Blogging for FUN or PROFIT?

If you can express yourself pretty well in writing, then I'd say that you shouldn't pass the chance to create your own blog and start blogging.

I have learned thru the apprenticeship program that I am in right now that blogging should not be treated as a vehicle to rant and rave. Yes, you can rant and rave and do your musings too but it would be a lot better if you start creating your site with a definite goal in mind: are you doing this just for fun or you'd like to earn some bucks.

Always have the end in mind.

I know I really am guilty of this big time! I mean I started this blog all fired up and ready to receive that windfall of cash. Guess what? It didn't happen. Why? I really didn't have the end in mind and have not put in the needed time and attention to make this blog profitable.

So how do you do it?

Before pounding those keys and creating your postings, think first.

If your blog is just a means to vent up all those pent up emotions and views, then do away with placing stuff that let you earn from it like Adsense and those Affiliate Marketing Products. However, if you want this as a source of income, then you should decide how much you want to earn, how many blogs are you going to create and how much time are you willing to devote to it. There are also tons of available info online on how you can increase traffic to your site. You need not spend a dime.

The real secret to profiting from your blog is to get tons of traffic. Let the whole blogosphere know that you deserve to have a place here. Let them "listen" to what you have to say. It really would not hurt promoting your blog to every Tom, Dick and Harry who happen to have internet access. Don't be shy!

Remember too that you need to have content, lots and lots of new content for you to rank high in the search engines. And that means at least 2 new posts every week.

So are you blogging for fun or for profit? Wouldn't it be better if you do both?

On Ways to Earn Online

There are a lot of different ways on how to earn online. The past year was, for me, a good year where I learned and earned in different ways.

Like most who started earning online, I got myself project based jobs. I had Data Entry and Writing projects.

The longest Data Entry project I had lasted for more than two years (that is if my memory serves me right). It was a simply cut and paste job, just updating and submitting the daily excel document of a client. I felt a bit sad when my US based client terminated the project. I felt sad not because he found a better, faster and ultimately cheaper way to do what I was doing but because the client was such a nice person to work with who paid in advanced and went the extra mile to make sure I got my money.

I also did technical data entry where I was introduced to HTML. It was basically a cut and paste project too but it was coded with all those HTML gibberish. It was actually an outsourced work from a Pinoy middleman.

Another data entry project I did was encoding captchas. Captchas are those letters and numbers that you sometimes have a hard time deciphering that you need to copy in order to be given access to the next step. It is just the online world's way of making sure that the person they are transacting business is a real person and not just an automated program.

The writing projects I did were articles of less than 500 words, about 1 page of a legal sized bond paper. The articles had to be written in such a way that certain keywords are incorporated, meaning you have to use the keyword in the title, opening sentence or paragraph, in the body and closing.

I also dabbled in HYIP (High Yield Investment Program) where my investment earned 12% daily or 144% after 12 days. HYIP is a very risky type of investment program where scammers abound. The minimum investment was just $6 and I entered the company when they were barely a month old and had a promo where they offered a $3 incentive for signing up. The company didn't last long though but I was wise enough to have kept my investment to a minimum and just used some of the profit when re-investing.

I also did PTC or paid to click. Here you get paid to either manually click on or automatically view ads for a few seconds. This is really time consuming and on hindsight really isn't worth it because I was just paid $0.01 per click. What was good about that online earning episode was I was able to be part of a team who really did their due diligence and we usually were able to bail out before we got further ripped off. PTCs are a haven for scammers.

I don't recommend though that you tread the same path that I did if you want to earn online. My purpose here is to just give you an idea that, yes, it is possible to earn online and it is not confined to just getting a job.

Mama's Online Helper

You know, Mama works in the computer almost everyday. She always click here, click there, type here, type there, e-mail here, e-mail there, imagine if you work like that!

So, I decided about helping Mama at work from now on.

Though my Kuya is Mama's perfect helper, (Kuya is a computer wizard) he's only interested in downloading and playing computer games with Papa, which are making Kuya's so called "microchip nerves" alive.

It's so hard to do Mama's kind of work. She has to listen to instructions in videos, then do it in a website, then listen to another video, then e-mail Joel or someone else, yadda, yadda, yadda.

It's hard for me but Kuya says it's as easy as a chicken-flavored lollipop.

I kept on thinking if I have to ask Kuya if he would do the role of being Mama's online helper or if I could do this role myself. I asked Kuya if he wants to earn money by helping Mama but he said "Maybe, maybe not. I like to earn money by playing games or something."

The way I like to earn money is by selling some of the stories I make

AND by helping Mama do her blog (Mama said I get Php25 for each article). I really love writing articles in Mama's blog, but I have a lot to do so sometimes, I have no time to write in here, because Kuya kept on begging me to play with him, Mama asks me to look after my baby bro, I get too bored so I watch TV, etc.

The way I help Mama is by writing some articles here and telling Mama tips on how to advertise her blog. But even though that's just a little way for helping Mama, I know that way means a lot.

Pinay Work at home Mom and Joel Christopher

As a Pinay work at home mom, it really is a struggle to find ways on how to earn online. Like I mentioned in a previous blog entry, I started to scour the net for a money making opportunity way back in 2000. Got really frustrated because during that time, being based in the Philippines meant that I cannot get a Paypal account or Clickbank.

I tried to be on the list of most of the professed guru and when I wrote to them about my dilemma, their response was usually not favorable.

I really wanted to give up!

But part of me still wanted to believe that it is possible for a Pinay to work at home.

I know that I need to have a mentor in order to succeed online. Not just any mentor, though. I need a Pinoy mentor.

Finally while browsing through some forum I saw someone commenting that Joel Christopher is a Filipino. I've encountered his name before through the newsletters and I knew how successful he is in his niche and even heralded by most as the masterlistbuilder. With such an American sounding name, I didn't have a slightest clue that he is a Pinoy.

Part of me knew that my quest for a Pinoy mentor has ended and yet another part doubted if he would even respond to my email.

Joel Christopher finally responded and I was ecstatic! That was in 2007.

He subjected me to lots of tests - most of which I never even had an inkling that I was being tested - before he agreed to be my mentor.

Learned a lot but not enough yet to succeed. Not that it was Joel Christopher's fault but it was mine alone. I drifted in and out of his mentorship program and lacked one important thing - FOCUS.

Right now I have already completed Phase 1 (yehey!!!) of Joel Christopher's Apprenticeship Program. Five more Phases or Levels to go...

Work-at-Home Mom Tip #1 : Focus, Focus, Focus

It is nice working from home. It is, however, doubly hard if you are a work-at-home mom.

Those who are single, and even dads working from home still have things easily. If they decide to start working all they have to do is sit by the computer and pound on the keys. They can just inform people that they don't want to be bothered and that's it.

Not so for work-at-home moms. Multi tasking is more the rule rather than the exception.

I remember one time I needed to finish a particular job ... I was nursing my baby using one arm, pounding the computer keys with the other hand, and listening to my two other kids as they excitedly narrated what they watched on TV.

I could go on and on complaining and enumerating the thousand and one ways of how hard it is for a mom to work-at-home but, just as my mentor said, when you want to earn online,"I want RESULTS not REASONS!"

So be it.

For all work-at-home moms out there, for you to be successful you really need to FOCUS, FOCUS and FOCUS.

What will motivate you to continue and not be sidetracked? Always keep in mind the reason why you are doing this. If your goal is to earn $1,000 passive, residual income, then let that be your motivator.

It's hard, I know, but it is not impossible. Remember to keep your eyes glued to your goal and eventually you will get there.

THE NEED FOR MULTIPLE STREAMS OF INCOME

There is one thing I learned in my many years of searching for online earnings - multiple streams of income.

There are lots of ways on how you can earn online.

First, I did some article re-writing. Here I didn't need to do research that much because an article was already provided. All I had to do was to write it again using my own words. The main thought should be there and I had to be as close to the original number of words as possible.

Next, I got a simple data entry job where all I had to do was to copy and paste information in an Excel sheet.

Then I went back to writing only this time I need to write articles from scratch. Some were the SEO type where I needed to repeat the same keyword at least 5 times.

I also did a technical data entry project that dealt with HTML even if I had no idea what all those gibberish meant. I was able to pull it through with the help of my client.

Right now I am still into article writing, data entry and PTC (paid-to-click). The former is a better source of income than the other two but the others give me that much needed break from wracking my brain.

Why is having multiple streams of income important? So that you will still earn even if you don't get enough projects for the others. It also teaches you about the different ways of earning online. Like what financial gurus say: you have to diversify.

What I Feel When Mama is at Home

I'm Workingpinoy's daughter(7 yrs. old).

When mama started this blog it was like I went crazy coz' I really really wanted a blog. Then when a person in PMT (that's where mama put her posts) viewed her blog, I felt a little excited. What an amazing thing that I experienced that mama always tell the people what she learned and funny words that I added in my vocabulary.

Then after a week or 3, my brother had a blog named gamezone V3.0(I think), then he started screaming like crazy.The night after that, I viewed mama's blog and saw some ads or things that are usually in websites. I was a bit confused until I asked "Ma, how did you put this stuff together?" then mama answered my question with unique answers.

The next morning, I woke up at 9:30 (I usually wake up at 10:00) then took a bath at 12:00. Then I signed in Blogger, then made my blog,Barbie tips. I was really happy when mama sticked together her made-up articles together. I usually view Pinay Work-at-Home Mom to know that her articles sometimes teaches people to earn money online.