Purpose

I started this blog with the goal of documenting our creation of enough passive income by July 2012 to achieve true financial freedom - a great lifestyle funded by money that comes in whether we work or not.

We didn't make it...at least partially because I now believe that work provides a lot of benefits both to the one working (physically, mentally, emotionally, and even spiritually) and also to the one being served.

I still am very interested in investing and the world of finance, so I will try and pass along any interesting opportunities I see, but I have a newfound love for active income as well.
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts

Monday, August 13, 2007

Other Passive Income Blogs

Never one to hoard all of the glory for myself (at least I like to think I am getting better at this), I want to share some of the other good passive income blogs I have found, along with my comments on them:

Blogs (in no particular order):
1) http://www.geniustypes.com - great blog on trying to develop passive income (further proof that I'll never figure out search engines - comes up #2 in Google on "passive income" but #11 on "passive income blog")
2) http://www.theroadtoperfection.com/ - although not many new posts will be added, this is an interesting story of a college student getting very close to financial freedom - Jeremy and I keep in touch to keep each other motivated and welcome others to help
3) http://www.netpassiveincome.com/ - great site for online passive income development, especially blog related!
4) http://income-opportunities.blogspot.com/ - depite the similar website name, we are not related :) Apparently Malathy is in India, but that doesn't keep him from highlighting some interesting opportunities.
5) http://www.kchut.com/ - mostly online oriented, again, not necessarily passive (but most online ventures lend themselves to being passive - except blogging, of course, unless you can get other people to blog for you...)

I will highlight more as I run across them. The beautiful thing about the current internet is the ease with which you can find people that share your interests.

We need to get a passive income mastermind group together... (for any literary types the "..." is my version of foreshadowing)

Speaking of groups with similar interests - Anyone ever played Kiyosaki's Cashflow 101 board game? Great game that really helps develop some passive income knowledge and strategy. If anyone in the central Kansas area ever wants to play - let me know!

Friday, August 10, 2007

Amazon Context Links

So Amazon has an affiliate program where you get paid if people buy stuff from Amazon by linking from your site.

SIDEBAR
From a moneymaking standpoint, Amazon is not that great because it only pays 4% to start up to 10% based upon your volume of business - but when I have checked Amazon always has the lowest prices, so I strongly recommend them as a place to buy books, especially when you get free shipping on orders over $25!


They recently (I assume - it's in beta) rolled out a new application (or "app" to use the "lingo") that scours your text for search terms and makes those words "live" where you get a preview if you hold your mouse over it and can click it to go to Amazon to buy.

e.g. if I wrote "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire", this should become an active link to Amazon where if you hold your cursor over it, you will get a preview of the item, which you can then click on to go to Amazon.

I think this is really cool (putting on my "old man hat" for a minute) - it's incredible what that there technology can do these days. Seriously, I do think it is cool, and given my experience with Amazon being very cheap, the idea seems really cool, if it works.

After some trial and error (and consulting the all-knowing Google oracle), I figured out how to incorporate this into Blogger.

Please give me feedback on these context links:
1) Do you like them or not like them?
and of course,
2) Let me know if they are not working for you!

Thanks for your help!

Sunday, July 22, 2007

HELP! - How to make money with your blog?

Or to use the proper "lingo" - how do you efffectively monetize your blog?

I wish I had all of the answers on this one :)

As stated in the purpose of this blog, my primary intent for this blog is to journal my journey to financial freedom and share my successes (and not-quite-as-successfuls) with others. At the same time, I have put in some Google advertising (Adsense) blocks in an attempt to not only generate some revenue from the site but also provide more relevant content.

Adsense makes great sense (no pun intended) to me because many readers will stumble across my blog looking for information on a certain topic. You may or may not get value from the information I provide (hopefully you will!), but the ads provide information on similar topics that you (the reader) may find useful. If you do - it's a win-win - you get information you were looking for, and I get some advertising revenue.

My attempts to monetize this blog effectively (note also the link to Amazon.com for the 5-day book) are part of a larger goal of mine:

I hope to start a road trip blog where the revenues from the blog are what I have to live on each day. So no revenue would mean no gas, no place to stay, and no food.

Of course it would be critical to get some revenue generation before starting out because the blog about me sitting in my car in my driveway waiting for some revenue would be pretty boring (potentially very amusing, but still boring).

So that's where I need your help. How do I effectively make money from a blog? Adsense is easy to drop onto the sites, but any tips on generating click-throughs? Targetted advertising? eBooks? A "recommended reading" list linked to Amazon? I would welcome all ideas here - please make a comment to this post if you have an idea.

I plan to experiment on this site with revenue generation, so be aware of that. If you see things on here that you think are good ideas, please let me know. Likewise, make me aware of things that really "turn you off". I want this to be a positive learning experience for all of us.

Many people have great knowledge and experiences that they can share with the world. I think blogs are a great way to do that. If we can figure out the best ways to make some money at the same time, I think that would certainly provide more incentive for people to share via a blog.

Thanks in advance for the help!