My Money Making Journey

Well it's been a while since I've written here because I had to move out of my apartment, so I've been a bit all over the place, but today I had a chance to sit down and catch up on things, and when I opened my mail today, I had an e-mail from Ezine Articles. Not only has my article been accepted into the directory, I have earned expert status, it will be featured on the home page, and it will also be sent to their e-mail subscribers! I am so excited! I submitted an article about ways to increase the number of backlinks to your website, you can check it out: here. For all of you out there that are struggling to get traffic to your website, I really recommend reading the article to get some ideas. More than that, I encourage you all to get out there and start writing your own pieces. You all can see just how much free traffic I have generated simply by writing about something I know and love. I hope this is the first of many victories to help increase traffic to my blog and exposure to some of the programs that have helped me to make some money. All of you can and should do it, so get writing!!

Whew! I have so much to write about these days. I want to focus some more on getting more exposure to my blog and more readers and links back to it so that I can get more free, targeted traffic. A great way to do this, I have found, is joining blogging communities. Two very popular ones are MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog. They each offer a place to post your profile with your authored blogs and an interface to meet people, share information, and build readership to your site. Both communities have a strong members base so staying active in each can only benefit you. BlogCatalog also features a rating system where people in the community can rate your blog. If you have genuine information and an interesting blog, your votes will be high. Anywho, for anyone out there that wants to get more exposure to their blog should check them out.

If you, like me are endeavoring to make money on the internet, no matter what you do, you have to expose people to the opportunities that you are involved in. You have to get the word out about what you are doing and hopefully get people to join you. I am involved in a number of traffic exchanges that are great, including TrafficSwarm, but nothing brings more targeted and quality traffic to my site than a community that I just joined called LinkReferral. The reason that I am raving about this program is because they have a system in place that only allows your listing to move up in the search rank after you have visited 30 sites and reviewed 5 of them. The LinkReferral community is active, so that means if you have done your part and viewed and reviewed, then your listing will be one of the first that members see when they are doing the same. Once you have completed your tasks, your listing in the search results are locked in for a full 24 hours so with about 15 minutes of work, you get some great exposure. The traffic to your site will be targeted because searches are categorized, so people are actively clicking and looking for sites just like yours. In the 8 days that I have been part of this community, I have gotten 111 site views and 15 reviews. I especially love the review feature because you can respond and interact with your critic to help make your site better. LinkReferral is definitely worth checking out if you want genuine targeted traffic to your site.

For all those people out there who like to write.....Scratch that, I don't even like to write, but I enjoy using Helium. It is a community of people that are writing articles about all sort of topics and being paid to do it. Just today I wrote an article about whether or not grading should be abolished in colleges. There are tons of topics that you can choose from and so many articles that you can use if you are looking for great content for your website (with author permission of course). You can write about things that interest you, or you can visit the marketplace and see vendors that are paying anywhere from $20-$100 for people to write about certain topics. I am going to give you an actual example of this sort of listing:

	$44	8/26/2007	Relatively unknown dog products, priced between $20 and $80, that everyone should know about
			200 - 400 wordsThe writing style is fun and cheeky, not formal at all. The products we talk about are products we love because they are unique. The style is usually that we set up a problem/issue and then tell readers what this problem solves. No affiliates are paying us to review their products. You can go on the site and sign up for the newsletter to get a feel for what we are doing. www.spoilspot.com

This is just one example of a marketplace listing, and even if nothing in the marketplace appeals to you, you still get paid for writing about any of the topics that they have on the website.

The money that you earn depends on the rating that you receive for an article. People in the community compare two article and see which one is better and rates it higher. If your article stands tall, then you can have a #1 rating, making you more money. Out of the ~20 article I have written, about 15 of them are in the top 10, and 7 of them are in the top 5. I even have 4 in top 3! Another great thing about Helium is that your article will continue to bring you money. I am still earning money from articles that I have written back in June. Writing at Helium has not only helped me make some extra money, but is something that I love to do in my spare time. It is not hard for me to write about things I love, so being able to make money while I do it, is great. You can even make money from the articles that people you referred have written, so if anyone wants to join Helium just leave me a comment and I will send you and invite, or just head over to Helium and sign up!

I have searched around and seen that there are so many websites that pay you to read e-mails and complete offers. But I have found 2 programs that I like best: SendEarnings and InboxDollars. These two programs allow you to earn money reading e-mails, completing offers, taking surveys, shopping, and playing games. There is a $30 payout at each of these sites, but reaching payout is easy with all of the ways that you can earn money. I just started on these 2 sites and have made over $20 taking surveys and reading e-mails. Another reason why I have chosen these programs is because they do not flood your inbox with junk; I average about 5 e-mails a day from each and that suits me just fine. These programs are just for a little extra money a month. I will use these earnings to join other programs and further my money making journey.

When I decided to start my money making journey, I was over excited and wanted to sign up for any and everything; but a lot of the websites and programs that I wanted to join required me to enter my phone number. Now I don't know about you guys, but I definitely didn't want anyone calling my cell phone or house phone. A lot of these programs only take your phone number just to have on file, but I still did not want to take any chances, so I signed up for PrivatePhone. I think the website is just www.privatephone.com. You can go there and sign up and they will give you a phone number and voice-mail account online for FREE! They let you personalize your greeting and check your messages from any phone. They send you an e-mail when you have received a voice message and you can also listen to it online. It's a great service.

So it has been a little under a month that I have been online and and heavily researching ways to make money on the internet. I have come across some programs that I truly feel offer some great and legitimate opportunities and have decided to embark on a money making journey that will hopefully end in success. I want to take this blog in a different direction by posting about some of the programs I am involved in, ways that I grow in each of the programs and the results of my efforts. Over the next few weeks I will begin to explain some of the programs that I am involved in. I would love if there were some other brave souls endeavoring to make money like I am so we can support eachother, so if you are out there trying to stake your claim on money on the internet, comment, and share! Wish me Luck!

I recently came across this program while surfing the Internet, and at first I was very skeptical because it offered the promise of no start up cost; but after exploring the website and forum a little more deeply, it revealed itself as a very good program for earning. The way that this system works, is that members build a small downline ( of 5 active members) and then have this downline follow you through a series of 7 programs that pay out referral commissions. The reason that this program works is because you are personally sponsoring 5 people, who must do the same in order to move through the system, but your entire downline moves with you, so you never lose commissions. In essence you and your downline are working together to make money for everybody. While they say that there is no money needed, there is a $10 start cost for the first program, but they offer many free ways to earn this money (most people will just pay the $10 because it is such a small amount). But once you have joined this core program, moving to the next program is only possible when you have acquired enough profit in your current business to pay the start-up cost for the next one. The earning potential for this program is amazing and it is definitely worth checking out: One Step 4 Income