioneer new ones. This is why I enjoy looking at startup launch events such as Ycombinator demo days, the 500startups demo day etc. Of course, my aim is not to create a competing product but to look at the areas that they are pioneering and what kind of information needs that will arise. I will then try to use one of the format I mentioned above to create a quality niche site that meets such needs.

I think this example will make this clearer.
Peer to peer loans startups such as prosper.com, lending club etc: These companies pioneer the peer to peer market. Currently there is at least 2 sites that use the news approach called sociallending.net and p2plendingnews.com, an aggregator site called peer-lend.com/ that collects all the different loan rates from different companies, a how to site called peerlendingnetwork.com and lots of personal finance sites that talked about their goals of making money with peer to peer to loans.

If you apply the above logic to any new niches that are created by startups, the opportunities to create quality niche sites are quite plentiful.

Off my head, I am already thinking of the following niches that I 'stole' off startups:

Sharing niche: pioneered by all the peer to peer sharing companies such as zipcars and what ever not, there is this whole talk of how sharing will transform the economy. So, in light of such changes, you can create all sorts of quality niche sites to serve this market. How about a personal site to show how sharing things can save more money? Or a new sites that tracks all the performance of the companies in this sector? How about a review site that rates the service level of each company? There are really quite a number of great opportunities to create quality niche sites here.

Motion control niche: with Kinect being so popular, the notion of motion control is getting more widely known and desired. I expect motion control to be applied in more of our daily products and hence makes for a great new niche to create sites for.

Light field photography: A new form of camera that can possibly provide a radical different phototaking experience, similar to how Polaroid is entirely different from digital camera. Again, this is going to spur a lot of interest, epecially if the big manufacturers start to come into this niche.

- Google News
Learn to use Google news to hunt for the next big thing in your niche. I have done this numerous times and is now one of my favourite ways to look for new and unexplored areas. Let's see a few examples.

Wine & Beer: I have a wine site in the amazon challenge that is making me good money. I wanted to see what else is new and typed in beer making into google news. Just glancing through the results, I saw a new approach called one gallon beer making. This came about because it is challenging for a beginner to make the typically 3-6 gallon of beer. It also helps to save space. Hence, one gallon beer making is going be a trend as it has practical benefits. Although there are some sites covering this, you can use one of the models above to create a new value for this growing community.

Wireless: I have an amazon site that targets a certain wireless product. I then realised that wireless will become more and more common for new forms of devices and this in turn will create a whole new range of wireless + product keywords. I shall not mention any specific ideas because Google news will give you so much more. Same with the keyword "touch screen"....

- Industry news site
Every niche has a news site. Learn to hunt them out and see what new things are being covered in that industry. I did this for my cosmetic surgery niches and the result was a 5k adsense cheque. This technique is very useful in identifying things that people in the niche will search for but people outside will have no clue on. This means very little competition from other IM folks.

These 3 sources are my favourite ways to learn new niches. There are of course other ways but I never use them so I can't comment on them. Whatever your source is, you must be able to tune in to what is the latest so that you are not chasing a competitive field that leaves you no choice but to build links.

To summarise, here are the main takeaways from the article:

Benefits of quality niche sites: going beyond Google
Types of quality niche sites that you can learn from
How to find new topics that lack information so that your niche site has a role to play

How much money can you make online - Income report 4

2012-04-03T17:07:00.000+08:00

March was a nightmare for me. There was some idiot hacker who got into 2 of my hosts and installed some scripts that redirected all traffic to their sides. Google immediately flagged all the sites on these 2 hosts as having security risks. Needless to say, my traffic died and I was in fire fighting mode most of the time.

Here is what caused the hack:

"The loophole was in the timthumb.php file, which is a script commonly used in WordPress's (and other software's) themes and plugins to resize images. The exploit allows an attacker to arbitrarily upload and create files and/or folders on your account, which can then be used for a number of malicious tasks, including but not limited to defacement, browser high-jacking and infection, data harvesting and more. After a site has been exploited, it may lead to becoming labeled a "Malicious Website" by Google or other security authorities. Any timthumb.php file below version 1.35, but above version 1.09 is considered vulnerable, unless patched"

My father in law also had an car accident last week. My wife and I had to rush back to Malaysia every night to see him. That also reduced the time I had for Internet marketing. Overall, it was a super unproductive month for me. Let's see how my income did shall we?

(By the way, you can check out the rest of my income reports here)

Making better affiliate niche sites

A side note: the amazon challenge is not dead! I am just trying to redo the sites to give them a purpose, rather than just making me money. I am also trying to make them more pretty because I discovered that the more beautiful my sites are, the more I want to care for them and create good content. Also, it creates a collector's mentality as I want to 'collect' as many nice sites as I can. Who wants to have a collection of ugly sites? :p

Such changes create a very nice virtuous cycle but it does take a lot of my time since I possess the most horrible design skills among everyone in the IM niche. : )

So, if you are waiting to see an update, it is coming soon. More of my niches will be revealed! LOL

Adsense Income Report: USD622

The same earnings. Nothing much to add except that I have not touched this site for more than 6 months and it is still splitting out money even though it has been affected by Panda 2.6. Say what you may, there is still nothing better than making niche sites and collecting money.

Skimlink Income Report: USD113

After being banned by Amazon for my carelessness, I have converted the amazon links to skimlinks. This was a long process as I have so many amazon sites to change, including those from the amazon niche sites challenge. In fact, I am still not done yet due to the lack of time.

Anyway, the income has falled quite significantly due to the hack and the conversion to skimlinks. I am hoping to see a much better April.

Private Ads Income Report: USD1,700

A super big jump in my private ads income. Although the money is great, I don't expect this to continue every month. Private ads are not as consistent as adsense or amazon unless you manage to secure a monthly contract. Unfortunately, most of my contracts are yearly so there is no telling whether I will be making the same amount next month.

Total Income: USD2,435

Overall, I am not very happy with the income composition. I liked skimlinks and adsense to be bringing in at least 2K and private ads to be 1k, not the other way around. I hope my efforts in building my amazon sites will lead to a greater increase as we progress further in the year.

Keyword optimisation vs ranking keywords

2012-03-23T16:30:00.001+08:00

This is a very important 3 part series that I am writing about creating quality sites for 2012 and beyond. For those who are familiar with my methods, please don't use them anymore as the advice is outdated. If you really want to make money online, pay attention to this and the upcoming 2 posts.

To summarise the series, the first (which is this article) will talk about why you should give up the notion of ranking for keywords and focus on just keyword optimisation. The second article will then teach you how to pick new niches that can use this keyword optimisation method even more effectively. The last article will pull everything together and give you tips to how to make a site that has value after picking the right niches.

Ok, on with the show.

I spent lots of time on this blog talking about doing keyword research including how to check keyword competition, how to find low competition keywords as well as using software to find long tail keywords. However, I realise there is one critical thing that I didn't talk about. What do you do with the keywords you found?

I realise that I am a bit more successfully at generating traffic because I do one thing very differently with regards to keywords. I don't chase their rankings anymore. What I do is to conduct the keyword research and then place them in my content. That is called keyword optimisation. I am trying to optimise my content to gather as much traffic from as many different keywords as possible. I don't have a goal of trying to reach position #1 for any keyword.

This explains why I am so relaxed about backlinks. People asked me how to rank for keywords if they don't build backlinks. I used to find this question odd until I realise that when they talked about rankings, they are talking about specific keywords. For me, rankings means having some keywords ranking on the first page without me knowing in advance what these keywords will be.

You might find this strange but my approach is actually more resource efficient. Why?

You don't know which link passes value

If you are chasing keyword rankings with backlinks, you are facing a very tough challenge of not knowing which links will pass value. Do you know that Google discounts a lot of our backlinks? If you are not familiar with what kinds of links do google discount, read this article

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-link-based-spam-analysis-techniques

The only way to correctly test whether a link passes value is this: use a unique expression such as "aaron is in hanoi recently" as the anchor text of the link and point it to a page which doesn't have this expression. If that page ranks, (and it should if the link can pass value since this is a unique and non competitive keyword), then the link is a value passing link.

Unfortunately, there are no tools currently that can do this automatically for you. As a result, you simply have no idea of what links can help your keyword to rank. One solution is by volume as among the large number of links created, a couple will surely pass value. Another is to use guest posting on high authority sites as these tend to have a higher chance of passing value as well.

Hence, if you are building backlinks to rank particular keywords, you are wasting a lot of resources on getting the right kind of value passing links because you don't what works.

All known keywords are competitive

More and more folks know what is SEO. This means a more competitive landscape than what we have seen. If you chased keywords, you are like everybody else. Worst thing is many folks have more resources than you and they can easily outgun you if you are a beginner.

So, rather than engaging in pointless competition, cast a wide net using your keyword research and your content. Throw it out there and let google tell you what is competitive and what is not. If you do your keyword optimisation, I guarantee that there will always be terms that you can rank for without backlinks. If you then used your search logs to look for future content and keyword ideas, this becomes a never ending cycle of being able to increase your search traffic in the most effective way.

Does this really work?

Yes it does. The screenshot below shows the traffic for aaronchua.com for the past 6 months. Oct 2011 is when I decided to pick up blogging again.

About 5k unique visitors using 1788 keywords!

Click to enlarge

I didn't build any backlinks but search traffic has grown. This is through the method I outline above. The numbers will have been higher if I blogged more and put in more effort to finding the easy to rank keywords. It doesn't help that the make money online niche is also super competitive.

So, if I can achieve that with such lazy efforts and in a competitive niche, you should do better if you are hardworking and pick a new niche with no competition.

Minimizing the risk of making money online

This approach of not chasing keywords also make your site more real. Building links is always against what Google wants. The recent deindexing of build my rank and the Panda alogirthm all points to the risk of trying to game the system with links. Focusing on writing useful content with keyword optimised words carries less risk.

Also, by spreading your search traffic across thousands of keywords, you tend to be less prone to any changes in the search engines, relative to someone who is drawing traffic from only a handful of terms.

Maxising your resource allocation for SEO

As a SEO practitioner, you should try to maxmise your resource including time and money. Don't listen blindly to people who said links are everything. These guys are narrow minded and they purely chase keyword rankings. Remember that SEO is about keywords, content and backlinks.You can still build a successful site with lots of search traffic if you practice good keywords research and optimising them on a piece of quality content.

Writing content is much more resource efficient. After all, I have just increased this site's traffic with this article that I have spent 30 minutes writing. How much time do you think I would need is all I do is to go out get and backlink for the keyword 'how to make money online"?

Banned from adsense Now what

2012-03-18T22:23:00.000+08:00

This is kinda of creepy. I used Wesley as an example in my last post on how to make 100 with adsense is easy but maintaining it is hard to tell you guys that the current niche model is flawed. Well, he just said in his latest post that he got banned from adsense.

http://www.chasingpace.com/change-is-coming/

Wow, do I have the ability to predict the future?
Not really. Just some real experience and the wisdom to know that history always repeats itself.

You see. Wesley is a typical person who will be successful online. He is hardworking and he is intelligent. He is the one who will get starry eyed when he first heard of making money online. He will also see some initial success and make some good money for himself. Unfortunately, he will also see trouble when the rewards are just coming because his foundations are all wrong due to what was preached in the online money making world.

It is not his fault that he got into all sorts of trouble such as being penalised by Panda or getting his adsense account banned. In fact, I argued that this is to be expected. I have seen this cycle of success followed by troubles many many times, including on myself!

We suffered through this because our foundations are wrong.

We chase keywords instead of real markets
We chase backlinks instead of real visibility to our customers
We chase clicks instead of real engagement
We chase money instead of value

There was a lot of comments advising Wesley on how to get a new adsense account. That is not the problem.

The problem is our business model. The sooner we fight our way to a real model, the better it is for us. If you are starting in your niche site journey today, remember not to take shortcuts.

There is nothing wrong with building niche sites per say as long as you don't forget the fundamental of providing value in the marketplace. Niche content is nothing more than spotting an area where there is an opprtunity to make the information more accessible or available to the people searching for it.

Use the gift of SEO wisely. Don't use it on the wrong foundations. If you do things right, you don't have to worry about getting banned from adsense or any of the other nonsense in the online money making world.

More to come about this if you interested to know how to really make money online.

Making 100 dollars with adsense is easy Maintaining it is hard

2012-03-08T18:43:00.002+08:00

I might sound cocky saying this but making USD100 dollars with adsense is very easy once you know how. In fact, even making 500 dollars or 1000 dollars is not a challenge once you know the make money process behind it. The challenge is in maintaining it.

The story of a typical money making journey

A beginner who is starting his or her journey to make money online will face challenges in knowing what keywords to target, how to get backlinks etc. If they continues to push forward, they will eventually find a couple of niches that they can rank and make money.

This is when things start to fall apart.

You see, once the money starts to come in, people get excited and see the possibilities of making lots of money online. If 1 site can make me USD100, 10 sites will make me USD1000! (An alternative version is if 10 pages can make me USD100, 100 pages will make me USD1000). Such thought patterns are happening in almost all the blogs that talk about making money, including this one : (

In the excuse of scaling, quality and thoughtfulness are offen forgotten, resulting in websites that have no other reasons to exist except to make money for the owner. Such sites will suffer later on when the algorithm changes.

The latest in such a casualty is Wesly from chasing pace. His story is not uncommon. Quick success followed by a drop due to changes in site rankings. This story is repeated so often that you know it is not a concidence. We, internet marketers, chase keywords instead of real businesses and that will bound to bite us back if we don't change.

For Wesley's case, even for his niche authority site project, I see very little thought being built into the sites. Yes, the content is real but there is nothing special or different about it. The part that disturbs me the most is how his entire foundation is based on keyword reseach, instead of finding a gap in the market where it is serving.

Compared Wesly to how Patricia Handschiegel, a figure in the media/telcom/startup world, goes aboout creating her site . Check out her post on why she started her publishing project:

http://patriciahandschiegel.tumblr.com/post/18868461463/condiment

This is the statement that got me: "There aren’t a lot of mainstream media companies using this format at the moment, but it’s something that I’ve believed digital media would ultimately look like for some time."

Notice the subtle difference in why sites are started? One is chasing keywords while the other is innovating and trying to find a reason to exist.

What is a quality site

To me, it is simply a reason to exist. It is not about how long your content or even if the content comes from personal experience. Many internet marketers believe that an affiliate site with personal reviews can be considered as quality. I don't agree. If you want personal reviews, there are so many of them in amazon. Why make yours so special?

To me, a quality site pays attention to filling a gap in the market. It is a sumation of not only content, but how it is presented, in what frequency, under what tone and in which kind of medium. These considerations are what real media companies think about. Yet, being website publishers, we totally ignore all this. Our criteria is simply keyword search volume, competitiveness of the keywords, potential money you can make.

This game is a house of cards. It will not stand the test of time. If you care about your site, find a reason for it to exist. Sometimes, content is enough because there is not enough of it on the web. Most of the time, you will need more.

Am I building quality sites?

I say all this not because I am a saint. I build keywords sites as well and find that they often run into problems. If you are here for the short run and just want to make as much money as you can, this model is ok. If you want to build a quality site, learn what is the unique selling propositon of the site first.

It is not easy and I don't have all the answers but let's start this journey, shall we?

How much money can you make online - Income report 3

2012-03-06T15:29:00.000+08:00

You might think that this is going to be my absolute worst income reports given that my amazon account was banned. Well, turns out that things might not be as bad as you thought. Continue to read on to get all the juicy details! LOL

You can keep your amazon earnings even if you are banned

It turns out that I might be able to keep the amazon earnings that I have earned before the ban. Initially, I thought all my amazon earnings will be gone, based on my experience with adsense. However, after looking at the payment table, it seems like I might still be getting a cheque for my dec earnings. Here is the screenshot that I saw:

I haven't received the cheque but the above gives me hope that I will be. This means that all my previous income reports are still valid. Thank god!

I am also going to include a new income item called private advertisers. It is cutting out Google and going straight to the advertisers who might have an interest to advertise on your site. It is quite commonly practiced for big sites but I thought I can have a go at this income stream as well.

Below are the numbers

Adsense Income Report: USD699

A sharp fall from the the USD948 in Jan. This is mainly due to 2 reasons. First, one of the adsense accounts were banned which means a reduction of USD100. Second, there were less days in Feb so the earnings were affected as well.

The good thing is that I have switched this site that has the banned adsense to media.net, which is a new CPC based advertising network similar to adsense. The surprising thing is that their ads are surpassing adsense for this site and I expect it to earn much more. I will not include media.net earnings in this report but I might do so for the next one. Depends on how comfortable I am with disclosing another earning source.

Amazon Income Report: USD324

I am going to include what I have earned from amazon in feb given that there is a chance I will still be paid. The amount is not large but it makes for a nice meal.

I have not given up on amazon yet. I have already created another account and am using it on 2 new sites. For the amazon niche sites with my old code, I am using skim links. So far, it is already tracking my revenue in March so I will probably use that.

Private Ads Income Report: USD800

This is going to be tricky to prove because all the advertisers pay me directly through paypal. Taking this part from all my paypal transactions will be a pain so I am not going to do it. Either you trust me on this or you don't.

This USD800 came from 3 advertisers. You can compare this to adsense and you know how getting private advertisers can be lucrative. To get these advertisers, you will need which niches have them in abundance. Finance for example is one. Furniture can be another.

To be attractive to private advertisers, your blog needs to have a certain level of PR and traffic. It also has to be look real and not like a spammy site. I am not an expert on this yet but I am learning the ropes. So far, it has been quite productive for me : ).

Total Income: USD1823

Again, not really near my target of 5k but this is a full time income now, especially when you convert it to Singapore dollars, which is around SGD2296. It is a low income but I know folks who made less than that here in Singapore.

Why you should create personal finance blogs to make money

2012-03-01T22:33:00.000+08:00

For those living in Singapore, you realise the industry here always move slower than the US, especially when it comes to Internet Marketing. SEO, for example, is still not widely practiced here. This creates an opportunity for those who want to make money online in Singapore.

Currently, the personal finance blogs are doing pretty well in the US. Most of them made money by selling their page rank to financial companies. The amount per link is actually pretty high, going from 200 to 400 per link if you have a site with high PR. This is not unexpected given that the finance industry is rich and can afford to buy links and push their rankings up.

Now, this is going to happen sooner or later in Singapore. SEO will be more well known and finance institutions will start to hire SEO companies to rank them for lucrative keywords such as mortgage loans, credit cards etc. Being that most SEO companies in Singapore such as Purple Click knows really nuts about SEO, they will go for a link buying spree. When that happens, if you happen to have a few high PR finance blogs for Singapore......

Is selling page rank risky

Of course, selling page rank is a risk. In 2007-08, a bunch of blogs lost their PR overnight because google slaps them all to kingdom come. However, while selling PR is a no no in Googles eyes, the PF blogs are making a killing. I think this can work if you keep your mouth shut about how your blog is making money. Unfortunately, these PF blogs are boasting about how much they are earning with this type of private ads. It might be a matter of time before Google slaps them all to PR0 which will cause their income to disappear overnight.

Finance keywords have high CPC

Even if the above doesn't happen, we all know that adsense clicks for finance terms are super high. Looking at the personal finance blogging landscape in Singapore, I would say the competition is pretty weak. If you start one now and attack the long tails, the chances of you getting traffic will be pretty high, especially if you apply those super duper keyword strategies that I have mentioned on my blog. If you have a good quality personal finance blog, I bet the search traffic will stick around and you will start to become an authority.

A new personal finance blog for Singapore?

This is not a theory. I am so confident that this will happen that I am going to create a PF blog myself for the Singapore market. My focus will likely be extreme retirement i.e. how to retire at an earlier age. I love this topic and I lived my live according to this principle. Writing good quality topics should be easy for me.

What do you think? It is worth to start a PF blog for the Singapore market?

Stay On Track With a Arizona Divorce Lawyer

2012-03-01T09:22:00.000+08:00

Stay on track with your divorce and finally get it finished! You want to be done with them, right? Well then find a arizona probate attorney and take your case to court to get settled. Who wants to continue on with all this paperwork and legal talk? Sit down with your attorney and make a decision, one that will speed up the case and hopefully get you closer to where you'd like to be.

When it comes to divorce, if you're wondering about more of the in-depth questions concerning divorce, keep in mind that there are plenty of different lawyers that can help you out. They receive questions all the time from people who are not clients and [depending on the attorney] they really don't care about answering them. They will help pretty much anyone because they know that there is a chance of them getting a new client out of it. Searching for answers on the web can be both helpful and misleading. There are a lot of wrong sources and information all over the internet, and who is to decide what is right?

If the case is important to you, I would rather highly suggest that you ask an actual attorney your questions so that you are getting information from someone who really knows what they are talking about. Know exactly what you want to discuss about your case when you walk into the attorneys office. Looking like you are very knowledgable is a great first impression and will help you to get the assistance that you need. If you choose to go to an attorneys office with another person, make sure that you are the one that does most of the talking unless it is their case. This just shows that you know what you want and are confident about it. You don't need anyone else to talk for you, that just gives the image that you don't quite know what you want. If you need help talking about something because it is a personal problem for you than that is different and just be sure to explain that to your attorney.

Trust him or her with everything you need help with and everything that you would like to happen and I'm sure they will do their very best to win your case for you. Every attorney wants to have a good amount of cases won, so they will do their best to try and take your case and statement to the next level to really get you results.

Celebrity homes

2012-02-29T09:39:00.000+08:00

In the last couple of months, many celebrities have been in the news for buying new homes. These homes have some of the nicest amenities available to the public. Luxury homes are probably the largest investment any of these celebrities will make in their lifetime. Celebrities must protect their investments with house insurance in the event of an unlikely occurrence. Some of the nicest celebrity homes demonstrate past and present architectural advancements.

1. Colin Farrell Colin Farrell resides in a beautiful modern art-deco villa with a gorgeous view. The home is complete with exposed beams, limestone kitchen countertops, a wine cellar and outdoor billiards. The terrace is reminiscent of an outdoor living and dining room. It features a sitting area, a bar, Jacuzzi hot tub and a dining table. Farrell spared no expense decorating this modern architectural home.

2. Barbara Streisand Barbara Streisand’s monstrous mansion is a traditional estate covering numerous acres. The home is made of aged wood and features stained glass windows. Numerous gardens are featured on the grounds with beautiful brick walkways and a waterfront view.

3. George Clooney George Clooney has a 25 room Italian villa with an outdoor theater and swimming pool. The home was purchased in 2001 and has a beautiful view of Lake Como. The area was also home to Donatella Versace. AvrilLavigne, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas have all vacationed in the area.

4. Pharell Williams Pharell Williams has a modest and whimsical estate home located in Virginia Beach. The home has direct access to the waterfront and artwork reminiscent of a modern art museum. The artwork complements the home and provides primary color contrast to a natural color palette. The home has an open floor plan with lots of natural sunlight beaming through floor to ceiling windows. With such a beautiful view of the area, guests can relax and meditate.

5. Lisa Ling Lisa Ling recently purchased a Zen paradise in California. The home is reminiscent of an old Frank Lloyd Wright design. Beautiful and modern glass-tiled back-splashes and bathroom walls create a spa-like paradise inside for this Asian actress. The painted kitchen ceilings and stone countertops are the perfect accent to entice visitors to the home.

6. Madonna Madonna’s Wiltshire mansion is situated on 1,200 acres. The home is where Madonna learned to fish, ride horses and hunt. The home features murals painted by Salvador Dali, Rex Whistler and Augustus John. Madonna’s Ashcombe estate is currently on the market for GBP 12 million.

Banned from amazon and adsense!

2012-02-28T11:55:00.000+08:00

Feb is not a great month.

Banned from adsense

First, my friend's adsense account was banned. This was the account that I used for one of my cosmetic surgery site of which I have reported its earnings in my monthly earnings reports. There was no specific message except something along of the line of invalid clicks. This is crazy as there was no abnormal clicks or spikes in the account so I don't know how google came to this conclusion. Anyway, this marks the third adsense account that was banned. Interpret this info as you would. The ban means that I just lost the income from Jan and Feb for this site. Shit!!!!

Fortunately, I found a great adsense alternative which I will talk more about in a future post. If your adsense account has been banned or if you did not manage to get one approved, you might want to look out for that post.

Banned from amazon

The above was nothing. The worse news is what I received in my inbox this morning. Double shit!!!!!

**************
Hello,

It has come to our attention that you are artificially increasing your advertising fee earnings by automatically tagging Amazon sessions to your account. This is a direct violation of the Operating Agreement to which you agreed when registering for the Program. You can find the complete text of the Associates Program Operating Agreement, including Participation Requirements, via this link:

https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/agreement

We insist that you cease this activity and remove all Amazon content from your site(s) immediately. Moreover, because you are using the Associates Program in ways in which it was never intended, your account has been closed and you will not receive further payment. Any other accounts you may have or may open in the future will be closed and advertising fees withheld without notification.

Best regards,
**************

Why I was banned from amazon

Frankly speaking, I have no idea what "automatically tagging Amazon" even means. After discussing in a private forum, some members think that it might due to some themes or plugins. My own gut feel is the fact that I have used a redirecting plugin which causes the ban.

The plugin will cloak the links so that instead of showing http://amazon.com/blah blah, it is showing http://sitex.com/recommends/productX. I think this is against their new terms of service in Feb 2012 as stated below:

"In addition, you must not use a link shortening service in a manner that makes it unclear that you are linking to an Amazon Site."

Another possible reason is the auto blog which I have mentioned in my post here about can you make money with auto blogs. This auto blog, for some reasons unknown to me, generated a huge amount of amazon impressions even though I don't have that kind of traffic to back it up.

Take a loot at the stats from my Dec amazon earnings:

You will noticed that there were 30K clicks and mostly from that autoblog! This could be a reason for the ban as this auto blog is somehow 'automatically tagging amazon'. However, I had disabled this site since end of Jan so I am not 100% sure this caused the ban.

Can I get my amazon affiliate account back?

I am not sure I can. Of course, I can always get another amazon account as they are not as strict as adsense. However, the thought of replacing all the amazon links with the non redirected links makes me sick in my stomach. Do you know how many pages I need to go through? Geesh, making money online is not an easy thing at all!

Another amazon affiliate alternative is skim links. I just applied for an account but I am not sure how strict are they with the quality of the sites. I intentionally submitted a pure amazon site i.e. there was no other info besides product reviews. We will see how that goes.

A realistic look at the make money online journey

I have posted about my ascend and descend of my adsense earnings in this post on why my adsense earnings is down for 2011. However, I want to list the journey of what you are likely to face as you embark on your money making journey. This is what I have been through and I hoped you have better luck than me!

-First 3 months: Excited about being able to make money online. Lots of possibilities come to your mind. You will also try to understand how everything works and end up confused as hell.
My advice: Do as you learn. It makes everything easier. Don't have to get everything right when you are starting.

- 3-6th months: The passion started to die down as there are no visble results. The hardworking ones would have put in a lot of work but the results are pathetic. You might not have earned a single cent yet.
My advice: Keep working and learning. There is always a breakthrough waiting to happen if you continue to work at it. You might realise you are doing the wrong keyword or you might be focusing on too many sites or keywords ro you might learn how to repeat your first dollar success 100 times. These kind of realisations don't just happen. It will happen only when you continuously apply what you learn.

-6-12th months: Things might start to look up if you have been working hard. You might have earned your first 100 dollars per month. For those who did, you will feel like king of the world. Suddenly, your perspective changes and you realise that working for a job is not the only way to make money. You might even dreamt of working from home.
My advice: This is a good time to start learning about the bad things that can happen. Be prepared for the worst while you still have not much to lose.

-13th -18th months: You might have successfully scaled your sites and earning more than 1k per month. Congrats! You are now convinced that making money through online works! You see endless possibility now and are prepared to scale it up even further.
My advice: You must do things right at this point. Don't take shortcuts. Produce good quality sites with the money you have. Find a purpose for your site besides making money.

- 19th-24th months: Suddenly, problems start to happen if you have not been doing the right things. Your sites might get affected by algorithm changes or your accounts got banned. You realise that things are not as passive as they seems. You get disillusioned and learn to pick yourself up.

My advice: None. I am at this stage right now. I don't know if I want to continue with this path. Getting sites affected by panda and getting your adsense/amazon accounts banned are not fun things at all. One lesson I have learned is that SEO makes you lazy. You tend to forget the fundamentals of a good site because you can get all the traffic just doing backlinks and putting up sub standard content. You can get away with it for a while but things will come back to you.

Hence, my advice for those making some money is to start investing some of these money into better content or even your own product. Look at the startups to see how they are creating products that bring real benefits.

Don't get lazy in your make money journey. SEO is a valuable skill. Don't waste it.

How many websites to make money

2012-02-21T00:21:00.003+08:00

I am going back to the topic of how many websites you need to make an online full time income. My previous article pointed out the fact that the hardest part of any online business is to find that one niche that can make you money. This is why it is good to try many niches, either with your own niche site or through web 2.0 platforms. The purpose is to fish. Sometimes I wish there is faster and more cost effective way to find good keywords and niches but unfortunately, that is not going to be the case.

Conversation rates and why they are important

Some online folks said that most commercial or product keywords can make you money. The difference is in their conversion rates and hence the amount of traffic required to make a serious full time income.

Let's use a funny example: white socks

White socks can still sell even if they convert at only 1%. It just means you need 30000 people per day. With 300 of them buying a pairs of white socks that cost about $5 of which your commission is $0.3, 400 sales will means $90 per day or $2.7k per month.

You can see from the above example why finding the right niches is important. Getting 30,000 visitors per day is not an easy task so I prefer to look for better converting product with higher margins. Hence, learning how to fish through your niche sites or web 2.0 platforms is very important.

Focus on your money making site

The key in making money is in knowing what to do that once you find a good niche. It is to focus like a mad man. Don't do anything else except backlinking the site everyday or to create content for it everyday. Do this for a few months and you will your income jump around exponentially.

I have always experienced this in my own sites. In the making 1000 dollars with adsense experiment, my income jumped within a few months because I backlinked and created content for a winning niche. Similarly, my experiment on how to make 1k with amazon only became successful when I do nothing but backlinked and created content for a site that was starting to make good money. This always happens when you focus. The wrong thing to do is to be satisfied with your converting niche and start to do something else. This is not how to make money online folks.

How many backlinks for your niche sites

So, I will be applying when I preach above with my amazon 50 niche site challenge. As mentioned in my previous update, my rate for producing new sites has slowed down because I think I have found a good converting niche. My plan is to backlink it every single day, using different anchor text.

DO NOT USE THE SAME ANCHOR TEXT!
This approach used to work but it has sunk all my previous amazon sites. Please vary them using the suggested ratio below. There is no logic about these ratios except that it has worked for me:

33% to use exact keywords
33% to use modifiers such as cheap, best, top, for etc
33% to use nonsense keywords such as your url, click here, get here, see this page etc

I also plan to dominate this niche. When I first started this niche, the keyword I am targeting to what is the domain name. Now that I know it is a good niche, i am expanding my keyword set to cover the entire niche.

How to add value to your niche sites

In the meantime, I will also be thinking about how to add value to the user who visits this site. Sometimes, it is hard to add value using just the keywords you want to target. The best way is to go one level higher and think of the boarder niche. For example, if your site is in the treadmill, you can think of the fitness niche for useful value adding articles.

Thin affiliate sites will not have a future in Google's algorithm. Learn how to build value added affiliate sites and you will be better off than 99% of the affiliate marketers. It is hard to do but worth our efforts in exploring the how dos. Maybe we need to add apps to our site, maybe some calculator or tool, maybe some price comparison tables, maybe some unique interesting content, maybe interviews with the authorities in the niche. Whatever you do, think of how to create affiliate sites that have a reason to be.

That is all the make money online rant for today. Free feel to leave some comments. I feel lonely without them : (

How much money can you make online - Income report #2

2012-02-10T21:29:00.000+08:00

Welcome to super late income report for Jan 2012. Nothing much happens as the income for Jan has maintained on the same level as Dec although the composition has changed. Let's take a look shall we:

(in case you are not aware of what kind of earnings I am tracking for this income report, please refer to the explanation here: income report #1)

Adsense Income Report: USD948

Almost made it to 1k last month with adsense. Remember that my 2012 make money goal for adsense was to hit 1k for 2012. Looks like I can achieve that without doing anything else. This will leave more time for amazon which I am still struggling with.

That being said, I did order a new homepage backlink service for site 1 that you see below. In Feb, this site seems to be coming back from Panda and I want to see if the addition of new powerful links can help to bring this site back to its USD400 per month record.

Yes, I am not always supportive of using backlinks but in a competitive industry such as cosmetic surgery, the competition leaves me with very little choice. I will report back on how effective this homepage backlink service is once it has passed a month.

Click all images to enlarge

Amazon Income Report: USD412

As expected, amazon earnings fell after Christmas. In January, the income dropped from USD630 to USD412. Ouch! The good thing is that the composition of the amazon earnings has changed from being concentrated in a few sites to a larger base of sites due to my 50 amazon niche site challenge. With time, I am confident that this new network of amazon sites will make serious money as I have not seen money coming in so fast with such new sites. Give them a year and see what happens : )

Click the image to enlarge

Total Income: USD1360

So, not much happening. This is how it is my friends. There is a delay effect in making money online and my results show this.

During the Oct-Nov period, I basically did nothing due to the panda update affecting my motivation. As a result, nothing happen in Jan as there was no work done before that. Conversely, all the stuff I am doing now will only reflect in the results in the coming months.

If you are stuck in the same siutation of not seeing results even though you are putting in the hard work, then be patient, The results will come!

Have fun making money online.

Work hard to make money

2012-02-08T16:40:00.002+08:00

I received many visitors who search for this term "can you really make money online'. This is not surprising given that there are lots of scams and rubbish online. However, to those who asked, you can really make a full time online but there is no shortcuts around it.

I have been making money online since 2009 although the money in the early years were tiny. The important thing however is to realise that the making money online model works but it needs a lot of commitment to get there. There is no such things as fast money so stop searching for terms such as how to make money online fast.

In this article, I am going to lay out how much work you really need to put in to start seeing results. Don't expect half hearted efforts to result in money pouring in. It wouldn't and the sooner you realise this, the better. You need massive efforts to see massive results.

Ultimately, my model in making money is simple: build sites that can rank well in search engines so that the traffic that comes to my sites either clicks an ad or buys a product from my affiliate link. The more sites or the more content I have, the more money I will make. So, what the hell is 'more'. What does more means in my eyes.

Here is what it is:

For those who have not money but are willing to write

Aim to write 3 articles a day. That will give you 150 articles in a month. 20 articles can be on your side while the others can be used as backlink articles. Just doing 3 article a day with give you a solid site that has 20 pages of content and 130 backlinks. It will be enough to gather traffic and clicks if you know how to pick low competition keywords.

Multiple that with 12 months and you will have 12 strong sites by the end of one year. This is going to make a huge difference to your income. I guarantee it. Compare this to the person who is only making one site and adding a couple of article and backlinks per month, you are going to have a much higher probability of selecting a good income producing niche.

For those who have money but are not willing to write

There will be some of you who just hates to write. It is fine if you can invest a small sum of money into creating websites. 20 articles will cost you around $60. 130 backlink articles will cost you around $130 or less if you manage to find low cost writers. The total cost per site is only $190.

For $190 per month, you are building a potential business that can bring hundreds of dollars each month for many years to come. You cannot get a better rate of return than his. For $190 per month, you have a chance of building something that can get you out a boring job. All for just $190.

For those who have no money but are not willing to write

There is still hope for this bunch of folks. The answer is to starve yourself. Yup. Don't take lunch or dinner and save yourself $6 per day. At the end of one month, you will save $200. Use that to invest in a way that I have mentioned above. When the site is making money, you can start to eat more : ).

So, there you have it. You either need to put in hard work or money to create income online. No work, no money!