How loving yourself can get you more money.

Another few page impressions. Most, however, are from this blog. It seems that people are coming here from my pings rather from the links. hmmm... I wonder why. Maybe I just need to give it a bit more time.

I just had a thought. For all those out there trying to make a difference in the world keep in mind that whatever you're feeling at any given moment is reflected in the world around you. So for instance, if you are trying to convey charm and honesty to a client, customer, or even your date, you're gonna have much better results if you actually ARE honest and charming (or at least feel charming cuz its not always possible to turn it on and off). I think most people know this from experience, especially writers, that whenever your writing and your emotions are in sync everything just sorta turns out better. Well I believe that's true for all areas of life. People are smarter than you think, even if you use all the right words to make you seems sincere nothing in the world can tell someone you are sincere unless you really are.
I think its also important to realize that people will treat you however you treat yourself. I mean if you're in a constant state of hating yourself, you're always stuck on all the horrible things you've done, and how you think you're such a disgusting person, people will see that. Not only will they see it but they'll treat you the same way. I find this everyday of my life. on the days when I feel like I can love myself, even my flaws, on those days everyone around me seems a little more willing to give me love as well.

This may seem a little off topic for this blog, but I really honestly think that everything in life is connected and if you start neglecting one aspect of your life a whole bunch of other aspects are gonna start suffering. So every now and again I'm going to throw in a few comments here and there that relate to keeping your mind, body and spirit healthy so we can all benefit a bit more from these endeavors.

So the lesson for today is love yourself and others will love you too and if money is what you want that love will often be naturally converted into money.

Luke.

Forum advertising.

Hey all, been ahving a bunch of trouble from my ads today, nothing is going my way. I'll have to put off getting into the affiliate stuff today cuz I have some things I need to get sorted out. I will however tell you all that I just spent the last hour crawling forums and making posts with this blog's URL as my signature. Oddly enough I already have about 20 new page impressions. I guess it works. I personally wouldn't do this on forums that discuss topics I know nothing about, but it seems to work great when you can actually make some thoughtful posts. I would also only do this for forums that are highly specific to your site. But don't take my word it, experiment, see how far you can push things before you cross the line. Keep one thing in mind though, always let me know if something works;)

Luke.

Affiliate Programmes.

Affiliate programmes are by far the best way to make an easy living on the net. Its not quite as easy as advertisers would have you believe but its really not that hard. You don't need a site of your own, you can start with no money (or under 50$ if you want), and your success is directly proportional to your ingenuity, dedication, and hard work. I'll be outlining the basics, some advanced techniques and going through the best sources of information and resources that I have found over the next few days. I'm a little strapped for time right now, so I'll continue this topic this afternoon.
stay fresh,
Luke.

Increasing traffic to a blog.

Hey all,
only got 16 page impressions yesterday. One click through. Made nineteen cents! Hazzar! I think probably the best way to increase the traffic for a blog like this might be to start posting comments on other blogs. Probably not the best idea to just post any old nonsense, a genuine thoughtfull post, with real insight would be best. Thats what I've been doing with Myspace and it seems to be working out quite well.
I'll keep ya'll posted.
luke

A couple more adsense secrets.

Just a couple more little AdSense secrets. Placement is very important. If you can put them on the left of the page, or actually incorporate the ads directly into the text of the page that's best. Some people like to put them just below pictures, and I've seen sites that do this quite well and that probably get a very high CTR because of it, but I really don't think its the best thing to do for a lot of sites. Some people also like to put the ads just after an article or post, thinking that once the reader is done the article they will look around for something to do for a second. Could work. Essentially trial and error is all anyone really advocates.

As far as color is concerned just make sure it matches as close as possible to the rest of your site to avoid the dreaded "ad blindness." Other than that I haven't seen too many interesting tips for color. Joel Comm says that the URL should be blue because that has become the universal link symbol. Seems reasonable, but I haven't been able to figure out how to get blue links on my blogger ads yet. I just need to play around a bit more I guess.

That's all for now, I'll give away a bunch of affiliate and AdWords "secrets" tomorrow. Stay tuned till then.

Luke.

Adsense Basics and a couple Secrets Revealed.

Hey there everyone. Yesterday's page impressions were pitiable. I only had 15 page impressions and a big fat zero for my click through rate (CTR). The good news though is that I was only pushing (pings and article distribution) this blog and this is the one that got 13 impressions. At least there is some effect. The way I see it any feedback is worthwhile.
Before I start dealing with Adsense basics I just want to mention a couple books that I think are really worthwhile. They're by Robert G. Allen, "Multiple Streams of Internet Income" and "The Road to Wealth." These are very good books, very helpful. I was actually just looking through The Road to Wealth and realized that he was doing what I'm trying to do; prove to everyone that anyone can become financially independent (just so long as they live in Canada or the US, I don't know enough about foreign economics to say anything about other countries). So check them out they're certainly worth the time investment.
Now for Adsense.
Adsense is a service by Google that allows website owners to monetize their pages with highly relevant ads. All you have to do is copy and paste some code into your source code and Bob's yer uncle. Its really ridiculously simple if you have a blog from Blogger. Just set up your blogger account (takes a couple minutes), put at least one post up so that Google has something to look at, then go to google.com/adsense and put in your application. There you'll find all of the instructions (which are really easy to follow) and all of the rules you need to follow (also really simple, just don't put the ads on a porno site, or click on your own ads and you should be fine). Once your application is approved you'll have to pick out your ad formats, colors, and you'll get your code. Then its just copy and paste.
You get paid every time someone clicks on one of your ads and how much you get paid depends on how much the ads are worth. The value of the ads is determined by the popularity of the keywords used in the ads. Now, you can determine which keywords you want by altering the content of your site. If you want ads for legal aid, or debt management, then just plaster your site with relevant key words (I'll get into proper keyword use in a later post). There are lists of the highest paying keywords and it is possible to get some that pay considerably more than 0.10$ per click. There are some difficulties when it comes to choosing keywords and determining the content for your site but everyone seems to be pushing on the niche markets really hard (I'll go into this too in a later post). If anyone has any questions about any of this you can leave comments here and I'll respond as soon as possible.
Now for a few details. I've read several books on how to maximize adsense income and they all seem to be saying more or less the same things. None of them seem to have anything original to say so I'm going to save you the trouble of buying and reading them and just give you they're advice. I can't really consider it giving away they're secrets because I've read the exact same "secrets" in several different places so the original innovator has certainly been robbed by a long time ago.
Essentially what all these people are saying is that the worst thing you can do with adsense is make your ads look like ads. Everyone ambulating on the net has been bombarded with so many ads for so long now, and been ignoring them for so long, that there is a universal "ad blindness" when it comes to typical ad formats. We see banners, or the typical off-set scream-in-your-ear ads, so often that we literally block them out altogether. So what these authors tell us to do is ensure that the colors of the ads are the same as the colors on our sites, that they are placed so as to look like a part of the actual content of the page, basically anything to make the ads look less like ads and more like real content. There are really very few tips from these authors that go beyond what you'll learn from Google when you sign up to get your ads. They all just basically say to experiment, try out some different things, but always make sure to prevent your ads from looking like ads.
I will be doing my own experimentation with the little variables as we progress, and I'll let you know what works for my sites and what doesn't. I think that's all for now, if I think of anything else I'll post it and if anyone else has anything to add don't be shy, especially if you have any questions.
Luke.

Money as a representation of appreciation.

Hi again, I hope everything is well with every one reading this.
Before I get into the discussion of the basics of internet income (as I understand them) I want to spend a bit of time acknowledging some basic principles of the laws of universal attraction. Consider this: money is energy. The value of money rests entirely on the fact that people agree that it has value. There is nothing inherent in the money itself that we prize, it is the energy that the money represents. Money is a force, created by universal agreement, that is propelled by our energetic investment of thought and intention. Now consider what that energy looks like, what it sounds like and feels like. Money does not have the same energy as a greedy person or a rich person. It has an altogether different energy when we consider its essence. In its essence it is the energy of appreciation. We use money to show our appreciation for products, services and sometimes people themselves. It is the appreciation of a product (or the perceived value of a product, which might possibly lead to appreciation) or service that compels us to pay money for it. Now consider how this can be so. Tell me how there can be a spending of money without a display of some sort of appreciation.
To put all this in perspective and to give you something to consider further, think about the fact that we all control our sense of appreciation. We can literally force ourselves to give or withhold appreciation at will. We can distribute appreciation as easily as we could distribute a thousand dollars. The only difference is that appreciation is limitless. We can literally give away millions of dollars worth of appreciation without ever spending a dime. Consider what would happen if you actually did this. How would people around you react if you were dolling out to them appreciation that's worth a thousand dollars? Would they reciprocate? How do you think they would reciprocate if they decided to? Do you think most people would pay actual money to feel genuinely appreciated? How often do you think the average person gets the chance to feel genuine appreciation? Would it be worth the investment on your part?

These ideas are not entirely my own. They mostly come from the Abundance for Life course from Paul Scheele at Learning Strategies. Don't think that I'm trying to sell you something, I get no commission from any of they're products (don't get me wrong I'd like to, but my affiliate account isn't up yet;). So don't be shy, don't feel like can't trust what I'm saying, or that there must be some catch or whatever. Just consider these ideas.

I love my family, with a note on article advertising.

Hey all,
I haven't updated this thing in a few days but I have a couple fairly good reasons for it. First I wasn't feeling too well, second I wanted to see how much organic traffic this thing (and the rest) is attracting. Well, turns out there isn't much. It seems that the only traffic I get for these blogs is from when I update them, even sending a ping through pingtheempire.com does very little. I guess I need to spread the word a bit, get some controversy, some back links, some zest, etc etc.

I've been thinking a lot about language as a means of increasing conversion rates for article advertising. I figure that the standard 3-5% is far too low and that a bit of the old crafty language patterns just might do the trick to bring it closer to 10%. We shall see, we shall see. I'll be developing some article templates, filled with variables that can be changed to fit any type of product, and which are highly convincing. I want to test them out first before I release them on the world so stay tuned.

A little side note about this blog in general. I figure even if it is a failure in itself, in that no one but my friends and family ever end up reading it, it really doesn't matter. The way I see it I'll eventually get the whole internet money making formula down pat, and I'll figure out a way to do it with little or no money. So at the very least this blog will stand as a great resource for my parents, and possibly my sister, so that they can have a beacon of hope whenever they get run down by money, or their bosses, or their coworkers, or customers, or whatever. Essentially all I want is to lay out in as clear a way as possible a method by which the people I love can feel free to start living the way that they want, on their own terms. If nothing else comes of this so be it, at least I'll have provided for my family, and possibly many others.

By the way the only blog that's been getting any organic page impressions at all is my Leavening Poetry. Go figure. It only got three hits for Sunday and three for Monday.

Luke.
PS. I want to go over some fundamentals of affiliate marketing, adwords and adsense in tomorrows post so if yer new or just curious to see my take on the whole thing then checkk in tomorrow.