Melvin is the owner of The Melvin Blog. A blog all about internet marketing and making money online. Follow Melvin by visiting his site and subscribing to his feed.

Nowadays, it’s no secret that you can make money online blogging. In fact, just look at how many blogs we have now talking about making money online. But anyway, most are just stupid to think that by talking about making money online, they can make money online. Honestly, if you look at most “make money online” bloggers nowadays, they just run a blog hoping to make money by talking how they can make money online… but the truth is they never have any idea how to really make money themselves. Sorry for ranting!

Now, I just feel that I have to talk about a thing that most people don’t really get about having a successful blog. By saying successful, it means that it isn’t just about the income it generates. If you look at the successful bloggers today, shoemoney, johnchow, darren rowse and etc, many like to duplicate what they have done and have those people as their inspiration. But how did they really reach that lofty stature? Ok, I hate to give thrillers and drumrolls… so I’ll say it, patience!

The Number One Quality in Successful Bloggers… Patience!
Of course there are other reasons like, expertise, humor, perseverance and more… but honestly, I am surprised at how many people don’t see the value of patience. Look at what all those bloggers I have mentioned have in common… it is that they are blogging for more than 3 and 1/2 years now. 3 years is a very long time, and they are still alive and kicking. Another thing is to try to look at their archives, let’s take ProBlogger for example. You can see that he has started out writing “high-quality” content, even when he was just getting started… but he didn’t have any comments for at least the first 100 posts. I mean, can you see it? I’m sure it’s hard to swallow writing a post for an hour or two… having no one care to say their piece on it. But taking this into account, look how famous he is now!

You can say the same with others. Shoemoney wrote about his ramblings before, and no one really cared about them… but now he writes his ramblings, and look at how many comments he gets! In all, it looks like sometimes… we just have to be patient with things. Most modern bloggers start their blog and get quite excited with it (which there is nothing wrong with). After three months, if they see that no one is interested in commenting and reading… then they might want to call it quits already! If your blog is not getting what you think it should be getting… simply work harder. It might not work for the first few months… but believe me, it will make sense for the long run. Sometimes, we all need to look past what is happening in the short term, and focus in on the long run. Besides, what do you think is the first thing that makes a site successful and popular? The answer is so simple. It is because they have been there, hanging in for a long time

-The Net Fool

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The following is a guest post that was written by Caden Grant, who blogs about making money at CadenGrant.com. Caden is a fresh face in the MMO world… check him out!

Search engine optimization is very important for any blog right? The better your blog is optimized for search engines, the more traffic you get. The more traffic you get, the more money you make. There is a lot to learn about search engine optimization. Many bloggers make simple mistakes… so I’ve made a list of the most common search engine optimization mistakes most people make. Try to avoid these mistakes and it should help you out.

1. Not updating and maintaining

This is very important. Most successful bloggers or website owners do this, but if they don’t it will affect their ranking. If you don’t keep up to date with the new algorithms of search engines, your page will eventually drop in the rankings. Some people think that after optimizing their website, they’re done forever. Well, this isn’t true. Try to always update your web page and work on your search engine optimization. As far as updating and keeping up with the competition, it’s also important to update your content. Google likes updated content and will make your page rank better in the SERPs.

2. Wasting your time on the meta tags

This is another common one. People think that if you get your meta description and keywords tag right, it will help optimize your site to perform well in the search engines. Well, this also isn’t true. Nowadays, meta tags don’t really help at all, they’re mostly a thing of the past. Now, you don’t even need the meta keywords tag as it doesn’t have any effect on your rankings. Although, the meta description tag does come up as the description for your website in Google.

3. Not minimizing duplicate content

Duplicate content mostly refers to blocks of content on websites that match other parts of content on your website. Some examples are discussion boards like vBulletin that can show the regular version of a post and then a different version, WordPress, printer-friendly pages, etc. Some people will use duplicate content to try to gain more traffic from search engines, but it’s not necessarily good for your users… or even yourself. Google will probably think you’re trying to deceive your users, and it will hurt your search engine rankings or cause in complete removal in certain search engines. You can try to minimize duplicate content in a few ways.

1. You can tell the search engines to block certain pages through your robots.txt file.
2. Use a 301 redirect. A 301 redirect, (Permanent Redirect), will redirect your users and search engine spiders to the actual page that should be displayed. (Do this in your .htaccess file, look up 301 redirects)

4. Canonicalization Issues

Canonicalization is a term that means you can get to your website through different urls like for instance www.yoururlhere.com and yoururlhere.com and someotherurl.com. Decide on the link you want and use it. You can use Google webmaster tools to tell it which URL you prefer to be indexed and Google will use that link for future crawls. Another way to do this is in your .htaccess file. Use this code:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Replace it with your link details of course, then save it and upload it. That’s it!

5. Not using the HTML attribute rel=”nofollow”

As Wikipedia states: nofollow is an HTML attribute value used to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing “spamdexing” from occurring. NoFollow is not meant for blocking content or preventing it from being indexed, but instead is meant for telling the search engines to not affect the pages PageRank. For instance, the “About Us”, “Contact Us”, “FAQ”, “Privacy Policy”, etc aren’t really important enough to have a PageRank.

6. Not using relevant keywords when linking internally

Try not to use the words like ‘click here’ or ‘here’ or anything similar when linking to posts or something within your website. Try to use keyword relevant links. Like if I was linking to 10 Ways to Make Money Blogging, I wouldn’t link to it saying “Click here.” Instead I would link to it using the words 10 Ways to Make Money Blogging.

7. Ignoring the <title> tag

The <title> tag of your website in the heading of your code is very important as it comes up in the search engines for the hyperlink to your website. Use relevant keywords related to your site in the title of your tag. If your website is about making money online, include those words in the title of your Web page.

8. Using JavaScript menus

JavaScript menus aren’t necessarily bad… but just know that search engine spiders cannot read JavaScript. So, if you can, try to stay away from them altogether.

9. Letting pages get indexed that shouldn’t be

There are certain pages on websites that shouldn’t be indexed in search engines. For instance, printer-only versions of web pages, or just content-less pages with no use to the user. Go to Google and use the site:link.com/page.php or whatever to check and see if certain pages that should not be indexed are indexed. If you find pages that shouldn’t be there, you can tell the search engines to block them using the meta robots tag in the heading of your website and the robots.txt file.

10. Not using SEO friendly URLS

Not using SEO friendly URLS is also another mistake bloggers make. For instance, if you have the link http://www.linkhere.com/page.php?id=3&blahblah=computercases it’s not very friendly to the search engines. What would be a better option is something like http://www.linkhere.com/computercases/ or something similar. In wordpress you have the option to change your “permalink” so that it’s more SEO friendly.  It should be under the permalinks option in your settings. Choose custom structure and put /%postname% in the field.

11. Using flash without HTML

Flash might look good but it’s not good for the search engines. Search engine spiders can’t read flash (yet). So either try to stay away from flash or as an alternative create an HTML version of the web page and optimize it.

12. Images as headlines

Some people think that images do better as headlines but it’s really better to use h1, h2, h3 and so on for headings. Images are good but text is great. Search engines love text. Although, be sure to use the alt=”" attribute when using an image to describe what the image is.

13. Lack of keywords in content

To rank for certain keywords, of course you have to have keywords in your content. Put them where necessary. Putting them in heading tags or in bold is really good. Just try not to make it look spammy. Write for people not for search engines.

So there you have it. 13 common mistakes most bloggers make when blogging. If you try to avoid these problems, they should help you in optimizing your own blog for success!

-Caden Grant

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This post is a guest post by Bradblogging.com, a site that aims to help you blog better with personal blog tips and blogging help. Subscribe to my feed if you like my tips!

If you’re anything like me, you would have been reading Jim’s blog for a while now, learn some pretty unique tips on how to make money and definitely of had some laughs along the way. I was reading his latest “spoof” post when I thought of the post that you are now reading.

I’m sure you’ve heard of people that make thousands of dollars a month on the internet through their “Get Rich Quick” scheme landing pages. They usually want you to buy something at the end, and you simply [x] out of the page, to be stopped by a stupid javascript popup that promises 50% off of the original price and get redirected to a “live” chat agent. It is just a bot.. believe me, I’ve tried to talk to it.

Now, what if I was to tell you that you could make some decent money – not off Ecourses or Ebooks (they are over saturated as it is), but off of referral commissions. Now how would you do that? Read on.

How To Make Money With Referral Commissions

It’s actually pretty simple to do. Simply find out about startup programs or affiliate networks (Marketleverage for example.. there is a newer network that I read about on Tyler Cruz’s website called Amped Media) and sign up for them.

You will then go through the “approval” stage and then most likely be accepted. Then, instead of trying to promote the offers that the networks or product website offers, promote the actual network or website through your referral link. Paste it on your blog, website, email signature, articles that you write, RSS Feed, etc.. As many places as you have access to. Chances are that people will wonder what the link leads to and will sign up under your referral. For most affiliate networks, that’s 5% of what they make forever. Other websites will offer you a set rate for your referrals.

The ideological theory around this is generating the buzz about it before the bigger sites do. The more time you promote it before the larger sites get their referral links in there, the more people will be signed up and locked into your name – earning you a passive income for doing absolutely nothing. In other words, they will be doing all of the work for you!

Sit back, relax, and watch your wallet get fatter. I hope you’ve enjoyed this guest post… and thanks for reading!

-Brad “BradBlogging.com”

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This guest post is by Mattaw of Moneybites.com. Moneybites is a blog sharing tips, tricks and little bites about how to earn online, so check out his blog!

Video blogging seems to be gaining traction in the blogosphere. Everywhere I look I see video blogs pop up. Now this could just be me going crazy, but I do think there is a lot more interest in video posts.

So, I know you guys are all groaning thinking, “oh no, not another what you need to do to make good videos post”! Well, do I have a treat for you. This post is, in fact, not about what makes a good video but what makes a bad video.

What you should glean from this post is what mistakes not to make, so next time you’re making a video you can keep them in mind (and hopefully not make them).

Video and audio quality – This is my number one factor when looking at videos. Honestly if I can’t hear what your saying or having a hard time seeing you (due to static), I’m probably not going to be watching it again. If your audio quality sucks, get a better mic (and/or camera). In terms of video quality, if you’re making a lot of videos it’s probably worth investing in a decent camera (come on, they’re not too expensive).

Cutting together your video with a program also drastically improves video quality. Transitions or even just cleaning the video up using a program like Windows Movie Maker (it’s auto installed for all you PC users), or any of the other decent freeware out there will improve your watchers watching experience. The result is more people will come back to watch what you produce because it is simply easier to watch. I personally won’t watch anything that looks like it was made by a sixth grader (unless I’m at a sixth graders video presentation, then I might stomach it..).

Load time - Don’t self host your videos. Unless you have a server to be streaming videos off of I wouldn’t recommend doing so. Honestly, nothing annoys me more than a slow or partially loading video. If you self host your videos you can/will run into these problems. There are tons of good free hosting sites out there. Even if you want to get away from YouTube you can find another site that allows you to upload video (and maybe has a revenue sharing option for all that are looking to slightly monetize videos). A couple of these are sites like Viddler, Veoh, Revver, and so on.

Confidence – Not a lot of people want to watch the person with no clue what they’re talking about (unless for some reason they are very entertaining, so if you are very entertaining, disregard what I say next ). Speak on video with confidence. Video blogging is about being a good actor. Even if you are nervous, don’t show it. Confidence is attractive to a viewer when watching a video. By being confident it assures viewers that you know what you’re talking about (even if you sometimes don’t…. ) and gives them another reason to watch the content you put out there.

How the blogger looks – Unless you are the sleepy unshaven video blogger, you shouldn’t look like a sleepy unshaven blogger. Video blogging is also about putting in an effort to look decent (at least I think it is). If you look like you just rolled out of bed (like quite a few people that video blog do), it turns me off. If you don’t put in the effort to make yourself look good for your videos, why should I watch it?

Content (and this doesn’t mean you need good content… that is a given) – Is your content dry and boring. Video blogging is about putting a face to a blogger and giving a user a new experience. If I think that you’re just reading off a screen or piece of paper, I won’t be tuning back in. The moral of this story: vary your content. Do make it all about just the material. Perhaps use some comic relief or even just being somewhat personal can break the monotony of a lecture like video post.

So heed my advice, and don’t make the mistakes I outlined above! Hopefully you will all take my advice, produce better video posts, and subscribe to my RSS feed.

-Max

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This is a guest post by Kevin from The Red Stapler Chronicles – an up and coming personal finance blog about making money and get paid to websites.

1. “Get busy living or get busy dying”
—Andy Dufresne, Shawshank Redemption

The millions of Americans that are currently overwhelmed with debt and are on the road to financial ruin, really only have two choices.  They can immediately start taking measures to reduce their debt and spending.  Even if they are able to eliminate one monthly bill or pay an extra $25 on a credit card, they are “getting busy living” toward of debtless future.   Yes, sometimes the path to recovery can be a long and difficult one (probably not as bad as Andy’s path to freedom in the movie).  However, the second option, ignoring the problem, will quickly cause your financial life to end via drowning in a vast debt pool.

2. “Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.” — Forrest Gump, Forrest Gump

If you can predict the future, you don’t need to be wasting your time reading any personal finance blog.  But, if you can’t, you need to prepare for unexpected events.  Sometimes these events will be tragedies (a layoff or illness), while sometimes they will be blessings (a pregnancy or wedding).  Regardless, a nicely funded emergency fund is a necessity.  Experts say a great fund would cover 6 months of living expenses.  Nevertheless, a thousand dollar emergency fund would surely be a good start.

3. “It’s not always the popular person who gets the job done.” — Gordon Gekko, Wall Street

Of course, I had to include a quote from Wall Street in this list.  Often, difficult decisions have to be made in order to eliminate debt.  These decisions are more than likely to affect others.  For instance, try explaining to your teenage daughter why you are getting rid of HBO, Showtime, and Starz to save some extra money.  Imagine how your co-workers might react if you start putting in extra hours in order to earn a promotion.  Regardless, if you are really determined to eradicate your debt, you will sometimes have to play the role of the bad girl/guy.

4. “You’re not your job.  You’re not how much money you have in the bank.  You’re not the car you drive.  You’re not the contents of your wallet.  You’re not your f**king khakis.” — Tyler Durden, Fight Club

Too frequently, Americans get caught up in a destructive possession contest (usually with a family member, neighbor, or in-law).  It really must be engrained in our DNA somehow.  For example, your brother buys a new self-propelled lawn mower—you get a sit down mower.    Perhaps, your brother-in-law boasts at Christmas table about his recent success in the stock market, you create an E-Trade account the second he leaves.   Would you take a job as a garbage man even if it had a higher salary and better benefits than your current job?  These types of decisions are rarely based on anything remotely close to real financial data.  Even though you probably will get a temporary high of being able to “one up” a family member or spare yourself the humiliation of telling someone you are a garbage man, these decisions are unlikely to provide any lasting happiness in your life.

5. “Life goes by pretty fast.  If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” — Ferris Bueller, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

I think everyone would agree that reducing and eventually eliminating debt is an extremely worthwhile goal.  Too many Americans are forced to live under extreme levels of stress because of their financial difficulties.  Still, life is too short to make EVERY decision in your life based on saving money.  You can still enjoy a trip to the movies to see the newest blockbuster (maybe sneak in your own snacks though J).  You can still go to your parent’s house across the country for the holidays (maybe you forgo the non-stop flight to save money).  The road to a healthier financial situation is not short and will not be a straight line.  Just keep your financial compass in the right direction and you will eventually reach your goal.

Even movies can help you live a better, more economical lifestyle. Remember to plan for the worst, and keep your finances in order if you really want to live the dream!

-The Net Fool

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