How I’ve Made Money Online

Posted on November 16, 2009 by Matt

While in college I actually paid my rent from money earned online.  Now I wasn’t making tons of money, but it was enough for a college student to pay the bills.  The perquisite to my method is patience and usually a bit of web know how.  My method for paying the bills was flipping websites.  Flipping Websites is the purchasing of a website, modifying and further developing the site in some manner, and selling the site for a profit.

Ideally I’d like to provide tips to individuals who are interested in this, however when looking most of the content I found was very low quality.  Mostly just individuals trying to make a few bucks “teaching how to flip sites.”  Here is the process I used which worked well for me.  I’d flip a site over about 2-3 months.  Buy a promising blog, spend several days writing articles to post, and time-stamping the articles for the duration of the time I planned to own the site.  In addition I would work on making sure I had proper SEO plugins installed so that the site would do well in the eyes of the Google.  Normally after the period of several months a clear improvement could be seen in traffic and SEO rankings, at which time I would sell the site for a profit.

Actually I may need to purchase a site soon to develop a case study on flipping a site?

Posted in Blogging, SEO | Comments Off on How I’ve Made Money Online

The easy way to grow traffic to your site

Posted on November 13, 2009 by Matt

This is so simple I’ve simply overlooked the concept for years.  Earlier today I was browsing ProBlogger.net and JohnChow.com both are blogs which I used to read everyday trying to gain knowledge from them.  Being a web developer I decided the greatest value to myself and others was in web development.  It was at that point that it made sense to me that the easiest way to “make money online” was to use my knowledge of web design and development to help others and build sites rather than to take the route of trying to blog for money.

As time has passed I’ve realized that my skills lie in development and design and those skills are best to use sharing knowledge here, and also for a monetary gain selling those skills to others as well.  Now the thing i’ve finally taken away from these sites where the authors make crazy amounts of money from their blogs is a simple lesson and epiphany.  The easiest way to grow traffic, is to continually create new and unique content. Now it has been a few years since I first came across these “make money online” blogs, and just now I’m realizing why those individuals succeed.  They make money off of their traffic, and they keep and build their traffic by continually creating new content.

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5 Things I learned from working at Ad Agencies

Posted on November 12, 2009 by Matt

1) It’s not your fault – When you brainstorm and come up with killer ideas, great concepts, and amazing campaigns the ideas are your own but the final say is not in your hands.  No matter how you wrap up a pitch, no matter how great the slogans and designs, it all comes down to the client.  If the client doesn’t approve it, that’s it.  However the client’s lack of approve doesn’t mean you failed.  It’s not your fault.

2) Client revisions will kick your butt – Unless you have a great client, or a great contract with the client, the client will come back with changes.  Client revisions will be the bane of your existence, but they are just part of the routine.  Nothing is perfect… not the client, and unfortunately not your work.

3) You’re only as good as your portfolio – Your agency is awesome, amazing.  However if you have a portfolio which hasn’t been updated in 3 to 6 months, or longer, you may be losing clients.  Until you always have your best work in your portfolio you continually run the risk of potential clients seeing what you do have available and passing you by.

4) Know when to say “No.” – As important as having a concise creative brief, is sticking to it.  Without knowing exactly what you should be doing for a client, you run the risk of getting off course.  When you get off course, everything goes crazy.  You lose profits because you go over the estimated time for a project, you lose profits because the scope was changed and the workload changed.  Know when to say “No.”  Without this skill, clients win but at the expense of your profit margin and everything else that goes into it.

5) Social media is an iceberg – Social media is an iceberg, treat it as such.  Saying “we are prepared for social media and social marketing” is as good as seeing the iceberg coming.  Until you have legitimate plans of how you will utilize Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, your company blog, and all the other tools which social media offers, you don’t see the other 80% of that iceberg still under the water.  Knowing how to use, utilize and leverage social marketing tools for yourself and your clients is what will make or break campaigns in today’s market.

    Posted in Advertising | 1 Comment

    The least important part of designing a WordPress Theme.

    Posted on November 11, 2009 by Matt

    The least important  part of designing a WordPress Theme is the header.  There I’ve said it.  It is the least important part for three reasons:

    – It is the first thing anyone will see on your site.  The header is also the thing that everyone sees on your site.
    – Since designers know the header is the first thing everyone sees, they normally have preconceived ideas of how a header will look or fit in with the design.
    – Because the header is first and foremost, that means you need to be spending all of your other time on the other parts of the site which should look as amazing as your preconceived header because a truly engaged reader should want to look at each part of your site, not just the content but the layout and design of the site that the content lives in.

    Posted in Design, Themes | 1 Comment