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30 days to InfoBarrel success

By Chris | Published: March 19, 2012
infobarrel success

I have read a few blogs that suggest InfoBarrel as a good way to start earning passive income.  I first heard of it here on smart passive income and also saw an article about it on my4hourworkweek.com  

Description of the experiment

The idea is that you can create original articles that get published on the InfoBarrel website.  Your articles will get decent search engine ranks and receive organic traffic.  Within InfoBarrel you are able to add your Adsense publishers ID.  Your Adsense ads will then show up on your articles and you will receive the money for the clicks.  InfoBarrel does keep some of your generated income, however 75% goes to you which is the highest I have seen amongst revenue sharing sites.   Read More »

Posted in Case Studies | 6 Comments

How to start a blog that doesn’t die

By Chris | Published: March 17, 2012
Start a blog

A few weeks ago I stumbled across a blog that had a post issuing a challenge.  The challenge was to write a post that could help out beginner bloggers.  I liked the thought of helping out blogging begginers so I started thinking about post ideas.

The beginning

I have been involved with internet marketing for over 8 years now, (since 2004).  I got started in 2004 when I found the warrior forum.  My first endeavor was creating a free blog on Blogspot.com about fantasy baseball.  I monetized it with Adsense and wrote a bunch of original articles.  It went ok and during the first 8 months I made $45.  I was hooked.

Since 2004 I have started and stopped many different online income adventures.  Many have failed, some have succeeded, with my most recent one being the most successful.

I also started and stopped many blogs.  My blogs always started with great intentions, however they were doomed to fail due to terrible planning on my part.

I started the Sminso blog on February 11, 2012 (about 1 month before writing this post) and I plan to keep this one going.  There are many reasons I think this blog will be a great success, but the biggest of them is that I am incredibly passionate about the topic, making passive income online.   Read More »

Posted in How To | 10 Comments

Passive Income: What is it, and why do I want it so bad?

By Chris | Published: March 14, 2012
passive-income

Passive income as defined by Wikipedia is an income received on a regular basis, with little effort required to maintain it.  Some traditional methods of obtaining passive income are rental properties, royalties from a book you wrote, or dividends from stocks or bonds.  The key to income being passive is the fact that it requires little effort to maintain it.

Passive income sounds great until you do the research and find all the work required to get it set up.  For example if you receive royalties every month from a book you wrote 3 years ago you may not have to do any work during the months that you receive the check.  However the months or years it took you to write the book are what allow you to continue receiving that passive income today. Read More »

Posted in Motivation | 12 Comments

7 Reasons your blog could fail: The pitfalls and traps to avoid

By Chris | Published: March 12, 2012
Reasons your blog could fail

95% of blogs fail in the first year.  If you are reading this chances are you have a blog or are thinking about starting one.  I am one of those that believes in the power of positive thinking, but sometimes its necessary to know why you can fail so you can avoid it.  Since starting the Sminso blog I have been doing a lot of research on why blogs fail so I can stay away from these pitfalls.  I figured since I spent all this time doing research I would share my knowledge with you. Read More »

Posted in How To, Tips and Tricks | 7 Comments

Get more blog subscribers with Optin Skin

By Chris | Published: March 10, 2012
Get more blog subscribers

You have heard the phrase a million times, “the money is in the list”.  When it comes to online business this phrase is talking about your email list.  If you own a blog or website and are not using an email list to capture leads, you are missing out big time!

Why having an email list is important

An email list is important because if someone signs up then they are interested in what you have to say.  Someone may find your blog, or website and visit it once.  They may love your content.  The one problem with this is they may never come back to you blog or website.  

If they are able to subscribe to your email list then whenever you want to contact them you can!  This is important because a subscriber to your list is a highly targeted customer that may be interested in purchasing a product from you.  With them subscribing you get to keep them coming back to your site (which hopefully you fill with INCREDIBLE content) and possibly making a purchase wich then results in you making money.   Read More »

Posted in How To, Reviews | 8 Comments

10 ways I am going to improve my blog posts

By Chris | Published: March 5, 2012
How to improve your blog posts

The Sminso blog has been up for a little more than 3 weeks and I am already getting a decent amount of traffic on a daily basis.  With this traffic came the realization that people are ACTUALLY reading what I have to say!  This has motivated me to find ways to create better blog posts.  I took a look at my blog, a long and hard look, and found some things I felt I could improve upon.   Read More »

Posted in How To | 12 Comments

How to create a blog disclosure policy

By Chris | Published: March 5, 2012
how to create a disclosure policy for your blog

Recently (well 2 years ago) the FTC decided that all bloggers needed to state if they were earning any kind of money on their blog.  This was to stop the advertisers that would pay bloggers to review their products but not disclose that they were being paid.  Readers of these blogs would believe that every word was the blogger’s own opinion and miss out on the obvious, that the blogger’s opinion may have been influenced by the fact that they were receiving money from the advertiser.

If you are blogging and are making money using any technique out there, you need to have a blog disclosure policy.  Not only do you have to have one, but it has to be somewhere that everyone can see, not hidden in the dark depths of your website.  The best and most common place seems to be in the footer.

Some bloggers may look at creating a disclosure policy as a negative.  I, however, think it’s a great thing!  By having a disclosure policy I can put all of the “stuff” about how I make money with my blog in one convenient place for my readers.  Not only that, but it keeps  the FTC happy, which is probably a good thing as well! Read More »

Posted in How To | 7 Comments

Do you have OSCD (obsessive stat checking disorder)?

By Chris | Published: March 3, 2012
Website Statistics

Hi my name is Chris and I check my website statistics obsessively.

Ever since my first website about fantasy baseball I have been obsessed with stats (probably why I like fantasy sports).  One of the first plugins I install when starting a new website is Google analytics.  While this is a great idea, because tracking is everything when it comes to optimizing your website, I am always doing it for the wrong reasons.

When I check my stats I check them all the time.  I leave it up in the browser and refresh it every few minutes!  Sometimes when I refresh there is new data, but more often than not, especially with a new site, there is nothing!  Even if I do get a new visitor or another Adsense impression, what does that get me?  What can I do with such an incredibly small sample size? Read More »

Posted in Tips and Tricks | 10 Comments

9 tricks to get your website de-indexed from Google

By Chris | Published: February 29, 2012
how to get de-indexed from google

One of the most exciting things to a new blog owner is seeing their new site in Google’s index!  Once your site is in Google’s index your target market will potentially be able to get there from the search engine. Now there are other search engines out there; Bing and Yahoo are the next two biggest, but let’s not kid ourselves, Google is the holy grail.  The whole point of search engine optimization is to get your site to climb up Google’s index.

The title of this article may lead you to thinking that getting your website de-indexed from Google is a good thing; it’s not.  I just want to show you some of the issues you may run into so you can avoid them and keep your site or blog from being de-indexed by Google.

Sometimes you will notice that it’s just a page of your site that had been de-indexed from Google, while not as big of an issue it is still important to resolve the issues that caused it! Read More »

Posted in Tips and Tricks | 2 Comments

A passive income lesson I learned while playing soccer

By Chris | Published: February 27, 2012
passive income

Every Thursday I play on a recreational soccer team.  We are ok, we win some and lose some.  We have somehow won the championship 2 times now despite never having a winning record for the season.  This past Thursday I was reminded of a lesson that applies to my quest for creating passive income online.  Since this has been on my mind since Thursday I thought I would share so you could learn the lesson I learned.

My team was playing a team we had not played before, this new team was not so great.   The referee made it pretty clear early on that he was not going to call many fouls when one of our players got tripped and there was no call.  We were down by one goal as half time approached.  The ref blew the whistle to signal the end of the half, but that 1st half seemed really short. Read More »

Posted in Tips and Tricks | Leave a comment
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