Learning how to get rich is great - teaching how to get rich is better!

About The

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Sensei Ono, founder of Shinka Martial Arts, is a teacher and student of life. His passion for helping others and self improvement is the purpose behind this blog. -- "If your purpose in any way includes making the world a better place, I urge to you read, and share the knowledge."

Great Web Hosting

if you're looking for an inexpensive, affordable, reliable web hosting, startlogic is the way to go.

We're going on year 3 of having Shinka Martial Arts website up and running, and I just wanted to give a positive shout out to startlogic.

The fact that I have 100,000 TERRA BYTES of space is just astounding and amazing.  Their service has always been excellent - and their tech support (email) is top notch.  Not only do they find the cause of any glitches (which are few and far between) but they also provide details how-to-avoid-in-the-future advice.

Honestly, it is rare to find a web hosting company that, at the end of three years of hosting, doesn't have more bad than good press.  But, I'm here to tell you, its been a real treat.

I don't think people do that kind of thing enough, really.  Just praise good things.

All of our news is based off of bad things - even our TV shows seem centered around the negativity in the world.

The only good shows (ie Tony Robbins' and Oprah's shows) get cancelled to make way for more Jersey Shores.

Anyway, that's enough of a rant for today.  But yeah, if you're looking for an inexpensive, affordable, reliable web hosting, startlogic is the way to go.

Whoever is more committed

Let me tell you something:  Whoever is more committed to their ideal reality in this world, has it.

I heard an interesting story once, where a fellow was very sure that Tony Robbins didn't have any official credentials in the realm of NLP.  And, Tony knew that he did.

But the fellow on the other end was so sure that this was the case, that, when he said to call up Tony's professor - Tony got nervous, because of the passion this other fellow had for their argument.

Now, obviously, Tony knew he had graduated from this place and had his credentials, but THE PASSION OF THE OTHER PERSON STILL MADE HIM QUESTION THEM.

If you go into a negotiation and you are simply more committed to something and passionate about something than they are apathetic towards it, you win.  Plain and simple.

Use every objection as a reason to find out why they would be so foolish as to not see the awesome that is your idea, and then help them to understand.

Eventually, they will understand... if passion for the idea exceeds the person opposed to the idea's jaded apathy.

Your problems are all money making ideas.
Solutions are money.
Easy solutions are lots of money.

If you can take something that is "too hard" and do it FOR someone else...

Oprah, hi! Read my book :-)

Seriously, I think Oprah would like my book.

How the heck to GET the book to her...  well, I'll let you know.

But, Oprah, if you're reading this... well, I know you have a large amount of money, so offering to send you a free book might not exactly work as an incentive... so...  read my book and I'll donate $100 to Kiva.org.

(just let me know you read it :)

I know $100 isn't much in the Oprah scale of finances, but, that's still 4 new businesses we could help launch in an impoverished nation, and you get to read a neat book (which I honestly DO think you'd like) as a result :-)

Yay for win/win/win!

MLM reviews

Multi-level-marketing programs, or MLMs, are as diverse as businesses of any other type. There are scams, there are legitimate businesses and there are both ethical people running those examples, and unethical.

Like picking a martial arts school, you can't clump all "Karate people" into one lump, any more than you can clump all "MLM people" into one clump.

I will say this, I seem to attract MLM peoples like crazy. And, for good reason, as I am highly excitable and future oriented (their ideal)

So, I've tried Quixtar (now re-named back to Amway), Isagenix, and a few others, all with similar, lack-luster results in earnings, but, excellent results in mindset from some of the books they'd had me read (ie Rich Dad, Poor Dad)

I will say this: Everyone should try one MLM, for their excellent training, and ambitious atmosphere. Like going to the MMI, or a great martial arts school - simply being surrounded by positive people, in a positive environment with positive goals WILL affect you... positively.

The reason I suggest everyone should try at least one MLM, is because of two reasons.

1) To experience the thought of true freedom, and develop a passion for it.

Regardless if the MLM is right for you long term, it will still fuel future efforts towards that end. You have the potential for greatness, and an MLM is an excellent segue into said greatness. Understand, it could be the tool that establishes that freedom, or, it could simply be a stepping stone. Regardless, I'd say they're excellent teaching tools of leverage.

2) Their training systems. To experience the training methods of some of the better MLMs (The best I've seen is Market America's) is to experience (again) that taste of true freedom. What they teach is basically time leveraging and practicing what you preach.

Capitalizing off of pre-existing habitual activities, and monetizing what you already do. (this blog, for example, is an example of that - I give this advise for free, but, you reading it here makes me a nickel if you click on some of our lovely sponsors on your right)

What I would suggest, is not to go head-first into the first MLM you stumble across (or more likely, are invited into)

Why? Because they are basically all the same. They have different bells and whistles, and different products, and different people, but they basically start by drawing a circle, then two other circles.

SO: Find an MLM that works for YOU. What is YOUR passion? What do you love? I guarantee you there is an MLM out there waiting for you.

From water to protein powder to gas to pretty much any consumable product you could already know about, there are MLMs about them.

Heck, even Deepak Chopra has one, so why not you?

PS - There are also interesting resources, if you have an MLM that can help acellerate your progress.

Fear

Manifestation and fear are a dangerous combination.  The phrase "be careful what you wish for" is apt, though I think a more clear warning might be "be careful what you think emotionally about"

Coming to terms with this in my own life has been an interesting process.

"Keep movin' foward"
- Rocky.

TK2A Hardcover

Its interesting, how putting something into physical form increases the editing and focus behind it.

The eBook is good... but the print book is great.

Even aesthetically, a theme has been developed and its really turning out wonderful.  It should be ready this month!

Exciting to have it being put into libraries etc!!!

Outsourcing

I have been learning a tremendous amount about outsourcing, licencing and fabrication.

I'll share my findings with you soon - I'm in the process of marketing my new book AND patenting an invention!

My new Ebook is published!

Sorry I haven't posted this last little while. I've really been working on finishing up my ebook, the Key to Awesome

Support independent publishing: Buy this e-book on Lulu.

I'll have to figure out a way to put this up on the blog as a perminant link - but, in the meantime, check 'er out!

A list of multi-tier affiliates

Affiliate Income is fantastic.

The best affiliate income is multi-tier affiliate income.  What that means, is that when you sign up for these services due to the below links, they pay me.  When people sign up because of YOUR links... I MAKE MONEY (and so do you) and so on.

Usually there's a three tier limit, so, the person you told, if they told a person, I wouldn't make any money, but you still would.

The best part is, YOU DO NOT LOSE ANYTHING... WHEN I MAKE MONEY.

So, you basically get to reciprocate to the people who tell you how to make money, at no cost to you.

Win/Win/Win...Win!

So, you want a list of these amazing affiliates do you?

Very well, in nor particular order, they are:

Maximum Survey *****
Awesome.  They give you nearly $25 p/referral... and $1 p/referral for every referral they refer.  They compensate you okay for the surveys themselves, too.

Survey Savvy   ***
This site is "okay" - it depends on who you are.

Personally, I've only made about $20 in about two months.  Though that was on a single survey, as that's the only survey they've sent me in that time (except for one other one, which I didn't qualify for)

This is just my experience, though.  I don't think I'm a much sought after demographic for surveys.  You might get one every day for all I know.

Also, there's a somewhat long process of filling out free survey-like questionnaires, so that they have a personality profile with which to match you against potential surveys.

Still, its worth signing up, just to be on their list.  The paid surveys are quick and painless, and the potential to make a quick $20 is always a nice thing to find in one's inbox.

Blogvertise
I've made a whopping $7.50 on this site.  Again, though, that's off of a single blog.  That one took a whole 2 minutes to do, so I'm a huge fan of this.  It does require having a blog, and writing an article in which you mention some related products.  (I wrote about purchasing Diablo III characters)

You don't have to endorse their products, though.  You can be as harsh/negative as you want towards the product.  All they care about is the fact that you link to them to increase their SEO (so your artistic integrity isn't biased, simply your choice of subject matter)

Millionaire Mind Intensive Seminar *****
This is a life changing, awesome event, filled with multi-tier affiliate income opportunities.  Their products are fantastic, and their sales presentations very compelling.  I take Shinka Students every year, as I find it an excellent way to upgrade a student's mindset, and improve their lives!

___________________
I've also included a few others.
While these are not multi-tier, they do offer multiple levels of income.

Lulu
This site provides a fairly good commission on sales, and, also is an excellent site for you to upload any content you think would make a decent ebook.  Again, residual income.  The biggest check (at this writing) that I've gotten from my published books is $88, though, on average, its closer to about $8 p/month.  Not bad though, considering the books were already written and just sitting in my hard drive collecting bytes.

Threadless
Not a writer?  How about a funny artist?  This site is similar to Lulu, except they deal in tshirts.  Again, you can get modest commissions (I think I've gotten a few payments of $5 here 'n there, very sporadic) but if you get a shirt "published" you can make quite a bit of money.  (As yet, my ideas have been rejected, but perhaps you'll have better luck)

What people will need in 3-5 years

Innovative child-learning interfaces & games based off of this technology mixed with the 3dh (3d TV without glasses via spherically polarized screens)

Start thinking now, kids. There has to be the first "Super Mario" made by somebody.

Solar power & LEDs

One of my investing partners was looking at some of the new green technologies, including some LED plans, and I got to thinking...

What if we were able to create bright enough LEDs, or sensitive enough/efficient enough solar panels, that we were able to power those LEDs with 99% or less than the energy generated by the panels powered by the LEDs to begin with?

Is such a thing so far fetched?  A light-powered generator that powers lights?

This wouldn't so much be for local power (clearly, we have the Sun, which should be fine).

Instead, think about the space-travelling applications, or, even subterranean applications.  Places where sunlight cannot reach, where fuel/electricity is scarce.

I imagine a huge, bright dome with mirrors and solar panels and a super bright LED in the center... a power source for some large, space faring ship, or an underground living area.

Too science fiction, or possible?

"If an idea is at first not rejected, it has no future" - Albert Einstein.

Sensei Ono, Shinka Martial Arts

Intellectual Property's new Frontier

There's a trend on the internet which is pure brilliance.  Create a space, and allow people to fill it with their creative ideas, and everyone shares the profit.

Likely Ebay & Youtube were the firsts of their kind, after that, threadless & lulu became the next ones that I personally had heard about.  (the most recent, is veer)

The uprising of ideas of this nature is fantastic.  

It allows every day joes to create passive income opportunities, and people with innovative ideas to become millionaires.  

The concept is this:
Create an niche idea that would require a huge amount of content.  

Say, a collection of photos of angry people yelling; or people getting splashed by cars as they drive by.  

The more creative the better.

Next, create a portal for people to submit their content, and promise financial reimbursement when clients pay to use the images (often different costs for amounts of usage)

Next, market this portal to:
A) People who would have the content to submit
B) People who would want to purchase the content

Passive and beautiful, the archive takes care of itself.  Hire people to screen/rate/price content, and update the site as necessary.

Which begs the question:  What does the world need a lot of, that a niche of people could provide...?

Sir Ken Robinson

Lately, I've really become enamored with Sir Ken Robinson.  His way of passing on knowledge and ideas is masterful.

I first heard about him in an area that I was quite passionate about (do schools kill creativity) and now, I've become enamored once again with his new material.

I've only heard him on TED, but I plan on reading his books now, as well.

Check him out
 


  

Molecules of Energy, (Dumps continued) and a Shameless Groupon Plug

If you haven't already heard of Groupon get on that sucker asap.  Weather it be to sell, or to buy, its great!

(yeah, that's that)

So, conveniently, I was watching this TED talk, on rearranging fuel molecules.  It doesn't have any answers, but, it does pose some pretty interesting questions which aligned quite nicely with the million
dollar dump project.  I like his line about not running out of stones.  We'll continue to refine fuel sources and improve upon them.  A simplified but, accurate description of things.

I like the idea of refining things into super-things based on nature's same methods.

Million Dollar Dumps

Random concept idea.

So, y'know how in the World Wars, they'd melt down kid's metal toys and whatnot for the metal to make their guns/bombs etc?

So... what if in the future something similar happened with oil?

Those who owned the landfills... or possibly the technology required to sort said landfill into various parts (metal/plastic/organic) would make quite the fortune.

As far as I can figure, you could make a (don't freak out) flesh eating/organic material eating parasite type thing, and separate the rest with a big magnet.

Heck, the parasite might even be able to make usable soil, and then you could sift the whole thing.  100% usage of viable resources.

If not a money-making idea, an environmentally awesome one at least.

(I know this type of musing is a little off topic, but I'm curious as to your thoughts)

Sensei Ono, Shinka Martial Arts

How to make money off of good credit (somewhat passive income)

For those of us who have excellent credit, there is an interesting passive income option that's been getting some great press lately, called "Credit Card arbitrage"


What is credit card arbitrage?
Credit card arbitrage is where you take a low rate balance transfer promo offer from a credit card company and invest it in something that will hopefully give you a higher return.
How do you do it?
The beauty of this arbitrage is the simplicity.
  1. Apply for the credit card offering the 0% balance transfer/cash advance.
  2. Once approved, write a credit card cheque to yourself and deposit it into a high interest rate savings account or a GIC.
  3. Before the balance transfer offer expires (usually 1 year or more), pay back the credit card in full.
  4. Note, NEVER make any purchases with the credit card as they will charge you with regular interest.
This process will enable borrow money at 0% and keep all the interest that it generates.
Options on what to do with the money
In order for it to be called arbitrage, you need to make a profit from the deal.  However, in my opinion, guaranteed profit is the recommended route to take.
Here are some options:
  1. Place it in a high interest savings account (I love ING, myself) (note, if you decide to open up an ING account, use the "orange number" 15517875S1 and they'll give you $25 for opening a savings account!
  2. If the time line is long enough, you can place the funds into a 1 year GIC (4.5% @ PCF, 4.65% @ ICICI).
  3. You could use the money as an interest free RRSP loan.  The only issue being that you will have to make up the difference between what you owe and what you get on your tax return.  Even so, your tax return will probably not get to you in time to pay back the balance, so you would have to ensure you have cash on hand to pay back the loan in full.
  4. Placing the money into the stock market for 1 year is too risky for my blood.  However, for those of you willing to take the extra risk to put the money in the markets, go nuts!
Implications
  • For those of you who don’t know already, interest income is taxed 100% at your marginal rate.  For more info read my article about how Canadian investment taxation works.  So if your marginal rate is 40%, then 40% of your interest income/profit will be taken by the government at the end of the tax year.
  • The second biggest drawback of this strategy is the potential draw down of your credit score.  If you borrow the maximum balance on your credit card and keep the balance for a period of time, your credit score can be affected.  The solution?  Only borrow half of your credit limit eh?
blogarama - the blog directory

Great how to reference on blogging income pt5

Testing and optimization
In the beginning you won’t know which potential streams of income will work best for you.  So try everything that’s reasonable for you.  If you learn about a new potential income stream, test it for a month or two, and measure the results for yourself.  Feel free to cut streams that just aren’t working for you, and put more effort into optimizing those streams that show real promise.

A few months ago, I signed up for an account with Text Link Ads.  It took about 20 minutes.  They sell small text ads on my site, split the revenue with me 50-50, and deposit my earnings directly into my PayPal account.  This month I’ll make around $600 from them, possibly more if they sell some new ads during the month.  And it’s totally passive.  If I never tried this, I’d miss out on this easy extra income.
For many months I’ve been tweaking the Adsense ads on this site.  I tried different colors, sizes, layouts, etc.  I continue to experiment now and then, but I have a hard time beating the current layout.  It works very well for me.  Adsense doesn’t allow publishers to reveal specific CPM and CTR data, but mine are definitely above par.  They started out in the gutter though.  You can easily double or triple your Adsense revenue by converting a poor layout into a better one.  This is the main reason why during my first year of income, my traffic grew at 20% per month, but my income grew at 50% per month.  Frequent testing and optimization had a major positive impact.  Many of my tests failed, and some even made my income go down, but I’m glad I did all that testing.  If I didn’t then my Adsense income would only be a fraction of what it is now.
It’s cheap to experiment.  Every new advertising or affiliate service I’ve tried so far has been free to sign up.  Often I can add a new income stream in less than an hour and then wait a month to see how it does.  If it flops then at least I learned something.  If it does well, wonderful.  As a blogger who wants to generate income, you should always be experimenting with new income streams.  If you haven’t tried anything new in six months, you’re almost certainly missing some golden opportunities.  Every blog is different, so you need to test things for yourself to see what works for you.  Failure is impossible here — you either succeed, or you learn something.

Pick your niche, but make sure it isn’t too small
Pick a niche for your blog where you have some significant expertise, but make sure it’s a big enough niche that you can build significant traffic.  My wife runs a popular vegan web site.  She does pretty well within her niche, but it’s just not a very big niche.  On the other hand, my topic of personal development has much broader appeal.  Potentially anyone can be interested in improving themselves, and I have the flexibility to write about topics like productivity, self-discipline, relationships, spirituality, health, and more.  It’s all relevant to personal development.

Pick a niche that you’re passionate about.  I’ve written 400+ articles so far, and I still feel like I’m just getting started.  I’m not feeling burnt out at all.  I chose to build a personal development site because I’m very knowledgeable, experienced, and passionate about this subject.  I couldn’t imagine a better topic for me to write about.

Don’t pick a niche just because you think it will make you money.  I see many bloggers try to do that, and it’s almost invariably a recipe for failure.  Think about what you love most, and then find a way to make your topic appealing to a massive global audience.  Consider what will provide genuine value to your visitors.  It’s all about what you can give.

A broad enough topic creates more potential advertising partners.  If I keep writing on the same subtopic over and over, I may exhaust the supply of advertisers and hit an income ceiling.  But by writing on many different topics under the same umbrella, I widen the field of potential advertisers.  And I expand the appeal of my site at the same time.

Make it clear to your visitors what your blog/site is about.  Often I visit a blog with a clever title and tagline that reveals nothing about the site’s contents.  In that case I generally assume it’s just a personal journal and move on.  I love to be clever too, but I’ve found that clarity yields better results than cleverness.

Posting frequency and length
Bloggers have different opinions about the right posting length and frequency.  Some bloggers say it’s best to write short (250-750 word) entries and post 20x per week or more.  I’ve seen that strategy work for some, but I decided to do pretty much the opposite.  I usually aim for about 3-5 posts per week, but my posts are much longer (typically 1000-2000 words, sometimes longer than 5000 words, including the monster you’re reading right now).  That’s because rather than throwing out lots of short tips, I prefer to write more exhaustive, in-depth articles.  I find that deeper articles are better at generating links and referrals and building traffic.  It’s true that fewer people will take the time to read them, but those that do will enjoy some serious take-away value.  I don’t believe in creating disposable content just to increase page views and ad impressions.  If I’m not truly helping my visitors, I’m wasting their time.

Expenses
Blogging is dirt cheap.
I don’t spend money on advertising or promotion, so my marketing expenses are nil.  Essentially my content is my marketing.  If you like this article, you’ll probably find many more gems in the archives.

My only real expenses for this site are the hosting (I currently pay $149/month for the web server and bandwidth) and the domain name renewal ($9/year).  Nearly all of the income this site generates is profit.  This trickles down to my personal income, so of course it’s subject to income tax.  But the actual business expenses are minimal.

The reason I pay so much for hosting is simply due to my traffic.  If my traffic were much lower, I could run this site on a cheap shared hosting account.  A database-driven blog can be a real resource hog at high traffic  levels.  The same goes for online forums.  As traffic continues to increase, my hosting bill will go up too, but it will still be a tiny fraction of total income.

Perks
Depending on the nature of your blog, you may be able to enjoy some nice perks as your traffic grows.  Almost every week I get free personal development books in the mail (for potential review on this site).  Sometimes the author will send it directly; other times the publisher will ship me a batch of books.  I also receive CDs, DVDs, and other personal development products.  It’s hard to keep up sometimes (I have a queue of about two dozen books right now), but I am a voracious consumer of such products, so I do plow through them as fast as I can.  When something strikes me as worthy of mention, I do indeed write up a review to share it with my visitors.  I have very high standards though, so I review less than 10% of what I receive.  I’ve read over 700 books in this field and listened to dozens of audio programs, so I’m pretty good at filtering out the fluff.  As I’m sure you can imagine, there’s a great deal of self-help fluff out there.
My criteria for reviewing a product on this site is that it has to be original, compelling, and profound.  If it doesn’t meet these criteria, I don’t review it, even if there’s a generous affiliate program.  I’m not going to risk  abusing my relationship with my visitors just to make a quick buck.  Making money is not my main motivation for running this site.  My main motivation is to grow and to help others grow, so that always comes first.
Your blog can also gain you access to certain events.  A high-traffic blog becomes a potential media outlet, so you can actually think of yourself as a member of the press, which indeed you are.  In a few days, my wife and I will be attending a three-day seminar via a free press pass.  The regular price for these tickets is $500 per person.  I’ll be posting a full review of the seminar next week.  I’ve been to this particular seminar in 2004, so I already have high expectations for it.  Dr. Wayne Dyer will be the keynote speaker.
I’m also using the popularity of this blog to set up interviews with people I’ve always wanted to learn more about.  This is beautifully win-win because it creates value for me, my audience, and the person being interviewed.  Recently I posted an exclusive interview with multi-millionaire Marc Allen as well as a review of his latest book, and I’m lining up other interviews as well.  It isn’t hard to convince someone to do an interview in exchange for so much free exposure.

Motivation
I don’t think you’ll get very far if money is your #1 motivation for blogging.  You have to be driven by something much deeper.  Money is just frosting.  It’s the cake underneath that matters.  My cake is that I absolutely love personal development – not the phony “fast and easy” junk you see on infomercials, but real growth that makes us better human beings.  That’s my passion.  Pouring money on top of it just adds more fuel to the fire, but the fire is still there with or without the money.
What’s your passion?  What would you blog about if you were already set for life?

Blogging lifestyle
Perhaps the best part of generating income from blogging is the freedom it brings.  I work from home and set my own hours.  I write whenever I’m inspired to write (which for me is quite often).  Plus I get to spend my time doing what I love most — working on personal growth and helping others do the same.  There’s nothing I’d rather do than this.

Perhaps it’s true that 99 out of 100 people can’t make a decent living from blogging yet.  But maybe you’re among the 1 in 100 who can.
On the other hand, I can offer you a good alternative to recommend if you don’t have the technical skills to build a high-traffic, income-generating blog. Check out Build Your Own Successful Online Business for details.

Thanks again to Steve for the great content!  Go click on some of his links!  :-D

Great how to reference on blogging income pt4

Will putting ads on your site hurt your traffic?
Here’s a common fear I hear from people who are considering monetizing their web sites:
Putting ads on my site will cripple my traffic.  The ads will drive people away, and they’ll never come back.

Well, in my experience this is absolutely, positively, and otherwise completely and totally… FALSE.  It’s just not true.  Guess what happened to my traffic when I put ads on my site.  Nothing.  Guess what happened to my traffic when I put up more ads and donation links.  Nothing.  I could detect no net effect on my traffic whatsoever.  Traffic continued increasing at the same rate it did before there were ads on my site.  In fact, it might have even helped me a little, since some bloggers actually linked to my site just to point out that they didn’t like my ad layout.  I’ll leave it up to you to form your own theories about this.  It’s probably because there’s so much advertising online already that even though some people will complain when a free site puts up ads, if they value the content, they’ll still come back, regardless of what they say publicly.

Most mature people understand it’s reasonable for a blogger to earn income from his/her work.  I think I’m lucky in that my audience tends to be very mature — immature people generally aren’t interested in personal development.  To create an article like this takes serious effort, not to mention the hard-earned experience that’s required to write it.  This article alone took me over 15 hours of writing and editing.  I think it’s perfectly reasonable to earn an income from such work.  If you get no value from it, you don’t pay anything.  What could be more fair than that?  The more income this blog generates, the more I can put into it.  For example, I used some of the income to buy podcasting equipment and added a podcast to the site.  I’ve recorded 13 episodes so far.  The podcasts are all ad-free.  I’m also planning to add some additional services  to this site in the years ahead.  More income = better service.

At the time of this writing, my site is very ad-heavy.  Some people point this out to me as if I’m not aware of it:  “You know, Steve.  Your web site seems to contain an awful lot of ads.”  Of course I’m aware of it.  I’m the one who put the ads there.  There’s a reason I have this configuration of ads.  They’re effective!  People keep clicking on them.  If they weren’t effective, I’d remove them right away and try something else.
I do avoid putting up ads that I personally find annoying when I see them on other sites, including pop-ups and interstitials (stuff that flies across your screen).  Even though they’d make me more money, in my opinion they degrade the visitor experience too much.
I also provide two ad-free outlets, so if you really don’t like ads, you can actually read my content without ads.  First, I provide a full-text RSS feed, and at least for now it’s ad-free.  I do, however, include a donation request in the bottom of my feeds.
If you want to see some actual traffic data, take a look at the 2005 traffic growth chart.  I first put ads on the site in February 2005, and although the chart doesn’t cover pre-February traffic growth, the growth rate was very similar before then.  For an independent source, you can also look at my traffic chart on Alexa.  You can select different Range options to go further back in time.

Multiple streams of income
You don’t need to put all your eggs in one basket.  Think multiple streams of income.  On this site I actually have six different streams of income.  Can you count them all?  Here’s a list:
  1. Google Adsense ads (pay per click and pay per impression advertising)
  2. Donations (via PayPal or snail mail — yes, some people do mail a check)
  3. Text Link Ads (sold for a fixed amount per month)
  4. Chitika eMiniMalls ads (pay per click)
  5. Affiliate programs like Amazon and LinkShare (commission on products sold, mostly books)
  6. Advertising sold to individual advertisers (three-month campaigns or longer)
Note:  If you’re reading this article a while after its original publication date, then this list is likely to change.  I frequently experiment with different streams.
Adsense is my biggest single source of income, but some of the others do pretty well too.  Every stream generates more than $100/month.

My second biggest income stream is actually donations.  My average donation is about $10, and I’ve received a number of $100 donations too.  It only took me about an hour to set this up via PayPal.  So even if your content is free like mine, give your visitors a means to voluntarily contribute if they wish.  It’s win-win.  I’m very grateful for the visitor support.  It’s a nice form of feedback too, since I notice that certain articles produced a surge in donations — this tells me I’m hitting the mark and giving people genuine value.
These aren’t my only streams of income though.  I’ve been earning income online since 1995.  With my computer games business, I have direct sales, royalty income, some advertising income, affiliate income, and donations (from the free articles).  And if you throw in my wife’s streams of income, it gets really ridiculous:  advertising, direct book sales, book sales through distributors, web consulting, affiliate income, more Adsense income, and probably a few sources I forgot.  Suffice it to say we receive a lot of paychecks.  Some of them are small, but they add up.  It’s also extremely low risk — if one source of income dries up, we just expand existing sources or create new ones.  I encourage you to think of your blog as a potential outlet for multiple streams of income too.

Automated income
With the exception of #6, all of these income sources are fully automated.  I don’t have to do anything to maintain them except deposit checks, and in most cases I don’t even have to do that because the money is automatically deposited to my bank account.
I love automated income.  With this blog I currently have no sales, no employees, no products, no inventory, no credit card processing, no fraud, and no customers.  And yet I’m still able to generate a reasonable (and growing) income.

Why get a regular job and trade your time for money when you can let technology do all that work for you?  Imagine how it would feel to wake up each morning, go to your computer, and check how much money you made while you were sleeping.  It’s a really nice situation to be in.

Blogging software and hardware
I use WordPress for this blog, and I highly recommend it.  Wordpress has lots of features and a solid interface.  And you can’t beat its price — free.
The rest of this site is custom-coded HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL.  I’m a programmer, so I coded it all myself.  I could have just as easily used an existing template, but I wanted a simple straightforward design for this site, and I wanted the look of the blog to match the rest of the site.  Plus I use PHP and MySQL to do some creative things outside the blog, like the Million Dollar Experiment.

I don’t recommend using a hosted service like Blogger if you want to seriously monetize your blog.  You don’t get enough control.  If you don’t have your own URL, you’re tying yourself to a service you don’t own and building up someone else’s asset.  You want to build page rank and links for your own URL, not someone else’s.  Plus you want sufficient control over the layout and design of your site, so you can jump on any opportunities that require low-level changes.  If you use a hosted blog, you’re at the mercy of the hosting service, and that puts the future of any income streams you create with them at risk.  It’s a bit more work up front to self-host, but it’s less risky in the long run.

Web hosting is cheap, and there are plenty of good hosts to choose from.  I recommend Pair.com for a starter hosting account.  They aren’t the cheapest, but they’re very reliable and have decent support.  I know many online businesses that host with them, and my wife refers most of her clients there.

As your traffic grows you may need to upgrade to a dedicated server or a virtual private server (VPS).  This web site is hosted by ServInt.  I’ve hosted this site with them since day one, and they’ve been a truly awesome host.  What I like most about them is that they have a smooth upgrade path as my traffic keeps growing.  I’ve gone through several upgrades with them already, and all have been seamless.  The nice thing about having your own server is that you can put as many sites on it as the server can handle.  I have several sites running on my server, and it doesn’t cost me any additional hosting fees to add another site.

Comments or no comments
When I began this blog, I started out with comments enabled.  As traffic grew, so did the level of commenting.  Some days there were more than 100 comments.  I noticed I was spending more and more time managing comments, and I began to question whether it was worth the effort.  It became clear that with continued traffic growth, I was going to have to change my approach or die in comment hell.  The personal development topics I write about can easily generate lots of questions and discussion.  Just imagine how many follow-up questions an article like this could generate.  With tens of thousands of readers, it would be insane.  

Also, nuking comment spam was chewing up more and more of my time as well.
But after looking through my stats, I soon realized that only a tiny fraction of visitors ever look at comments at all, and an even smaller fraction ever post a comment (well below 1% of total visitors).  That made my decision a lot easier, and in October 2005, I turned blog comments off.  In retrospect that was one of my best decisions.  I wish I had done it sooner.
If you’d like to read the full details of how I came to this decision, I’ve written about it previously:  Blog Comments and More on Blog Comments.
Do you need comments to build traffic?  Obviously not.  Just like when I put up ads, I saw no decline in traffic when I turned off comments.  In fact, I think it actually helped me.  Although I turned off comments, I kept trackbacks enabled, so I started getting more trackbacks.  If people wanted to publicly comment on something I’d written, they had to do so on their own blogs and post a link.  So turning off comments didn’t kill the discussion — it just took it off site.  The volume of trackbacks is far more reasonable, and I can easily  keep up with it.  I even pop onto other people’s sites and post comments now and then, but I don’t feel obligated to participate because the discussion isn’t on my own site.
I realize people have very strong feelings about blog comments and community building.  Many people hold the opinion that a blog without comments just isn’t a blog.  Personally I think that’s utter nonsense — the data just doesn’t support it.  The vast majority of blog readers neither read nor post comments.  Only a very tiny and very vocal group even care about comments.  Some bloggers say that having comments helps build traffic, but I saw no evidence of that.  In fact, I think it’s just the opposite.  Managing comments detracts from writing new posts, and it’s far better to get a trackback and a link from someone else’s blog vs. a comment on your own blog.  As long-term readers of my blog know, when faced with ambiguity, my preference is to try both alternatives and compare real results with real results.  After doing that my conclusion is this:  No comment.  :)

Now if you want to support comments for non-traffic-building reasons like socializing or making new contacts, I say go for it.  Just don’t assume that comments are necessary or even helpful in building traffic unless you directly test this assumption yourself.

Build a complete web site, not just a blog
Don’t limit your web site to just a blog.  Feel free to build it out.  Although most of my traffic goes straight to this blog, there’s a whole site built around it.  For example, the home page of this site presents an overview of all the sections of the site, including the blog, article sectionaudio content, etc.  A lot of people still don’t know what a blog is, so if your whole site is your blog, those people may be a little confused.

Great how to reference on blogging income pt3

Thriving on change
Your greatest risk isn’t that you’ll make mistakes that will cost you.  Your greatest risk is that you’ll miss opportunities.  You need an entrepreneurial mindset, not an employee mindset.  Don’t be too concerned with the risk of loss — be more concerned with the risk of missed gains.  It’s what you don’t know and what you don’t do that will hurt you the worst.  Blogging is cheap.  Your expenses and financial risk should be minimal.  Your real concern should be missing opportunities that would have made you money very easily.  You need to develop antennae that can listen out for new opportunities.  I highly recommend subscribing to Darren Rowse’s Problogger blog — Darren is great at uncovering new income-generating opportunities for bloggers.
The blogosphere changes rapidly, and change creates opportunity.  It takes some brains to decipher these opportunities and to take advantage of them before they disappear.  If you hesitate to capitalize on something new and exciting, you may simply miss out.  Many opportunities are temporary.  And every day you don’t implement them, you’re losing money you could have earned.  And you’re also missing opportunities to build traffic, grow your audience, and benefit more people.

I used to get annoyed by the rapid rate of change of web technologies.  It’s even more rapid than what I saw when I worked in the computer gaming industry.  And the rate of change is accelerating.  Almost every week now I learn about some fascinating new web service or idea that could potentially lead to big changes down the road.  Making sense of them is a full-time job in itself.  But I learned to love this insane pace.  If I’m confused then everyone else is probably confused too.  And people who only do this part-time will be very confused.  If they aren’t confused, then they aren’t keeping up.  So if I can be just a little bit faster and understand these technologies just a little bit sooner, then I can capitalize on some serious opportunities before the barriers to entry become too high.  Even though confusion is uncomfortable, it’s really a good thing for a web entrepreneur.  This is what creates the space for a college student to earn $1,000,000 online in just a few months with a clever idea.  Remember this isn’t a zero-sum game.  Don’t let someone else’s success make you feel diminished or jealous.  Let it inspire you instead.

What’s your overall income-generation strategy?
I don’t want to insult anyone, but most people are utterly clueless when it comes to generating income from their blogs.  They slap things together haphazardly with no rhyme or reason and hope to generate lots of money.  While I’m a strong advocate of the ready-fire-aim approach, that strategy does require that you eventually aim.  Ready-fire-fire-fire-fire will just create a mess.

Take a moment to articulate a basic income-generating strategy for your site.  If you aren’t good at strategy, then just come up with a general philosophy for how you’re going to generate income.  You don’t need a full business plan, just a description of how you plan to get from $0 per month to whatever your income goal is.  An initial target goal I used when I first started this site was $3000 per month.  It’s a somewhat arbitrary figure, but I knew if I could reach $3000 per month, I could certainly push it higher, and $3000 is enough income that it’s going to make a meaningful difference in my finances.  I reached that level 15 months after launching the site (in December 2005).  And since then it’s continued to increase nicely.  Blogging income is actually quite easy to maintain.  It’s a lot more secure than a regular job.  No one can fire me, and if one source of income dries up, I can always add new ones.  We’ll address multiple streams of income soon…
Are you going to generate income from advertising, affiliate commissions, product sales, donations, or something else?  Maybe you want a combination of these things.  However you decide to generate income, put your basic strategy down in writing.  I took 15 minutes to create a half-page summary of my monetization strategy.  I only update it about once a year and review it once a month.  This isn’t difficult, but it helps me stay focused on where I’m headed.  It also allows me to say no to opportunities that are inconsistent with my plan.

Refer to your monetization strategy (or philosophy) when you need to make design decisions for your web site.  Although you may have multiple streams of income, decide which type of income will be your primary source, and design your site around that.  Do you need to funnel people towards an order form, or will you place ads all over the site?  Different monetization strategies suggest different design approaches.  Think about what specific action you want your visitors to eventually take that will generate income for you, and design your site accordingly.

When devising your income strategy, feel free to cheat.  Don’t re-invent the wheel.  Copy someone else’s strategy that you’re convinced would work for you too.  Do NOT copy anyone’s content or site layout (that’s copyright infringement), but take note of how they’re making money.  I decided to monetize this site with advertising and affiliate income after researching how various successful bloggers generated income.  Later I added donations as well.  This is an effective combo.

Traffic, traffic, traffic
Assuming you feel qualified to take on the challenge of generating income from blogging (and I haven’t scared you away yet), the three most important things you need to monetize your blog are traffic, traffic, and traffic.
Just to throw out some figures, last month (April 2006), this site received over 1.1 million visitors and over 2.4 million page views.  That’s almost triple what it was just six months ago.
Why is traffic so important?  Because for most methods of online income generation, your income is a function of traffic.  If you double your traffic, you’ll probably double your income (assuming your visitor demographics remain fairly consistent).  You can screw almost everything else up, but if you can generate serious traffic, it’s really hard to fail.  With sufficient traffic the realistic worst case is that you’ll eventually be able to monetize your web site via trial and error (as long as you keep those visitors coming).

When I first launched this blog, I knew that traffic building was going to be my biggest challenge.  All of my plans hinged on my ability to build traffic.  If I couldn’t build traffic, it was going to be very difficult to succeed.  So I didn’t even try to monetize my site for the first several months.  I just focused on traffic building.  Even after 19 months, traffic building is still the most important part of my monetization plan.  For my current traffic levels, I know I’m undermonetizing my site, but that’s OK.  Right now it’s more important to me to keep growing the site, and I’m optimizing the income generation as I go along.
Traffic is the primary fuel of online income generation.  More visitors means more ad clicks, more product sales, more affiliate sales, more donations, more consulting leads, and more of whatever else that generates income for you.  And it also means you’re helping more and more people.
With respect to traffic, you should know that in many respects, the rich do get richer.  High traffic leads to even more traffic-building opportunities that just aren’t accessible for low-traffic sites.  On average at least 20 bloggers add new links to my site every day, my articles can easily surge to the top of social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, and I’m getting more frequent requests for radio interviews.  Earlier this year I was featured in USA Today and in Self Magazine, which collectively have millions of readers.  Journalists are finding me by doing Google searches on topics I’ve written about.  These opportunities were not available to me when I was first starting out.  Popular sites have a serious advantage.  The more traffic you have, the more you can attract.

If you’re intelligent and web savvy, you should also be able to eventually build a high-traffic web site.  And you’ll be able to leverage that traffic to build even more traffic.

How to build traffic
Now if traffic is so crucial, how do you build it up to significant levels if you’re starting from rock bottom?
I’ve already written a lengthy article on this topic, so I’ll refer you there:  How to Build a High Traffic Web Site (or Blog).  If you don’t have time to read it now, feel free to bookmark it or print it out for later.  That article covers my general philosophy of traffic-building, which centers on creating content that provides genuine value to your visitors.  No games or gimmicks.
There is one other important traffic-building tip I’ll provide here though.
Blog Carnivals.  Take full advantage of blog carnivals when you’re just starting out (click the previous link and read the FAQ there to learn what carnivals are if you don’t already know).  Periodically submit your best blog posts to the appropriate carnivals for your niche.  Carnivals are easy ways to get links and traffic, and best of all, they’re free.  Submitting only takes minutes if you use a multi-carnvival submission form.  Do NOT spam the carnivals with irrelevant material — only submit to the carnivals that are a match for your content.
In my early traffic-building days, I’d do carnivals submissions once a week, and it helped a great deal in going from nothing to about 50,000 visitors per month.  You still have to produce great content, but carnivals give you a free shot at marketing your unknown blog.  Free marketing is precisely the kind of opportunity you don’t want to miss.  Carnivals are like an open-mic night at a comedy club — they give amateurs a chance to show off their stuff.  I still submit to certain carnivals every once in a while, but now my traffic is so high that relatively speaking, they don’t make much difference anymore.  Just to increase my traffic by 1% in a month, I need 11,000 new visitors, and even the best carnivals don’t push that much traffic.  But you can pick up dozens or even hundreds of new subscribers from each round of carnival submissions, so it’s a great place to start.  Plus it’s very easy.

If your traffic isn’t growing month after month, does it mean you’re doing something wrong?  Most likely you aren’t doing enough things right.  Again, making mistakes is not the issue.  Missing opportunities is.

Great how to reference on blogging income pt2

Can you make a decent income online?
Yes, absolutely.  At the very least, a high five-figure annual income is certainly an attainable goal for an individual working full-time from home.  I’m making a healthy income from StevePavlina.com, and the site is only 19 months old… barely a toddler.  If you have a day job, it will take longer to generate a livable income, but it can still be done part-time if you’re willing to devote a lot of your spare time to it.  I’ve always done it full-time.

Can most people do it?
No, they can’t.  I hope it doesn’t shock you to see a personal development web site use the dreaded C-word.  But I happen to agree with those who say that 99% of people who try to generate serious income from their blogs will fail.  The tagline for this site is “Personal Development for Smart People.”  And unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your outlook), smart people are a minority on this planet.  So while most people can’t make a living this way, I would say that most smart people can.  How do you know whether or not you qualify as smart?  Here’s a good rule of thumb:  If you have to ask the question, you aren’t.

If that last paragraph doesn’t flood my inbox with flames, I don’t know what will.  OK, actually I do.
This kind of 99-1 ratio isn’t unique to blogging though.  You’ll see it in any field with relatively low barriers to entry.  What percentage of wannabe actors, musicians, or athletes ever make enough money from their passions to support themselves?  It doesn’t take much effort to start a blog these days — almost anyone can do it.  Talent counts for something, and the talent that matters in blogging is intelligence.  But that just gets you in the door.  You need to specifically apply your intelligence to one particular talent.  And the best words I can think of to describe that particular talent are:  web savvy.

If you are very web savvy, or if you can learn to become very web savvy, then you have an excellent shot of making enough money from your blog to cover all your living expenses… and then some.  But if becoming truly web savvy is more than your gray matter can handle, then I’ll offer this advice:  Don’t quit your day job.
Web savvy
What do I mean by web savvy?  You don’t need to be a programmer, but you need a decent functional understanding of a variety of web technologies.  What technologies are “key” will depend on the nature of your blog and your means of monetization.  But generally speaking I’d list these elements as significant:
  • blog publishing software
  • HTML/CSS
  • blog comments (and comment spam)
  • RSS/syndication
  • feed aggregators
  • pings
  • trackbacks
  • full vs. partial feeds
  • blog carnivals (for kick-starting your blog’s traffic)
  • search engines
  • search engine optimization (SEO)
  • page rank
  • social bookmarking
  • tagging
  • contextual advertising
  • affiliate programs
  • traffic statistics
  • email
Optional:  podcasting, instant messaging, PHP or other web scripting languages.
I’m sure I missed a few due to familiarity blindness.  If scanning such a list makes your head spin, I wouldn’t recommend trying to make a full-time living from blogging just yet.  Certainly you can still blog, but you’ll be at a serious disadvantage compared to someone who’s more web savvy, so don’t expect to achieve stellar results until you expand your knowledge base.

If you want to sell downloadable products such as ebooks, then you can add e-commerce, SSL, digital delivery, fraud prevention, and online databases to the list.  Again, you don’t need to be a programmer; you just need a basic understanding of these technologies.  Even if you hire someone else to handle the low-level implementation, it’s important to know what you’re getting into.  You need to be able to trust your strategic decisions, and you won’t be able to do that if you’re a General who doesn’t know what a gun is.

A lack of understanding is a major cause of failure in the realm of online income generation.  For example, if you’re clueless about search engine optimization (SEO), you’ll probably cripple your search engine rankings compared to someone who understands SEO well.  But you can’t consider each technology in isolation.  You need to understand the connections and trade-offs between them.  Monetizing a blog is a balancing act.  You may need to balance the needs of yourself, your visitors, search engines, those who link to you, social bookmarking sites, advertisers, affiliate programs, and others.  Seemingly minor decisions like what to title a web page are significant.  In coming up with the title of this article, I have to take all of these potential viewers into consideration.  I want a title that is attractive to human visitors, drives reasonable search engine traffic, yields relevant contextual ads, fits the theme of the site, and encourages linking and social bookmarking.  And most importantly I want each article to provide genuine value to my visitors.  I do my best to create titles for my articles that balance these various needs.  Often that means abandoning cutesy or clever titles in favor of direct and comprehensible ones.  It’s little skills like these that help drive sustainable traffic growth month after month.  Missing out on just this one skill is enough to cripple your traffic.  And there are dozens of these types of skills that require web savvy to understand, respect, and apply.

This sort of knowledge is what separates the 1% from the 99%.  Both groups may work just as hard, but the 1% is getting much better results for their efforts.  It normally doesn’t take me more than 60 seconds to title an article, but a lot of experience goes into those 60 seconds.  You really just have to learn these ideas once; after that you can apply them routinely.

Whenever you come across a significant web technology you don’t understand, look it up on Google or Wikipedia, and dive into it long enough to acquire a basic understanding of it.  To make money from blogging  it’s important to be something of a jack of all trades.  Maybe you’ve heard the expression, “A jack of all trades is a master of none.”  That may be true, but you don’t need to master any of these technologies — you just have to be good enough to use them.  It’s the difference between being able to drive a car vs. becoming an auto mechanic.  Strive to achieve functional knowledge, and then move on to something else.  Even though I’m an experienced programmer, I don’t know how many web technologies actually work.  I don’t really care.  I can still use them to generate results.  In the time it would take me to fully understand one new technology, I can achieve sufficient functional knowledge to apply several of them.