This month (this year, actually) has been off to a great start. Since returning from vacation less than 2 weeks ago, I’ve written 3 guest posts (2 are coming soon!) and started 2 new made for eBay websites. This is all in addition to being a full time grad student and full time IT guy!

Needless to say, I’ve been up late doing all kinds of research for class and working on websites that could help me make some money in the long run. I decided to go ahead and work on these 2 new sites because my first 2 websites have been working well for me so far. Nothing stellar considering that I haven’t spent more than $15 on advertising, but enough to make me want to make more websites. If things work out for these 2 new websites and my extrapolations and calculations go as planned, I could stand to make between $300 or more per month without spending a dime on advertising. I know that’s not retirement money, but it certainly is enough money that I could splurge on some geek things like a new monitor or some fancy website reviews or maybe even go to a blogger conference one of these days.

If things proceed as planned, I will of course spend money on advertising in the hopes of getting more visitors to my sites. As we all know, “traffic is the new gold” so the more people visit my sites the more chances I have that they’ll like what they see and will buy something.

I’m sure you’re wondering how I am making my money on eBay, and I’m going to say that I’ve already told you how I do it. In case you missed class that day (shame on you! Sign up for the RSS feed!), here’s a link to my previous post about making money with eBay. I’m sticking to my plan and the plan is panning out so far. I will continue to work on the SEO of my websites and hope that they get more and more organic traffic each day.

Sign up to my RSS feed and stay tuned!

When it comes to launching a new website, there is nothing more frustrating to me than a lack of visitors.  I work hard on content and the creation of the site and to see a site receive little to no traffic feels like a slap to the face.  This site has been one of my better attempts at online marketing but I am nowhere near my goal of 250 visitors per day.

In the past, I have tried several things in order to bring in traffic to my websites and these strategies included, but were not limited to: writing articles for article repositories, placing links on directories, placing ads on Google with Adwords, telling my friends, putting out flyers, announcing the new site on web boards, and using social bookmarking sites like Technorati, Digg, Reddit, and Stumbleupon.

Out of all of those things, one has worked better than most of the other ones combined, and that is the use of social bookmarking websites.  The problem with the other methods (with the exception of Adwords) is that you get visitors who aren’t necessarily interested in your product or website.  They’ll visit your site because they see a catchy title or because they want to support a friend, or frankly, because they’re bored.  Since launching this site, a majority of my visitors have come from either Reddit or StumbleUpon.  These two sources have accounted for nearly 88% of my incoming traffic and have led to a few loyal (I hope) RSS subscribers.  These visitors actually have stayed on the site for a long enough time period to read a couple of articles and in my opinion, that’s a good visitor.

Reddit and StumbleUpon

Reddit and StumbeUpon are social bookmarking websites that drive traffic to a certain website as people vote for them.  The thing about relying on either of those sites is that only posting your site won’t immediately drive traffic to your site.  Sites only receive traffic if they’re voted on by other people and only the “popular” sites get a significant amount of traffic from their use.  I’m not sure exactly what makes a site popular because I’ve seen a lot of bad content reach the top of these two sites, but I think it has something to do with the ability to have others vote for your site for a small fee.  If you visit the forums at digitalpoint, you will be able to find people who are willing to vote for your site in exchange for a small fee.  I have yet to try this out as I think it’s cheating a little bit, but it may be worth a try to get your site over the tipping point once you have somewhat established yourself.  I don’t think that paying for votes is a good thing if your site is brand new, but if you already have a regular number of visitors to your site then gaining some paid momentum could be well worth the cost.

That being said, I will continue to write content that I think is good for my readers and good for my professional development.  I will keep sharing what I try to do online and hopefully we can all learn from my mistakes.  Thanks for visiting my site and vote for it if you like it! Don’t forget to sign up to my RSS feed too!

One of my mantras is that it’s better to give than to receive, so without further ado here is a list of some helpful links that I found this week:

Are You Writing with Clarity?

 The Pros and Cons of Niche Blogging

Bloglines Launches Top 1000

How I gain 6,691 RSS Readers in 1 Month

Grip Your Readers With These 7 Knock Out Opening Sentences

The Adsense Check For $132,994,97

8 Ways to Make Money Online

So there you have it, folks!  These links should provide you with enough information to last you the weekend!  Go study and share what you learned!

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a big fan of John Chow and his blog.  I’ve been a regular visitor to his site and an RSS reader for quite some time and like his reviews, his attitude, and his outlook on the Internet.  Life is pretty good for John these days…he rakes in a lot of money from his blog in addition to what he makes with his other projects (TTZ Media and who knows what else).  One of the things that I like most about John Chow’s blog are his commentaries on his daily life and his restaurant reviews.  Aside from lifestyle opinions and his sense of humor, I’m not entirely sure why his website is so popular though.

While John offers the newbie blogger a few helpful tips once in a while, it seems that a lot of posts are paid review ads, general off-topic commentary (like what he had to eat or what you’re not allowed to do on new airplanes),  or some kind of self promotion.  I don’t think any of those things are bad, really, but I do have to question the quality of the blog when it relates to his mantra, which is “I make money online by telling people how I make money online”.

Once a month he tells everyone about how much money he made with his blog, and how much money came from what strategy.  I think that this once a month post is the most worthwhile thing he writes, and now for some reason I, like thousands of others, can’t seem to tear myself away from his blog even though there’s only one loaded blog post every 30 days.

As a new blogger, I’ve realized that it’s really quite difficult to write content that all of your readers will find useful on a daily basis and I do give John a lot of credit for that.  Additionally, I know that there’s only so much one person can say on a certain topic without sounding like a broken record. His posts, although fluffy, are well written and I enjoy them to some extent but if his blog were a stock, I would sell while it’s hot.