Blogging is something that is quickly becoming the “thing” that everyone in internet marketers are doing. The reason for that is that blogging can be an excellent way to get traffic to your business. If done correctly, a blog can be THE thing that helps to take your blog to the next level.

If you are a blogger and you’ve never heard of Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick, then you’ve been living in the middle of nowhere. Yaro is the guy that got me into blogging with his Blog Mastermind coaching program. Needless to say, the results have been GREAT.

It’s no secret that Yaro and Gideon have an amazing membership site called Become A Blogger (currently closed) that teaches people to, you guessed it, become bloggers. Well they did something that they don’t normally do. They released a video to the general public on How to Rapidly Grow your Blog Traffic. It’s a great video because it addresses something that everyone is interested in - Traffic!

I would HIGHLY recommend for you to check it out, because it’s free and you don’t even have to opt in to get it. It’s just good Free content. In the video, Yaro discusses his “Impact Marketing” techniques. They are techniques that I use. However, in order for me to learn about it, I had to pay for the details (at the time), and it was well worth the $97 a month. Now you get it for free. So go ahead and check it out:

How to Rapidly Grow your Blog Traffic

The following is a Guest post by Onna Holland. Onna is a freebie trader, blogger and Stay at home mom. She writes for the blog www.makingmoneyquick.net/blog and www.toddlercraft.net and is an active trader on www.calistyle.com.

Twitter is such a great networking, communication and marketing tool. As you use twitter more and more and begin to follow an increasing number of people you will realize that you need something more then the standard twitter.com site, to keep track of the people you follow.  I also personally found the standard twitter.com not as user friendly.

There are many twitter clients out there for the PC and Mac.  The list grows everyday.  I will highlight a few I have used and some others that I have heard are noteworthy.  There are Three Twitter Clients that I have found useful. They are Twirhl, Tweetdeck and Seismic Desktop. My favorite at the moment is Seismic Desktop.

Twirhl is a great Twitter client that also shows your friend feed.  In my opinion, the fact that it uses friendfeed is a huge plus.  It allows you to interact on both friendfeed and twitter easily moving back and forth between them.  It also allows Multiple accounts from twitter, which is great! The negatives - no categories for different users, and there is no interface with facebook.  As you follow more people it gets harder to keep track of important tweets if you can’t group the people you follow.

Click Images to Enlarge

Tweet Deck is great because it allows you to categorize the users you follow.  For example, say you have some favorite tweeters that you don’t want to miss their updates, you can put them in a category/column.  This way you won’t miss their tweets and messages.  I have a few categories for different things I do online.  For example, a freebie trading, craft and seo category.  This way I can catch the messages easier from my friends I twitter with in those areas.  Then there is a list/column of all the people I follow.  As you follow more people there are more and more tweets to read, having categories/columns allows you to get to the ones you see as most important.  In addition, you can have columns/categories for @replies to you and a column for your direct messages.  So you won’t miss if someone replies to one of your tweets.  This allows you to interact easier with your followers and those that you follow. Tweet Deck also allows you to access your facebook account So you can see your facebook friends updates and know if anything important is said.

Seismic Desktop. This Client is terrific! It’s fairly new and they have made massive improvements and added great features based on user feedback.  With Seismic, you can do all the things like you could do with tweet deck: make categories and columns, Follow your facebook Friends, Have columns for your @replies and your direct messages.  What sets it apart and makes it the best in my opinion is that you can not only follow your facebook friends, but you can comment on their updates!  In addition, you can have MULTIPLE accounts on Seismic!  If you have more then one twitter account then this is extremely helpful!  You can easily see the tweets of those you follow from the various accounts, put them in categories and tweet from all your accounts from one place.  They also have great integration with twitpic for adding pictures.  I love it!!

Some other Twitter Clients I have heard positive things about are…

• Nambu
• Twibble
• Digsby - This is a great client if you want to be able to do quick updates from multiple accts, and use it for IM and email notification.  Not great for following the tweets from people you follow, if you follow a lot of people.
• Matt - Web based, used for updating from multiple accounts.
• Tweet3 - Web based, supports multiple accounts.

Have you used any twitter clients? What’s your favorite?

You can Follow Onna on twitter here

You can Follow Me on twitter here

Technology has come a long way. I can remember when I bought my first computer. I do not remember what kind it was, but I do remember that it took me days of programming and entering code to see the result that amazed both my friends and I - a Square face, with two dots for eyes and one box for a mouth. The mouth moved and it actually made strange sounds that was supposed to be speaking. That seems funny today, but back then, it was AWESOME.

Ever since the dawn of the World Wide Web, people have been able to connect in a way like never before. Back in 1997 (when I started college), for every 100 people (in the developed world), there were 11 people on the internet. 10 Years later, that increased from 11% to 62%. This has allowed people to be able to connect in ways like never before.

One great benefit of the internet is that information is readily and freely available. Google has now become a word that’s listed in the dictionary. If you’re looking for an answer to a question, you can just “Google it”.

Leslie in Germany

In 2004 and 2005, I spent the summers in Germany doing research for my Master’s degree. This was a great experience. I met people from all over the world, got to do some traveling, made friends and even learned a little bit of German. I’m not fluent, but I can have basic conversations, order just about anything to eat, and find my way to the restroom anywhere in Germany. Everything was great the first summer. I had a decent place to stay, I was fully funded by a research grant and I basically had nothing to worry about.

The second summer was not as great. The research grant had run out and I had no money. I was supposed to stay by a “friend” over there, but when I arrived in Germany, it turned out that their plans had changed and I was somewhat homeless. I stayed with my professor for 2 weeks while looking for a place, and eventually ended up staying in a Fraternity House for $80 per month, which is another LONG story in and of itself. Stay with me . . . this is going somewhere.

Leslie - The Web Designer

Since I wasn’t getting paid anymore, I had to find a way to make some money. I had taken a Computer Tools class back in 1997 or 1998 and since then had dabbled in some website design for fun. At my point of desperation, I decided to become a “professional website designer”.  Now, remember . . . I had only designed personal websites up to this point. However, I was desperate and needed to do something, because I was starting to go without food, which was NOT a good thing.

So before I left to Germany, I started my web design company called The CWeb Alternative. I put together a website, put it online and got going. The news started to spread to some of my friends, who then spread it to some of their friends and within a short period of time, I had a few clients.

There was something that was almost inevitable in this process. EVERY SINGLE CLIENT had things they wanted done that I had NEVER done before. In every meeting, they would shoot out a bunch of ideas and at the end the question was always the same: “Can you do that?” My answer was always the same: “But of course. If you want it, I’ll make it happen”

What then followed was ours of research. I went to www.google.com and found out exactly how to do everything that needed to be done, and NEVER let on that I didn’t know how to do something and my clients were always very pleased.

The Online Entrepreneurs

As on online entrepreneur (or wanna be entrepreneur), you have a tremendous tool at your disposal - Google. It contains the answer to just about every question. When trying to figure out something, or learn something new, it’s easy to say that you don’t know how to do something. Yes, it is easy, but in my opinion, this doesn’t lead ANYWHERE.

If you need to learn HOW to do something, search for it in Google. If you can’t figure out how to put video on a web page, Google it. If you need to find out how to insert a contact form on your site, Google it. As an Online entrepreneurs, you have a tool that enables you to do just about everything. If you want to find an excuse as to why you aren’t doing something, you can probably Google that too

So no more excuses, take your success into your own hands. If you don’t know how . . . You guessed it . . . GOOGLE IT!

I’ve got some exciting news. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that I’m a true believer in Affiliate Marketing. In my opinion, it’s the BEST way to make a sizeable income online. The thing that holds many people back is that it’s not as easy to get into as Freebie Trading. It takes a while to understand the concepts. However, once you understand what you are doing, the income potential is endless.

As I’ve mentioned OVER and OVER again, the best program I’ve found to learn about Affiliate Marketing is Wealthy Affiliate. You can read more about it in my Wealthy Affiliate Review. It’s a great program because it walks you through the process step by step, providing you with all the details you need, when you need them. The great thing is that they have significantly reduced the barrier of entry.

Wealthy Affiliate is a course that costs $39 per month. However, they have just started a 1-week trial for $1. As a part of their 8-week action plan, they give you practical steps that you can take to start making money with affiliate marketing. In other words, you can get the first week of their action plan and take advantage of ALL their resources for 1 week for $1.

I would truly recommend for anyone who is interested in Affiliate marketing to give this a try. It’s a dollar that can change the way you think about making money online.

Join Wealthy Affiliate Today

One of my goals since starting this blog was to make Freebie Trading more popular. Yes, you probably know that freebie trading is legitimate and that you can make money. In fact, if you are reading this blog, it’s VERY possible that you have made some money as a Freebie Trader. However, Freebie Trading is still a very young industry and not one that is well-known and understood by internet marketers in general.

Since starting TheFreebieGuy.net, I’ve had the privilege of being interviewed and mentioned by a few bloggers and websites that has helped to expose people more to the industry and I’ve decided to put together a list of these sites for you to check out. Lets continue to get the word out there.

1. Interview with Yaro Starak from Entrepreneurs-Journey.com. This was the most exciting one for me because it was my first interview and was with someone I TRULY respect. He is my Blog Mastermind mentor and is, in a large part, responsible for the success of this blog and my exposure to making money online.

2. Interview with Bob Lotich from ChristianPF.com. This was another great experience and I really appreciated that interview.  He interviewed me because I’m a Christian who is making money online. His blog is a great place to get financial advice from a Biblical Perspective.

3. Mentioned as number 13 in the Article “52 Ways to Make Extra Money” on PTMoney.com. This article mentioned Freebie Trading as a way to make money and linked to the interview above at ChristianPF.com. PTMoney.com is another good blog on how to save money, get out of debt and live a Frugal Life.

4. 52 Ways to Make Extra Money featured on MSN Money. This was the Big one that brought Massive exposure. The article from PTMoney was featured in a way that brought a significant amount of traffic to the industry.

5. Mentioned as number 17 of “23 ways for teens to make money“, once again on ChristianPF.com. This article focused more on teens, but is also applicable to adults.

6. Interview with Tyrone Shum from InternetBusinessPath.com. This interview was similar to the above two interviews, in which I gave an introduction to Freebie Trading and showed people how they can get started.

7. Mentioned on MyMochaMoney.com in the article “Can You Make $100 a fay from Freebie Trading?“.

8. CaliStyle101.com mentioned on MakingMoneyQuick.com

This summer will be a very active one. We are going to be working on taking that exposure to the next level. Since Taking over CaliStyle101.com, my focus has begun to shift. I’m no longer an active trader, but now seek to provide a place for people to not only trade, but learn more about Making Money Online in general. Lets face it, people are facing some tough times right now with the economy the way it is. The more we can do to help people learn about legitimate ways to make money, the better.

The following is a Guest post by Onna Holland. Onna is a freebie trader, blogger and Stay at home mom.  She writes fot the blog www.makingmoneyquick.net/blog and www.toddlercraft.net and is an active trader on www.calistyle.com

Twitter is a social media utility that is used by people to keep in touch, meet new people interested in the same topics, and attract readers to your blog, website, or topic of choice.  Twitter is part IM, Part facebook in concept. If you know facebook and how it allows updates to all your friends, then you will have a general idea of how it works.  On twitter instead of friends, they are called followers.  When somebody has a Twitter Account, they can use 140 characters to send a message either directly to someone or to broadcast it to all those who are following them.

There are many ways to gain followers, one way is to search for keywords that are related to your area of interest.  For example in twitter you can search for freebie trading, making money online, affiliate marketing etc.  Then you can follow those individuals and most of the time those you follow will follow you back.  As you respond to others in twitter and send your own messages your list of followers will grow.

For Freebie Trading, Twitter can be utilized in many ways.  One way is to broadcast to your followers the earnings you are making. I have personally had some luck with getting referrals this way.  People see the profit you are making and will naturally ask you how you made it.  It’s a great way to get new referrals that want to make money online.  Another way to utilize it is to drive traffic to your blog or website that you use to train your referrals.  You can share links to your updates on your blog and get new referrals that way.

I have also found twitter a great way to learn about things I am interested in like affiliate marketing,  blogging, search engine optimization and more.

Twitter is free to sign up and use.  It is also very easy.  Just go to Twitter.com and pick a user name.

When picking your user name think about what you are going to be using twitter for.  Are you going to want to brand yourself, your name or do you want your username to reflect your niche-or interest.  For me I used @freebietrader, because I use it a lot for my freebie trading business.  Take some time to think about it before you sign up as it will be how people start to recognize you on twitter.  The way twitter works, once you pick a user name, and get signed up you are ready to start tweeting  (tweeting is what messages are called on twitter.  When you send someone a message you send them a tweet)!  I would  suggest filling out your profile on twitter and adding any blog or website you have.

The first thing I would suggest doing once you sign up, is to go to the search box on your twitter page and search a term that you would be interested in tweeting about.  This will show you various tweets from different people.

Click on one that looks interesting and their profile will come up (click their user name in the tweet).  You can then click follow and you will now see their tweets on your twitter home page as they send them out.  Many people will follow you back if you follow them.  If you find someone interesting you are following, you can also click on their profile page and then click under the number of followers and following and you can see those people who follow them or they follow.  You might like to follow some of those people. Make sure not to follow more then 100 people a day- twitter doesn’t like that.

To broadcast a message just click in your What are you doing box and type your message (must be under 140 characters) and click update. When sending messages make sure you are not just posting about your website or niche.  Respond to other’s tweets and add to the conversation.  To send a message to someone specific, publicly (so that others can see the message) you put an @ in front of their user name, for example @freebietrader.  To send a private message (direct message) you put a d in front of the user’s name, for example d freebietrader.

If you have questions leave them in the comments below and I will try to address them in a future post.

Coming soon - a review of some different clients to use with twitter.

Follow Onna on Twitter

Follow Me on Twitter

The fact of the matter is, it usually takes a good amount of time to make money online. Whether you are into Multi-level marketing, affiliate marketing, or buying and selling antiques on ebay, there’s some kind of learning curve involved. There’s information to read, video tutorials to watch, memberships to purchase (sometimes), and other unexpected issues along the way.

Since January of 2008, when I started making money online, I’ve realized that there are different levels levels on which someone can be successful online. There’s what I would call the entry-level strategies and the higher end strategies.

Entry-level strategies

Entry-level strategies are the ones that just about anyone can use. They are the ones that get you into making money online in a relatively short period of time. However, they aren’t usually as lucrative as the higher-end strategies. You can usually make a few hundred to a few thousand dollars on a monthly basis using these strategies.

Higher-end Strategies

These are those that take much more time to learn. However, the earning potential is significantly greater. Professional internet marketers are able to make $20,000 - $100,000+ on a monthly basis. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it is very true. The problem with these strategies is that it’s much harder to get going and it takes a significantly greater investment, either financial or an investment in time. Things that fit into this category would be affiliate marketing, product development, membership sites etc.

The Perfect Strategy

If you are serious about making money online, your goal should be to reach to the level where you can use these higher-end strategies. However, it can be quite a daunting task to start with these strategies. In my opinion, the best way to get started is by using some of the entry-level strategies, while investing the time into educating yourself as to how to take it to the next level.

The Perfect System

I have not found a better place to start making money online than Freebie Trading, and trust me . . . I have looked. Freebie Trading is the ONLY system that I’ve seen where you can make money on day one without a huge financial investment. I made $70 on my first day (January 18th, 2008) and over $28,000 in my first year.

The Perfect Place

CaliStyle101.com is the best place to start making money as a freebie trader. It’s a Freebie Trading forum with simple video tutorials that you can watch to learn about the system (FREE of charge) and hundreds of mentors that are there all throughout the day to help you through the process. However, the best part about CaliStyle101.com is the strong sense of community. You can go over there and just hang out in the shoutbox with other members, talking about whatever you feel like, while learning how to make money.

You will NEVER find another place just like CaliStyle101.com. So if you want to start making money TODAY, I would recommend checking it out. You have NOTHING to loose (It’s Free) and EVERYTHING to gain (Money and friends).

It’s relatively easy to make your first $50 at CaliStyle101.com and those steps are outlined below. I hope to get a lot of people responding to this article excited about their first $50. As a Freebie Trader, I made $70 in my first day without doing much work, so it’s VERY possible.

Step #1: Go to www.CaliStyle101.com and register. It’s a pretty simple process. All you need to do is enter a few details and BAM, you’re done.

Step #2: Introduce yourself to the community. It’s REALLY about community over there. They are REAL people, just like you. Once you do that, you will see how quick you will be welcomed.

Step #3: Watch the video tutorials. It can’t get any easier than that. You don’t have a bunch of information to read or anything of that sort. Just sit back, relax and learn.

Step #4: Find a Mentor. There are two ways to do this. You can browse around the forum and just see what people have to say. It’s more than likely you will find someone and think to yourself - “Hmm, this person seems cool. I would like to learn from them.” The second way is by just going to the Cash for Referral Freebie Trading subforum. Here, you will find a bunch of people willing to pay you to go green on sites. If you don’t understand what this means, I would recommend checking out my Freebies 101 or downloading The Freebie Report.

Step #5: Contact that mentor and let them know you are interested in working with them. They will then respond to you and let you know how to get started with them.

Step #6: Go green on your first site for them. You do this by completing offer requirements. However, it’s not what many people think when they hear this. These can be Free or inexpensive trial offers (many are between $1 and $5).

Step #7: Contact your mentor and get paid. When you go green on your first site, they will pay you anywhere between $20 and $40. I know, it sounds unrealistic, but it’s true.

Step #8: Get excited and go green on your second site. Getting paid (in step 7), usually motivates people to try it out again. I was so excited that I did it 3 times in my first day

Step #9: Contact your mentor again and Get paid. Twice in one day makes this process even MORE exciting.

Step #10: Tell all your friends and family about how excited you were to make an easy $50 in one day.

That’s pretty much it. Head on over to CaliStyle101.com and register to become part of a great Making Money Online Community.

Wow guys, since I’ve posted the last Top 5 List of Freebie Trading Forums, A LOT has changed. This is a very exciting thing for me as a new Forum owner. If you remember from the previous post, I ranked these forums solely based on Alexa Rankings. It’s VERY important to note that this is not the only indication as to how successful a freebie trading forum is, but it is a measure of how much traffic the forum is getting.

To give a brief explanation of what Alexa rankings mean, Alexa is a company that is known for its statistics-gathering toolbar. This toolbar is used to collect data from websites all over the internet and stores them on its website providing a web traffic report. If a site has an Alexa Ranking of 1, that means it is the most frequently visited site according to the data that Alexa collects. F.Y.I, the site with an Alexa of 1 is Google, with Yahoo at a close 2nd.

So according to Alexa, here are the current Rankings:

Now here’s why it’s so exciting for me. As you know, I’m the new owner of Cali Style 101. Since we relaunched this month, traffic has increased significantly. We are working on a bunch of things behind the scenes right now that we believe will eventually take us to number one. Just think, a few weeks ago, we were at number 5. Where will we be by the end of the summer? AND, if you look at the traffic rankings for the last 7 days, you will see that CaliStyle101 is at 71,652.

What is surprising to me is how quickly Net Income Solutions is dropping in rank. With their endorsement by Project Payday, I would’ve thought they would be increasing in rank faster than everyone else. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case, and I won’t go into why I think it’s going that way.

We have some great things in store for Cali Style 101, so stay tuned.

CaliStyle101.com is a Make Money Online Community based around the Concept of Freebie Trading. As some of you may already know, I started out as a Freebie Trader in January of 2008, hit the ground running and have moved on to a number of different ways of Making Money Online. However, since my origins have been in Freebie Trading, that is where my passion lies, and what I strive to teach people. The Freebie Industry is what was responsible for over $28,000 of my earnings in 2008.

A majority of my Freebie Trading Earnings have come from Freebie Trading on Freebie Forums. In my opinion, this is the best place to start. They provide a community of support that allows you to put your mind at easy as a beginning trader, giving you the confidence to know that it is a legitimate opportunity, in addition to providing an environment that seeks to protect the individual traders. However, the biggest benefit to starting as a forum is that there are many experienced veterans available to answer questions that WILL come up in the beginning.

That being said, CaliStyle101.com is a place where you can not only learn about Freebie Trading, but also put that knowledge into action and start making money. Many people make money in their first day as a freebie trader. It’s not something that you need to spend a lot of time building in order to start seeing a profit. You can see that profit from day 1. However, CaliStyle101.com is not like every other Freebie Trading Forum.

What makes CaliStyle101.com different from other Freebie Trading Forums?

Since taking over Calistyle101, I’ve had 3 Main Goals:

1. To make it as EASY as possible for a new trader to get started and make money. One of the problems I noticed at some of the other Freebie Trading Forums is that there’s no clear path to follow when you first arrive there. Yes, if you do some digging, you can figure it out, but there’s nothing that screams out to you - THIS IS HOW YOU NEED TO START AND WHAT YOU NEED TO DO. One of the first things I did was put together some simple video tutorials that make it easy for a new person (I don’t like the term newbie) to understand what to do and how to do it.

2. To give people the resources they need to succeed BEYOND the freebie industry and have a well balanced portfolio. Diversification is the key to financial success. Not just diversification, but informed diversification. We will be incorporating a number of different projects to the community that will provide the members with resources to be able to make informed decisions on how to legitimately incorporate other methods of making money online.

3. Not to be satisfied with where we are - EVER! One of the problems with certain Make Money Online communities is that once you reach a certain point of success, it’s easy to sit back relax and not worry about where the money is coming from, because regardless of what they do, money will continue coming in. However, it’s NOT just about money for me. I have a certain problem that I hope you don’t mind me sharing. I LOVE learning and doing Research. The pursuit of knowledge and continual improvement is my passion. I also enjoy taking that knowledge and passing it on to as many people as possible. I guess that’s why I became a teacher in the first place.

So HOW Can This Make You Money Today?

It’s really simple. Head on over to CaliStyle101.com, register (for Free) and get started. Check out the Video Tutorials, Choose a Mentor and get going. You’ll be surprised at how easy it is to start making Money.