Posted Wednesday, November 19, 2008 by momscashblog |
By now, most of us have heard that the best way to make money blogging is by having more than one blog. With multiple blogs you can diversifying your niches just as you would with mutual funds in the stock market. A good mutual fund invests in several different types of stock with several different companies. The money adds up and because all of your eggs are not in one basket, mutual funds are safer than investing in just one stock. The same principal applies to blogs but with blogs you don’t necessarily diversify for the safety of the investment because a blog doesn’t cost much to run. With blogs, you diversify to make MORE money. The average web hosting for a blog is around $7 a month and with most hosting companies you can also get unlimited add-ons for that price, so why not have more than one blog? All you have to pay for is a new domain name but if you don’t want to buy a name, you could even start some more blogs using a free hosted site such as WordPress.com or Blogger.com and use those blogs to drive traffic to your main site by linking them in your posts, or sidebar. (WordPress.com and Blogger.com provide free hosting but you do not own your domain name and there will be restrictions on ad usage.) By having multiple blogs in different niches (categories) and getting streams of income from all of them, you could make a very hefty yearly income right from your own home.
I have recently started two other blogs besides MomsCashBlog and later I hope to start more. I plan to keep them separate from MCB and I even have a friend who is interested in blogging and is working with me to learn about blogging. (and it’s great to have someone to dish with about blogging! lol). MCB makes pretty good money but I want to branch out and make MORE money and learn all I can about how to make money online. I can then pass what I’ve learned onto everyone who comes here. I am enjoying the process and the creativity it takes for each one of them. What I really like is that I can use all of the different aspects of my personality on my different blogs. With this blog, I’m pretty much boxed into a tight niche where I am teaching what I’ve learned about making money online so it’s not really appropriate for me to just talk about myself or certain things that interest me.. on the other ones I can say whatever I want and there’s freedom in that. (more…)
Posted Thursday, November 6, 2008 by momscashblog |
I know there are a lot of people who have recently started blogs with MCB’s Free Blog Tutorial, so I just want to remind you to get your list of pings for your new blog. Pings are a way to notify the big sites like Google and Technorati, etc, every time you put new content out on the web, so it is very important to ping each post you make. There are many, many ping sites and the more you notify, the better. In WordPress it is easy to ping your posts because all you have to do is put this list in and your blog will automatically ping with each post, or each change you make to your blog. (more…)
Posted Friday, October 31, 2008 by momscashblog |
Are you one of those bloggers who feels the pressure to write a post every day on your blog and send your RSS feed out with every post? Well, not so fast! You could be turning off your readers by doing this. Many behaviorial studies have been performed on internet usage and they’ve found there is a point where people turn off when they get too much e-mail information from the same source.
Advertisers who sent e-mails LESS often, had MORE of a chance of getting their e-mails opened and possibly responded to. For an advertiser the golden number was one e-mail a month, unless they had a special offer that “really wowed” the customer and enticed them to open the e-mail. In that case, 7 times out of 10 it would get read, but any more than that, and the customers would turn off to the e-mails. Advertisers who use e-mail campaigns find that if they send correspondence to the same people regularly, they quickly turn off to the mail and even find them to be a big nuisance… especially if they’re received on a consistant basis. The campaigns that sent e-mail ads every day, and sometimes more than once a day, got the worst response. These e-mails were sent to the delete box and the recipients thought of them as having little or no credibility. The more e-mails they got from the same source, the more the recipient considered them scams and of course they would not get read! This is very important information for bloggers because the same could be happening with your RSS subscribers if you overload them with e-mails on a daily basis. You could be thought of as a “pest”! (more…)
Posted Friday, October 24, 2008 by momscashblog |
I must admit that “blog burnout” was one of my biggest fears when I first bought MomsCashBlog and I’m sure other bloggers worry that they too could burn out some day and end up with a dead or inactive blog. All bloggers feel that pressure to perform and burn out can happen to anyone. There are many reasons for a blogger to stop posting on a blog. Sometimes it starts with writer’s block, or just plain disinterest. A blog can also go inactive for personal reasons, with life taking priority over blogging. Then some bloggers make a conscious decision to leave one blog… making a name change, and a change in blog content and/or category that is more suited to their desires and land the “big one” in doing so. Maybe we shouldn’t think of blog burnout as a bad thing because in many cases it can be the push we need to take blogging in the right direction. Burnout can actually open your mind to new ideas, and that’s a very good thing!
StandOutBlogger is one blogger who’s known for finding the positive lessons in life and he’s shown us by example that blog burnout can lead to success. At the very least, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, and at the very most, it can catapult you into a new direction that is more intuned with your real “self.” I’ve been a follower of Tom since the days he ran the now inactive blog ThomasSinfield.com, (which, btw had a PageRank of 3 when he left it.) Thru email contact, I asked him a few questions about making the switch. I knew this could help other bloggers who are feeling burnt out and may be at a crossroads in deciding which direction they should go in the blogging world.
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Posted Wednesday, October 15, 2008 by momscashblog |
I’ve been helping out in the presidential campaign so I’ve been quite busy this month and will be until this is over. I belong to the League of Women Voters, and also the Democratic Party, but I go either way in any election… I vote for whoever I like and think is qualified for the job, just as the League does. (It just happens to be that more often than not, the Democratic Party is more inline with my point of view than the Republicans are as a whole, so I stick with the Dems.) While getting back together with a group of people that I haven’t seen in a few years, I ended up telling them I’m “running a blog”. Interestingly enough, everyone had something to say about blogs… but no one knew that blogs make money!
To most of us who are here to make money online, this is hard to believe anyone wouldn’t know that blogs can make good money. I don’t know about you, but since I got this blog all I seem to read is “how to make money with blogs” so with my narrow vision, I would never imagine that others didn’t know BLOGS MAKE MONEY! Do they think we do this for FREE? (lol) Well, yes, come to find out, they do think we are all blogging for the fun of it and the mainstream of “Main Street” doesn’t have any clue that we’re making money from the blogs they read. (That’s a good thing.. let them think what they want. lol)
Now the Political Community has been taking polls all along with this presidental campaign and I know the big issue on everyone’s mind has changed from Iraq to Health Care, to Oil Prices, to The Ecomony becoming the top worry of all, at this point. Personally, my most important issue is still Health Care since I’m caught between a rock and a hard place with insurance. It’s kind of like this… people who have a low FICO credit score can’t get credit, I have a low health score, so I’m on an “emergency plan”! I have too much money (or assets) to qualify for any type of government health program so one more BIG operation and I could lose my house and everything else I’ve saved for. (So, even though the polls change, I still consider Health Care to be my top issue along with The Economy no matter what the polls say.) (more…)
Posted Friday, October 10, 2008 by momscashblog |
We’ve seen a lot of loss in the U.S. stock market this week with the Dow going down below 9000 for the first time in 5 years. Our bad economy is having a global effect hitting the Asian markets, the European market, and all others too, I’m sure. Despite the crisis with financial institutions and it’s effect on housing and mortgages, The Wall Street Journal and others in the know agree… it is lack of confidence that is driving this poor economy. Yes, we had problems, and we put a safety device in place but it caused a lack of confidence in people and now fear is causing more problems than we started with. t’s like when someone screams fire in a crowded building and everyone panics. They all run for the exits and people get trampled and hurt, even when it’s a false alarm.
We’re being told that we should not panic even after this “black week” of seeing the Dow go down below 9000 for the first time in 5 years. It’s hard not to panic, yet we really have no other choice but to be calm. When you’re in panic mode, someone telling you “don’t panic” just doesn’t always seem to sink in. If you think of this as the same advice they give in any emergency situation, then it makes sense. Fear and panic puts you (and everyone else around you) in harm’s way.
Recessions Can Make Millionaires!
It’s recessions (or crashes) like these that can make millionaires out of investors. If you keep a steady head and refuse to panic you can make money but you have to think long term. Warren Buffet makes his money solely from the stock market and is he letting fear dictate him in this market? No way! Warren just surpassed Bill Gates as being the richest man in the world by making over $8 billion in this past month (earnings from the end of August to October 1.) As Warren has said many times before, all we have to do is think smart and use this and every recession as an opportunity to buy low and sell high just as we are supposed to do. He puts his money where his mouth is and he buys low (but of course low to Warren Buffett can be considered very high to the rest of us! lol) and when he does sell, he sells high. Warren invests for the long term and he doesn’t panic and pull all of his money out of the stock market while it’s down… and neither should we.
Are You Buying HIGH and Selling LOW in the Stock Market?
We all know the first rule to the stock market is to “Buy low, sell high” but historically that’s not what the average individual investor does. Most of us don’t usually make much money in the stock market because we do the EXACT opposite. Individual investors tend to only buy when times are good and they hear how well the stock market is doing in the news. As a result, they make a few bucks here, and a few bucks there but the minute the market goes down, most individual investors actually SELL their stock and get out… so not only do they not make any money in the stock market, they lose money. Then they go back and do the same thing again when times are good and the market goes up. (and it ALWAYS goes up!)
Many people stop putting money into their 401K plans, IRAs, and mutual funds when they hear things are bad in the market. When you do this, you miss out on a great opportunity to be buying stock at a low price which is the whole point of investing. If you keep putting your money into your fund regularly, you’re buying shares in the fund at a low price and that is GOOD! (You’re buying low and you’ll sell high later on!) The worst thing someone can do is to close their 401 or retirement plan just because the market has crashed. Not only do you lock in your losses, you also have to pay the capital gains taxes on those losses, and a 10% penalty on top of that! Wow, talk about a loss…
Don’t act out of fear!
So don’t act out of fear! Keep a level head and know your options. If all of this talk about the stock market really bothers you, then just don’t look at your statements for a while. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what the experts advise and hey, we really don’t have many other options, do we? If you’re already in the stock market you have to ride it out, and look for opportunities to buy some good stock if you have the money right now because there are deals to be had (and there will be more!). The only other alternative is to take a loss. It’s your money and your choice, but don’t let fear rule your actions.
Posted Saturday, October 4, 2008 by momscashblog |
If you’re looking for ways to save on monthly expenses, your cell phone should be one of the most obvious places to cut. When debt experts help clients with their budgets, one of the first expenses they look to cut is the cell phone (and cable or satellite plans but that’s a whole different ball game that I won’t get into now! lol) I know many of you are gasping because you feel you could never live without your cell phone, but remember, it’s a luxury and not a necessity, so you really could live without it if you had to. Still cell phones are a convenience and a great safety device so if you need to adjust your budget and can’t give up the cell, some debt experts suggest using a pre paid cell phone to save money. With a pre paid cell phone (Track Phone), there are NO monthly bills and you get to control and decide how much money you spend on your own cell phone use. You buy as little or as much airtime as you want, when you want it.
TracFone wireless is a pre paid cellular service that purchases “airtime” from the big cellular companies so you can use it wherever you use a regular cell phone as it uses their towers. Their price per minute (or unit) is the same and sometimes even better than most cell phone plans… but there is no monthly bill and no contract… and no credit checks, either! They have more cellular customers than ATT and Verizon combined. They also sell the best brand name phones from top manufacturers such as Motorola, Nokia, Kyocera, and LG so if you’re into fancy gadgets with the latest technology you can get it, just as you would with a cellular plan. But if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t care about all that bling and you really want to save money (like me!) then you can even get a phone for less than $10!
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