Passive Income Blog: Create Passive Income Online

Before I get started, I just want to say that the title to this post is one of the many search terms that people have used in the search engines to get to my blog. So with that said, I want to remind every blog/website owners to periodically check their awstats, webalizer, or any traffic stats software that you have in your hosting package. Look into the keywords that people used to get to your website/blog, and capitalize on those.

Getting passive income from the internet is not much different from building passive income in the offline world. I always like to use the analogy of a real estate business to an online business. Yes, it is possible to build a virtual real estate business on the internet. In the real estate business, a piece of property is an asset. Much like an online property, it could be your blog or your website.

The beauty of building an asset online is that is so much easier to build when compared to building a house in the offline world. There is no excuse for not starting one right NOW if you don't have one already. Now, there are many free blogging service providers out there such as WordPress and Blogger, but why build on "borrowed land"? Instead, you should really "own" your own property by choosing and registering your own .com domain name, get it hosted, and spend a few minutes and a couple mouse clicks to get your own blog set up, much like the one you are reading right now. You can literally have your own online property built in 10 minutes.

Once you have your online property (ie. your blog), then you need to maintain it and increase its value by adding content to it. Be sure you provide valuable content, otherwise you'll be wasting your time. Provide valuable content and you will get search engine love, as well as people linking back to your blog.

Don't underestimate the value of good content. A well-written blog post or article that you have written has the potential of making you money long after it is created. However, you are not going to get anywhere if you don't get started. So, get started with your own blog today. Always think about giving before receiving you will do quite alright on the internet.

I just released " Google Craigslist Slap Report".

We all know Craigslist is an excellent source of free traffic, but only a handful of marketers are making serious income with that traffic. I have been secretly earning an income over the past one and half year with only Craigslist traffic. In fact, I got so good that if you show me any ad on Craigslist I can almost immediately tell you if it's a genuine post or just some marketer trying to make some quick bucks with Craigslist traffic. I've got so good of a handle on Craigslist more so than the many of you who are trying to figure out how to rank top 10 in Google. While there has been many "Google Slaps" that happened in the past year, so has there been "Craigslist Slaps."

Check it out here:

Make Money With Craigslist

I just want to share with you a new product that is sold through Clickbank.  It is called PPC Keyword Tracking Tool.  It just got listed in the Clickbank marketplace and it's a recurring product (currently priced at $47 first month, and $27 thereafter).  It is a product that I co-developed with my partner who is a web programmer that will help affiliate marketers who advertise in the Pay-Per-Click search engines track clicks & sales conversion down to the keyword level.  If you are advertising in search engines, you will know how vital it is to track your keywords - it helps the advertiser to determine easily which keywords are profitable and which ones are not.

The best feature about this software, in my opinion, is that it automatically discover new search terms that visitors used to arrive to the landing page. You can read more about what the software is and what it does at SEOSEMTools.com

If you are in affiliate marketing, why not promote something that gives you recurring commission month after month?

I was looking into my hard drive to search for a good popup program I can use for my blog.  Then I came across a program called Impact Popup (widely popular due to Master Resell Rights available).

Upon research on Google I came across Joel Comm's website which has an article on the Impact Popup program:  http://www.joelcomm.com/impact_popup.html

I clicked on the Impact Popup link in the article and to my surprise the domain is not currently registered (http://www.impactpopup.us)! *bing... lightbulb moment!*

So, there you have it.  You can either place nice and inform Mr. Joel Comm about this, or snatch up impactpopup.us and purchase a MRR right to Impact Popup and use the enclosed Salesletter to slap on the domain.  Who knows, you may even make some sales for no promotional effort on your part!

Check out payperpost.com

Simply put, it's a marketplace (like Google's contextual advertising program Adwords & Adsense) for advertisers to post jobs for bloggers to fulfill. Bloggers get paid for writing to their blogs about advertiser's website, product or service, etc. As an advertiser, you can typical pay around $5 to $10 for a blogger to post about your website.

So I decided to check it out, and this is what happened:

On 6/2/2007 I signed up for an advertiser account just to check out what their service is all about. To create an advertiser account you do need to enter a valid credit card number. At that time I didn't have a website in mind that I would like to use the service to promote, so I moved on.

On 7/29/2007 I received an email from payperpost that they have just credit my advertiser account $100 for me to try out their service! Wow, that's awfully generous of them! If I post a job for bloggers and pay them $10 per blog post, with backlink to my website, then I have just received 10 free backlinks!

So there you have it, that's how you are able to get $100 free advertising spend from PayPerPost.com. I'm not saying this will work for you, and you do have to wait around for it. I am only telling you what happened. Also keep in mind that payperpost is probably a growing business and they may not be so generous as more people are familiar with their service.

As you can see I haven't updated my blog for almost 2 months now for 2 reasons.

#1.  I 'd like people to get an opportunity to read the last post I made on building passive commission with the eBay affiliate program.

#2.  I've just finished with a latest passive income project - A coupon swap website.   It was an a project sparked by my wife's idea.  Now that we are parents, we started to receive all of these coupons for babies and parents in the mail.  There were a few coupons that she could use, but many more that she simply don't need, and many coupons that she wanted but aren't in the mailer.  My wife started "Googling" for coupon exchange clubs or coupon exchange sites, and to her dismay, there are a couple of forums for them, but not an actual website focused on just coupon swapping. *lightbulb moment*  So I spent about a week and hacked together a coupon swap site and slapped it on a brand new domain.  The monetization on the site is done by Adsense (I know, but it's quick and dirty), and a CJ program.  Is it profitable?  You bet!  And the best part is that the site is growing by itself because of the user participation and it's completely hands-off.  My wife is very happy to see there are actual users who list their unwanted coupons for exchange!

What's the lesson learned here?  Not all "junk" mails are bad.  Go through them next time and maybe you will come up with your next big idea.

Okay, the words are out. I made a post (get your website indexed by Google in 24 hours) about how I use WordPress blogs to secretly leverage eBay sellers' auction listings to gain free search engine traffic which allows me to automatically seek out long tail keywords.

Here is the step-by-step process of how you can start earning passive affiliate commission:

First of all, let's talk about how commission is made and what you will be doing:

• eBay has an affiliate program (administered by CJ.com) that currently pays $25 (as of June 1st, 2007) per new active user registration + 50% of auction listing fee
• Surprise! Not everyone has an eBay account.
• You will be building blogs that automatically pull in eBay auction listings
• When visitor go to your website and clicks through one of the eBay auction listings, you will get credit for new eBay user referred and/or auctions won by your referral.

• Each blog you build will pull in FREE search engine traffic
  • Blogs will get indexed by major search engines automatically
  • You can use these eBay blogs to help index you other websites (by linking from your blogs to websites you would like indexed)
  • Content is provided and refreshed automatically
  • Top ranking for keywords in the search engines automatically

• Not many people know how to do this because of the technical difficulties of getting a WordPress plug-in to work with eBay RSS Feed
• Each blog you build becomes an ATM machine with very little maintenance cost (hosting & domain registration, which is standard cost for running any website business)
• Blogs can run on sub-domains or sub-directories to reduce cost
  • Tip: Register a general-topic domain name
• Takes about 5 to 10 minutes to set up each blog

Action Steps:

1. Sign up as a publisher with CJ.com (if you don't have one already)
   • If you do not have website, just make up a newsletter name and leave the website URL empty.
2. Decide on a market/product line/trend/”niche"
   First go to ebay.com. Do you have a particular interest in any products or category of product on ebay? Such as collectibles, games, DVD's, etc? If not, have a look at eBay Pulse for some of the hottest selling items. Make sure the category of product is a healthy market (meaning that there are always those products being sold and bought on eBay, that way your blog will always be refreshed with new auction items!)
3. Generate eBay RSS Feed
   Get your Commission Junction account PID by logging into your CJ.com account and click on "Account" tab and then "Web Site Settings" sub-tab and get the PID number from there:
   

   Click on "Advanced Search" from eBay's webpage:
   

   Enter your search criteria:
   

   Enter your CJ account PID number and click Search!
   

   Now, from the search results page, scroll all the way down of the page and find an orange button with RSS label on it:
   

   Copy & Paste the URL of the RSS feed from your web browser into a notepad for later use.

4. Register domain name & host the website (if you don't have one already)
   I personally use WholesalerDomain.com for domain registration ($7.15 per year) and HostMonster.com for WordPress Hosting ($5.95 per month).
5. Install WordPress blog script
   Login to your Cpanel from your hosting account and use Fantastico to install a WordPress blog in 2 clicks!
6. Install Feed-o-Matic plug-in

   Get the free plugin here:http://www.infinityscript.com/wordpress-plugin/

   To install:
   1) Unzip feedomatic.zip
   2) Upload the entire feedomatic folder into /wp-content/plugin
   folder of your WordPress directory
   3) Login to your WordPress admin and go under “Plugins” tab
   4) Activate Feed-o-Matic
   5) Now add in your eBay RSS feed (from step 3) by going to “Options” tab

7. Rinse & Repeat
   Remember, your passive commission from eBay affiliate program is scalable. It's up to you how much you want to make. I would recommend that you install at least one eBay blog onto each of your domain that you own, and also to through up a quick eBay blog to new domains or domains that are just sitting there collecting dust!

Talk is cheap and you have everything you need to implement the system, so get to work!

In my previous post I mentioned a keyword/competition research tool called Spyfu (Spyfu.com).  Since I was a beta tester they have issued me a 50% off LIFETIME coupon.  They have also issued me 3 other coupons that I can pass along.  I just checked, and of the 3 that I posted, only one has not yet been used:

Spyfu coupon code: 8XI7-VVU91

I, myself, got a yearly subscription at $148 (50% $296 regular subscription) which is a BARGAIN.

So, what can you do with Spyfu?

Spyfu gives you a search box which you can type in a website URL, or a keyword and once submitted, it spits out all the relevant keywords and websites related to your query.

Ever wonder what keywords eBay is bidding on Google Adwords?  You can get that data from Spyfu.  Do you think Yahoo! Auctions may be interested in knowing that data?  At $148 per year (or even at the regular price of $296/year).  It will even tell you how much an advertiser/website is spending (estimated) PER DAY on Adwords.

Unfortunately (or should I say, fortunately), Spyfu currently does not have data on "smaller" advertisers and websites.  Can you imagine an affiliate space where every affiliate knows what other affiliates selling the same product or service are bidding on?

If you are not reading James D. Brausch's blog, you need to!  His blog is like an open book, full of practical and proven methods of running a successful internet business.

James also runs a Magical Email Address Program where you get to ask him any questions related to running an internet business.  Occasionally he would open up his blog for questions.  If you are not taking advantage of this, you are insane!  (James' Magical Email Address is currently going for $1,000/month).

So here is my question to James regarding running an internship program.

"James, naturally you are assigning interns the task of promoting your blog/products in your 'internet business' business.  What do you have your interns do in your 'weight loss' business?"

Thanks James, for your generosity of your time!

Most internet marketers suffer from near-sightedness.  What I mean by that is majority of the affiliate marketers chase after one-time commissions rather than promoting programs or products that pay in residual.  As I've said in my post yesterday on getting traffic from yahoo groups, I was a super affiliate for PartyPoker.com.  Now, PartyPoker's affiliate program pays in 2 ways.  You can sign on a new player and get paid a flat commission of $65 ($75 if you recruit 10 or more), or you can sign on a new player and get paid on that player's rake fee for the lifetime of that player.

If you had a choice, what option would you go with?  Getting paid $75 per new player, or getting 20% cut of the poker room's revenue for your players?