If you could tell by the tone of my last income report, things weren’t looking all that great.  My income was down for a variety of reasons, and even though April as a whole didn’t turn out too badly, I could tell that a further decline was in store for this month.

As result, I’m launching this personal challenge to see if I can get myself back on the right track.  If everything goes as planned, I’ll have some great things to report at the end of the 31 days.

Let’s get into the details…

What is the “31-Day Workaholic Challenge”?

Basically, this challenge is about one thing: laser-focused productivity and hard work for a period of 31 days.  I feel like my productivity online has been slipping for quite some time (possibly dating back to some point last year), so I wanted to buckle down and turn that around.

For me, productivity is about two things:

1) Eliminating distractions

2) Finding your focus

If I can conquer both of these, I think I can boost productivity significantly.

Eliminating Distractions: Not Easy!

The biggest problem I have with distractions is that there are a couple in my life that I can’t eliminate and don’t want to eliminate.  I’ll call these “obstacles” instead of “distractions.” Those two obstacles are my “9 to 5″ job and my girlfriend.

Obviously, I have to go to work so that I can earn my salary (at least, for right now).  As for my girlfriend – I live with her, and love spending time with her, so there’s going to be a certain amount of that which is unavoidable.

Now that we have these “obstacles” defined, I’m going to put a temporary end to a few distractions that can be eliminated:

• Watching TV - During this 31-day period, I’m not going to watch TV, with a couple exceptions:

• The first exception is my typical late-at-night-before-bed TV watching with my girlfriend.  In my mind, this is dead time that wouldn’t be productive even if the TV was off.

• The second exception is Memorial Day, where I will be off of work and likely marathon-watching the entire (highly anticipated) new season of Arrested Development.

• Video Games - I periodically play various video games on my Playstation 3 system, and this tends to be a major distraction when there’s nothing on TV and I don’t have any real obligations after work.  I actually think this will be an easy one to cut out.

• Blog Reading – Over the course of a day, I probably spend a significant amount of time reading different blogs online (some related to internet marketing, some that are not). Although much of it is helpful and educational, I think it can also be counter-productive.  I’m going to do my best to avoid reading blogs during these 31-days.

Finding My Focus

If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you know that I’m notorious for spreading myself thin and juggling multiple projects at one time. I know that this isn’t the most productive way to operate, and this was only further confirmed by a recent podcast from Pat Flynn at SPI (which I highly recommend).

Basically, Pat’s podcast explains that you’re generally more productive when you focus on one project at a time.  Take a project from start to finish (or at least, to a point where you can’t currently work on it further) before starting something new or working on another “in progress” project.

I do have certain obligations with my online business that I’d like to maintain during this focused 31-day period – in particular, blogging here at My 4-Hour Workweek as well as my authority site.  During this 31-day period, I’d expect to write 4 blog posts here (including this blog post), and 1-2 posts on Slow Carb Diet Experiments.  Outside of these obligations, I will be fully focused on one project.

What I Hope to Accomplish

I have two projects in mind for this 31-day period that should take 15 or so days each.  I will not work on these simultaneously - I only plan on starting the second project if/when I fully complete the first one.  If I don’t get to second project during this 31-day period, I’m okay with that.

These are the projects I hope to complete:

1) A new niche site – I want to take a site from start to finish, with most content and SEO work outsourced.  I think I can complete the majority of this within 15 days, but there will of course be some on-going maintenance (for example, you wouldn’t want to build all your backlinks within the first 15 days of the site’s existence).

Although I’ve done work on an authority site  recently (where I write 100% of the content myself), it’s been a long time since I’ve set up a site where I establish the site myself and outsource the content creation.

Given the current state of my online business, I do need some new passive income “assets” in my portfolio.  The goal would be to build something in a low-competition niche with the potential to earn $250-500/month (obviously more would be better!).

2) An information product for my authority site - I don’t think my authority site (Slow Carb Diet Experiments) is going to ever earn much from ads or Amazon affiliate links (until I have substantially more traffic), so I decided that I want to create my own product to sell on the site and via the e-mail list I’m building.

This is lower in priority than the niche site, which is why I will only start this once the new niche site is complete.  I already have some ideas for the product, but have yet to begin writing anything.

What About You?

That’s my plan, and I’m going to stick to it.  The 31-day period will begin when this post goes live, and I’ll provide a full recap once the 31 days are over.

If you’re interested in doing something like this, feel free to write about your plan in the comments – we can all hold each other accountable.

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The 31-Day Workaholic Challenge

Related posts:

1. Batching & Automation Challenge, Day 10: Distractions
2. Let’s Experiment with Laser Focus

As I previously mentioned, April’s income is probably going to show a very large drop from March’s, thanks to a big loss of traffic from one of my top income sources. With that in mind, I wanted to take this time to revisit some of my 2013 goals and come up with a plan to take my online income to the next level.

This will be more of a public brainstorm post, where I’m just going to write about what’s on my mind with respect to my passive income projects.  I encourage you to do the same, either on your own blog, or in the comments below.

Every once in awhile, I find myself in this position – there are so many possible directions to choose from, that I become frozen and don’t take any action.  It’s similar to analysis paralysis.  The best course of action is to try and get everything on the table and come up with a plan of attack.  It’s important to analyze, but not for long.  At some point (soon), you just have to pick something and take action.

Without further ado, I’m going to go through the various “projects” or ideas that I have on the table, and see if I can figure out what’s worth pursuing, what isn’t, and what the priority should be for whatever I do pursue.

Article Writing with Squidoo

The goal I set for 2013 is to write at least 200 Squidoo lenses (i.e. articles).  I have about 60 right now, but of those 60, probably only 10-15 currently have income potential (this is pretty normal).

Last month, I earned about $110 with Squidoo, but all of that income came from maybe 5 lenses.  If I can get to 200 lenses, I think there’s income potential in the $500-1,000/month range, which I’d be happy with from that income source.

Pros: Lenses are fairly quick to create – I could easily do one or two per day.  If I write them myself, they don’t cost anything to create.  In other words, the only investment required is my time.

Also, the income expectation is fairly reliable in the short term.  If I create 200 lenses (assuming I do the proper keyword research), I can expect that my earnings will increase by a significant amount.

Cons: The long-term sustainability of Squidoo lenses is somewhat questionable.  If the site comes under scrutiny by Google, it’s possible that many lenses could lose their search engine ranking.  As of right now, if you do good keyword research, you can rank a Squidoo lens on page 1 of Google without doing any backlinking.  If this changes, it may not be worthwhile to create Squidoo lenses.

Also, creating lenses isn’t the most interesting thing in the world.  If I decide to outsource some of this writing, there will be a financial investment involved, as I’d estimate each lens could cost me around $5.

Overall Analysis: In the short term, I think I will stick with this plan.  I may not be able to write a new lens each day, but I think there’s a lot of value in creating whatever lenses I can now, so that by the time the holiday season rolls around, I’ll have a lot of people clicking through to Amazon (which is the primary way to earn with Squidoo).

Authority Site (Slow Carb Diet Experiments)

This is a project I knew would take some time to gain traction, because it’s a blog in the health/dieting/food niche, arguably one of the most competitive and saturated niches.  The reason I still pursued it was because it’s something I’m interested in and enjoy blogging about.  It’s been a lot of fun creating new recipes and writing about them (not to mention, I lost over 15 lbs. on the slow carb diet).

In addition to simply creating new content on a regular basis (I’m aiming for once per week), I think I need to start doing more link building.  I’ll do this slowly and manually – I definitely don’t want Google to penalize the site.

Pros: Writing for this blog is something I enjoy, and if it does eventually gain traction and receive a lot of traffic, there could be a lot of earning potential (through affiliate revenue, my own information product, etc.).

Cons: There’s a chance this site will never make much money. Even if I increase the traffic 10-fold (going from 50 visits/day to 500 visits/day), it’s possible that the increase in earnings won’t be significant.

Overall Analysis: The success of this site will probably not occur in the short-term, so I’m prepared to stick with it while it slowly grows.  As long as I continue to focus both on SEO as well as my social media efforts (Pinterest is huge for a site like this), traffic should steadily grow.

A New Niche Site?

Now we’re entering uncharted territory. Although I have projects in place, I’m always looking toward new projects and ways to diversify my online income streams.

Ever since Google came out with its “Penguin” algorithm updates and ever since I lost my AdSense account, I really haven’t tried any new niche sites.

Although niche sites aren’t what they used to be (you can’t just throw together a quick 5-page site, rank it, and watch the money roll in within a matter of weeks), there are still viable ways to produce quality, profitable niche sites.

Most likely, any site I create would initially be monetized with Amazon’s affiliate program. Before I create a site, however, I’m going to spend a decent amount of time doing keyword research, and make sure that any keyword/niche I get into is worthwhile.

The overall goal would be to create a site where all the content is outsourced.  This wouldn’t be another site like my authority site where I need to be involved with it on a regular basis.   The income potential of a site like this would likely be in the $100-500/month range.

Expected Upfront Costs:

• Domain = $8
• Hosting = Free (I’d use my existing hosting accounts)
• Website theme = Free (I’d use a free theme or one of several premium themes that I already own)
• Content = $70-100 (I’d probably start off with approximately 10 articles, and I’d expect each to cost $7-10)
• SEO = $100; This is my initial budget – I would probably do a bit of backlinking myself as well.
• Total = $180-$210

This site would clearly require an upfront financial investment, but hopefully won’t require too much of my own time.  If all goes as planned, I would hope to make back the initial investment within 3-6 months of the site being fully built and operational.

I know Pat Flynn mentioned something about running a second niche site duel, so perhaps this would be a site for the competition.  I haven’t decided yet if I’d want it to be a public project.

A Kindle Book?

It seems like this is the current trend in the blogger/internet marketing community.  For right now, I don’t think it’s for me.  It’s not that I couldn’t write a book, but I don’t think that it’s something I would enjoy.

Somewhere down the road, if my audience on Slow Carb Diet Experiments is large enough, I may consider putting together a book, but that’s a long way off in my opinion.  Right now, I’m much more focused on writing shorter content that’s published online for free, and building an audience through that content.

A “Real” Online Business

At some point, I may look to combine my “offline” job (as a CPA) with an online business.  I haven’t thought much into this yet, but I could see the potential for being a CPA who specializes in the in the internet marketing/blogger niche.

It’s an area I know very well, and I’m equipped with the right tax and accounting knowledge to really help people in this niche.  This is a very long-term idea at the moment, but it’s something that I have in the back of my mind as a possibility one day.

That’s All for Now…

Thanks for taking the time to read through my fragmented ideas for current and future projects.  It helps me to put everything in writing, so hopefully someone out there will find value in it.

If you have thoughts or feedback on any of the above ideas, please feel free to share them in the comments.  I’m always open to constructive criticism.

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Crafting a Plan for Success [A Public Brainstorm]

Related posts:

1. Crafting a Life Changing Authority Website
2. Experiments with Passive Income – Squidoo Update
3. Experiments with Passive Income – Squidoo

What is Lending Club?  It’s basically a platform that allows individuals to loan money to other individuals (also known as “peer-to-peer lending”), with Lending Club as the middle man, making sure that your risk is properly identified before you make an investment.  They do everything from running a credit check on the borrower to verifying the borrower’s annual income, to make sure it’s relatively safe for you to loan them the money.

Of course, there is some risk involved, but you’re compensated for that risk by earning a nice interest rate on the loan (investment).  If you read my income reports, you’ll see I currently earn around a 6% annualized rate of return on my investment, and the average rate of all Lending Club investors is around 9%.  There’s a lot more to it, which is why I decided to write this guide and show you my strategy when investing on Lending Club.

Setting up Your Lending Club Account

Before I actually go into the investing strategy I use, I figured I should probably briefly touch upon how you actually set up your Lending Club account in terms of what you should be thinking about.

First of all, it’s free to create an account.  You can sign up here and set up your account with all the required information.  Lending Club is a secure/reputable site, so you can trust them with your sensitive information.

Upon setting up your account, you will want to make some kind of deposit so that you have money to invest.  For people that are unsure of it, I usually recommend making a $25 deposit – that’s the minimum amount you can invest in a loan, and it’ll allow you to get your feet wet.

Walking Through the Investing Process

I’m going to go through the basic investing process here so that you get an idea of how it works and so you can do it yourself.

Determine Your Tolerance for Risk

Before you even start looking at the available loans to invest in, you should first think to yourself, “how much risk am I willing to accept?”  If you feel like you’re a bit more conservative, you may decide to invest in loans that seem very safe, but also don’t pay a high interest rate.

On the flip side, if you’re only using a small % of your investing portfolio for Lending Club, you may decide it’s worth being a bit more aggressive - in which case, you would target loans that offer a higher interest rate.

No matter what your tolerance for risk is, the process will be the same.  Even if you want to be more aggressive, you still want to make smart choices.  After all, the end goal is to not only make money, but to make enough money to compensate for the risk you are taking on.

Browse Available Loans and Consider ALL Available Information

This is the most challenging part of the process, because you’ll have a lot of information and different loans to sort through. Here’s a sample of what it looks like when you are browsing available loans:

The Loan Rating

The first column basically shows you the quality/rating of the loan along with the expected interest that you would earn if you invest in the loan.  The ”A” type loans are the highest quality – this means, the borrower probably had his or her income verified, has a great credit score, little to no history of defaulting on loans, low outstanding debt, etc.

The “G” type loans (not pictured in the list above) are the worst.  There’s a lot more risk here, but the interest rate they offer can be 25% or higher.  I typically stay away from these, but that doesn’t mean you should if you’re willing to take on a little bit of risk with a smaller investment.

B through F obviously fall somewhere in between, and you of course should evaluate each loan individually before making a decision.

The Term

The term is the period over which the loan will be repaid to you (loan payments are typically made on a monthly basis).  Most loans are 36 months (3 years) but there are some that are 60 months (5 years).  You’ll notice in the image above that the loans that are 60 months give you an extra bonus.  The loan second from the top shows “+3.52%”.

What this means is, you’re getting an extra 3.52% for allowing the person to borrow over 5 years instead of 3.  Again, this is all tied to risk – the longer the loan will be outstanding, the more uncertainty there is (what if they lose their job in 4 years?), so therefore, there is more risk.

FICO, Amount, and Purpose

These columns are pretty straightforward.  The FICO score is the person’s credit score (to learn more about how the FICO score works, look at this Wikipedia page).

The amount is the total loan amount that the borrower is requesting.  As an investor, you will (most likely) only be investing in a small portion of that loan, starting as small as $25.  Even though your investment will be small, it still important to consider the total amount the person is investing, and the purpose for which they are going to use it.

For example, if I see a loan for $50,000 with a description that says “Credit card debt consolidation“, there are some red flags that go up in my mind.  This person has racked up $50,000 in credit card debt that they have not been able to repay yet, and they are now turning to Lending Club to try and move that debt into something with a lower interest rate. It’s smart on their part, but do you want to invest in someone who racked up $50,000 in credit card debt to begin with?  Doesn’t sound like a financially responsible person to me.

On the other hand, if the person needs the money for a home improvement or something else like that, and their credit score, etc. looks good, I might be more inclined to invest.  As I’ll explain later on, you’ll be able to click on the loan and read more about it beyond the one-line purpose shown on the screen above.

% Funded and Amount / Time Left

Social, peer-to-peer lending is an interesting thing.  Not only are you trying to make an investment decision based on the characteristics of the borrower, but you can also take a look at what other people are doing.

For example, if there is a loan listing that expires in 10 hours and is only 5% funded, there’s probably a good reason for it, and perhaps you should stay away from it.

On the other hand, if there’s a loan that people seem to be quick to invest in and is almost fully funded well in advance of the loan listing’s expiration time, that might be a good loan to look into and see if it’s something you want to invest in.  These aren’t metrics that should necessarily drive your investment decision, but they are additional signals that can help you determine whether or not it might be a good investment.

Looking Deeper into a Loan That Interests You

Once you’ve identified a loan that looks interesting (based on the metrics shown on the summary page), you can dig deeper into it to see more information.  Here’s an example of one that I looked at:

I would rate my interest in this loan as moderate.  There are a few things I don’t like, but given the fact that the interest rate is a whopping 15.80%, I can’t expect it to be perfect.

Let’s analyze the loan by first looking at some things that I like:

• 15.80% Interest rate - This is what first got me interested in the loan.  Part of the reason it’s so high is because it’s a 5-year loan, not a 3-year loan, but that alone isn’t going to stop me.

• Verified Income - Lending Club has verified the borrower’s income (which they don’t always do), so that’s a big plus for me.

• Good employment record - This person has been employed for the past 10+ years and I can even see who the current employer is.

• No delinquencies - In the past two years, this person hasn’t had any delinquencies (i.e. no issues repaying debt).

• Credit score is good (not great) – This borrower’s FICO score is 695-700, which is considered fairly good by most standards.  It’s not great, but it’s good enough for me to have some trust in this borrower.

• Social signals - This shouldn’t be weighed too heavily, but I like to see that the loan is already 67% funded with 10 days to go.  It tells me that many other investors have decided to invest.  And while we don’t know how smart the other investors are, it’s still a somewhat positive signal.

• Renter - Depending on your perspective, this could be good or bad.  With someone at this income level, I like knowing that this person doesn’t have a mortgage to worry about.

Now, some things I don’t like as much:

• Purpose of the loan - The total loan ($19,750) is going to be used to pay off existing debt.  This always leads me to ask, “how did the debt become so great to begin with?” This leads us to a further question: “If this person continues to build up additional debt, will they be able to continue paying down our loan for the 5 year duration?”  No one knows for sure, which is a big reason why the interest rate is what it is.

• Relatively low income compared to loan - Assuming the $3,683 gross monthly income is only around $2,700 or so after taxes (this is only a guesstimate), the monthly loan payment represents almost 18% of this person’s income.  Again, this is okay, but it’s not ideal.

Overall Analysis 

Even though I’ve only listed two negative points compared to 7 positive points, the two negative points are very significant.  This is the type of loan I would invest in a small percentage of the time (maybe 10-20% of the loans I invest in).  It’s okay to take some risks, but you have to keep your entire portfolio in mind and how it relates to your overall risk tolerance.

Determining an Amount to Invest

This is going to be based on your personal preference, but I like to strictly stick to $25 per investment.  This way, I can be sure that my portfolio is diversified.  Inevitably, you will eventually run into a bad loan and the borrower won’t pay it back in full.  When this happens, your risk will be minimized if your loan amount was only $25.

If you have a lot of money to invest, you might consider increasing the loan size to $50 or $75, but that’s not something I’ve done due to my portfolio size (under $5,000 right now).

If you start out by depositing $500, don’t feel like you need to get out there and invest in 20 loans right away.  Take your time, and only invest if you see loans that you like.  It doesn’t hurt you to have a little bit of cash sitting idle while you wait for a good loan to appear.

Reinvesting

Even though most loans are three years, you’ll generally start to see money coming back after the first month (because the borrower typically pays the loan back on a monthly basis). Each payment you receive will consist of both principal (i.e. the money you’ve loaned the borrower) and interest (the compensation you receive for lending the money).

Eventually, that repaid principal + interest will accumulate to $25+.  At this point, you can take the money and reinvest it in a new loan.  I am constantly reinvesting the money I receive, so each month I’m able to invest in new loans without actually depositing more money into Lending Club.  I’d recommend doing this if you want to maximize your rate of return.

Streamlining the Investing Process: Filters

Lending Club allows you to save filters so that you can always see the loans that match your preferences (loan rating, verified income, etc.) and don’t have to set them each time you log in to look for a new investment.

You should set your filters to match your risk tolerance and other preferences, but in case you’re wondering what mine looks like, you can see it pictured on the right.

You don’t want your filters to be too restrictive because you might be filtering out good loans that you’d actually like to invest in.  Your best bet is to only filter out the types of loans that you definitely would not invest in.

Here are the key aspects of my filters (as pictured to the right):

• Lending Club has approved the loan application.

• Show loans of ALL grades.

• Show both 36 and 60-month loans

• Debt to income ratio must be 25% or less.

• Exclude the loans I’ve already invested in.

• Must have NO delinquencies in the past two years.

• Credit score must be at least 695.

Conclusion

There you have it – that’s my investing strategy and how I make passive income with Lending Club.  There’s nothing too exciting about investing in loans – it’s like investing in a CD or stock.  You put the money in and sit back while you wait for the investment to pay off.  In this case, I believe the return is nice given the risk involved.

Once again, you can sign up for free here, and get started with as little as $25.  If you have any questions at all, please leave them in the comments and I’ll be happy to answer them.

If you decide to invest, best of luck, and hopefully you find it to be a great source of passive income like I do!

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How I Make Money with Lending Club (My Investing Strategy)

Related posts:

1. Review: Lending Club – A Great Source of Passive Income (and a free $25!)
2. Revisiting Passive Income With Lending Club
3. My Blog and Passive Income Experiments Update [July '10]

No online “empire” has penetrated the average web user’s home like Google, and it only makes sense to look at a online business just as popular to find out who could be the next big player in the ad publishing world – Facebook.

This isn’t all conjecture on my part – there are some real signs that point to Facebook becoming the next big online advertising giant, which I’ll of course explain further…

Facebook is Already an Advertising Machine

For starters, let’s look at the fact that Facebook already is highly driven by its own advertising platform, which takes into account every last detail about you, and tailors the ads you see to those details.  Talk about highly targeted advertising.

As an accountant, I like to first dive into the company’s financials – as you can see below, advertising makes up a significant portion of Facebook’s revenue (as of the end of 2011). This data was taken straight from their registration statement for when they went public earlier this year.

Also, this paragraph was taken straight from the same registration statement (see the bold text):

We generate a substantial majority of our revenue from advertising. The loss of advertisers, or reduction in spending by advertisers with Facebook, could seriously harm our business.

 The substantial majority of our revenue is currently generated from third parties advertising on Facebook. In 2009, 2010, and 2011, advertising accounted for 98%, 95%, and 85%, respectively, of our revenue. As is common in the industry, our advertisers typically do not have long-term advertising commitments with us. Many of our advertisers spend only a relatively small portion of their overall advertising budget with us. In addition, advertisers may view some of our products, such as sponsored stories and ads with social context, as experimental and unproven. Advertisers will not continue to do business with us, or they will reduce the prices they are willing to pay to advertise with us, if we do not deliver ads and other commercial content in an effective manner, or if they do not believe that their investment in advertising with us will generate a competitive return relative to other alternatives. 

Although you could look at it and say that Facebook needs to diversify, it’s clear that their most powerful weapon is the database of millions of people around the world – data that can be used to make advertisements more effective.  No other company (not even Google) has access to this depth of information.  It makes sense that Facebook will continue to leverage the power of its ad publishing.

The Next Logical Step: Ads on YOUR Website

Facebook’s ad publishing is obviously a huge source of revenue for the social networking company, however when you stop to think that this is all a result of only page views on Facebook, it almost blows your mind to think about the kind of revenue they would be generating by having their ads on other websites.

It’s Already Happening (to a Limited Extent)

As pointed out by this TechCrunch article, Facebook is already testing ads outside of the Facebook platform.  As you can probably guess, they’re testing it with Zynga, a company with whom they have a strong partnership.

And yes, this TechCrunch article refers to Facebook as a potential “AdSense Killer“.  I like the sound of that, don’t you?

If you go to Zynga and are logged into your Facebook account, here’s what you might see (these are the ads that I see):

Here’s How I Think it Would Work

I actually think these ads could be the best thing to happen to internet marketers who rely on displaying ads for earnings on their websites.  Think about it: You’d have extremely targeted ads with the familiar/friendly Facebook formatting that people aren’t blind to (in the way they might be blind to Google AdSense ads).

Now, Facebook isn’t going to just run wild with this – I’m assuming that you not only would need to be logged into Facebook, but would also need to opt into sharing your information with outside websites (or not opt-out of it).  This is obviously the right thing to do from a privacy standpoint, even though it reduces the effectiveness of the ads.

Even if you’re not logged in or you opt-out of sharing information, I see no reason why Facebook couldn’t or wouldn’t create a back-up ad system that bases the ads on the content of the page much like Google does with AdSense.  This would be a pretty logical move.

Not only do I think these ads would have a higher click through rate, but I also think they would have a pretty high earnings per click.  All you have to do is think about it from an advertiser’s perspective – Facebook is a great place to advertise (just as good or maybe better than Google), so I imagine the earnings would follow.  The unknown factor would be how much of the earnings Facebook would be willing to share with its publishers.

It’s important to note that I don’t think Facebook is going to roll this out to the general public anytime soon.  They will most likely start with a handful of trusted sites (like Zynga and other sites where they may have partnerships) before they consider allowing other sites to publish ads.

There are a lot of other important questions:  How picky will they be with approving ad publisher accounts? Will you need to get approval for each URL that displays ads (similar to Media.net)?  No one knows right now, and all of these variables will determine whether or not Facebook can truly become an AdSense-killer.

What Do You Think?

It’s exciting to think about this possibility, especially for those of us who were banned from AdSense.  Facebook is in a unique position to really be able to compete with AdSense/Adwords – and if this does eventually happen, there’s no doubt that Google will need to react, to stay competitive.  That can only be a good thing for us (hopefully).

Let me know what you think in the comments!

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Google AdSense Alternatives: Facebook Ads?

Related posts:

1. Top Google AdSense Alternatives: Media.net Review
2. Google AdSense Alternatives: Chitika Review
3. Google AdSense Alternatives: Infolinks

As I go through and review these various alternatives to AdSense, I’m starting to realize that it’s going to be extremely difficult to ever match or beat the performance of AdSense. Perhaps it doesn’t make sense to set AdSense as the “standard” because then everything else is going to appear very weak by comparison.

Nevertheless, there’s a lot to like about Chitika, and I’ll go into all the details below.

What is Chitika?

Much like AdSense, Chitika is a display advertising network that primarily aims to provide advertisements that are relevant to the content.  The big difference is, the ads displayed are driven by the visitor’s search query, not directly by the content on a given page.  Also, similar to AdSense and other ad networks, you are paid per click, which you’re probably very familiar with.

Different Types of Ads

Chitika doesn’t offer to much in terms of ad variety, but all of the basic types of block ads are there.

Standard Ad Unit

Here’s what an ad would look like if you were searching for the iPod Touch:

You can change the colors and the ad sizes, very similar to AdSense.  I’ll go into this more below where I discuss what I like and what I don’t like about Chitika, but as you can see, some keywords don’t seem to work well for Chitika.  Why would someone be looking for “local answers for Ipod Touch?” Or “Top answers for Ipod Touch?” It just don’t make a lot of sense, and doesn’t make me want to click on the ad at all.

Local Ad Units

These ad units basically look just like the one above, except the ad is tailored to the visitor’s location, based on their  IP address. So sticking with the same example as above, I might see: “Looking for Ipod Touch in Chicago?”

What I Like About Chitika

Here are some of the reasons why I think Chitika is worth trying:

1) Once you have an account, you can put ads on any site without requiring further approval.  This is where Chitika is very similar to AdSense and it’s what sets it apart from the other ad networks I’ve reviewed (Media.net and Infolinks).

2) Assuming you use PayPal, you only need to earn $10 to receive a payout.  This is a relatively low threshold, especially compared to AdSense’s $100 minimum.  I’ve been paid by them several times, and they are usually pretty quick to release payment.

3) They are one of the few ad networks to have an affiliate program.  So, if you happen to run a blog that talks about internet marketing, you can earn a little bit extra by referring people to Chitika (if you’re feeling generous and want to sign up to Chitika, please feel free to use my link. )  According to Chitika’s site, “You will earn 10% of the CPC revenue that your referrals earns for up to 15 months from their approval date.” I’ve had a small handful of referrals, but so far, it’s only amounted to a few pennies.

What I Don’t Like About Chitika

1) Earnings per click are fairly low (in my experience), requiring you to have strong traffic and/or a high click-through rate to see good earnings.  This seems to be the case with most programs that are not AdSense…  Here are my stats since I’ve used Chitika:

• CTR: 0.32%
• EPM: $0.36

This is pretty dreadful, even compared to Infolinks, but I will admit that I tend to place my Chitika ads in a poor location.  When possible, I have placed Media.net in the best spots, and Chitika ads somewhere “below the fold” where it’s not as likely to get clicks.  If Chitika was your primary form of monetization, I would expect you to see much better results.

2) The different types of ads aren’t too diverse.  Aside from manipulating the ad block size and colors, there really isn’t much else you can do.  This is fine for most people, but if you’re looking for something similar to AdSense’s link units, you won’t find it here.

3) Ads are based on search query, not content (as I briefly mentioned above).  I was debating whether or not to write this as a pro or a con, because in some cases, I think it’s a positive aspect of Chitika.  In most cases, the ads shown will be related to whatever search engine query the visitor input in order to land on your site, so in theory, the ads should be highly relevant (which should lead to a higher CTR).

When you don’t land on the page via a search engine, it seems to just base the ads on your primary keyword (whatever the title of the site is).  This has a high relevance, but the ads don’t feel “real”, so I’m not sure how enticing they are.   Furthermore, because these seem to be “cookie cutter” ads, I don’t think they pay very well since they show up for just about any terms (I can’t imagine an advertiser paying much for that, since it’s not super targeted like AdSense)

That’s All!

As you can see, this isn’t going to be your savior if you’ve lost AdSense, but Chitika is still something worth trying especially if you are having trouble getting other ad networks approved for your website(s).  It’s quick and easy to set up, and you don’t have to get approved for each site.  And as I mentioned, I think if Chitika ads are your primary ad units, you will see much better results than I have so far.

How has your experience been with Chitika so far?  Did I miss anything?  Share it in the comments!

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Google AdSense Alternatives: Chitika Review

Related posts:

1. Top Google AdSense Alternatives: Media.net Review
2. Google AdSense Alternatives: Infolinks
3. Google AdSense Alternatives: Facebook Ads?

Much like Media.net, Infolinks was one of the alternatives I turned to almost immediately after losing my AdSense account.  I had seen it around on a lot of other sites in the past, but never bothered to try it until now.  My overall feelings are pretty mixed on this one, and I’ll explain why below.

What is Infolinks?

Infolinks is a bit different than AdSense or Media.net, mainly because of the way the advertisements are displayed.  Instead of displaying advertisements in a separate box, the ads are actually embedded within hyper-linked text in a site’s content.

Here’s what it looks like on one of my sites:

Basically, random words are selected and underlined, and when your mouse cursor hovers over the text, a small ad box pops up (as pictured above).

Customization Options

Depending on your site, double-underlined green text may not fit in with your overall design. Infolinks does have a number of options when it comes to customizing the way the links appear.

As you can see, you can select whatever colors you want for the links, and whether you want the links to be double underlined or dotted.

More importantly, you can select how many links you want per page.  To me, this option is important if you don’t want your content to look really spammy.  Infolinks allows you to select as few as one link or as many as twelve.

Other Types of Ads

In addition to the underlined text, Infolinks offers a few other types of advertisement.   One of them is the tag cloud (pictured below):

They also have a type of ad called related tags, which is very similar to the horizontal link unit that Google AdSense offers:

And finally, they have what they call a “search widget” – essentially, it’s a bar that sits at the bottom of the screen, and pops up when the user hovers over it:

What I Like About Infolinks

Although I’m not too crazy about Infolinks, there are a few things I like about it:

1) Flexible customization and variety of ad types.

As I showed above, I really like how you can customize the number of links that appear on a page.  Also, I’m a fan of the different ad types. To be honest, I didn’t even realize some of these other ad types existed (or maybe I had forgotten) until I went to write this post.  In particular, I like the “related tags” ad unit – ads like these typically have a nice click-through rate (CTR) when placed at the top of a page.

2) Easy to implement.

This is hardly a selling point, considering most ads are very easy to implement, but these are easy too.  You just need to add one snippet of code to your site’s <body> tag, and they take care of the rest.

3) It works well with other ad types.

Because Infolinks has ad types that other ad services don’t have (like Media.net or AdSense), you can use them together.  For example, several of my sites have a Media.net ad block within the content (at the top, justified left or right with the text), and another ad block in the sidebar.

In addition, I use the hyperlinked Infolinks ads within the body of my content.  While some people have become blind to standard block ads,  most people recognize and click hyperlinks.  In theory, this should make Infolinks a solid addition to a website’s monetization plan.

What I Don’t Like About Infolinks

Unfortunately, I have more to say on the negative side.  This doesn’t mean I won’t continue to use Infolinks – it just means, I’d prefer other types of ads to these.  Fortunately, I can have both.

1) The ads can appear spammy.

While the customization options allows you make the sponsored links appear less spammy (either by changing the color to blend better, or by simply reducing the number of links), I can’t help but feel the links are slightly intrusive.  While it’s easy to ignore a sidebar ad block, sometimes these ads are annoying (i.e. when you accidentally hover over a link and the ads pops up).

I’d be more okay with this if the ads were almost always relevant, but sometimes they aren’t.

2) They are surprisingly picky about site approval.

This is a similar problem I had with Media.net, and I’m starting to realize that perhaps AdSense was the least picky of all, considering they allowed you to put ads on any site, once your account was approved.  While Infolinks has approved most sites that I have submitted, they denied my thinner sites.  Basically, this was the reason:

 ”Our quality assurance team has tested your website for Infolinks compatibility and found that the website does not contain enough text for our algorithm to work properly.

Since Infolinks is an In-Text ads provider, your website needs to provide a certain amount of text in it for the ads to work. If the current situation changes, please let us know and we will be happy to approve your website to work with us.”

Clearly, they felt the site was too thin.  Although the site is on the thinner side (5 pages of content), the front page is about 1,000 words and the other pages are 400-600 words each, so it’s not as if there wasn’t enough text to support the ads.   I’m okay with that though – I don’t mind them being strict, especially when they have a good reason.

3) The CTR and earnings are just plain terrible.

Again, I’m comparing this to Media.net and AdSense, the only two ad providers that I have a decent amount of experience with.  So far, I’ve seen some pretty horrible results with Infolinks.

Ever since I started using Infolinks, here are my stats:

• CTR: 3.38%
• EPM: $1.37

I’ve seen other bloggers post their Infolinks performance, and it’s typically higher than what I’ve experienced so far.  It may be that I’ve had a bad run, or the 7-10 sites I have Infolinks on right now simply aren’t a good fit.  I definitely plan to keep Infolinks on my sites for now, and will hopefully see some improvement in the coming weeks/months.

That’s All!

While this review wasn’t an overwhelming endorsement of Infolinks, I still believe it’s a good AdSense alternative if you can supplement it with another ad provider, such as Media.net.  You’ll be able to follow my Infolinks performance in my monthly income reports, so stay tuned to see how it performs in the future.

How has your experience with Infolinks been? Are my results typical, or have you seen better (or worse)?  Leave a comment below!

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Google AdSense Alternatives: Infolinks

Related posts:

1. Google AdSense Alternatives: Chitika Review
2. Top Google AdSense Alternatives: Media.net Review
3. Google AdSense Alternatives: Facebook Ads?

Media.net is one of the first places I applied after losing my AdSense account, and so far, it’s been an interesting experience.  It’s going to be very difficult to fully replace AdSense, however I already believe Media.net will be one of my top alternatives.  Here’s my in-depth review.

What Is Media.net?

Like AdSense, Media.net is a contextual advertising company – what this means is that the ads displayed on your website are influenced by the actual content on the page, so that visitors will see relevant advertisements.

Also, like AdSense, Media.net pays you for each click, and the amount is based on the bidding of the advertisers (so as you would expect, more competitive niches will yield higher earnings per click).

Different Types of Ads

Just as AdSense has its regular ad units and its link units, Media.net offers a few different types of ad styles.  Note:  Media.net only allows you one of each ad type per page.

• Content Ads – These are your standard contextual block ads, and you can choose from a variety of sizes.  They don’t have as many size choices as AdSense, but all of the more popular sizes are there.  This is the type of ad that I have implemented on all of my niche sites that currently utilize Media.net, and from what I’ve heard, this type pays better than the others.

• Search Targeting Ads – These ads actually look the same as the content ads, with one big exception: they are shown to search engine traffic only, and the content of the ad is tied directly to the visitor’s search query.  As you can see, this allows very relevant ads to be displayed to organic traffic, although I’ve heard these ads don’t pay as well as the content ads.  I don’t have enough data personally yet to confirm or deny this.

• Web Bar – This is an ad unit similar to AdSense’s horizontal link units, except that it’s placed at the bottom of the screen and is “sticky” to remain above the fold as the user scrolls down the page.  I’ve never been a fan of these types of ads since I think they look too spammy, so I have yet to try this one.

• Mobile Ads  - These ads are simply optimized for mobile viewing.  To be honest, I have yet to jump on the “mobile” bandwagon (no pun intended) when it comes to internet marketing.  I know it’s where the future is trending, but for right now, it’s not a focus of mine.

What I Like About Media.net

In some ways, I actually like Media.net more than AdSense, although that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t gladly give up my Media.net account if it meant getting back AdSense.   Here’s what I like, specifically:

1) Decent earnings per click

This is obviously going to vary by niche, but in my past month of testing Media.net on a small handful of sites, Media.net’s CPC seems to be very similar to AdSense’s.  This is probably the biggest reason why Media.net stands out among many other contextual advertising alternatives.  Obviously, there are many I haven’t tried yet, but this is my early impression.

2) Ads appear to be very “clickable”  

Media.net’s algorithm for determining relevant ads with your content seems to be very strong, and the design of the ads are such that they look like part of your site’s navigation.

I think the average internet user is so used to seeing AdSense-style ads that many have become blind to them.  Media.net’s ad style, while nothing spectacular, is somewhat refreshing after seeing a million different AdSense ads.  Here’s an example from the sidebar of one of my sites in the pet niche (I’ve blocked out any identifying information from the site):

As you can see, the ads aren’t “in your face” advertisements.  There is a small snippet of text (which isn’t visible in this screen shot) at the bottom which indicates that this is an ad block, however it’s not very intrusive.

3) Friendly support

This is absolutely unheard of with Google, so I found this to be a huge positive with Media.net.  When you create an account, you’re assigned an account manager.

I had one instance where one of my niche sites was denied for Media.net ads (more on this below).  I contacted the account manager to find out why, and what I can do to get the site approved, and he replied fairly quickly with some helpful information.  He told me once I make the necessary changes, I can re-submit the site for approval.

Do you think anyone at Google would ever take the time to help with something like this? I highly doubt it.

What I Don’t Like About Media.net

This is a very honest and unbiased review, so I’m of course going to be very open about what I don’t like about Media.net.

1) Each individual site requires manual approval. 

Unlike Google AdSense (which you can place on any website once your account is initially approved), you must add each site individually to Media.net and it must be approved.  This usually doesn’t take long (within 24 hours), but it’s an extra step, and it means that you have to essentially fully build a site without knowing if you’ll be able to put Media.net ads on it.

2) Media.net is somewhat strict about the sites they approve.

I’m actually fine with this because it  improves the integrity of Media.net for its advertisers (which means, over time, advertisers will pay more on Media.net than they might on other ad platforms).  However, I have had several sites declined already.

Certain thinner micro-niche sites that might have been fine for AdSense may not work for Media.net.  Specifically, sites that have only 3-5 pages of content, like many of mine do.  I do, however, believe that this is subjective on Media.net’s side of things.  I had one site with 5 pages of content declined, but a site with 3 pages of content accepted.

It may have to do with the individual person who is manually approving the site, or maybe they like certain niches more than others.   It may also depend on word count (and not just # of pages) – I’m not sure.

Either way, this is a significant hurdle. For my sites that are currently too thin for Media.net (which unfortunately may be the vast majority of my micro-niche sites), it may be awhile before I take the time to beef up the content on all sites.

3) Media.net may not work for every niche.  

When you submit one of your sites for approval, you have to select a category for the site.  I think this step is in place so that your site can be matched up with the pool of advertisers for that particular category.  Although they have a lot of categories, I’ve had a couple instances where a site didn’t really fit perfectly in any of the available categories.

That’s All!

Hopefully if you’re in the same boat as me (i.e. no AdSense account), this review will help you determine if Media.net is a good option.  In most cases, I think it’s a great alternative.  I’m very far from replacing my AdSense income, but this is more due to the fact that right now I only have Media.net on 6 of my 80 sites.

What do you like/dislike about Media.net, if you’ve used it before?  Share it in the comments!  

Stay tuned for future articles where I’ll review other AdSense alternatives (and be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed so you don’t miss them).

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Top Google AdSense Alternatives: Media.net Review

Related posts:

1. Google AdSense Alternatives: Chitika Review
2. Google AdSense Alternatives: Infolinks
3. Google AdSense Alternatives: Facebook Ads?

Furthermore, one of the most popular blog networks (BMR, used for backlinkng) was deindexed by Google, throwing many people into a state of uncertainty about the future of backlinking.  Fortunately, I hadn’t been using this network, but I’ll write a blog post later about the status of my niche sites from a ranking perspective.

Anyway, let’s get to the good stuff, because I’m going to be giving away some money here.

A Quick Update

Before I get into the details about what I’m giving away, I just wanted to write a quick update to follow up my previous post about my AdSense account becoming disabled.  My appeal was denied, so it looks like I’m going to give up on trying to get that account back.

My focus now turns to finding a way to build profitable ad-supported niche sites without Google AdSense, which I of course believe can be done.  While I still plan to get a new AdSense account for my business (once the LLC is set up), I’m hesitant to rely on Google to monetize the new sites.  I want to be in a position where I’m earning good money with or without AdSense.

With that said, I really don’t plan on doing much work until after the tax deadline (April 17th), so my passive income and productivity in general will probably be minimal until May.

I’m Giving Away One of My Passive Income Sources

As you may recall from my income reports, InfoBarrel was one of my more reliable income sources, usually generating $40-60 of passive income each month (having been over a year since I last put a lot of effort into writing articles there).

Ever since my AdSense account was disabled, that money has been….going nowhere (although I suspect InfoBarrel defaults the AdSense publisher ID to their own).  I think it’s a waste, and until my business opens an AdSense account, I want someone to be getting that money.

My plan right now is to hold some kind of very simple contest on a monthly basis, where I will put the winner’s AdSense ID in my InfoBarrel account, and they will earn whatever money my articles generate, for a month or so.

Here’s How to Win

It’s very simple:

1) Follow me on Twitter.

2) Retweet any of my blog posts.

3) Use the Twitter hashtag #my4hww so that I can properly track the entries in the contest.

You can retweet as many blog posts as you want – each retweet counts as one entry.

4) The winner will be randomly chosen Saturday, March 31st.  The winner will receive a tweet from me announcing that they have won, and will need to tweet me their e-mail address so that I can contact them with further details.

The Rules

• In order for your retweet(s) to be valid, it must occur between now and Friday, March 30th at 11:59 PM EST.

• The retweet must include the hashtag #my4hww, otherwise I will be unable to track the entry.

• You must be comfortable providing me with your Google AdSense publisher ID (I will of course keep this 100% private, and there really isn’t much I can do with it besides make you money).

• By entering, you agree that I am not responsible for the earnings generated via InfoBarrel, good or bad. Once I put in your publisher ID, it is as if this is your account.

• Entries from “empty” Twitter accounts (i.e. accounts with no followers) will not be considered valid.  I don’t want people creating new Twitter accounts just to retweet 100 of my blog posts to no one.

• You have 24 hours  from the time I tweet you (if you win), to respond with your e-mail address and provide me your AdSense publisher ID via e-mail.  If this time limit expires, I will simply choose another random entry.

• For the winner: To track your Google AdSense earnings from InfoBarrel, you will want to follow these instructions and set up a URL channel for infobarrel.com.

Personally, I don’t think there is any issue with using a different AdSense ID on my InfoBarrel account.  Although Google AdSense did disable my account, it was certainly related to my niche sites, not InfoBarrel.

InfoBarrel is a huge platform, so putting your AdSense ID on my InfoBarrel articles is no different than creating your own articles on InfoBarrel (i.e. it’s all housed on the infobarrel.com domain).  Obviously, if you are uncomfortable with this, don’t enter!

Best of luck to anyone who enters!

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I’m Giving You Some of My Passive Income

Related posts:

1. Am I A Failure When It Comes to Earning Passive Income?
2. A High Level Analysis of My Passive Income History
3. Passive Income Experiments Update [June '10]

Rather than do this and keep it to myself, I figured I might as well make it public and see if you have any thoughts as well.

I thought I’d begin by looking at my overall online income from the point where I began keeping track of it.  To make it easy for you to follow along, I’ve linked to each income report below.

• May 2010 – $0 (or unknown)
• June 2010 – $222.52
• July 2010 – $228.45
• August 2010 – $363.15
• September 2010 – $335.22
• October 2010 – $377.72
• November 2010 – $987.92
• December 2010 – $682.73
• January 2011 – $745.94
• February 2011 – $469.71
• March 2011 – $637.09
• April 2011 – $710.98
• May 2011 – $805.63
• June 2011 – $902.06
• July 2011 – $738.90
• August 2011 - $914.08
• September 2011 – $834.77

Here a few graphs to illustrate some trends with my overall income, and the income of two of my larger projects (Amazon niche sites and InfoBarrel):

Overall Income



Amazon Niche Sites Income

InfoBarrel Income

Some Thoughts On This Data

1) InfoBarrel was clearly impacted by some Google updates that decreased the search engine power of many article sites/content farms.  My income had a very nice upward trend as I wrote articles and as they aged.

After a series of Google “panda” updates, I believe many of my articles lost their high rankings, which subsequently led to a decrease in earnings.  If I want to get back onto an upward trend, I will likely need to add more articles.

2) It’s difficult to draw any conclusions from my Amazon income trend, because a large % of my income there comes from one of my sites that ranks well and receives decent traffic.  If I were to graph my total Amazon income along with the traffic of my primary Amazon niche site, you would notice a very strong correlation.

If I want to continue an upward trend with Amazon, I will likely need to continue adding backlinks to my current sites and possibly create new sites.

Overall Conclusion

Aside from the spike in income during November 2010, my overall income has seen a fairly consistent upward trend.  However, you’ll notice that during 2010, the increases were much more drastic.  In 2011, income has seen a general upward trend, but it’s somewhat flat compared to 2010.

What does this mean? This data supports what I’ve been thinking for the past several months.  The projects I built in 2010 provided significant boosts to my online income.  In 2011, I haven’t worked as hard.  I’ve built less projects.  I’ve blogged less frequently.  All in all, I’ve done just enough to maintain a level of income between $700-1,000 per month, but haven’t done enough to get past it.

Yes, it’s nice to maintain this level of income without doing much work – that’s the beauty of passive income. However, you can’t forget how you got here – persistence and hard work.

If you want to earn more, you have to approach day 366 the same way you approached day 1.  In fact, you should be even better, because by now you’ve learned a lot and have many more tools at your disposal.

What do you think?

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A High Level Analysis of My Passive Income History

Related posts:

1. Finding Hidden Passive Income: How to Empower Your High Traffic Content
2. My Blog and Passive Income Experiments Update [July '10]
3. Am I A Failure When It Comes to Earning Passive Income?

The problem I have with this equation is that it’s like saying “the money’s in a high traffic, well-monetized website.” Obviously.  Honestly, I think half the reason many internet marketers preach “the money’s in the list” is so they can use their affiliate link to Aweber or another subscription mailing service.  I’m purposely leaving out my affiliate link here.

Really, the money is in how you use your list.  Having a list is a lot like running a niche affiliate site – you can’t just focus on getting traffic – you must also focus on converting that traffic.  Keep reading, and I’ll keep ranting…

Why I’m Even Writing About This

I didn’t just wake up this morning and decide I want to criticize e-mail marketing.  In fact, I think e-mail marketing is an excellent way to both connect with an audience and ultimately drive sales of a product or service (even as an affiliate).  My problem is, I’m terrible at it.

My blog isn’t wildly popular, so it may surprise you  to learn that I currently have over 2,500 subscribers to my e-mail list (see a screenshot from my Aweber account below).

A lot of people signed up to receive my free backlink tracking tool, and many have remained subscribed for my general newsletter.  I also do other exclusive things for my list, such as the “newbie niche site month” I’ve done a couple times, which was very well received by many readers.

With 2,500+ subscribers, I’m spending $30 a month with Aweber.  It might shock you to know that, even with over 2,500 subscribers, my list probably doesn’t generate $30/month most months.  That’s right – I’ve built a somewhat large list within the internet marketing niche, and I’m possibly losing money with it.

Now, that’s not to say there haven’t been non-monetary benefits to the list.  Whenever I send out broadcast e-mails (i.e. e-mail that isn’t part of my pre-written newsletter content), I see an influx of traffic to my blog.  By being able to do this, I know that at any moment I can utilize my list to receive a lot of traffic in a short period of time, to my blog.  And some of this traffic may lead to income generated through affiliate links on blog posts, so I’m sure my list has indirectly led to income.

Here’s My Point

You can’t just build a list and expect the money to start rolling in. You have to have a plan and you have to stick with it.  And you have to respect your list. Pat Flynn does this well – although he doesn’t push affiliate products in his e-mails, I can virtually guarantee that he has indirectly made thousands of dollars from his list.  Yet, he provides massive value, so no one really complains.

I, on the other hand, have done a good job “respecting” my list, but a poor job of converting subscribers into value for me.  Ignoring the fact that I don’t really try to make money off the list (I have thrown in a few random affiliate links here and there, but it’s been nothing substantial), I’ve done a poor job staying in touch with my list beyond my 7-8 pre-written newsletter e-mails which are sent once every 1-2 weeks after you subscribe.

Utilizing an e-mail list effectively is a lot like running an authority website – you need to provide regular content and stay in touch with your readers.  To make money with a list, you need to respect your subscribers and absolutely do not spam them.  Even promotional e-mails should add some kind of value that doesn’t require a purchase.

I used to subscribe to a lot of “guru” e-mail lists (John Chow, etc.) until I couldn’t stand it any longer.  It was educational to see how an income-generating e-mail list functions, but after awhile, I found myself deleting all e-mail without reading it.

What are your best e-mail marketing tips? Everyone tells you to build a list, but from there, it can be a challenge to utilize the list effectively.  I’m curious to see what you think.  And yes, this is the first ever internet marketing blog that wrote an article about e-mail marketing without using an Aweber affiliate link!

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Is the Money REALLY in the List?

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