Showing posts with label Money. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Money. Show all posts

Sunday, December 10, 2006

More on money for blogging (Blogvertise)

I were just randomly surfing the internet and blogs, when I tripped over this: www.blogsvertise.com

This is yet another site, who establishes contact between you (the blogger) and varies companies, who will pay you for writing about their products.

I wrote about this concept in the “how to get rich (part 4) – money for blogging”, if you haven’t read this yet, do so now. Please.

The very good thing with blogvertise is first of all, you don’t need to have a very fameus blog, and there are no requeriments for the age your blog.

This means that you could actually start a new blog today, write a few interesting articles, and then go and sign up with www.blogsvertise.com.


So check ‘em out, I’m sure you’ll find the concept interesting.

Bye for now, have fun and enjoy life.

How to get rich (part 4) - Get Paid For Blogging

Being paid for blogging is a concept there is getting more and more visible the last couple of years.
Basically it’s all about waking the little journalist inside of you, and rent your writing abilities out to big and smaller companies who have discovered the advantage in this new form of advertising.

Example:
A firm launches a new product, and chooses as a part of their advertising strategy, to use bloggers help them getting the word out.
In stead of just using some fancy website banners, they actually pay the bloggers to write a few nice words about their product.

A blogger is signed up with a site, which primary and single purpose is to establish contact between the firms and the bloggers.
Here the blogger log in at his private area and can chooses between couples of tasks, and then write a small article and a couple of days after, the payment wait at his paypal account.

This is actually very simple; the ethics on the other hand is discussable. Some believes that this form of advertising will ruin the blogging culture, and especially make the readers unsure of which content are the bloggers own personal opinion and which are paid for.
My own personal beliefs are that there is nothing to be afraid of.
New blogs are born every ten seconds. And only a small percentage will survive, and the again, only a small percentage of those blogs will be visited by others, than the writers friends and family.
After all, if the blogger is ethical and true to his readers, he would never write about a product, he couldn’t vote for.

There is also a “sister” to this kind of advertising. Shvoong.com is a perfect example.
You choose a book or website, write a review, and submit it to their site.
They won’t pay you big time at once, but instead they are using adsense or a similar product, to support their website, and the more visitors who’ll read your articles the more you’ll get paid. It is as simple as that.

And then there are the last (and most intelligent solution, in my opinion) alternative.
Write your blog in a community.
A community is basically a giant blog, with several writers (some times many thousands), and instead of setting your blog up with adsense, and using time creating traffic (which can be vary hard to do btw.), you’ll get the traffic they already have, and in return you’ll share some of your adsense income with the community-site.
The only disadvantage to this concept, is that you’ll have to share your trafiic with all the other writers. This is something you’ll have to calculate yourself. But remember that the traffic on such site is quality traffic, and most visitors actually read your posts, and then again some small percentage click the adsense links…

If you combine this last method with a classical blog (your own blog), and post your articles on both sites, you’ll in the long run get lots of traffic and hence lots of $.
Be sure to read the terms and conditions on the varius sites, so you don’t end up breaking some rules.


Articles written FOR OTHERS on YOUR SITE:

Reviewme (they will only accept if your blog is somehow known allready)
PayPerPost
Blogvertise (They dont have any requirements regarding the age of your blog and etc.)

Your articles on other blogs/sites:

Blogfeast (write blogposts on their site, and share the adsense (90% to you)
Shvoong (reviews of books, webpages and translations)

Similar for all methods are, that you’ll get paid to write. And even though most bloggers write to write and not to get paid, it’s not a bad deal anyhow.

Please leave a comment with your views on the subject.

Monday, October 16, 2006

How to get rich - part 3: The new marketplace.

This is part three of the “How to get rich” series. The title is actually a little deceptive. The purpose with these articles is despite the name, not to give you a quick all-in one solution, but to change the tought patterns inside you. And make you realize, that working 9-5 is not the only alternative. That said, I don’t want to encourage you to go and quit you day job just yet. Wait at least until you have found out what work for you, and what doesn’t. Lets get started.

I have this friend, he is a greengrocer, and he is always joking around. One day, we were talking about business, and he was joking as usual, and told me, that I should join the greencrocer business.I’ve told him that I didn’t know anything about greengrocering or vegetables and fruit by the way.He laughed and said some very obvious yet very intelligent words; “All you have to do, is buy some bananas for $1 and sell them for $2”… That makes sense right, and its very true.

But this is, at level one anyway, active income. You actually have to be in the store or the marketplace yourself. At least until you’ll get someone working for you.To learn more about active and passive incomes, please read this article.

Websites like eBay make very easy to buy low and sell high. You could actually buy something very cheap, and then resell it on an internet auction, and if the products are popular enough, the prices will rise as you sleep, literally speaking.
If you spend a couple of hours surfing on eBay and similar sites, you’ll find, that a small percentage of the traders in there, are very serious, they have a lot of auctions going on at the same time and their products are very popular.
Of course, eBay is not the only way, but it will save you a lot of effort getting traffic to your site.The traffic is already there…This is not meant to be a guide on how to use eBay, since you are reading this, I assume that you are a fairly intelligent person, and you’ll figure out how it works.

What to sell:
Actually you could sell anything. If it has value for you, it will have value for others also.Take a look in the basement, the garage or anywhere you store all of your…well junk. And then experiment with selling, at least you’ll get rid of some of that old stuff you’ve been hanging on to for decades. When you are ready, take this process to the next level.
The next level is to buy stuff, with the intention of resale in mind. From here this is actually up to you how far you want to take this.
If you are good at carpeting, and just want this as an hobby to start with, go to local garage sales, find furniture there is in need of a loving touch, repair and resell.If you want to go big, then contact some of the big Asian companies, who specializes in shipping new technology abroad. The possibilities are unlimited.

There is nothing new to all of this. We have been doing this since the stone age, where we traded a nice club for a piece of fresh meat, and later on started to use nice stones for value markers. Now we are talking about dollars, but the principles are the same.

I’ll ask to to leave a comment if you find this reading interesting or have any questions. I’ll also request that you take a quick look at the ads in the sidebar, and should you find any of them interesting, please click it, since this is what keeps this blog alive.

Bye for now…

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Online poker


Later this month I will write an article about alternative ways to make a living.
If you haven’t read the articles labelled “How to get rich” I suggest you do that soon.

I was actually not sure about posting this article or not. This is a very difficult subject, and poker can be somewhat dangerus if you play without your head, so to speak.
I’ve been playing online poker for a couple of years now, starting as a hobby, but soon I started to dig a bit deeper, read some books, and then realized that I was making a profit.
In this article I will introduce to you, some basics guidelines, and provide you with a couple of great links. If you are not familiar with the rules of the many pokergames I suggest you take a look here: Poker rules.

Isn’t poker gambling?
Poker is gambling. But that doesn’t mean it is a bad thing. Poker is one of the only two game, where you can beat the house (e.g. the casino) in long run. The other one is Blackjack.
If you take a game like roulette, or the one-armed bandit, the house will always win in the long run.

I can almost already hear you say something like “…but in roulette, there is a fifty/fifty if you go with black or red all the time, isn’t their?” You’ve seem to forget about the green field my friend. Roulette has a slight advantage. But enough to make the house win in the long run. It’s all mathematics. In poker this is different. Sure the house win, but the terms are a little different.
Lets take an online pokersite for example. They take somewhere between 2-5% of every chip put on the table. But it dosent really matter, if you play correct all the time, you will win in the long run.
But it isn’t easy. It requires discipline, among a lot of other things.

The mathematics of poker
This is it. It is all mathematics. If you stick with the matemathics. You cant go wrong.
I will not go into detailed explanations on how to play poker correctly. But I will provide you with links and some very readable books to get you started.
There is also a lot of software out there, there is designed to help you making the right decisions, and track you play, and thereby eliminating any flouds you may have.

Tools
These are some very recommendable tools, some of them I used in the beginning, some of them I still use and some I just occasionally to make sure I am still on the right path.

  • Pokertracker (This is very recommendable, takes some time to learn, but if you like statistics…)
  • Calculate’em (Pure methematics, helps you make the best decisions)
  • PokerAceHud (This is an add-on to pokertracker, and will give you stats on the other players at the table)
David Sklansky is one of pokers best aurthors, at least in my opinion. Check his books at Amazon
You should be a little carefull about reading Doyle Bruson's "super system" and "super system 2", these are greats books indeed, but doyle has a very aggressive way of playing, and that might confuse you in the beginning.

Links

  • Bonuswhores.com will help you build a bankroll, with the smallest start amount possible.
  • 2+2 forums has a lot of analyzing and finding the best possible play going on. Worth a visit.
  • Bet365 is a great place to start, and this link will give you rules in a way you can understand.
Outro

As mentioned above, this is a very short introduction to online poker. Poker is one of many way to make an alternative income. Please remember to never play for money you cant spare. Set aside a fixed amount each month, and DO NOT use any more. Remember poker is a game of skills not luck, but luck is a factor and so is bad luck. Only if you always make the correct play, you will win in the long run.

You need to fully understand these concepts if you want to make a profit from online poker:
  • Bankroll management
  • Deposit Bonuses
  • Table selection
  • Starting hands in various positions
  • The mathematics in poker
  • Thight-aggressive playing

I’m not trying to either encourage or discourage you from playing poker, but it you want to make it more than a hobby, you need to know what you are doing.That’s all for now… have fun!>And please leave a comment if you did find this usefull.

How to get rich... Part 2: Passive vs. active income

I’ve read an article not to long ago from Steve Paullina’s website.
And it reminded me of something I hadn’t thought of for a long time.
The terms passive and active incomes.

The idea with this article is to make you realize that there other ways to make an income, than trading you working force for money.

Let’s take a look at the two terms:

Active income is when you are doing a task and then get paid once.
Passive income, is when you doing a task and then get paid again and again.

Artists have a passive income. Take a musician for example.
He will work hard in a period without getting paid, to make an album.
When it’s finished, he will be paid, for as long as his album sell.
Take the Beatles for instance, the survivors still receive a pay check once in a while, for music they created decades ago.

Say you have a bakery.
You bake a cake. Sell it for $5.
You hire another baker, to bake the same cake. But you’ll only pay him $3 to bake it.
Now you made yourself $2. Say you hire ten bakers. They bake $10 cakes, and you’ll make $20.
This is passive income. Sure in this particular case, there are other expenses such as electricity, rent, taxes and so forth. But you get the idea right…

Another example would be, to make a website. Say 1% the visitors, would click a banner ad.
And, just for the example, you’ll get $1 for each banner click.
If you had 100 visitors each day, then you would make $1 each day. This is also passive income.

Basically what you have to do is to somehow copy this idea, and make it your own.
I assume that you are not a worldwide known artist, and that you are somehow interested in blogging and internet, and since you are taking the time to read this, I also assume that you are interested in passive income.

Adsense:

Now you are familiar with the term passive income, if you want to take this further, please notice AdSense box in the sidebar, on the top of that box, is a link “adds by Google.”, please click there, and you will be redirected to a website telling you everything you need to know, about getting the most out of your blog.

If you enjoyed this article, please leave a comment and check the Google links in the sidebar, and see if something looks interesting.

And most importantly have fun…


How to get rich… - part 1: the 10% rule

 In the next couple of post we will try to define richness. And give you a new perspective of the possibilities there are available today.

What is richness?
First we need to define richness. For most people, the answer is: “Lots of money”. But that’s not all. What good is millions of dollars, if your health had suffered a great deal while earning them, or of you had to work so hard, that your family left you?

Richness is not only a matter of money in the bank, but also a question of:

- Health.
- Family and friends.
- Travel
- And achieving your goals.

All of these areas of your life have to be somewhat complete or fulfilled, before you truly feel rich.

Money:
For now we will focus on the money. Not that this is the most important area. But we’ll cover the other later.
First if you haven’t read my article
Goal settings for beginners, I strongly encourage you to do so.
This will give you some techniques and help you achieve whatever goals you may have.

10% rule:
The first concept we’ll use is the 10% rule.
Basically it’s like this:

Take 10% of what you earn and save them.
Take 10% of what you earn, and earmark it for giving away.
Take 10% of what you earn and use it on you.

Now you can properly hear your inner voice saying “this is not possible, I cant set aside 30% of my salary”.
Well, you have to. What usually happen is, that the more you earn the bigger your expenses will be.
And therefore the sooner you get started, the easier it is.
It is much more harder to set aside $1000 from $10.000, than $100 from $1000.

Why it is so important to save?
Richness is a state of my mind, among other things. And when you know you have money put aside, it surely gives you this feeling of richness. And another very important benefit, is that the 10% gives you an opportunity to invest.

Why is it so important to give away then?
First of all, it feels really nice to give someone you love something.
Next when you are giving, it creates a very special and important feeling inside of you. The feeling of having more than enough.

And last but not least. You are important. You really need to buy something nice for you. After all you are the one who has been working hard for the money. So go get yourself something nice. Maybe something you’ve been wanting for some time now.

That’s all for now. Next we’ll take a look on the term passive vs. active income. Stay tuned.
Bye for now.

Categori: Finances