Myself, well I’ve been still working on the app I mentioned  in my last post. I can reveal partially what it is, as it has been developed further than I originally planned! Exciting times no? The application itself is now an automatic keyword researcher – the basic functionality of which will query the google keyword tool automatically for a randomly generated list of keywords. It will then present you this list in an excel spreadsheet. And thats not all…

At the minute, I’m working on further functionality which includes checking various page ranks, and performing calculations on the results. However, I can’t go into much detail on those points as I don’t want to be in trouble for revealing the secrets of the ‘keyword crash course’. However, as much as I would like this part to be working fully, its sadly not. Checking the pagerank of many sites is providing tricky, as google don’t particularly like their servers being spammed with requests. Currently I am trying to seek a way around this, however my only conclusion so far is to use a ‘farm’ of websites so that google is not receiving manic requests from the same IP. Yet this is further work on the project that needs looking into, and it’s not really leaving me with a lot of time to look at my other projects, all of which are time consuming themselves.

I do have another project underway, which is ‘comedy pictures’ website. However under the competition rules I’m unable to publish the URL to the site – at least for the moment anyway. I’m hoping that this might be a small income earner, I don’t expect fortunes from it though. Luckily I managed to find free hosting, and a free domain name from a hosting company called Just Host. I had to go through a couple of loops, but it was worthwhile.

I hope you guys are having more luck your end!!

Much love,

Dan

Edit: Ok so it turns out my post was slightly in haste, as I hadn’t checked my clickbank account. Seems that I have made $26.95 via clickbank! Not too bad via free facebook adverts. Am in the process now of setting my facebook ads account back up now. Unfortunatly I can’t update my total amount, as I haven’t technically recieved the money yet, its just sitting in my account. 3 more sign ups and I will be able to though! Yay!

Not only are we to be trying to make money online, which in itself is a challenge, but we are also starting off with only £10 each. This eliminates a lot of avenues; for example, if we wanted to buy a .com domain name, half the starting amount is already gone! Then you have to think about hosting costs etc. Currently, I pay $25 a month in hosting costs, which is well over the starting limit, so I will have to find a way of making money without using any hosting (until I can afford it that is). Alternatively, I have to make over the $25 amount within the first month so that when I’m charged for my hosting I can afford to take it out of the money made! Yet getting up to that $25 amount could provide challenging.

My ideas are currently mostly in the long term, however this means I will be at a loss for a very long time, so I’m having to look at other options to get a good footing. I’ve already started looking in some areas to make money without having a website, and for very little collateral. One avenue I’m thinking of looking to is affiliate marketing. It’s something you don’t especially need a website for, and can be a very lucrative market – yet I’m going to have to research that a little bit more before I commit.

So do you guys have any tips for us? Things that we might want to try looking into at the start in order to get our feet on the ground? All ideas are welcome, and greatly appreciated

Dan

Now the immediate concern is that you might not know any programming skills in order to develop an application for the iPhone; it might be that you don’t own a Mac that you can actually do the programming on (as the development kit can only be used on Mac machines) or it just might be that you don’t have a good enough idea for an app! So, lets debuff these myths…

Now apple themselves have gone with the claim that the iPhone “has an app for everything” which, strictly speaking, isn’t true. I’ve yet to find an app that will get me a drink from the fridge, or print out cash, yet I can get an app which allows me to play a multitude of fart sounds…great. The fact of the matter is that you do not need a good idea to produce an app to profit from! You could make an app that simply displays a stick figure that you can bounce around the iPhone screen, and its highly likely a large number of people will buy it. Lets look at the case in point of the iMirror application – this claims to turn your iPhone into a mirror. Actually, what it does is put a frame around the edge of the screen, and show the rest of the screen as ‘black’. You may think ‘who would buy such tat’ but as it stands its sold thousands of copies, all at $0.99 each.

There are of course the ‘useful’ apps – take the ‘Tube Deluxe’ app, which I personally have. This is an app that provides you with an up to date tube status, along with a map and route planner. One of my work colluegues knows the guy who developed the software, and aparantly he makes over £1000 a week from sales of this 59 pence application. He left his job and now works full time on his iPhone applications.

Before you get excited about this ‘free money’, know there are costs involved; Apple takes a small cut of each sale (I believe 10%) and you have to pay an initial $100 to get yourself registered as an iPhone developer. Obviously the main cost is the registration fee, but that is a one time payment which afterwards you are free to submit apps to your hearts content.

Yet what if you know next to nothing about programming for the iPhone ? Personally I am taking it upon myself to learn, as the possibilities it provides you with are endless. The code style is similar to that of Java and Actionscript (used in flash). I know a number of people who make a VERY good living converting flash games to iPhone apps, and because the language is similar, it’s hardly any work at all. Yet who said you need to know programming to develop software? Depending on the idea you have, you could hire out a developer to create you a simple iPhone app for around $100. If you sell your app at $0.99, you’ll make your money back after a hundred or so sales – which you are more than likely to make, as people buy a lot of crap on the app store!

The real difficulty is if you don’t have a mac. This is where my problems lie. You can *find* yourself a specially made DVD online to try and install a Mac OS on your PC, however as it stands I am having no luck. There is a lot of support around online though, so if you do want to make a go of it, then by all means do. Of course, this step doesn’t matter so much if your paying someone else to develop it for you

The potential of the app store is an exciting one, and there is a lot of money to be made from it. If you find yourself thinking up a good idea, run with it. Or tell me and I will I hope to touch on this area again once I know more about it, and maybe provide some more help for those interested in getting into the area.

Dan

This is my first post and is a sort of response to Dan’s last post. Having read Dan’s post I will be taking a different route to (hopefully) making money online, I have tried out different methods before and they have worked for short periods of time but I want something more long term. I currently have a traffic selling website that used to make more money when I was promoting but with extreme competition at prices that you can’t even buy a double cheeseburger for, I decided to stop this. I used to flip websites as well and this was profitable for many months but costs have increased on this and it is very time consuming; I could stick with this because it does work and there are always more “Omg if I buy this I will be a millionaire” people out there to buy from me.

Currently I’m into proxy websites and this I can tell you has the potential for making lots of cash, especially as school season is upon us. The sites are easy to promote and I can get 200,000 page views a month per site, if you are willing to pay for some promotion that is. Get accepted to a CPM publisher site and BLAM 1000 views = $1+ .  Only problem is my hosting company just folded and I didn’t have new back ups of my site

My plans for this competition are to learn more skills as well as beat Dan’s ass!! I’m thinking of moving into CPA as soon as I can get accepted, although I have to be careful to stay within the white hat area. Other than this I have a few other ideas up my sleeve which will remain secret until tried and tested.

That’s all from me from the moment,

Gray

So I plan to try and learn as much as I can about marketing so that I can effectively put my ideas and plans out there. Marketing is key to any business structure, wether we like it or not.

That said, Im planning on focusing my attention on the long term goals – I have couple of websites in mind that could potentialy go viral, and Im also thinking of branching out into the iPhone app industry, as there is a great money making potential there. I have a couple of kick ass ideas in this area also, which I will talk about in later updates.

If I could give anyone any advice about making money online, I would strongly suggest doing your research on advertising. You could have the greatest thing in the world, but if no-one knows about it, you’ll struggle.

Dan

Yet out of the darkness, two heroes arise…

In case you were unclear, I am one of those heroes. Lol. YES! We are officially back after a stupidly long hiatus. I’d like to say I have used the time wisely to increase my knowledge about the mmo market and industry, but then I would be lying. In fact I have used my time off to work, go to the gym, and try and sort out much of my life, lol. However, over the past couple of months I have been brushing up on my techniques and research, and so we are opening the flood gates again ready to share the knowledge…

You might have noticed I’ve been saying ‘we’ a lot – this is because the ‘Race for a million challenge’ is starting up again! I have enlisted the help of my good friend Graham and together we will be competing each month to find who has the best skills at making their money online. He will be introducing himself to you in the form of a blog post sometime in the near future.

For those of you who are not familiar with the challenge, let me fill you in; this blog was originally started as to be an ongoing competition; contestants would start with £10 each, and try to best each other every month by making the most amount of money. The official rules still haven’t been written up fully yet (I’m getting around to it) but that’s the jist of it.

The competition officially starts on the 1st of September, which gives me time to make some little enhancements on the website so you guys can track our progress. Throughout the competition we will be writing up our experiences, feelings, and general tips so you guys can see exactly what it is that we are doing, and try it out for yourselves! There may also be rewards for subscribers and frequent visitors in the future, so keep a keen eye out!

I see I have rambled again, so I will leave it at that for the time being, and catch you all later in the week!

It’s good to be back

Dan

So, how are we going to get ourselves organised and focuses on the tasks at hand? The answer is really simple if I’m honest, and I’m surprised its taken me as long as it has to do it – we write a list. Yup. You read correctly, you are going to sit down and write a list of everything you want to get done in the next 3 months. Why this length of time? Well, it gives you enough time to write down a pretty comprehensive list of things, and isn’t long enough to write ‘unrealitic’ goals, such as buying your own house, going on a dream vacation etc.

I started out by writing out a list of simple things I wanted to get done in the upcoming months – one of which was to sort through all my domains and plan out actions for each of them (and to throw them if they were of no use) – obviously I ended up thinking up ideas for even the most ridicoulous of domains I had, so now have them all, lol – but just this one list item ended up with me creating a whole other list, and actually helped me be pro-active!

So why would a list actually help you, as oposed to just something you can throw away? Well, there are a number of reasons. The first is that it allows you to organise the mess that is currently in your head – you can clearly outline what you need to get done, and by writing it on paper, your psychologically ‘releasing the worry’ from your mind, and committing it down into words. Secondly, it creates a list that you are able to tick off – and with every item you tick off, the closer you come to actually completing the list – again from a psychological standpoint this encouranges you to put that little bit of extra effort in to finish off the list. This is particulary useful, as by the time the list has whittled down, you have probably got rid of the ‘eaisier’ items that wont take you too long, and the difficult ones are left – precisly the ones that you will need the most help with! Last, but not least, it will give you a clear list of goals for you to acheive.

I can openly and happilly say that since creating a list last week, I have been getting so much more done than I had without – I’m hoping that the future will be picking up for me soon because of it. So what are you waiting for? Go write that list, and become more productive than you have before!!

Dan

You see, once the user has sent you paypal payment, you usually have to then send them the eBook manually – which means a lot of waiting on their end if the expected it instantly. So I wanted to set up a system where the user could pay via paypal, and then receive a link to their eBook instantly. Well, searching for one (that was free) took a lot of time, and I almost gave up on finding one before I found this brilliant free tutorial at ngcoders. This gives you a completely free php script that allows you to set this type of transaction. It also contains a way of creating links that are only active for a certain amount of time – so when a user purchases a copy of my book, they receive a link via email and then have 24 hours to download it before the link becomes inactive. Its great, and free, so very worth your time. Unfortunatly the only problem is that you have to direct them to an external link to click on the ‘buy it now’ button…a small issue for when your selling in forums and avenues that do not allow html coding.

I hope that has been of some use to you…I hope to detail in my next post how I have got on with advertising the book, telling you what I have done in order to make sales, and various websites I have listed it on. Catch ya later racers!

Dan

On a similar note, I discovered another one of these ‘tricks’ that can be used to get free champagne if your cocky enough (or have had enough dutch courage). You might be out with your friends, and one of them suggests celebrating a friends birthday…now normally champagne isn’t very cheap…but it is for you! So you stroll on over to the bar, birthday girl on your arm, and greet the bartender in your best James Bond voice (why the voice? No reason, but you’ll feel cool).  You buy whatever drinks you might like, before laying down the champagne challenge. You turn the the bartender and say ‘It’s this lovely girls birthday today, and I’d like to show her something really special – I’d like to show her how to drink from a champagne bottle, while it is still sealed, and without breaking the glass. Do you reckon its possible?’ – the bartender will most likely stare at you, thinking the drinks he just served you were a mistake. ‘Well how does this sound, if I am able to drink from this champagne bottle, without opening it, without breaking the glass, without even damaging the seal, this girl receives a lovely free bottle of champagne courtesy of your bar. However if I fail, I will buy three bottles of your most expensive champagne’, and as you say that you place your card down on the counter. Now some bars do give out courtesy champagne to VIPs, so the chance might be good enough for the bartender to take you up on it. So he brings over a bottle of champagne and looks at you, ready and waiting.

You stare at the bottle for a bit, running your fingers all over it, and then repeat the bet – ‘If I can drink, from this bottle of champagne, it is ours to take for free – agreed?’. You stare at the barman, he stares back at you…you hope he isnt coming on to you. He nods. You grab the champagne bottle, turn it over, pouring your drink into the crevice at the bottom of the champagne bottle. You take a sip of the drink, before grinning like a buffoon – you never said you would drink the champagne inside it, you merely said you would drink from it. The curved bottom of the champange bottles make it very easy to do! Enjoy your champagne, you classy piece of work you.

Dan

Now it seems that these tools do a lot of things, yet there has never been an ‘all-in-one’ tool that is able to do everything that you would like. So I would like to put the question to you all – if you could have a blogging tool, what would you like to see in it? What should it be able to do for you?  What types of things haven’t been addressed in the blogging world? Let me know in a comment, and I will get to work on seeing what I can develop for you guys, and how realistic a program like this might be!

I also would like to know what types of posts you would like to see, what you would like to see addressed, what you would like to know more about, and anything I can do/try out for you – whatever you want! I’m willing to consider anything!

Merry Christmas, to one and all!

Dan