Apparently, Amazon sold millions of Kindle Fire. That’s great for them, but when you know that Amazon actually loses $10 per Kindle Fire sold, it makes you think…

Amazon says: we sold millions of Kindle Fire.

Translation: we lost millions of dollars.

Of course, Amazon’s strategy is to recoup its losses by selling content to Kindle Fire users, especially via the $70 Amazon Prime membership. That’s a gamble though.

In comparison, Apple makes $200-$300 per iPad sold. And that’s money going straight to the bank.

If you run a website and have basic interest in SEO, you probably heard that Google recently released their so-called Panda update, a change in algorithm aimed at getting rid of the shitty sites such as eHow.com and similar content farms.

The change in the algorithm came in 2 iterations. The first one came out on February 24th, in the US only, affecting about 10% of search queries. The second one was released on April 11th and was rolled out in the rest of English-speaking countries, also making a slight change to the US algo, which supposedly affects an additional 2% of US queries.

On the morning of February 25th, I was glad to see that my iPhone blog had gone through the update and came out unhurt. Even better than that, it seemed I was doing even better in search engines. It was nice to see Google recognizing me as a good resource. Then on April 12, everything changed when I realized the second iteration of the Panda update had slapped me in the face. Big time!

A quick look at my Google Analytics account revealed the damages. Week over week, I lost 31% of my traffic, going from an average of 90,000 visits/day to about 60,000. That really hurts, believe me.

At first, I kinda panicked a bit. Oh my god, what am I gonna do? You know, that kinda ritual every time Google tweaks their algo. Then I tried to rationalize all this.

First, this is not the end of the world. Taking a 30% traffic decrease sure isn’t pleasant, but I was there before and I did fine. As a matter of fact, this 30% slap takes me back where I was about 4 months ago, when I was averaging a little over 60,000/day.

Second, and maybe most importantly, I felt like the growth I had seen in the last few months was just insane, almost unnatural. Yes, I do admit that I was surprised I was receiving so much traffic from Google for very important keywords.

What really bothered me the most was the drop in revenues I expected from this. I now have several writers that I pay to write on iDB, and a drop in revenues means either a drop of my writers’ pay, or at least the freeze of their pay. To this day, I’m still not sure how the Panda slap will affect my bottomline so I haven’t really strategized about it, but a drop in pay for my writers is very unlikely.

So after the freak out period came the relaxed period. I just dealt with it, sucked it up, and moved on. It’s just the way it is, I said to myself.

Then I had a chat with my friend Shane from TC Geeks. Shane had been hurt much more than I was as he had seen a 50% drop in traffic. Ouch! And, as ironic as that can be, Shane, who wanted to work full time on his blog, had happened to give his 2-week notice the day of the Panda slap. Double ouch!

Shane was kind enough to tell me about what he had learned about Panda while browsing the various forums and blogs posts about the topic. Shane found out that we were not the only sites being affected, and that a large amount of web publishers were hit by the panda. Some of them just lost their business overnight.

The most interesting find to me is that Panda appears to hit those sites with numerous ads or affiliate links. iDB sure is one of those. I admit I have more ads than I really would want to have on the site, but again, this is my only way to generate revenues, allowing me to pay myself and the other writers.

What’s strange is that after the Panda update, many sites that rank better than me actually have more ads than I do. Even worse, Google now seems to rank crappy spammy sites better than my own blog, that is 100% original and legit.

I tried to analyze what had happened, or rather how I was affected. Turns out that instead of ranking #1 for many high value keywords, such as “iPhone 5″, I now rank much lower. It’s not as if Google had kicked me out of their SERPs, it’s just that they lowered my ranking, and you know as well as me that being anything but #1 for a query doesn’t bring you much traffic.

So I still have the graces of Google, simply not as much as I did before.

One of the advice that Shane gave me was to not do anything drastic to the site. When Google changes their algo, many publishers freak out and completely change the way they manage their sites (ie. by changing the URL structure), but this is actually the biggest mistake you can make. As Google is fine tuning the Panda, things might get better, and those spammy sites ranking better than me today, might even be gone tomorrow.

This whole episode confirmed my realization that we, web publishers, are extremely dependent on Google. One slight change in the way they rank websites and my business loses 30% of traffic, and most likely revenues. What can you do about that?

The logical and somewhat stupid answer is to get traffic elsewhere. The obvious is to not be dependent on Google. Sure, but how do you do that?

I think a real answer to that question could be a blog post in itself, but in a nutshell, I believe you have to build your reader’s loyalty. If they’re loyal, they’ll come back, and even better, they’ll sen people over to you.

But of course, creating a loyal readership is easier said than done. It involves great quality content, a compelling voice, constant engagement of your audience, an omnipresence on Twitter and other social media avenues, and a lot of luck.

I have decided not to over-analyze what happened with Panda because I’m tired of SEO. SEO good practices change all the time. What doesn’t change is Google’s quality guidelines and this is where I’m going to focus my efforts for my blog, and so should you.

Whether you’re an Apple lover or hater, there is one thing you can’t deny: it’s the powerful and compelling presentation that Steve Jobs gives when he’s on stage. Not only Steve Jobs is a charismatic man, but he also knows how to play with our emotions and make us want to buy whatever he’s selling.

No matter how hard you try, you’ll never be able to speak like Steve Jobs. However, you can borrow some of his tricks to use in your own presentation. The way Steve Jobs does it is by repeatedly using very strong adjectives, basically brainwashing you to think that what he’s talking about is indeed “wonderful”.

Today, I’d like to share these adjectives with you so you can try to include them in your next presentation, sales pitch, or whatever you want to use them for.

• Significant
• Incredible
• Extraordinary
• Stunning
• Amazing
• Great
• Remarkable
• Jaw dropping
• Best
• Incredible
• Beautiful
• Wonderful
• Gorgeous
• Awesome
• Exciting
• Phenomenal
• Important
• Huge
• Aggressive
• Powerful

Do you have more words we should add to this list? Feel free to chip in by adding a comment.

I just updated one of my WordPress blogs to the latest version available, directly from the WP admin panel. After hitting the “please update now” link, I was quickly presented this message: “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.”

For the first minute or so I thought WordPress was working in the background and that my site would be back up in a couple minutes. But 5 minutes later, it was still displaying this message. I’d be lying to you if I said I wasn’t worrying…

After doing a little bit of research, I found this post on WP forums that explained how to get rid of this issue. Basically, all you have to do is get root access to your domain and simply delete the .maintenance file that was created.

This .maintenance file might be hidden, depending on what FTP client you’re using. Just make sure you choose to show hidden files, somewhere in your client’s settings.

As soon as I deleted the .maintenance file, my WP blog was back on track, and had been updated to the latest version of WordPress.

Hope this little trick will help some of you.

Up until last week, I followed back anyone who followed me on Twitter. Using Social Oomph, it was done all automatically without me having to do anything. If you followed me, minutes later I would automatically follow you back.

I started doing this for two main reasons. First, I wanted to follow back everyone as a courtesy. If you made the effort of following me and listening to what I had to say, then I considered following you back was the polite thing to do.

Second, I wanted to follow back everyone because I assumed that it would get me more followers (a lot of people are following you hoping that you will follow them back, thus increasing their followers count).

After a short while this became completely unmanageable. There was only one solution: mass unfollow everyone and start from scratch!

Why I Unfollowed Everyone

Twitter had lost all its sense to me. Sure I was using lists (and thank god for those) to help me categorize my Twitter buddies and follow what they had to say but this wasn’t convenient.

I ended up following 37,752 people while I had over 40,000 following me. Everytime I would look at my Twitter timeline, I would see tons of spam, porn, tweets about people sharing how good their meal was and a bunch of other stuff I couldn’t care less about. Finding good quality content on Twitter had been made impossible.

I started missing the days when I was following a couple hundred people. Those were people I had chosen to follow and was genuinely interested in listening and sharing with. There really was no other solution but unfollow everyone and start fresh.

How I Unfollowed Everyone

It took me a while to make up my mind. Should I do it? Should I not do it? I was worried that I would lose tons of followers in the process but I soon realized that those people that are really interested in me would not unfollow me. Really, I had nothing to lose.

Once I made the decision to unfollow everyone, I had yet to figure out a way to do it. I started searching online for services that could do that for me as I was not going to unfollow 37,752 people manually. I ran into a few sites that helped me unfollow a few hundred people at a time, but clearly that wasn’t the solution.

I finally remembered a website called SocialToo that offered similar services a year or so ago. I went to the site and was glad to see they were still offering this mass unfollow service. They charge $35 for doing a mass unfollow of your account but to me it was well worth it. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous before clicking the “run the script” button on SocialToo.

Building Up Relationships One Follow at a Time

It took about 12-14 hours for SocialToo to unfollow everyone I was following. I then looked at my timeline: it was blank. Nothing! It felt peaceful.

Now that my Twitter account was a clean slate, I started following people one by one. I started with people that were in my lists and added a few others along the way. It took me a couple hours to do that, but again, it was time well spent.

I did lose a few followers in the process but I don’t really care about that. The most important thing is that I fell in love with Twitter all over again and that I can finally look at my timeline without being overwhelmed by twam (Twitter spam).

Do you automatically follow everyone back on Twitter? Or do you hand pick those you want to follow back?

Everyday I see people online that are trying really hard to blog and pretend to be what they’re not. They usually try to use very complicated words, or they try to make themselves bigger than they are by saying “we”, when they should just say “I”.

Why do people do this? They try to impress us because they are worried that if they show what they really are, then they won’t be taken seriously. Reality is, it’s quite the opposite. If you pretend to be what you’re not, people will eventually figure it out and you will lose all respect they might have had for you.

Because it’s easier to show what you really are than pretending to be someone you’re not, finding your voice on your blog shouldn’t be a painful exercise and will benefit you greatly.

Everyone is Guilty

You’re not the only one pretending to be something you’re not online. When I first started blogging about the iPhone, I was just another copy/paste, a blogger molded to perfection to fit the terrible blogging standards that many most blogs use out there.

I would just read an article, then paraphrase it on my blog. I was proud of myself because I had created unique content which would sometimes bring a few extra visitors to my site.

One of my favorite thing to do was to say “we” instead of “I”. Saying “we” in my articles would instantly make me feel like I was running a large blog with dozens of writers. That was so good for my ego!

Most bloggers are guilty of this. Because everyone does it doesn’t mean you should do it to.

The Web Doesn’t Need Another Standardized Blogger

After a while, I grew tired of pretending to be someone else. I got tired of paraphrasing articles. I got tired of being yet another blogger among thousands of similar bloggers.

The web is so full of crappy shitty bloggers that you don’t have to be one more of those. Why would someone read you if they can read about the same topics from someone really unique and original? Someone who would actually bring something to the table instead or regurgitating content and ideas.

It took me some time but I eventually figured out that I didn’t want to be one of those plain bloggers anymore. That’s when I started working on finding my voice.

What is Your Voice?

Your voice is who you really are. That’s you when you’re talking with your friends and family. That’s you when you’re being 100% true to yourself and your values. Your voice is what sets you apart from every other blogger. Something that makes you unique, original, different, and hopefully remarkable.

Finding my own voice was actually pretty simple. I stopped bullshitting people and I started writing with my guts. That’s when I started giving my opinion on things vs just reporting on them. Instead of being just another iPhone blogger, I started building authority in the bloggosphere because I was writing with this special voice that is mine.

Try to write like you speak. It’s ok if you don’t speak well. It’s ok if you say “shit” or “fuck” all the time. If that’s the case, you’ll be known as the guy who swears a lot and that’s fine.

Be real. Be original. Be yourself.

Why Finding Your Voice is Important

It’s important to find your voice so you can set yourself apart from all copycat bloggers.

Like I mentioned above, finding my voice allowed me to stand out from the crowd and having me, Sebastien Page, recognized as an iPhone expert. I might not be an iPhone expert, but that’s how people see me because I talk a lot about the iPhone with my own voice. I’ve got my own views and opinions and I’m being recognized for that.

Once you’ve found your voice, you will start seeing readers coming back and reading more of your content because they’ll see that you’re different from everybody else and that you have something to say.

If I had to sum it up, I’d say finding your voice is important because:

• it builds credibility
• it makes you original
• it builds trust
• it differentiates you
• it makes you shine
• it attracts readers
• it captivates those readers
• it keeps them coming back
• it sets you up as an authority

Have You Found Your Blogging Voice Yet?

I hope these few words will convince you that it’s important for you to find our own voice and be true to yourself and your readers. If you have any question or comment, please feel free to speak up in the comments section below.

Earlier this year I wrote a post about how I make money online in which I stressed the fact that it was hard for me to explain people what my job is when they ask what I do for a living. At the time, I was doing many things online which made it hard for me to tell exactly what I was doing, especially to those people who don’t know much about ways of making money online.

Things have changed a lot since then. My lovely fiancee and I traveled the world, I gave up on Google Adsense after they gave up on me and decided to take me back after all, but most importantly, my iPhone blog went from about 300,000 visitors/month to over 1,500,000.

What I previously considered a “remunerating hobby” became a full time job, and even though I’m not writing about the iPhone 8 hours per day, I certainly am reading or discussing about the iPhone most of the day.

Now I know what to tell people when they ask me what I do for a living: I’m a blogger.

And you know what? I love telling people I’m a blogger who writes about the iPhone for a living. Most of the time, they look at me like I’m coming from another planet. 99% of the time I can predict what their first question is going to be: “how do you make money?”

So I usually give them the short and sweet answer and tell them that advertising is my main source of revenue. To be honest with you, I always hope they ask me more questions about it because I love telling people about blogging and the different ways you can make money from it.

I think Tina loves telling her friends and new acquaintances that I’m a blogger too. Is she bragging about it? Neh, I think she’s just very excited her husband-to-be as such a great and unusual job, which has been able to support both of us financially during our eight months of traveling.

Right now, I couldn’t be happier with my situation. But (there’s always a “but”), the big problem is I spend way too much time in front of my computer. I know it’s bad for me. I know I need to get out and do stuff. I know all that but for some reason, I can’t get away from the computer once I start staring at the screen. It’s definitely something I have to work on this year.

All in all, life is very very good. How’s your life been lately?

A couple of months ago I wrote about how Google killed my online business, taking a big chunk out of my monthly revenues, but today I have good news. I have very good news! My Adwords account has been reinstated!

For those of you who didn’t read my previous article about my experience being kicked out of Adwords, let me recap for you. Basically Google suspended my Adwords account because it was violating their landing page guidelines policy. After many email exchanges, Google pretty much told me to F off and that they were done with me, banning my account. Forever.

My Life Without Adwords

For someone who makes money online, being banned from Adwords sucks. I was completely desperate for a few weeks. I had a hard time getting over it as I was trying to deal without it.

I tried MicroSoft Adcenter. The interface is awesome, but the results are very poor. While it does bring a bit of traffic, it just doesn’t compete with Adwords at all.

After a few weeks though, I realized that I didn’t really need Adwords per say. Sure, it really sucked that I couldn’t advertise my sites as much as I wanted to, but I still had my affiliates promoting my sites for me, so I was still making money.

My rough estimate is that without Adwords, I would generate about $3,000/month. Cost of traffic: $0 since it’s all affiliate driven.

With Adwords, I would generate up to $8,000/month. The downside is that I would have to pay $2,000+ in advertising cost. So basically, Adwords just brought in $6,000/month NET.

It’s clear that using Adwords generated more sales and more income but one of the “pervert effect” of using Adwords is that I have to monitor it. I have to look at my clicks, impressions, costs, and everything. This is stressful!

It is stressful on some days when you see you spent $100 in advertising and you sold products for only $50. It was stressful when this situation happened several days in a row and when I was actually losing more money than I was making.

After being banned from Adwords for a while, I didn’t stress about these numbers anymore. If the money was coming in, great. If it wasn’t, well at least I hadn’t spent any. And THAT was the good thing about being banned.

How I Got My Account Reinstated

I owe everything to Twitter. Or I guess I owe everything to how I use Twitter and the connections I made on it.

When I first found out my Adwords account was banned, I tried to figure out if I knew someone at Google. I don’t. Then I thought that maybe I knew someone who knew someone at Google. I sent a tweet asking for help and a few peeps were kind enough to tell me they would pass on my info to their “friend at Google”.

Then I remembered that the Editor for one of the top SEO blogs was following me (mind you, I’m one of the few 600 he follows). I will not give his name here because he might not want to have such requests every day.

So anyways, I DM this person and asked him kindly if he would be able to help me out since he probably knew a lot of people at Google. He replied to me saying that he would do his best to pass the information to someone. A few weeks passed and it seemed my savior had forgotten about it. Then 2 days ago, he emails me saying that he finally sent my info to his contact at Google. Great!

Two days later, I get this email from Google Adwords:

Hello Sebastien,

Thank you for your patience. I wanted to let you know that your AdWords
account and website were escalated for review as requested in your
previous emails. Per our investigation, your account was disabled for the
following Landing Page and Site Quality violation:

Customer ID: xxx-xxx-xxxx
Example URL: xxxxxxxxxxxx.com
LPQ Violation: Webmaster Guideline Violation

To learn more about Webmaster Guideline Violations, please visit
http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guidelines.cs&answer=73762&adtype=text.

Upon re-reviewing your account, we discovered that the violation was
removed. Given this, we were able to re-enable your site
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXx and your account, Customer ID xxx-xxx-xxxx.

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Sincerely,

I like the “re-reviewing” part!

Really, if I hadn’t made this connection on Twitter in the first place, I would still be banned from Adwords.

What Now?

When I got this email from Adwords this morning, I literally woke my fiancee up to let her know. She was still sleepy but I could tell that she was very happy to see me happy about it. A few minutes later, after really waking up she asked me “what are you gonna do now?”

I told her that maybe I didn’t need Adwords after all and that we’ve been doing pretty well even without it (the blog for example has been generating great money lately).

Then of course I realized that this was stupid of me to pass on an extra $3,000/month. I don’t mind having the stress of spending money in Adwords if that means I can increase my revenues by 100%.

*Sigh*. I wish I didn’t have to be so dependent on Google.

In my previous article about how I make money online, I briefly mentionned that to run a blog, you need expertise about a given topic, time, and dedication. I think those are the three pillars of blogging.

When I tell people how I make money blogging, they get really excited and want to start their own blog. Some of them actually do start their own blog but the majority fails because they either lack expertise, time, or motivation. If one of the pillars is missing, your blog is going to collapse.

Let’s have a look at the three pillars.

Expertise

Expertise doesn’t mean being a living encyclopedia in a certain field. It simply means knowing more than most people in a certain field. That’s a big difference.

For example, I blog about the iPhone but I really don’t consider myself an iPhone expert. More often than not, I will find myself confused when reading technical information about the iPhone. However, I know much more about the iPhone than 99% of iPhone owners. In their eyes, I am an expert.

We’re all expert at something. It sometimes takes time to figure out what we’re good at or what our special skills are, but the reality is we all have skill sets that can make us look like experts in the eyes of many.

Are you a good cook? Are you passionate about tropical fish? Do your neighbors come ask you about gardening tips? Those are areas of expertise that you can take advantage of and leverage on your own blog.

Time

Being an expert is one thing, but having the time to show your expertise is another. Blogging is time consuming and you will need lots of time if you want to run a blog.

Last year I set up a blog for my accountant. As the guy who filed my taxes, he saw how much money I was making from blogging and he thought he could just start his own blog about taxes. He sure had the expertise, but the poor man didn’t have the time.

He didn’t have the time to put at least one article up a week, and he didn’t have time to reply to comments. Basically, he didn’t have time for something that wasn’t generating income as quickly as his business. He gave up within days.

If you’re serious about blogging, make sure you have the time to blog!

Dedication

Being dedicated is very related to having time. You obviously can’t be dedicated if you don’t have time. But having time doesn’t mean you will be dedicated. You might have all the time in the day to blog, but the truth is that if you don’t feel like blogging, well, you won’t!

I am very dedicated to my iPhone blog. I write at least one post a day, every single day. I am so dedicated that I sometimes get up at 3 in the morning to cover breaking news. I buy every new iPhone coming out. I read over 50 iPhone-related sites. I answer questions on Twitter about the iPhone. I reply to people’s comments on my blog or on Facebook. I do this because I am committed and dedicated.

There are some days when I don’t feel like writing an article because I lack the motivation to do it. Well you know what? I still move my ass and write an article. That’s dedication. No matter what happens, I’m going to publish one article/day, and I’m going to be as helpful as I can to people who think I’m an expert. They trust me, they give me their time (and their money); my part of the job is to being there to deliver what they come for.

Is that it?

Can you be a successful blogger simply by being an expert, having time and being dedicated? Absolutely not! These are just the basis of a blog. There is obviously much more to it than just the three pillars but those are the foundations and support of a solid blog.

What’s your take?

When you meet someone for the first time, there is always a time in the conversation when you’re going to ask each other what you do for a living. When I was working for the man, the answer was easy. I would simply say “I’m the Vice President of Marketing for a web company that offers various services to franchise companies”.

Now that I am self-employed and that I generate 100% of my revenues on the Internet, I find it a bit harder to explain what I do in one short and concise sentence. The best answer would be that I make money online. I’ve found that telling this usually generates about 60 more questions about the possible ways to make a living off a computer and an Internet connection.

In this article, I would like to discuss the various ways I make money online, mostly through blogging, content publishing and projects for clients.

How I Make Money Blogging

To me, blogging is one of the easiest ways to make money online. The start-up cost is extremely low. All you need is a domain name, a hosting plan, and a blog set up for a total cost of about $100/year. Of course, besides this you’ll need some time, expertise in a given field, and some serious motivation and dedication.

I run several blogs but there is one that I am completely dedicated to: my iPhone blog. I’ve been running this blog since May 2008 and at the time I am writing this, it is one of the most regarded iPhone blogs out there and it gets about 1 million visitors per month. Yes, you read it right. About 1 million people come visit my iPhone blog every month. Google “iPhone Blog” and you’ll see the iPhone Download Blog up there in the top results!

This didn’t happen overnight, but I can’t say that it took me forever to get here either. I’ve invested a lot of time in it. I really know what I’m talking about. I am very motivated and totally devoted to this blog, which I update at least once a day, every single day.

This being said, here is how I make money blogging:

Adsense

Adsense is a a service offered by Google that allows you to be paid everytime someone clicks on an ad on your site. This is basically how it works. You sign up with Adsense, Google gives you a piece of code to put on your site. This code will look at what your site is about and will display relevant ads. Whenever someone visits your site and clicks on one of these ads, Google will pay you a little commission. These commissions can go as little as $0.01/click to well over $50.

Although many A-list bloggers will tell you that Adsense sucks because it drives traffic away from your site, it still is a great and easy way to generate money easily. The downside to this is that you have no idea how much Google is really making thanks to you. When they pay you $0.25 for a click, they might actually make $4 for it, keeping the largest piece of the pie.

Banner Ads

I make quite a bit of money with banner ads without having to spend time managing them. I work with a company called BuySellAds (BSA). This is how it works. I tell BSA that I have a few ad spots available on my site and I also tell them what each spot is worth. That’s my part of the job.

BSA has a huge inventory of advertisors and puts my site in front of them. When an advertisor thinks my blog would be a great fit for their products, the advertisors can look at my ad spots options (placement and price) and decides to buy an ad.

From there, BSA collects the payment and takes a 25% cut. That’s their commission for their service. After collecting payment, it will automatically display the new ad on my site and send me an email telling me I just made money (I love receiving those emails).

The benefit of using such a service is that BSA helps me connect with advertisers that I may never find otherwise. Additionally, it makes it very easy and safe to collect the payment. Finally, and more importantly to me, all this is handled without me having to do anything.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a form of marketing where the affiliate (me in that case) promotes a business or service in exchange for a percentage or fixed commission of the sales they generate.

Let’s take the example of my iPhone blog. Invisible Shield is a product that helps protect your iPhone from scratches. I placed a banner for their product on my site and every time someone clicks on this banner and buys an Invisible Shield, I get about $5.

There are affiliate programs for virtually every product or industry out there. Here are 5 of my favorite affiliate marketplaces:

• ClickBank
• Regnow
• Share A Sale
• Commission Junction
• LinkShare

On my iPhone blog, I promote several affiliate programs ranging from accessories to softwares for iPhone. This generates pretty substantial revenues every month.

In-Text Advertising

In-Text advertising refers to links placed inside your text, that come with a double underline to differentiate them from normal links. Once the user rolls the mouse over the link, the advertising will pop.

Although these in-text ads, also known as contextual ads, can seem annoying, they’ve been generating quite some income for me since I started using them.

I was very reluctant to include them in my blog until I realized that 1) my readers don’t mind them at all, and 2) they can generate thousands each month.

I use Kontera for my in-text ads. I even cut a pretty sweet deal with them, which is probably why I generate so much income from these ads.

Sponsored Tweets

Just like in-text ads, it took me a while to jump on the sponsored tweets bandwagon and so far, I’m not really impressed by the results. I do get people to pay me to send a tweet promoting their products from time to time, but not as often as I would want it.

There are 2 ways I go about it. The first is that I let people pay me directly via Paypal to send their sponsored tweets. That’s my favorite way because there is no middleman.

The other way is to use a service called Sponsored Tweets. It’s like a marketplace where advertisers can find tweeters like me. Although this service is very respectable, I don’t like it as much as the first method because it takes a pretty big commission, which means less money for me.

Content Publishing

Publishing and selling content is my favorite way to make money online because if you do it well, it doesn’t require much work at all and can provide a steady revenue stream.

Writing & Selling eBooks

eBooks are hot and they’re about to become even hotter. They allow anyone with a little bit of knowledge about a given topic to be published at a very small cost.

The concept is very simple: you find problematic topics and give the solution under the form of an ebook. I wrote a few eBooks on my own that I am now selling via the ClickBank marketplace.

Blog Building and Internet Marketing Consulting

I recently started offering my services to a select group of clients. From constructing a new blog from scratch, through to writing killer articles that attract more traffic and links, I help individuals and businesses, large and small, every day. Here are some example services:

• Blog building
• Blog teaching
• Social Media consulting
• Search Engine Optimization
• Content creation

More to Come

As the Internet evolves, new ways of making money online are created. I believe that what I’m doing now online has nothing to do with what I’ll be doing in 10 years.

How do you make money online?