I finally got Wordpress Link Cloak working on my site.  It took some figuring out, and playing with the settings but all is well now.  One think that is not a huge plus for Wordpress Link Cloak is the cost.  It is $77!!!, however I think that it is well worth it for the time that it is going to save me on many of my different sites.

However the down side that almost had me asking for my money back, is the customer service.

I know that this is probably a one man show, but being a paid plugin means that it doesn’t have much of a community to help people out when they run into problems.  But even being a one man show shouldn’t mean that you don’t reply to your emails for days.  I bought the plugin a week from today, couldn’t get it to work and emailed the support.  I didn’t hear back for a couple of days and when their fix didn’t work I emailed them again.  I still haven’t heard back.

But anyway, if there was a free product out there that did what this WP Link Cloak plugin did, I wouldn’t be using it.  The fact of the matter is that there is only one other plugin that does the automatic keyword linking that this one does and that cost another $20 on top of the $77 of this one.  The free ones out there need you to automatically copy and paste the URLs, which is not a big deal for a new site, but for an old one that can be very time consumming.

I will be writing a more indepth review of the software in the future, but for now give WP Link Cloak a try and let me know what you think

Today I have sold my last link placement through TextLinkAds.  I recommend them if you are interested in selling some text link space.  They are very easy to deal with and the payouts are fair.

Currently TLA is the main way that this blog makes money.  It is about 25% of my total online income currently, but I am expecting more.  I have added the ability to sell private ads using OioPublisher.  This is a great plugin, very easy to install and manage.  The only downfall, if you can call it that, is that it costs money.  I will write a full post on it in the very near future, because it really is worth everything that you pay.

Right now I am offering 3 site wide banners and 1 inline ad.  I have “default” banners located there now, so there are 4 spots available, so get them now before they are gone

My next step in my hobby is to let one site die and build on another.  The killer for me is that the site that I don’t have to time for is the one with the more profitable niche, however I have more “fun” writing for the other site.  Since this is a hobby I am going to leave it this way.  I may not let the other site die prese but maybe I will just let it sit and buy some post for it in the near future.

For my next step I am going to start to investigate my entry into the affiliate marketing space….again.  There seems to be a number of people doing the same, but I am sure that I can succeed.  I have a monthly profit goal in mind that I want to reach for the new year.  If I reach it, I may plan on making this hobby into an actual company.  This has the advantages of limiting my personal liability, but it costs money.

That is enough rambling for tonight.  Maybe in the future when I have more cash flow into this blog I will post my earnings like JohnC and TylerC.

Ciao

I am always saying that making money is my hobby, well so is writing and leaving reviews. I used to do this over at Epinions, but now I do it at my own blogs. One of the money makers that I talk about on this site and link to in my side bar is PayPerPost. This is a great way to get paid to blog.

PPP is not something that I use a lot, I have a hard enough time finding time to write my own posts than to spend time writing reviews and plugs for other people. However there is the odd lunch hour that it is raining outside and PPP is there. I can log on, find an opportunity that I like and that I think will fit one of my audiences and go for it. It doesn’t take more than a hour to find thing that you like about the site so that you can write about it, and if you genuinely don’t like the site, and the opportunity is asking that you give them a thumbs-up, well, don’t take that opportunity.

Read the rest of this entry »

One thing that is amazing about making money online is that even when you are not working on it you are still making money. I am a big fan of the subscription payment. Pretty much all of the money that I make now is through subscription payments, automated systems, etc. So basically my profit INCREASED when I was not working.

Like I mentioned last week, I have been crazy at the day job. But now it has stopped, something like running into a brick wall, one minute you are going full tilt and the next you are stopped dead and sore. I am sore, but not from work, I was playing ball hockey last night and got a ball off the top of my foot, but I will write more over at HoserLife on that, so go over there and check that out, or just register for the HoserLife feed and get all of the great updates.

I know that this is not something that was going to continue for ever but at least I know that I don’t have to worry about losing everything next time I have to take a short break from my constant online work. This is something that is not true if you do a lot of SEM and such, since that stuff changes on a constant basis.

Now that I have more time to spend I will be completing my blog series on how to start your own site. I am going to try to go into as much depth as I can talking about how you pick your niche, how to start your site with free tools, when you should pay for something, how to get ideas for great content, how to get your first traffic and then how to get your first dollar.

From there it is up to you.

Don’t get fooled by all of the “Get rich today” schemes that will tell you that they have a fool proof way to make money by doing nothing. All they have is what I am going to tell you, for free.

So do forget to subscribe to my feed, either by email (form on the side) or RSS reader. ITS FREE!!

Like my title says, “Making Money is my Hobby”. Unfortunately for a hobby to be successful you need to have spare time. This is not something that I have an abundance of these days. For example I have been 130% chargeable at my day job for the last 3 weeks. This means that my girlfriend is not very happy….Well not really, she is in the same industry.

Anyway, I have some great ideas for posts in the coming weeks and just have to find the 4 hours that it is going to take to put them together. One is a review of some of the free ebooks and stuff that you can get from various webmaster blogs out there. I have signed up for a lot of them, and even though they are free you can get some great information from these experts.

Another is a detailed account on how to set up your own blog, from picking your domain to setting up my recommended plugins. This post is for my friends that have been asking me how to start a “website”.

There are a couple more, so be sure to add my feed to your RSS reader or your get my posts in your inbox so that you don’t miss anything.