I’m finally back with another post, and there isn’t much to report really. I have been using adwords more with CJ and I am still focussing on sign ups as oppossed to buying products. I managed to find a $75 Adword voucher for $12 on Digital Point forums, so this helped me top up my adwords. So far I have managed to sell £19 worth in CJ and spend £13. However, I do have a lot left in my adwords so at the rate of 1 sign up per day (£1 per day) I can see what I will soon overtake Dan (Hopefully). At the moment I haven’t thought of any new ideas, but I will soon me trying something new no doubt and when I do I will be the first to post here. I have attached my statistics for CJ so you can see what has happened.

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!

I have also taken the affiliate route like Dan and I registered with Commission Junction (easiest to get accepted) and Adscend Media (Also easy to get accepted). I have decided in trying to sell sign ups (my leads) as opposed to selling products. I know most of you thinking, who will pay to sign up to something they may not have been looking for? All my sign ups are free and pay $6 per sign up!! The sign ups I choose to go for were all non English speaking websites due to Adwords being saturated on the US and UK sites for this particular website sign up. First off I was going to have a go at the German market, but as I don’t know anyone German speaking and translators are usually wrong, I changed to Swedish. I have a couple friends that are Swedish so I asked for them to translate for me for my advertisement. I checked to see what pops up for multiple key words and there were no sponsored links at all… YIPPEE!! I had to pay $5 for registration to Adwords and $5 for credit so I have spent around £6 so far. I placed 160 keywords/phrases that I thought would help in Swedish and English and submitted them.

Progress

I managed to get 33 clicks yesterday and 1 lead bringing my revenue for the day to £4 (around $6-$7)

I will post more in-depth information about what I am doing and the sign ups I am working on in due time.

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

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

Well, its true, you can walk away from today with an extra $10 or more - if your willing to dive in to what I have to offer! Now its not a money making idea that you will profit from in the long term, however it will bring in little bits of cash here and there…and maybe even a few free drinks if you do it right! So what is it? Well, for this, your going to have to go…offline…

I think I can best show you what I’m talking about with an example. What if, I bet you $10 I could tell you exactly where you got your shoes? No messing around, no estimates, I bet I can tell you exactly where you got them. Want to bet? Sure you do, your curious…well ok, I’ll take your $10 bet, and tell you exactly where you got your shoes. You got your shoes…on your feet. Bad grammar wins me a tenner.

Yes I’m talking about the world of bar bets and cons that you can pull on your friends and family! Ok ok, its not the greatest money making scheme in the world ever I admit, but hey, a few free drinks here and there, a couple of quid in hand, it all goes towards the total! So here I wanted to show you one of my favourites that has done well by me in winning me a few free drinks, and that you can use instantly to make yourself $10 out of your victim friend.

So your sitting down with your friend (lets call him Bob), drink beside you, and you offer him a challenge of “do as I do”. The rules are fairly simple, all he has to do is copy your moves 6 times, and he wins $10…if he can’t, well he’ll owe you $10. Of course, anything you can do, Bob thinks he can do better, so he takes you up on the bet. You pick up your glass – Bob picks up his glass. You take a sip from your glass, Bob takes a sip from his. You say ‘Hail to Odin!’, Bob repeats. You again take a sip from your drink, and Bob, again, copies. You hold your glass high in the air, Bob copies, thinking that he is one copy away from a free $10…and that’s when you spit your drink back into your glass. You see, with the last ’sip’ you took, you held some of it back in your mouth, while Bob drank it all, thinking that when you held your glass high in the air, you had already swallowed. It’s impossible that he can copy you on the last move! Time to take your $10 off of Bob, and skip merrily on to your next willing friend!

I hope that you guys liked that little ‘trick’, and get some use out of it in the near future, even if its only for a laugh with friends! I’ll be posting later this week about a potential ‘work form home’ job you can apply for that is 100% legitimate, and earns some people quite a nice amount of money! Until then, be safe racers!

Dan

As you can see, I started out with a variety of materials – some of which were standard; sellotape, scissors etc. The frame I bought for £1.50 in a cheap store, and luckily it came with a transparent back, meaning I didn’t have to somehow ‘hack’ the back of a picture frame out. So I decided I would only use one piece of black paper (cost of 20 pence), the film cells, and the postcard that came with them (approximately cost me £1.50). Plus the sellotape I bought, that comes to under £5. Not bad!

I ended up using a kitchen knife (a crafting knife is recommended) as opposed to the scissors I had, and scored out pieces of the paper after doing some measurements. I taped the film cells to the back of the paper so they could be seen through the hole, used some glue to stick on the ‘Transformers’ name tag, and cut a hole to show the picture through, which I taped onto the back. I slid the paper, with items attached, into the back of the frame and it was complete! Not very long to do, and pretty simple if I’m honest!

Now that I’ve done it once though, I have learnt from a couple of things, and how it could possibly be made better. Firstly I’d spend the money on a proper craft knife, as the kitchen knife made my edges look frayed. Second, I would probably use thicker paper, or cardboard, instead of black paper. One suggestion I had was that instead of using paper and sticking pictures on, I should design a picture (or layout) on the computer, and send it to a photo printing company. You can apparently get these prints for very cheap (about the same price or less than the actual paper I bought!) and they will fit to your exact specifications, meaning you don’t have to worry about the picture not fitting in the frame. This would also allow the picture to look very glossy, and mean all I would have to do is cut out a gap for the film strip. Not only would this mean it looks nice, but it would essentially be ‘unique’ to the type of film cell frames being offered in the market currently. I think I’m going to try this when I get the use of my Internet again, and see how much I can improve on it. I reckon with a bit of editing, these ‘new style’ picture frames could be marketed very well!

So there you have it. A practical way to design something for less than £5, which can come across as much, much more. Have you guys any suggestions of things that could be made to sell? If so, let me know!

Dan

So, as you may know, I like to give you all ideas on how to make money – and not just hypothetical ideas. Real ideas that you could go out and make money on. Well, I thought I would share another technique I have found in order to give you guys a little bit more money this Christmas. It involves getting a little bit ‘crafty’, and can see you a very good return if you are good at it! Its also an ideal Christmas gift if you aren’t sure what to get someone this year, so you get the best of both worlds! I won’t go into the details of exactly how the item is made (as it should be pretty obvious), but we will go through how it can benefit you financially, which is what matters. Ok, so lets take a look at what it is we are going to sell…

The Product

We are going to be creating and selling – film cell frames. What is that you ask? Well you have probably come across them before, here is a website full of them. Sometimes these things can sell for hundreds of dollars, yet the funny thing is they can be built for less than five! You see, when you first glance at these items they come across as almost a ‘piece of history’ – the fact you are getting a frame that contains ‘authentic’ film cells of you favourite movies, but the fact of the matter is there are loads of these in existence, and you can buy packs of ten on eBay for less than a couple of dollars. All these film cells come from used and old movie reels that have been used to show the films in cinemas around the world, as well as any others that might have been privately bought. They have no real value, but put them in a frame with some pictures, and all of a sudden they become amazingly so. Now we know what we are making, how do we go about doing it?

The Method

I wont go into detail, but I will cover the basics: First things first you’ll need to buy the film cells themselves – this can be done very easily on eBay. Just do a search for ‘unmounted film cells’ and you’ll be able to find hundreds of results. You can put in the film name as well if you know exactly what film you want to do. Now you can normally get 2-4 frames worth of film cells for under $2. Then you need to buy the backing plate, which is simply two bits of thin black cardboard. You then mark on the cardboard where you want to place the film cells, cut the sections out, and then slide the film cells between the two pieces of cardboard. Then you just need to stick on a small picture of the movie in question, and frame it! If you want to go all fancy you can get a small piece of shiny card and print the name of the film on that…I’m not exactly sure where people get the engraved plaques you see on some of them – I assume they don’t come cheap though, so I offer ’shiny card’ as a substitute!

The Sale

Once you have done all the work, you should be able to sell it for almost double what you paid for it! After getting the first couple under your belt you should be able to produce loads for a reasonably cheap amount of money! Then you can set up your own shop as seen above, or sell them on eBay. The key is to try and make them look as professional as possible so that they will sell well - there are lots of ‘tacky’ ones on eBay, and they don’t ever see a bid. If the whole thing cost you $5, or $10, then sell for $20, even $25! The more professional it looks, the higher the asking price!

The idea is a sound way to ‘craft’ your way into getting some money this Christmas, and each item will take less than an hour to build – albeit I foresee it taking a lot less time than that. If you were able to build 5 (which shouldn’t cost much more than $20) within a few hours, you could see a return of over $100. That’s not a bad investment when you think about it, and also takes you away from the distractions that your computer contains, which normally might stop you making money ‘online’!

My Challenge

Now I can’t claim I have tried this one personally – I bought the film cells in order to do so, but never got around to doing it sadly. However, I am going to try and put a bit of effort into this plan, and try to build at least one by the end of the week; so long as I can get the film cells sent up to me in time! (They are at my parents house) When done, I will get a photograph of the final product, and place it online for you to see. If you would so like, I will include step by step instructions on how I made the item, and the cost involved! I hope you guys do try this, and have found it a useful idea.

Dan