Passive Income

Building passive streams of income has been somewhat of a passion of mine for the past twelve months. I have spent more hours than I care to admit researching, reading, trying and failing. I have tried writing for eHow, Bukisa, and Today dot com (biggest scam ever). I have tried article marketing via Ezinearticles, lens building with Squidoo and hubbing it up over at HubPages.

Nothing has been as exciting for me as Commission Ritual.

In the past few weeks, I have built six new niche sites. A couple target Christmas stuff, while the rest are targeting normal everyday crap that people buy. The thing I like best about the Ritual is that it focuses primarily on real products. This is actually what I thought internet marketing was when I began my journey. I never even knew informational products existed.

It is so much easier to get ranked for ‘ice cream makers’ (not my niche, btw) than it is to have to constantly battle another internet marketer in a Clickbank niche. Even relatively obscure Clickbank niches are sometimes impossible to crack into the top 10 spots of Google. Another benefit of my new strategy is that I won’t have to constantly pump out articles to maintain my rankings. One or two posts a month should be sufficient to keep traffic flowing to my sites.

So far, my results are pretty decent. Here are the rankings for my new niche sites:

1. #11
2. #11
3. #14
4. #19
5. N/A
6. N/A

As you can see, these sites are doing fine for being only a few days/weeks old. In fact, site #1 has actually produced a few sales already. Too bad this was a test niche and the commissions are so low. One thing that I have started doing is integrating Chitika ads into every new niche site. Say what you want about them, these little ads can create some serious clicks. The best part is that you can use them along with Adsense, or any other CPC type ads.

Allyn Hayne, who runs my favorite video blog, likes to say that if you put Chitika ads on an ugly blog, she becomes the prettiest girl around and really attracts the clicks. How right you are Allyn…how right you are

Well enough of my ramblings. I am off to start another new site. Did I mention I found 30 domain names in just over 2 hours that I want to buy? As soon as I catch up on the domains I got last week, I am going to grab a ton more.

By the way, if you use this link, and the code ‘geo199‘, you can buy a dot com domain name for $1.99. Pretty cool. Too bad it is limited to one per customer.

Later all.

If you have not picked up Commission Ritual yet, you can get a 7 day trial for only $4.95 by following this link!

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Twelve months ago, I started my quest to learn how to make a few bucks online. Looking back at my first couple attempts it is difficult not to laugh and wonder what I was thinking about when I decided that was a good idea. To be honest with you, up until a few short weeks ago most of my campaigns are quite pathetic (I tend to get bored rather quickly).

During this time spent online I have come to realize a few things about myself and this industry that I wanted to share with you.

Quantity beats quality ever time – While it is true that if you are trying to build a true authority site you should endeavor to create only top notch content, when building mini-sites (aka niche sites), it is better to simply pump out as many as you can, as fast as you can. How else can we accountant for the tremendous success that many of X-Factor’s students are achieving? Those little sites are popping up everywhere!

Having perfect grammar is not required to be successful – Most internet users simply skim whatever they are reading. Most readers look for bullet points that will help them solve their problems, address their issues, or entertain them from the monotony of life. They do not want to read scientific jargon that would confuse even a PhD from MIT.

Diversification is your friend – If you do not own the site where you publish your content, you risk losing it all. Take, for instance, Squidoo. After years of accepting any garbage that a writer wanted to publish, Seth decided that he wanted to clean up his site and not allow certain truly profitable niches (i.e. weight loss products). If you were in one of these now taboo niches, your lenses were frozen.

Another example would be eHow. Don’t get me wrong, I still like that site but I do not spend much time writing for them anymore. I simply do not want to waste my time writing articles for a site that will delete your article, redirect the url to one of their own articles (using the traffic that you naturally built) and then give you no explanation as to why your article was deemed unworthy. At least Today dot com came right out and told you they were scamming you!

Procrastination is a habit – During my first 10 months online, I spent 2 hours reading for every 5 minutes actually working. There are so many different techniques that truly can make you a lot of money, but if you never put those plans into action, you will have nothing to show for it. Following a few techniques outlined in Brian Johnson’s Commission Ritual, my progress has skyrocketed. Brian is the same dude that sold $22,000 worth of Halloween costumes last month. Instead of wondering what to do next, I now have a workable plan that will take me all of 2010 to complete. I have committed to avoid purchasing anything else until I make this technique profitable; which unfortunately means that I will not be promoting CPA offers anymore (which stinks because Copeac is awesome).

Ten minutes a day is not enough – If you want to actually make money online, it is crucial that you put in some serious effort. You cannot succeed if you spend more time checking your stats than you do creating content. The past two nights I have created 2 new niche sites. These babies are sweet, if I may say so myself. Each site takes about 3 to 4 hours to completely set up; from buying the domain names to publishing its first page.

My new plan is to try and create 2 new sites a week, hoping that each site will eventually earn $2 per day. After a year, this could be real life-changing income. If this does not excite you, nothing will.

At the end of one year of sacrifice, my potential earnings could be:

104 niche sites * $2 per site per day * 365 days = $$75,920

So there you have it; five things that I have learned in the past twelve months. In my naivity, I imagined myself a lot further along in my journey towards financial independence. I actually thought this stuff would be easy. I am, after all, a relatively bright and hard working individual. Unfortunately, it takes more than brains to make money. It takes a well thought out action plan, seed money (to buy domain names) and a ton of work, which does not include checking your stats.

What have you learned in the past 12 months? What steps have you taken to secure your financial freedom?

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Lately it seems as if I have created too many passive income streams for me to handle. I only get a few hours each week to work online, yet I have been buying each and every new thing that pops up. This is definitely NOT the way to increase my monthly revenue.

As such, I spent a few hours organizing my passive income streams while my son was taking his nap this afternoon. What I discovered is that I have been bouncing from one technique to another, never giving any of them a real chance to work. My income is down, my production is down and my confidence is down.

I need to get back to the basics.

For me, the most consistent income stream has always been eHow. I have a little over 100 articles published and I should actually clear $100 this month. Some people complain about the eHow sweeps. I find that whenever they do a little house cleaning, my earnings increase a bit. Works for me!

Clickbank is all over the place. Sometimes I make decent money, other times I make nothing. I can sometimes go a month without a sale and then follow that up with four sales in 24 hours. I honestly believe it has something to do with their tracking but you could never prove that.

My Squidoo earnings are absolutely pathetic, although I do manage to make a sale or two every now from a OWM campaign or two. If you are trying to learn how to effectively use Squidoo to make some extra money for Christmas, Jackie, from Beginner’s Internet Marketing, has some really effective ideas. I printed out one of her mindmaps which has really helped me organize a few campaigns.

Finally, my niche sites are quite simply a waste of space. I bought a few domain names that have a ton of potential but the subjects BORE ME TO TEARS. I will never finish these, but at least it taught me to only do things that I like instead of thinking only about their potential.

Passive income is a tremendous way to plan for the future. It is, however, really easy to get distracted. Instead of trying to do everything at once, start slowly and build a little bit each day.

Now, I just need to follow my own advice!

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