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Thursday, October 1, 2009

WE HAVE MOVED!

Thank you for your visit.

Blog Along with Me has moved! If you arrived at this page please click on

http://www.blogincomelife.com

for the latest postings.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Bloggers are Born at the Crossroads of Crisis and Opportunity

At the crossroads of Crisis and Opportunity entrepreneurs are born. It’s true. Tough times bring out the latent entrepreneurial spirit in all of us. Whether that spirit moves us to successful entrepreneurship is up to you. It’s akin to leading a horse to water.

I believe there are two types of entrepreneurs. There is the A type of entrepreneur, the individual who may have tried the nine to five but couldn’t stomach the stifling atmosphere. Typically this type of person has an innate restlessness, an impatience for something bigger and better and quite honestly, does not make for a good employee. Such a person has a different agenda. You see such a person in the faces of Richard Branson, Warren Buffet and Phillip Knight.

Lesser known and flying under the radar of visibility is the entrepreneur who becomes one out of necessity, or, for want of a better term, the B type of entrepreneur. These are legion and account for a significant portion of multi-millionaires – not a bad place to be financially. Faced with economic uncertainty they actively cast about for opportunities and finding them take action. Today that opportunity is writ large on the internet and the entrepreneur born is often a blogger.

Blogging for money is the easiest introduction to making money online. Everyone can write, the cost is negligible and it is a user friendly introduction to cutting your teeth in the field of Internet Marketing. In fact knowing what I now know, after having taken several internet marketing courses, were I starting in Internet Marketing today, I would definitely start with blogging.

A word of caution though, you need to do more than just publish posts on your blog. If you want to make money blogging you need to treat it as a business. There are some basics that need considering:

1. Select a niche
2. Select the blogging platform
3. Monetize your site
4. Market, market, market.

Each of these basic to the bones steps form the foundation upon which you will build your business. That is why I wrote the e.book ABC’s of Blogging for Money which you can download in PDF format for free.

Once you get the basics down pat you can expand, bit by bit and eventually become a super blogger pulling in at the very least a mid-six figure annual income.

Happy Blogging!

Valentina Bellicova
Blogger for Money

Blogging is all about getting your own cheese.

Quick Lins:
ABC’s of Blogging for Money

Monday, September 7, 2009

Start of new year, blogging for money results, and random thoughts

Happy Labor Day everyone! Last days of summer barbeques and the wearing of white. Hmmm...I will continue to wear white.

Here in Vancouver the weather has decided cooled from just a few weeks ago when we were melting from the heat ... yes, they were scraping us off the sidewalks then! I love working from my home office which looks out on a grove of oak trees. The leaves haven't even got a hint of rust anywhere, they are green as green can be. It won't be long though before the squirrels start coming to gather the acorns of which there will be plenty.

I always look at Labor day which usually is a bit earlier in September (I guess September 7th is as late as it can be)as the beginning of a new year. To me this is more of a new year than January. I guess it goes back to school. We always started a new grade or "year" in September and finished in June, with the summer off for fun. I still do that now with my business. I have noticed that this is also a time when people start new things - not make resolutions like they do on New Year's Day, but things like signing up for a course on something they've always wanted to learn, or sign up for a new activity like fencing or tennis. Corporations typically ramp up their efforts in sales and marketing to finish the year strong ... statistically October and November are the most productive months of the year, both in business and personal lives.

Ok... enough of the musing already.

Found a site today that publishes blog incomes of bloggers who, well, publish their incomes publicly. I wrote last week that I was going to try and compile such a list well Jeremia Froyland has done it. I noticed that the big earners were absent, Jeremia and I had a little bit of online conversation about that and agreed that when you start pulling in the really big bucks, a la John Chow, Darren Rowse, Yaro Starak to name just a few (easily in the half mil a year league)then you stop publishing. Privacy and other things come into play. So the big guns are missing but it will be interesting to see the incomes of the current list members rise over time. Hmmmm..... gee, I'd like to be on that list soon ... and then earn to the point where I will stop publishing.

Happy Blogging!

Valentina
Blogger for Money

I guess acorns are like cheese for the squirrels

Quick Links:
Jeremia Froyland

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Top Bloggers for Money

As I was doing some research on the top bloggers for money, I came across a posting by one of my "do follow" bloggers, the author of The Digerati Life which is a whole year old but the thread of comments keeps lengthening. Here is the link to her post titled
Make Money Blogging: Top Bloggers And How Much They Earn


Of course the stats need updating, notably her own. Two years into blogging she was making 50% of her corporate income as an IT engineer in Silicon Valley. That can't be too shabby. It is now three years. Is she at 75%?

This is the time of month that bloggers who publish their monthly results ... well, err..publish. So I am putting together a list of my own, which will not be a complete list, but its one to start with.

Happy Blogging!

Valentina
Blogger for Money

PS... today, blogging for cheese!

Quick Links
The Digerati Life
Make Money Blogging: Top Bloggers And How Much They Earn

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

August Report - No Zero Days!


August was a busy month. I have three distinct income streams and they all needed chunks of time. My internet marketing time chunks were devoted mostly to 30 Day Challenge. I thought that this blog would suffer. Looking at the graphs I’m actually quite pleased - 38% increase in visitors from July! The graph above is one that is a comparative between August and July. The green line being July and the blue August.

Considering that August is the slowest month for business whether it is on the internet or in the “real” world I am quite pleased that the numbers are up. This is the first month that not a single day passed by without a visitor – NO ZERO DAYS! That is a milestone for me. That spike up there for August 10 reflects the day that Google picked up one my postings and included it in its Google Alerts for the keyword phrase "Blogging for money."

Search engine traffic is way down. Another encouraging factor. When the search engines begin to deliver the 8% - 12% traffic I have been receiving in the past few months then the visitor stats should increase.

Top three blog postings to date:
1. Yes Virginia, there is money in blogging
2. 30 Day Challenge More Like 30 Days of Christmas
3. Rock Stars at Frank Kern’s Mass Control

I am also encouraged by the increasing number of downloads for my ABC’s of Blogging for Money e.book.

Earnings were paltry. No affiliate sales. Adsense not even at $3! I came across a blog that posted the top 10 blog earners and I was going to put a link to that post here as I wanted you to see that there's money in them thar blogs, but then I noticed that some of the top earners were not mentioned. It’s hard to come by hard data but maybe what I’ll do for next first of the month report is come up with my own top ten blog earners. This info is based on those bloggers who publish their monthly results.

Its time to move on. I have started the process of moving this blog to Wordpress. The shenanigans behind the scenes will take a while since I am doing this myself, so the new look won’t be up for a week or two, but I am both excited and looking at the exercise with trepidation: excited as I will be able to make immediate comparisons between the two platforms, trepidation: because it means more learning or at least perfecting the Wordpress Direct system which is quite different from that of Blogger.

Happy Blogging!

Valentina
Blogger for Money

PS... What cheese?

Quick Links
ABC’s of Blogging for Money
There’s Money in Them Thar blogs
1. Yes Virginia, there is money in blogging
2. 30 Day Challenge More Like 30 Days of Christmas
3. Rock Stars at Frank Kern’s Mass Control

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Secret Affiliate Weapon

Ewen Chia is one of my favorite Internet Marketing Gurus ... I have been receiving his newsletters for some time now, bought the book How I Made My First Million on the Internet and How You Can Too!: The Complete Insider's Guide to Making Millions with Your Internet Business and his course.

What I really like about Ewen is the easy to follow, step by step instructions on how to do something. I mean it's like learning ABC's. As mentioned many times here, anything techie and my spine stiffens (I am getting better). When I first started looking at Wordpress, I found it a bit of challenge. I downloaded several e.books/instructions on how to install, upload, download, FTP and all that stuff. Frustration set in. Then I remembered it was part of Ewen’s course that I had (at the time this part of the course was beyond my capability, so I left it alone). I quickly went to my files, opened the videos, and voila! Easy as a cake walk! I now refer to them all the time.

Why am I telling you all this (and isn’t today the “statistics” day for August?

Yes ... it is.

But the reason I am telling you this is because Ewen has just launched his Secret Affiliate Weapon 2.0. I knew it was being launched today so was watching my Inbox like a hawk as I wanted to grab a copy of it quickly.

Affiliate marketing is my next step in developing my internet marketing muscles and it should be yours too. It's the natural progression to making money. I like Ewen’s easy to follow style. As I write this, I am busy downloading. All I can say is that if this is only half as easy/good as Ewen’s other stuff, it will take my internet marketing up a notch or two ... or ten!

What hooked me on this is that this is an automated system. After doing the 30 Day Challenge I am on the lookout for anything that will save me time and help me generate a PASSIVE INCOME ... Ewen says this is the same system that he uses to generate $18,291.75 per month from ONE affiliate product!

OK. I’m game. But I was SHOCKED at the price ... you will be too! I think the boy has lost his marbles or his brain has turned to mush. I am certain it will not last at this price for too long. I recommend, without reservation that you go and get your own copy of the Secret Affiliate Weapon 2.0

Happy Blogging ... and Affiliate Marketing!

Valentina
Blogger for Money

PS. This is cheese is rare.

Quick Links

Secret Affiliate Weapon 2.0


How I Made My First Million

Sunday, August 30, 2009

From Below Broke to Self Made Multi-millionaire

“I quit every day, but I also got up every day and started all over again ...” July Ono

On a cloudless Sunday morning, July and I sat outside of Petra’s, a popular local cafĂ©. We drank tea, shared a decadently lethal sticky bun and spent the better part of the morning getting to know each other.

I had the advantage. July is a celebrity, not just locally but in the world of real estate investment. She is also the author of Your Million Dollar Network: How to Start and Build Your Million Dollar Network She is known internationally, so of course I know a lot about her already, notably, that she went from below broke to being a self made multi-millionaire. July has 440 “doors” - that’s real estate investor speak for units- and counting. Conservatively that translates into an impressive $30 million property portfolio. Not bad for someone who was $40 thousand below broke a scant seven years ago.

Success leaves clues. I love meeting with successful people. There is something special about them not in the sense that they are different from other people, in fact they are ordinary people just like you and me, but what I find is that they exude an energy that sets them apart from others. I think that the more time we spend with people like that the more we learn and the more that energy rubs off on us. Oh yes, they are willing to do what is required to get their first whiff of success.

What’s that got to do with blogging for money and internet marketing? ... you want to know.

Nothing, yet EVERYTHING!.

July was telling me about the first 6 months in her real estate investment career. It was poorly focused and filled with frustration. Nothing was coming together. It took her 6 months to get the first deal put together and even that almost unraveled literally hours before closing. I remarked on her tenacity and that’s when she told me that every night she quit, every morning she got up and started again.

I thought about how that holds such a parallel to what we do in internet marketing. So many people sign up for courses, spend lots of dollars on learning, but never do anything with what they learn. Or they go through the first three maybe four lessons of the course, find it overwhelming, and put it aside for a later time. A time that never comes. In the world of blogging exact statistics are hard to come by but it is estimated that there are some 150 million blogs created, but get this: 60% - 80% are abandoned after three or four postings, usually within a month!

While the sheer numbers are nowhere near as staggering in the real estate investment community, July concurs that the statistics are similar: most people who get started don’t continue. I venture this holds true for most entrepreneurial endeavors. What sets the true entrepreneur apart from the wannabe is the pit bull mentality and tenacity that these people bring to the game – a willingness to learn, to take action, to adjust, to sharpen and execute. They are willing to do what is required to get the job done. Eventually they get a taste of success – now they’re hooked!

It’s just a game. Master it. Have fun. You will live a life others only dream of.

Happy Blogging!

Valentina
Blogger for Money.

PS... make a point of being in the company of big cheese.

Quick Links:
Blogging Statistics
July Ono
Your Million Dollar Network: How to Start and Build Your Million Dollar Network
ABC's of Blogging for Money