A Brilliant Idea from Kristi

I just had to share with you something absolutely brilliant that I read about at Kikolani.com.  You can see that I have had Kristi's blog in my blog roll for quite some time and for good reason.  She had a wonderful post about using Google Reader for blog commenting.  I found the title interesting and decided to check it out since I have been trying to do the same thing to help with getting OptionsDude off the ground.

It turns out that her idea was absolutely wonderful.  First of all, I never really understood what Google Reader was or how it worked so I learned something there.  Secondly, I actually started subscribing to various blogs and doing what she suggested.  Since I already was in the habit of checking my gmail account a few times each day, I just click on the Google Reader link and check it out as well.

Google Reader will bring up all the new posts for every blog to which I am subscribed.  I can then quickly decide whether to read the article or comment.  This has helped me immensely.  In fact, yesterday's traffic to OptionsDude was the highest it has been.  I plan on subscribing to as many blogs as possible and networking in this fashion.  This will help with linking as well as provide ideas for content.  I can also even locate blogs for writing guest posts.

I have to thank Kristi for this great idea.  I think that it can help you grow your site which is something that we all need to be doing.  You should really go and check out her post. 

Creating Links for eHow

I am busy creating links for all of my articles since I believe that improving my traffic will do a lot to improve my passive income.  I decided to start with eHow since on a per article basis, it is my most profitable article site.  HubPages makes more but has 4 times the number of articles and only makes about 2 times the income.  Now not every one of my Hubs are evergreen so I can't expect all of them to be making money.

All of my eHow articles have links on Xomba, and I am getting close to being done with Shetoldme.  From there I plan on moving to Redgage, Snipsly, Folkd, and StumbleUpon.  I am trying not to do too much at one time since I would like it to seem somewhat natural.  The Xomba links were done last year so any new links will be fresh.

It will take some time to get all of them completed but I am hoping that I will be done with all of the eHow links by mid-August.  That would give me 9 months before my second anniversary to see if there is an impact upon earnings.  I believe there will be and that I might be able to see my average earnings up 1.5-2 times.  At least all I can do is try.

Then I plan on moving on to my HubPages articles.  I will probably mainly link the evergreen articles.  It will take quite some time (probably to the end of the year) since I have 143 Hubs.  Again, I think it will be very useful for increasing traffic and building up the income at the same time.  My HubPages traffic has been increasing naturally throughout 2010 so I think the links will give it an added boost.

What do you find helps you with traffic?  Are there other sites than the ones I mentioned that you would recommend for link building?  Thanks for reading and commenting.

Photo credit: Petritap 

Good News from eHow

I went to my eHow account this past weekend to look it over for the purpose of improving my links to my 38 published articles and found out that every single article had at least earned something.  I found it exciting and encouraging to see those results.

If you read about my goals for my second year online, you know that I am going to try and increase my earnings through continued publishing of content but also through improved efforts at linking and "marketing".  I decided that I should start with eHow since I won't be tempted to write more content.  Besides, the payments come via Paypal which I plan to use for funding the development of any niche sites.

My original goal was to start making money online without investing any of my own money.  I could only invest my time and use whatever money I made to reinvest in the online venture.  So far, I have done this.  I used the money in the Paypal account (from eHow) to purchase Michelle Adams' Virtual Real Estate Development Guide for $57.  (I am almost halfway through reading it.  It is long and detailed, and I at times have to re-read a paragraph several times.  But that is good for me as a novice.)

Anyway, I thought that I should begin with linking and marketing eHow so that I could increase my passive earnings there and use those funds to start making niche websites.  Then I could continue to use AdSense checks for paying down debt.  That is why I was looking over my eHow articles. 

So far, I have created a link to each of my eHow articles on Xomba.  This was done last fall.  I also have about half done on SheToldMe which were again done last fall.  But I have none on Redgage, Folkd, or Snipsly which I plan on completing over the next several weeks.  It will be interesting to see if there will be any impact.  Needless to say, I certainly hope so. 

Once I have completed this task, finished reading the VRED guide, and made a little more for the Paypal account, I plan on starting a niche site.  Don't worry, I will keep everyone posted.  It won't be incredibly quick since I am a part-timer.  But I'm OK with that.  I am still having fun. 




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