Play an Instrument or Have Knowledge of Anything? There's Money to Be Made on Youtube

One of the most rewarding ways you can make money online is to teach beginners something you know a lot about. You don't have to be some incredible expert, you just have to be good at something and have a youtube account. I use musical instruments as an example, but it could be anything from how to make a pineapple upside down cake to how to change an air filter. A lot of people make good money on youtube by utilizing some skill they have acquired and teaching it to random people who are eager to learn.

You only need a Youtube and Google Adsense account, and your first video to get started. Personally, I can play acoustic guitar and I focus on videos that I think would've helped me when I was first starting out.

Specifically, I like to post instructional videos of popular songs, but with simplified chords because something all beginners want is to be able to play some of their favorite songs.

Doesn't need to be guitar, anything that you believe could have been useful to yourself when you first started doing a particular skill or hobby.

In your youtube account navigate to your video manager and on each video there will be an option to monetize it, you can choose the pre-roll ads and the little pop-in ads.  Of course comply with the copyright laws, use descriptive tags, and make sure your headline is something you would search for.  Youtube will review the video and usually within a few hours approve it as long as there is no copyright problem.

If you want to promote the video find some related forums and use the video as your signature or just post it there if the forum allows.  The most important thing is to post a new instructional, at the very least, once a week.  You want subscribers to your channel, you want a following, so keep up with it.

For recording I just use an Ipad, but if you have deeper resources than me, use them, better quality videos have a better chance of becoming popular.  Speak very clear and be positive.

Make Money with Adfly

Adfly is a link shortening service that pays you for clicks and pays well.  A little over 7 dollars per 1000 views for U.S. clicks.  Users who click will see a full page 5 second ad then can skip it to go to their destination.  This is very effective for people who have a large social media following or frequently post on popular forums, if the forum allows for it.

If you don't have a popular blog to post links on or many social media followers there are still ways to get clicks.

If you provide valuable information for anything you can get links.  One way I've found to be effective is to join Amazon's Mechanical Turk program and let people know about valuable HITs.  A great way to do this is the join the Reddit community HITsWorthTurkingFor which receives tons of traffic everyday with people looking for good HITs.  Follow the community rules and they allow you to use Adfly to point users to HITs.

This is a good way to earn extra cash and it isn't very time consuming if you do a little research over at Mturk.  Refer to this post for more info about how to better use Mturk.

Click Here to Sign Up for Adfly

3 Survey Sites You Should Care About

The "make money taking surveys" craze started a long time ago with promises stating you could make thousands a week just by taking surveys online.  Well like most things that sound too good to be true, it is. There are quality survey sites, but you will not make thousands a week and you won't be quitting your job to take surveys.  There are an incredible amount of scammy survey sites, but these 3 sites that offer surveys do actually pay and pay better than most.

Survey Savvy - This is my number 1 recommendation because although you take surveys sparingly they actually pay you good money for the ones you qualify for.  You may only get 2-3 surveys per month, but you can make anywhere from $40 to $90 off of that.

Mturk - Amazon's Mechanical Turk is a great place for surveys as well.  Check out the reddit comminuty HitsWorthTurkingfor for good easy cash with surveys or the many other tasks you can do there.

Cash Crate - Cash Crate has good survey options.  .70-.90 cents for very short surveys and most enter you in big sweepstakes as well.  Many of them also allow you to take them on a daily basis.

Of course you can make much more money with these sites (except Mturk) by getting referrals.  Check out my article- Top 3 Ways to Get Referrals for some help in that department.  Remember to maximize your time and don't get impatient.

Quote of the Day

Wednesday Night Inspiration - A Story of Quitting a Job for All the Right Reasons

It's Wednesday night, and it is -1 degrees where I live.  I just wanted to write some encouraging words for the people that want to make working from home a reality.

First of all if you work at a big corporation and are absolutely miserable working there you owe it to yourself to make a change.  Awhile back I worked for a very large corporation.  Now I was just looking for a night job to go along with my 9-5 job which I happen to like.  So I fill out the application to basically just be a labor worker doing the physical tasks.  The problem was they liked my interview and said we will pay you a dollar more to work inside the store.

I'm like fine so I took the job.  So I started their mind numbing computer training and realized they wanted me to be a salesman on the floor.  I'm talking real selling, upselling, all that bs.  So I go to the supervisor and say "am I a salesman?", she said yeah.  Now they were paying me $8.50 an hour at this point.  So I asked her, "what's my commission?", she replies "we work on a scale where if everyone in your department reaches a certain quota there are cash bonuses".  Basically I could sell 20 products for the month and still receive $8.50 an hour.

This isn't fair of course and this is how corporations make billions because payroll is any company's biggest expense.  Of course the first video I had to watch for training was an anti-union video.  It's like this at many corporations, employees work their butts off to sell something and 100% of the profit stays in company hands.

Long story short, I asked the supervisor how in the world this is considered fair?  She said it's "team building".  And if your department happened to make the quota that month?  $50 extra on your paycheck, thanks for nothing.  So after I told her how absurd that was I just quit and walked out.

If this seems like a similar situation that you are in right now then make a damn change.  Start putting in the time it takes to get out of that situation.  Get up early, write a blog post, get through the day at work, come home write another blog post or do some surveys and make that extra cash.  Picture yourself getting out of that horrible cycle that so many people find themselves in.  Once you start putting in the work necessary you will start seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.

Top 3 Ways to Get Referrals

The most lucrative way to make money from sites that are based around tasks or surveys or rewards, ala Cash Crate or InstaGC, is to rack up a bunch of referrals.

Referrals are people that sign up using your link.  You receive a percentage, usually 10-20% of everything they earn.  Basically they become your employees except you're not paying them, the company is.  This can be lucrative and it's basically the easiest way to make money because there's very little work involved for you.  Of course the methods I list below can also be used for actual affiliate sales if that's your thing.

1. Rent an Email List - No one wants to drop cash, but if you have a little dough to spend and you want to build up some referrals, Rent-a-List is really the way to go.  They send your pitch out to very targeted audiences and guarantee you a 40% click through rate, which is really good. This works particularly well for make money sites since there are tons of lists for this certain niche.  Their pricing is very fair (21 bucks for the lowest package), give it a try at least, it might be for you.

2. Forum Signatures - Being an active forum member and using your signature to get referrals is an amazingly effective practice.  There are many forums related to making money online.  If you actively participate and get well respected within the community people will be inclined to check out the stuff you promote in your signature.  Popular forums rank very well in google as well, so you also expose your promotions to much more traffic than you may think.

3. Start a Blog - A boring suggestion.  An obvious suggestion.  But it works.  The best advice I can give is NEVER give up.  Make a post every single day.  Give out some good advice.  Of course link your referral sites wherever you think they will receive the most exposure.  For more blogging advice and a little inspiration check out the 4 posts below I did earlier.

Never Run Out of Post Ideas by Fringe Blogging

Need a Flood of Traffic - Write a List - A Crazy Story of Success

Don't Neglect Other Types of Blog Posts

You Can Work from Home on the Internet

Need a Quick $100 - Write a List for Listverse

Listverse is a hugely popular site that compiles the internet writer's best friend, lists.  Listverse will pay you $100 cold hard cash directly into you Paypal account.  Below you'll find the best practices to get your list accepted directly from the listverse crew.

The rules are: there are no rules. As long as your list (and we do mean yours—don’t steal other people’s stuff) is over 1,000 words you can choose any topic you like. Just remember—if it’s good enough to publish (by our standards) you get 100 bucks—simple as that.To help you out with some ideas, the lists that our readers love the most (and the ones we will most likely pay for) are usually offbeat, looking at something normal in an unexpected way (top 10 ways college makes you dumb, for example), hidden knowledge (things most people don’t know), misconceptions, facts, and just really really good general knowledge about anything—science, for example.

If accepted you can also link to your blog or social media site, which can be fantastic exposure. Just believe in your writing that's the best advice I can give. Plus if you don't get accepeted, Listverse doesn't own it, you can still post it on your own blog or Medium is a always great exposure too.

Click here to Submit a List

Never Run Out of Post Ideas by Fringe Blogging

"Fringe Blogging" is not a thing, I'm not making this a thing.  It's just a golf analogy that's been beaten to death, but hey it's the best I can do.

What I mean by fringe blogging is to look slightly outside your chosen niche for post ideas.  It is every blogger's worst nightmare, to run out of ideas for a post.  That's why it is important to fringe blog so to speak.  For example on this blog I've posted inspirational things because although it doesn't pertain to a particular way of making money, it is a very important to keep a positive attitude towards what you're trying to accomplish.  Otherwise you will stop working or think "I'll just take a few days off".

As I mentioned I used to run a mixed martial arts blog.  When I started doing it it was a fairly small niche, events would happen maybe twice a month.  So to keep the flow going I would make posts pertaining to other combat sports like boxing or K-1 kickboxing.  There were always a few readers who would make a snarky comment because it wasn't MMA related so to speak, but 99% of the readers loved those fringe posts and even thanked me for opening them up to another world.

It really is a simple idea that can be overlooked by beginning bloggers because it's not laser targeted to their niche.  Your niche is very important of course, but it pales in comparison to the number one goal; entertaining your readers.  So have a blog about movies?  Throw some TV or video game posts in there.  A blog about playing guitar?  Make a post about the banjo.  Etc. Etc.

Warren Buffet's Quotes for the Day

I love posting pertinent quotes on what we are trying to accomplish as at home entrepreneurs.  Here are 6 little gems from one of the greatest men history has ever seen.

How to Better Use Amazon's Mechanical Turk

Here's a great video on how to better use Mturk.  Mechanical Turk is Amazon's task program that allows you to make money by doing things like taking surveys or giving opinions.  It's my second favorite earner after PostLoop.  You can make some really good money with it, use this video for advice and helpful browser plugins.

Save and Earn Cash with Ebates

Saving money is something we all strive to do.  Whether it is from clipping coupons or striving to keep our spending it check, it’s something we are always concerned about and could always do more with.  Luckily there are a lot of great ways to save some extra money while online.  Ebates is one of the best programs out there.  It is set up to pay you money for the shopping you already do online.

How the program works:

Ebates offers you a percentage back on any purchase you making using a variety of sites.  These range from sites you might use every day such as Walmart to lesser known ones like Groupon.  All that is required is that you use Ebates tracking token when purchasing items.  Not only that, but Ebates also has a variety of coupon codes to help you find the best deal while shopping online.

Earning Cash Back:

Earning cash back is very easy with Ebates.  You have two options.  One, you can start every shopping adventure through Ebates site and click through to the site you want to use.  The second option is where Ebates shines.  They offer a browser plug in that will tell you if a site you are on offers cashback and how much.  It couldn’t be any easier.  I have been using this program for over a year now and its great earning 1-6% cash back on everything I purchase.

Overall Ebates is a great program that will help you stretch your dollar even further.  I use it primarily as a passive income earner.  I do most of my shopping online to save money.  With Ebates I get a check every couple months for a very nice refund.

It’s a free program that requires very little personal information.  I encourage you to check it out and help you save even more money while living frugally.

[Sign up here] 

Don't Neglect Other Types of Blog Posts

If you are starting a blog to work from home and make money then you should already know that researched content is everything. A lot of people will immediately think articles, articles, and more articles. This is partly true. Blog articles will help the most in determining your search engine ranking, but let me tell you a universal truth, they can be boring.

The last thing you want is for your loyal readers to be bored. Bored readers become non-readers. Now don't get me wrong, the majority of your blog should be good researched articles, but here are some suggestions to keep a good flow of posts going that intertwine with your articles and make your blog more entertaining.

-Videos - Look at other blogs in your niche and if they post a youtube video, grab the embed code and post it also, make sure the headline is different. In addition search youtube yourself for videos in your niche.

-Infographics - People love a good infographic, you can easily find one pertaining to your niche.

-Pic of the Day - If you have a blog about making money like this one, find a picture and superimpose an inspirational quote on it. Of course if you have a sports or entertainment blog well that's easy.

-Quote of the Day - Speaking of quotes. They are perfect for a nice quick blog post.

-Link Club - Start a link club in your niche, even if other blogs don't want to participate, just inform your readers of good links once a week.

-News Snippets - There is news in virtually ever niche. I'll be writing a post in the coming days about how to write a good news snippet.

-Events - If there is an upcoming event pertaining to your niche, let your readers know about it in a short blog post.

Thanks for reading and try some of these. You may find that it's easier to have a productive blog when you aren't stuck doing the same thing constantly.

Getting Started with Postloop

I recently wrote about my favorite earner Post Loop. In that article I mentioned what you need to do to get the most out of the time you spend there.  Well I didn't mention the basic things you should do to get started. Lucky for me a youtube user made a short video explaining just that.

Need a Flood of Traffic? Write a List - A Crazy Story of Success

When you start a blog and that's the way you would like to earn your work at home income there is just ONE hurdle you need to leap.  The traffic hurdle.  Now traffic from search engines is the most valuable traffic there is, but it takes awhile to get a steady stream.

If you're a true writer, writing a list might seem like a cop out or an easy dumbed-down version of writing. For the most part it kind of is, but sprinkling in a few can be very valuable.  

Lists are one of the most popular things on the internet, a ton more people will be inclined to read a list than a news piece or a normal article.  Lists are also more likely to go viral and bring in an amount of traffic you could never even dream of.  

Here's a short explanation of how one of my lists went viral awhile ago and brought in the most amount of traffic I ever witnessed.

-Submitted list to Fark.com

-Fark accepted the list, changed the headline slightly, and put it on their front page.

-Traffic is really spiking at this point, about 8k visits per hour.

-Nearly every blog in my niche picked up the article and linked to it.

-Stumbleupon users start stumbling the Fark link, which redirects to my link. 

-Sites that are essentially "link farms" in my niche pick it up.

-The yahoo blog in my niche picks it up.

Yahoo really sent it into the stratosphere and there I was glued to my adsense earnings and traffic stats. Final tally?  Over the next 3 days I generated over a million page views and made about $900 in adsense.  This all came about from writing a list in about an hour and a half.  

It was like a drinking binge, I was hungover, it was a rush.  It was like watching a slot machine winning for 3 days.  The exposure was invaluable as I received emails from more advertisers in the coming days and earned a little respect within my niche.  

Think of a list, write it, promote it to free sites like Fark, Digg, Reddit.  It happens all the time, it can be you the next time, just do it.

Find Out What People Want from Your Blog

This is a fantastic guest post over at Problogger by Sabina Stoiciu about how to find out exactly what your blog readers want from you.

Giving out free content is quite the gift, but it has to engage your readers so they'll keep coming back for more and tell their friends.  New readers are certainly valuable, but developing a loyal following of people that check your blog on a daily basis is the real key to success.  Here's a snippet:

5. Analyse engagement

The last point on our list (but definitely not one that should be neglected) is to analyse the engagement around your blog posts and around their reverberance in social media.

 To be more specific, take a look at the number of likes, shares and comments a post received directly on your blog, as well as on the social media channels where you shared it. Naturally, posts that sum up a lot of engagement have always proved themselves to be a hot topic for those engaging with them. Hence, why not consider exploring more of these topics that your readers were so keen on?

 These are some ideas on how to find out what your blog visitors are looking for. Remember, you can always test to see what works out best and let the results point you towards the direction worth following.

Click Here to Read the Entire Article.

Post Loop -Tips to Succeed

Post Loop is a site where you are paid to post on forums and also paid to post blog comments.  

It is my favorite site because I have found forums that I am actually really into and it never feels like work to me.  Don't get me wrong if you are a good writer and want to joining 30 forums and grind it out to make extra money, you absolutely can.  That's not really for me though, I prefer to not be a drone if I can help it, but like I said that isn't a bad thing if you have the motivation and savvy to do it.

The way I like to use Post Loop is to just have fun and get in to really interesting conversations on the forums.  You can also customize your forum signature to promote your favorite referral sites or your blog.  If you are interesting, people will genuinely be curious and give you some traffic or possible business from those signatures.  Here some tips to help you succeed:

-The First 10 Posts are Everything - Post Loop will hand you out a rating from 1-5 stars that determines what forums you will be able to participate in.  Be sure to use good grammar, write 2 informative sentences, don't be long winded, have a clear point, and don't bash anyone.  I scored a 4 and it has gone up ever since because I maintain the same quality at all times.  You will be rewarded with bonuses for continuing to put up good content.

-Take Advantage of Your Signatures to Promote Other Things - Like I said above, this is basically free marketing, especially if  what you promote pertains to the forum.   

-For Quicker Cash Use the Blogs - I've found that if you need some quick points to hit your payout ($5 Minimum) run through some blogs as it is quicker.  Blog comments can be shorter and less informative in my experiences, but don't get cute and just post like "Good Article" or something.  

-Set a Daily Goal - Let's say you want to reach the $5 payout tomorrow.  Just do it, it is absolutely possible.  Change your daily goals frequently though.  Some days I'll just focus on hitting the maximum at one particular forum that the owner has given me positive feedback on already.  In turn this can turn into the owner giving you bonuses, basically he will increase the amount you get paid for each post.  

Remember these tips when navigating the site, they will help you maximize your experience. You can sign up by clicking here, hit those first 10 posts out of the park, you won't regret it.

You Can Work from Home on the Internet

First off, I started this blog because I hear everyday that working from home on the internet is an impossible task and that only so-called "geniuses" or people who are already wealthy can do it. Let's just eliminate that right now. 

I am 31, never went to college, but for 5 years of my adult life I worked from home and loved every single second of it. I started a Mixed Martial Arts blog for fun and it turned into my job and I was proud of it. I sold the site in 2012, which is something I regret, but for the past year I have been working a regular job and making money online with the ultimate goal of just working from home again. Here are some important factors to help you along the way.

 -Creativity - Find your muse and marry her. If you work on being a more creative person an entire new universe of online income opens up for you. 

 -Work Ethic - At first, treating it like a regular job is a must, you have to grind a little bit to reach your ultimate goal. 

 -Picture Yourself Making It - Everyday take a moment and picture the life you want for yourself, you can achieve it, all these negative people will tell you to the contrary. You need to block that out. Don't tell people you plan on doing this, just let the results speak for themselves. 

 -Be Open to Other Entrepreneurs - Work with other people, help them, answer your emails promptly. This is not a competition, don't be afraid to help your fellow people who are wanting to work from home as well. The internet is entirely too vast to think you need to keep some good ideas to yourself. So that's it for now, wake up, get up early and do something, anything to forward your progress in this. I will be making posts daily to help you along the way. I will be setting up an email account specifically for this blog and I will gladly be prompt in my communication. Thanks for reading, onward and upward.

Feel free to email me - chordsdude@gmail.com