Phone (Call or Text): 559-871-1613|brandonchopkins@gmail.com

Brandon

About Brandon

I own and manage a professional reputation management services company. We specialize in ranking results. If your negatives are on page 1, what else is really important? Contact us to get rid of your negatives!

$15k Challenge – I lost

When the $15k Challenge blog first launched (August 2006), I signed up and followed along. The goal was for this guy Dan to make $15k, in one month. The catch was that he only had $200 to spend on anything he wanted. He couldn’t use any of his existing resources (contacts, websites, newsletters, email lists, etc).

I decided that I would give it a shot as well. He was going for a viral lauch and was promoting a craft membership site, and I followed along, just with a different niche. Each month this craft site was going to give away free books and patterns, etc. Stuff that interested people involved in craft…stuff.

I decided my niche would be scrapbooking and created this site for Scrappy Jackie (my alter ego…she needed to be female). I didn’t spend anything beyond the cost of the domain (and JackieWinton.com my alter ego’s full name) so less than $20 total.

I created an account at scrapbooking.com and a few of the larger forums. I created personal pages, and went full steam ahead. Over the course of a week, I posted about 200 posts in 6 different forums.  A few days later I got some signups to my email form, but in a weeks time I had about 30 people signed up.

When Dan made his list he had over 6,500 people sign up.  That told me that I either missed a part of the process or he was cheating!

Thankfully I didn’t spend any money promoting this site because it would have all been for nothing.  Anyways, I learned my lesson, stay away from email marketing.  I’ve never been able to get anyone to sign up for anything email related anways.

I guess that doesn’t really have to do with an idea for a way to “make money online”, but it does tell you how to not lose money online!

p.s. If the Jackie Winton is out there, I have a few websites for you!

By |March 26th, 2007|Make Money Online, Reviews|6 Comments

Make Money Online by Writing for KnowMoreMedia

For a few months I wrote for a company called KnowMoreMedia (KMM). They were a good company to work with, and I made a few online friends. I wrote for BizToolBelt.com and PayPerClickIQ.com. PPCIQ hasn’t had a writer since me, but BTB has progressed nicely, but slowed down this last month.

In 7 months I made about $1500 ($1492.89 exactly) through KMM including one month that was over $700. They paid based on the amount of posts you made, comments made, and traffic. I don’t think they pay for comments any longer, but they still pay for posts and traffic from what I understand.

Making money by writing for a network is an easy way to get a check (or PayPal deposit), but is time consuming. You don’t however need much knowledge or skills in building websites, marketing, building links, etc. KMM has put together a great starter kit for someone knew to writing online. If you take the time to learn Typepad, you’ll go a long way with KMM.

I stopped writing from KMM when they dropped the prices they paid for each post and started focusing more on traffic. I never really cared about my KMM traffic because I was getting paid per post, and traffic and monetization was their worry. When that became my worry, the posting wasn’t as important because I needed to focus on marketing this website I didn’t even own. That was pretty difficult. I couldn’t see the value in building links and traffic for something I didn’t own. That is about the time I quit and began focusing on my own websites. If the money would have stayed the same, I would still be blogging for KMM.

If you are interested in writing for KMM you can view a list of blogs that currently don’t have writers here, but also look on the far right side for blogs with an asterik (*). That means they don’t have a writer, but are looking for one. I don’t know how selective they are, I’m sure it depends on the blog, and how many applications they receive.

When I first started writing for KMM, they were brand new. I was fearful that I would do all of this writing then never get paid. They were consistent with their PayPal deposits and never missed one. KMM has a strong leadership team and they are always adding features to their blogs. They have an authors only back end site where the authors can hang out and talk about their blogs.

I would give KMM a high recommendation and hope you find a blog that fits your area of expertise. When you apply, let them know that Brandon Hopkins sent you.

This review is completely unbiased. I’m not getting paid or receiving anything by writing it. I just wanted to show you one of the ways that I have made money in the past.

By |March 26th, 2007|Make Money Online, Reviews|7 Comments

Make Money Online – Blog Refocus

When I redesigned and relauched this site about a month ago I still lacked purpose.  I knew I wanted to share some of the things I’ve learned online, but didn’t really know what I wanted to focus on.  Know I know.  Here is my new goal:

I plan to share what I’ve learned about making money online, and in the process create a vibrant site that also makes money through consistently increasing traffic.

How’s that sound?  If you’re  ready to make some money, put this site in your RSS list and let’s go!

By |March 26th, 2007|About Me, News|3 Comments

SEO Authority Contest – Free Entry!

It’s time for my first ever contest. I don’t have much to offer except a free site review ($150 value) and the knowledge that Technorati thinks you’re blog is a great SEO Authority.

Here’s how this will work. Within the next week, make a post that links to my blog (homepage is best, but that’s up to you). I’ll check Technorati’s Authority page for this blog and whoever is listed above Jim Boykin’s wonderful post will get a free site review. This means we could have up to 10 winners!

No purchase necessary, anyone can enter. You will have to claim your winnings. I’ll try to email, but no guarantee I’ll be able to get a hold of anyone.  Currently there is one site ranking above Jim’s post, and if they want to claim a free site review, they’ll get it!

So get your entry in, and help me give out some free site reviews!

By |March 24th, 2007|Link Building, Reviews|2 Comments