Thank you for 2007

It's the end of the year plus the end of the month so it's a time to say thank you. Firstly thanks to the bloggers who have sent this blog traffic during December.

This month I've done a Top Seven as there was virtually no difference between 5 and 7. Other organisations, search engines and websites may send me more readers but I especially appreciate the efforts of smaller bloggers like myself - so thanks everyone.

1
My Quest To Make Money On The Internet
2
Make Money Fa$t
3
Blog About Your Blog
4
Active Duty Military Money And Matters
5
Money Money Money
6
Web-Dosh
7
The Gospel According To Rhys
These seven will stay in this blog's left hand side column for the coming month. I also have a MMMM Links Page where I'm happy to list the links of other bloggers. Any niche blog welcome - no rules other than must have at least 10 posts, see details here.

Also a big thank you to subscribers and those who visit the blog regularly. I appreciate this very much.

Same with advertisers on this and my celebrity blog - thanks for your support.

All in all, it has been a good 2007 blogging wise, especially over the last quarter. I've made some decent money and have enjoyed the journey.

I wish everyone a successful and profitable New Year - and yes, you can make money with free blogs!

Good luck,
Mike.

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Odd Money Making

It's been a busy holiday period for me personally but it's nice to see that the likes of Voxant, AdSense, FriendFinder, Amazon UK and a few others keep pulling in the commission regardless.

These are the sort of money making programs I like as they tick over by themselves with very little effort - as long as the traffic keeps arriving at the blog.

I did see a dip in traffic over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, on my main celeb blog, but it seems to be picking up nicely again now.

Celebrity Insider Christmas Week Traffic
That's all for today as I have some family commitments. I'll leave you with what Voxant say are their most popular newstories in their 'Odd' category.

Good luck,
Mike

Money Making TradeDoubler

A lot of bloggers use Commission Junction as an umbrella for many of the affiliate programs they promote. For many people this usually works okay.

There is, however, an alternative that may be of interest - especially to UK and perhaps European bloggers and website owners. This is TradeDoubler.

TradeDoubler have hundreds of affiliate programs to join - subject to your blog or website being approved. These are generally quality companies and all banners and promotional material is provided.

It's possible to search what programs are available by category i.e. Art, Business & Finance, Cars and Transport, Computers and Internet etc. etc.

I looked at the Home and Garden category, as an example, and there are about 35 companies to choose from with UK well known brands such as British Gas, Co-op Electrical, Halfords, John Lewis, Kodak, Littlewoods and so on.

It takes a couple of days to be approved and accepted by an individual affiliate program and each program has there own payment structure - i.e. pay per click, per order etc.

Payments are made on 'cleared funds' once £30 has been accumulated. This is made by bank transfer direct to affiliate's bank accounts. There is no other method of payment.

From my limited experience with TradeDoubler it all works okay. I promote CD WOW and AllPosters through them on my celebrity blog. Both have sales on at the time of writing this.

Might be worth looking at, especially if you have UK traffic.

Good luck,
Mike.

Seven Things

These are strange days between Christmas and the New Year.

I always feel that life is somehow in abeyance until the shiny, full of promise 1st of January finally appears.

Ah, a New Year ... success, happiness, wealth, relationships ...

The problem can be, however, that we wake up on the 5th or 6th and it starts to sink in that the new year is somehow very much like the old one. This can, of course, be either good or bad - depending on how 2007 stacked up.

One of the things I do is always to have seven things to look forward to.

Not too sure why I chose seven, but it's a number that appeals to me - and it is supposedly linked to good luck.

These seven 'things' aren't anything to do with targets or objectives and so on but are just 'things' to make life interesting and help to stay focused on the good 'things' in life. These can be absolutely anything and would be completely different for everyone.

Perhaps bigger things like a holiday, weekend break, a new something or other but they can also be small like starting to read a new book, watching a much awaited DVD, a night out, visiting a friend or friends, a football match, concert, a planned walk along the beach, making love, planting a tree, having a sauna, eating chocolate ... I don't know, simply anything that gives pleasure and a feeling of expectation and perhaps excitement.

So many people seem to think of life as dull, routine and not very interesting but, if we have seven things to look forward to, it creates a whole new perspective.

And I guess you can do this with blogging or anything else.

There's no reality in life. There is just our realisation of how things are.

Good luck,
Mike.

Happy Christmas

Wishing everyone a very Happy Christmas, Happy Holiday or just a Happy Week.
Best wishes,
Mike

Passive Money Making

I just wanted to enlarge slightly on yesterday's post - the part about passive income.

I'll give an example as to why this form of income is not only preferable but is also essential if you want a really big income.

The main reason is time. Take my wife for instance ... please! No - that's a joke.

Anyway, my wife designs and makes dresses. It's a hobby she started years ago and it developed into an income, and all from working at home. She's good at it and has been listed in such places as Vogue.

It earns her money, which she is happy with. It's almost become a social thing as well as she knows her customers well and enjoys the chat, cups of coffee and gossip that goes with it.

However she can only make a certain amount of money in a week - unless she wants to work all hours. She has only one pair of hands.

If she had wanted to take the money making to another level this would have meant developing a passive income from the business.

In other words she would have to stop doing the work herself and get other people to do the graft for her. She would ned to become a supervisor / boss / manager, or whatever title you would want to choose.

In blogging things like sponsored posts are work.

Adverts, AdSense, other affiliates you have introduced to various programs and so on are examples of blogging passive income - whereby you do very little yourself. You have to supervise, of course: where the ads go, swapping things around, keeping stats etc. but this isn't real work and is therefore less time consuming.

It's what you get other people or 'things' to do for you that will make real money. Otherwise it's limiting. This is fine if you want to make some pin money or a little extra - but it won't make you rich.

Quite a while back I did some consultancy type work for an American networking company who wanted to start up in the UK.

I envisaged that they were a big organisation. It turned out there were just three of them plus a sort of office worker come dogsbody.

All of their business was done by other people and companies on their behalf. They had someone else to source the products, a fulfillment house to the dispatch goods and every aspect of their business was covered.

All they had to do was supervise and think up ideas. Oh, and count the profits!

It's not what you do yourself ...

Good luck,
Mike.

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Celebrity Insider - Photos & News: News, photos and gossip of worldwide celebrities

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Tribute To Make Money Fast

I wanted to pay tribute today to Rob who publishes the Make Money Fa$t blog - and about 30 others as well. He's one of the 'good guys' within blogging.

For about six months Rob has been working three days a week at his blogging to see if he could build a full time income this way. It was a brave thing to do but he wanted to try and cultivate a lifestyle whereby he could see his children more and generally have a better life.

Unfortunately he has now decided to go back to working at a full time more traditional job - though his blogs will be continued. What knocked him was the Google upheaval with PageRank and the way this hit sponsored posts in general. You only have to read his 500 Dollar Challenge to see how he was well on the right track.

Though maybe things haven't worked out exactly as Rob hoped he has learnt a lot about blogging. He wrote:

"For a while there I was almost living the dream and the lifestyle was great, however reality has set in and its probably more sensible to work hard for a couple more years, earn some real money and just keep building the passive streams."

Two things from the above:

(1) Knowing when to change is an important part of being successful.

(2) Passive streams of income are the way to go. By this I mean building incomes -from whatever means - that do not involve too much personal involvement.

If we look at sponsored blogs, for example, they take a lot of work - especially if you have to write stuff for a small return. Plus the potential is limiting - there is only so much time in a day. It's much better to try and develop your income by some other means, where there is no real effort involved.

As 'they' say: It's not how hard you work, it's how clever you work.

As for Rob he'll be a success and he will fulfill his dream. He has the right positive attitude to life. He writes:

"The exponential growth part of our experiment will still be a driving force for me, however I am going to really try to work on the passive side of it more than anything else."

Good luck, Rob.

Mike.