2010 October | Affiliate Blog Online

Archive for October, 2010

How to Make Money Using Public Domain Content

Friday, October 22nd, 2010 at 7:30 pm

Comments (58)

We don’t believe in putting all our eggs in one basket and so we have been looking for other ways of diversifying and one of the things we have been seriously considering is using the public domain to make money.

We initially read about using Public Domain works to generate income on a forum and it tweaked our interest enough for us to go looking for the experts in this field for more information.

What we eventually found was an ebook package written by Logan Andrew and Debra Conrad called The Public Domain Treasure Hunters Survival Kit. These two are experts in this field and we were absolutely amazed with the information in it. We never really realized the potential that the public domain has for making money online.

If you’ve never heard of the public domain basically it is content (ie books, music, video, prints, images etc) that is no longer under a copyright…so it is free to use in just about any way you wish.

Hopefully that statement has made your jaw drop and if it hasn’t it should by the end of this blog post. It truly is mind blowing because there are so many different ways to make use of this information to start an online business or simply use it to supplement the amount of money that you are already making online.

Let’s take an example just to whet your appetite. Say for instance you have a website about dogs and you want to start building up an email list. One of the best ways to do this is to offer a freebie such as a mini report or ebook, which encourages people to sign up. So you sit yourself down and start writing an ebook or you may get a writer in Elance to do it for you. Either way, it takes time and/or money. But what if you could get the information for your ebook for free and within the next five minutes?

With public domain content you can do just that and you can have that ebook up and ready to go in as little as half an hour. Plus you can be confident in knowing that the information you use has been written by professional authors, and you are getting quality content for absolutely nothing.

You can also take that public domain content and turn it into an audio book or a series of audios for your email list. You can literally have never ending content readily available to send to your list…depending on your niche of course.

With public domain content not only can you create your own reports and ebooks but you can also use this free content for your website. Now we personally like to create unique content wherever possible but the thing with public domain content is that not many people have caught on to using it on their websites so you’re not likely to see the same content duplicated over and over.

So you can search for Public Domain content in your niche and simply copy it over to your website and it’s all perfectly legal and above board. You can actually create an entire website just from public domain content alone. This could also work really well if you have a membership site.

You can also legally change that content. So you can manually make changes to it or put it through a spinner if you like. (We recommend The Best Spinner – which in our opinion we have found to be the only spinner that really spins well written content.) So you can have fresh content added to your site for free or if you want you can use it for article marketing.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg…what about creating your own t-shirts or mugs using public domain images? With CafePress in conjunction with eBay you can do just that. How easy is that!! You don’t need to stock any inventory.

You can also find public domain cookbooks and take recipes to combine them into your own book which you can sell on Amazon or in the Kindle store. In fact, you can find content on just about any topic and compile it into your own book.

You can even simply republish books without making any changes and make money from them.

These are just a few examples of what you can do with public domain content but there are plenty more. We have decided to go with one method described in the Public Domain Treasure Hunters Survival Kit and have been working on it for a few months now and yes we are making money with it. It’s definitely not enough to retire on just yet but we can see the real potential in it…enough so that we are going to be devoting 50% of our time to it over the next few months.

You’ll also notice we’ve added a new category to this blog called ‘Public Domain’ so we’re not just playing around with this. It is something we are seriously getting in to.

So Where Do You Start?

One of the best places to start is with Project Gutenberg. This site has over 30,000 books to choose from with the majority in the public domain and they add more on a regular basis. Another excellent site is archive.org. Just remember that although both of these sites mainly focus on public domain works, not all the books listed are in the public domain, so you do need to check the copyright status as indicated against each book on these sites before using the content.

More Information

If you are looking for more detailed info on this then we do recommend the Public Domain Treasure Hunter’s Survival Kit. This is an extremely detailed and informative guide on how to use the public domain effectively. And it is written by people who actually make a living from it. It includes specific money making ideas using public domain content, where to find public domain content for books, movies, audio books and so on, how to tell if a book is still under a copyright, how to use public domain content to create your own products and even where you can sell your public domain content.

We’re talking over 200 pages of solid information and that’s only in one of the ebooks you get. They also include step-by-step videos and plenty of bonuses. And these bonuses are not your usual crappy add-ons so that they can make a sale. This is solid stuff that you will actually use.

We’re excited and we are sure you will be too once you grasp the full potential of using Public Domain works.

Recent Google Keyword Tool Changes – Are They Accurate?

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010 at 8:39 pm

Comments (26)

Anyone who uses the Google Keyword Tool on a regular basis may have noticed some changes recently. The main one being the significant decrease in search volume results. Surprisingly enough, it has been kept relatively quiet considering the impact. Google made no announcement of the change and although there are lots of blog and forum posts about it, I just felt that the situation didn’t get the reaction it really deserved.

But then again perhaps like us, others have been waiting to see what the impact of all this means because at this point in time, there is still ongoing debate about whether the changes are beneficial or not. There seems to be two schools of thought – those who think the changes have resulted in more accurate data and those that think the old results were more accurate.

The changes came through at the beginning of September and we personally didn’t even realize until some time closer to the end of that month. I think that was the case with a lot of people. Unless you are constantly comparing search volume numbers for your keywords you probably wouldn’t have even have noticed the difference. The changes basically involved a rather dramatic decrease in the number of results for the Global and Local Monthly Searches.

As we already mentioned, there was no real announcement from Google regarding this change, in fact, about all we got from them was a paragraph left by a Google employee on one of their forums which read as follows:

“If you use both the previous and updated versions of the Keyword Tool to search for keywords, you may notice differences between the tools for statistics on Global Monthly Searches and Local Monthly Searches. This is because the previous version of the Keyword Tool provides search statistics based on Google.com search traffic and traffic from search partners, while the updated version of the Keyword Tool provides search statistics based on Google.com traffic only. We’ve updated these statistics based on user feedback, and hope you find them helpful for keyword selection.”

If we want to see examples of the difference in volumes we only need to look at a couple of keywords like ‘bathroom supplies’ for instance which has gone from 5400 local monthly searches to only 880. And another – ‘golf clubs’ which has moved from 165,000 searches to 33,100. As you can see, these are not simple statistical errors but massive differences in search volumes.

Even one of my brothers who has just started building a website has noticed a significant decrease in one of his major keywords which went from 120,000 down to 18,000.

So is it more accurate?

Well we did a little test since we are ranked no.1 for quite a number of keywords so decided to run a check on a few of of those keywords to see how they compare. Here’s the results for our data in September using our traffic results from Google Analytics data and comparing it to the local monthly search volumes (exact match) from the Google Keyword Tool data:

Keyword 1

Our traffic – 1623
Google Keyword Tool estimate – 1900

Keyword 2

Our traffic - 1726
Google Keyword Tool estimate – 4400

Keyword 3

Our traffic – 713
Google Keyword Tool estimate – 720

Keyword 4

Our traffic – 487
Google Keyword Tool estimate – 480

As you can see, the Google Keyword Tool results compares quite well with those few keywords so perhaps it is more accurate. If this is the case, then this is excellent news. It means we won’t be sitting wondering why we aren’t getting all that traffic even though we are ranked no.1 in Google. It also means that when we build a website, we will know the exact traffic numbers before hand. There won’t be any nasty surprises after we’ve spent months trying to build up our websites.

However, at the same time it means that anything we may have done in the past may be all for naught as we realize they will never generate the traffic numbers we were expecting. We have over 20 websites and not all of them have performed as well as we expected them to. Mind you, they would probably do better if we put a bit more effort into them but even so, had we had more accurate data to begin with , then we might not have lost motivation earlier on when we realized we weren’t getting the traffic numbers we were expecting.

So I see this change as being beneficial because it looks like we can build websites with more confidence as having more accurate data means we know what to expect in traffic volumes once we hit the no.1 spot in Google.

Would love to hear what our readers think about this change and if you see it as a positive or negative change.

Secrets of a Millionaire Mind – Book Giveaway

Monday, October 4th, 2010 at 9:06 am

Comments (53)

Sometime back we happened upon a book by T.Harv Eker called “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind’. He was actually giving away a free downloadable copy of the book as an incentive to attend his conference in Sydney. The book is basically about how your thoughts can affect the amount of money or abundance you receive in your life, and in my personal opinion, it is an excellent read.

I know there are a lot of skeptics who debunk the idea that we create our own world by our thoughts, but I was interested enough in what Harv Eker wrote to attend the Millionaire Mind Intensive in Sydney earlier this month. This was one of those free seminars where they teach you a heap of stuff but they also promote the hell out of their products….so it’s almost like attending a 3 day infomercial. But if you can put the promotional stuff aside, the stuff he teaches is really worth taking in and the book is excellent.

Apart from wanting to hear just what Harv Eker had to say, we were really interested in finding out more about his 7 jars money system. Financial freedom is so important and when you start receiving large amounts of money it is very easy to just blow it, and this is something we don’t want to do.

I guess I need to take a step back, before discussing the seminar more fully. Before our business really took off we were becoming a bit, how shall I say it, hmm, despondent. We were working long hours and putting everything we had into trying to make our business a success but not much was really happening…we were basically struggling with the online business. Now Paula has been a long time advocate of self improvement and the power of positive thinking. I on the other hand have been a long time skeptic about this “stuff” as I called it. Well one day something she said just clicked with me, can’t remember what it was but it was a quote from Tony Robbins.

So I thought well it can’t hurt to listen to what he has to say. And as I played Tony’s lessons on my ipod when I went walking, it all began to make more and more sense

I could turn my life around and only I was responsible for my happiness and my feelings and by taking some positive action I could make all the difference to my world. So we started to factor some time each day before we started our work to listen to the audio versions of Tony Robbins and then The SGR Program (Science of Getting Rich), The Four Agreements, The Power of Now and Secrets of the Millionaire Mind along with a number of other self improvement books.

Now I don’t know if it was coincidence or not but the more we listened to these people the more opportunities began to come our way. Our income improved quite significantly and we became more positive in our actions.

Thoughts –> Emotions –> Actions = Results.

Anyway back to the T. Harv Eker ‘Millionaire Mind Intensive’.

This proved to be 3 days of full on interaction. It was definitely a positive experience and it was well worth attending. But as we have already mentioned, there are certain times during the conference where a lot of promotion for further courses and a lot of product selling of books and resources goes on. And although some may find this hard sell off-putting, we find that if you are resolved to not getting swept along with the hype, you can enjoy the things that are beneficial to you and ignore the rest. It wasn’t like they chased us around to get us to buy their products and we could leave at anytime when they started into the hype.

It was amazing to actually to watch them in action and see how easily people could be swept up in it as they literally raced down to the back tables to sign-up to courses which were in the thousands of dollars. These people really know how to promote. The only thing we ended up buying was a motivational meditation cd set which is something we knew we would use.

I was also amazed at how people can be ‘encouraged’ to pour their heart out, at times to perfect strangers. Not my thing, regardless of how much I am told that letting it all go will help me on my way to becoming a millionaire. I think it is more about having a positive approach, an action plan and a financial strategy in place and just being a little relaxed about it all.

I do recommend that you read “The Secrets of a Millionaire Mind” or attend the Millionaire Mind Intensive, just leave your checkbook at home so that you don’t rush into signing up for something you may not need. Go home and think about it first, don’t get swept up in the hype of ‘only this price at this conference’.

So, on a more positive note, the book itself is well worth reading if you want to change your thoughts about money. Eker uses lots of comparisons between the rich and the poor. For example:

Rich people associate with positive people, poor people associate with negative people.
Rich people are excellent receivers, poor people are poor receivers.
Rich people believe ‘I create my life’. Poor people believe, ‘Life happens to me’.
Rich people act in spite of fear. Poor people let fear stop them.
Rich people focus on opportunities, poor people focus on obstacles.

Eker suggested that giving is most important, not only for the receiver but also for the giver. So we decided to put into practice some of what we learnt and we started by each taking $20 worth of $5 notes with us on our daily walk (while we were in Sydney) and giving it out to various homeless people on the street. The idea is to carry the money in your pocket, as you don’t want to be pulling out your purse on the street all the time, and to give it out without judgment. It helps with training your mind to not judge how a person may have arrived at their situation, and not to think about how they will spend the money, or whether or not they show gratitude, but just to give unconditionally.

In a nutshell the basic premise of the Secrets of a Millionaire Mind is that you set yourself up with a ‘money blueprint’ which sticks with you for as long as you hold onto it. So if you constantly believe that you can never be rich, that you can’t make ends meet and that you never have any money then that’s what will be the result in your life. Eker’s thinking is that if you believe money isn’t that important then you are most likely broke.

Money is important in my opinion – without it we can’t exist in the society we live in. We need it to survive so it’s incredibly important. And why would you only want a small amount to just get by? Who created that thinking for us? We should have enough money to have the freedom that we all deserve as well as to help others. Wouldn’t you love to help a friend who is in a financial crisis, wouldn’t you love to help a child who desperately needs an operation, wouldn’t you love to fund a school in an underdeveloped country? Only money can do this but for some reason many of us feel that we only deserve just enough to cover our expenses and maybe have a little fun if we can afford to. How limiting is that?

Then there are others that say that money can’t buy you happiness. I agree with that but then again being poor ain’t going to make you happy either. At least if you have plenty of money, you don’t have any worries about paying your bills and feeding your family – those problems disappear. I love this quote which pretty much sums it up:

“Money can’t buy happiness But I’d rather cry in my Ferrari”

Giveaway

Today we are going to be giving away 5 paperback copies of ‘The Secrets of a Millionaire Mind’ so if you are interested in receiving a copy please let us know in the comments below. If we get more than five people requesting a copy then we will be randomly selecting the winners. Giveaway closes on Oct 10, 2010.

If you are interested in seeing T. Harv Eker in action you can click the following link to attend the Millionaire Mind Teleseminar.

UPDATE: The competition has now closed and we will be announcing the winners shortly. Thank you so much to all our lovely readers who participated.

AND THE WINNERS ARE….