Comment Policy

I feel its important for a blog to have a comment policy.  An effective blog should be like a little community in which everyone is encouraged to add their own opinions.  Unfortunately there are some bad apples that like to stir up trouble or spam blogs for their own selfish purposes.  That’s why I created this simple comment policy that sets the ground rules for imiseasy.com

1. No porn, gambling, hate, or otherwise questionable links allowed. 

2. You’re welcome to link to your blog or website, but no affiliate links please.

3. Don’t be greedy.  You’re getting a free link in return for your comment so please don’t add even more links inside the comment itself.  It just looks spammy.

4. Please use a real name.  I’d like to actually get to know and interact with my regular readers and a name helps build relationships among readers more than keyword stuffing will.  The other day I received a comment with “Hot Latina Asses” as the author.  If I see something like that I’m  going to change it to Anonymous or just delete it.

5. Keep in mind this is a family friendly blog and comments that are insulting, rude, or offensive will be edited or deleted.

6. I’m using 3 different plugins to help give back to regular readers.

Lucia’s Linklove rewards frequent posters by removing the NoFollow tag from your link after you’ve had 7 comments approved.  The idea is to discourage drive-by spammers without punishing loyal readers.

CommentLuv automatically checks your url and if its a blog it will post a link to your most recent post after your comment. I’ve noticed some bugs with this one pulling the right post but overall it works great.

Top Commentators does exactly what its name implies.  It lists the top commentators for the current month in the sidebar and those links are all DoFollow, so you can get a sitewide link on this blog (currently PageRank 4) just by regularly posting approved comments!

7. I reserve the right to approve, edit, or delete comments as I see fit.  I also reserve the right to change this comment policy at any time.

77 Creative Ways To Make Money Online

Everybody loves having money…but not everybody realizes how many options they have for earning extra cash.  In this post I’m going to give you the ultimate list of ways to make money online.

I’m not going to go in depth for each money making idea.  Instead I’ll just post a short blurb here and then follow each of them up with a full post in the future…

Creative Ways To Make Money Online

1.  Start your own affiliate marketing blog or website.  You can make money promoting other people’s products.

2.  Build a readership and sell ad space on your blog.

3.  Join a paid blogging network and get paid for blogging about certain topics.

4.  Sell text links in your blog’s content.

5.  Put Google AdSense or other contextual advertising on your website or blog.

6.  Write and sell an ebook.

7.  Give away free reports with affiliate links in them.

8.  Buy Resellers rights for digital products and sell them.

9.  Turn PLR content into products to sell.

10.  Start a paid membership site.

11.  Start an online directory and charge for inclusion.

12.  PPC arbitrage.

13.  Become a virtual assistant and work from home.

14.  Be a ghost writer.

15.  Good at writing sales copy?  There’s a huge market for copywriters who can write effective ads and sales pages.

16.  Write articles for bloggers looking for content.  Check out Elance and Rentacoder for freelancing opportunities.

17.  If you speak a second language you can make extra money translating documents.

18.  Transcribe documents from paper to digital format.

19.  Data entry jobs can pay well…but beware of the many scammers trying to fleece you!

20.  Got a nice camera?  Sell your photos online at sites like iStockPhoto.

21.  Be a day trader buying and selling stocks.

22.  Forex.

23.  Start an ezine and sell solo ads.  You’ll need a large readership to make any money.

24.  Be a link broker.  Lots of people are looking to sell links and others are looking to buy.  Be the middleman.

25.  Start an eBay store.

26.  Sell stuff around your house on ebay.

27.  Buy stuff wholesale to sell on ebay.

28.  Dropshipping.

29.  Sell stuff on Craigslist.

30.  Design logos for websites and blogs.

31.  Design and sell blog themes/templates.

32.  Build custom websites or blogs from scratch.

33.  Create MySpace layouts.

34.  Create Wordpress plugins.

35.  Create and sell useful scripts.

36.  Design clipart/icons.

37.  Create simple software programs.

38.  Design an impressive “seal of approval” and sell it to websites looking to make themselves look more authentic.

39.  Get paid for taking online surveys.

40.  Get paid for web surfing.

41.  Get paid for reading emails.

42.  Get paid for digging, stumbling, etc.  Be prepared to be crucified by users of those sites.

43.  Good at gaming?  You may be able to win some cash prizes.

44.  Invest in virtual real estate on sites like Second Life.

45.  Make money on World of Warcraft.

46.  Take advantage of reward sites such as myPoints.

47.  Start your own niche search engine.  A highly targeted SE could find a loyal following.

48.  Flip websites.

49.  Buy and park domains that get type-in traffic.  Make money by placing advertising on them.

50.  Do the same with expired domains that still get traffic.

51.  Buy domains, develop them, and sell them at a profit.

52.  Online gambling sites….be prepared to lose your shirt.

53.  Create simple online games to sell.

54.  Record music to sell online.

55.  Use the internet to promote your offline business.

56.  Write resumes and help people find jobs.

57.  Become an SEO consultant.

58.  Become a link-building consultant.

59.  If you’re into arts and crafts, sell them online.

60.  New forums need help getting comments.  The owners will often pay you to post in them.

61.  Get paid to post comments on blogs.

62.  Get paid to manually submit websites to directories.

63.  Create a helpful eCourse and distribute it with an autoresponder like Aweber.  Mix in some affiliate links to make some money.

64.  Can you draw?  Draw little cartoons or artwork for websites.

65.  Create and sell instructional videos and tutorials.

66.  Get paid to search at sites like Winzy.

67.  Get paid for reviewing software at SoftwareJudge.

68.  Install scripts/troubleshoot for the technically challenged.

69.  Sell pixel ads on your site.  It worked for MillionDollarHomepage!

70.  Become a hosting reseller.

71.  Get paid for coming up with unique domain names at PickyDomains.com

72.  Sell your unused CPU cycles at CPUShare.

73.  Start a paid article directory.

74.  Build some Squidoo lenses and share in the revenue they generate.

75.  Write and sell articles to AssociatedContent.

76.  Design t-shirts, bumper stickers, etc and sell them at CafePress.

77.  Ask for it.  Years ago a woman named Karyn started a simple website that asked people to send her small donations so she could get out of debt.  They did!  She’s not in debt anymore.  Why not try something similar?

Well that’s about all I can think of?  Did I forget any?   If you have more  creative ways to make money online please leave a comment below and let me know.

Blogs I Like

After reading Josh Spaulding’s recent article about maximizing PageRank/Authority through smart internal linking, I realized that a traditional Blogroll just doesn’t make much sense from an optimization point of view.

Of course I’d still like to have a place to recognize my fellow bloggers who pump out quality content.  Below is a list of blogs I read regularly…many thanks to my friends and mentors who write them.

Caroline Middlebrook

ProBlogger

CopyBlogger

Yaro Starak

Josh Spaulding

Steve Pavlina

Dosh Dosh

Michel Fortin

Franklin Bishop

Jonathan Leger

ThouShallBlog

How to Find Me Online

I’ve been a little slow to jump onto the social media bandwagon. I’ve always been more interested in building mini-sites to promote affiliate programs. Now that I’m blogging more I wish I had taken better advantage of social sites earlier.

That said, I’ve created this page so you can find me online through various social sites.  Just click each link below and it will take you to my page.  Feel free to add me as a friend and I’ll be sure to return the favor!

Twitter

MyBlogLog

StumbleUpon

Delicious

Digg

Sphinn

That’s all I use for now but if I decide to use other sites I’ll add links to those as well.  Of course you can also reach me using my contact form.

Are You Ready To Quit Your Job?

So your online business is really picking up steam and the checks keep getting bigger and bigger.  You’re thinking about ditching your full time job for good so you can focus 100% on your online empire.

photo credit: ted.sali

Not so fast!

Before you tell your boss what he can do with his job…make sure you’ve thought things out clearly.  A miscalculation could have dire results.

Most internet marketers start their online business in their spare time while keeping their day job until their business reaches a certain point.  But how do you know when its time to cut the cord?  Here’s a couple of factors to consider:

Salary.  Are you willing to give up the security that comes with a regular paycheck?  What if your business income suddenly drops?  Do you have a stockpile of cash reserves put aside to cover personal expenses?

Benefits.  When you quit your day job you’ll be giving up more than your salary.  Your company probably pays for a portion of your health insurance, retirement fund, life insurance, and other fringe benefits that you’d be solely responsible for once you quit.

Track record.  So you’re finally turning a profit…but is that going to be the norm?  One good month could be followed by a year of bad luck.

For me, there’s a number of reasons I still have my full time job.  My job is relatively low stress, the hours are somewhat flexible, and I’m used to the cash cushion it provides.  If you follow real estate at all, you know New Jersey isn’t cheap.  We went pretty deep into debt to buy our modest little home so I might as well pay as much off as possible before quitting.  Plus, I kinda like the social aspect of working.  Working from home is a big adjustment.

In the end, only you can decide if you’re really ready to quit.  Just be sure to consider it carefully before you actually go through with it.

PLR Articles – Leveraging the Work of Others to Build Your Business

I wrote this article awhile back to promote by PLR article site…it fits with the theme of this blog so I figured I’d reprint it here…

Private Label Rights (PLR) is one of the hottest things to hit the internet marketing community in years. A lot of very smart people are making an awful lot of money with them.

Wouldn’t you like to be one of them?

Buying PLR articles is a dirt-cheap way to get your hands on quality content. They usually only cost about 50 cents to a dollar each, which is way less than paying a ghostwriter to write them for you. Ghostwriters charge anywhere from $5-$20 for each article.

Once you purchase PLR articles you can do just about anything you want with them. You should always read the ‘terms of use’ before buying them, but typically they allow you to edit them as much as you want and add your name as author.

So how do you make money from that?

Well, that’s really only limited by your own creativity, but I’ll give you a few suggestions to get your juices flowing.

1. You can package a bunch of articles together, convert them into an ebook, and sell them online through sites like eBay or Clickbank.

2. Put a few articles together into a ’special report’ and release it for free. You can use it to entice visitors to sign up for your newsletter. And if you embed your affiliate links in the report, you will get some backend commissions too.

3. Release the articles one at a time through an autoresponder like Aweber. Turn it into an online lesson and weave a few affiliate links into it to create another revenue stream.

4. Or just add them to your current blog or website. Work in affiliate links or use Google AdSense to generate revenue from them.

The possibilities are endless, which is what makes PLR articles so powerful.

There is only one concern I hear from people who are hesitant to buy PLR articles online. They fear that since the article is being sold multiple times, others will be offering the exact same content.

But that’s really nothing to worry about. All PLR sites I have seen limit the number of packages they sell so they do not lose their value.

And honestly, a lot of people who buy PLR packages get lazy and never do anything with them. So even if 200 copies of the package are sold, maybe 10 percent of those people will ever do anything with them. 

The best way to distinguish yourself from other purchasers is to tweak the articles a bit and put your own spin on them. Add a short introduction and a summary at the end. Rearrange a few sentences and replace a few words with synonyms. It should only take a few minutes to do, and you’ll eliminate any threat that someone else is offering duplicate content.

PLR articles offer a powerful solution to webmasters and marketers who don’t have the time or the desire to create their own content.

Trying to stay productive.

Its been a tough few of days for me in terms of [tag-tec]productivity[/tag-tec]. 

First, we’ve been cleaning out the basement because we had some minor flooding after the remnants of Hanna blew through.  Didn’t lose anything of real importance but there was a a bit of a mess to clean up.

Second, I’ve been fighting off a nasty cold that I just can’t shake.  I feel like my head is in a vise and sitting in front of a computer screen doesn’t help any.

And lastly, my oldest daughter had her first day of preschool yesterday!  She’s such a cutie.  She was all excited and extremely proud of herself for being such a big girl.  We went to meet with her teachers and spent the morning there and then I took the family out for brunch and did a little shopping.  It was beautiful outside and I can’t say I didn’t enjoy a day away. 

But there’s work to be done so its back to the salt mines! 

Discover the Secret to Success…

Do you want to be a success and make serious money online?  Then you need to sit back and read this post in its entirety.  Read it twice.  Print it out and post it on your wall if necessary, but for god’s sake make sure you understand it because it might just change your life…

Go to any internet marketing forum and start reading some of the questions posted.  I guarantee you’ll see a whole group of people who post the same types of questions over and over again:

“Does this system really work?”

“Can I really make money online?”

“What’s the easiest way to…”

If you pay attention over time you’ll see the same exact people asking the same exact questions.  These people are caught in a trap and they will NEVER be successful.  You see, they’re stuck in this cycle of ”inaction”. 

They’re simply spinning their wheels at 120 miles per hour and getting nowhere fast.  While they keep asking the same basic questions and searching for the golden goose that will give them a passive income with zero work…the rest of the world passes them by.

I used to be like them.  When I first started out I had no idea which direction to head in.  Should I write an ebook?  On what subject?  Should I build AdSense sites?  Should I try affiliate marketing?  Which way should I go?

Finally a light bulb went off in my head and I realized I had spent months lurking around in forums and reading various ebooks and blogs trying to figure out the best plan of action. 

But here’s the secret to success…having a solid plan is great, but it means nothing without ACTION.

At some point you have to take action.  Just pick a direction and start moving.  What’s the worst that can happen?  If you fail…great!  That means you learned something new. Don’t fear failure because that’s how we learn.  Talk to any successful marketer and they’ll tell you about the spectacular failures they suffered before they finally hit on the right formula for success.

Take action.

You want to be a blogger?  Start blogging.  Don’t spend days trying to find just the right theme or creating the perfect logo.  Just start churning out quality content and worry about design later.

Want to be a Bum Marketer?  Then start writing and don’t stop until your fingers fall off. 

There are a million different ways to make money online and what works best for me may not work at all for you.  The only way to find out what works for you is to try…take action.

Avoiding Information Overload

One of the biggest obstacles to becoming a successful online marketer is the sheer number of distractions that pull our attention away from what really matters.

Take me for example.  I love to read.  I read lots of books about business and marketing.  And I love history.  And science.  Plus I spend time in marketing forums and reading other blogs.  There’s always a new report being released with a new technique for generating traffic or increasing revenue.

But at some point you have to say “Enough is enough!”

It’s easy to spend your whole day reading other people’s blogs and posting in forums…and you’ll never make any real money doing that!

For me the key was getting organized and scheduling my time more effectively.  Instead of popping into forums at all times of the day I try to block out a chunk of time each day for that.  Same thing with reading other blogs.  I generally try to avoid any new information until AFTER I’ve gotten some work done that day. 

By forcing myself to limit the amount of information I take in each day it gives me more time to actually get some work done.  As soon as I made that adjustment my productivity skyrocketed and I finally saw some results.

So what’s the moral of the story?  If you want to be a success you need focus.  Put on your blinders and ignore all distractions.  Choose a direction and take action.

Do it now.

The 9 Things You Absolutely Must Have To Start Your Own Online Business

One of the perks to starting an online business is the low start up costs.  You can literally get started on a shoe string budget of around a hundred bucks or so.  That’s pretty enticing to entrepreneurs who want to work from home or start a small business but don’t have much capital to back them up. 

When I set out to build my first website I barely had 2 nickels to rub together.  I needed to start making money quickly just to pay the bills and keep food on the table.  I had already tried to make money online with paid surveys and other crap that didn’t work, so I couldn’t afford to fail as an internet marketer. 

Since I had very little money to start with, I was very frugal with purchases.  I did everything manually…outsourced nothing…kept everything basic and simple.  I thought I was being smart by keeping my expenses to a bare minimum. 

Turns out I was being penny-wise but pound-foolish.  Sure I saved myself a few bucks here and there but I probably lost out on thousands of dollars in missed opportunities. 

If I was starting over again from scratch I would have invested a little more into my business and sooner.  But hey…my mistake can be your lesson.  Here are 9 things you must have to start your own online business…and most of them are free! 

1. A computer (duh).
2. A high speed internet connection.  You’re going to be spending a good deal of time online…if you’re still on dial-up its time to upgrade.
3. Decent writing skills.  You don’t need to be another Hemmingway but you do need to be able to get your point across clearly.  Don’t worry, writing skills can be learned and improved on.
4. A plan.  I wasted a lot of time trying to decide exactly what I wanted to do.  Do yourself a favor and pick a course of action early.
5. Focus.  The world is full of distractions both online and off.  You’ll need to stay focused if you want to stay on track.
6. Your own domain.  It costs about $9 at Namecheap and there’s no reason you shouldn’t have one. 
7. Your own hosting.  If you use a free host you own nothing and you have no real control.  You can get shared hosting for $6.95 at Bluehost (I use Bluehost and I recommend them).  For the price of a fast food meal you can host dozens of money-making sites.  It’s a no brainer. 
8. A way to capture email addresses and follow up with prospects.  This was my biggest mistake…I waited way too long to start this.  I should have been collecting email addresses from the start.  If I had my lists would be ten times what they are now.  There are several different services you can use to capture emails and build a mailing list.  I recommend Aweber because that’s what I use. 
9. A desire to learn.  Things happen fast online…new software, new methods, new authority sites pop up, old ones fall by the wayside.  You’ve got to be able to keep up with the times or you’ll fall behind fast.