Here is his question…

Hi there,

My question is: how do you manage a full-time offline job (or studies) with trying to make money online? Or is making money online your full time job? If so, how did you make the transition?

Could you also share one of the first methods you used to make money online and what currently earns you the most (residual) income?

Thanks!

Right now I am full-time online while I do some off-line work for my dad 90 to 95% of my day is online starring at this 17 inch gateway display of mine! I made the transition after I knew I could make money online full-time, I’m averaging about $500-600 per week right now with all that I do.

Its not a ton but its what I love and I would rather do what I love then what I don’t and make more money, maybe that is wrong but its how I feel.

Well if you subscribe to my rss feed I share tips all the time on how to make money online. As my my main source of income that would be my web design business. I make 80% of my income from doing website design for other people, companies etc…

The rest is made from blogs, sites and other methods of online money making via affiliates and such.

The Short Question: I am using WP 2.5.0 and want to rewrite my blog pages. I want seo friendly URL like testblog.com/mypost “don’t want like testblog.com/p?no1″

The Long Answer: First of all I want to thank you all for reading my blog and asking such great questions! Keep sending them to me and I may answer yours on the blog or I will email you back instructions to help with your problems!

Here is a short tutorial type post to help you accomplish the above question with ease in Word Press! This technique makes the urls of your blog SEO friendly which in the long run will help you gain serp positions and power overall in your blog!

Step 1 – First you need to load up your /wp-admin panel and login to it, you will spend all your time in the WordPressAdmin Panel to create the seo friendly urls.

Step 2 – Next click on the settings link in the top right of your WordPress2.5 admin panel. If your using an older version of wp then 2.5 I suggest you upgrade right away!

Step 3 – After your in the admin settings panel you can click on the Permalinks settings menu, notice the red arrow below, this is where we will make the change for the seo urls!

Step 4 – Now that we are to the permalink settings we need to type a custom structure in the custom structure box. Simply put “/%postname%/” in the box (without quotes) and scroll down to the bottom of that page and click save changes!

And that’s it, all your worries are complete and now you have a seo friendly URL blog!

The Question: Is it true paid WP themes are better for adsense than free ones?

This is a great question that I have never had the privilege of answering before. Its simple to answer though and the answer is “no”. Any theme can make money as long as you take the time and place the adsense ads smartly on the page.

Experiment with different ad types, sizes and colors until you get a good ctr. Once you have done that you will know what will and will not work when it comes to adsense on wp themes!

The Question: What are the top 5 plugins you would recommend for those who are using blogging for personal uses?

This is a great and one I have semi answered before but I will bring it back up again since it is slightly different then a commercial blog which is what I talked about before.

When it comes to a personal blog the goal is not really to make money, however I see no harm in listing some ads if you want to make some money off the personal blog. When it comes to plugins for a personal blog here are a couple I would suggest!

Akismet: Lets face it, this plugin protects our blogs commercial and personal from blog comment spam! It does wonders for IBB and I get maybe 1-2 that slip through per week which is not to bad at all!

All in One SEO Pack: While the personal blog may not be for making money seo is still a important factor for any site. Besides if you ever want to sell your personal blog you can highlight the fact that its seo friendly and has been for xx years!

Other Posts From Cat: I really like this plugin for the fact that it improves CTR through your whole site as it shows your visitors other posts that they may be interested in reading!

Contact Form ][: I like people to be able to contact me and I have found using a contact form plugin to be a great way to eliminate spammers from finding my email and still getting the job done right! Just be sure to check the contact form and that its working at least once a month!

Broken Link Checker: And lastly I like this plugin because it shows me what posts have broken links on them so I can correct the problems and eliminate future seo problems because of missing pages!

The Question: I’m new in blogging and I would like to earn by that. But that one is blog? or forum?

While I didn’t fully understand the question I believe the person is asking which is better to make money off of a blog or a forum? Luckily for this person I have experience with both owning a rather large webmaster community as well as my awesome blog here that you all make possible!

I can’t for sure tell you which makes more, I can only tell you that any website you put time into and monetize right can make great money if you find the right ad buyers. So to answer the question “Both” are great money makers!

Well that about sums it up!

If your like me you want to stay up on the latest trends and info on blogging so you don’t miss a beat! Today we are going to show you our favorite top 5 bloggers in the making money and seo/ blogging industry. You can use these sites to learn more or advertise on them for great traffic results in our niche. I have received this question a few times and I finally found a spare moment to answer it, without any further adieu or details here are the best!

ProBlogger.net: Run by Darren Rowse you will do well to read his blog daily, he provides some of the best info on blogging I have ever seen. His posts explain things very well and he is big into community, comment on his blog for some serious linkjuice!

TylerCruz.com: Run by non other then Tyler Cruz himself! Tyler provides some of the best free how to make money by blogging info I have seen. He shows what he is doing and has done to teach others how to make money like he does. His blog brings him in over 1,000.00 a month alone. THATS HUGE!

JohnChow.com: Arguably one of the best top bloggers in the world, John Chow has been showing others how to make money online and improve there own blogging skills for ages. Check out his blog and stay up to date with all the latest blogging trends!

RetireAt21.com: Michael over at RetireAt21has become a good friend in the last couple of weeks. He has assemble a great blogging crew that contributes to his blog on a daily basis. They are all pros in there own right and the old saying “Learn From The Best” still holds true to today.

BlueVerse.com: Before I ever got into learning how to make money online I read BlueVerse. The owner Gnet is know for making money in so many ways. He does it now by blogging as well, to learn from a real pro the ins and outs of blogging, making money online and seo you need to check out BlueVerse.com

What Are Authority Sites?

The other day I opened up my email box and found this question starring me in the face!

My question is :

What are Authority sites ? How to make your site an Authority site ? Some
key points ?

Thanks
Muneeb

I thought today would be a good day to help out those with this same problem, since starting the blog I have received this question a few times so I believe its time to share my opinion, here we go.

Authority sites are made up of several important factors, domain age, link popularity, link profile, search mentions and branding. It all comes down to you however in the sense that you can boost your sites authority. Before I get into that though we first need to know how to check a sites authority. While we can never know what the search engines consider an authority site through years of testing we can get a general idea. SEOMOZ has a tool called the page strength tool which takes many factors such as links, domain age, dmoz and wikipedia listings among multiple other factors to give any website a page strength.

You can access the page strength tool on seomoz, after you are there just enter your website URL and click the go button. If you score 5/10 or higher your very authoritative, however if you are below 5 you have some work to do!

So that brings us to the meat of our topic, how do we make a site authoritative and improve a existing sites authority through out the web. Firstly I want to thank Muneeb and the others for submitting such great questions that make me think about things. I have always known how to make a site authoritative but telling others how I do it is hard since I just do it and have no specific one size fits all technique that works. But I will do my best to dissect it into 5 basic principles…

Link Popularity: I know it sounds old and outdated but its still true, links matter to the search engines and help you rank. Do your part and get good quality links to your blog or site, the better quality the links are the better your going to rank. Be sure to read the quality link building post I did some time back. It should help you understand the quality link building technique!

Domain Age: This one is not covered to often but it should be, the domain age is extremely important to the search engines. The longer you have been around the better off you will be once you start to perform SEO. It is possible to become authoritative without this step (like infectedbybugs) but it makes it so much easier when you do have and aged domain.

Like the total number of years your site has been up on the web how long you have your domain registered for is also an important factor. Look at it this way, if the search engines see your domain is registered for another 10+ years they think to themselves “This guy appears to be in it for the long haul, so lets put some authority to him” I have tested this technique myself and jumped 3 pages with not doing anything else! Now tell me that’s not power!

Link Profile: Often SEO’s and other blogs don’t talk about a link profile and how important it is to ranking success. Just like its important to the success of your rankings it also helps your site build authority fast. To put it bluntly keep a balanced link profile, I have found a 1/8 split of the quality link building tips I gave is a decent profile. Stick to it and I believe you will have success like I do!

Type Of Site: Authority also greatly depends on what type of site is being run, are you a blog, forum or html site? This matters to the engines and I have found that forums and blogs are highly valued. So if your site is HTML add a blog at /blog/ to your site so you can still build authority without jeopardizing removal of your aged important content.

Current SE Rankings: Believe it or not your current search engine rankings can help or hinder your sites authority. Try to rank for some easy long tail terms to improve your authority and don’t be afraid to rank for multiple longtail keywords when the opportunity presents itself!

Today I am starting a new section in the blog called readers questions, in this new section I’ll answer questions that I have received via e-mail. I’ll be choosing the best questions that will benefit all blog readers, but you’re welcome to submit all of your questions to me on the contact page and I’ll answer them as quickly as possible!