Make Money Online - Scam or Legit?

5 Bucks a Day Jr. Review

This post is about an opportunity or an offering that I feel is totally legit.  By legit I mean

1) worth it’s price
2) absolutely lives up to its claims

That’s the ebook, 5 Bucks a Day Jr. 

To quote from the Squidoo lens on 5 Bucks a Day, where I came upon the concept and ebook,

Every week I work on something that will earn me that 5 bucks, every day for a long time.

Next week, I'll work on something else that will earn me another 5 bucks a day.  By the end of the year, I'll be at the point where I'm earning $260 a day (52 weeks times 5 bucks), just from this year's efforts.

To me this seemed realistic, no promise that I’d open my Clickbank account the next morning and be overwhelmed by the cash pouring into it. The author continues on his lens

The concept behind "5 Bucks a Day" is that those attempting to make money on the Internet are often overwhelmed with all the possibilities. Auctions. Web sites. Dropshipping. Blogs. Search engine optimization. Bum Marketing aka Article Marketing. Social bookmarking. Resell rights products. Affiliate marketing. And on and on. So much to learn. So many possibilities. Where do you start?

I've been there, done that, and went through 3 long years of unprofitable frustration before I realized that it wasn't what I didn't know about Internet Marketing, it was about what I wasn't doing with what I did know.

Wow, I’ve been there, done that.  Not 3 years, more in the 3 – 6 month range, flitting from one internet money-making scheme (Stomping the Search Engines, Affiliate X, Day Job Killer, blogging advice, etc) to another.   I have some ideas of projects, good solid ideas that I’m never getting to.  I’m not focused and I don’t have a plan.  And every week I get a little more irritated with myself for chasing my tail and not getting anywhere. 

Then I saw the price for 5-Bucks-A-Day-Jr: $7.77.  I mean come on – I’ve blown that much money renting a video that we either never found time to watch or else wished we hadn’t spent the time watching. 

So I bought 5-Bucks-A-Day-Jr.  I like the fact that I can choose to upgrade to the full 5-Bucks-A-Day (at $47). 

Other things I like about 5-Bucks-A-Day-Jr. 

- I feel the author is a kindred spirit in terms of talking about need to focus and to stop jumping all over the place.

- The goals are realistic. 

- The author talks about developing a list as the key step.  But he means a list of projects, projects that can earn you $5 a day.  The book does not suggest that you have to develop a list of email addresses and their interests.  Yes, that's an option, but if you are like me and feeling that everyone already has too many opportunities/junk in their inbox already, you can find lots of other good ideas.

So I’m going to let you know how I’m doing with my $5 bucks a day plan.  The idea is a project a week.  So, that should give me a blog post per week as well.

Stay tuned.

Win-Loss Record 1 - 17

I FINALLY have a winning Adwords campaign.  It's kind of funny because I was complaining to a friend about a personal problem (no, nothing sexual) and they suggested a solution and said it was by far the best brand and why.  So, I checked it out, wrote a review and made that my landing page.  Did the standard keyword research and discovered that this wasn't a super-competitive and therefore expensive niche to advertise and voila -- a winning campaign. 

I mean it isn't going to put anyone through college.  It seems to be averaging about $3 - $4 a day in cost and about $6 - $10 a day in income.  But hey, at least it's a definite positive.  I did use almost everything I've learned along the way -- setting up several different ads and different keywords.  After several hundred impressions, I deleted all the poor performing keywords and ads, so that my clickthrough rate is now at 3% and climbing.  This has allowed me to keep whittling down my bids, which are still at 20 - 30 cents each.  At least I convinced myself it could be done.  Yeah. 

And everyone says that for every winning campaign expect to have 10 losers.  Well I counted and even saying "well this campaign was really just a variation of that one", I had 17 losers before this winner.   I confess this less than stellar 1 - 17 record to encourage the reader who has 15 or more losses already.

Budgeting My Time

In Two Voices Sending Me in Different Directions, I mentionned my unhappiness with how much time I was spending "making" money online versus other perhaps more substantial business ideas.  I wasn't quite ready to say all make-money-online ideas are scams, worthless wastes-of-time, BUT...  I felt I had gotten suckered into devoting more time to them than I should.

And then it hit me.  I need to budget my time.  I want to invest some time in my blog and websites, because I hope that I might end up with a passive income stream, even if it's a small one.  BUT... I can't spend all my "free" time on the online-money-making activities.  I realized I spend time even more irresponsibly than I spend money.  I tend to apply the simple test of "Do I want to spend time on this?" and answer yes or no.  If the answer is yes, then I go off at the first available moment. 

If I were to take the same approach spending my money at the store, it would be the equivalent of going along buying clothes and books and gifts for my family, only to end up with no money leftover for food.  How dumb can I be?

So I'm determined to set up a budget for my online activities.  A simple number of hours a week that I can spend and then chop that up into blog time, website maintenance and promotional activities.  My first step was to actually see how long does it take me to add a blog entry?  Today as I'm typing I've got a timer running.    It now reads 9 minutes and 21 seconds.  I have to hit save, so I'll round it up -- 10 minutes to post a blog entry (where I know what I want to say already).

It's a first step!

I've Been Tagged

As a frequent commenter on Lost Ball in High Weeds, I've been tagged to provide 5 Reasons I Blog.  Hmm.... 

1) Honesty is too rare among the How-I-Make-Money-Online crowd, or should I in the spirit of honesty call it the How-I-TRY-to-Make-Money-Online crowd.  I've been called "painfully honest" by a friend, so I knew I could contribute.

2) Most of the valuable online tips I've found have been from blogs.  Initially, I began reading blogs to find a topic worth commenting on and sprinkle some backlinks to my websites around the internet.  (Told you I was honest).  But while that was my initial reason, I've found some real gems of information out in the blog world and it made me want to join the discussion.

3) I like to write. 

4) While I don't expect to earn much, if any, money off this blog, I guess I already have three reasons that I blog AND I know some people make money from their blog, so in the spirit of you-have-to-play-to-win, I guess I thought I'd build a blog and see who came and MAYBE at some future date it might be a money-maker.  Sorry for rambling, let's summarize #4 as - money-making potential.

5) I like to laugh at myself and others.  Internet marketing, or making money online, or whatever you call this let-the-internet-make-you-rich-niche, provides plenty of material.

There you go Splork -- matched your 5.  Not sure if I'll tag 5 others or not.  Is this like a chain letter where only by passing it on will I be blessed with good luck?  You did your part.  Let me know if you are visited by Internet Prosperity shortly.

Two Voices Sending Me in Different Directions

I feel as though I have two different opinions sitting on my shoulder, whispering in each ear, sending me in different directions. 

On the one hand -- I read posts on forums.digitalpoint.com where it sounds like real people are making anywhere from $100 - $400 a day.  They aren't trying to sell me anything, so I think they are being honest.  Or John Chow reporting similar $$$ in his blog entries.   Granted John Chow's blog is not your average blog, but still... a tenth of his success wouldn't be all bad for just writing down my thoughts.

On the other hand, I listened yesterday to the video attached to Rich Schefren's blog entry, What They Won't Tell You where he talked about how too many people don't build a real business because they get sidetracked chasing all the overhyped "opportunities" to make money online. 

I know I am spread too thin, that I neglect substantial business ideas to try and make a quick buck here and there.  On the other hand, a modest second income stream, would really be useful. 

As you can see I'm still debating, still listening to both sides and trying to make up my mind. 

Squidoo - I LOVE IT

The other day I read a blog entry on Lost Ball in High Weeds about Squidoo.  I had seen Squidoo coming up in my search results from time to time and noticed the strange (Doesn't anything you don't know about seem strange the first time you see it?) "lens" terminology.  So I read the blog entry and looked at the Lost Ball author's lens, read Why Build a Lens and Everyone is an Expert.  And yes, I even read the warning label "Squidoo can be addictive" -- like I need another thing like THAT.

Even with that warning (Or was it because of it?), I logged in and created Random Dog Tips for Random Dogs, my very first lens.  And I love Squidoo and here is why:

1. It's about content.  Yes, some people create pages that are just lists of links OR contain one cut and pasted ad for one product.  But those lenses are just background white noise.  They don't get the attention.  Squidoo rewards good writing.
2. It's so easy to create a lens (page) with very nice mix of content -- a poll question, list of Amazon goodies, 3 or 4 text passages (I think of them as mini-essays or tips), a guestbook, maybe a video.  I have to say, no offense to Typepad, that I like the Squidoo interface better than any blogging or webpage creation software I've found.
3. The ranking appeals to the competitve jerk that lives inside me.  Upon creating a lens, expect to be ranked about a millionth (they haven't hit that number yet, but I'm sure they will).  If you use your common sense and their tips and join a few groups, sign a few other guestbooks, and participate in the community, you'll move up fast.  As I type Random Dog Tips for Random Dogs is number 1654 -- not bad for 2 days into the game.
4. Squidoo is set up to make it easy to donate a portion (or all) of any money earned by your lens, to charity.