Another month has gone by and I have learned more about internet marketing.
While I am still formulating methods, best practices, and ideas, I have picked up on the fact that internet marketing is really an everyday task.  You shouldn’t do it once and forget about it, not even for a few weeks.
For starters, I decided to spend about $40 in SEM this month and it gave me some interesting data to analyze.  Firstly, I need to congratulate myself on my advertisement writing ability.  I feel that I got pretty good CTR’s for an amateur.  These $40 brought in roughly 200 new visitors meaning I paid about 20 cents per visitors.  In all, this particular site had approximately 850 visitors for the month of October and it brought in a paltry $35 this month.  In comparison, this same site brought in $105 last month without any SEM efforts which leads me to my conclusion: SEM is not the “end-all, be-all” of advertising.  I do think that the additional visitors will turn in to a few long term customers, but my money could have been better spent doing link and website development.

For November, I am going to work on placing better in the search engines and try my best to learn how things work around these Internets.  Hopefully I can write in a month stating that my $35 has grown and multiplied!

To all of you that have kept coming back to check my site once in a while: a great and many thanks!

To those of you who may be here for the first time – welcome!

Since my last post in April, I’ve been on the move both litteraly and figuratively.  I’ve finished school, moved to another state, got a house, a new job, and a lot of other things. One thing has not changed though, and that is that I am still trying to find the best ways to make money online.

While I’m still not rich and probably won’t be for a long time, I have created a new realistic goal for myself: to make $1,000 per month in passive online income.  I think that if I can set up shop and make $1,000 a month while doing nothing, I can use that money to grow and set my sights higher.

Where am I now?

I am still far from my goal.  I am currently averagining about $125 per month in completely passive income.  I’ve built a few websites and haven’t really touched them since building them and I’m earning $125 per month from them with very minimal upkeep.

What can you learn here?

No, I am not going to promise you great wealth.  I am not even necessarily going to share with you any of my websites.  However, I will talk to you about strategies that you can use to make money online.  The web is a big place.  There is a LOT of money out there.  All you have to do is reach up and grab your share.  I’m still learning to reach out and I hope you keep coming back to learn how to reach with me.

Google today announced a joint partnership with multi-billionaire Richard Branson. This joint venture will take Google and hundreds of selected applicants on a new adventure to be “the first permanent human colony on Mars”. Watch the video below to find out how to enter:

Following this short video, Virgle applicants need to pass a 15-question multiple choice personality test.

If you do well on the test, you’ll be presented with a link to submit your application video. Good luck!

Gyutae Park from Winning the Web is probably one of the most prominent “up and coming” bloggers around.  Since October of last year, he has made quite a name for himself and his blog by getting users through the use of contests and giveaways.

The present seems to paint a good reflection of the past for Gyutae as he is running, in my opinion, the most insane, well organized, and well thought out contest around.  Gyutae is surely to be a huge winner from this contest.  He’s rounded up over $13,000 dollars in prizes and sponsorships and he will give it all away on April 2.

Here’s a small sample of prizes that he’ll be giving away:

• Cash: A crazy amount of cash.  Ranging from $50 up to $650 from different sponsors!
• Gadgets: An iPod touch, at that!
• Special memberships to places like SEOmoz, SEOBook, and more.
• Banner designs
• Wordpress themes

Are you interested in any of these things?  I think you should be!  Gyutae is a genious and has worked hard to find sponsors so that he can give away these prizes!  Check out the official contest page and join in the fun!

A tried and true tactic to making money has been to build something from scratch and then sell it to the highest bidder once the going gets good. Just look at all of the mergers and acquisitions that go on in the business world; this should give you an idea of just how much money is potentially at stake for you. You could sell a small business to Google, for example, and net yourself $1.6 billion.

Taking the ‘real-world’ example and modifying them to something you can do in your spare time is pretty easy, conceptually. With all things, however, you are going to need to dedicate time and effort to making things work, grown, and prosper. It won’t be easy, but you can do it.

If you’ve never heard of it before, there’s a huge marketplace for websites on the internet. More than one, actually, but this post was inspired by an auction currently going on at the sitepoint marketplace.

This auction is for a premium, well established, monetized, popular website. Minimum bid: $500,000.00. Small fries need not apply. This auction caught my attention because I’ve used that site in the past. It also caught my attention because it’s being sold for at least half a million dollars.

So how can you build, market, and sell a website for a profit? The principle is easy: Build a site, build a following, then sell the site. Now, as webtrepreneurs, we all know that quite a bit of effort is required to make things work out. Starting this week, we will explore these 3 topics: how to build a website, a community, and finally, how to sell the website for a profit. Be warned: you will need to spend a few bucks to try this, but it takes money to make money.

The methods that I will teach you are tried and true; I’ve built a few sites using this plugin and the sites have already paid me back nicely. Bring a good attitude and a business spirit and get ready to jump on the online money train!

Are you interested in making money online? Then stay tuned and sign up for my RSS feed. We’ll do this step by step so that by the end of the series, you will have a website that you can build on and get it ready for sale.