Money Secrets

I confess I’m more than a little disappointed with the requests I recieved to help you earn extra money. To begin with I’ve deliberately targeted this blog at the ‘newbies’ who are just starting out looking to earn some extra money online.

In that spirit I try to keep it relatively simple, no technical mumbo jumbo on the little intricacies and nuances of what makes a successful business. And the reason for this is that the little details aren’t important in the beginning - when you’re just starting out the basics are hard enough to grasp and put into action without getting overload paralysis before you’ve even begun. Building your reputation starts with moving it up from the bottom, not keeping it at the top. That’s a whole different ball game.

Before any already established gurus out there start telling me that it’s important to implement this stuff right off the bat - don’t. The majority of newbies aren’t capable of it. Most of it just is too damn deep and one thing leads to another and another. Before you know where you are, you’re too busy learning to actually ‘do’ anything.

Look at keywords as an example. When I first started out, didn’t even know what they were. So then it turns out, they are the words/phrases that you type into a search engine if you’re looking for something.

Great. Keyword research means you find out what words people are typing and then you use them in your site. How? Seriously, newbies who don’t know about keywords are hardly likely to know about the different matches, or ‘longtails’ or which keywords are likely to attract folks willing to spend money, or how best to optimise their sites for those keywords, oh, now we’re into learning and researching SEO…

It’s too much. So you have to go with the basics and build up from there. But if you can’t be bothered to go with the basics you’re not going to ever get anywhere. At least not anywhere you actually want to go.

Came across a great quote on one of my favourite horoscope sites (yup, I’m a horoscope junkie ) just the other day.

There are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going.

So when I offered to buy a domain to folks just for the sake of doing a little research I didn’t expect them to go into it full blown. But I did expect some work to have gone into choosing it!

Still, we don’t always get what we expect do we? And unfortunately, the research that was done was minimal at best and just non existant at worst. Now I could have gone ahead and chosen a winner anyway. But you know what - that just reinforces the belief that you can earn money for doing nothing.

It doesn’t work that way. And if you can’t put in the research to come up with a good domain name, then you’re not going to put in the work to make that domain name work for you and earn you some money, which was the point of the exercise after all!

Research may be time consuming, it certainly isn’t ’sexy’, sometimes it’s pretty damn hard, but it is necessary.

So I’ll keep the offer open. Anyone who cares to actually put in a little work researching what the best domain would be to help their business, feel free to contact me (just hit the link at the top, it’s not hard ) with your efforts. You might want to note that I’m not putting a deadline on this so it will be first come - first served. Assuming you’ve actually done some research of course!

If you want to know how to choose a good domain name, read this domain guide first.

For those who applied previously, there’s no reason you can’t do so again. But only if you’re prepared to actually go ahead and do a little research first. I’m not such a soft touch that I’ll give you something for nothing.

Susan

I confess to not fully grasping this idea. I mean, if you’re going to put in the effort to earn a little extra money online, why not put that same effort in to building a successful business? But then, luckily, we’re all different creatures.

The problem comes from the fact that those who just want to earn a bit extra cash tend not to take the time to learn all the tactics and strategies needed not only to help them make that money, but also to help them steer clear of the multitude of scam artists out there.

When you don’t know any better, it’s all too easy to be swayed by a good looking website that promises you money in your bank account within 15 minutes of signing up. Newbies who aren’t interested in learning the skills of keyword research, website design, copywriting, traffic generation, marketing, social networking…(and a zillion other jigsaw pieces), also never learn how to spot a scam, how to understand the triggers being pulled by the copywriters, and so they are easy prey.

I’ve met folks who’ve been busy trying to ‘earn a little extra money’ for years! Years, not months - and still they’re surfing through Traffic Exchanges and drowning in Safelist ads. Because they aren’t interested in learning, they’ve never managed to find their way to the training and resources needed to get them out of the beginners market.

The only thing I can say for them is that they’ve got determination. I’m pretty sure I’d have given up long before if I hadn’t managed to move on pretty quickly from looking to earn money, to learning how to build a business.

If you’re hoping that some wondrous opportunity is going to come along where you can hand over some of your cash, send out a few safelist ads/surf a few traffic exchanges and you’ll start earning that extra money you’ve been looking for, quit it right now. It’s not going to work!

At the very least get some training. There are some terrific free tools and resources out there. Check out some of the freebies I’ve used.

The biggest recommendation I can give you is to invest in your own domain name. If for no other reason, than it allows you to send folks to a real url, rather than an unprofessional, please steal my commission, affiliate url. Seriously, which link are you most likely to click;

http://myaffiliatelink.com/?ref=24316

or

http://myowndomain.com/

If you don’t know how to set up a website, or you can’t afford hosting, then at least get a domain and set it up to redirect to whichever programme or product you’re promoting. If you don’t know how to get a domain, or set up a redirect - LEARN. Shoot me a mail, I’ll talk you through it if needs be.

In fact, to make sure you at least take this one step, let me offer a little sweetener.

• Go do some research into domain names, see if you can come up with one you like, that is related to what you’re offering and is available to buy.

• Shoot me an e-mail telling me a little about yourself, what you’ve done to try and earn some money online, and what domain name you’ve found and would like to buy.

• Tell me how and why the particular name you’ve chosen will help you.

Whoever puts up the best case for their domain I’ll buy it for you. And I’ll even post up the winning domain right here on Sans Money Secret, so you’ll also get your first backlink thrown in.

Closing date needs to be pretty soon or 2009 will be gone and you’ll be no further forward than you were last year. So let’s say January 5th. That gives you about a week, which is more than enough time if you’re serious about earning that extra money.

To Earning Extra Money

Susan Coils