Work to Make Money Online

All too often this concept is very overlooked online when it comes to making any sort of income. Mainly people have this conception that just adding Adsense code to a blog or site, or just signing up for a program will start making them instant money. It just doesn't work this way folks. You get paid for work in the real world, and making money online involves work too. If money were free, we wouldn't need make money online blogs...John Chow would be primarily blogging about food and Shoemoney about UFC.

Almost everyone's a rookie when they start out with Adsense. You may have read up on it, but it's going to take extra planning and tweaking to get it to work for your particular site. Not only that but in order to get paid by Adsense, you need enough traffic visiting your site to get the impressions/clicks to earn the $100 minimum payout. Getting traffic takes work, whether it be search engine optimization, promotion/marketing, building social networks or even offline publicizing. To expect Adsense to make you a steady income off a blog just by adding the code is a bad assumption. Many times it may even take several blogs or sites to earn a check from Google. It may also take several months before you even see that first check. But believe that it will take work. If it doesn't, then you're probably spending money to make your money.

Then there's the referrals signing up for programs. I've had individuals say "ok I'll sign up through you so you'll get the credit/incentive". The referrals don't work this way. For example, Widgetbucks or ShoppingAds (formerly AuctionAds). You can sign up for them, and you'll have $25 to start in your account. But simply signing up doesn't earn the referrer money. The referrer earns money through their own work and your work. And you'll earn extra money through the work you put in, to get your own referrals and implement the code on your site. PayPerPost is the same. You can sign up through a referrer, but they don't make a dime until 1)your blog is approved and 2)you post about PayPerPost. There's the work. Even survey programs seem like great concepts. But you're being paid for work, in terms of filling out surveys, which takes your time and effort.

Don't believe for a minute that guys like John Chow, Shoemoney or Darren Rowse are just lucky individuals who happened to make a fortune online. All 3 have worked extremely hard to get to where they are. So how hard are you willing to work to make money online yourself?

Hit 777 EC's with the Monetizer!

It's time for the first official contest here at The Monetizer! You may have seen all those "Win 500", "Win 750" and even "Win 1,000" Entrecard credit contests, but this has a different "spin" to it. Since the Monetizer used to be much more of a gambler, this contest has a casino theme. One of the best things you can achieve in a casino is hitting 7-7-7 on a slot machine. It usually brings quite the payout! Now here you can hit the Triple 7 on the Monetizer's slot machine, giving you 777 Entrecard credits to spend up!

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It's quite easy to enter, there's 3 ways:

1) Blog about the contest (2 entries) - Make sure in your post that you provide the 2 links: 1 back to this blog (with "make money online" as the text), 1 back to the contest post. Here's an example you could use:



That cool character the Monetizer blogs about ways to make money online. Now he is also giving you the chance to win 777 Entrecard credits over at his blog! Check out the "Hit 777 EC's with the Monetizer" contest for all the details!


Also, provide that blog post's link here as a comment or email me it!

2) Subscribe to Email Updates (1 entry) - make sure to comment here that you're subscribed this way.

3) Subscribe to RSS feed (1 entry) - Please comment with a link to a screenshot showing the RSS feed on your reader, or email me it at monetizer@myway.com.

Confused yet? Me too :) That's a total of 4 entries, should you choose all 3 ways to enter! Make sure to email me or comment with your links to let me know how you've entered!

The contest will end February 1st, 2008 and the winner will be chosen at random amongst all the entries. As a rule, I'd like there to be at least 10 entrants. It's never fun to win a contest when it's just 2 people! Plus I know there's at least 10 people on Entrecard who want those 777 credits to spend!

So start entering, tell your friends and strike it rich with The Monetizer!

I Get Money with the Travian Money Cheat

You're probably asking yourself, what is a Travian money cheat and how do I get money from it? The Monetizer had no clue what it was either, until just today. My initial thought was it must be from World of Warcraft or Webkinz. However, Travian is a popular online game developed in Germany. It involves a multiplayer setup in an ancient world around the time of the Roman Empire. You start off as a settler (either a Roman, Gaul or Teuton) in a single village and then begin to move up to the top ranks, as you build up your resources and alliances. The main objective is to be part of the first alliance to build a "level 100 Wonder of the World". It seems like a new online combination of the popular Sim City title and several other strategy games. Travian is free to join and play, and according to their current US website's stats, there's over 46,000 regular players of the online game. You can see a screenshot of the cozy Monetizer village below:



I could easily turn this into an analogy of how conquering the online Travian game is like conquering the make money online world. The real point here is that the search term came up 4th when I researched the word "money" on Wordtracker. It's a tool I've been using a lot more lately to help me create new SEO-targeted blog posts elsewhere. You type in a simple keyword like "money", and Wordtracker gives you the top related keywords people search on, plus the estimated times they are searched for each month.

Here's a look at the "money" results:

8578 money
6449 money talks
3705 i get money
1539 travian money cheat
1530 download money maker for clubpenguin
1504 free money
1275 money shot
1114 money in the bank
1100 money honey
1097 msn money
1037 50 cent i get money
1031 unclaimed money

So basically people aren't just searching for free money, but also Club Penguin money, 50 Cent's I Get Money song, the 80's pop star Eddie Money, and yes even the Travian money cheat which ranks 4th. Divide any of the numbers next to the above terms by 30 and that gives you a daily estimate of searches. So about 50 plus searches per day for the Travian money cheat, and who knows this just might end up being a result?


(Are you a Roman, Gaul or Teuton?)

Sometimes you have to get creative in your blog posting and SEO strategies, especially here in the "Make Money Online" world. SEO can be fun, so don't look at it as a chore so much. It's something I've dedicated myself more to in 2008 and am already seeing traffic increases due to search engine results. I recommend heading over to Wordtracker and searching on any keyword terms related to your blog. Work on developing blog entries that are amongst the hot keyword searches. Keep an eye on the keywords that others may not be using for blog entries. Make sure to use these keywords in your blog title and entry itself. Once Google starts indexing your blog more, and you start using internal linking to those posts, I think you'll be pleased to see your entries start showing up in the higher search results.

And if you happen to know the Travian money cheat, feel free to drop me a line! (From what I've read, there's really no such thing.)

All images courtesy of Travian.us

Review: Fast Money Stock Picks

Another way of making money online is done in the exciting world of trading stocks, bonds, and options. Many people have been able to quit their dayjobs in favor of daytrading too. The cable station that has emerged as the leader in providing the best business news and stock information, is CNBC. They've basically turned stock-trading into a sports type activity, offering shows that bring excitement into what many may consider boring. If you've ever seen Jim Cramer's Mad Money, you know how crazy it can get. Cramer uses all sorts of sound effects and even behavior such as tossing a chair around the studio to illustrate his enthusiasm.

Another helpful show that CNBC offers nightly is Fast Money. The show airs every week night at 5 PM EST and is currently hosted by Dylan Ratigan. The traders who appear on the show bring their Wall Street trading floor knowledge straight to the viewers by offering a plethora of stocks to trade so you can in effect, make money fast!

Sometimes you might miss all the picks they give on the show. There's a website available to help you with that called Fast Money Stock Picks. The site, while plain in nature, does a good job in recapping the evening's stock picks and comments presented on the CNBC show. My first observation was that the site while providing these recaps, didn't really give me a true feel for a "stock market" type website. By this I mean, the banner for the site could be better associated with money, dollars or even black and white pictures of Wall Street. This may not seem like a major point to those that argue "content is king". Banners and site design often best create an atmosphere for what the site is trying to convey. The picture on the banner made me think it was a random blog image.

Overall, the site is simple and could use a bit more in terms of navigation and design. It still does what it says by providing the nightly stock recaps. The site owner may also consider making the stock pick text titles and ticker symbols differentiated with bold, underlining, italics and other techniques. Right now the website is still young, with just 103 entries. In the About section, the author says they try to watch every show and update. So if you follow the markets, this could be a good place to subscribe to in case you've missed any picks on the CNBC Fast Money show.