The Joy Of Making Extra Income From Home
With all the worries these days about jobs and redundancies, and the general state of the economy, one of the best things you can do to help yourself or your family is to start building some extra income. There are no genuine 'get rich quick schemes' unfortunately, and anybody who tells you there is should be viewed with a degree of suspicion. That is not to say there's no way of making genuine and meaningful amounts of money online working from home.
I got made redundant a few years ago and turned to the internet as I didn't want to go jumping through all the hoops in interviews only to be rejected because I'm too old, too young, too experienced, not experienced enough, etc. You can insert your own excuse; I'm sure you've heard a few of your own!
My first port of call was right here on this site, at Squidoo, and I still make a nice steady monthly income here. There are other platforms too, which allow you to create compelling content about subjects you have a passion about, and then share in the income that content produces. There is also the option of not sharing the money, and building your own websites. In this article, I want to share with you some of the options, and tools available to help you make more than just a few cents a month.
I'll disclose that I'm lazy but still manage an easy three-figure monthly amount. It should probably be four or five-figure earnings per month, but like I said, I'm lazy. Having said that, the ability to get consistently into three figures means all you need to do is 'scale up': build more lenses on Squidoo, build more websites, promote them more eagerly.
Full disclosure: The tools I discuss here are ones I use myself, and have done so for some time - spanning several years for some and several months others. I use them because they work for me. When I link to them, I use affiliate links, which means I benefit (and can sometimes offer you a discount) if you decide there's value in the tools and sign yourself up. I would urge you similarly to sign up for the affiliate programs of these sites, to help increase your diversification of income streams.
Okay, let's dive into the tools and see how you can start making more money online today.
I got made redundant a few years ago and turned to the internet as I didn't want to go jumping through all the hoops in interviews only to be rejected because I'm too old, too young, too experienced, not experienced enough, etc. You can insert your own excuse; I'm sure you've heard a few of your own!
My first port of call was right here on this site, at Squidoo, and I still make a nice steady monthly income here. There are other platforms too, which allow you to create compelling content about subjects you have a passion about, and then share in the income that content produces. There is also the option of not sharing the money, and building your own websites. In this article, I want to share with you some of the options, and tools available to help you make more than just a few cents a month.
I'll disclose that I'm lazy but still manage an easy three-figure monthly amount. It should probably be four or five-figure earnings per month, but like I said, I'm lazy. Having said that, the ability to get consistently into three figures means all you need to do is 'scale up': build more lenses on Squidoo, build more websites, promote them more eagerly.
Full disclosure: The tools I discuss here are ones I use myself, and have done so for some time - spanning several years for some and several months others. I use them because they work for me. When I link to them, I use affiliate links, which means I benefit (and can sometimes offer you a discount) if you decide there's value in the tools and sign yourself up. I would urge you similarly to sign up for the affiliate programs of these sites, to help increase your diversification of income streams.
Okay, let's dive into the tools and see how you can start making more money online today.
Start Off Squeezy
It's Easy With Squidoo
As I mentioned above, my first foray into making money online was to start creating lenses here at Squidoo. The great thing about Squidoo is that it is free to join and you don't have to worry about all those initial setup costs and hassles, which are part and parcel of building your own sites (eg domain name registration, finding reliable hosting, joining Adsense and other affiliate programs, etc).In fact all you do is go to www.squidoo.com and click on "Join for free!" You will need to set up an account, which is quick and painless, and then you are able to immediately start building your first lens. So make sure you have an idea for a page you want to create before you go to the sign up process.
My advice then is to keep building. Build more and more lenses until you have a ton of them. Think about aiming for one of the Giant Squid levels. In the beginning try not to get too fixated on how much money you will make. It does take time - I told you this is not a 'get rich quick scheme' - and the cream will float to the top. So make sure you create really compelling, entertaining, educational and thought-provoking lenses. And like I said - LOTS of 'em.
You can read more about the earnings aspects of Squidoo below, in the section called "Make Money On Squidoo". But first let's take a quick look at creating content to construct your lenses around, which should do very well in the medium to long term, along with a couple of tools I use.
Top Tips On Content Creation
Be Yourself, Not Somebody Else (And Focus On Your Readers!)
- Be Yourself - if you write about things that you are interested in, rather than things which you think make the most money, then you will head in the right direction. Often, the high value topics are crawling with thousands of internet marketers, each employing different methods to try and beat the competition. Sometimes, the methods used can be fairly vindictive, but only if you manage to get your material into the top spots in Google Search - which you won't if you go for super competitive topics!
- Don't Be Somebody Else - once you have a nice topic, which you enjoy, write about it in your own words! Do not start stealing other people's work. It's called plagiarism, and people get very upset about it, understandably. They will not rest until you have removed their content from your pages, or they'll get somebody else to do it for them. This might mean Squidoo closing your account, or Google deindexing your site, or if legal action is threatened, your own website might be shut down by your hosting company. Write your own words!
- Focus On Your Readers - you will hear a lot mentioned about keywords, and keyword density, but to a degree, there's no need to obsess about these. Don't misunderstand me, keywords are important. Very important. But you still want to make sure you are writing high quality content for your readers; not just cramming the same keyword phrase into a webpage or Squidoo lens to try and tell Google's search algorithm what you are writing about. It's an exceedingly clever algorithm, and it'll already know what your page is about if you use your keyword just once or twice. So just write naturally, and you will find that your keyword, and a healthy selection of related phrases will weave their way into your story.
If you focus your efforts on writing interesting, unique content which you are passionate about, and you entertain people, or solve their problems using your own experiences, you will be onto a winner. Let's take a look at how to find good keywords to think about, once you have picked your general subject area.
Tools For Keyword Research
Google Adwords Keyword Tool & Keyword Strategy
During the summer, the folks at Google removed access to CPC data both for people using the free tool, and for developers using the paid Google-feed data, unless they were using it for legitimate Adwords campaigns. This was a real pain, but of course, Google were within their rights to do so. They are a business after all!
These days, all you can expect using the tool is popularity of keywords. So you type in your keyword or keyword phrase, fill in the CAPTCHA and search. Make sure your settings are set to [Exact] rather than Broad, and you will get the number of people searching for that phrase. It's useful data, as you can expect to get about 40% of that number to your page if it gets to number one in Google Search.
To keep getting at least a little estimated data for CPC, there are services around, but I don't use any single one. What I use is an all-encompassing keyword database offering called Keyword Strategy, which provides CPC data as well as a host of other useful stuff.
Keyword Strategy
Discover | Manage | Filter | Track | Take Action on Keywords
Keyword Strategy is a keyword management database that was developed by Fraser Cain to keep tabs on all his keywords on his premier website Universe Today. Having built a site with tens of thousands of pages, he needed some way of tracking the keywords and the rankings in search engines. During 2011 he opened this management tool to the public, and I have been using it for about six months. It is a godsend. It has helped me ditch dozens of separate spreadsheets which contained all my keywords for the many websites I run, and it allows me to plan my articles by grabbing keywords, finding out searcher volumes, CPCs and a range of other useful data.It is also possible to group keywords in order to use a good selection for SEO purposes, rather than the old-fashioned - and oft frowned-upon - practise of keyword stuffing.
The Keyword Strategy Plugin
For Internal Linking On Your Website
If - like me - you also run a bunch of websites as well as writing on Squidoo, there are several tools available to you via the Keyword Strategy Database Manager. The first really useful and time-saving tool is the Internal Linking plugin. We all know how important it is on Squidoo to link your related lenses together. This means visitors can stay within your own small set of lenses and read information, going from one lens to the next. It also creates internal links, which is a very helpful SEO tactic to employ.
This is also true for your own websites. You obviously want people to stay on your site, because the longer they stay, the better chance you have of them performing an action you want, whether that is a sale, or a click on an affiliate link, or even an email sign-up. What you certainly don't want is for the visitor to show up, not find what they were looking for, and click the Back button on their browser. So offer them a place to go at the end of your article (on your website) or your lens (here at Squidoo) - somewhere that you get a second chance to offer them the information they are looking for.
This is also true for your own websites. You obviously want people to stay on your site, because the longer they stay, the better chance you have of them performing an action you want, whether that is a sale, or a click on an affiliate link, or even an email sign-up. What you certainly don't want is for the visitor to show up, not find what they were looking for, and click the Back button on their browser. So offer them a place to go at the end of your article (on your website) or your lens (here at Squidoo) - somewhere that you get a second chance to offer them the information they are looking for.
The Keyword Strategy Tool
Supercharging Your Website
So the Keyword Strategy Tool is primarily for use managing keywords on your own sites, because you install the plugin, and it will import data straight to the tool, and match up URLs to likely keywords. It will allow you to find new keywords and associated data, and then you can manually link one of your URLs to what you think is the best keyword or keyword group. Remember though that this is a tool meant for huge websites, and so its real usefulness materialises when your site gets big enough that you start to lose track of things manually. For this reason, in the early days, it is recommended that you let the tool assign URLs and keywords automatically.
The data you will be able to get access to on the main Tool are shown above: you will see Keyword and URL on your site (I have blanked these out for my website that I recently set up), Monthly Visitor estimates for that keyword, Actual Visits to your URL, Ranking in Google, the number of Competitor pages targetting the keyword, the KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index), number of Internal Links, number of Backlinks, Tags and Groups (which you can define yourself, to bunch sets of related keywords into 'families') and the CPC data.
There are literally tons of features available with this Database Management Tool, too many to mention here, but you can go over there and take a look at the Features Page to see if that is something you would like to help you with your own website.
There is also a whole array of helpful video tutorials to show you the features and how to use them to boost your website. These Tutorial Videos cover everything you need to get started using the tool.
The best part about it is that you can hook up a website and get started Free Of Charge on the 30-day trial. If you still think there's no value in it after that, you don't have to pay a cent. Just unhook your site and kiss it goodbye! At least you took the trial, so you won't be left wondering what it's all about.
Take the Free 30-Day Trial and you'll see why I love this tool so much. I'm sure you will too.
The Keyword Academy
This Is Your "What To Do Next"
Now that you have a vague idea of the subject area you want to write about, and you know the rules about how to write great content, what's the next step? Well, obviously, you need to get busy and start writing that content, whether it's on your own website (or websites), or on Squidoo. But there is another tool that I use to help me stitch all the pieces together to try and make sure that what I write is going to be successful. That tool is called The Keyword Academy.
I have been a member of The Keyword Academy - TKA - for well over two years (as I write this article) and it allowed me to take my monthly online earnings from just a few dollars (including Squidoo and Triond) to several hundreds of dollars. But remember what I said in my intro above; I'm fairly work-shy and didn't apply myself or the TKA system in a constant, pushy sort of way. I was sporadic with it. I so wish I had just worked a couple of hours EVERY day, and my income would be in the multiple thousands per month now - like an awful lot of the other members over there!
But I'm sure you are not bone idle like me. You'll go ahead and do the work, grinding out new, fresh, intriguing and engaging content, every single day! But you'll probably be asking, "What's TKA all about? What's in it for me? How can I use it to make massive increases in my earnings from my sites or my Squidoo lenses?"
I have been a member of The Keyword Academy - TKA - for well over two years (as I write this article) and it allowed me to take my monthly online earnings from just a few dollars (including Squidoo and Triond) to several hundreds of dollars. But remember what I said in my intro above; I'm fairly work-shy and didn't apply myself or the TKA system in a constant, pushy sort of way. I was sporadic with it. I so wish I had just worked a couple of hours EVERY day, and my income would be in the multiple thousands per month now - like an awful lot of the other members over there!
But I'm sure you are not bone idle like me. You'll go ahead and do the work, grinding out new, fresh, intriguing and engaging content, every single day! But you'll probably be asking, "What's TKA all about? What's in it for me? How can I use it to make massive increases in my earnings from my sites or my Squidoo lenses?"
TKA Benefits
Or, What You Get When You Join The Keyword Academy
The first thing you get when you join The Keyword Academy is the Core Materials Ebook. It is in the membership area on the TKA site - rather than being an emailed pdf file, but that's fine. There is a LOT of information here to digest, including lessons on 'Keyword Discovery And Organization' (which fits nicely with the Keyword Strategy Tool I mentioned above); 'Writing Content For Your Website'; 'Setting Up Your Website'; 'Promoting Your Website'; and 'Monetization'.
When I first started out, I was actually terrified of the idea of setting up my own websites, as I didn't know anything about domain name registration, or buying hosting, or using cPanel. It's a piece of cake now, and in my case, that is thanks entirely to TKA and their lessons showing how to do the whole thing, including which plugins to use for optimized SEO and site speed etc.
Are you afraid to go it alone? Setting up your own websites? It does not mean giving up on Squidoo. I always like diversified income streams, so I'll always use Squidoo - but it's nice to know I also have online 'properties' where ALL the earnings are mine, instead of sharing it. So, if you want to ditch the fear, and start building out your own online portfolio with one or two of your own sites, maybe TKA is worth taking a look at.
Once again, The Keyword Academy has a no quibble 30-Day Free Access option, so you can snoop at literally ALL of their material for a month without paying a cent, and then you can leave if you don't like it. I thought about doing that in August 2009, and well, I'm obviously still there.
And I'll tell you why...
Why I Never Left TKA After The Free Trial
The Priceless Benefits Of TKA
- The Owners - the guys who set up TKA - Courtney Tuttle and Mark Butler - stood out above a lot of the garbage that was around at the time I joined. Plus I was reading other top 'no nonsense' blogs about making money online (MMO), by successful experts like Vic Franqui and Griz who both seemed to agree that Court was a real stand up guy who knew what he was talking about. As time passed by, Court went off to do his own thing and Mark continued to run and evolve TKA into what it is today. But happily, in the last week or so (as I write) Court has made a reappearance, and is active on the forums. Court was the one who tried and tested and experimented on all things SEO and MMO, and was transparent enough to report his findings to the community. For example, in a forum thread he started this week, he discusses his '100 Hubpages In 30 Days' experiment results. He reports earning $14,647 in the time since that experiment, with $208 in earnings in the last month. Remember, he did this work over a 30-day period 3 years ago, and never touched these hubs or backlinked them ever again! Not bad for a month's work, huh? (You can read the thread on the inside!)
- The Community - like any online community, there is a lot of support to be had by interracting with others in the same boat. For people trying to make some extra cash online, often it can be a bit boring and lonely, but with the TKA Forums, there's always a place to go to touch base with other like-minded people. Many are beginners, with no earnings at all from the internet; in fact a lot of them never even found the free platforms like Squidoo. Then there are people like me; the scatter-brained sporadic members who know the system works, and kind of have a go, but never really build up huge momentum - we still make hundreds of bucks a month, every month. And then, there are the serious workaholic pros; the resident experts who coin in $10,000, $15,000, and even $20,000 per month doing this. Many of them offer their experiences and advice for free on the forum, on topics as diverse as setting up in eCommerce, or how to kill it with Amazon sites, etc. Huge talent pool of people over on the forum, and it's one of my favorite places on the internet - but be careful, it's also a time sink!
- Webinars - every month there are live webinars, which range from general Q&A about all things involved in making money online and how to make our web properties successful; to new content webinars discussing best business practices, for example, how best to promote and market your website, and the ins and outs of getting email signups and building a list using AWeber or MailChimp. There are also webinars where TKA members' websites are openly reviewed and critiqued, to help the owners make more money from them; and also in the pipeline is 'guest spot' webinars where Mark interviews or co-hosts with one of those ultra-high earners, to get other perspectives on internet marketing, or eCommerce, etc. If you can't make the live webinars (the times vary to accommodate US and non-US members) then they are made available for download within a couple of days.
- Postrunner - this is now the only tool offered by The Keyword Academy, but it is worth the regular monthly subscription price alone! It is a kind of cyber-Cupid, which acts as a matchmaker between authors who want to get their work posted on a good website to gain some important exposure, and website owners who are happy to accept some fresh, new and excellent material on their site. As an author, you can add a bio with a link back to your page, lens or website, but be under no illusion: these websites in Postrunner - there's about 2000 of them - are real websites, run by real owners. They are not dodgy link farms where you get to drop sub-standard, scraped content onto a site in return for a link. Rather, the Postrunner site owners have very high standards, and review all the submissions to their site; if you write garbage, the owner rejects it. If you scrape (aka steal) other people's content and try to post it, the system will catch it, and you'll be banned from using the tool. Simple. This is just a less time-intensive version of going to find a high authority site in your niche, building a relationship with the owner over a few months, gaining trust of that owner, and then asking if you can write a guest post for their site. Boy oh boy, it had better be a high quality article, or you just blew it! But used in this sense, with original high quality and unique content, Postrunner is fantastic for getting better exposure for - and visits to - your site! Worth the TKA price, so worth it!
If you want to:
- get involved in a thriving and highly innovative online money maker community
- learn about wider aspects to develop a broader understanding of how to succeed with Adsense, Amazon, Email Lists, and eCommerce stores
- maximize your site's or Squidoo lens' exposure using Postrunner
Then here's the link again to Sign Up for The Keyword Academy.
Make Money On Squidoo
How Does It Work?
Here is a quick list of awesome lenses which demystify the process of making money on Squidoo.
- Top 10 ways to make money on Squidoo - discusses the methods employed by the Squidoo platform itself for generating revenues which are shared between Squidoo and you, the Lensmaster
- How To Earn Money On Squidoo - shows you a few other methods of making money, using external affiliate companies (which you can also use for making sales using your own websites)
- Squidoo Payday Q&A - a veritable goldmine of information and historical data about Squidoo's Pay Tiers, showing you how much money you are likely to earn, and how
Some Money Maker Reading
Helping You Keep Your Money Making Mindset
We all have to walk away from the computer at some point, to take a break from pounding the keyboard, and rest our eyes on something else. But instead of reaching for the remote and watching TV, try out one of these game changing books, mentally uplifting and hopefully inspiring enough to get you back to work with renewed vigor! They always work for me, anyway.
Other Money Maker Platforms
Make Some Extra Income For Yourself With These
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