What's Working

We will be discussing what is actually making money or has made money right here. 

How we did it - how much has been made - what we used and...  you will get to see the real world example.

Membership Sites

In early April we launched Spare Change Profits - a membership site offering monthly private label rights articles, adsense sites, source code resell items, premium master resell and plr items along with graphics to use and sell etc.

Initially we charged $10 per month for the 1st 75 subscribers. This was filled quickly from an email to the subscribers of this site (about 1,500 at the time).

Have Ads

This application lets you setup Google type ads (like you see on the right of this page). They come in the exact dimensions that googe ads do. I ran a strip of these on my blog http://mythirtydaychallenge.com and the result was a little over $300 in sales in about 17 days. It was frowned upon to have a monetized blog for the Thirty Day Challenge so they were removed until the challenge was over. Of course being on the first page of google for the search term thirty day challenge did help. The site recieved around 300 to 400 uniques daily. Now that the challenge is over this has trickled down to under 200.

The $7 Mall

It's reviewed here You can see my mall here  http://the7dollardeal.com Using the Have Ads tool mentioned above to run Google type ads (like the ones to your right) the mall has brought in $256 from $7 product sales and the malls affiliate program combined. Read the review for more info.

Using A Name Squeeze Page

I changed some links and forum sigs to this name squeeze page and saw a 30%m increase in subscriptions. So I would say it works much better than just linking to my old join page.

Building a Website around an Existing Product and Including Adsense and Click Bank Income Sources.. Ok this worked. 10 sales at $47 in about 3 days so $470. Case Study > See how it was done

This month I decided to see if a product could be made and marketed using tools in the subscribers area. I used one of the free headers available and one of the templates from the "super fast loading templates". From this I made a website using MS Front Page - although you could easily use the NVU WYSIWYG Editor that's available. The sites content cane from a mystery shopping website I used to promote. Adsense was added along with affiliate links to related Click Bank products. An ebook with resell rights about How To Be A Mystery Shopper was added. This was from a bonus/give away from somewhere. It is also in our Niche Product pack and most every membership site around. Set the price at $19.95 and ran a "Martini Special" WSO (Warriors Special Offer) in the Warriors Forum. 8 days 15 sold for $299 in sales. If they all sell the total will be about $500.  There you have it. Take action with what you've got and sell :) Combined with the 1st try at  selling something (see Newsletter #2) about $1,000 will be made over the course of two weekends. Not a lot but it would go a long ways in helping a newbie get their venture off the drawing board. All sold :) 

The Giveaway That Gives Back Update >>> $290 passive income so far :) Most from this site and the occasional sig line in a forum. I now of one person who has done well running a featured plus auction for .99 on ebay. I would put a link in my about me page on ebay if you have one.

Here is an excellent example that actually makes money. I first used it when I downloaded a free ebook as a bonus in an ebay purchase - it did not look nearly as good as this one and there were no bonuses. I tried it anyway offering it as a bonus from my about me page. It worked - no great amount of money but every few weeks I would get $10 in the paypal account. Even if you don't spend the $10 to have it rebranded you should download it to look at the technique and style. Have a look here

Online Surveys

I have made money from participating in online surveys. the payout was usually a gift certificate to Amazon - Target etc. 

However I made a few thousand by operating a membership website that sold access to a database of survey companies along with "how to" info and a few free software tools to help. All located in the password protected "members area". People seem to love being a "member". 

Here is how I stumbled across this. I bought a survey membership site from a very nice seller on ebay for $75. He included a word doc on using google adwords. Hosting was $6 a month. I signed up for adwords and began my first campaign. I made sales and man was I excited but after running the numbers I was barely breaking even. My ads were using the content or broad search feature. Lots of clicks costing me money but few sales. I turned off content match and only used the direct search in my campaign. Now I had just a few clicks and just a few sales. Still breaking even. I was spending around $250 weekly on ads and making about the same from bidding to get the 6th or 7th position on my keyword. 

Enough of that - I bid to get the top position and priced my membership $5  lower than the competition. The sales poured in. Profits were about 50 to 60%. If I spent $500 on ads I made $1,000 netting me $500. This was a bit nerve racking. I had identified the peak hours of the day that brought sales and would run home from work to turn the ads off and on by these hours. 

It was great seeing all that money building up in the paypal account - I even felt guilty. People were paying me for a password to get info that was free if they searched for it. That's the power of convenience ! After 6 months and only two refunds I didn't feel guilty any more but I had enough. I sold the site on ebay for a tidy profit. 

Type paid online survey into google and check out the advertised sites like survey scout etc. That's more or less what I offered.  

The ebay store coming soon - its here.

See one at http://www.skatedawg.com/Store/ This site is new and as of 3/24/07 it has earned $218.57 in commissions through CJ.com where ebay runs their affiliate program. You can read more about the construction of the site here.