What I did yesterday...

Old cell phone pic I played around with changing

For the better part of the day on Saturday, I spent time setting up a new niche website all about a cool new high-tech stroller I learned about.

I jumped on my BlueHost web hosting account and paid more than $20 for a new dot com name -- $11.95 or so plus the $9 and 90-something cents for the who is privacy that I love.

I know my DreamHost account only charges $9.95 or whatever for new domain names and gives you the who is privacy for free, but after DreamHost went down for a full day about a week or two ago, I told myself that I wouldn't buy or host any additional domains on there -- other than the 30 or so dot coms I have spread across my two DreamHost accounts.

Those are all good -- but I was thanking our Lord seriously that my most profitable website for now is hosted on my BlueHost account -- and it didn't go down or suffer any losses. I don't think it's been down at all since I started that one last May, in 2011.

So it was time to add another new dot com name on my BlueHost account anyway, and it was interesting the way you have to do an "add on" and I Googled around for instructions to make sure I was doing it right, because it looked different than what I was used to -- and I didn't want it to go up as a subdomain on my other dot com or something.

But no, it went up fine, and will hopefully turn into a seriously profitable website. I also liked the new SmallBiz free WordPress template that showed up on the panel, so I played around with the free version, and thus far I love the way it helps you easily create a nice niche website that looks professional and lets you add pages, but not have to worry about adding a bunch of posts if you don't want to.

Check it out at OrigamiStollerBuy.com if you want to see the theme in action.

So that was my Saturday. I've been hittin' it and working up a storm of writing, seeing as those taxes are due in a bit. And God has been blessing the work of my hands, so I'll keep on working!

What did you do yesterday?

Making money writing online after the Google Panda algorithm update

My PayPal earnings back in 2009 and 2010

It pays to serve God, and listen to Him and follow His ways.

Sometimes we don't think our spiritual lives and our financial lives are intertwined, but they are.

Yes, there are folks that get blessed (seemingly) with tons of money who are non-believers in Christ -- people we may secretly rail to God about.

"How could you bless them like that? They don't even serve You!" we may say inside at low points.

But anyway, taking stock of our lives, there are lots of blessings -- and I feel more on the way, like when Celie in The Color Purple felt something coming -- not the "twister weather" she suspected -- but Shug Avery, her husband's mistress -- blew into town and brought her relief from beatings and some excitement.

Okay, all that notwithstanding, I feel better stuff (no mistresses!) coming soon, as I see the sun reflected against all this snow gracing the ground in Northeast Ohio. Feels like spring even in the midst of winter.

This winter has not been bad at all to me. Seems short, and so hopeful.

Making Money with Examiner.com and Writing for Other Places After the Google Panda Update

I guess it depends on where you lay your hope and trust and the resilience in your life. Back in 2009 and 2010 when I took that screenshot above of my PayPal account, you can see it was flush with money I earned from writing for Examiner.com (yeah, go ahead and click on my affiliate link if you like to write and work and follow some tips and listen to the Lord about his good ideas for earning income) -- but in early 2011, the Google Panda update change came along, a change that altered how easy it was to get views, and therefore money, from writing online.

But the end isn't always the end. You listen to heaven and find new ways to make money -- sometimes with new places, like the way I've been writing more for places like Social Spark and reviving dead blogs that are really worth something. (I just tripped out to see that this blog is more than 5 years old! Gold in the eyes of Google...)

And find new ways to revive streams of income that have seemingly died, but are really full of life if you just look for it. A look through my articles about finding Internet coupons and stuff will teach you how I got the idea to write more on that channel, and therefore offer more ways for readers to buy things through my affiliate links, a process that has made me more money, and bless God put me on the path to pay off the IRS, and, I believe, plenty more debts and then some.

When life seems like it's trying to give you lemons, seriously make that lemonade and lemon squares and lemon cakes and lemon zest and lemon...

...you get what I mean. Look for the positive silver lining and He will direct your paths, even through those long nights when you don't feel like looking for hope anymore.

Pay taxes by credit card: Pay Income Tax with American Express® Card, Discover® Card, MasterCard®, or Visa® card

Paula in Napa Valley Wine Country

Last year I paid my taxes with my American Express card – at least the portion of taxes that I didn’t already pay up in cash, or directly from my checking account with a check written (or was it by debit card?) – whatever, thank our Master they are paid!

 I used Official Payments, and they aren’t a scam because everything went through just fine and the IRS is happy with us. Finding out how much you owe the IRS online is another story – in fact, there really wasn’t a way for me to look up my balance initially – IDK, read that post for the details of how to get the amount you owe by phone, and then once you begin installment payments, you can see that balance owed as you pay it down each month. 

Going back through my old blog posts, I was led to this IRS page about paying taxes by credit and or debit card, and I see they list a number of different places, like World Pay US, Inc. and Link2Gov Corporation as well, but I’ve only used the Official Payments Corporation, so I don’t know about the other two.

 Leave comments if you’ve used any of them, please.

They do show the various convenience fees that the different places charge you for using your credit card to pay taxes online or by phone – along with the customer service numbers to help you. There’s also a table that lists the providers, like Official Payments, File Your Taxes and World Pay US, Inc. that offer integrated e-file and e-pay.

 “Generally, taxpayers can make a payment through the above-named service providers using an American Express® Card, Discover® Card, MasterCard® or Visa® card. Taxpayers can visit the service provider's web site for payment method options,” writes the IRS.

Okay, since it’s that time of year, I’m going to gather all my expenses up in a little while and praise the Lord for the monies once again to pay all our debts and then some. He makes miracles even when I don’t always steward the money as correctly and efficiently as I should. Bless Him. Again.

Does Blogger's Dynamic View hurt your pageviews and hits? I would say so...

I am the kind of person who loves to experiment with new ways of making money online. That's why I spent the better part of yesterday creating a new website about these very cool, high-tech strollers called Origami that almost make me want to have another baby. But not that much. I'd rather sell billions of them and collect billions in affiliate income from Amazon.com instead.

Anyhoo, since I've been updating this blog -- one that I started with my dad years ago, before he died -- so I can submit it to Social Spark and get another blog property on there and begin getting paid to write blog posts and pages for various companies on an additional website, I've been paying it more attention lately.

That's why I was playing around with the various layouts and tweaking the website, and I kind of fell in like with the "Dynamic Views" offered within the Blogger dashboard that let me easily make this website look more professional, like the magazine view, etc.

But I noticed that when I selected a default dynamic view and click through to the Tax Daddy blog, it took awhile to load. Seconds longer than normal. And I know that in this world of down-to-the-seconds timing of website loading, people don't always wait around for a website to load till they're on to the next site, surfing on.

So I made a mental note to go back and check the traffic stats -- and today, a mere full day after I implemented the change, I see how they negatively affected traffic, therefore, I'm back to the basic template.

Notice above how this blog has been hovering around an average of 140 hits per day or so, mostly from people finding a post I wrote a long time ago about Legal Zoom referral codes, complaints and the like -- one of those posts that you write off-handedly that turns into a boon over time. (Don't you just love those?)

Even though people have written their personal complaints about the company, I still put my affiliate banners in the post to Legal Zoom, not expecting much, however, folks appreciate the honest reviews from real customers, and some of them continue on to use the Robert Shapiro-led firm for services like divorce, will creation, business formation help and similar services, and almost monthly now I've been getting a paper check in the mail for around $50 for those referrals.

Therefore, I didn't want the traffic to drop off just because of that dynamic view slowness. After all, I'm pretty sure I didn't remove the tracking code, so the drop off in traffic you see above must be all attributed to that one change -- a change that looked better visually but is nowhere near worth the loss in traffic and revenue.

Sometimes plainer is better -- until Blogger works out that slow page load issue on the dynamic view thingee. At least I saw that my mobile view wasn't turned on, so I turned it on, and here's praying that will help the pageviews even more. It's worth it to poke around and play around and learn from your blog.

Bloggers aiming to make $30,000 or more in 2012

I think it was last night when I found the leaderboard of the bloggers aiming to make more than $30,000 this year, in 2012, from blogging online.

Even though God graced me to make more than that, making over $50K in 2010, and less than that from blogging in 2011, things are turning around for the better -- and I always learn something new and interesting from plenty of people, even if they've made less than I have online, and even if they've been online a shorter time than I have.

I've been online since 2005, when I started this Blogger.com blog only to put essays online at first to easily pitch to print media editors.

But it's so cool how writers who've hopped online in 2008 or 2009 or later have taught me so much about increasing our online income -- like the trend in making more money online from direct advertising, instead of relying so heavily on Google Adsense.

So if you're looking to learn from other folks, check out that list of bloggers aiming to increase their online salaries, and learn whilst I learn and increase my blogging income as well!

Blogger making nearly $10,000 per month

I love to see income reports like this one from Kirsty, who hit nearly $10,000 per month in earnings for the month of January.

Looks like he is a true nomad, traveling around the world -- and I'm trying to uncover which of his sites makes all that ad revenue.

The one thing it continued to reinforce is that the bulk of his income ($8,515 worth of it, in fact) came from advertising -- and we ain't talking Google Adsense. His Adsense brought in $582 for the month, so it looks like private ad sales are the way to go.

Good thing my previous post describes how I just contacted Crystal from BudgetingintheFunStuff.com to have her negotiate my direct ad sales for some of my niche websites.

I know Yaro Stanak has something new going on with CrankyAds.com as well, so those are new options that I can look into to increase the ad revenue on sites whereby the Adsense ads wouldn't pay as much, or be as relevant as the private ads.

Hopefully that will pay off pretty rapidly and lucratively.

Get private, direct blog advertisers that pay more for ads than Google Adsense

One cool thing about having a bunch of Google Alerts sent to my email inbox on terms like "my online income" and "my earnings" and "blog income" such is that I find a whole lot of other bloggers blogging about their income than I normally would otherwise.

That's how I found this blog about passive income, and from there I was able once again to uncover a little network of writers that use Crystal from Budgeting in the Fun Stuff to negotiate their direct ad deals.

I contacted Crystal and got the low-down on how to get started -- so stayed tuned to my upcoming income reports to learn how much my ad income increases on my niche websites after I add direct ads to some of my websites, like the movie fan site about African-American women, and the one about transitioning to natural hair care and such.

Is Examiner.com still in Google News?

So I've been writing up a storm on my Examiner.com channels, and I have nice bookmarks set up that help me check the specific articles that make it into Google News.

Usually they are placed in Google News pretty swiftly after being approved -- but today I noticed my Examiner.com articles weren't making it into Google News -- even after being approved as such by the channel managers.

So I checked Google New to see when the last Examiner.com article was allowed into Google News, and I saw that none had been placed there in the past 24 hours.

I really hope and pray this is a temporary situation, and by the time you check this link, you'll see lots of Examiner.com articles in Google News and that we're back in business again.

I've seen sites like AssociatedContent.com (now Yahoo! Contributor's Network) and others like Examiner leave Google News temporarily and then get back in, once whatever suggestions or whatever the Big G has going on decides to put them back in.

Let's all pray in Jesus' name that it's ASAP!!! Pray with me, peeps...seriously. Pray. Today.

Thank you.

How to get your Examiner.com articles in Google News

For those of us who write for Examiner.com, it can be a great thing when our articles make it into Google News -- especially when it's during that sweet perform storm of a time when there are a very high volume of searches for terms on Google that our articles rule the web on.

I've been checking my latest articles from my Examiner.com Internet Deals channel that have made it onto Google News -- and I've finally looked into the new feedback feature that Examiner gives us with notes, letting us know why certain articles didn't make it into Google News.

Some of my articles have said "objectivity" under the notes section when I go back into my published content and scroll down to the bottom of the page and see the ones listed as "rejected as newsworthy" and seek out more information as to why it was rejected.

Today was a big day for Jason Wu's new clothing collection being available in Target stores and online at Target.com, so I wrote an article about it last night -- and praise Jehovah Elohim that it made it into Google News.

So I wrote a couple more pieces about Wu for Target, and those got rejected for Google News, so the latest one I created about Wu's line being nearly sold out on Target.com, I made it more objective -- more "just the facts ma'am" style of writing.

I am hoping and praying in Jesus' name that one makes it into Google News, as well as many of my Google News articles, and as many of yours that He intends as well! Let me know how you're doing with some comments below. Thanks! ;-)

It's frustrating when bloggers don't tell you how they make money online

It might be in here somewhere, but I just spent a few frustrating minutes trying to find out how this blogger makes over $3,000 per month online.

Yes, I see the breakdown and I don't think it's all from Google Adsense -- perhaps some of it is freelance writing.

I try to be pretty clear with my readers on how I've been making money online.

It helps to see a great breakdown, like this much from Amazon Associates, or this much from Adsense and a certain about more from paid blogging or whatever -- and the exact platform (like Social Spark or whatever) helps me as well.

Okay, I know it's late and this is after the bottle of Merlot my hubby and I split has worn off -- but I read and research lots of money-making blogs each day -- and it's really helpful when writers make it as easy as pie for me to figure out how they are really making money online.

Either way, I'm glad they've written about it at all! I just wanna know more...

Amazon Associates increase from $200 to $1,500 per month

I just read the most interesting post from AnnMarie about how she increased her Amazon Associates revenue from $200 to $1,500 in one month by using a number of tactics.

The thing that tripped me out is that she and I both had about 13,000 clicks on our various Amazon links peppered around the net -- but while her conversion rate was a little over 7%, mine was a little over 1%.

So of course I soaked up her tips for getting more sales, including generally linking more often -- plus I got a good idea or two about the types of products that are selling well.

She also used that plugin by Chris Guthrie -- that Amazon super affiliate -- that makes linking to Amazon products easier. I haven't purchased that yet, but I see that she's a believer in it, as well as another woman in her comments section.

I seriously love reading about how other bloggers make money because even after years and years online, I still learn so much about increasing my income.

Now I'm going to check out her huge Facebook fan page about cheese and stuff. I think she's got like 100K followers, so I want to see what that's all about.

Good deal, good deal.

How many articles do you have to write to make money with Examiner.com online?

Sometimes people ask me how many articles you have to write for Examiner.com in order to make money.

Well, that number can vary widely. It used to be that I could write an article and it might hit a sweet spot and really get over 100,000 views in one night -- but those days are rare now.

Therefore, it can take more articles to get a comparable number of views, if that much. I like writing about products on my coupon deal channel, so that I can make extra money with any related referral sales in addition to my pageview income on Examiner.

But the point is -- sometime I write a bunch of articles in one day. Some new people come to Examiner and try to write only 2 or 3 articles per week -- which is definitely above the minimum required -- but it's not necessarily the pace of pieces that are going to make you much money.

As you can see if you're reading this blog post anytime close to the time I've been on a streak of writing a lot -- and I've written at least 10 articles today on my Internet deals channel. I like to write on a variety of different deals, so that you never know which particular article might gain a lot of readers, and prove more popular than you thought.

Of course, SEO plays into the whole deal -- even if it is in Google News (hopefully, if the article makes it into Google News) to give it that extra humph to hopefully get your views and earnings up.

If you write for Examiner, leave me a comment about how you get the views and how much money you're making.

Oh yes, and see how much money I make online by checking out my blog and clicking the link at the top.

SEO for Google News

Everyone talks and writes about search-engine optimization for Google, like SEO for the regular Google search-engine results pages (SERPs) -- but do many people write about SEO for Google News?

It's just one of those things that I think about as a writer whose work appears in Google News pretty often -- thank you, Jesus! -- usually through my Examiner.com work, or perhaps once in a good blue moon when I write a piece for my Yahoo! Contributor's Network channel.

I just thought about a piece I want to write about Jason Wu's line launching at Target on Super Bowl Sunday -- so naturally I did a quick search to see how many folks are writing about the topic.

When I plopped "Jason Wu Target" into Google, the Google News items that popped up were perhaps prominent, but one thing I did note was that there were only 42 articles written about the topic, as witnessed by that little number of articles count that they give it.

In my experience, 42 is -- hey, my age right now, a great sign, I pray! -- and it's also not that high of a number of Google News reports about a subject, seeing as though I've seen that number creep into 1,500 or so when a subject is really popular.

So my plan to "Google News SEO" my Examiner article is to include the keywords "Jason Wu" and Target somewhere in my article title -- especially toward the front, instead of the end of the article title.

And naturally I'll include the designer's name throughout the piece (but not too much overkill) - and also pepper "Tar-ghay's" name (a place where my son kind of begged me to go today) throughout the piece as well.

These days they say Google loves variations on the phrases that you're targeting as well -- so it's not all about saying Jason Wu's at Target, but perhaps writing synonyms like popular designer, retail store, etc.

The good thing about Examiner is that they still have enough "ish" to get some articles in a prominent spot in Google News at times, so that helps. Check my link above to my blog to find the links on where to apply for Examiner, if you like to write.

How much do Squiddo and Hubpages writers earn? Nothing, for this person

Okay, I know people earn a lot more money (some of them) than this person who reported her nothing compared to 1 penny earnings from Squidoo vs. Hubpages.

I understand.

I think I have a Squidoo account still, but it was one of those places that I never put a whole lot of effort into, so I don't think I've made much if any money with them yet.

And I may even have a Hubpages account -- after all, I've been online writing for like 7 years now and have lots of accounts all over the place.

But us writers tend to find certain grooves, and we tend to put our energies into those places that we like.

I, for one, put my efforts into stuff that I know works, for example, like writing for Examiner.com -- where I've been writing since 2009 -- as well as other places like my own websites and running Adsense ads, Social Spark, Amazon product reviews, etc.

When you see the places that actually pay you and actually bring you real money into your checking account or PayPal account, that's further inspiration to do more of what you know works. I guess that's human nature.

But it's also good to go with new trends and try things that we've never tried, because the online world changes, and new places of revenue open up.

Anyway, if you make money wit Squidoo and Hub Pages, let me know with a comment below.

$1,000 per month blogging -- and a guy who makes more than $2,000 per month from 20 websites

Here's this interesting site called Grand Per Month that has published their own $1,000 or so blogging income -- as well as the blogging income of a few others who are making well over $1,000 per month.

Even though the writer writes about being reluctant to publish their income online, I'm glad they did. That's the stuff that people really want to know -- especially those who are considering leaving their corporate day jobs to give a go at earning an income online.
Anyway, I keep thinking about the latest post that Spencer Haws published on Niche Pursuits that detailed just how well his 20 niche sites that he created 6 months ago have been performing.

All told, those 20 new sites are bringing in more than $2,000 in January 2012 -- and I LOVE the way he gives away so much information for free -- like his total backlinking strategy, and how he researches niches (the most important part, instead of always just buying new domain names we think might be good) and how to research your competition.

Because of his lessons, I'm able to figure out how to use free tool like SEOQuake and other free SEO tools that are Firefox add-ons like their Rank Tracker and lots of stuff.

I love that Spencer isn't one of those guys making money from creating a bunch of products that others charge like $97 or much more for -- and instead, he's actually in the trenches getting new sites ranked and making them profitable with Adsense income. He makes around $15k per month.

I saw one guy who makes a whole bunch of money with teaching products -- but very little in Adsense -- and I had to wonder: How does this guy really know that the stuff he's teaching newbies really works?

I know I could probably make a ton of money selling dreams to innocent people coming online in hopes of making easy money -- but I prefer to do it Spencer's way (along with varying other ways of earning through Kindle books and the like) by actually making money from Adsense and Amazon and stuff, instead of taking advantage of people who might not have the money to waste on some $47 product that doesn't really help them.

Okay, there's my rant. Basically, I've learned that research, research, research and backlinking is more important than just the rush of buying a new domain and loading it with content and hoping folks will find it that way. Yes, that can work, but backlinking can be a lot more important than folks like me gave it credit for years ago.

Problems with Blogger.com not saving and publishing? Try a different browser than Firefox

Can I just say that one thing I've noticed about Blogger.com is that when using the Firefox browser, sometimes it gets hung up when you're writing a post and it just continues to say "saving" and the "save" button is grayed out and won't let you click it and it won't let you publish your post.

Sometimes it's so frustrating -- especially if you haven't saved your post, but thank God I usually have a copy of my post somewhere, or at least a draft saves so you don't lose everything.

Anyway, I've found that clicking over to another browser other than Firefox helps a lot in this instance. I don't know that I've tried Internet Explorer -- after all, since I've converted to a Mac-lover after I bought my MacBook Air on Black Friday 2011, I don't use IE anymore.

But when I click over to Safari, the publishing goes well and works just fine.

I don't know what it is with Firefox and Blogger.com -- but I've kind of noticed the same thing sometimes when writing my Examiner.com articles. Not as often, thankfully, but sometimes on Firefox it'll get hung up when I'm trying to add a photo to my articles. I think I remember that switching to Safari helped that issue, too -- but usually I just grab the copy of the article I've written first in Microsoft Word -- because I like to get a quick word count and make sure my articles are at least 200 words and do a quick spell check.

And then I paste it over into Examiner again and I'm off to the races and earning again.

Blogger income: more than $1,500 per month

I love finding "new to me" bloggers like this guy Derek who made around $1,800 in January 2012 from a variety of means.

He didn't make the bulk of his money in Google Adsense -- that was only about 60 bucks, so I continued to try and figure out how he made his online monies.

A good chunk was made from "staff writing" for his other blogs -- perhaps the OnlineMoneyBloggers.com? -- but I don't know because he didn't specify -- and I'm not in the mood to dig through archives right now.

Anyhoo, I subscribed to his blog via email, since I didn't see a Facebook like box. (Who am I kidding? I didn't put one on this blog -- and I finally added one to my main blog just a few weeks ago.)

So there's another blogger making real money online.

Oh yeah -- and his sponsored posts -- are those through Social Spark or PayPerPost or what?

Just curious...

Stay tuned for more money-making blog info.

The $30,000 blogging challenge

One new site that I find really interesting is the OnlineMoneyBloggers.com website (just click the pic to see more) that has sprung up, inspiring people to make at least $30,000 per year blogging.

There are several websites that are listed as part of the blogging challenge. And I applied on my main website that publishes my income online -- but I didn't hear back anything from the Online Money Bloggers yet.

I didn't think I was supposed to put the badge on my site yet, until I got approved. Oh yes, and I can't remember if they had any "above the fold" requirements -- but I doubt that.

Besides, they are gonna get a good boatload of various backlinks with that brilliant badge. People love knowing how much real money that people make online -- and seeing as though I have a bunch of Google Alerts set up on phrases like "my earnings" and "my income report" and various other terms that brings their income report links to my inbox each day, I am going to write more about those bloggers making money all around the web.

It helps me to learn the specific ways that others are making money these days. And also, I want to build up this blog with at least 20 recent posts in the previous 90 days, because I want to get this additional site in my Social Spark inventory and make even more money. I like the way I get paid in 30 days with those posts that get approved -- and it goes straight to my PayPal account and adds up the income that can pay off my Amex debt and Chase Ink business card debt and those upcoming taxes!

Tax filing deadline: April 17, 2012

According to this guy, the tax filing deadline is April 17, 2012 -- since April 15th falls on a weekend.

I wonder why the IRS didn't make the filing deadline Monday, April 16th instead? Either way, I'm not complaining.

He's got some good tips for LLC businesses and how us online income earners can do their business.

Now I need to go pay my The Company Corporation to keep up with my filings...