Happy Valentine's Day 2009 - Love & Money

Hello lovestruck readers and Happy Valentine's Day 2009! Today's the day when people profess their love for each other or in some cases their love for money. Whichever your situation may be, The Monetizer wants to spread some love on this sweet, sweet holiday...

You may have already noticed that the big G has a red-inspired Google logo theme today, and clicking that theme will take you to Valentine's Day search results. There you can read about the history of Valentine's Day, which many know is based on Saint Valentine and is mainly a holiday for lovers to express their love for one another...

There's also an interesting article within those search results from San Francisco Chronicle regarding Valentine's day and lovers spending less on each other. One individual in the articles notes that he's changed his 2 day Valentine's day holiday into a 1 day celebration. Basically he can't justify buying $100 worth of roses when his neighbor recently lost his job. According to the article V-day spending will drop about 4.8% this year, going down to $28.6 billion. Some of those who will be feeling the tightening budgets will be hotels, restaurants and flower services. Read the full article here at SFGate.com

But you can still share the love this Valentine's day and weekend. The Monetizer has found some cool deals online you may want to utilize. One is the Free Breakfast that IKEA is serving customers from February 13-16th each morning until 10:30AM. It may be too late to take your sweety to a V-Day breakfast, but Sunday and Monday could be your Valentine's day breakfast celebration. There's also several compelling restaurant deals so you can still take your sweetheart to a great meal. One example is TGI Friday's Buy One Get One Free Entree deal, just print the coupon out here. If you have Texas Roadhouse in your vicinity, they are offering a Valentine's Day deal of 2 entrees for $29.99 complete with 2 made-from-scratch sides! The choices include Baby Blossom, BBQ Chicken & Ribs, 12oz. Ribeye Steak and 12oz. Prime Rib. John Chow eat your heart out! (not literally) But nothing says I love you like a good plate of ribs or a nice hunk of steak. Texas Roadhouse's deal extends through Sunday February 15th with details and pictures here.

Now how about some mood music for today's lovefest? Amazon.com is offering Dean Martin Love Songs MP3 Album for just $2.99 today only! Even better, Let's Get It On by Marvin Gaye is FREE!. So you could technically just loop that track all day long if you really want to save money, however The Monetizer doesn't recommend it! You may want to purchase your lover a sweet iPod Nano to go with the music as well...

No matter how you choose to spend Valentine's day whether it be wining and dining your sweetie, watching romantic movies, or counting your money made online, The Monetizer wishes you nothing but love for Valentine's Day 2009!

4 Ways to Expand Your Blog

You'll find it repeated on many of the make money online blogs, the concept that your blog is a business. As a business you want the blog's audience and income to grow. Someone like John Chow did this successfully, going from about $300 a month to $30,000! I'm a big fan of Google Adsense, which everyone uses these days to produce income, but I'm always looking for ways to add even more income to blogs I run. Eventually you may find that your blog's earnings hit a plateau, and you want to increase them. While it could included more advertsising and marketing costs, you can also consider ways to expand your blog as a website. Here's 4 ideas to consider.

1) Add a forum - The obvious choice, and a great idea for all those who love Adsense. Adding a forum to your blog gives readers and passers by another spot besides comments to leave opinions. It also can help you keep readers around, and attract them to your latest blog entries. Adsense and other advertising or affiliate programs can work well with forums, in addition to your blog.

2) Offer an online course - If you have a particular area or subject you want to teach readers, offer enrollment for a class. This may be one of the New School ideas for adding additional income to your site. It's something that John Cow & Garry Conn both have employed in their blogging battle, to teach readers. Make sure you've prepared materials for the course in advance, and syllabus, so that you can give readers what they pay for. Affiliate programs tend to work well as you include references to them in your ebooks or other course materials.

3) Offer catchy extras - The best example here involves social media sites. Offer readers applications they can use on Facebook, graphics for their Myspace or anything else you can think of. With Facebook it will take some skill, but many claim building useful applications is where the big money is to be made. Another option involves the ebook which could include affiliate or referral links to produce more income.

4) Merchandising - Some may view this as egotistical, but consider your blog site as a brand just like Coca Cola or GE. You can easily create catchy items with your logo, phrases and URL over at Cafepress (using art programs to design). If you don't have the graphic design savvy, enlist someone to help. This is a great offline way of expanding your blog into new areas. It makes you visible in the "real world" and if you design something catchy enough, it just might become a big moneymaker offline.

Keep these 4 ideas in mind with your blog site. A smart approach may be to invest in web hosting early on that will also give you a forum and other extras. Setting this up early on may give you plenty to work with in the future as your blog audience grows. The last thing you want is to hit an earnings plateau!

The Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

Several posts ago the Monetizer revealed the 17 distinctions between rich and poor people, as written by T. Harv Eker in his excellent book. Eker's book "Secrets of the Millionaire Mind" is designed to put you right into the mindframe of a rich person. The basis may seem similar to other books on the subject with the motto "Think Rich, Get Rich". After all, people who think money is a problem and controls them, will have a very hard time getting rich. In Eker's book he outlines the various distinctions between rich and poor people and the end of each of them gives you some homework to do. For example jotting down phrases your parents used to say about money. Some parents might have thrown around phrases like "money doesn't grow on trees" or "you think I'm made of money?", and those impact how kids view money as they age. So if you get the book, consider getting a notebook or journal to accompany it.

Eker provides sound advice towards saving in terms of setting up various accounts for specific purposes, but overall he seems to teach positivity and money management. One technique is to get in the habit of managing every dollar you have by taking 10% of it towards investments or your savings accounts. You'll find some great tips and techniques to employ throughout. I enjoyed the book quite a bit, although at times it can get downright wacky. One example is Eker's suggestion for the reader to go out and buy a brand new tuxedo or elegant dress, then come home, put it on, get down on one knee and declare "I'm worthy from here forth!". It's silly, but it might be exactly what seem people need to get inspired for moneymaking.

I give the book a thumbs up, and if you can find a copy at the library or even buy it online at Amazon, you're doing yourself a favor. You're bound to get some interesting perspective and ideas from Eker. Also, with the more positive material you read, whether it's on money, personal development, health or any other positive subject, can only help you advance yourself. You don't necessarily have to subscribe to every word written, but there might be just one nugget of valuable advice that inspires you , so the book will pay for itself many times over.

Order Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth at Amazon.com to get yourself in the mindframe of a millionaire!

Why I Have 8 Blogs to Make Money Online

I was chatting with a friend last night and mentioned I maintain about 8 blogs on various topics that interest me. She was stunned by the number, and I explained it can be a lot of work, with some blogs getting updated more often then the others. There's times where I look at the RSS counts and then feel those people will be let down if there's not recent updates. I tend to update the one that is my "breadwinner" while the others get a little less attention based on how I feel at the moment. So while it may seem overwhelming to have 2 or more blogs, I feel having more is better, and here's why...

In the Rich Dad, Poor Dad series, Robert Kiyosaki discusses the notion of not just having 1 business, but many. The more business assets you own and profit from, the better. While it's great to have just 1 blog going and making you money, why not have several? There's no rule you need to update blogs daily, or advertise heavily on each one. Some you can set up just for search engine traffic and experimenting. You can set up a 10 entry blog, and really make it into a website to catch search traffic.

I think it's a great idea to have at least 1 additional blog, besides your main stay. Make it experimental in nature and use it to test different monetization strategies. It can be more of an "anything goes" blog, where you just go crazy. Consider an entertainment or random humor type blog, where you can let your imagination go crazy. Create your own unique character to pitch products or just give your own take on life in general. You'll see many examples of these blogs over at Entrecard.com.

The good thing about that sort of blog is you can build it up at your own pace, and then profit from paid advertising, Google (or alternatives), try Amazon product sales or even paid review sites. Sky's the limit if you set up one of these sort of blogs, because you can test the implementation of all sorts of money strategies...

Another consideration is with more blogs, you expose yourself to more opportunities, networking and link building. You also can leave some projects behind if they just aren't working, then return to them later. Tapping into your creative thoughts is also one of the keys to becoming rich. It's what many smart industrial age millionaires and billionaires did, and most of today's young dot com generation have done.

You don't need to have 8 blogs, but consider starting up a second blog over the weekend. It doesn't have to take up all your time, start simple and build from there. Make it your "anything goes" project and have fun with it. Sometimes the most creative, wacky and out of the ordinary ideas end up making you the most money!

People Want Answers - Wiki Answers

This isn't a paid review of any sort, just a bit of info sharing about a site The Monetizer found. The site is called Wiki Answers and one of its question pages came up within the 1st two pages of a specific search I did on Google. Wiki Answers is just what you might expect; a site where people pose questions and others provide the answers. It's easy to register and use, and can potentially provide you with a flow of extra site traffic.

The coolest part of the site, is you can add in your own answer to a question or even "Improve an answer". You are given an option to supply a site link as part of the answer, with anchor text for your link. The Wiki Answers site currently has a pretty high traffic rank, so this makes a ton of sense to do. Leave a link if you have a blog post that answers a popular question, even if the question has been answered 10-20 times. People who view that question will see your link and possibly visit for more info on the topic.

I placed a link as an answer there and it has brought about 400-500 visits in several days time. That's not Digg like traffic, but it's not bad either for a new steady stream of traffic. It basically means you're listed within the first few pages of Google search results too. Consider this technique: Do a search on keywords or phrases on Google related to your blog. See what comes up in the first 2 pages of the results. If there's any Wiki Answers listing or another Ask & Answer type site, you may have struck a new traffic source for your blog. You can also register for the site and just poke around a bit. Find out the popular questions related to your blog, and see what you can answer with blog posts. While this may not be groundbreaking, it may be a technique many overlook in terms of getting some extra traffic.

(Note: The above technique may vary based upon the popularity of your search terms. Also use the obvious ideas of leaving links on forums, blogs and YouTube videos that may come up in the 1st few pages of a Google search.)

The Monetizer's 2008 Resolutions

As another year rolls in and people are just waking from hangovers (or still sleeping them off), I decided to evaluate my upcoming resolutions and goals here. Since the year ends in an 8, I came up with 8 for my online ventures.

1) Make More Money - It seems like a greedy top goal, but more money equals more comfort in life. Once you have money to live comfortably, you can also give back to others. While that's not the only way to give back, it's very helpful. So I put this at the top of my 2008 list. To do so I will have to evaluate my strategies and blog audiences better. I'm seeing what works and what doesn't, and it will be a continued learning process.

2) Improve blogs - that means site designs and layouts. I'm never satisfied completely with current blog designs even if they are pulling visitors. I always know this can be improved, especially when you use Blogspot. This blog rests on blogspot, until I make the decision to go for a domain. Why wait? Because right now I have several blogs, and making a decision on which to host has been a major point of contention for me. I urge those who can afford it and are serious about blogging to host their site as soon as possible, it's one thing I've learned the hard way.

3) Improve ranks - That includes this blog and other blog's RSS subscriber counts, Alexa ranks, PR's and other ratings. I've done very well so far on this particular blog, thanks to things like BlogCatalog, BloggingZoom, Social Media and Entrecard. Looking to continue this in 2008.

4) MakeTop 100 for a Squidoo Lens - This might not seem important to others, but when you're close once it makes you hungrier to get there. I'm nearing this goal as I type, and it will be a great way to start the New Year. Monetizer has come close before, and is curious to see what it brings in revenue. If you've hit top 100 with Squidoo, let me know if you noticed any drastic increases in revenue.

5) Make Top 100 of 45n5.com list - Right now I've moved closer to the top 100, at #164. Something about this list is inspiring, with Problogger, Shoemoney and John Chow sitting at the top. Being in their company in the Top 100 ranking of anything is pretty sweet.

6) Continue building social media networks - The ones I see becoming increasingly valuable seem to be Facebook and Twitter. Myspace in my opinion is being eclipsed and at times it seems very old-school compared to the new school players, especially Facebook. I haven't fully learned how to tap into Facebook, but this will be part of 2008. Also, I'm looking to build up my Digg, StumbleUpon and other valuable networks to see if I can harness that power more. If you're on Digg, I advise you to add people with

7) Improve time management - Belonging to so many social media, bookmarking, content, blogging and advertising type sites can really be rough. It's come to the point where I actually missed approving ads on Entrecard (apologies to any who felt rejected). When you belong to so many article, media and other sites it can be tough to prioritize. In 2008, I hope to sort through these and use them with better management.

8) Learn more SEO - this is an area I felt was one of my weakest, so towards the end of December I started toying with it more, and feel it's something I can do well with. I was able to achieve page 2 of a Google search result within a week or so on another blog. So I will continue to learn more about these techniques in 2008. I recommend Courtney Tuttle's Internet Marketing School to those looking to learn. I've seen very valuable lessons and info in there.

Looking ahead, things can always get better. And that's the main goal, keep looking forward this year. Hopefully everyone isn't hurting too bad in the wake of their New Year's Eve celebrations, and let's get ready for a great 2008!

A Money Saving Thanksgiving

No, no I'm far from a John Chow hater. In fact I'm a fan of Chow who loves to show pictures of the food he eats on his blog. I think that gives it a nice deviation from the norm. However while he likes $70 hamburgers, sometimes you have to live below your means in the interest of building your wealth. So here's a picture of a Thanksgiving meal that can be had for just $1 on sale! Complete with Turkey, gravy, stuffing, peas and mashed potatoes. For a Google Adsense check you could give out 100 Turkey dinners at your place and turn it into a soup kitchen!



Now the point of this post is not to mock the less fortunate or John Chow. It's not a PayPerPost for Banquet microwave meals either :) Just to keep with the theme that you can always save money if needed. The Monetizer wishes a happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, and we'll all resume the moneymaking soon after we have recovered from the Triptofan nap attack!

(Note: These dinners weren't part of the recent recall. Con Agra is back to making the Banquet pot pies that were part of a Salmonella outbreak. The recall cost an estimated $30 million.)