Free Stuff For Everyone!!! Huge Competition Starting January 1st. Stay Tuned

I wrote a post recently about how commenting is the number one method for building up your traffic. I am a strong believe of this an currently about 60+% of my traffic comes from comments I have left on other blogs.

Codrut from LazyBlogger recently asked me if I would recommend outsourcing my blog commenting strategy. This means would I pay for someone else to comment for me so that I can get the same amount of traffic but I work less time (because I pay someone to do the hard yards for me).

This is a really interesting question because as you may know I am getting married and going on my honeymoon soon (Oct 23rd is the BIG DAY!) and this means I will be away for about 3 weeks -1 month and though I will have a blog post lined up for every day I am away I will not be able to spend my time commenting other blogs while I am away so I will lose a lot of my momentum.

For this very reason I am actually considering outsourcing commenting for just one month while I am away so that my blog can continue to build it’s momentum. I think by doing this I will take in a loss (it will cost me more than I make) but I am more concerned about the momentum because blogs tend to grow exponentially.

So I cannot write a post about how it is a good or a bad idea because I have never done it before. But I am going to ask if anyone would like to be a commentor for me? You will need to work a short period everyday and comment on around 20-40 blogs when each of them has a new blog post.

I will pay $0.10 for every single comment you do (one comment per new post) and I will pay you $0.50 if your comment lands in the top 3 comments for that blog. So if you get in the top 3 for everything then you can be making $50 for just 100 posts! Talk about an opportunity.

You will start on the 23rd of October and finish around the 21st of November and I expect comments on every single post of the specific blogs I choose.

Comments that land below the top 20 I will only pay $0.05 for. So the quicker you do it the more money you make (and the more exposure for me).

So if anyone is interesting you could make a couple of hundred dollars in a month just by commenting for me then contact me. If not I will go to digitalpoint forums to find someone (but I would much rather reward one of my readers).

So email me using my contact form if you are interested.

There is a big craze going on at the moment that is “Website Flipping”. Website flipping is the act of starting a brand new blog (or buying a smaller one) and making it bigger and worth more money and then selling it on to make a profit.

I have tried website flipping in small doses for the last month. I got caught up in the craze and thought that I would give it a go. Flip a few websites, make a few hundred dollars. I had some successes and some failures and I think I ended up in the negative but that’s not the point. I have discovered that website flipping is not for me. I know I posted quite a bit about how good it was but I have changed my mind.

Here are my reasons why website flipping sucks and why it isn’t for me.

1. No Genuine Connections

I think that when you get to the end of your life you are going to think back on the genuine connections you made with people, not the quick money you earned from flipping websites. When flipping websites you are never around long enough to make any genuine connection with your readers. This is what I want to do and this is why I love blogging so much. People like Yan, Hussein and Ethan are great commentors of this blog and I am building a relationship with them. I love this and website flipping just doesn’t support this.

2. Doesn’t Build

The thing I love about blogs (especially about Smarter Wealth) is that they grow exponentially over time. The bigger they already are the faster they grow. When starting out blogging is hard and you need to push to get readership and it builds really slowly. But as you have more readers you find your blog grows exponentially. If you are website flipping you are always doing the hard yards trying to get new readers when you have no established readership base. Blogging for the long term is better because it builds over time.

3. Market is Overcrowded

Website Flipping has gone mainstream with people like SiteFlipU talking about it and loads of other sites. It appear that every MMO man and his blog is trying out site flipping and this is making the market overcrowded. You used to be able to make a couple of hundreds site flipping for a really basic site (so I am told) but now you will struggle to sell because there are so many people flipping websites.

4. No Reoccuring Income

The best thing about blogs and internet marketing schemes is that they bring you recurring income. The visitors from this blog bring me recurring income from advertising revenues (so thankyou so much for visiting, you are making me rich!). But when you are site flipping you don’t make that revenue every month. You have to work for it by creating another site which is just like having a job. The best thing about being online is you can work less and earn more, in website flipping I have found it can be a lot of work for a return that doesn’t recur. 

5. I Don’t Enjoy It

This is truthfully the main reason why I think website flipping sucks. It is not enjoyable. I don’t like doing it. I think it is boring and monotonous and I would rather be doing other things like posting on this blog and marketing this blog. So I don’t want to spend my days doing something I don’t enjoy. I would rather do things which I really enjoy doing and then I will live a much happier life.

So I think website flipping sucks and I won’t be doing it anymore. Sorry if that disappoints anyone. What do you think about website flipping?

One of my good readers DoubleOurMoney from www.doubleourmoney.ca has been blogging for a few months now and is finding himself frustrated at the fact that he hasn’t made any money yet. I promised him that I would take a closer look at his blog and critique it for him and show him what he can do better. Now I am no expert (I only make about $100 per month online) but I have learnt a lot in the last year or two.

Take a look at the constructive criticism I have listed for this blog and see if any of it applies to your blog:

Get a New Domain

Ok first thing is first. Dot ca (.ca) is a bad extension to have for a blog. You need a .com or a .net if you are serious about blogging. I checked and DoubleOurMoney.com and DoubleOurMoney.net is available. Now no one steal these from him but seriously buy the .com and you will be much more popular in the long run. Nobody likes a .ca

Get a New Theme

I am sorry but the theme you have chosen is not an optimal theme for your type of blog. For a financial blog you need something similar to mine or to JohnChows. Writing should ALWAYS be in the background of white with a black ink because people respond better to this and it needs to be more proffessional looking spanning a larger portion of the page and having a wider sidebar as it looks really cluttered at the moment.

There are loads of free themes out there. Just google “Free wordpress business themes” or “free financial wordpress themes”

Update Content More Regularly

I noticed that your content is only updated about once per week. I suggest updating it once per day or at least once every 2 days. This way it gives readers more reason to come back again and again

Make Your Content Helpful

Make sure every post you do it helpful to the readers. If every post you do is something they have never heard before then they will keep coming back for more. Try to steer away from just writing about whatever you want.

Make It More Personal

Tell stories, have a laugh, put a picture up or a video of yourself. Make your site more personal. When it comes to stocks it is not about the stock but it is whether or not I trust the person giving me advice. You need to make it extremely personal and show your success so people will trust you. Truthfully, why would I take advice from a random when it comes to stocks?

Expand Your Niche

You wrote this in your about page

“The goal of this website is to blog about doubling our Non-RRSP (outside of pension) money every 4 years (72/18) by earning 18% per year after having used the Smith Maneuver to free up cash to invest. ”

This is a teeny tiny niche. What the hell is Non-RRSP and what is the “Smith Maneuver”. You have made your niche way too small and limited it to about 1 person in the world (which is you.) Make it more generally but specific. Be about stocks, or about personal finance. This blog is generally about Making Money Online which is a fairly large niche. Expand your niche so your blog interests more people

Market Your Blog

Once you have vamped up your blog a bit start marketing it. Run a competition, comment on other larger blogs, comment in forums, write guest posts. Make your blog known to the world. I am writing an ebook at the moment about using comments to market yourself. Get this and IMPLEMENT IT! Then your blog will grow

Be In It For The Long Run

In the long run your writing style will develop, you will find out what you are really passionate about writing about and you will begin to learn how to market your blog effectively. Be continually learning and applying what you learn. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen

I hope this wasn’t too harsh but I really am trying to help you. Do you guys have any tips for DoubleOurMoney? If so leave them in the comments section below.

There are tonnes and tonnes of blogs out there running competitions and a few of them are bound to run a competition that just falls completely flat on it’s face.

Personally, recently I have run one such competition. This Competition, which is still running (but which I do not speak of) is one of these sorts of competitions. Every now and then you will run a competition that fails. Now there are loads of blogs out there that will tell you how to run a successful competition but none I have seen yet that will tell you what to do when your competition fails.

As you know I pride myself on my honest and I hate those people who try to “fake it to make it” so I will be speaking from my own experience. Because I successfully overcame a sucky competition to launch a super successful competition which was my “Top Commentator” Competition where you can win $50 for being one of the top commentators. (Just a heads up next month I am hoping the prize will go up to $100).

Firstly just so you know a few reasons a competition can suck is because it has too many ways to enter, it can be too hard to enter, the prize can suck, you might not have enough readers for it to be successful, it has crappy marketing so no one knows about it. They are just a few. I pretty much did all of these

Ok so lets get into it.

1. Ditch It

This is the first option, and if you have had none (or barely any) entries then this can be a good idea. But otherwise it can be a really bad idea because people can get really angry at you and there can actually be legal issues if people have done things for you to gain entries. So in most cases I would avoid this one, but if no one has entered then destroy all mentions to the competition and get on with life.

2. Change It

Again I would be very careful about this one because if people have already entered then it can be hard to change. But instead of having a competition where people can enter 5 ways, change it midstream so there is just one way to enter and focus on people doing that. This can make your competition a lot better and more effective.

3. Hide It

Just hide your competition as best you can. Count the previous entries but delete the post that talks about the competition and delete any links to the competition. This way no one else will enter and it will be simple to choose a winner at the end of your competition

4. Just Let It Run It’s Course

You can just leave your blog there, let people find it and let people participate as they want to, but don’t put in any extra effort to market it. Just let it build you new readers organically.

5. Market It

Your blog might just have fallen flat because of a lack of marketing so market the hell out of it. Add it to your signature in your forum posting, write about it in forums, write about it throughout your blog, leave comments linking to your competition page. Do everything you can to get the exposure you need to get.

6. Start a Bigger and Better Competition

I left this till last because this is exactly what I did. You need to learn from your mistakes and then use that knowledge to make your next competition bigger. My last competition the prize sucked (sorry Jason) so in my new competition I offered a better prize which was $50 in cold hard cash. My marketing was bogus in my previous competition so in this competition I launched it the same day I did a guest post on www.JohnChow.com this way all the traffic coming from John Chow would see this competition and hopefully want to enter. In my last one there were too many ways to enter, this new competition there is just one way to enter and that is commenting.

My comments have increased 10 fold because of my bigger and better competition.

Have you ever run a competition that was a little flat? If so let us know about it in the comments section. 

Anything else to add? Let us know below.

Today is a monumental day because as I write this I am sitting in my shorts. It has been winter for a while now in my hometown of Sydney, Australia and it has just recently come into spring. Today is the first day where it is hot enough for me to wear my shorts. This means that summer is on its way….woo hoo!

This monumental occasion has led me to want to be outside in the warm spring sun rather than being here inside sitting in front of my computer. So I started thinking up ways in which I could market and build my blog while being outside. 

Not everything you do as an online marketer has to be done online, you can do a few things offline in order to build your presence online. Many of these things I am going to mention are just ideas and I haven’t done them yet. So don’t take me as a pro on this stuff but think through my ideas and see if they will work for you.

1. Hand Out Business Cards

This is something I haven’t done yet just because the money is not coming in enough for it to be worth doing. But as soon as I am making over $200 per month I am going to invest in a business card design and 500 business cards. I will pay about $50-$100 for the design and then about $50 for 500 cards.

Then once I have them I can just hit up the streets and talk to whoever I want to (people I know or don’t know) and then if I like them I can give them a business card. This can build readership but I will probably aim these cards to get people to sign up for my newsletter to receive a free ebook.

2. Hand Out Flyers

For the same reason I haven’t handed out business cards I haven’t handed out flyers. It is just the cost involved that I cannot afford. But instead of just going for your daily walk you can print up some flyers and go on your walk putting flyers in every letterbox. Everyday you can walk somewhere different and it can be leisure and work. Make sure you have a killer offer (like something of value for free) on your flyer and make sure you have clear instructions of what you want people to do.

I got this flyer a few months ago where the instuctions made no sense at all. It told you to go to the website to sign up but the it had no website on the flyer. Stupid advertising and a waste of money. I kept it as a reference for “what not to do”.

3. Go to a Cafe and Write

I have a little Eee PC 901 from Asus which has an 8.9″ screen. I can take it to a cafe and get breakfast and type up posts as I eat and enjoy a hot chocolate. I can sit outside and enjoy the sunlight. I can even sit in a park and do this, it doesn’t have to be in a cafe.

4. Just Rest

Resting builds you up and when you are built up you can sow more into your business. So go for a walk in the sunlight, go have a sleep on the beach. Do whatever relaxes you and then come back refreshed and ready to give more into your business than ever before.

5. Watch The Clouds and Think of Ideas

Ideas make you money. One good idea can make you a millionaire. I get my very best ideas when I am in the shower. I got THE BEST EVER IDEA the other day in the shower which I cannot implement until my blog goes viral and gets massive. But once it does I will be raking in the money. Don’t ask me because I am not telling anyone this idea and I have never seen it done before. It’s going to be awesome.

Go outside and stare at the clouds or do whatever helps you think of great ideas. Because these great ideas is what is going to make you loads of money. I don’t know if any of my great ideas have come while I have been sitting in front of the computer.

So if it is a nice day and you have been inside for a while then get outside and start building your online business while you are offline. This will both increase the amount of money you make and it will increase your quality of lifestyle and your health

Thanks for all the comments guys. I haven’t been able to respond to the all due to lack of time. But I read each and every one of them. Keep commenting for your chance to win $50 in cold hard cash.

I have been feeling a little bit disempowered lately to go and make Smarter Wealth the best blog out there. I have been doing the easy things such as responding to the comments and writing comments on other blog but I have not felt empowered to write multiple posts or to write guests post which could possibly be my best avenue of new readers.

This has led me to question what it is that is disempowering me to do my best. I believe that these things will be common to many of my readers and many of you guys also have blogs and are looking to build and grow your business.

I will list and talk about the things that have been disempowering me, and then I will go and get rid of them after I wrote what they were. Then I will tell you what I have done and how you can do it too.

1. Clutter

I absolutely hate clutter and it frustrates me having clutter around. I can’t think properly, I can’t work properly and for some strange and odd reason when there is lots and lots of clutter around I can’t write. The words just don’t flow. Even right now I have clutter on my desk and it is frustrating me. Hold on I am going to get rid of it before I continue writing…..

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Ok so I just decluttered my desk. I still need to de clutter my bedroom but this is a good start. What I did was I filed odd bits of paper into manilla folders, I put all my pens, wires and receipts in boxes and stacked them together with labels, I put all my books and magazines on a set of shelves next to my desk. Now that I have a completely clean desk my mind feels free-er and I can write much easier. Onto the next one

2. Lack of Nutritional Food

Often I am silly because I will get up and go straight to work on my website without eating breakfast. I will also be so busy on my website that I will forget to have lunch. It is now 12:30 in the afternoon and I am getting pretty hungry. This is distracting me from writing so I am going to go and have some lunch to stop this disempowering distraction….

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Ok so I just went and made a bowl of spaghetti and ate it. Took me about 1/2 hour all up which isn’t really long considering it helped me focus and now I can write better.

3. Lack of Exercise

This is a big one for many online marketers and business people. They are so focused online, building their business or blog, responding to readers and customers and trying to make some money that they sit in front of their computer all day. This lack of exercise has a terrible long term effect of tiredness and laziness. This has been the case for me personally and I need to get into a regime where I exercise everyday….

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I just did some exercise. I did some chin ups, about 10 minutes of skipping and I cleaned the pool. Which isn’t massive exercise but still helped me stay fresh and ready to write.

4. Lack of Sleep

Lack of sleep is one of my biggies. Some nights I will work as late as 2am-3am in the morning and then my body will automatically wake me up around 9am which only gives me 7-6 hours sleep. For my young and handsome body I need at least 8 hours sleep a night other wise I don’t function properly. One of the ways I combat this is having a nap. So I am going to have a nap and I will be back soon

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1.5 hours later - Just had a nap and I am feeling a little sluggish from just waking up but very refreshed to keep going and keep writing. If you feel tired don’t be afraid to have a nap. It will pay off handsomely.

5. Distraction

They always say men cannot do 2 things at once. For the most part they are right. I often find it hard to do two things at once. I always get distracted by one or the other. For this reason I cannot listen to music and read/write, and often I get distracted by browsing websites related to my blog. Sometimes I call it ‘research’ but most of the time I am wasting my time.

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Ok. I closed all the pages I was browsing and I stopped listening to the music I was listening to. I also decided to ignore my RSS feed reader for a while. Now it is a little quite in here but I feel more focused on writing.

5. Not Having a Plan

You need to always have a plan when you get online if you are doing it for business purposes. Often I fail at this but having a plan can increase your productivity massively! What my plan generally is is to comment on all the new blog posts written the night before (to market my blog), then I respond to the comments my readers have written (but there are so many now), and then I get into writing my posts. But sometimes without a plan I spend too long on other blogs and don’t spend any time building my own….

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Ok I just sat down a plan and wrote one up for the next 1.5 hours I am online (before I need to go and do other things). It looks like this

1:30 - 3:00 - Write posts for my blog

Haha simple but I am sticking to it.

6. The Long Road Ahead

This is something that is extremely disempowering to myself and to thousands of other bloggers. The long road ahead is the amount of time and hard work you know you will have to go through in order to become a successful blogger. I am expecting to have to work hard on this blog for 12-18 months more before I can take a full time wage home from it…

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In order to combat this you need to have a dream about what you want to achieve. If you dream is worth more than the cost you will need to pay for it then you will continue on the long road ahead and not be discouraged by it.

So they are a few things that disempower me to run my business effectively. Are there any things you would add to this list?

It is possible to build a successful blog in just 2 hours per day? I really hope so because that is all of the time that I have.

I am getting closer and closer to my wedding now (just 7 weeks away) and I am spending more and more time working at the chemist because I just simply need the cash. Because of this I have not had as much time to bum on the internet and to run this blog. Truthfully this blog doesn’t need to be a full time job, it doesn’t earn nearly enough yet (only earns me bout $10 per month at the moment :-(). But I want to spend at least 2 hours per day, 5 days a week blogging on this website so that within the next 12-18 months this can become a full time income (plus income from site flipping and other blogs I run).

So is it possible to run a successful blog in just 2 hours per day. Personally I believe it is. I know that Darren on ProBlogger started out blogging in his spare time and now he makes over 6 figures per year blogging.

So how can I build this blog into a killer blog just using 2 hours per day to do it. It is a tough task but it is definately achievable.

When You Work You Work

If you only have 2 hours a week to do everything for your blog then you need to not waste those two hours at all. So when you work you need to work hard on your blog and not get distracted. Getting distracted can literally be the difference between failure and success. Having only 2 hours per week you can’t waste one minute of it.

Write Killer Content

Killer content is the basis of all good blogs. Spend at least half of your two hours writing the absolute best quality content you can come up with. That way people will continue to come back to read more, and people will link to your blog because the content is SOOO good.

Get Other People Promoting For You

Getting other people promoting your blog is like multiplying your time. You can blog just 2 hours per day and then other people can spend their time promoting your blog. There are a few ways you can do this. Jason from The University Kid got people to promote the site and gave them a password to an A-Class post. Write and ebook and allow people to give it away for free, just make sure they leave the links back to your site in the ebook. Write a killer post and people will link to it for free.

Respond to My Readers

Having conversation with your readers through email and in the comments section is VITAL to your success as a blog. People love community and if they feel you are approachable then they will stick around. So I am going to spend time responding to any users questions and emails

Network, Network, Network

If you write great content but no one knows your website exists then it may as well not exist. Networking is a great way to get your blog noticed. Write blog comments, write quality posts in forums with an interested signature attached to it. Drive people to your website by using the established traffic from other websites.

So in the next 7 weeks I am going to be blogging about 2 hours per day and I am going to be blogging hard. You can definately expect one quality post per day everyday.

A lot of people want to make money online. So they start a blog or a business which teaches people how to make money online, the only problem is you aren’t making any, so how can we trust your formulas. How often have you seen a website which teaches people “How to build huge amounts of RSS subscribers” and then you see the person has less than 100 subscribers, or you see a website teaching “How to drive huge amounts of traffic” yet the website has little to no traffic.

Trust me, I have tried starting a business teaching people how to make money when I wasn’t making any and it doesn’t work. You need to be able to back yourself 100% and know what you are talking about. It is this confidence in the truth of what you are saying that will lead you to make sales.

I was listening to a song by Missy Higgins yesterday and there was a line which said “lies will lock you up with truth the only key”. If you have started a business online teaching people how to make money when you haven’t started making any then it is time to fess up. Don’t try and wait till you are making money so what you say is true, start making money in some other way, then teach people how to do it.

I fessed up here on Smarter Wealth by saying that I am a struggling entrepreneur and that you should read this blog to follow my journey of becoming successful. I have not already made it.

One of the best ways to make money without teaching people how to make money is to choose a non-internet related niche. If it has to do with the internet you can be sure 1,000 people have already jumped on the band wagon and there is no room for you. Start a website about something that is NON internet related I am in the process of starting my latest blog www.thediligentseeker.com which is a christian blog containing devotionals, sermons, thoughts etc. It is not internet related and I don’t need to teach people how to make money to build a readership and to make some money. 

Someone who used to be my hero Mike Guggliemucci, preached about how he was dying of a terminal illness (cancer) when he never even had cancer. He was recently discovered as a fake and he hurt a lot of people.

If you try to fake the Make Money Online Niche sooner or later you will be discovered by someone and your business will be up in flames. First make money in a non MMO niche and then you can teach people about making money online.

One of the biggest obstacles you will have to overcome when you want to make money online is the ability to have confidence in yourself. When starting out writing a blog or selling a product often we can be hesitant and hold back because we are scared of what other people will think of our content, and scared that our content will not be worthwhile to people.

In order to have a successful blog then you need to be confident in who you are and be confident in the usefulness of your content. Jason on The University Kid does this really well. He is confident in who he is (as a lazy uni student) and he is also confident in the content he produces which I must say is fairly A class.

When I started out blogging and writing products I was scared that what I actually had to bring to the table was not good enough. So I tried to fake it. I tried to pretend that I knew what I was talking about when it came to earning $1 million. However, I do not have any idea yet because I have not earnt $1 million yet, however I am on my way.

You cannot fake it to make it. You need to have confidence in yourself so you can be honest to your readers. By being honest to your readers you build relationship with them and they then are more likely to buy products for you. I am honest with my readers on this blog (about 50 people per day) and also the readers of my newsletter (over 70 people signed up).

Some good ways in which I have found to be confident in yourself are these

1. Fake it and fall on your face

This is what I tried to do first up. I tried to fake it to make it and it did not work. I could not sustain the mask I put up and my products which I create all failed. I fell flat on my face and realised that it was completely pointless doing things this way.

2. Be honest and see people’s response

Only in the last week or two have a started to become really honest with my readers. I am writing about how I DON’T make a lot of money, but how I am trying my hardest to. The response from readers has been overwhelmingly positive. Now that I am completely honest, showing readers where I am really at, then my readers can really connect with me and respond to my material. In the future I am hoping that this will lead to a greater relationship with my readers which will equal high sales on some great products I will create.

So don’t bother trying to fake it to make it. Find confidence in yourself by being honest and seeing the positive response from people. There will always be some negative responses but generally readers want to connect with a REAL person, so be real.

I recently had a comment on this blog from a reader who seems to think that the ability to make money online is just a scam and that it is not possible. This is what he said

All those people who have sites claiming to teach you how to make money with blogs - they’re lying, you do know that, right? The only way they make money is by selling the “secrets of making money from blogs” to gullible end-users like yourselves.

Seriously. Give up and get a proper job. You sound like a nice guy, so I’m telling you straight. The internet is free.

So it got me thinking? Is the ability to make money online simply a scam? Are the only people making money online those who are selling their “secrets” which aren’t actually true.

Personally I do not believe this statement for one second. If no one was making money online except for the sites that are about making money online then why are there so many other sites out there. They could not possibly run at such a large scale and fail to make any income from it.

I have been thinking through this statement because it is a really interesting one. What if you couldn’t make money online because the internet is ‘free’, wouldn’t this change the way you looked at the internet and the way you looked at Make Money Online (MMO) websites. If this was true it means I should definitely give up now and stop chasing my dream of working full time online.

If no one made money online then there wouldn’t be so many websites

There are so many websites out there (and so many large websites too) that they couldn’t possibly be running if they didn’t make any money. Websites such as myspace and facebook which are worth over $1 billion could not be worth that much money if they did not make money. If no one made money from their websites then people wouldn’t put as much time and energy into them. This proves that you can make money online because otherwise these websites wouldn’t exist in the size and quality which they do.

I have personally made money online (though not a lot)

Personally I have made $50 from flipping domains, $50 from flipping websites, $80 from selling affiliates and about $10 from selling advertising. I have made money myself online and therefore I know that it is possible.

I know people who are making money online

People like Jason over at The University Kid are making loads of money online (or so they say) and I bet some of my readers are making money online also. If you are please leave a comment in the sction below stating how much money you make online per month.

What do you think? Do you think the ability to make money online is a scam? If so then let us know in the comment section below. If you disagree (like I do) let us know also. I want everyone’s input.