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

Blog

  • Blog

Are Email Lists Still Profitable?

Are email lists still profitable? Do you make any money with an email signup list? If so, I’d love to hear from you!

Here is what I have been thinking…

Take a niche, say “car maintenance” and they build a 7 day course around “7 ways to better care for your car”. Make an email signup form and send 1 tip a day for the 7 days. Each day would like back to a page on your site for more information, and that page would have Adsense and/or an eBook or some form of monetization.

Anyone do anything like this? Would it still work?

Here is an example of what I’m talking about:

Digital Photography Course

What do you think about an idea like that?

By |April 1st, 2007|Make Money Online|2 Comments
Read More

Text-Link-Ads.com March Coupon

If you want to buy some links through Text-Link-Ads.com first you can get $100 in FREE Links and still use the 15% coupon code below.

March 2007 Text-Link-Ads.com coupon code: spring 

With the above link and code, you can buy a link at Brandon-Hopkins.com for pretty cheap, less than $20/month actually!

By |March 29th, 2007|Link Building|0 Comments
Read More

3 Easy Ways to Stop “iPod Thumb Syndrome” (ITS)

iPod Thumb Syndrome is a repetitive strain injury (RSI) and can be defined as, “Repetitive use of your thumb, in a manner that it was not originally created to be used. Continued misuse can cause pain, numbness, enlarged thumb syndrome (ETS), and possibly amputation. Sometimes misdefined as “Irritable Thumb Syndrome”. Also see definition for ‘SMS Thumb’ and ‘Texting Thumb’” Definition mine.

If this iPod craze continues we’ll be amputating thumbs by the dozens, and I’m kinda attached to my thumbs.

Since I got my 60gb iPod video last year, I’ve learned a few things that have thankfully saved me from the dreaded iPod thumb epidemic sweeping our nation.

Here are my top 3 ways to avoid iPod Thumb Syndrome (ITS).

1. Use Manual iPod shuffling for individual folders.

Shuffling your songs (random for you non-iPoders) is pretty awesome and allows you to listen to music without developing acute ITS. Unfortunately you can’t create a folder and shuffle the folder. But here is what I do:

1. Open iTunes.

2. Open your favorite folder (Purchased for example) and notice what column you are sorting by. Currently my Purchased folder is being sorted by Genre. View screenshot.

3. Click a different heading. If I click one of the other headings, it will sort my list by that heading. For example, my Purchased sorted by Artist, view screenshot.

Next time you sync your iPod, that folder will now show the same order that you created in iTunes. Manually sorted, one of the best ways to protect your thumb from iPod damage and ITS and ETS.

2. Create the Ultimate Playlist.

For information on creating the ultimate iTunes playlist, please view this screenshot:

Ultimate iTunes playlist settings

You’ll need to change the play count. With mine set to 5 I ended up with 892 songs…too many. When I set it to 15 I only had 487 songs, much better. These settings allow you to only show songs based on actual songs (not podcasts) over 1 minute long (avoid comedy sketches, and partial downloads) that you haven’t skipped in the last two months, with over X amount of plays total (including on your iPod).

Those settings will make it so your favorite songs are being played, therefore reducing the possibility that you end up hospitalized due to the ravenous iPod Thumb.

3. If Addicted to your iPod, Seek Professional Help.

There are a variety of ways that a professional can help with your iPod Thumb pain and troubles.

1. Contact David P. Meyer & Associates or Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro. They sued Apple for iPod nano scratches, and other ridiculous stuff. iPod Thumb Syndrome would be right up their alley.

2. Contact a crazy chiropractor in the UK. The British Chiropractor Association says that iPod Thumb Syndrome, “is an injury that affects the finger of music-mad consumers who are constantly using the scroll-wheel or buttons on their MP3 players to organise their song library, update playlists and adjust volume of their favourite artists.” Music-mad? Must be a British thing.

3. Sell it on eBay. These people will take your money the work out of listing your thumb-wrecking device (and give you like 50% of the value). If you chose this route, you probably can’t use #1 (lawsuit).

I hope by spreading these tips and ideas we might be able to continue our dominance over mammals without opposable thumbs!

Do you have a way to avoid ITS? Leave a comment!

By |March 28th, 2007|General|2 Comments
Read More

6 Ways to Monetize Your Traffic – Passive and Active

For some people, traffic comes easily. Maybe it is because they’re great writers, maybe the get the scoop before anyone else. Or maybe, people just like what they say. Whatever the reason, some people have more traffic than they know what to do with. Today we’re going to look at the various ways to monetize that existing traffic.

If you aren’t at a level of traffic you’re happy with, check out my 66 Ways to Build Links in 2007.

Passive Monetization

There are a million ways to make money online, but none better than the “set it and forget it” method. In order to create a passive income from your websites, you need to be able to create the content, monetize the traffic and move on to create another passive income stream. About 85% of my monthly income comes from passive sources.

Here are the best programs and methods for passive monetization that I have used. I know there are other great programs and methods, so leave a comment with your favorite.

Google Adsense logo1. Google Adsense (65% of my monthly income.)

Google Adsense allows you to paste some code into your website and it displays contextually relevant ads. If you’re a good writer and can write about topics that don’t interest you (like vending machines), Adsense could be a good earner for you. I love Adsense because all you have to do is insert the code and move on. Nothing else to do, it is one of the simplest programs, and also one of the best ways to monetize a website.

Text-Link-Ads.com Logo2. Text-Link-Ads.com (15% of my monthly income.)

Text-Link-Ads.com (aff) is both passive and active. It is passive because once you set it up you don’t have to do anything else. However, if you stop updating your blog/website you’ll start to lose advertisers. At least I always do. Text link sales are an easy way to monetize your blog. TLA doesn’t have any specific guidelines for traffic, but the more traffic the more your links will sell for.

TLA has great support, especially a guy named Drew. He helped me for over a week with a WordPress plugin issue until we finally resolved it. TLA is easy to install and they have plugins for every major publishing platform and forum software.

AzoogleAds logo3. AzoogleAds (5% of my monthly income.)

AzoogleAds (aff) doesn’t have the most affiliate programs, but when they have a program, it pays the most. I use 2 of their offers. This is a set and forget because I use them on webpages, and not through active promotion. Most of the offers I choose are business related. Unfortunately they have mainly CPA programs, and some of their landing pages convert horribly. Others are wonderful. If you choose to start using Azoogle make sure you do your own testing with a few similar programs.

They also have a few programs with a CPA over $50 and not much PPC competition. If you like PPC, you can find a great match at AzoogleAds.

Active Monetization

Active monetization differs from the passive realm because you need to devote time to keeping the income levels high. Usually these include advertisement that you seek out, must approve regularly, or implement monthly.

AdBrite Logo1. AdBrite (1% of my monthly income.)

I really don’t like AdBrite especially since they started allowing people to advertise on bulk sites. Out of 100 sites that want to advertise on my sites a month, I approve about 2. Out of those two sites, I make very little money. AdBrite ads stand out too much, don’t look contextual, and don’t get many clicks regardless of the ad text.

If I can, I always avoid AdBrite.

2. Sell sponsored posts. (2% of my monthly income.)

I really like sponsored posts. Sponsored posts are great because they are obvious advertisement (people don’t mind obvious as much), they don’t stick out, and they are usually related.

3. Sell your website. (5% of last year’s income.)

I don’t sell many websites, but when I do, I don’t mess with selling any sites for under $1k. Anything less takes too much time and energy. If you have a site with great traffic, or any traffic for that matter (100+ uniques per day), you can find a few buyers pretty easy. I would start with a thread at a few of the popular forums like DigitalPoint. That’s where I’ve found buyers and sellers in the past.

If you decide to sell your website, make sure you know what it is worth to you. Most people will pay a multiplier of your monthly income. For example a site that makes $100 a month will be worth 10-12x usually ($1000-1200). If you are making that much money, but have 1000 unique visitors per day, your site is worth a lot more because someone like me will buy it and turn that $100 into $500 per month. But if you don’t know how to monetize your site, you can still make decent money by selling it.

Those are the top 6 ways that I create an income from the internet. If you have other ideas, leave a comment!

By |March 27th, 2007|Make Money Online|9 Comments
Read More