Ways to make money online

There are many ways to make money online – choose convenience

The ways to make money online have gotten easier. For some years now, people have been automating their online earnings. To automate your online earnings simply means putting a system or process in place where you can earn with little to no effort. For example, when a website monetizes by using display adds, they are automating the process because all they have to do is produce content and drive traffic to their site to increase their revenue.

Automation creates an easier way to make money online

Fiverr helps people automate because of the ability to outsource. By outsourcing I mean, you can pay someone to literally create/design your website, write your blog posts, upload your blog posts, and more. You can pay someone to write your social media posts and essentially manage your social media account geared specifically to your brand, blog, business, etc.

The unique thing about Fiverr is that rates start at a low of $5 and move past $1,000 USD depending on what services you are looking for. Myself, I proofread on Fiverr and I rarely charge anyone $5. And I often tell clients, think of it as an investment. You are going to pay me and get expert service for your book that will essentially be a best seller and you will make thousands times more than my rate.

 

How to hire on Fiverr

For the sake of clarity, I want to make sure everyone knows what a freelancer is. A freelancer is someone who offers a good or a services and receives payment in absence of a company. Essentially, freelancers work for themselves. When using a freelancer on Fiverr, there is buyer protection. That is mainly what gets freelancers on Fiverr lots of business, the buyer feels a sense of protection.

Moving forward,  to hire on Fiverr, simply identify the service you need and you can type a search for that service in the search box. For example, if you want proofreading, you’d type in proofreading and sift through the results and screen everyone’s profile making note of their prices and offerings. This allows you to have some info before contacting freelancers. You can pretty much find a freelancer that will do anything. I was just offered to ghostwrite for a few authors. I have written about us pages for large companies as well. My Fiverr page is Professional Proofreading – Mrltheteacher

ways to make money online using Fiverr

Use Fiverr as a way to make money online

 

Once you identify a freelancer, you can tell them what you are looking for and create a request along with your budget. Use your budget as a ballpark because they may charge slightly over your budget. Also, keep in mind that if you don’t pay for quality, you will most likely have to buy the service twice because the 2nd time you will pay someone to do a better job. So pay the higher quality freelancer the first time and don’t be cheap on quality!

If you are struggling to choose someone, you can go to the post a request section. In this section you literally create a brief write up like a classified ad specifying what you are looking for and your budget. You will get many replies this way. 

3 Steps to create a blog to make money online

How could you not want an online earning opportunity that can be automated? I’ll give you 3 steps to creating an online blog that can be monetized.
1) Identify your interest
2) Identifying the needs for your site
3) Identify how you want to monetize.

Step 1 is the most important because if you don’t choose a niche that you are interested in, you are not going to maintain your drive to produce content or drive traffic to the site. Both of those factors greatly impact how much money your site can generate monthly, weekly, and daily.

Identifying the needs of your site allow you to plan what to budget for. For example, you may not consider yourself a writer or you may not want to write at all. Fact, to get your new blog recognized quickly from visitors you need to write content regularly. At this point, you need to decide to pay a ghostwriter. You may have a budget for a $10 per post ghostwriter on Fiverr. At 4 post per week (4 x $10 = 40) you can expect to pay $40-$90.

In addition, you also need to advertise your blog or website whether it be social media or paid advertising. As you do your research, you may decided that you don’t want to set up advertising yourself, so 2 options:
Pay someone to optimize your site for search engines or SEO.
Pay someone to set up your advertising account on Google, Bing, Pinterest, or Facebook.

 

Keep Costs Low

The problem with both options is there is an additional cost involved. The pro is that this helps you automate where if you go back to my statement about my clients I proofread for, look at it as an investment. You are investing in someone writing your blog post and advertising so you can make thousands times those investment costs over time. Still a great deal.

If you are wondering how to make money online free, then you can go all in and do everything yourself. It does take more time, but it saves you money.

In closing, my advice for how to make money online for beginners is to simply automate. You can simply go to Fiverr and post a request for someone to give you a consultation on how to walk you through how to set up your website or blog, to earn you money. There are thousands of ways to make money online. You can read all the information in the world but if you don’t understand it, you won’t make it far.

 

Additional Resources

Any New Blogger Must Read These Tips!
Stop Procrastinating! Get Paid Online for Ideas
I made $10 in 3 minutes from my bed! Holy Crap!!!

To Make a Post Go Viral or Make a Viral Post?

Everyone wants to make a viral post 

How to make a post go viral or make a viral post, that is the question that many bloggers have. You’re here because you want to learn what are the “must haves” to make viral posts. I’m sure you don’t want just one post to go viral but all your posts. 

Viral Defined

According to Merriam-Webster (2020) viral means to quickly and widely spread or popularized especially by means of a social media viral video.

This definition that will serve as the basis for discussing the word viral or using the phrase ‘go viral’ throughout this post.

Mateo went viral just with 2 words: Listen Linda!

As bloggers we want our content read, shared, pinned, tweeted, liked, and simply saved. But how do we go about getting our blog on everyone’s screen or device? Do we pay for promotion, advertising, or traffic? Should I just optimize my blog/website for organic traffic, even though we never really know exactly how Google configures its algorithms (no matter how good at statistics we are)? What is the best approach?

How does one go viral?

The first thing I will mention is and to me it’s pretty obvious, there is no “Ultimate Way” to make a post go viral. Think about how many posts or YouTube videos claim to unveil the secret to accomplishing this. It’s kind of like that author who wrote a best seller that they were doubtful about the whole time or their publisher was hesitant to publish. And it unexpectedly become a best seller. 

Research to go viral

Although I previously mentioned there is no ultimate way to accomplish going viral from your blog, I have decided to research some of the most popular blogs on viral posts. Unfortunately, I need time to conduct that research and analyze the data. So, this will all be released in a future post. With that said, the ultimate way to write a post that will go viral is in my opinion to do your research. You want to be viral, do the research!

Will research help your posts?

Doing research to go viral was hinted at in a post by ConvertKit discussing the suggestion to “Curate Content.” 

If you already know what you audience is searching for on the Internet, a great way to wrangle them in is to write a blog that has everything they want in one easy-to-read space.-ConvertKit.com

Now you may note that the brief quote above from ConvertKit.com never mentions the word research, but rather advises you to think about what your readers are searching for and write about that on your blog. These are more geared towards keywords and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). 

Do preliminary research for improved content

Aside from the advice from Convertkit, I am advising that you do research on the content your are talking about. This allows you to write really informed posts that are relevant, current, and backed by research. There is nothing wrong with throwing out your opinion however, you can strengthen your argument by providing a source that is in alignment with your opinion. Using research adds to your credibility and it adds additional value to your posts.

Moving forward, doing research informs you as the writer and positions you to better be able to inform your audience, the readers.
Think about it, those of us using Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Mix.com, etc. to circulate our posts. We have to admit that at one point we did a little research and in fact we learned that these are great ways to drive traffic to your blog and increase the chances we have to make a post go viral. 

We know better than believing Content is King

There is a saying that has been around since like the mid 2000s, “Content is King.” I believe research is King and it has always hidden behind Content. Research is the hard work that you do and Content is the final product. Your audience doesn’t see your research, they see the content. It’s kind of like in sports, the untrained eye doesn’t see the coach, they see the athlete.

If this post was research study with participants, my readers would read the description I give regarding the methodology or the methods used to collect and analyze the data. I digress, let’s  go back to our example with a viral blog post. You do research before you write, you might research for a quote, a chart, and some other unique facts. Right in line with research comes the idea of rewriting previously written posts.

Revise Content

A lot of successful bloggers discuss making revisions to rewritten posts. This reminds me of the stories of successful inventions. You barely hear about the thousands of failed trials, what you do hear about is the success. In this vein, it is like the work behind the scenes, the research and in the quest for going viral, the work that is viewed is the viral content.

Research is King 

Research to make a post go viral

Want to make a post go viral? Research is King!

Brittany Bullen in her article titled THE SECRET SAUCE THAT MADE THESE 7 BLOG POSTS GO VIRAL, cited a powerful post by Derek Halpern of SocialTriggers.com. That post was titled THE “CONTENT IS KING” MYTH DEBUNKED (Halpern, 2011). If we think Content is King we should think again!

Moving forward, as I read Bullen’s posts I was very excited to see that she agreed with my thought on the significance of research being King. And this sense of research being king is what will really make a post go viral. She said, Halpern’s post wasn’t just a contrasting view; it stole the spotlight by using academic research to prove a contrasting point. Again, as I have said Research is King and apparently it always has been.

I will conclude by saying as I did preliminary research on how to go viral with blog posts, I consistently noticed lots of misspellings. As someone who once thrived on SEO, I know that some writers intentionally misspell words and use those as targeted keywords to increase their traffic. But let’s be honest we have all read a book with typos. When the content is engaging we disregard the typos and keep going. I’m assuming the same holds true for the misspelled words in viral blog posts. 

To make a post go viral

If your goal is to make a post go viral, you should write each post with this intent in mind. Coach Stowers used to tell us, play every play like it’s your last. Essentially, if you never played again, then you know you played that last play as best as you could. Write every post, with the intent of it going viral. 

Make your post go viral

Make you post go viral like fidget spinners!

Once you have gone viral, what will you do next? I always advise people no matter what it is you are doing, think about what you can maintain. If you write a viral post, what are you going to do next to honor your readers?

Maintain your activity level on your blog

Can you put out more viral content? Do you know how to rewrite some older posts and use the sauce to make a post go viral again and again? You better, continue with exceptional content! Don’t be a 1 post wonder. In the words of Lil Baby, “my biggest fear is being a used to be”. As you prepare potentially viral content, ask yourself what will my legacy be. Will people say, I remember him, he wrote 1 viral post. 

Often times when I write content, I don’t want to stop. I always feel that I am one sentence away from going viral or one sentence away from a huge explosion of traffic to my blog. This motivates me to keep writing. Every post I write is my best post. I continue to write subsequent posts with the idea of writing a better post than my last post. It’s never all about me when I write, it is all about my readers. When I coach people on writing (I take my own advice as well), I tell them to write their content in a way that answers all of their readers’ questions.

No Secret Sauce

With that said, is there a true secret sauce to going viral? No, but there are things that can be done to increase one’s chances such as sustained hard work. As I look at bloggers writing about how to make a post go viral, they work long hours 60+ weekly. And some have small teams (1-2 people). The common variable though is hard work.

3 Must Haves

During my doctoral research proposal, a member of my committee said, “I was a little disappointed. I thought this was going to be something that prepared us to go on Oprah.” Honestly, I wasn’t offended because Oprah didn’t have her Oprah Show that aired on WFSB 3 anymore, she had the OWN network. So, he was wrong on many levels. But more importantly, I rewrote my content with not only Oprah in mind but my audience in mind. The 3 ingredients from the go viral recipe that you should “cook with,” are research, hard work, and keeping your audience in mind.

In conclusion, write every post so it is better than your last post. Above all, do your research on the content you are writing about plan to promote your content like nobody’s business.  Not even the experts have identified a single ingredient that is the end all be all to make a post go viral. So, write every post with the intent of achieving that ultimate goal of going viral! And don’t be surprise when it happens, expect it!

Additional Resources

Why your blog ain’t making money online!
The reasons your blog ain’t making money online, Part 2
Why having a blog has huge online earning potential

References
Bullen, B. (2019). THE SECRET SAUCE THAT MADE THESE 7 BLOG POSTS GO VIRAL
Retrieved from https://smartblogger.com/go-viral/

ConvertKit.com. (n.d.). How to Make Your Next Blog Go Viral.
Retrieved from How to Make Your Next Blog Go Viral

Halpern, D. (2011). THE “CONTENT IS KING” MYTH DEBUNKED.
Retrieved from https://socialtriggers.com/content-is-king-myth/

Jasmine. (2018). 7 Hidden Secrets to Writing Viral Blog Posts.
Retrieved from https://www.shoutmeloud.com/secrets-to-writing-viral-blog-posts.html 

 

Any New Blogger Must Read These Tips!

Welcome new blogger!

First, I want to congratulate you on starting your journey as a new blogger. Wait, how do you know that you are officially a blogger? Well, according to Maxwell Maltz the author of Psycho Cybernetics, it takes at least 21 days to form a habit (2015). So in theory you can blog at least 21 days and call yourself a blogger. If you are on week 1, you are working towards being a blogger!

Watch out for Skeptics

Now, I want to advise you to avoid the skeptics, and know that they are everywhere. By this I mean anyone telling you that you can’t make money online especially being a new blogger. If you have trouble with this or identifying who the skeptics are, then think of them as such:

  • People who have never made money online themselves
  • They are always speaking negatively about the possibility of making money online, and lastly, they are the watchers and not the doers! (People who would rather watch YouTube instead of make a YouTube Channel themselves and monetize it).

If you look at our society there are always skeptics in every genre. My grandmother was a skeptic of me making money online (until I cashed my first check). I remember it clear as day. In 2007, in her granny voice she told me, “Don’t cash that check, that ain’t real.” I think I was sweating bullets as I walked through Bank of America to cash my first check from monetizing my blog. After things took off, granny even got some of that money… Yeah, I took her to the casino quite a few times with my blogging money! I was so proud. 

Skeptics are everywhere

Back to the idea of skeptics though, I could give any granny a pass for being a skeptic. It’s ok, they were brought up in a different era. For example, until recent years our grandmas were all skeptical about using cellphones. For this post, I mentioned granny just to say that sometimes a skeptic can be a family member, mom, pop, brother, sister, etc.

Again, until you start cashing those Google Adsense, ShareAsale, or Commission Junction checks, there will be skeptics. The problem is if you identify the skeptics and they continue bringing negative energy your way. No I don’t mean disown them but rather decide to not discussing making money online or your new blog. 

Avoiding skeptics will not only save you time but also save you from doubting themselves. You ever notice how you could be in a great mood and you share something with that 1 person and they totally “kill the mood”? they continue justifying why they said what they said but it only goes down hill from there.

Make Lots of Mistakes

As a leader, I always tell people make mistakes, mess some things up. Be reasonable if there are mistakes that you have read about other bloggers making, then obviously avoid those. But if you’re torn between copywriting your blog or your brand, go for it and try it. You won’t truly know unless you try it. Make mistakes with your content, experiment with your post length, experiment with citations of sources, and using outbound links for other blogs. The authors will appreciate the love and they may sprinkle some love your way. 

Be Reflective

New blogger and new learning

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes as a blogger.

Making mistakes is good because it gets you out of your comfort zone and pushes you to try new things. Some times the best things happen when we mess something up. We rebuild it or create structures that would never allow the same mistake again. While you’re making mistakes, take note of them and be reflective. 

Some veteran bloggers have even considered listing monthly earnings as a mistake. As a result, they have gone into previous blog posts and edited them to remove earnings or leave a disclaimer regarding why they will not display earnings any more. We live, we learn, and we revise. 

If you start earning your first $500 monthly on your blog, you will not double that by reflecting on what strategies got you to $500 per month and revising. Bloggers that read other post about monetizing don’t read from bloggers that make less than they make, they read posts by the bloggers making more than them. 

Find a mentor

Even if the mentor you identify doesn’t know you exist, find someone that you can get ideas from. The ideas could be their writing style, frequency of posts, affiliates they use to monetize, etc. You do not need a formal mentor to learn how to be successful at blogging and monetizing your blog. Instead you simply need the url of a few very successful bloggers i.e., Neil Patel or Caitlyn Pile.

As a new blogger myself for while, I spent my time reading from other bloggers, writing content, and promoting the content. They say content is king and I agree but I would go on a limb and say having a mentor or bloggers to follow is in that same royal family! And ultimately, Research is King! Research is King To Make a Post Go Viral!

If you approach mentoring the right way, you could actually find a blogging mentor who is willing to consult with you and have regular conversations with you. You may do this on online platforms i.e., Fiverr, Upwork, LinkedIn, commenting on blog posts, etc. Cherish this opportunity to connect with a mentor. At some point as you continue growing your blog and your followers, you will become that mentor to a new blogger who needs your support and encouragement! 

Ask any blogger and they will tell you, they were once a new blogger at some point. On that note, it is a very humbling experience for me to engage with an audience and I want to help lift you all up! Please comment and share my blog and also email me and I will consult with you: Drl@Drlwow.com And remember stay away from the skeptics!

Helpful Resources for a New blogger

Having a blog has huge online earning potential
Why your blog ain’t making money online!
Why your blog ain’t making money online, Part 2

References

Maltz, M. (2015). Pyscho Cybernetics. New York, NY: Penguin Random House LLC.

Why your blog ain’t making money online, Part 2

not making money online, why not?

In this post, I provide a checklist explaining why your blog is not making money. As you learned in part 1 of this post (titled Why your blog ain’t making money online!), there are many variables that you could blame for your blog not making bringing the monthly income you hoped for. Some of these variables are a little easier to tap into and cross off the checklist. Let’s take a look at these variables in further detail.

Is your blog new?
Is your site/blog indexed?
How competitive is niche?
Are you promoting your blog?
Are you writing for your readers or for the money?

If your blog is new, keep in mind that it takes time for the search engines to index your site. Indexing is how the search engines Google, Bing, etc. gather information and data about the content of your site. This information is used to list your site in the search engines. This is also based on the keywords that are associated with your site and your site will appear based on how it is ranked by the search engines for those keywords.

Fortunately, there is a way to check to see if Google has indexed your site. To check this, follow the steps below:

  1. simply type: site:(YourSiteName)
  2. your website address for example site:drlwow.com (see image below)
not making money online

If you are not making money online, your site may not be indexed.

Once you have that information, it will help you determine next steps. If your site is not indexed, use google search console to allow Google to index your site. You can also download and install plugins in WordPress to create sitemaps that help search engines with navigating your site and indexing it.

Get to know the competition in your niche

Your niche or genre that you are blogging in may have thousands of bloggers writing similar content. Also in your niche, there are experts who may have been blogging for a lot longer than you have (years). So, they may have a few tips and strategies that position them well ahead of you in the search engine results.

In addition, with so many bloggers in a niche, so many styles of writing are available for readers. Some readers look for the style that speaks to them and it may or may not be yours. 

How are you promoting your blog?

Not making money online, let’s change that!

Are you promoting your blog online? If not, you should consider doing so since that is where a lot of your traffic will come from. If people don’t know you exist, how can they visit your blog? You can’t just write some blog posts a few times a week and wait for “it to happen.” Be active and be in control of your traffic to an extent.

Schedule your week where you spend time posting and organizing your blog, while you also carve out some time to promote your blog. This will significantly impact the traffic coming to your posts and the amounts of comments and shares.

If you don’t promote, then you are increasing the likelihood of not be making money online from your blog! As you write and promote posts, think about how everybody has a story to tell and people are always looking to read these stories. Let this drive you to promote your blog and get noticed!

Who are you blogging for?

When I read a lot of posts from experienced bloggers about making money online, I immediately know their audience. Once they start sharing their stories, their struggles, their triumphs, their failures/mistakes (including how at one point they were not making money online with their current blog), etc. I know I am reading a blog that was written for content readers!!! Ask yourself that question as you write, am I telling a story that is written for my readers or am I communicating that I just want to make money and I could care less about helping others do the same? 

As you know good things come to those who… It’s not wait, but my belief is Good things come to those who do good things for others. My only caveat is, you don’t do good things, expecting something in return… the universe takes care of you! In the words of Dr. Richard Carlson,

“Do Something Nice for Someone Else and Don’t Tell Anyone About It.” Take that approach as you blog, write good content…Okay well promote it, and tell people about it but don’t expect something good to happen just because you shared a good post. Just practice the habit of doing good things. 

SEMrush

 

In closing, know your audience and continue to write for them. Develop loyal followers and readers who will continue to come back but equally important they will comment and share your posts. The final thing to consider is whether or not you know and understand the ways to make money online. In addition, they will contribute to the discussion around some of your content.

Stop Procrastinating! Get Paid Online for Ideas

How you can get paid online for ideas

Believe it or not, you can get paid online for ideas. Napoleon Hill was spot on, “Think and Grow Rich”. That is exactly what it means to get pain online for ideas. You are literally selling your thoughts in an attempt to provide a significant benefit to others.

There a millions of creative individuals that are writing content and publishing it via books, blogs, and YouTube channels. However, these creative writers get writers block from one time or another and with this, they can’t think of a catchy title for their novel, blog posts, or video clip. More often than not they will post a request on Fiverr or UPwork. Fortunately, if you are a seller via these sites you can respond to these request and potentially land these jobs where you will be paid to come up with potential titles for content.

Get paid for names

Get Paid Online for Ideas

Many people get paid online for ideas and you can too!

You can get paid online for coming up with names. These names that people will pay you for are titles of books, names of companies, products, services, apps, baby names, and more. In a “gig economy” where you can pretty much get paid for a variety of online services, you can create a job.

On Fiverr, it is simply as creating a gig. For example, “I will come up with a name for your company”. People get paid for creating names, tag lines, and more.

The problem is, not many people know about this niche. I myself have gotten paid for this very work. For me the approach was very subtle. I edited a book for an author on Fiverr. The author gave me a 5 star review and tipped me. Then asked me to give him a few names for his book. Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t work for free. I believed I charged him $15 to come up with 3 title options for his book. He paid me and decide to take part of 1 of my suggestions and revise it into something different. 

You can get paid for reviews

You can make reviews and get paid for them. Product tester review sites will pay people like you and me to test their products and review them. There are also authors who want beta readers before their books go live and they will pay you to read their books and provide ideas and suggestions for improvement. Then there are the less ethical means i.e., on Fiverr some buyers will pay people for reviews of their amazon books or products.

Actually this is not necessarily unethical. What I mean by unethical are the people that will pay you for a positive review without ever seeing, reading, or using their book and/or product. My words of wisdom around this are simple.

If you engage in something unethical to get paid online, you have to ask yourself 2 questions:

Is this the kind of person you are?

Can you maintain this and continue to get paid online by these unethical means?

Remember you want continued business from repeat customers and referrals. Giving false reviews certainly impact your credit. I have had authors that I have worked with ask me to give video testimonials after editing their books. I chose to decline because my freelance work is proofreading, editing, and writing; not promoting books via video testimonials (although this would be a good gig).

If your ultimate goal is to get paid online for ideas, then create some guidelines for what you will and won’t do as a side hustle and stick to your list.

Social Media

Over the recent years, I realized that people pay for ideas to post to Social Media accounts. I didn’t realize this until at a 4th of July cookout (Black People, We Love our Cookouts!!!). Anyhow, as I sat down to enjoy my ribs I cooked for 8 hours +, my brother asked me what should I post: “Spending time with my family, much love.”

Think about $10, $15+ for a few minutes to craft or edit a social media post of less than 100 words. It’s a no brainer. That’s the easy part. The challenge comes in promoting your services to do this work, and get paid for it online.

Get paid online posting to pinterest

People are get paid online for posting to Pinterest, you can too!

In addition, there are people who get paid directly to build Pinterest accounts with followers and post regular Pins. There is an art to this and there are also apps available that support with creating pins. Most importantly when creating a pin, make sure your pin is offering something to others. Ling at Finsavvy Panda provides a detailed guide for making money from posting pins on pinterest. 

In closing, this post touched on the ways people get paid online for ideas. Unheard of right, but it keeps bringing me back to something President Barack Obama said years ago, the jobs of the next 25 years will continue to be created!

My advice to my readers, create a job. I don’t just go to Fiverr and create a gig. Think outside the box and create a job. Even if you go around your neighborhood and tell elderly neighbors you will bring their trash cans to the street and back every trash day for $5 per week. This won’t work for me, I do it for free for Paul and my neighbor Fred he is in his 80s and walks a few miles each day, and he is also a former marine!

Anyhow, please feel free to leave a comment and I will be sure to reply! I look forward to hearing what you have tried. Let’s walk this journey together. 

-Dr. L

Helpful resources:

Easily Make $100 Per Day Online Without a Computer Right Now!
OMG! You are Capable of Earning Money Online
Instantly Increase Online Earning Potential