When should you trim the fat?
For the last hour or so, I have been wading through my list of bookmarks deleting many of them.
More specifically, affiliate programs, ad networks, and ‘get paid to’ sites that were not doing any good for me to keep around. I’ve not only been deleting the bookmarks, but also trying to find out how to close my accounts and collect any outstanding payments (which I’m sure will be futile).
I've decided to slow down on making money from online ventures. I still have to pay off the bank, but I won't be going overboard from now on, trying to make money hand over fist. Really, my wife wants me to stop trying completely. I suppose I may have let this get a bit out of hand, and it really is time that I took a step back and tried to streamline everything. Seriously, doing that has many benefits. Look at it this way: some of the leading affiliate marketers say you should diversify your sources of income so that you have a more reliable cash flow. Have I ever followed the 'rules' of blogging? Huh? I have thought about this, and it's more like I'm applying the 80/20 principle to my blogging ventures. I've decided to hold on to a few programs that are really working for me. For example, NeverblueAds, Market Leverage, and PayPerPost aren’t going anywhere. In fact, they will be my main three programs. I’m only sticking with one ‘Pay Per Click’ site, and that is Pay2Surf. Other than that, not much will be remaining. I may still do some freelance gigs from Digital Point folks, but this is no longer going to be my exit to an early retirement. Frankly, I doubt I’ll live to see my ‘real’ retirement. Oh well, that’s just life. Anyway, that’s just an update and a couple thoughts on trimming the fat from my marketing tools. I have seen many blogs that like to give out a bit of ‘link love‘ every now and then, just as I did the other day. I was looking at my traffic log and noticed something interesting…the aforementioned post had been stumbled and was generating traffic. Wow…I’ve never had a stumbled post actually do what it was designed to do before! That has me wondering, should giving out linkage be a normal thing for this blog? I mean, the author of one of the posts I linked to returned the favor with a stumble, which does two things: 1) give my post more traffic and 2) gives his post more traffic from my site. In business, we call this a win-win situation. If you are not doing this, why not? I believe I will be handing out links more often! Just so you know, the post came from a great site that dwells in my RSS feed reader called Gather Little By Little. It’s a very inspirational site - on several different levels! Go! Read! Stumble! Enjoy! I’m going to have to apologize in advance for this. It may sound more like I’m ranting, but I’m just so stressed out and I just had a disheartening realization. My blogging and trying to make money is doing nothing to help my family. Nothing. I would like to thank Bank of America for causing my bank to go into overdraft over $160 because of the ORDER in which they process items, and because their online banking window can still show a positive balance while in reality, behind the scenes, they are considering you to be overdrawn and NOT telling you about it (yes, I saved the conversations with their ’support’ that prove my statements). This year I’ve made a fair amount of money with my blogging but have been forced to spend almost all of it on either fuel or food/drinks (mostly drinks) related to working my ‘real’ job which only pays $12.00 per hour. When you add the fact that now I apparently owe the bank money and cannot access the balance in my PayPal account any other way (yes, I just recently applied for their debit card), it’s hard to use the ‘extra money’ that is there. I have two kids. A couple of weeks ago, my son got sick and had to go to the hospital. I make too much money for CHIPS, and I can’t afford insurance, so it put us in a bind. We have sold just about every book, CD, video game, etc. that we can get our hands on to try to make enough money for food and gas. And yes, I’ve tried discussing cutting spending on things before. Since I have ZERO control of the cashflow around here, I am pretty much just written off or ignored outright. It makes people mad to hear what I have to say about the money because ‘I have no idea what goes on and how the bills work, and I shouldn’t worry about it.’ Blogging, for me, has become something I love to do because I have some kind of creative control over it. You know, since I sold my guitars. And, I know that I can make a little bit of spending money with it, even if it all gets spent on necessities. Blogging helps me blow off a bit of steam. I enjoy being creative and getting paid for it. In truth though, it really isn’t helping our situation any. I’m learning a lot reading other blogs, but in reality I’m not making enough money with it to actually help. Well, I am, but it is being spent on other, more pressing things, so I can’t save any of it. It looks like I will reach that $500 goal for the year, but the laptop I was planning on getting will probably not be happening. Until it does, I’ll be blogging live from the abnormally hot garage. I keep jokingly telling myself that ‘one day, my blogs will take off and I’ll make a decent supplemental income with them’. I’ve always been a bit naive, and I’m thinking that this is just another in a long series of stupid ideas that I will not be giving up any time soon because I believe I can do it. I need to go back to college. I can’t, because I don’t have the time or money at the same time. Mostly, I don’t have the time. I can get the money. Grants will cover everything. But I also work a 12 hour night shift, and being a truck driver, I MUST be rested to safely do my job. Meh. Some days I just hate being me. I just checked out this comment that was pending and thought I should pass it along, just not in comment form (for spammers do not deserve backlinks). how to trade commodities… Cool Beans. After reading your blog I now understand “trade currency”. Thank For the great post!… Thanks! I had no idea that I was even discussion currency trading, but now that you mention it, I’m glad you learned something! And now, lesson number two: in my Terms of Service document (which can be found on my desktop for those so eager to look), it clearly states that any irrelevant comments that are left with the intent to spam, with or without approval, will be hit with a $50 fine per comment. Time to pay up, buddy. That’s right, I know who you are… If you aren’t familiar with the name IZEA, you need to pay attention for the next couple of minutes. If you are familiar with IZEA and their resources for blog marketing and making big bucks but aren’t using their services, you need to seriously rethink your position and get with the program. The fact is, IZEA’s programs are great for helping you make money blogging. After all, that’s what you are trying to do, isn’t it? The two main programs offered by IZEA are SocialSpark and PayPerPost. I am a member of both of these services, although I’ve yet to fully explore SocialSpark. I do know of many folks making pretty good money with it. My area of expertise would have to be PayPerPost. For those that don’t know, PayPerPost is a service that you can sign up for, get your blog approved, and start making money by making your original posts about topics that you can choose from (which are based on your blog rankings, etc.). The great thing is that you can submit multiple blogs (after successfully completing 10 posts) and that will give you more specific control of posts related to your niche. Not only that, if you have a blog with a higher Google Page Rank, you can make more money per post. I believe SocialSpark has the same basic feature, but they tend to be more of a ’social network’ for bloggers. If you haven’t joined PayPerPost yet, you should. In fact, I’m going to make this easy. There’s an ad in the sidebar for them that will take you directly to the signup page. Also, they have another feature you should know about, called ‘Review My Post’. Basically, a new user can use that feature (as seen below) to sign up and get paid to review the post that the link was clicked from…which means you get to select which post you review first! PayPerPost has been my best money making program so far. I guarantee that if you are a halfway decent blogger and have the motivation to do the job, you will make good money from IZEA’s programs. This is a sponsored post, but I do love IZEA!
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Getting Stumbled is a Good Thing
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Blogging As a Method of Stress Relief
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Comment Spammers
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IZEA - You Do Want To Make Money, Right?
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