If you want to to be a good businessman and learn how to make money online, you have to learn the system on some level. If you want to be great at football, you have to know the rules. If you want to learn SEO, you have to learn the systems that search engines use.

Success in anything requires familiarity with a system of some sort.

This post will be about how to take your blog, learn the system, and increase earnings through efficiency—not brute force.

Your Blog is a System

Every blog is a sort of system, and includes even more sub-systems. But for most blogs, the monetization system is relatively simple, and mostly contains two or three parts.

The website is set up so that visitors will have a chance to take some action (click an ad, email the webmaster, donate money, buy a book, etc) that will cause the owner of the blog to make money.

The owner then tries to get as many people as possible to get through the system—hence a “money-making system” is born—as thousands of “marketers” like to refer to it.

Unfortunately, it’s easy to get “caught up” in one step of the process and forget about the other just-as-important step.

Traffic is Just Part of the Process

If the website is a motor, then visitors are the fuel. But if you’ve got a four-wheeler, it doesn’t matter what kind of fuel you use – you’ll never be able to go substantially faster without altering your engine.

Fuel is just part of the equation.

The same is true for traffic. Some popular bloggers have tens-of-thousands of visitors per day, but hardly make any income, comparatively speaking. Others, like myself, get only get a few thousand, but are able to convert that traffic into more income than many “rockstar” bloggers.

The reason for this is simple. My “conversion” rate of visitors-to-profit is higher. Because of that, I need less traffic.

Most of us realize this is true. For example, what niche would you rather get 5k visitors in per day, credit cards or bed-spreads?

The reason is that “credit cards” is a naturally high-paying niche. You can have less traffic than most niches, yet still make more money. Your engine is already high-powered, so your chances of going fast are much, much better.

But enough of the explanation of the theory – let’s move on to how you can make your blog’s “motor” more efficient.

Ways to Increase Your Conversion

This might sound a little disappointing, but when it all boils down, there aren’t many life-altering “secrets” to blogging for money. Most blogs that fail do so for pretty obvious reasons.

Bad monetization, lame content, bad SEO – most sites fail in at least one of these areas. And one failure is enough to cripple most blogs.

Fundamentally, when it comes to making money with a website, there are only two ways to go about it:

1. Increase Your Traffic
2. Increase Conversions

That’s it. Either put more into your machine, or make your machine better. That’s it. I won’t be talking about how to increase your traffic, but will list a few ways to research increasing conversions:

• Increase Website Usability

“Website usability” basically means “a website that does what it’s supposed to do.” Are your ads placed at the right place? Is your navigation bar on your right or left sidebar? Where do you put your images, if any?

Answering these questions correctly can actually increase your visitors’ time on your site by up to 20%, at least in my experience. To learn more about web usability, read 43 Web Design Mistakes You Should Avoid.

• In-Text Advertisements

To be honest, I have absolutely no idea why more people aren’t using advertising services like Kontera and Infolink. I use infolink and it currently earns an EPM (earnings per thousand impressions) that is almost what my AdSense EPM is.

If you do it correctly, expect to see another $3 per thousand impressions on your blog by using Infolink. This might not sound like much, but just a small increase in EPM can mean thousands in the long run.

Of course, they do make your blog feel a little more crowded. Still, if your content is compelling, it shouldn’t be a problem. I haven’t experienced any lack of traffic thus far.

• Search-Engine Ads

Showing advertisements specifically for search-engine traffic is a great way to increase you monetization without making your site seem “crowded” for your regular visitors. Chitika has taken this to an art.

Though the earnings vary depending on the niche, I experienced between a $2 and $3 EPM increase, without seeing my other ads lose any revenue at all. Again, though the earnings increase is small, over a long period of time, it’s really big. Plus, mixed with a few more earnings boosters, you can see a huge impact on your income.

• Utilize “Footers”

You can edit the template of your blog to put a small message at the end of every post/page of your blog. Don’t waste that area by leaving it blank or unfilled. An advertisement, a two paragraph “mini” sales pitch for a product, an opt-in form for subscriptions or your newsletter — find something to put there.

Daniel has a great example of the ultimate “Post Footer”, and uses it to collect subscriptions to his newsletter. That opt-in is where I originally signed up. If nothing else, utilizing your footer will increase your subscribers, increase your traffic and later add to your income.

• “Free” Affiliate Programs

A huge portion of internet traffic doesn’t spend money. They either don’t have a paypal account, don’t have their credit card handy, are super frugal — whatever the reason, a large part are very unlikely to spend money.

Typically, the only way most blogs monetize that traffic is through advertisements like AdSense. However, the best way is an affiliate program where you get paid per lead, rather than sale.

In the “make money online” niche, for example, “surveys” are an extremely popular affiliate program to pedal, mostly because the blogger can make money without their visitors having to spend a dime.

All in all, some of the most profitable affiliate programs I use are free “signup” programs. If there are any in your niche, make sure to utilize them — anything else is wasting otherwise useless traffic.

Conclusion and Last Thoughts

Monetization is one of the most important aspects of building a money-making blog. No duh, right? Still, it’s often the most screwed up concept that bloggers often get wrong. The above ways to make money with your website might not be fantastically new, but I’ll wager most blogs still don’t use them.

Information is useless if it isn’t acted upon. Don’t get up from the computer until you’ve found at least one way to increase the efficiency of your blog’s earnings.

Do you have any methods of squeezing more profit out of your traffic? If so, let me know in the comments!

Shaun Connell is a full-time blogger. He’s the guy behind Learn Financial Planning. He also has a specific “sub-blog” on the website appropriately entitled “Make Money Online” where he explains how to systematically blog for profit.

How to Make Money Online More Efficiently

How to make money fast is one of those questions that almost everyone ask when they’re first starting out. The truth is, there is no one line answer to this; one fact that you must be aware of is that no newbie can make a fortune in a a few days. I mean, it took me more than 2 years to learn the good, the bad, and the ugly ways to make money online. So, if you’re in for a short time, you won’t make a fortune, but you could make a little money on the side.

There are only two recommendable ways to make money online in a short period of time, for now, I’ll just stick to affiliate marketing (which is one of those two ways). So if you want to make money online in a short time the best way would be to wet your hands in affiliate marketing. Why? Let me explain:

• Affiliate marketing is not time sensitive. By that I mean, you don’t have to wait for a long time before your AdSense websites or blogs make you any money.
• We’re not in for making millions here, So, even if you do not spend money on PPC advertising for affiliate marketing you can still make money.

I can see the puzzled look on your face after reading the second line. Yes, you heard it right! You can still make money if you don’t own a website or don’t want to spend money on PPC ads.

Below are just a few ways to make money with affiliate marketing without spending a cent on advertisements:

• Squidoo: Squidoo lens are known to be the most effective sales pitch for getting customers as compared to website or splash pages.
• Ezine Articles: Write a good article (otherwise don’t write it) that can attract traffic and put in your affiliate link to the product at the end of the article.
• Create free blogs on Blogger, optimize them for the search engines and convert the organic traffic to sales.

The list doesn’t end there, in fact there are a lot more methods you can implement to make money with affiliate marketing. The main reason I recommend affiliate marketing to newbies is that they can avoid the whole “Google Sandbox” thingy they would most probably face if they were to try and make money blogging or make extra money using other methods that take a while.

You also avoid getting banned by AdSense and other similar annoyances created by similar services. Affiliate marketing is clean because you’re the main man—there is no boss over your head and rarely have I heard someone saying they got dumped by a CPA network.

If you still can’t make money online after implementing these tips, then I recommend you keep trying until you do get them to work (I’m sure they will).

How to Make Money Online in a Short Period of Time

To be honest, blogging is probably the worst way to make money online. You need to have a lot of free time and dedication to run a successful blog, and as you’ve probably seen, many other bloggers have started to realize this and so they have really cut down on their posting. (Take ThouShallBlog.com for an example, the last post was on April 29 and the one before that on April 13. Or, TheUniversityKid.com, Jason sold his blog )

Don’t get me wrong here; this blog was where my online journey began and it has helped me network tremendously and learn new skills, but I just don’t think I will be posting as often as I used to (which wasnt’ much either, hehe). I’ll still use this use blog to network, make friends, and as a tool to leverage other sites/tools of mine, but that’s mostly it. (I might post other types of articles, but let’s just wait and see how things go.)

I just wanted to let you guys know what was going on since I didn’t really think it would be fair to just leave you hanging there without any idea of what happened to me. Oh, and theBlogoholic.com did sell for those of you wondering! (For a cool $1,000—not bad for my first site flip, eh?)

You’ll be seeing a post in these next few days that will give you a general idea on how to make money with Squidoo and the post will also promote this eBook on a site of mine. The main reason of the post will be to help me boost that site in Google for the keyword I’m targetting, but if you feel like buying the eBook please, go ahed.

It’s been quite a time since I’ve had some interaction on this blog, so if you’ve got any questions please feel free to ask

Yes, I’m Still Here

If any of you are interested in getting their hands on an established blog that will easily make money online with huge potential for a great price, then this your chance.

theBlogoholic.com is up for sale over at SitePoint, check out the auction listing here.

theBlogoholic.com Is Now Up For Sale

Every experienced blog flipper out there will suggest adding something to your blog to make it more unique; be it a custom script, eBook, or template etc. Seeing that I knew quite a bit about making money online, I decided to go along with the idea of making an eBook, and thus The $147 Price Tag was born.

This 17-Page eBook shows you how to make money online by flipping blogs for yes, you guessed it, $147 a piece. I didn’t want to spend too much time on the cover or sales page of the product, and so I ended up doing both myself. (So don’t laugh.)

If you are struggling to make money online blogging and would like to earn yourself an extra $2,000 per month (or more, depending on how much you put into it), then this information product was made specially for you. Obviously at a price of only $9.99 you haven’t got much to lose.

But hey, don’t take my word for it, just check out the testimonials on the sales page and you’ll get a pretty good idea of this products quality. Oh yeah, and if you aren’t satisfied with the product after purchasing it, just shoot me an email and I’ll give you back 100% of your money; no questions asked.

You can purchase the $9.99 eBook directly by clicking this link, or you can check out the sales page here and then purchase it from there.

Download The $147 Price Tag Now!

Special Offer: Use the coupon code 02ee8ac to get the eBook for only $6.99

I’d love to know what you guys think about it! By the way, I’ll be back soon, I promise.

Introducing My First eBook: The $147 Price Tag

What’s better than watching one of the Internet’s most talented Internet marketers live? Watching three.

The blogosphere is one of the best (if not THE best) places to get tons of free and valuable information. But 99% of the time, bloggers will never reveal their most well kept secrets. Even when they try and sell you their secrets, they’re still not giving you the full picture.

The only sure-fire way to squeeze out every secret an Internet marketer has in his possession, is to kidnap him/her and then tie up the victim, forcing them to spill the beans. But seriously, joking aside, attending a seminar featuring some awesome Internet marketers and then getting together with them afterwards is one of the the best ways to get a hold of their secrets.

Jojy Azurin is one of those people you can learn a lot from. I mean, the guy does make $xxx,xxx/year working an average of one hour a day. He works wherever he likes and whenever he wants to, nobody tells him what to do. Ever. He spends the rest of his time trying to help out other people setup their online business. Definitely a guy I’d want to spend the day with.

Then you have Carl Ocab, one of the most talented young entrepreneus I have ever seen. In case you haven’t heard of him, he’s the 15-year old that ranks #1 for “make money online” and makes $x,xxx from his blog, every month – and that is he feels like working or not. I’m sure that over 80% of the adult bloggers make less money per year from their blogs than he makes in one month. And don’t even get me started about his writing or designing skills.

Finally we have, Joel Christopher, also known as “the Master List Builder”. This man is said to be one of the best list builders around, and although he hasn’t precisely stated his monthly income, he has hinted that it is around the $xx,xxx per month range – not bad for a few hours of work per week, eh?

Alright, so what exactly do these three phenomenal Internet marketers have in common? Well, they’re all featured in a seminar that Joel Christopher himself is holding at the University of Santo Tomas High School Auditorium on Saturday, February 14th, 2009 in Manila, Philippines. The seminar will be a full day event from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM (Philippine Time), you can also watch the event live on a webcast at the following times:

• Alaska: 4:00 PM – 12:00 PM
• Pacific: 5:00 PM – 1:00 AM
• Mountain: 6:00 PM – 2:00 AM
• Central: 7:00 PM – 3:00 AM
• Eastern: 8:00 PM – 4:00 AM
• GMT / Zulu / UT: 1:00 AM – 9:00 AM

You can save yourself a seat right now for only $127 if you purchase the ticket now, $200 after this month is over (only 2 days), and $1,000 if you decide to purchase them at the entrance. This deal is an obvious no-brainer considering that fact that you’ll be getting Internet marketing tips from the best of the best, and a chance to meet up with them during the event.

Oh yeah, did I mention that there are also $12,000 worth of freebies when purchasing the tickets (which by the way, are running out very quickly)? Here are just some of the freebies that you will get when purchasing a ticket for the the seminar:

• FREE BONUS GIFT # 15: You?ll Be Given A Chance To WIN A FREE TICKET To Join Me & My MasterListBuilder Team, Clients, Partners, Affiliates and Licensees On A Week-long Cruise at www.MarketingCruise.com in 2009 – ALL EXPENSES PAID by yours truly, Joel Christopher, The MasterlistBuilder. ($1,497 Value)
• FREE BONUS GIFT # 16: Finally, You?ll Also Be Given A VERY RARE Chance To Apply For and Be Chosen To Be Part of My World-Famous, Results-Proven & Time-tested MasterListBuilder MASTER APPRENTICE PROGRAM. Please note that I used to charge my clients $1,000 PER MONTH for 12 Months to Be Part of My MASTER APPRENTICE PROGRAM so this is TRULY A TREASURE TROVE Of BONUSES You?ll Get ALL For FREE If You Get Chosen.
  Many of my clients and subscribers have been BEGGING me to admit them into my MASTER APPRENTICE PROGRAM and even willing to pay me $12,000 but I DECLINED?HOWEVER?On FEBRUARY 14, 2009, You?ll Get A VERY RARE CHANCE To Be Part of An Elite Group of Marketers and Internet Entrepreneurs Once You Get Picked Out From The Crowd By Me. ($12,000.00 Value)
• FREE BONUS GIFT # 14: ACCESS To The 3-Day Live Interactive MasterListBuilder FUNShop VIRTUAL SEMINAR on January 15 to 17, 2009 (US $2,997 Value)
  Or if you can NOT attend the 3-Day FUN Shop Virtual Seminar! You?ll be able to access the recording REPLAY of the 3-day VIRTUAL SEMINAR later, at NO extra cost to You. (US $2,997 Value)
• FREE BONUS GIFT # 12: FREE Affiliate (Referral) Program with A Commission of 10%. This is Open Only At This Time To Those Who Are Registered To Attend The Live Seminar / FUN shop on February 14, 2009. You?ll Be among the FIRST to Promote it. (US $500 Value)

Yeah, I’m sure that got you excited.

If you are living in the Philippines (or anywhere else, as a matter of fact), then this is your chance to get some top-notch material straight from some of the Internet’s most talented marketers. It’s your choice. But I would recommend you spend those $127 (that were going to be spent on buying some crap eBook) on attending this seminar and learning a few things from it.

Check out Mikhail Jon’s blog for more updates on the seminar.

Joel Christopher “The Master List Builder” is Holding a Seminar, and You’re Invited!

I always thought it would be cool if someone could make a list with all the young bloggers of the Internet; I was even thinking of making one myself. Luckily, someone beat me to it (do you know how long it would’ve taken?), guess who?

Carl Ocab, of course! Probably one of the most famous kidbloggers around that knows how to make money online more than any of you do! Anyways, Carl was very kind as to let me know that he setup a new website that lists the top 100 young bloggers and sorts them using the usual factors (Technorati, Alexa, PageRank). To be honest, I’ve grown a bit tired of all these “top 100″ lists coming out every few weeks, but since I rank #2 on this list I thought I’d give it a mention.

If you check out the list, you’ll see that it shows each blogger’s name, age, and a link to his blog. Except, clicking the link to the blog won’t take you directly to the blog, but a page where you can review the blog and read more about it. I don’t know how successful the review feature will be, but no matter how many reviews you get, they won’t affect your rankings.

The list still hasn’t reached the 100 mark yet, but I’m sure once Carl does a bit of promoting it’ll be full in no time. If you’re a kid and have a blog/site, be sure to submit your it using the form here. If you aren’t under 18, but do know someone that is and blogs, you can lend a hand by submitting his blog for him.

One thing I think Carl should do is add the ability to sort blogs in the list by age, since most of the people that check the list out will be interested in seeing the youngest kid’s blog.

Overall I think it’s a great list that will help promote the young bloggers and motivate them into achieving more. The only that puzzles me is why Carl hasn’t added his own blogs yet – probably because it’ll top the list with ease

The Top 100 Youngest Bloggers of the Blogosphere

Once upon a time, good content was enough to ensure exposure to your site, that, however, is not the case nowadays.

What’s the point of composing the most amazing piece of writing if nobody’s ever going to know about it? Don’t get me wrong here, content will always be important, but if nobody knows about your masterpiece, then you’re better off not writing it in the first place.

This is where buzz marketing comes into play, and where Dean Hunt performs rather excellently. In case you haven’t heard of Dean, he is one of the best buzz marketers in the world. Just read the interview…

Rajaie: Tell us a bit about yourself (your name, age, and occupation etc.)

Dean: My name is Dean Hunt, I am 26, from the UK and work in Internet Marketing. I am considered a leader in buzz marketing, and one of the most influential, young bloggers on the planet.

Rajaie: Many of us have never heard of the term “Buzz Marketing”, what exactly is it?

Dean: It is basically any form of marketing that creates a lot of emotion. Often I use humor, excitement, controversy etc to do this.

Rajaie: What on earth compelled you to turn such innocent little creatures into killer bunnies?

Dean: I like the anonymity that you can get from the Internet, and I wanted to take this a step further by diverting the attention to something else. Killer bunnies seemed the right choice at the time.

Rajaie: If the Internet did not exist, what do you think you’d be doing right now?

Dean: Probably something really boring. It was the Internet that helped me realize that you don’t have to get stuck doing crappy jobs from 9 to 5. I would probably be someone’s bitch in retail or something.

Rajaie: In ten years, will Buzz Marketing still be as useful as it is today?

Dean: Buzz will be more important in the next 10 years. You see, there are already over 85 billion web pages on the net, information is no longer enough, people need to start entertaining as well as informing, that is why you see people like Gary Vaynerchuk breaking onto the scene, yet 3 years ago, nobody had heard of him. Also, this is why video is becoming so popular.

Rajaie: I noticed that your blog has no advertisements, how do you monetize the traffic it gets?

Dean: I monetize my personal brand, so I go to events, use my name to launch products etc… we have been very slow on that recently, me and my biz partner (Barry Dunlop) are launching a membership site in the coming weeks, where people can get access to all the secrets, strategies and tips that we use to get millions of visitors. Go to www.BuzzProfits.com and sign up for access.

Rajaie: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever been given?

Dean: “If you don’t value your time, nobody else will.” This is so true.

Rajaie: We all make mistakes, what do you think is the biggest mistake you have ever made? (In terms of your online business.)

Dean: Not selling enough. I appreciate that many people in this industry have the OPPOSITE problem, but we have been giving away all our best stuff for years, and it is about time we started monetizing it properly. Another big mistake I have made is trying to do everything myself, there are many areas we should outsource, you HAVE to play to your strengths in this game.

Rajaie: If you could give someone just starting out with the Internet some advice, what would it be?

Dean: Network like a rockstar. It is not who you know, but who knows you. So get out there and hustle.

Rajaie: What do you think is more important: writing for the search engines, or writing for real people?

Dean: The days of writing for search engines are long gone. Especially since the boom of online video. Write for people, get links, and you will rank in the search engines.

Rajaie: Tell us one true thing about yourself that nobody has ever heard before

Dean: At aged 20 I had a glass bottle go through my knee. I had to have rehab to learn to walk again.

Rajaie: Your blog is full of awesome posts that I have greatly enjoyed reading, any specific ones you’d like to tell us about?

Dean: There are too many to mention… But this recent post about going viral with low traffic websites was a good one I also suggest people download our free report, this spinning lady is kinda weird and this makes me laugh everytime.

Rajaie: You’ve recently been to Dubai, what are some of the other places you have traveled to? Anything you dislike about travel?

Dean: Dubai was great, I hung with all the other speakers, including Mike Filsaime and John Carlton. I have visited a lot of places across America, I think I enjoyed Los Angeles the most. The only part of travel I don’t like is the jet-lag.

Rajaie: Build it and they will come. Content is king. What is your personal stance on those two statements?

Dean: They are both wrong. You can build something great, but if nobody hears about it, they won’t visit. For example, you can create a great video, but if you don’t upload it to the net, nobody will ever see it.

As for “Content is king”. CREATIVE content is king…. content is generally boring, copied, and lame. Remember, there are 85 billion web pages on the net, you gotta stand out.

Rajaie: I’ve heard thousands of people say that social media traffic is useless. They come, they go, and they crash your blog. Oh yeah, they also don’t click any AdSense. What do you have to say about this?

Dean: In terms of directly monetizing the traffic, yes, it is pretty useless. BUT, indirectly, it is valuable. For example, some people may link to your content from their site, they may blog about you, they may submit your page to other sites like Digg. So they are valuable, just in a different way.

Rajaie: Is there you’d like to tell us about yourself that I haven’t asked yet? (We could do a series. Kidding.)

Dean: Haha, I think that covers everything. I would like to remind people that if they do want to get huge amounts of traffic to their site, they need to sign up at www.buzzprofits.com right now. There is so much killer info in there, a lot of which I can’t believe we are even sharing publicly.

Oh, and we may be hiring in the near future. We are looking for a developer who gets stuff done, an action orientated guy or gal. If interested, email me at dean@buzzprofits.com

I would really like to thank Dean for giving me the opportunity to interview him, I hope you find this interview useful. For those interested in making money online and driving tons of free to their site, subscribing to DeanHunt.com is a must. Do it now.

Interview With Dean Hunt – The Buzz Marketing Genius

Did the thought of “retiring at 21″ ever cross your mind? For many of us, that thought is nothing but another fantasy we like to daydream about every now and then.

Apparently Michael Dunlop’s site – Retire at 21 – proves otherwise!

Who is Michael Dunlop?

Michael Dunlop is one of those awesome young entrepreneurs you hear about every now and then that has blown away the blogohsphere with his amazing site: RetireAt21.com He has many other websites with the most popular being WebDesignDev and Retire at 21.

Michael has had the entrepreneurial spirit ever since he was 5. When his mother had asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he had answered that he wanted to have a large superstore like Walmart or Tesco. At age 16, Michael decided that he wanted to create a website, and so Retire At 21 was born!

Here are is a picture to show you the kind of success Michael has achieved online (More photos)

Retire at 21 – The site. The interviews. The idea.

I consider Retire at 21 to be a site each young (and old) blogger/entrepreneur should read when looking for inspiration and great content.

The idea - The main concept behind the site is to show you how young entrepreneurs have made it big online and how you can too. Browsing through the website will both inspire and motivate you while causing you to be jealous at the same time.

It is very inspirational to see how college dropouts turned themselves into millionaires using the power of the Internet. If that doesn’t make you get off your lazy butt and start working, then I don’t know what will!

The interviews - One of the things that Retire at 21 excels at where no other blog or website has, is its interviews section.

Michael has gone to great lengths to secure interviews with some of the biggest and most popular names on the net, here are some of interviews that really had me impressed!

• Catherine Cook Interview | Young Entrepreneur Success at MyYearBook.com
• Harrison Gevirtz, Interview with a Teen Entrepreneur
• Aaron Wall Interview, SEO Book Founder Talks Life and SEO
• Matt Mickiewicz – Interview with the Co-Founder Of SitePoint.com

The design - Michael’s site has a very clean and simple design that uses every available bit of space to showcase some of the site’s best work. The only piece of criticism I have regarding the design is that the eBook subscription box is way down at the bottom instead of being right at the top of the sidebar.

Everyone know how helpful eBooks can be in gaining subscribers, so I think that Michael should put the “About” box in the footer and move the subscription box to the top. I’m sure that will help him get many more subscribers.

The content – Not only does Retire at 21 have some inspirational interviews, but it also has a great blog with some extremely helpful posts. But one of things I love best about his website are all the awesome lists:

• Top 20 Young Internet Entrepreneurs Under 21
• Top 50 Young Entrepreneurs Under 30
• No Grey Hair CEOs

While browsing some of the lists, I noticed that some of the information was incorrect since it’s outdated, so I think Michael should update the lists on the site to make them more accurate. Another thing I noticed when browsing the site, was that the “Directory” link at the top leads to a page with no apparent use – still under construction. I think if would be best if the link was removed till that page is sorted out.

A Bit of Constructive Criticism

There’s not much to criticize over at the site, Michael’s got pretty much everything sorted out properly. The only things I would say that he needs to check up is the “Directory” page subscription box.

If you check out the blog, you will probably notice that the posts don’t get as many comments as they should. I don’t know if that is because he doesn’t promote the blog that much, or because it isn’t directly on the front page. Another place I noticed there wasn’t much activity was the forums, perhaps he could get a few paid posters to start things off or have a contest.

Other than that, there’s pretty much nothing else to criticize with Retire at 21!

My Final Thoughts

Retire at 21 is definitely a great source for all young entrepreneurs that want to learn how young people are making it big online. It’s also a great resource for anyone looking for a bit of inspiration to start that project he’s always been putting off.

I would like to wish Michael success with all his current and future projects, I’m sure that his name will be on those million-dollar lists very soon!

Fun fact – I did a few calculations, and finally came up with the following:
If you were to live till you were 100-years old and wanted to retire at 21, then you would need at least 10 million dollars to live. (100 million to live comfortably.)

How Does Retiring at 21 Sound? – Young Entrepreneurs Making it BIG Online

What I’m about to reveal to you will change your life forever.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a screenshot of yesterday’s earnings:

Guess what? I’m going to be selling only 50 10 more copies of my eBook containing the exact secrets that will make you hundreds of thousands of dollars, all this for the one-time payment of $47.

———

Okay, hopefully by now you’ve found out that the above was all a joke. But wait, didn’t I have a screenshot to prove it? How could I be lying?

The truth is, it actually took me less than five minutes to cook up that photo using my favorite Firefox plugin. All I had to do was edit the values with Firebug and then use the PayPal Fee Caculator to make the PayPal fee value look legit. Then I just took a screenshot, blacked out the “secret information” and saved it to my hard drive!

I could also have easily edited my PayPal history to show that I had received thousands of dollars worth of sales from my $47 eBook.

What I’m trying to say, is, the next time you’re about to fork out a couple of hundred on some eBook promising you millions, think again. The same goes for those planning to buy a website, don’t just settle for PayPal screenshots, ask for videos or remote access to a computer to verify the screenshots.

I’m not telling you to be paranoid when buying a $9.99 eBook or a $50 website, but when things start going into the mid $xxx then you should at least try your best to make sure you’re not sending your money down the drain.

Screenshots can be faked, do your best to make sure you’re not another victim of those damned scammers.

I hope I didn’t give any of you a bunch of evil ideas to play around with, I wouldn’t wanna see some newbie scammed because of this post, alright?

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