Man its been awhile since Ive posted I apologize but I am happy to see people are still commenting (new people to) as well as my faithful subscribers (which count is going up some by the looks of it).

I love you all and I hope you still find use out of these posts

OK so today I want to talk about all the connections Ive made in the blogging sphere. I know so many people but when I went blog a-wall there for awhile I lost contact. That doesn’t mean anyone forgot me (in fact quite the opposite) but it can happen.

I did however lose contact in the sense that I lost there email addresses and info about what we were discussing at that time.

My main point is to encourage you to save and backup all this info “right now” so this doesn’t happen to you.

Its a simple point but a vital one you will thank me for, seriously you never know when you may need a guest post, sell an advert etc… If you keep all those email contact info’s you can do so pretty easily

Enjoy and have a great day!

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I have read lots of blogs in my time who talk all about ways to make money. Even my blog gives multiple ideas and venues to generate revenues online. Its sort of the MMO trait, and only those with accurate info seem to make it and be successful.

This brings me to the point of this post, instead of trying a bunch of new things why not sit back and look at what your doing already. Whats working? Is selling banners working? Text Links? What about paid blog posts and reviews? Services related to blogging?

What is your current No1 income source? Lets say its Text Links (like it is for me) instead of trying other new techniques I should be exploiting this one and becoming more of an expert at doing it to sell for the best price and getting return payers.

That’s my challenge for Feb 2010! I am going to try and get 4 new text link customers who are on auto renew! Hoping to generate Approx $200/mo from that! Why don’t you all join me or exploit your current income source that is working! Im pretty sure we will all like the results!

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Wow has it been a long time since I have posted here on IBB! I am sorry to all of you who have been waiting for your comments to be approved. I had over 2,000 waiting in the Que! All have been approved now and I am finally here with an informative post for you all!

I was browsing digitalpoint today and came across a guy who is starting his own SEO company and he wanted some tips / advice on how to do it. I wanted to explain my thoughts on the proper way to start your own company are and a few rules of thumb to follow Here we go!

Rules Of Thumb

Be passionate about what you want to do:  If you dont have more passion then the next guy then he will eventually beat you out no matter what you do. Passion is key!

Know your product / service: If your going to own the company nobody should ever know more about it then you. Your the head honcho, act like it!

Be ready for some heartache: Owning your own company is not all its hyped up to be. It sounds great until you realize you may be working 50+ hrs a week on it and throwing loads of cash into it with no return on your investment in the beginning “fair warning, these waters are tuff”.

Never back down: Once you get it going even if its not perfect simply stick to it, eventually things will fall into place!

I think if you can follow those simple rules of thumb anyone can own a successful business. Its not perfect but itll work right?

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So today I want to get back to a little old school post type, I used to make list posts like all the time and you seemed to like them. I really need to post more here on IBB but I’m so busy these days with other things I can’t seem to find the time!

However today I am going to list off 5 must have tools of our blogging trade. Its up to you all to get in on the goods and start making money of your own! Not all these tools are money makers but they are worth having and doing regularly!

1. Twitter – Believe it or not a ton of bloggers have never heard of twitter or they have simply not found the time to fill out the 25 second form to get there twitter account. Granted twitter is time consuming and aggravating at times it really is a great tool that over time you can use and build up into a great advertising tool as well as a money maker! Be sure and follow me @shblogger today!

2. Facebook - Believe it or not but facebook is now for more then just your friends and family to connect! As a blogger you can use it to your advantage and create an account or page for your blog on facebook that people can become a fan of! Its easy to setup and well worth the few minutes of time, just be sure to update it every now and then so it doesn’t look dead!

3. Aweber – I have said it before and I will say it again, aweber is the best email marketing tool out there. Its easy to setup and use, not only that but I have seen significant growth since starting to use the hover pop up that it comes with! It seriously is worth the $20/mo and I suggest everyone get in on the goods!

4.  Wordpress - Really do I even need to list this? If your not using wordpress for your blog then your either Stupid or completely have no idea what your doing…. Seriously use wordpress people!

5.  Flip Mino HD, Mac & iMovie - If you ever want to get your name out there on sites like YouTube or Vidler then you need a flip vid cam, a mac and imovie for video editing and of course a little spunk to get noticed! I have made lots of posts on video blogging that you can checkout

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Is your dream to make big money? Online or off it all comes down to two things “desire” and “working hard”. Nothing in life comes easy and if you want to make it big you need to prepare yourself for hard work and lots of it!

I have come to realize that I am a slacker of sorts, I need a good kick in the pants every now and again.

That’s were desire comes in, if you have desire or you are working towards something then you will most likely be able to achieve it if you set a goal and stick to your daily plan to get there.

For instance, I now have a girlfriend and I want to treat her right, take her out to eat, to the movies, spend time with her, pay for gas to drive to her place etc… How am I going to do this? WORK HARD!

I am going to work more hours and try to be more productive in those hours.

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Today I am very excited, not only do I get to do another new video for you guys with my new flip mino hd camera (which I highly recommend btw) but I also get to show you and tell you about my new earnings from blogging!

As you all know my goal is and always has been to generate a full time livable income online. I don’t want to have to work my butt off to get that though, I want it to be passive income and in that regard today’s post should excite you all!

Here is a quick video explaining what I mean. 

Alright, so as you can tell from my enthusiasm in the video I am really excited about my new passive income online!

Now comes the fun part here is a screenshot of just one venue where my passive income has gone up, this is on Text Link Ads. I run TLA on about 5 sites but only 3 of them are generating revenue which is not to bad considering the ads are back logged and never shown on my front pages unless I specify for them to be.

TLA 2009 August Earnings

You may be asking yourself  how I am doing so well with TLA, many people complain about it and don’t seem to understand how to up there earnings in TLA. Well its really quite simple, it took me awhile to figure it out but in 1 month I went from $45/mo to now $125.00/mo and I’m not done tweaking yet! I am projecting I will hit the $150 mark next month with some new tweaks I plan to make.

How To Sell More With TLA

Alright, so now that you see my earnings and your excited to get started with TLA you need to understand that these earnings will be different for anyone. My blogs / sites get lots of traffic but even more then that I have worked and re-worked to tweak my ads so they generate me as much revenue as possible. Here are some basic guidelines I use to up my earnings though!

Step 1 – Adjust your ad title, description and keywords to fit the advertisers needs. For instance I included the word “Web Hosting” into my tags section and the next day I had 3 web hosting companies buy links on my sites (big market).

Step 2 -Sell yourself with your description, don’t just fill this area with fluff about your site, tell advertisers why they should advertise on your site “We reach over 900 daily rss readers and even more by email and direct type ins, don’t miss your chance to advertise today at an affordable rate” is similar to what I have used in the past with good results!

Step 3 – Get a game plan and stick to it, once you have decided to test something stick with it for at least 1 month, you never know what could happen! If you change things up to quickly you may not have given it enough time to populate through the TLA network, be patient!

If you follow those steps I believe all of us can make more money through residual / passive income opportunities!

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I was just reading through the comments on my blog about the Robb Sutton ebook called Ramped Reviews.

I noticed a few of you asked questions like how I got the ebook without paying for it and in all honesty if you buy that ebook it will teach you what to do.

However I know some of you asked specifically what I wrote Robb in order to get his ebook for free and to please you all, here is the exact email I sent to Robb through his contact page.

My Email

Hello Rob, My blog has over 850 daily rss readers and I wouldn’t mind promoting your http://robbsutton.com/ramped-reviews/ ebook to them.

All I ask in return is a copy of the ebook to properly review. If its good I’m sure you will make sales through me, let me know if we can work something out.

Now, this doesnt mean you all should email Robb asking for his ebook for free, it really is worth the money and if Robb had said no I probablly would have bought it myself anyhow…

I do think however that some of you got the wrong idea from my review, a lot of you are saying you will wait till your traffic grows to a certain level and such before you ask to review a product or ebook. I want you to throw all that kind of thinking out the door, even if you only have 10 readers you can get stuff to review.

Those ten readers may be worth hundreds of dollars worth of products, your only one email away from finding out!

Don’t hesitate, try, try and try again! You have nothing to lose from asking!

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Sadly its not but it did teach me a few things that I think are important to note. Read along and see some places that you may not have thought about placing ads of any kind!

Sidebar Real estate- When I first placed adsense on my sidebar I put it towards the bottom, then later moved it to the middle below my categories and finally to the top above everything else.

Since doing so I noticed that the middle section actually converted better then the lower or upper part. This baffels me because usually the higher things are up on the page the better then convert, however because I have more then 1 post per page I think some people scrolled down to see the other posts and when they looked to the right sidebar the ads were there and they clicked.

Its important to note this and you may want to try adsense on your own blog like this and track the clicks you get in each area. Every site and blog is different and you never know what hot spots might be goldmines for you, especially if your doing a ppc or affiliate offer!

Affiliate Offers- I have only run 1 true affiliate offer on my blog thus far, but I am excited because ClickBooth called me up and wants me to start running there offers, they believe it will really work for me and I am excited to get them onto my blog this week!

Lets hope it can generate some extra income for me right? If and when it does I will be sure to report you all what I have done / learned so you can replicate the success I have. Or atleast you will know what not to do!

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I see a lot of people approaching companies to sell adverts on there sites as I showed you all how to do before on the how to get advertisers post I wrote.

I just want to make sure you all don’t approach these companies before its time to for your own blogs.

Remember, when I do it I have a big readership and lots of traffic / results proof to show them.

Things you may not have yet!

Here is a quick checklist of minimum requirements I believe you need for the technique I explained before to work.

• 350+ RSS Readers
• 500 Unique Page Views Daily
• Prominent Advert Slots In Place
• 5+ Comment Average Per Post

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Its no hoax and its not that hard to do, once you see me do it you will be able to replicate the same thing pretty easily.

See its all about talking with them on there level, businesses interested in advertising on one of your sites are most likely interested in other sites around the web.

We just simply need to put more opportunities in front of them so they have more to choose from!

I don’t know of a better way to explain it other then showing you a basic email conversation with a current advertiser on IBB, I have removed my advertisers name to protect them but I sent this email to them!

My emails are in red and there’s are in grey!

———————-
Hello Advertiser, Thank you for sponsoring my blog InfectedByBugs.com!

It is a honor to have you as a sponsor and I hope we deliever the results your after for months and years to come. I also own another website www.bzimage.org which is related to your business, its very active and could provide excellent results for you as well!

Please let me know if you want advertise on this site.

If so I can get you a deal for previously advertising on my blog as a thankyou!

Let me know!
———————-

Then they said….

———————-
Dear Shannon,

We did not know you owned BzImage.org! We have been interested in advertising on it for some time, please send me the details along with prices and current banner availability! We are looking forward to your reply!

Thanks, Advertiser Name!
———————-

That’s all there is to it, at that point I then send them the details and nearly everyone who buys on IBB also buys on BzImage. You know what that means right? Extra income from one email I send out!

Email advertising is big and this is just one example of many ways to do it! What do you think, has this technique worked for you? Add a comment below and let us know!

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