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

Make Money Online

$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

Challenge: Make $100/month with Clickbank

I have never actually made much money with Clickbank. I think my account sat at like $10 for a year and I forgot about it. But I would like to give it a try. eBooks are big business, that’s why people keep writing them! I know it is possible to capitalize on a piece of that pie, I’ve just never done it.

I’ve been thinking about this article and even posted a little response to it. Now, I’m ready to take action on this. So here is my plan:

1. Get a list of people interested in taking this challenge with me. The goal will be to make $100 a month through Clickbank just writing articles. You don’t need your own website, just a free Clickbank account.

2. Figure out a way to promote the articles and Clickbank landing page without spending money. Whoever wants to do this, we’ll put together an email list, or a thread in a forum and collaborate some ideas.

3. See who makes it to $100 a month, and what they did that helped them get there. We’ll share ideas for future contests and see how $100 can be multiplied easily.

So who’s up for trying a no-cost approach to making money through Clickbank?

If you’re interested either email me, or post a comment. Let me know what format for some collaboration would work best for you. Let’s see how many of us can make $100 from Clickbank in April without spending any money or using your existing website!

By |March 24th, 2007|Make Money Online|10 Comments

What Would I Do With 100K to Invest Online?

As we talked about last week, What Would You Do With $100k to Invest Online?

I have been thinking about it, and this would be my idea:

1. Transfer the money to ING Direct. ~5% = $1,000

2. Start shopping for a website in the $50k range that is already established and making $5-6k a month.

3. Buy site and start developing additional features within the site. Spend $10-20k on development.

4. Start marketing the new features of the site with Adwords, link buys, and buzz (social media) marketing.

5. Sell site for $150k in 6-12 months when revenue justifies price.

6. Repeat all steps.

My other ideas include:

1. Buy an old site in a market I can monetize.

2. Hire a link builder. $20,000

3. Hire a linkbait writer.$5-10,000

4. Hire 5 content writers. $10,000

5. Hire article submitter. $1,000

6. Spend $69,000 on arbitrage reinvesting the earnings into #2-5

I think that way would be more fun, but not necessarily as profitable. Any investors want to give it a shot and see if we can get you a 25% return on your money in 6 months?

What would you do with $100,000 to invest online within 3 months?

By |March 21st, 2007|Make Money Online|6 Comments