How To Make Money At Home

Had quite a few questions submitted, from people asking about all kinds of things – anyways, here we go. Unfortunately, the post comment count did reach 30, and I promised I’d answer them all…

Here we go…

Faint asked:

In your opinion, what is the funniest way you have made money online?

Hmm… the ‘funniest’ way I’ve made money would probably be a joke blog I ran for a week (it tanked, but made a lil in Adsense revenue) or eWhoring. I dabbled in quite a lot of blackhat a few months ago, and eWhoring is basically pretending to be a girl on chatrooms to get affiliate signups.

I got bored of doing it soon enough, but some of the responses were hilarious and I managed to make around $200 for a couple hours of work. I eventually automated the process by using an auto chat bot, but the desperate reponses from people that believed they’d get laid if they signed up for X site were pretty funny.

I also once marketed a joke type eBook about ‘How Not To Pick Up Chicks’ to social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace… priced it at $4.95, and it made 15 sales I think. Not bad at all for what was essentially a dressed up Digg type post.

Rich Hill asked:

Jason,

With owning over a hundred domain names and presently having a couple of dozen sites published, in various states of growth, I have some questions about WP themes.

Do you have an opinion on using Free themes versus custom designed ones?

Do you recommend anyone, or a company that could pump out say a half dozen custom sites for say 30 bucks each? I have a couple of hard business sales type sites that would be better not to use a free theme on.

Who does your design work? For instance there is no mistaking what the first impression is to new viewers when visiting you site. That is kick-ass header design work.

I for one would like to learn more about WordPress ideas from TUK.

Thanks for the billboard.

Rich Hill

Wordpress themes are plentiful, yet the problem with free ones are that the designers usually expect you to keep their footer links and get pissed off if you don’t. With the footer links, a website looks pretty unprofessional, especially with designers whoring out the links in most decent themes to pharmacy / gambling type sites.

I have commissioned Wordpress themes on social blogs in the Internet marketing niche (blogs visited by other webmasters) simply because I think that the best way to look good and stand out (and thus keep people coming back) is to have a cracking, unique design. On my niche websites though, I use Wordpress a lot, and luckily someone thought of this a while ago – I use PLR Wordpress Themes for a lot of my niche sites. They cost me around $50 and I had the license to do whatever I liked with them, including removing footer links, selling, giving them away free. For me, PLR is the middle of free and paid – it’s as good as a paid one, without the limitations of a free one or the costs of a custom done paid one.

Luckily for you guys, I found a download for themes on my computer that I bought PLR to ages and ages ago – they should still be functional and you guys can do whatever you want with them.

Here’s a direct download. Some of them come in xHTML format too, which you can use if you don’t want to use Wordpress.

As for my design work, the guys that did my header were ‘outed’ a lot time ago – they’re Design FX Pro, and they charge around $125 for the whole thing (custom drawn mascot + background), however you can find cheaper mascot designers on the various webmaster forums.

I do not share my elite freelancers, simply because I don’t want them overworked – perhaps this is a tad selfish, but in all honesty if someone is good I will continue to use him/her (I’ve spent close to $1,000 combined on two freelancers over the last month, one for WP themes and one for other design / content related work, an amount that is much more than a full time wage in some countries). My advice would be that if you find someone, try and keep hold of them; be easy to work with and they’ll do the same, and do not share them with others.

Dan asked:

What was the first way you made money online? The very first, way back when…

I’ve covered this a few times, but I started out making money content writing (simple keyword stuffed articles at low rates) and forum posting. It was hard work, not fun, and not well paid, but it taught me about a) working for things and b) gave me the capital to start up with a domain name and hosting.

I later moved on to domain names, and luckily was successful on my first flip (the domain HipHopUpdates.com, which dropped and after I picked it up managed to sell it for $60 very shortly after, a decent profit on the registration fee) and then website flipping, which I do a lot of these days.

Black Hat Way asked:

I’m always interested in flipping websites so I’ll ask about it.
I tried to come up with new kind sites to quickly flip as I couldn’t find any good plr-content and I don’t have enough money to hire people to write articles for niche-sites. I was thinking about flipping BANS-sites, but the buyer would need to own a lisence.. :S

So, what kind of sites have you flipped past the plr-content and those niche article -ones you have written about?

I’ve written about different types of websites you can flip, like proxies and image hosts – those two are pretty easy to get running and sell for a few hundred with revenue.

However, the current hot trend is membership sites – people love websites that can potentially bring in recurring revenue, month after month and I’ve sold basic membership sites for $300+, which took less than an hour to put together. Play around with Joomla, get a cracking free theme from Rocket Theme and create simple membership site with things like a forum, community etc (common addons for Joomla) then hit Sitepoint’s Startup Websites or DP’s Sites section.

Another thing that sells well is product websites; if you can write half decently, throw together a unique product website with sales page and with a decent enough listing, there’s no reason it won’t sell for $100 – $500 or more. You’re looking to create a product that is around 1,000 – 4,000 words long, which is something that can be created in a day (or a few hours) if you work hard enough.

shinkawa asked:

Hello,

i’m a newbie in site flipping..There are some question that popping up my mind about flipping site..Here the question

1)If a user request to transfer on his/her server,do i need to charge extra fee?

2)the second question is the same that being asked by rich hill about the free theme used.Changing the header and footer is it enough already?

That’s all for now

Shinkawa

For the first question, it’s really up to you – if you’re a new member of forums, you may want to do it to build reputation. What I’d do personally is for smaller sales ($50>) get the buyer to transfer things or charge a fee to do so, as those websites don’t tend to be too difficult, but for larger sales transfer it yourself or get a friend to transfer. It depends on personal choice; I like to keep my buyers happy (and don’t really feel comfortable letting random people into my cPanel account(s) so prefer to organize transfer myself, or host it for them).

An easy way to get around this is recommend hosting… at Hostgator, for example. They will do the transfer for you and you’ll also net an affiliate commission for doing so, which is a great ‘backend’ sale for a website. This can be done even if you sell a smaller type of website.

Re: 2), see above for the PLR Wordpress themes. Technically you *can* remove footer links as nothing stops you from doing so, however what I’d do is remove sponsored links (to crappy sites, usually…) and keep the designer one.

Ganesh asked:

Can you tell me more about you path to success?

In all honesty I can’t really answer that as that’s a pretty generic question, kind of like ‘How Do I Make Money Online’. Six or so months cannot just be summarized into a paragraph, and I’m not even going to try.

What I will say is that I asked for help when possible, without trying to be a jackass; I also did not take everything I read as fact and tried and tested my own theories. Most importantly, I did things that were actually challenging yet fun, rather than boring things, even though they may have brought in more money. For example, I completely ditched article writing a month or so ago, even though I was making around $1,000/month with it – I got tired of doing it and it was not simulating at all.

Nathaniel asked:

Jason? May I ask two questions? You can pick the best one if you want, but I am asking two.
1.Owning so many domain names, maybe over a hundred, is it hard to manage all of those and keep them up to date, especially having to manage TUK, BP, and family? I know that not all of the domains are active, but is it still hard? Also if you want a domain name, should you buy it right away because it might be taken soon?
2.What are the 5 hardest (you can make it one, 3, 2, whatever. Doesn’t have to be 5) of being a young entrepreneur? And how do you get past most barriers of being a young entrepreneur?

Two questions are fine, but I’ll cut the second one short.

Most of my websites are dead in all honesty, even though they make a few dollars (some more than that) I do not visit them anymore and traffic is slowly dying (except the ones with SE traffic). I use different update strategies on my websites – although TUK is updated daily, on most of mine I update less than once a week, some of them less than once a month, and others standard niche websites which do not need to be updated at all.

If you find a domain that is good enough, there’s a good chance someone else will stumble across it too… however, what I’d suggest is get a friend on board, one that’s experienced enough in domain tasting and one that you can trust and ask them whether they think XYZ.com would be a good buy. However, if the domain is any decent (two word, .COM, brandable, and will sell for more than reg fee) you should pick it up. Remember that you can get cheap domain names from Name.com, so you really have very little to lose.

As for question 2… the biggest barrier to being a young entrepreneur is age. In the beginning, it is hard for people to take anything someone not old enough to drive says seriously, however that usually changes within the first thirty seconds of talking to people (what I’ve found). The real problem with age though is getting registered with the various programs – a lot of affiliate networks, services like Paypal, GoDaddy etc won’t let you sign up if you’re under 18 and you’ll have to ask your parents politely. With people still skeptical of the online thing, this can be extremely difficult (took me a month or two to convince mine ) but if you show you’re capable, they’ll usually allow you to do so. Otherwise ask a sibling or depending where you are get a bank account and verify your Paypal yourself.

The easiest way to get past barriers is to be persistent; nothing is too hard if you work at it.

Jay asked:

Do you still find yourself making money online in a year? Five years? 10 years? If not, what do you see yourself doing? And would it make as much money as what you’re doing now online?

I know that was more than one question but figured some people would like to know your future plans because they look up to you. I think you mentioned part of the answer to me before…

To be honest, I have no idea… things constantly change. At the moment, although I make enough for it to be a full time thing, the main reason I do this is for fun and as a hobby… if that changes, I may stop.

I do thing I’ll still be around a year from now, because I have considerable VRE (virtual real estate) that I want to hang on to, but 5/10 years… who knows. I’ll be done with Uni then, maybe retired (hopefully ), anything could happen really. My ultimate goal is to purchase a Lamborghini Gallardo (or the equivalent) by the time I’m 25 though, so that will stay constant

Away from the MMO stuff, I’ve always been interested in owning an offline business, running it and the like; not a mega one but a small one that could dominate its market. Also been interested in media and advertising, as well as sports analysis (I started out wanting to learn more about websites and stuff to try and become a journalist, in fact one of my first real sites was an Arsenal related one)

Sell Porn Make Money asked:

Can you show us a site that you “flipped” previously… since after all you no longer own it? I guess my question is how much content is enough content to flip a website? you had mentioned filling it up with a few articles I think, but that doesn’t seem like enough to entice a buyer to spend a few hundred bucks.
Thanks

In recent times, most of the websites I’ve sold have been specific, profitable niche websites with little/no competition or semi-large blogs with thousands of visitors monthly under a pen name, so I cannot disclose the ones that would count (profitable ones). I can however show you examples of websites I currently have, like the type of Joomla membership site I talked about above (Alcoholism Club) or one of the public websites I’ve sold in the past (Lazy Riches; sold for $1,550 on Sitepoint and took 20 minutes to throw together).

For a standard niche website which won’t fetch more than a couple hundred or so, around 5-10 articles will be enough. However if you want to hit the big-ish time selling sites, you need something to differentiate them from the other cookie cutter ones out there – for example, slightly established with traffic / revenue, or a custom created script / design that will not be resold etc. Remember that in the flip, look is everything, and if it looks good… more often than not, it sells.

SPMB also asked:

Sorry for the double comment, but I guess a follow up question in case you don’t get 30 (which is unlikely) is … How do you get so many comments? I think most newer blogs struggle to get activity from the readers… do you have any tips or tricks since you have gotten at least 3 people so far averaging 2 comments per day?

Personally, the key to comment success is simply content that readers can relate to; my advice would be put out content that is on a simple level which people can understand (that doesn’t treat them as inferior, for example…) and most of all ask your readers questions, write posts that make them feel involved etc.

If you want to get comments on your own website, hit up a few smaller blogs (around 100~ subscribers) and comment on their posts; they’ll usually return the favour and it’s a great way to start up an online relationship. In the beginning (this is too difficult for me now, however I respond to pressing comments) respond to every single comment you get, as this doubles your count and keeps people coming back (and can also start off a debate!)

I just realised that this is only the 12th comment on the Q & A post… damn, I do have a lot more writing to do. I’m taking a break!

Flimjo asked:

Do you think a blogger needs to post every day to have a successful and profitable blog? If not, is it possible to maintain readership with quality posts about concrete and useful money-making topics that are less frequent (say 3-4 posts per week)?

Personally, I prefer blogs that update daily, however the key is quality, not quantity, You should stick to a regular schedule (it can get difficult to keep getting post ideas every day) and try and make your posts as well as possible. Do not post for the sake of posting, but if you have set a regular pattern (once every two days, once every four days) follow it.

You can have blogs which are updated regularly, but stick to the pattern. For example, if you post once a week, on Monday, keep to that and you’ll be okay. Do not post on a Tuesday one week, then a Friday next week, then a Sunday etc… if you confuse your readers, they won’t come back.

The best blogs though have constantly updating content; this helps for the search engines and new visitors have a huge supply of posts to read so they can get to know your blog better. If you’re going to post less, make sure each post packs a punch!

Arunabh asked:

Hello

How can we market niche e-books without having authority (say without having blogs) in that niche? I have written a few on topics I am passionate about but I don’t have blogs in that niche. Should I release these under pen-names?

If you prefer privacy (like me…) use a pen name, as there are some niches I don’t want people (or competition) to know I’m involved in.

You don’t need a blog, just setup a simple squeeze page with an opt in form using a service like Aweber. Make sure your opt in page sells to the visitor, talking about what you’ll be presenting them with. You may want to give away a smaller, free report to build credibility, then hit them with the sale after around seven attempts, or even promote your products via websites like Clickbank and PayDotCom.

Here’s how to market opt in / sales pages though…

• Forum Marketing (the BEST way I’ve found, completely free too. Make sure your posts on the forum are top quality.
• Article Marketing
• Pay Per Click
• Blog Commenting
• Joint Ventures (contact someone in your niche with a decent list and co-network)
• Paid Blog Reviews (on large niche blogs, this works well)
• Paid Advertising (banners etc)
• Offline advertising

There are other ways, but the above are some of the best.

Dollar dude asked:

Which is the best method of making money online- Affiliate marketing or Adsense?

It depends on the person, but I like neither, simply because I prefer Paypal to cheque. The easiest way of making money online though is by selling products and services to people that have a need for them, or contacting offline businesses and providing them with online services.

DR asked:

assume that i am a newbie and dont know anything about godaddy, domains,wordpress?
what should i do to earn online?(this question for my fnds?
also
i earn mid xxx$/day so whats the next step for pros?
a discussion on that wud b gr8.

Personally, if you’re earning mid $XXX daily (around $500/day, or $15,000 per month) I should be asking you questions – I don’t even make that amount

However, learn the basics, Google is a great place to go for these simple questions and so are forums as there’ll usually be people willing to help you out. The best way to learn of course is to try things out; I learned through trial and (a whole lot of) error, and you should do the same. Also, get some internet marketers on board and ask them questions; don’t annoy them though, one a day at max. You could also offer services in exchange for their help.

Richard asked:

OK then, where shall we start…?

1) Do you prefer to flip/sell brand new sites (no traffic, PR, sales history etc.) or established sites and why?

2) What is your decision-making process for choosing a niche for a blog/site to flip?

3) How do you rapidly ramp up traffic to a new blog so you can sell it with healthy visitor numbers even when it’s reasonably new?

4) What are you actually studying at university?!

5) What motivational techniques do you use to keep plugging away at this game? I know a lot of people burn out or get bored before they start really getting successful at it…

6) In terms of business, what has been your best investment to date and why?

7) What is the craziest thing you would be willing to do to raise money for charity?

Well, I think that will do for a start. NEXT!!!

Ouch, that is a long list. To keep things fair, I can’t give each question the length of the answers I’ve given to questions by others, that would take too long. However, let’s go…

1) Established websites. Mainly because they’re not much harder to setup (setting up something is the hardest part, everything gets a whole lot easier after that) and they sell for much, much more. A day’s worth of work on a website can be the difference between $100 and $1,000.

2) I look at how popular the niche is combined with how much money potentially is in it. For example, mesothemlia (a type of cancer) is a high paying niche but it is too saturated to make a lot of money in (relative to time spent), whereas ‘how to tie shoelaces’ may be a popular search term but those kinds of users aren’t looking to buy something. I also look at how much I know about the niche – although there are numerous health related search terms that I could dominate, I know next to nothing about it and it would not be a fun project, so I don’t do it.

3) One word – CONTEST. Of course, good content is important, but a contest with a decent prize can really get a blog off the ground. You should also look at playing around with social media (maybe even gaming it…) and other things like incentives towards subscribers / people that leave comments.

4) Business Administration, it’s a four year course. However there are many classes under it like Marketing, Accounting, Finance, Law etc…

5) Having a lot of pocket money is one, and the projects I take being fun is another. Despite the first part of this, money isn’t really the prime motivator – I look at a project, whether it’ll be fun to do and if it will be, I do it. Site flipping for example, is one of the fun ways to make money online – it constantly amazes me that simple websites that take an hour to setup can be sold for $500 or more, day after day after day.

I also work little on the IM business and fool around a lot online (two Fs – friends and forums) so getting burned out is not really a problem.

6) My first domain name. Cost me $7.15 and was sold for an immediate $50~ profit in less than a little while, which was an amount that gave me quite a lot of inspiration (considering I had worked two whole months the summer just before and earned just over double that).

Other than that, simple things like the customization of theme for this blog and tools that have helped me (and I’ve seen more than a 10x return on) like sales page templates and Brian Gardner’s Revolution Theme package.

7) Hmm, no idea. Probably something like bungee jumping, or if liquored up enough a naked marathon. Depends on the charity, to be honest…

Forex asked:

I know you’ve talked a lot about site flipping, but my question is…

Once you’ve flipped the site and found a buyer for whatever price, what method do you use to transfer all of the necessary files to the new owner?

Short and sweet, I know, but I feel a post with information like this, coupled with the techniques you’ve described in the past about site flipping could be a big hit.

Again, this is a generic question as different websites require different transfers.

First off, is the domain name – this is fairly simple, and your registrar will usually have a guide on site that will help you out.

If it’s a simple content site, all you do is upload all files to your buyers hosting.

If it’s a Wordpress site, you can transfer by exporting that database (an option under Wordpress’ dashboard) and then sending over the theme files.

I have a few friends on MSN that help me with transfers – people clued in with the technical side of things. In exchange, I provide free advice, so everyone wins.

kidfingers asked:

How has this money making online business affected your life? Do you want to settle down with it after you finish school?

I’ve already finished school mate, I’m in Uni

But when I finish – as I said above, I have no idea. As for it affecting my life… it hasn’t really, just have a lot more to spend when I need to (go out for parties and the like); I’ve valued offline stuff more than online stuff so if there’s a clash, the former wins. At the moment, I’m on the last month of a four month summer holiday so I’ve been able to get plenty done.

The Net Fool asked:

Here’s my question:

How have you adapted the University Kid blog over the time that you have owned it? In other words, I’m sure you’ve adjusted the strategy in what you are posting and when (as I have)… I’d love to know what your biggest focuses are now as you seem to be looking more entrepreneur than before.

Thanks!

It started out as a documentation of trying to make money, then moved on to your typical shitty ‘make money online’ blog with little to no use to those reading it, and finally became an entrepreneur blog because I got pissed off at being compared to standard MMO blogs (most of which are a load of shit and don’t help people make money…). These days, I run it more for fun and networking than anything… it doesn’t bring in
a killer amount relative to the time spent (I spend around an hour on this blog daily, and it only made around $2,700 last month – there are far more time effective things I could be doing). However, I’d hope that my posts have helped people, either start out or even just give them a sense of direction; I do know that some have made money, and loads of it too from following this blog. I’ll keep writing if people keep reading, that’s the simple idea to it.

Faint asked again:

Since everyone else is posting a ton of questions, I figured it would be okay if I posted one more.

How do you deal with people that try to scam you?

Generally, plenty of verbal abuse, a few threats (usually not carried through) depending on how pissed off I am. I’ve been in this a long enough time to know how to be able to ‘destroy’ someone if I wanted to… most of them are not worth it though.

If I’m pissed off enough, I’ll blog about it (see Blog Theme Machine or The Rating Blog) and this has done more than enough damage with SE rankings and in the former’s case, potential customers shunning him. Word of mouth travels pretty well and in the case of the above two, their credibility is pretty much shit these days.

Otherwise though, you could get their Paypal accounts shut down, take down their websites, fill up their emails with meaningless crap… it is dependent on how pissed off you are really.

I’m considering a project that will make it a lot easier for people to conduct business, a lot safer actually – I will update if things progress.

Rajaie asked:

Would you ever consider selling this blog? Why?

Do you keep all the Emails you get from WordPress whenever somebody posts a comment on your blog? Why?

I’m actually considering selling it at the end of the month… as I do have uni starting up, and might take a break from the whole IM thing for a while. We’ll see, for now it’s not really a problem but I want to concentrate a little as I haven’t taken things too seriously over the last year.

I do not think it would fetch a lot of money relative to the time put in (Bloggin Ads only sold for $5,000 and is a lot bigger) but we will see. I’ll ask readers of course, as I have before; there is a good chance I’d start another blog, updated less (once a week or so) if I sold TUK.

As for the second question, no I don’t; I can read comments off the site so don’t see the need. I do get an email popup every time someone comments though, so I can head over to the blog to see what they have to say

axioblogger asked:

Jason, you like calling yourself a lazy arse, but you own many sites and update them. You also post regularly daily on this blog. If you are are lazy, what will you call someone that has only 1 blog and posts like 4 times a month on the blog.

Umm… lazier than I, or a schmuck?

In all fairness blogging is not for everyone; if you can’t do it, find something else that you can

egk asked:

A little personal but… We all know that you must spend a ton of time on MMO. But when your taking a break from MMO what else do you do online? What sites do you like to visit, what types of online activities do you enjoy?

Friends and forums. I’m a die hard Arsenal Football (real football, not that rubbish Americans call football ) Club fan and have around 30,000 posts on an Arsenal forum over the last two years… it’s a place where I hang out, relax. I also like a bit of gaming, specifically shoot up games like Counter Strike or Battle Field and strategy games like C&C: Tiberium Wars, and play these online with local friends (as well as sports games like FIFA 08).

I’m not someone that’s into the whole social (Facebook etc…) thing though, consider it a waste of time.

Brandon asked:

Hey Jason. Here’s a question.

Say someone owned a MMO blog. What would you say (based on your experience) is the best way to increase traffic?

Proof that you’re making money. Nothing gees up people more than income statements.

Otherwise, you can run a contest, create linkbait type articles, guest post on larger blogs (TUK needs a couple more… ), comment on related blogs, buy traffic using the likes of Adwords, optimize for search engines… choose one you think is easy, and rinse repeat x 1000.

Proxy asked:

My question is

Is there a thing like spending too much on promotion?
Is every dollar/euro etc spent on promotion good?

Smart promotion over expensive promotion. $50 spent well is a lot better than $1,000 spent poorly. What you have to do is think up a marketing campaign that will set you apart, make your blog different to others out there… there are plenty of free ways to promote a blog / website.

Tris asked:

What’s the best way to achieve an online income of $50+ per day without flipping sites?

Provide services. If you can write or design, $50/day is easy. Hit webmaster forums, you’ll get work if your creations are good enough.

Five articles daily or five designs daily at $10 is easy time wise to manage, and if you prove yourself good to work with, you’ll get plenty of repeat buyers. Then you can eventually raise prices.

Another good way is to sell products to people that have a need. 5 sales of a $10 product, 2 sales of a $25 product, 1 sale of a $50 product daily all give you the amount you want. Putting together a product is easy, and better yet – free if you can write.

Also try domain flipping. Slightly harder, but if you hit a good buy the profits are a lot more than $50/day.

Melvin asked:

Nowadays every kid seems to hook up on making money online.. what is the biggest disadvantage that you think for someone very young trying to enter this internet marketing/making money online world?

Answered this above, but age – lack of credibility for one, and difficulties in signing up for needed programs second, two things that are important in the online business world. Also naivety – you can get pulled around and screwed over pretty easily if you know little about online business.

ukgimp asked:

If you are a true lazy git as you say, what do you do to actually motivate yourself?

I only work on projects that interest me and look at the challenge / fun involved rather than the money made. You’ll usually earn a lot more this way too!

stubsy asked:

Where does most of your income come from is it flipping sites, affiliate marketing, adsense or something else?

It’s mostly from website flipping, and a decent chunk from offline marketing or outsourcing. I’m moving away from Adsense / affiliate marketing, as I prefer Paypal payments over cheque.

That’s all for today guys, spent a good couple of hours on this post. My arms! Hope you guys got the answers you craved and this post helped a few out.

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