Welcome To Smarter Wealth, You can win $150 this month just by commenting on this blog. You can check out details by clicking here

Do you want to learn how to earn big money with no investments? It is much easier than you think. In the last two weeks I have gone from earning almost no money online (I was earning about $100 per month) to earning a full time income online (a total of around $100 per day).

The method I used is really simple. It is freelance writing. I have seen success in this area and I want to partner with you guys so you can see success too.

I am going to offer to joint venture with the readers from my blog and I am going to teach you the simple method of making money online through freelance writing. There will be no upfront fee for this.

What Is In It For You?

You can learn how to make a full time income online by freelance writing and you can earn enough money to maybe quit your job or to just supplement your income.

What Is In It For Me?

With no upfront cos you may be asking the question “What is in it for you Ryan”. Well firstly the success stories will be great for me if I ever decide to write an ebook and market it. Secondly you need to agree to give me 10% of your earnings from freelance writing for the first month. This is a small price to pay and will not heavily impact on your bank. Then in one month you walk away richer and with the skills to make great money by being a freelance writer.

If you want to get involved in this joint venture with me simply send me an email via the contact page. Most of our contact will be via instant messenger on MSN (as email is annoying) and payment will be based on honesty. I look forward to working with anyone who is interested.

Smarter Wealth is holding its very first question and answer time and I received some great questions from my readers which I will answer in this post.

1. Sohail Asked:

Thatz great in my opinion. question answers sessions are always my favourite on blogs So here you go

“For some one who has started a new blog (technology, gadgets, software reviews in my case) What marketing methods would you suggest to begin with?”

Good to hear you like question and answers because I will do more in the future on Smarter Wealth. Maybe on every month or two. There are three marketing methods I would begin with. Firstly let me just tell you to steer away from advertising, because in the early days of a blog it is pointless because not enough people will hang around and it is a waste of money. 

Marketing Method #1 - Forums - Forums are a great place to get traffic, especially in this niche. Find technology forums and spend some time building a reputation on there. Reply to people’s questions and write some articles that will help people and post them in the forum. Many forums allow you to include a signature so make it a catchy one.

Marketing Method #2 - Comments

Writing comments on other blogs has caused me to go from about 30 visits per day a couple of months ago to 150-200 visits a day now. So comment on other blogs in your niche and get traffic as a result.

Marketing Method #3 - Free Article Submission

Check out www.ezinearticles.com and submit some tech related articles to this site. People will use this article for free and then they will have to link back to you, so make a catchy signature so people will click through. Write original articles for this site because if you use articles from your blog google will penalize you for duplicate content.

2. Tushar Dhoot Asked:

What`s the best investment you have made till date on your blog?

I have made many good investments into this blog such as the new theme which is called One Theme and also another great investment was the program OIO publisher which I use to manage my advertising (this is worth its weight in gold). But the best investment I have ever made into this blog is running my Comment King competition. This has increased commenting 10 fold on my blog and I love the sense of community it has brought.

3. Andy Asked:

What is the best money making opportunity for a new blogger entering the blogging world?

Definately affiliate sales. You need to collect people’s names and email by using a program such as Aweber and then send out monthly newsletters which have good information plus which talk about affiliate products. This is the best way to make money as a nubie. Or do some freelance writing.

4. Rebecca Asked:

This is a few questions but they are all related.

How do you put together your newsletters?
Is it repeat content from your blog or do they contain unique content?
How often do you put out a new newsletter?

Thanks!

Well, currently I am not running an official newsletter. I am simply doing a blog broadcast through AWeber to my newsletter subscribers. This is soon to change and as of Jan 1st I will be running an official newsletter which will contain loads of great content.

I will put unique content in this newsletter and I will put it out once per week. Hope this helps

5. Rahul Asked:

What is better, creating a blog and put ads on it or do website flipping?

Depends on what you like. I prefer creating a blog because you can create relationships with your readers and you can gain passive income over the long term. If you are good at website flipping you can make a lot more more quicker than blogging. But why not do both? I am trying site flipping again (after a few failed attempts) and I will see how I go.

6. Computer Tweaks Asked:

i have some domains around 20 which i never developed due to lack of time and some of them are expiring on march .And i will be free in the month of december and i really love some of the domains so i wont be parting with the good domains some domains i think are waste which i bought due to my inexperience at that time.Can you suggest me what should i try to do with these extra domains ???
And i need some cash too for these domains

Go to digital point forums or even the sitepoint marketplace and try to sell these crappy domains as a package for cheap (that way you can get rid of all of them). Give people a good deal and they will buy.

7. Dan Asked:

Hmmm, I’m going to go with two questions…as I’m greedy 

1. What method has seen your biggest return of your investment?

2. If lions had thumbs and could walk on hind legs…would you be more scared of them?

Answer #1: Definately not my blog as I am constantly investing money into it. I have seen a good return on domain flipping, but my greatest return at the moment has been from doing freelance writing where I can make a full time income (almost) with no monetary investment.

Answer #2: Well I am ‘Ryan The Lion” so really they already can do that.

8. Kevin Asked:

My Question:
How do i sign op for a company like Agoogle, if I dont have any website? Because I wanne see the offers, so i can make a website about that, affiliate.

And what affiliate companies can i sign up to? because i am only sixteen! 

Truthfully I don’t know what Agoogle is. But I would recommend starting a website on what you love to write about and find a great affiliate program to go with that. Not the other way round. Personally I don’t know to much about affiliate companies you can sign up for being 16. You would have to do a google search sorry. Hopefully readers of this blog post can answer this question below.

9. Weightloss Product asked:

Which is better? To recycle your old post or not to post daily?

Depends on how old your blog is. If your blog is 3 years old with over 1000 blog posts then it can be useful to recycle blog posts. Otherwise I would stay away from reposting old posts because people can just access your archives to read them

10. Tivitune asked:

which program give you great income except adsense?

OIO Publisher is a great program where you can sell advertising to private advertisers on your website. This can make you a lot of money, you just need the advertisers to full the boxes.

11. Blog For Beginners asked:

This is simple: Is there any simple-to-use tool to make an ebook cover?

Yan

Yes there is. Once you have your ebook designed then you can use Box Shot 3D to quickly and easily create your ebook cover. This is what I use and it is so easy and simple. They offer a free trial so you can try before you buy

12. Eric Tan asked:

how did you get started and what did you do to get your traffic?

I got started when I read a simple ebook about how one entrepreneur lady made money in 30 days with no monetary investment by blogging and selling tshirts. This inspired me to start a blog. I started multiple blogs all of which failed and it took me about a year and a half to finally settle on my finance/MMO blog Smarter Wealth. I get most of my traffic by leaving comments on other blogs and I get some (about 10% from search engines)…also a lot of my traffic is from returning visitors.

13. John D asked:

Hey Ryan,

Here is my question(s) for you:

1. In 50 words or less, what is the best advice you could give to a new blogger who has no experience in the field and wants to get started?

2. Besides commenting on others blogs, what has been a successful method of getting stable and targeted traffic to your blog?

Answer #1: Know that it takes time. Blog because you love writing and communicating not because you want to get rich quick.

Answer #2: Running competitions to get visitors to return to my blog has been a great way to maintain high levels of traffic without having to spend lots of time marketing your blog. You can win $150 just by commenting. This is a great incentive for people to come back to my blog again and again.

14. Akira07 asked:

Haha, can i participate to ask? This is my question for you :

To make a contest, do you think it will drive a traffic? Why?

A competition is a great way to drive traffic to your site. People will come back to your site because there is something in it for them (they want to win the prize). This is why competitions work.

15. Sherry asked:

I wonder if this still open for question. If yes I like to how to prevent social networking account being hacked.

Hey Sherry, sorry but I cannot answer your question completely because I have no idea. I am not computer wizz kid. I just suggest having a good password with capital letters and lower case letters and having numbers and symbols. This should help.

16. Jeremy Day asked:

Hi Ryan,

My question is a bit related to some of the above but more specific.

I see you have two traffic spikes. One in the beginning-middle of September and another one in the middle of October. Have you analyzed your traffic enough to know what caused them? And if you have, would you mind sharing how you received so much traffic?

Cheers,
Jeremy

My traffic spikes were caused by me running advertising campaigns. I gave these a trial and found they were not cost effective (for every $100 spent i was earning about $35) so I stopped advertising. This was the cause of the spikes. Plus some stumble upon traffic as well I believe.

17. Genius asked:

My question is:

is there any international PPC website that pays via PayPal? 

Thanks in advance.

I believe that Adbrite does (though I am not entirely sure). I have used them before. Payments are less than Adsense but they are a fairly good alternative. I don’t know why adsense don’t use paypal. Paypal is the way of the future.

Ok. I have completed all the questions that have been asked. That turned out to be a MASSIVE post with almost 2,000 words. Hope you guys like the answers. I will run another question and answer session next month. I would love some guest posts from anyone if you can. It is a great opportunity to have your post shown to over 300 RSS subscribers.

Well my honeymoon is coming to a close soon (I still have another 6 days) and I am seriously asking the question whether or not to go back to work at the chemist. This month off has really challenged me to think about what I really want to do (and not just what money I want to make). This post is born out of my desire to do what I REALLY want to do and I hope that it will inspire you to do exactly what you want to do when it comes to your job (and life).

We are going to be using my life as the example. Here are my two options (when reading my options think about your two options).

Option A: Work at the chemist (which I hate) to earn enough income to stay alive and be confident that each week my paycheck will cover my costs. Learn nothing each day as I work and just go through the motions.

Option B: Become a freelance writer and work hard on my blog and try to earn enough income to stay alive and cover my costs. No assurance that I will earn enough money each week to cover costs but a faith that as I do what I love to do the money will come.

What are the different options in your life? You need to seriously consider them and weigh them up before you decide. Here are some helpful tips which might help give you a reason to do what you love to do (or maybe stick at your current job).

What Inspires You? - We all want to be doing things that inspire us, for me working at the chemist does not inspire me to grow and be all I can be, in fact it restricts me and makes me want to shrink and do less. What inspires you?

Are You Learning Every Day? - One thing that is important to almost all people is that their lives are progressing. In order to progress we need to be learning new things everyday. When I work online I learn new things everyday, when I work in the chemist I learn almost nothing of value each day. What job in your life will cause you to be constantly learning?

Are You Fulfilling Your Responsibilities? - We all have responsibilities which we have to fulfill no matter what. I need to earn money to pay rent, and if I can’t do it online I might have to go back to the chemist. Never bail out on your responsibilities, but go after your dreams while finding a way to fulfill your responsibilities as well. Can you fulfill you responsibilities doing what you would love to do? If the answer is yes go for it, if it is no maybe you will be able to later.

What Are You Good At? - I am good at thinking about things and asking questions, and then I am good at putting them in writing. I am very talented in this area. What are you talented at? Maybe you should be doing that?

What Makes A Positive Difference in People’s Lives - We should always be doing things that makes positive differences in other people’s lives. At the chemist I am not really making a huge positive difference because it is all transactional relationships. Customers want something and I sell it to them, that is as far as the relationship goes. With writing and my blog it is a lot more personal and I have a greater chance to make a positive impact in people’s lives. What about you? Which job makes a more positive impact?

So as you can probably see I want to give freelance writing and running my blog a go and I believe I can earn enough money by doing this (I made over $300 this week). I want to hear what your dream job is. Tell me about your dream job in the comments section below.

This week has been a great week for me because I have made over $300 this week alone online and I am hoping that with new improved strategies that I can make $300 per week every week. Now this is not a lot by some standards but my job at the moment is to cover the rent which is $320 so this means no working at the chemist.

This week was also a great week because I received my very first FREE t-shirt from my man Craig from Newport SEO. Here is a photo of me wearing my new t-shirt. You should check out Craig’s site by Clicking Here.

What is Your Mom's Myspace Page

It is actually a really cool t-shirt. It is a great fit for me and I like the way it looks. I had to explain to my wife what the saying meant because she was completely confused but I really like it and I look forward to receiving more free t-shirts in the future. 

If you want to send me a free t-shirt, or a free anything for that matter then I will post it online and talk about it because I love receiving new stuff. I know Shoemoney does Free T-Shirt Friday so I think that whenever I receive a free t-shirt it will be featured on “Shirts-On Saturday”. Getting free stuff in the mail is just one of the perks of being a successful online entrepreneur. Seeing as this is my very first free item I believe I am well on my way to becoming a successful online entrepreneur.

Also yesterday my subscriber count went over the 300 mark (which I am very excited about). It might fluctuate up and down a little over the next week but my site is constantly growing and becoming bigger and better and my RSS subscription will continue to grow.

It has been a great week and I am looking forward to the week coming.

This month we have been lucky enough to have Blogger Tests sponsor our top commentator competition. They are offering $150 to the winner. Now we are looking for a new sponsor to sponsor a competition in the month of December.

Prizes should be of the value of $150 or higher. They can be cash or it can be some other prize.

If you sponsor a competition you will receive the best marketing possible on Smarter Wealth.

You will be mentioned and linked to in every post concerning the competition, you will also receive a 125×125 banner for one month and a full site/product review either written by myself or written by you.

This is a great way to market your product or your website.

If you are interested then please contact me via the Contact Page.

This is a paid site review. The opinion I express was not effected by the fact I was paid to do it. If you want a site review done for your website click here.

Zak asked me to review his site www.zakshow.com when I was on my honeymoon so unfortunately I couldn’t do it a couple of weeks ago. But now that I have time I can share with you guys about this great site.

It is very similar to Smarter Wealth in that Zak is a 20 something year old online entrepreneur (like me) and he is working his way up to earning a full time income (like me).  However, he is further along in the journey than I am and he made a solid $24,000 in just 8 months last year while being a full time university student. So this guy knows his stuff.

One of the best places to look when you go to a blog is to look at their about page because it can show you so much about the author (mine needs a desperate update). Zak’s About Page is one of the best about pages I have come across because it shows that he is such an honest guy (and a pretty smart one too from the sounds of it).

You can trust that the content on the site is not fluff that he read somewhere else online. This guy is the real deal. He hasn’t been blogging for that long (he makes money online in many other ways) but he has already built a small subscriber fan base.

When reading his content I found that some of it was a little random. Here on Smarter Wealth I like to keep to the topic of Making Money Online but Zak has a few random posts thrown in there and I found it a little hard to read all of his posts because some of them were so different. The best way to describe what his site and content is about is from Zak himself. He says this on his About page.

ZakShow.Com introduces my day to day activities as a webmaster, blogger, web entrepreneur and someone who generates a reasonable revenue from the Internet. Post topics range from webmastering tips, blogging tips, SEO tips, Affiliate marketing, motivational posts, contests, product/service reviews and the occasional personal/lifestyle/rambling/hilarious posts.

And this is exactly what you get at Zak Show Dot Com. When considering whether or not to visit this site you should know that he earns what many of us would call a full time income in his spare time and he has a SHORT TERM goal of earning $100,000 per year. That is short term goal…not a long term goal. My goal for 2009 is to earn $42,000 online so he is double what I am. 

So go and check out The Zak Show for some great content and helpful tips

We have a great Comment King competition in October with the winner receiving $50 in cash and a 125×125 ad spot on Smarter Wealth. There could only be one winner and unfortunately not everyone could walk home with the $50

A big thankyou to Rahul Jadhav and Escoofield who each gave over 300 (not spam) comments to this blog each. I love your support and I wish I could give you both $50. I can’t, however I would like to offer you both paid reviews on my website for just $5 each (instead of $15). Email me if you are interested.

But a big congrats to Sophie who won this month’s competition. She had over 60 comments this month.

So sorry for the late notice but I have been on my honeymoon. This won’t happen next month

Just email me Sophie to claim your prize

I am usually scared to do a question and answer session because I am not one of those wealthy giants who has already ‘made it’. I am a young entrepreneur who earns a measly part time wage online (about $100 per month which I usually spend on updates like new themes or designs or competitions). But here is the first legitimate question and answer session on Smarter Wealth.

Ask away. I will answer the first 25 questions to be posted. Leave your questions in the comments section below. I will be honest and do my best to answer all your questions.

Also by asking a question you will get a link back to your site. So it is a win-win-win situation.

“We all know you want to make a buck or two, but seriously this is ridiculous”. 

This is what I think sometimes when I visit websites and they have MASSIVE amounts of advertising. They have advertising in their header, sidebar, footer and then advertising about 5 times within every article, not to mention full page and popup advertising. Some websites have way to much advertising and I think it could be damaging their website.

Many people respond badly to cluttered blogs. Personally I hate clutter and when I go to a blog and there I can hardly work out which is valuable content and which is advertising then I get frustrated and I leave that blog and often I do not come back. We do not want this to happen on our blogs because it is the returning visitors who are the ones who make you money over and over again.

This is so true that I have given my readers an incentive for coming back. If they come back and comment often then they can have the chance to win $50 in cold hard cash. I mean who wouldn’t want this??

So here are a few of the ways you might be able to see if your advertising is killing your website and actually causing you to lose money

Overcrowding

Overcrowding your blog with ads is the biggest way to deter readers. Basically if they are having trouble working out what are ads and what is content then you have a problem on your hands. Many times I have gone to a website with ads stuffed in their header, with about 4-5 different ad spots in their content which looked exactly like the content. I left these blogs almost instantly and I never clicked on any of their ads. I was offended they had SO many ads.

For this reason I have decided to remove the inline ads on this site (currently featuring hussein’s blog). This will give greater focus on the content and will cause less overcrowding. Making the 125×125 banners more valuable and making my site much more reader friendly. I am also going to be selling the 468×60 ad space above and below the content. This is less intrusive than the inline ads but will still give great value to advertisers.

What kind of advertising are you using on your site? Is your site a little over crowded?

People Leaving Your Blog

I get about 2.2 pageviews per visitor which I believe is fairly good. I get about 10,000 or more pageviews each and every month which is quite an achievement. If you are getting less pageviews than this it could be telling you that you have a problem. If people are not sticking around to read your content then it could be because your huge amount of advertising is sending them away. Test having less advertising (or better placed advertising) and see if more people stick around.

People Complaining

If people start complaining saying you have too much advertising then you KNOW without a doubt you have a problem. Not many people bother to write to you to tell you how to improve your site, but if they complain about this then it is pretty likely that your advertising is harming your website.

Too Many Empty Spaces

People always warn against having too many empty ad spaces on your site for good reason. If you want to go to a coffee shop and there are two shops next to each other. One is full of customers and one is completely empty. Same location so which one do you think would be better? The one with loads of customers.

It is the same with your ad space, if you have loads of customers it appears that your advertising options are good, if you have none it appears that what you are selling is no good. So never have more than two empty ad spots on your site. I have made this mistake in the past but I will not make it any longer and neither should you because it will cost you money. 

Clashing Colours

There is nothing worse than ads that completely scream at you because the colour scheme completely clashes with the colours on your website. It makes the ads look ugly and annoying and this can send your readers away. I once visited a website with fairly good content but the ad spaces literally hurt my eyes to look at because of the colours. I never went back to that website.

So have a long hard think. Is advertising harming your website? If it is then remove some of your ads asap. Please give suggestions in the comment section below.

Here are some photos from our wedding….freaking AMAZING!!!

Big thanks to Daniel Griffiths who took the photos for us. He does weddings all over the world amd if you want to check out more go to www.dgphotos.com.au