$1 per day: Make a Note!

If you are like me, you have ideas popping into your head all the time. Almost anywhere I am, no matter what I am doing, an idea for some kind of new business, or money-making idea will come to me. Because of this, it is important for me to write down every idea I think of, no matter how large or small, or even no matter how ridiculous the idea may seem at the time.

If I am out, away from the house, I don’t generally write the ideas down, but what I do is that I use the voice recorder on my cellphone to make an audio note to myself of what my idea is. Later, when I am home, I will listen to the recording and write down the idea on one of my notepads.

I don’t use my computer to make these notes. It’s not an MS-Word file, or a text file on my desktop. I do it the old fashioned way, I write it on a piece of paper. What I generally use for writing down ideas is post-it notes. Then I stick the post-it note on my desk. Often, the post-it notes get in my way on my desk. Maybe while I am handling my computer mouse, the post-it notes are in the way. This is good. It forces me to do something with the notes. I will keep looking over the ideas on paper, and decide which ones have merit. After a few days of staring at an idea on a piece of paper on my desk, often I will conclude that the idea doesn’t have merit after all, it was just a wild thought. Some ideas may not make it in the form that I had envisioned, they might be massaged a bit, and end up being something other than I had considered. Sometimes two or three ideas will meld into one better idea.

As these ideas mesh together and get filtered, I start making “To-Do” lists, also on post-it notes and stuck to my desk. Then, every day I check my “To-Do” list. I prioritize the list to decide which of the things I will actually do today. How do I decide? It is a earning/time ratio decision. If I look at an idea, and think to myself that this item could make me $500 per month when it is completed, I then figure how much time it will take to get it done. If I can do it in an hour, and not need to do much follow up work with it, and it will make $500 per month, I might jump on it and get it done, thus removing it from my “To-Do” list. If I see one that will make me $1,000 per month, but it will take me 3 months to get it done, and will require 10 hours of work per week to maintain it, that idea would be a very low priority. Too much time needed to get it done. Also, too much additional time needed to keep it going. So, because of the way that I work things, and the time/earning ratio that I consider before taking on a project, I have some ideas that have been on my To Do list for some time. I might still do the project some day, if the time presents itself to me.

Another thing that I may well do if a project would take too much time is to hire the job out. I find that for just a few hundred dollars, I can hire somebody to get a project going for me, and thus I don’t have to spend my time on them. I only hire it out, though, if I really feel quite sure of the project’s success.

So, at any given time, I will have a bunch of post-it notes stuck to my desk. They bug me. They get in my way. I don’t like them. But, you know what? They force me to get things done, because when the item on the paper is finished, I get to throw the paper away!

Maybe this isn’t a perfect system, but it helps me get things done. If you employee a system like this, I promise you that you will come up with a lot more money making projects!

And, it all starts with one simple act. When you think of a new idea - write it down!

$1 per day: Clean up your blog!

Have you ever heard the phrase “Spring Cleaning?” A lot of people reserve a weekend or a day in Spring to really thoroughly clean up their house! Make everything spic and span at least once each year. A thorough cleaning like this is quite important in keeping the place from just getting over-cluttered to the max. What about your blog? When was the last time you cleaned it up?

Yesterday I was talking with a friend about his blog. He has not been able to make much money online, and I promised to help him all I could. I went and had a look at his site, and frankly, it was a mess. There was all kinds of stuff on the sidebar, stuff that was old and dated, and basically had no meaning any more. We all do it. We see some kind of new widget that we like and add it to our site. In 3 or 6 months the thing has lost all meaning, we haven’t earned any money from it, and basically our site is cluttered up with dozens of such gizmos. Put a stop to it! Clean up your site!

To be honest, when I go to a site that is so cluttered up that it is basically unreadable, I leave, and I don’t come back for a long time. I suspect that a lot of blog readers are like me. If I have to dig to find any meat (content), unless the content is so important and unavailable elsewhere, I just leave the site. Don’t make it a hard job for people to read your site! Yes, you can have a few gizmos, but keep it to a minimum. If you find another gadget that you want to add to your site, find two other things that you can remove to keep the site clean.

I do believe that adding little gadgets and such is important, because it keeps your site fresh. Change your theme from time to time, to keep it looking fresh. When a regular reader comes to your site and it has changed significantly, you can bet that they will browse around a little more than normal to see what else is new, or what they have missed in the past.

My advice is that you should schedule a day around 4 times per year to review your blog and make sure that it is fresh and clean. Is everything that you have there relevant in some way? Are the thing that you have there valuable for your readers? Do the gadgets help you make money, or detract from your income earning quest? Ask yourself these things, clean up your site, and you’ll find yourself increasing your earnings!

$1 per day: Text Link Ads

If you have a blog or website, making an extra $1 per day is simple. There are so many ways to make that Dollar that it will be hard for you to choose which one (or ones) to use! Yesterday, we looked at making your money from Google. Today, let’s look at using “Text Link Ads.” What is Text Link Ads (TLA)? Well, they are a company that will help you sell ads on your site. The ads that you will sell through TLA are basically nothing but a link to the site that is buying the ad. Nothing fancy, no banner, no neat graphics, no flash, just a text link to the site that pays you to link to them.

Before you get too excited, let me tell you - Google does not like Text Link Ads. If they see that you are selling TLA, they can penalize you for that. Do I sell TLA? Yes, I do on some sites (not this one). Frankly, I don’t think that Google should be able to dictate to me what I do with my sites, and this is why I sell TLA on some sites anyway. On sites that Google AdSense is important to me, I don’t sell TLA, though. So, keep this in mind, and consider carefully if you want to sell TLA.

I’ll tell you this, after a while, maybe 6 months or so to get established, TLA can bring in a lot more than the $1 per day that I am encouraging you to try to accomplish. So, it is something to consider.

Do you have TLA on your site? If not, maybe you should consider it.