WAHS Challenge: I’m reading a book called Harmonic Wealth by James Arthur Ray which basically shows you how to use the Law of Attraction to find success in life. One passage that caught my attention was about integrating spiritual, mental and physical realms in order for success to occur. In essence you have to believe it, think it, and do it. That idea isn’t new, but I hadn’t quite heard it put that way before. Many people think it, but often the belief and the action are left out. I can’t help you believe in your goals, but perhaps I can help you take action. 

Many people get bogged down in the “how to” and end up not doing anything to reach their goals. Making money online is actually quite easy if you take the right steps and do the right work. There is no money for nothing and you can’t set up a system that will do the work for you forever. But you can easily set up a site and systems that through some basic management can make you money. 

In the Work-At-Home Tips feature (below) you’ll read about how my Adsense income increased 16 fold in one year and why Adsense is a terrific way (its free!) to make money. In the Marketing feature you’ll read how to set up a content based blog (also free), add Adsense and start making money. This is the WAHS Challenge. I want you to take action to start making money with Adsense ASAP. Whether you have a business already (a blog is a great way to market your business) or are just getting started, I want you to take the WAHS Challenge. Even if you want to find a work-at-home job, I want you to take the WAHS Challenge. Here’s how it will work:

1) Read WAHS Tips, Tools and Inspiration below.

2) Read WAHS Marketing tips.

3) Follow the steps in the Marketing Tips article to set up your own information blog based on any topic you choose.

4)  Contact WAHS and let me know the URL (website address) of your blog. I will list it on a special WAHS Challenge page at Work-At-Home Success (free advertising) and in a special blogroll at  WAHS Blog. 

5) Stick with your blog for 6 months (November 2008) and share your  results with WAHS.

I’m looking at offering some prizes….that will be announced later!

Work-At-Home Tips, Tools and Inspiration

In 2006 I added Google AdSense ad feed to my site and made a few bucks. Not much, but something is better than nothing. Then I started hearing about people who were making several hundreds of dollars a day through the program. Wow! I had to find out how to do that so I went to the expert, Joel Comm.

Joel’s tips were easy to understand and implement and in 2007 my Adsense income grew over 16 times than what it was in 2006. In fact, in 2007 nearly a third of my yearly income came from Adsense. In one year!

While Google is tight lipped about the formula it uses to calculate Adsense earnings, basically website/blog publishers get paid when someone clicks on an Adsense link. It’s probably just a few cents which seems hardly worth it. But the reality is that people are making good even obscene amounts of money through this program. And since it’s free to sign up and since you can design a web presence for free as well (see the marketing section for how to do this), it’s a great way for a beginner to get online and start making money with only time as an investment.

With that said, you’re not going to be raking in the big bucks tomorrow. There is a method to the madness that includes offering quality content people want to read, keywords that people are searching on, and basic internet marketing (see marketing section for details on how to do this).

Another big help is to get Joel’s book which provides his tips and tricks that earn him $500 a day at Adsense. Joel just updated his  Adsense Secrets for 2008 AND he slashed the price 90% to only $9.95.

It’s not very often that I’m adamant about products or services. But for anyone who’s serious about making money online, I absolutely think you should get  Joel’s Adsense Secrets resource.

Up in the Work-At-Home Tidbit section, I raved about using Adsense and picking up Joel Comm’s tremendous resource on using Adsense to make money. I wanted to also show you how easy it can be to set up a website (blog) to add Adsense and start making money. In fact, I want to challenge you to test it out. Its free and doesn’t take long to set up and manage. (Check out the WAHS Challenge in the Notes from Leslie Section above).

The key to success with Adsense is (all will be explained in detail):

1. Create compelling content people want to know about on a regular basis.

2. Use keyword rich writing.

3) Promotion

Compelling Content
Compelling content is information that people want to know about. (Details on chosing a topic are below.) There are some blogs and websites that are set up to make money with Adsense but when you visit them, all they have is adds. There is no information people want to read about. The search engines frown on this. You don’t need to be Hemingway to create compelling content. You do need to be knowledgeable or passionate about the topic. You also don’t need to write a book when create your content. 300-500 words is all it takes. Your content can:

1. Be your personal review.

2. An update on a current trend.

3. A news flash.

4. Tips.

5. An essay.

6. A link to another blog or article.

7. An article.

8. A rant (but be careful… you can be controversial but don’t offend people.)

9. A journal … but keep it interesting. Like reality TV.

10.  Advice

One thing that can help you organize your ideas is to have each day (or 3 days a week) be a specific topic or type of post. For example, Monday can be a news day and Wednesday can be a rambling day.
At Moms At Home Success I have Money Making Monday,  Tuesday’s Tips, Tricks and Tools, Wacky Wednesday, Transformational Thursday, and Freebie Friday.

Set a schedule to blog regularly at least three days a week.

Keyword Rich Content
Keywords are the words that people use search for information. At WAHS the most common keywords are “work at home”, “work from home”, “work at home jobs” etc. So when I write, I want to be sure to use these types of words. For the most part, this is easy. You can’t help but use keywords when you’re writing about your topic. But keyword are important for search engine listing and ranking, so you want to be sure to use a variety of keywords that are related to your topic.

Promotion

Just because you build it, doesn’t mean they’ll come. Aside from regular posting, your biggest job will be letting others know about your blog. Will go into detail on how to do that below, but for now I just want to point out the importance of marketing your blog. Search engines will eventually find it, but you can’t sit back and wait for the hits to come. Not if you want to make money anyway. Marketing
your blog doesn’t have to cost money. It simply takes time and a strategy. As you set up your blogging schedule, also set up time, everyday to promote your blog.

How to set up a blog to make money

Below are the step by step details you need to set up your blog, monetize it with Adsense, and promote it.

1. Choose a topic. If you already have a business, choose a topic related to your business. If you sell health and wellness products, set up a blog about health and wellness. If you have a gardening business, set up a gardening blog. If you don’t have a business, brainstorm a list of topics that you are either knowledgeable or passionate about. It can be related to your skills or experience, but it might be more fun to make it related to a hobby or cause. Ideas include gardening, politics, children’s issues, women’s issues, book or other reviews, ‘life as’ topics, quests, scrapbooking, parenting, aging, and so on. Make a list of all the things you go through, deal with, love, hate, have experience in. 

2. Choose two or three of the topics and visit  Keyword Discovery to find out how many people search for information on the topic you’re interested in. This will give you a variety of keywords that people search and tell you how many times those keywords were searched over the last month. It can help you narrow your topic as well as give you ideas on what to blog about.

3. Visit your favorite search engine and search you topic using a few of your keywords to see what others are doing. These people are your competition, but don’t worry too much if there is a lot of competition. Mostly you want to see what they are doing. Are they selling stuff? Simply providing information? Is there something they aren’t doing that you can do?

4. Choose a topic and brainstorm all the keywords and types of things you can blog about. You don’t want to start blogging and then run out of ideas. You can get more ideas by using Google Alerts to send you news items related to your topic, read other blogs related to your topic, and read books and articles about your topic. Keep a list handy to add ideas when they come to you.

5. Go to Blogger.com to sign up for a free blog account. There are other free blog accounts but Blogger is owned by Google (which runs Adsense) so its easy to integrate the program into your blog. WordPress is another good option except the only way to run Adsense is to download the script and run it on your own servicers. If you understand what that means and you want to do it, then its a good option. But here were going for speed and ease.

6. Choose a theme for your blog (template). You can do a search to find more Blogger themes, but for now, you may want to stick with the options available from your dashboard. Fancy isn’t always better. Content is the real cash cow online so focus on that.

7.  In your dashboard area, set up your profile.

8. Set up a Google Adsense Account. READ THE RULES CAREFULLY. If you break the rules (ie click on your own links) Google can terminate your account. And its notoriously hard to reinstate it.

9. From your Dashboard you can click on “Adsense” in the Related Services box.

10. Under “Template” click on “Adsense” to set up Adsense on your blog.

11. Go to Feedburner  and sign up for an account there. Use all the services you can there. This site will help promote your blog and keep track of stats. Once you’ve signed up, go back to your Blogger account and add your Feedburner URL under “Settings”, “Site Feed”,

12. Start posting to your blog.

13. Ad your blog to major search engines. Visit the search engines and find the “Add URL” or “Add Your Site Link”. You may need to poke around a bit to find it.  Here’s Google’s.

14. Promote your blog. 

• Email your friends and family about your blog. Add your blog URL to your email signature line.
• Visit blog directories (do a search online for them) and submit your blog. 
• Add your blog to Technorati.
• Post to your blog regularly. Search engines love this!
• Visit Ping-o-matic.com to set your blog to ping the major blog sources. This lets everyone know when you’ve added new content.
•  href=”http://www.workathomesuccess.com/contactWAHS.html”>Contact WAHS and let me know about your blog.
• If you belong to social networks or online discussion groups, tell them about your blog (if allowed). Add your blog URL to your discussion group signature line.

15. I’ve said it before but it is so crucial I’m going to say it again. POST AND PROMOTE REGULARLY.

If you’re really serious about making money with a blog and Adsense, I’m going to give you some resources that will be worth the investment:

Joel Comm’s Adsense Secrets! 

 Making Money with Your Blog.