Dollar Donkey

My first check from Google!

2012-01-31T22:21:00.000-08:00

I had almost forgotten my google adsense account, when suddenly I had a check in the mail from them. 101 Dollars! Wow, what a surprise. My work had finally paid off! Well, sort of. If you consider 2 years of continuous work, multiple hours per week, almost daily activity - 101 Dollars is nothing. Notably though, most of it came through enabling monetization on youtube, and interestingly, the adsense ads here on Dollar Donkey. I will keep you posted with updates.

DollarDonkey is back

2011-02-01T21:55:00.000-08:00

I haven't been working on any of the blogs recently, except Helikopter Hysterie - The Helicopter Blog. There, I've reached a few milestones. We're now a team of two, we own 20 GB of webspace, registered our non-blogspot domain, and keep posting daily. Helikopter Hysterie - The Helicopter Blog now has over 2000 individual visitors per month. Traffic has been building very slowly, but is trending up continuously. I also picked up DollarDonkey again just now, and think about revitalising blogionette and my cooking blog, which keep getting hits from people looking for updates. My other 30+ blogs, including my lottery ticket blog, have been discontinued. I don't think I will win the lottery any time soon.

You've seen it in previous posts, once you got something started on the web, opportunities arise automatically. For example, YouTube. If you got a few videos uploaded and a few of them take-off, they offer you to run ads and share the gains from that. I now have about 100 videos, had about 200,000 views since I started, and keep using it to host videos for Helikopter Hysterie. Look at Helikopter Hysterie's YouTube channel here.

Another example is Google Adwords. I kept getting offers for a $100 free ad budget on AdWords and finally gotten around to using it. Find out more about it in future posts here on DD (DollarDonkey). I'm currently running an ad for Helikopter Hysterie with a $10/day budget on google. Until the initial budget runs out.

Another example is advertising on LinkedIN. Just today I received another $100 in free advertising money on LinkedIN and signed up for it straigh away. The ads are running already, also for Helikopter Hysterie. Also until the initial budget runs out.

Maybe I should be running the ads for DD and redirect traffic to HH? LOL

Anyway, keep looking here on DD and I will give you the details on how to use your AdWords and LinkedIN advertising money (it's quite easy). At least I will tell you how I did it, and you can learn from that.

Another milestone in the near future will be to step out from behind that curtain of perceived anonymity and reveal my full identity on the web as founder, editor, and author / co-author of Helikopter Hysterie - The Helikopter Blog. I heard that a key element of blogging is to give the reader the courtesy of knowing the writer's name and address. We'll see how that goes. So far, starting Helikopter Hysterie - The Helicopter Blog, has led to people - mostly friends who know me and my address - sending me email and real mail about helicopter related things, so maybe more is coming?

Last but not least, I have pulled all google AdSense from Helikopter Hysterie after the initial AdSense trial period. The helicopter blog will remain not-for-profit. I will continue to look into opportunities with other web-based things, but HH will be an ad-free zone. After the initial motivation to try out many different blogs, I ended up discontinuing 39 out of 40 because I was not enthusiastic about them. HH is different. I continued posting there because it was fun, and I will keep doing it for that reason. HH has taken a life of its own and is not part of the make-money-on-the-web-experiment any more.

On hold

2010-08-06T23:42:00.000-07:00

I put the Dollar Donkey on hold until I have some new ideas. After istockphoto and google Adwords not working out, I'm out of ideas. Mind keeps working on stuff, so expect me to report back towards the end of the year.

$100 Free on AdWords

2010-06-16T23:38:00.000-07:00

We're creeping along making a few cents a day so I'm just under $27 now. Slow month. But google sent me a letter in the snail mail offering me $100 free trial in AdWords. I'm currently trying to understand the setup. Once I know how to start my first ad campaign, I will report back.

Approaching 25

2010-05-20T20:42:00.000-07:00

Not much going on today, I'm still adding between 2 cents and $2.48 a day but mostly around 2 to 10 cents. So overall, as shown, I'm approaching $25 on Google AdSense. Other than that, not much to report. I lost most of my interest in istockphoto right now, but I'm sure it will reignite some time in the near future. Updates to follow.

New High

2010-04-22T00:50:00.000-07:00

This is a new record! Adsense added $2.48 to my account yesterday, for a single click on an ad that's run in either of my two revenue share videos. Fantastic. I wonder what ad that was. Unfortunately I haven't found a way of finding out.

My total Adsense earnings are now up to $18.31.

Here comes the Arnold

2010-04-15T23:52:00.000-07:00

Alright, as announced, I finally made up my mind on how to "use" my Arnold videos. I bought an editing software, edited the best part of the video, and threw it out on Youtube. See for yourself. Then I sent an email to all my automotive friends, giving this thing a chance to go viral. I also sent a note to thetruthaboutcars.com to see if they want to post it (somewhat exclusively). This will not make me rich, but this video is really worth sharing and I want to see what happens.

By the way, my marine engine video is now up for revenue sharing. I now have about 270 views/day with two videos. About two people out of these click on the ad. That adds between 2 cents and $1.50 to my AdSense account, which is now at just below $15.

Two-stroke Technology

2010-04-09T22:51:00.001-07:00

Who would have thought that this little 7 second film about an outboard marine engine becomes so popular. It has just surpassed 20,000 views on Youtube and they sent me the attached message. I guess 20,000 marks their "popularity-threshold". Note how much traffic random (somewhat) Youtube videos generate, and how little traffic blogs with useful content create, such as my blog about engineering or my blog about helicopters in pop culture. That's for now at least. I won't give up though. One thing leads to another in this internet business. Stay tuned! I signed the video up for revenue sharing, let's see if it gets approved.

Monthly Income

2010-04-05T23:56:00.000-07:00

On March 1 I reported my first ten Dollars of total income through AdSense. Today I report $12.51. That means I made about $2.50 in just over a month. Compared to the 30 cents per month I made in the beginning, I have improved considerably. I will plot the daily/weekly/monthly income in a future post.

Two Euros - Chaching

2010-03-22T20:01:00.000-07:00

I finally received that long overdue email from spreadshirt.de that told me I sold some of my "artwork". Apparently, somebody used my hand-drawn graphic of a metric tapped hole called "M8". If you want to see it or use it, click on the link before. Also see some of my engineering related shirts on zazzle. So somebody used the graphic to make their own product on spreadshirt.de. This pays me a commission that I had set to 2 Euros. How cool. Unfortunately, the payment threshold there is 10 Euros. So it will take a while for me to receive a wire transfer from them. For now, I update my project status in the status bar on the right and leave it at that.

Speaking of updates. My Google AdSense account has now reached $11.19, again 99% of that comes from my youtube account. I keep feeding new videos into it, to see if I can get another big hit. My second MIG video does well, as well as my Huey takeoff. Check out the links before to get to the videos. AdSense's payment threshold is $100 though.

Meantime, I keep promoting the web's most diverse helicopter blog by continuing to post unique content on a daily basis, together with a friend from Germany. I also started a facebook fan page for the helicopter blog, called Helikopter Hysterie - just like the blog. So if you want to support us, become a fan on facebook, or add the blog feed to your reader. We'd appreciate it!

Quick update

2010-03-11T21:25:00.001-08:00

Due to high work load in my day job, just a quick update. My picture at istockphoto fell through - AGAIN! Can't deal with it right now though. Will do later. I now claimed a few blogs on technorati, as you know. Turns out, now I have one more thing to worry about. There's something called technorati authority. This is a measure of how important your blog is in the blogosphere of that topic. So now I have to build technorati authority. Not sure how yet, but I guess I need to build a name for myself. I start reading about backlinks now...

Quick report on the income from active projects, I'm at $10.27 right now. Stay tuned for updates.

istockphoto take 3

2010-03-02T08:17:00.000-08:00

Alright. In order to finally complete my application, I tried another photo on istockphoto.com. This time it's from the food and beverage category. Which is a wanted category of photographs as described in their tutorial or Photo Training Manual. If that pic doesn't fly, I guess I need new camera equipment. As you probably guessed by now, my approach to istockphoto is this. "Dude, you take thousands and thousands of photos every year, there must be some stock-worthy stuff in there."

If that approach doesn't work, I will start to put some more effort into taking "quality" stock photos, adhering strictly to their quality guidelines. And then we will see. But hang tight for now to see what happens to this half-ass approach - with a fun and challenging day-time job I just can't go all in on istockphoto at this point in time.

Technorati here we come

2010-03-01T22:23:00.001-08:00

Check this out: V6US3NBWVN9T. This is my technorati claim token (scroll down to see what technorati is). What I do is getting my blogs registered with technorati. In order to do that, I need to include this claim token in one of my posts. Then I hit a button on technorati and they start crawling my blog looking for that token. So if I click that button in a minute after posting this to Dollar Donkey, they will crawl my site and find above token (which they've given me) and this way they know I'm the "owner" of the blog I claim. Otherwise how would I be able to post that. Anyway. The claim process appears to be fairly slow, so be patient. I will keep you posted.

What is technorati? According to their ABOUT page, this is what it is:

Technorati was founded to help bloggers succeed by collecting, highlighting, and distributing the global online conversation. Founded as the first blog search engine, Technorati has expanded to a full service media company providing services to the blogs and social media sites and connecting them with advertisers who want to join the conversation, and whose online properties introduce blog content to millions of consumers.

The leading blog search engine, Technorati.com indexes millions of blog posts in real time and surfaces them in seconds. The site has become the definitive source for the top stories, opinions, photos and videos emerging across news, entertainment, technology, lifestyle, sports, politics and business. Technorati.com tracks not only the authority and influence of blogs, but also the most comprehensive and current index of who and what is most popular in the Blogosphere.

Reached the big 10

2010-03-01T17:21:00.000-08:00

Big day today as my online earnings went into the double digits for the first time. Two people clicked on the ad in my popular Youtube video "How to fire up a MIG 17" and thereby sent 12 cents my way. Thanks!

If they haven't changed the ad in the meantime, it was very likely this one about playing classic games (click on the text link above if you want to see the actual video, which has by now had 36,857 views):

Stay tuned for updates! Updates are a bit more sporadic at the moment, but rest assured that I'm working in the background to come up with new ideas on how to make money online.

Technorati for Blog Traffic Boost

2010-02-22T23:53:00.001-08:00

Today I came across an article about technorati. So I looked up a few of my blog topics and blogs on there, and none of them showed up. Consequently, I researched how to make them show up there, and "claimed" my first blog. The web's strangest helicopter blog is now being evaluated by them and should show up soon. I have high hopes, as all other helicopter blogs on there are pretty much non-related or R/C-related. We will see. My "claim" is currently under investigation. If a traffic boost occurs, I will let you know. Stay tuned for updates. I will also claim dollar donkey and a few others soon.

Of course, they say you shouldn't have a blog address that contains "wordpress" or "blogspot". That made me think....

Lots of work

2010-02-18T22:31:00.000-08:00

The total earnings have gone up to $9.56 mostly due to google posting the right ads to my youtube video. Readership at the worlds strangest helicopter blog, Helikopter Hysterie, steadily increases. We now have 10 subscribers and continue to post daily. We did so for the past 4.5 months and plan to continue through 2010 and beyond. The ads there are always the same, I need to look into how I can diversify the ads. So far, google picks the based on the blog content, and there's always only one or two helicopter related ads that appear all the time. Nobody clicks on those. No other updates right now, but as always, stay tuned for more.

By the way, I implemented smartfeed (tm) and a reader counter in the sidebar to the right. Please consider subscribing in a reader. If that smartfeed is as smart as it says, it should be very easy for you.

Blogging takes the lead again...

2010-02-09T19:59:00.000-08:00

After a few quiet weeks I'm back with the same old news for now. For one thing, AdSense earnings take the lead over Amazon Affiliate earnings again with $6.72 in the bank. Also, my istockphoto sample number 3 was rejected, too. Artifacting. Hmm. They're right. I guess my Panasonic Lumix didn't perform well at full zoom. Will come up with a better photo, and try again. I have 7 days until I can upload samples again, so I think I can select carefully. They delay uploads probably so they don't drown in bad pictures.

Here's what they wrote (in case you wanted to know...):

Status: Rejected
Admin Note:
This file contains artifacting when viewed at full size. This technical issue is commonly created by the quality settings in-camera, in post-processing, in RAW settings or scanner settings. Artifacting can also be introduced into an image from the result of other factors such as excessive level adjustments.

A little bit more about compression: The JPEG file format uses a lossy compression method. In order to make the file smaller, information is thrown away, or lost. The quality setting that most image editing programs and digital cameras have when saving JPEGs determines how much information is lost. At a certain point with lower quality settings the removal of information during the compression process can become visible in the form of compression artifacts (places in the image where too much detail has been lost). Too much JPEG compression can become visible either in the form of a general loss of detail, or grainy/patterned areas (especially in flat spaces, such as skies).

Compression artifacting can be introduced by the camera and/or by your image editing software at lower quality settings. Also, re-sizing, re-sampling, and re-saving can all degrade the quality of a JPEG image, so one should be careful about re-saving JPEGs. If for example, a photo was re-saved 4 times (even at a quality of 12 or Best) the image quality will become worse each time as pixel information is thrown out each time the file is saved. With this in mind, it is obviously best to start with the cleanest image possible. You may want to double-check your camera settings to make sure it is saving at the highest quality. If you continue to have issues you may try shooting in RAW/NEF mode, export to TIFF and then save as JPEG at the highest possible quality (level 12) with minimal or no post processing effects. Sometimes even trying a new RAW converter could be beneficial.

Noise (pixels of varying color where there shouldn?t be) is most commonly created by digital cameras, especially in darker shadows or under low-light conditions and exacerbates the compression issues mentioned above. You might want to double-check to make sure that your camera?s ISO/ASA setting is at the lowest number (usually 100). In digital cameras, higher numbers (200 or 400) will always result in more noise (just as with film). If you require further explanation regarding this rejection, please submit a ticket to Scout (http://www.istockphoto.com/contact_ticket.php)

For more information about iStock Standards, please see:
http://www.istockphoto.com/tutorial_2.3_noise.php

Stay tuned for updates from the low end of the parabola. It will take off some time... [*keeping fingers crossed]

Reject

2010-01-26T23:13:00.000-08:00

Istockphoto update. My third sample was rejected because I filtered out some noise. I'm now going through my files to find a replacement. Should be fairly easy to find one. Working on it. I updated the totals on the sidebar on the right. Getting there...

Amzon leaps ahead

2010-01-18T21:24:00.000-08:00

Very nice, finally I made some earnings with my Amazon Associates Account! Somebody bought two items and sent $5.96 my way! Check it out on the left. The items sold were a heart rate monitor and a book, total value of about $149. My referral rewards were 4% of that, coming out to about $6. THANKS!

This is a huge leap forward, my Amazon Associates Account now taking the lead over Google AdSense. If you follow this blog, you know how much work and effort goes into creating useful content and how tedious it is to make 1 cent per day with page impressions on sites with ads. Anyway, stay tuned for updates, I'm sure they will come!

As usual, I have updated the sidebar to the right to reflect the latest numbers.

Cruising

2010-01-13T23:55:00.000-08:00

Not much news today. The excitement about the $1.50/day evaporated really quickly but the thought to return to this rate is still alive. Working on it... My istockphoto application is 2/3 done. I still need to get one more sample through the approval. The overall earnings are at $4.16 right now. Stay tuned for updates!

Something for the programmer in you

2010-01-11T22:36:00.001-08:00

Dear readers, THANKS!

2010-01-08T20:23:00.000-08:00

I didn't plan to post today or even check my AdSense account, but I did check, was quite surprised, then happy and then had the urge to immediately share this with you:

What do you see here, let me explain. This image shows what went on today in my AdSense account. These are the so called channels that have received visitors today. Take the blog I founded about helicopters, Helikopter Hysterie, for example. I had 45 page impressions there. But zero clicks on ads. On the other hand, Dollardonkey, only 9 impressions, but two people decided to click on ads (what a high click through rate [CTR], too!). Surprisingly, those two clicks were worth $1.50! Wow, that's a quantum leap for me.

As you remember, my earnings were about a cent a day since I started my YT video revenue share (BTW look at where it says "AdSense for Content Host", you can see that my YT vid received 149 viewers today which was worth 1 cent). Most more recently I made about 2-3 cents per day. But $1.50? Nice...

So what do we take away from this? The earnings are little if lots of people see your ad, but nobody clicks on it. 1 cent per 149 times the ad was shown (but not clicked), versus $1.50 for two clicks on an ad on Dollardonkey. I wonder which ad that was. So far I don't know if I can find that out.

Again, before you click on an ad 20 times to freak me out tomorrow, I think this would lead to google shutting down my Adsense account, because they will think I set this up. So keep it realistic. ;-)

This brings my total earnings to date up to $4.09. Stay tuned for updates!

Adsense Overview

2010-01-06T06:55:00.000-08:00

To be exact, my AdSense Account is at $2.54 at the moment. In the picture below you can see the number of visitors my blogs received (2,543 since I started tracking) and the number of viewers my one single YouTube video received (5,804 visitors since I got approved for revenue sharing on that vid). Next to that number you can see the amount of people who have actually clicked on a banner ad. I guess my advice to any web-user is, if you like the site you visit, and would like to support it, click on one of their ads. It helps them.

If you would like to follow in my footsteps and don't know how, please watch my HOW-TO videos that will show step-by-step how to get a google account, how to start a blog, and how to implement AdSense on your blogs. Look in the side bar to the right, I listed all my HOW-TO VIDEOs there. Just click on the link and they will open in YouTube. If you like them, please rate them. They are also building on each other. So start with Vid 1 and go on until you got what you need. Have fun! Remember though, the most important thing is quality content. (Note to self: Listen to your own advice.)

Here's what I got right now:

Happy New Year!

2010-01-05T20:43:00.000-08:00

So, over the holidays my Google AdSense Account soared over $2.50 due to a lot of people viewing my youtube video, which was a featured video on YT for a while. Overall 23 out of about 5000 viewers clicked on the banner ad and sent a few cents my way. I also started uploading additional unique videos that I have, to see if more of them get "popular".

I also have an update regarding my ISTOCKPHOTO application. 2 of my 3 samples got accepted, the third one had an upload error. Strangely, I need to wait another 55 hrs before I can resubmit. Which I will definitely do. I strongly believe that I have some desirable photos somewhere in my terrabytes of photo material. And if they can help someone else while giving me some profits, that's much better than having them buried somewhere locked away from the world on my external hard disk.

In parallel to all that, I continue to build content on my blogs. Mainly the engineering blog, the helicopter blog, and the one you're reading right now. My web comic fell asleep unfortunately. It's easy while you have ideas, it's very hard if you "need" to produce a comic strip.

As usual, stay tuned for updates!

Conclusion

2009-12-31T15:27:00.000-08:00

We conclude this year with $1.92 earned! See you over there!

Education Channel

2009-12-28T20:32:00.000-08:00

Today, I heard a story about a guy making money by explaining math and science with youtube videos, follow the link to the NPR story. You can also play the mp3 there and listen to the story. You can also follow this link to the Khan Academy directly. Great idea.

Project 007: iStockPhoto Application

2009-12-22T08:15:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in my previous entries, I'm also looking into how to make money from all those photos I took over the years. From my old Flickr account I learned pretty much which images are popular and which ones are not. While stock photos are a bit different than flickr, the basic popularity of an image should still be similar. My application is put in, let's see if they accept me in.

When you apply for the istockphoto account, they make you read all kinds of stuff about publishing photos, quality, lighting, model releases and so on. Then they make you take a quiz and upload 3 samples of your work. I did all that late yesterday. Once I know more, I will post about it.

Stay tuned for updates.

Strange. AdSense Update.

2009-12-21T22:09:00.000-08:00

Today, I strangely received 24 cents for 159 people viewing my Youtube video, and only one person clicking on the actual ad. I don't know why. In the previous days, similar viewer numbers and clicks had only brough in 1 to 3 cents. I'm confused.

The ad they had shown with my video during the day was the one with the IQ question. It's intriguing to click on it, I have to admit. It says something like "97% of Americans get this question wrong. Can you answer it?"

Meanwhile, the overall earnings have reached $1.08.

Thought

2009-12-15T22:37:00.000-08:00

Extremely busy at work right now. My youtube video is still reeling in about 1-3 cent per day. But I can't work on content on my other blogs right now. The thought had occurred to me before that it might be the most lucrative solution in the long term, to stop blogging and put all my extra effort into my "real" work.

50 cents

2009-12-13T18:48:00.000-08:00

The earnings have surpassed 50 cents this week. At the same time, my one youtube video has seen more visitors (1,900) since it joined the revenue sharing program than all my blogs together since I started tracking them with Google Analytics (1,750).

A bit about the Youtube Partner Program

2009-12-10T08:09:00.000-08:00

Starting to get up to speed with the Youtube Partner program. Not sure if I will to have to remove some of my content before I get accepted in. Will follow up soon.

New Youtube Video

2009-12-08T23:53:00.000-08:00

My first very popular MIG 17 video reeled in almost 29.000 visitors by now, and as you know if you follow DOLLAR DONKEY, this adds about 1 to 3 cents per day to my Google AdSense account. I recently posted another unique and high quality video of a very rare sight in today's aviation landscape. It's a vietnam era F4 Phantom taking off in sequence with that same MIG 17 from the other video. Turn up the sound. The Phantom takes off with only one afterburner (is that standard practice or cost savings?). When the MIG adds the afterburner half way down the runway, the OOMPH is still very apparent from that great a distance.

Let's see how this video does. I will also send youtube a message to see if they let me into the Youtube Partner Program. Then I might upload the long anticipated Arnold video I talk about all the time.

For now, turn up the volume and check this out (currently 38 views):

Stay tuned for updates!

New blogs

2009-12-08T00:45:00.000-08:00

I started a few new blogs and am currently building content for them. These are mostly information hubs, so no new web content, just existing content rearranged. One example is an engineering blog. There is a wealth of very detailed and useful engineering content out there nowadays. My blog acts as a hub for engineers to quickly find that data, or to just get their mind entertained with a new daily topic. Published weekdays.

Google AdSense for Search

2009-12-03T23:30:00.000-08:00

Today I spent a few minutes to implement some rather useless search boxes in a few of my blogs. I personally very rarely use these search boxes in websites I frequent, simply because I don't see the point. I normally go straight to google.com and go from there. But because it's an option in my AdSense account, I gave it a try. Let's see what will be reported in my AdSense report page a few days down the road. Maybe other people actually use this feature. Go to this silly blog about lottery tickets to find the search box that shall bring riches to my google adsense account.

What is Google AdSense for Search? Google AdSense for Search is a feature that can earn you a few cents when people use it to search web content. Google displays advertisement in the search results. It's basically a piece of Java Script that you copy and paste into your blog. It's all explained in my video.

If you want to learn how to do this for your sites or blogs, follow this instructional video that I put together for you. It's real easy, just pause the video as necessary. The video shows step-by-step how I implement the Java script in my blogger blog. Don't be afraid. It's really just copy paste.

Stay tuned for updates!

Building content

2009-12-02T00:03:00.000-08:00

I'm slowly chipping away on building content on my blogs and also on YouTube. I don't think that any other ideas will bring in any money at the moment. I keep my mind set on new ideas (as my fortune cookie was telling me) and write down any new things that come to mind. Stay tuned for more details.

AdSense Status Update

2009-12-01T00:06:00.000-08:00

I'm celebrating over 1000 clicks since I started my AdSense account and tracking at all of my active blogs. There are about 5 blog formats right now that I post to regularly that compete for the most clicks per day. The top number is 15 clicks per day right now, so nothing to get excited about. But I think I'm building content daily, which will add to one or two nice web resources that might eventually be of value to some people.

One observation I made is, that a click in AdSense for Blogs is worth about 7 cents, in AdSense for Youtube it's worth virtually nothing. So in Youtube, you get paid by views rather than by clicks, whereas in blogs, you get more for clicks on ads rather than page views.

Stay tuned for updates!

Seal of Quality

2009-11-30T22:49:00.000-08:00

Today I was busy designing and rolling out the bigkungfumaster cachet. It now appears on all bigkungfumaster (TM) products. The bigkungfumaster brand stands for quality, no bullshit web content. Whenever you see the bigkungfumaster cachet you know where it comes from, who's behind it, and what to expect. The bigkungfumaster products always and without exception stand for true value in original web content.

The Trap

2009-11-28T00:33:00.000-08:00

Two things I thought about over the Thanksgiving break. One, how many people blog about blogging? Two, how many people blog about making money online. These two things are very popular and I think - inspired by indexed - I would currently sum it up as follows:

I also found an interesting article about a journalist who looked into making money online. There are a few more options I need to explore. According to this article put together by about.com about making money online I already did implement a few steps (like starting my own blog and posting affiliate links) but could look into writing for other blogs, and putting up my photos in a stock photo database.

Todo list:

1) look into blogging for others for money
2) look into stock photo databases

Fortune Cookie

2009-11-25T22:52:00.000-08:00

I was in a rush today and went to my local organic Chinese food place to get a wonton soup and some rice. As is customary there, I received my fortune cookie at the end of the meal. While I forked over the cash for the meal (worth it), I read the news:

I have about 40 blogs started with several different topics (except the one really lucrative one, porn) to test what I could be enthusiastic about and to find out what could fly on the web at the same time. On top, I have a list with about 20 more blog topics that I would like to explore. At the same time, I have ideas outside of the web business field, so I'm now trying to find out what the fortune cookie wanted to hint at.

YouTube Monetization

2009-11-24T22:22:00.000-08:00

My Youtube video showing the engine startup of a MIG 17 went up into the Youtube Revenue Sharing program today. See attached images. The ads are now shown during the video, covering the lower portion of the image. They are not shown constantly, they rather come and go. So far I haven't had any adverse reactions in the comments. See how the video looks on the left, or actually click on the link above and experience the ads live.

What I did have though, is already 1 cent of income due to 40 clicks on the video on my first day of being live. Let's see where that goes. The new duration to millionaire status just got cut in half. Only about 100,000 years to go! ;-) If the money had rolled in at a rate of 1 cent per 40 clicks since I put the video up, the income on it would've been 28000/40 cents, which is 700 cents, or $7. Here's your reference point! It will not be easy to make that little extra disposable income. As you might recall from my dollar donkey blog introduction I'm not shooting for the million, but for the little extra monthly income to bolster the disposable income.

Stay tuned for updates!

219 Thousand Years

2009-11-23T23:58:00.000-08:00

Ok, it was not the declared goal to become a millionaire with this project. But a good friend of mine pointed out that - at the current rate of return - I will be quite old when I reach one million dollars of income.

I just illustrated that here real quick:

It will take a bit more than 219 thousand years to make a million bucks through google adsense. In the 20 days I had the account, I made 25 cents. That's 1.25 cents a day. To make 100,000,000 cents, it will take that much time. So I need to improve my content, you think?

First Quarter

2009-11-22T22:39:00.000-08:00

Not much news today. YouTube hasn't added my video to their "revenue sharing" program yet. I did find out though, that it's only by invitation. You can apply for the youtube partner program, but what happened to me was only by invitation. So I will not be able to add more videos for revenue sharing unless another invite rolls in.

Anyway. I wanted to let you know that my AdSense income reached 25 cents today! I consider that a milestone. Remember those big checks you see from Google on other sites? I think what you see below is more realistic. Check it out!

And stay tuned for updates, as usual.

Structured Design: Fundamentals of a Discipline of Computer Program and Systems Design

2009-11-21T10:49:00.000-08:00

Check this out!

Monetize YouTube

2009-11-21T00:34:00.000-08:00

This is funny. Remember how a few days back I wondered if there was a way to make a few dollars off of my Arnold Schwarzenegger videos? Click on this link about my blog post about ways to make money on youtube as a reminder.

Anyway. I received an email two days back from YouTube, saying that one of my videos was quite popular and they offered me ad placement and revenue sharing. Sounds good I thought. So I thought I would share that with you in this instructional illustrated how-to video about monetizing youtube videos:

Just as a quick overview of the above video:
- it shows the email I got
- you can see that video that I got with 27000+ views
- you can see the tutorial about monetizing with youtube
- you can see me link the youtube account to my adsense account
- you can see me submit my video for monetization approval

I'm not sure if you can actively apply for this, I think you can. I will post updates once I got this video approved. And once I got those Arnie videos up. ;-)

As usual, thanks for checking this out and stay tuned for updates!

Modifications here

2009-11-19T22:16:00.000-08:00

In my blog post about understanding google and hyperlinks I mentioned that the article linked there is interesting. So I followed my own advice, read it, and then I started to redo some of the links in my blog. I used to make links to things always in the same format. The actual link (what you see as underlined hyperlink) was always with a word like "this pdf" or "this article". I learned that it's better to have words describing the contents of the link as the actual link.

Example.

My old style:
So I found a weird blog about lottery tickets. Check it out here.

My new style:
So I found a weird blog about lottery tickets.

This way, according to the article, your stuff gets indexed by the spiders and robots much easier. Good thing to know.

If you remember my post from two days ago about great illustrated youtube training videos for google, blogger, and adsense [see, another linking example!], here's how I tried to improve the links:

How is this related to making money online? Well, the plan would be to have better links, this way my content becomes more relevant, people will follow the links, stay here longer, maybe even link back to my blog, and ultimately by having good content, I have more traffic, and thus more AdSense income. Stay tuned for updates!

Understand Google

2009-11-19T01:15:00.001-08:00

With my first pennies rolling in these days (current status is I made US$0.24 through Google AdSense) I decided to keep posting useful information to my blogs (I have a few that I update daily or multiple times a week) because that's what adds real value to the web. All the fraud and short-term methods are BS. Anyway, I started looking into google and how it works. I came across this article about how you can score higher in the google rankings. It's a highly interesting read and I suggest you take a few minutes to read through (some of) it.

Here's a teaser:
For instance, it's far better to have a link pointing to my site that says something like "Sales Techniques - Free Sales Tips and Tutorials" then it is to have a link that says "For sales Techniques - Free Sales Tips and Tutorials, click here." And both of those are far better than having a .gif image which points to that page. So when you make links, make them in text and make them describe what is on the page you are pointing to. This will help you score higher in Google.

So what I've done here in this very post, is I've tried to implement that linking tip. Let me see if I can go back and edit the links later.

Of course, now I would benefit from people linking to my blog for something like "dude trying to make a few pennies online" or so... :-)

Inspired by Indexed

2009-11-18T07:27:00.000-08:00

I came across a cool site called indexed. Look for it here. That site inspired me to put some of my own findings into a format like the one utilized by indexed. Check this out:

Project 007: Google AdSense

2009-11-17T01:01:00.000-08:00

I almost forgot, I added Google AdSense as my active project number 007 to the side bar on the right and added my first positive balance to it. As my other efforts are still not bearing any fruit, my AdSense project has started to trickle in a few cents. Bottle of Champaign is opened. I also noticed a slight increase in people watching my YouTube training videos. Again, check them out here:

Video 001: How to create a Gmail account and start a Blogger blog
Video 002: How to get an AdSense account in 180 seconds
Video 003: How to Monetize a Blogger blog in 60 seconds
Video 004: How to get Google Analytics implemented for your blog

Basically, you can start reeling in some cents (like me), too. Just look at all the videos and follow the step by step instructions there. You will have your blog going and the first Ads posted within a day or two (remember it takes google approval to activate the AdSense account, so be sure to have some content ready for your new blog). Good luck! I hope you have some more interesting topics than myself! As usual, thanks for stopping by and stay tuned for more success stories!

Note: As you can tell by now, this blog is not about making money quickly. I also do not have the surefire way for you (or me) on how to get crazy rich super fast. I also do not want to sell you anything. My plan is to investigate how to make money online, with a lot of different possible ways, as you can see with my active projects on the side bar to the right. This blog is about the slow and strenuous way to a small additional income on the side. I will try different ways and post my findings here to share with you, so you can learn from my experience or try this yourself, if you want.

Success!

2009-11-16T21:12:00.001-08:00

All, I made my first 7 cents today via Google Adsense! I can not believe it. Whoever clicked on one of my ads, THANK YOU! Good stuff. I couldn't believe my eyes. And here's the proof:

So 16 page impressions happened today, so far, and one person clicked on an ad. I'm quite surprised that this one click was worth 7 cents. I imagined I would get one cent per 1000 clicks or so.

In any case, this is my first step to making money online. I will keep going and will keep experimenting with formats, so stay tuned for the next ideas. And hopefully I can show more results as time progresses.

Project 006: Pamper your luck

2009-11-14T22:10:00.000-08:00

A while back I started to investigate blog concepts. I came up with all kinds of ideas and will eventually introduce more of them. A few are about engineering, about food, about photography and so on, all of which are things that are repeated on the web millions and millions of times. You will have to provide some really outstanding content if you want to be on top with topics like that. But I find, mostly you can only repeat what's already there. There's even a thing where you can blog "automatically"! I just found that out recently and will post more about it once I know what it's all about.

For today, I wanted to introduce one of these sample blogs that I've created. It has 100% original content and is totally irrelevant. It might become of significance though if I ever hit the jackpot with one of these tickets. Check out a blog about lottery tickets and how to pamper your luck.

Adsense for Domains

2009-11-11T23:01:00.000-08:00

I'm tired today and don't have much time to continue my research into making money online. As I said a few days back though, there are ways of utilizing parked domains. If you've got a domain and don't use it, link it up to AdSense. It costs nothing and might reel in a few clicks. Check out this google help page. Once I get around utilizing my parked domain, I will post a video about it. Stay tuned.

Exploring other sides of YouTube

2009-11-10T21:31:00.001-08:00

I have a youtube account, like a lot of people, actually it comes automatically with any google account. As many others, I take video snippets with my digital camera and post them for my friends and family. This is all totally useless content for anyone but my friends and family.

Recently, I went through my 70 videos and looked at the views. The number of viewers ranges from 1 to 27,000. Hmm, I thought. What if there was a way of utilizing those viewers with AdSense or by some other means.

By the way, so far my AdSense account counted 240 visitors to my pages that contain ads but 0 clicks on any ads. This is too bad because I'm curios as to what happens when somebody clicks an ad. I can't click my own ads because that's against the rules.

Anyway. Back to YouTube. I have a few more exclusive videos that nobody else has. I wonder if I have the rights to them, and what I can do with them. A good example is my taping of Arnold Schwarzenegger's appearance at the 2009 SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) show in Detroit. I captured the moment where he says "The Detroit Auto Industry will be back!". Classic. I also have recorded the part where he promises to shoot a free commercial with any Michigan car maker should they wish to do so. I googled the topic and it seems I'm the only one who recorded that. So what can I do with it? Any suggestions?

Next thing I googled "how to market youtube videos" and found this legit NY Times article about youtube marketing. Quite interesting read, I recommend it.

This points towards a program called "YouTube Partner Program". This is where internet celebs or up and coming personalities can sign up for this thing where ads are posted within your videos, or after your videos. Not sure yet.

But I will try to sign up for that. It says if you have an AdSense account (which we do, remember the instructional video?) approval or disapproval takes 24 hrs. Then let's see what happens.

Again, my approach is not to get crazy rich with one thing, my approach is to trickle in some additional income with many different options available on the web. In fact, I will introduce a few more projects in the near future.

Stay tuned for updates.

Video 004: Sign up and implement Google Analytics

2009-11-09T22:27:00.000-08:00

A minute ago, I published my fourth video about how to get Google Analytics implemented for your blog.

First of all, why would you want google analytics? Well, just to keep track of your visitors and get an idea of what they look at, how long they stay, what they are most interested in, which countries they come from, etc. This is useful to customize your content later. Remember, good content that matches what your readers need is what will make your blog a success. I can't tell that about my blog yet. It's too early, I don't have a reader base yet, and don't have enough data to support any claims. But endurance is key in the beginning. So look at my video, and invest those few minutes to get your tracking started. Make sure you looked at videos 001-003 so that everything will work as I show it in my video.

The video shows - notably in 3:39 min - how to sign up for analytics, point analytics towards your newly created blog (which you've already done if you followed my videos 001-003) or any other website, then how to implement the java script code in the site that you want to track. All you have to do after these 3 minutes 39 seconds is wait for the traffic to roll in. This will be shown in one of the following videos. Make sure you stop by at my sample blog so that I can get some statistics going for my next video.

Also today, I want to tell you about two new ways of making money online, which I came across recently:

1) make your blog mobile device / iphone compatible
2) utilize your parked domains with google adsense

Both these things will essentially route more traffic towards your AdSense account. Which is legitimate, if you provide the reader useful content in return. And I assume you do.

Anyway, stay tuned for a few more easy and straight forward dollardonkey how-to videos.

PS: I agree that I'm a bit Google AdSense biased right now but that so far seems to be the most likely way for me to make my first cent online. Eventually this blog will be about other ways as well. Remember my shirt shops and Amazon affiliate program, which I haven't taken seriously yet.

Olympus Pen E-P1

2009-11-08T19:57:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine pointed out this digital camera to me today. What an awesome piece of equipment. It's a classic camera concept restyled for the digital age. A bit on the expensive side, but great (check out the active link below on the left). Just wanted to share it real quick. The camera linked on the right hand side is a bit more affordable and fits in my pocket (Stylus 9000).

I'm working on the next video right now.

Video 003: How to implement Google AdSense in your blog

2009-11-08T00:03:00.000-08:00

This short and informative video has annotations that show you step by step how to activate Google AdSense for your existing blog. You have to have three things done before you can proceed with this:

1) Watch Video 001 and create a blog and some content.
2) Watch Video 002 and apply for a Google AdSense account.
3) Be approved for the AdSense account (check your email after 24 hrs).

So Video 003, finally your ads can go live and your traffic will start creating some money for you.

I have gone ahead and implemented AdSense for all my blogs but so far have not made any money with it, simply because I don't have the traffic volume just yet. I will keep you posted though, as to how it goes.

Enjoy video three and stay tuned for updates! Good luck with your project, drop me a link and I will check it out (and click on the ads!).

Note: Do not click on your own ads! This is against google policy.

Video 002: How to sign up for AdSense

2009-11-07T01:29:00.001-08:00

I finished this instructional how-to video showing step-by-step what you have to do to apply for GOOGLE ADSENSE. It has annotations to guide you through. Let me know what you think. I know it will be too basic for some of you, and just right for others. Stay tuned, I will explain more advanced stuff once I learned it myself and once some time passes. Stay tuned!

Again, this video shows:
1) How to find the AdSense website
2) How to create an AdSense account

Video

2009-11-06T01:34:00.000-08:00

Currently working on the second video. Stay tuned for updates.

Video 001: Create a blog

2009-11-05T00:38:00.000-08:00

So finally I've gotten around to filming and posting my first instructional video. This is about setting up a gmail (google) account, and then starting a blog, and publishing your first blog entry. A few easy steps. I've illustrated the video. Let me know what you think. I'd love to hear from you guys. Leave a comment.

Again, this video shows step-by-step:
1) create gmail account
2) log in to gmail
3) go to blogger.com
4) sign in to blogger with google account
5) creating a blog
6) creating your first blog entry

This comes a bit later than expected. I had to pull a late shift to make it happen and could post shortly after midnight only.

Action plan

2009-11-03T23:28:00.000-08:00

I think this is getting a bit chaotic right now. As you can see, I have "monetized" this blog. Ads now appear on the sidebar, below the newest post, and if you click on a post, in there you will find ads too. These are all AdSense ads.

Anyway. To give all this a bit more structure, I decided to go back a few steps and start over. This CamStudio is pretty good and I think I can use it to explain to you with instructional videos, how to set yourself up with a blog and start posting ads. I signed up for a new youtube account with my dollardonkey id, and there I will post the following instructional videos:

Video 01: How to create a Blogger.com blog
Video 02: How to create an AdSense account
Video 03: How to implement AdSense into your blog, and "monetize" it
Video 04: How to create a Google Analytics account

So let's slow down and step back to the beginning. Please follow along and leave me a comment if you have questions or anything.

CamStudio 2.1

2009-11-03T20:45:00.000-08:00

I promised to talk a little bit about how to use google analytics today. For that, I'm thinking about making a little HOW TO VIDEO. And for that, I researched and downloaded CamStudio 2.1 from CNET. See here. This is not an active link, just to show you where the software comes from and maybe you're interested and want to try this at home.

With that I will start to explain everything and put instructional videos on youtube for you to easily access and follow through the individual steps.

In the meantime, I also re-applied at google AdSense and they accepted my application this time. I will implement a few adsenses and then also post a video about it. Give me some time and I will be back with some footage.

Quick account update: all accounts remain at $0 income. So my hopes are a bit higher for this adsense stuff. We will see.

Amazon links

2009-11-03T00:32:00.000-08:00

If you google "making money online" you will get a lot of spam results that don't lead anywhere really. So I looked on Amazon.com. There, I found three interesting products that I will consider buying. Find the active links below:

I haven't given the research due diligence yet, so I don't fully recommend any of those products yet. Another thing I need to look into in the upcoming days. A first thought is, the first one, well, represents a bit more of a down-to-earth approach, the second might be a bit too basic, the third might be too exaggerated. Stay tuned for updates.

Statistics now

2009-11-02T20:01:00.000-08:00

Well, that google biz kit thing threw a wrench in my system. Lost focus for a few days but am now coming back to introduce more projects. I'm thinking about installing google adsense here to see what it does to me.

In the meantime, I have installed google analytics to monitor statistics regarding this blog. Here's what they found so far:

29 people have come to this site since I first started on 10/18/2009, and you guys stay for an average of 4.something minutes. This is not too bad. I think lots of you guys are interested in making money online as well. I'm thinking 500 a month should be a good start for some extra disposable income, or for something to play with on scottrade or so.

Speaking of which, maybe I should expand my blog into other "making money online" options like online stock trading on scottrade or etrade or what not. We will see. If there's something to be said, I will do it. Otherwise I won't. Not sure yet.

In any case, stay tuned for an update on the running projects. By the way, I introduced a new t-shirt design on zazzle.com, maybe that's more popular than the old naked-girl-on-a-bike joke. Here's the (active) link:

like body engineering by abv2000
Create a custom t-shirt using Zazzle

By the way, signing up for google analytics is really easy. It will keep track of your traffic and give you daily statistics. I will speak in detail about it tomorrow.

Also, if you've started something, because you were inspired by this blog, please send me a message or leave a comment here, I'd love to hear about it. Thanks!

Biz Kit is a spam

2009-10-30T23:50:00.001-07:00

Just a quick note. I should have googled the google biz kit straight away. This way I would have found it to be a scam right away. Will post tomorrow with some more exciting stuff.

Gold Rush Pop-Up

2009-10-29T23:51:00.000-07:00

At work today, a browser window popped up just out of nowhere on my computer (what a coincidence I thought, but then again, I'm not surprised - what google must know about me is surreal). It was about making money online through google. I looked at it for a while and wondered if this could be real. Of course, you know me, I'm prone to believe stuff like this. But then I just jotted down the address for later use and tried to close the window. Another window appeared asking me if I was sure that I want to miss out on $5000 per month from google. That's when I stopped wondering if the site was legit and immediately put that one in the scam drawer. Look it up for yourself, see what you think. Here's the link. This is not an active link by the way. But I'm sure somebody is making some money of it every time I or you access the link.

If you don't want to click on the link, here's an image of what the site looks like:

But then, this afternoon, my mind wandered back to the google checks. I think I will download this free report or at least look at it, and then see if I can get a better idea of what that's all about. If it's a scam, too bad, if I can make a few dollars with it, all the better. Google Biz Kit. Hmm, sounds like a cookie to me. But anyway. Let me spend some time with it and I will come back.

Project 005: Zazzle Associate

2009-10-28T22:04:00.000-07:00

Okay. Quick list of projects added to the side bar. Just so we can keep an eye on what's going on. Helps me too, because I tend to layer information upon information in my brain all day (engineering does that to you or maybe that's just me), and only the most recent stuff stays accessible to me.

So Project 003. I found out that Zazzle has an Associate Program, too. A pretty good one too. If somebody clicks on the link I posted, a cookie is planted and if that person buys anything (anything) from Zazzle within 45 days, I get a 15% commission on that sale. So not just for something I link to (like in Amazon Affiliate program), but anything. Let's see how that goes.

If you have a Zazzle account, you don't even need another hookup for the zazzle associate program. You're all set. So since I have Project 001 going, I'm all set to start posting links to them.

I recommend watching this video which explains everything you need to know. Go for it! Try it! Make money online. (If only it was that easy right).

Look at this info page too.

Anyway, this link is active (if I understood that right I just need to add an asterisk to the link and that means it's active), so if you click it and buy anything from zazzle, I get 15% commission. Thanks! Well, since I only have two regular readers at the moment, this will not generate much income. But I could see how it might send some pennies my way, if I ever had a blog with 500 daily readers. For that I will need content that people are interested in. So far, I don't have that, but I'm thinking about it. Maybe one of these days I will have an idea that will work out. My wife says I just don't get it - the only things that attract that number of readers are topics like diet, sex, or fashion. Hmm, something to think about.

Anyway, here's another active link (just click on the picture of the mullet t-shirt). This one just cracked me up. I might order it myself (using this active link of course) and give myself 15% off, lol.

Mullets by hippocratees
See other Funny T-Shirts

So, that's it for today. I'm quite happy with my achievements today. This was a good find and very easy to work with. I hope you will try it too. Leave me a comment if you got a minute and share your own experience.

Thanks and have a good night.

10 day milestone

2009-10-28T00:42:00.000-07:00

By the way, just a quick note. I've reached ten straight days of posting daily about my efforts to make a few extra bucks online. This is quite a big milestone for me and I thought I'd post a quick note about it. But now I have to get a few hours of sleep in. After all, I still have my daytime engineering job which I truly enjoy. Stay tuned for updates and have a good night!

Project 004: Yaro Starak Associate

2009-10-27T23:26:00.000-07:00

I looked around the web and came across Yaro Starak. He makes a bunch of money with a site explaining how to make money with blogging. He explains everything with audio and video (very useful!) and uses case studies to drive his points home.

Then, I also came across this site. It takes a look at Yaro's site, and I basically agree with the author's points. In the article there, I found out that you can become an affiliate for Yaro and make money that way. So guess what? Next steps after reading that, I went to this site, to become an affiliate of Yaro. One hand washes the other. Anyway. There I saw that I need a clickbank ID.

Well, so I went to get my clickbank ID, which was fairly easy, took me 5 minutes. I did that here. Then, I went back to Yaro's site and signed up for his affiliate program (you need to confirm through an email sent to you account). Then, I needed another five minutes to find my way around to the affiliate links. They are shown below.

If you click here you will get to the first site about how to learn to become a blogger, the fast track.

If you click here you can go straight to his sale page.

So the above links are the links that will help generate money in my newly set up clickbank ID account, I guess. I will report back if anything happens. Stay tuned for updates.

Note: As you can see, I keep posting daily with some aspect or another, but I take a very trial-and-error or hands-on approach. I don't plan this out. I look for a new way to make some pennies online every day, and keep posting about it. Follow me along if you're as curious as myself to find out if that goes anywhere, or do as I do and gamble with the outcome. The odds must be better than the lottery right?

By the way, I found these banners shown below as alternatives to the above plain links. But I looked at them and found them to be a bit too much so I left them out but then decided to show them here anyway:

And:

By the way, meet Yaro
here, he's a really straight forward, down-to-earth guy.

Enough for now from me, I hope you found this easy enough to follow. Try it, maybe it makes you some extra bucks, and who can't be happy about those? Good luck from me!

Project 003: Spreadshirt.de

2009-10-26T00:01:00.000-07:00

Let me introduce my second project to you, another shirt design shop that pays out a commission once somebody orders a product that you have designed. Again, mostly engineering related stuff, but I'm thinking about an expansion into other topic areas.

Go to my Spreadshirt.de shop and look around. I put a few more options up there compared to project 001, so I will need to translate those over to my zazzle account at some point.

Here are the facts.

Money earned: 0
Visitors this month: 2
Visitors total: 17

So far so good...

Absurd

2009-10-24T15:50:00.000-07:00

I just read my post from yesterday and thought, well, in the future I should buy all the stuff I need from Amazon through my wife. She can click on my affiliate link which I will specifically set up for the product I intend to buy and then get 4 to 6 % off through my affiliate account. This will not make me money, but I will save a few bucks.

Also, I could buy 2,000,000 soda cans in Ohio with a 5 cent deposit, and then ship them over the border to Michigan to claim a 10 cent deposit refund. That means I made 2,000,000 times 5 cent. Or $100,000. Good plan...

Project 002: Amazon Affiliate

2009-10-23T01:01:00.000-07:00

A few days back I signed up at Amazon.com to become an affiliate. This means, when I refer someone to Amazon.com and they buy the product I linked in the same session, I get a 4% commission on the sale.

Now, I have to find a way to sneak in a so called affiliate link where many people browse by, and get them to buy the linked product. Easy as that. Right?

Oh well, how about that. I will add an affiliate link right here, just below this sentence - this way you can see what an affiliate link can look like.

Let's say you click on it and buy that hard disk straight away from Amazon.com, and who doesn't need more storage, I would get something like around $5 from amazon, while cost for you would stay the same. I will send an update with details on this affiliate thing. Meanwhile my balance stays zero. Keep going.

Working

2009-10-22T18:55:00.000-07:00

I'm working in the background to research more ways to make money online. There seem to be tons of ways, but all involve attracting a lot of traffic. And people are picky in what sites they frequent. Understandably so. More tomorrow.

Project 001: Zazzle

2009-10-21T20:55:00.000-07:00

Ok, so it's time to introduce my first project. How to make money online. Zazzle. This is an online t-shirt store, that helps you sell t-shirts printed with your artwork. You upload a design and state how much commission you want to make, and if someone orders "your" shirt, you will get that commission. As you know, I'm an engineer and not an artist. So, don't expect too much when you enter the holy halls of my zazzle store:

ABV2000 ZAZZLE STORE

I opened this "store" about 3 months ago, and so far, nothing has happened. Nobody wants this original piece of artwork for US$ 19.70, maybe I will buy one myself. Money earned on zazzle so far: 0.00. Whatever, maybe I just haven't reached critical mass yet. Stay tuned.

Current balance: ZERO

2009-10-20T22:42:00.001-07:00

Day 3. Just to get an overview of how my dollar donkey works out for me, I decided to introduce a clear performance indicator. Balance. How much did I spend (time excluded) versus how much I made. Whenever I need to invest something, I will let you know and apply it towards my balance, whenever I make something, I will let you know and apply it towards my balance.

Current balance: -0-.

Zero. Now go and make some money.

A post a day

2009-10-19T22:31:00.000-07:00

Well, common sense tells me that if I want to keep a reader interested in what I'm doing, I will have to post something every day. Probably it should not just be anything, it should be something of value to you. Otherwise you will leave within 3 seconds. So what's of value to you? Time and/or money. I can't offer you either one. So get the hell out of here. All jokes aside. I wouldn't want to see blah blah. So let's stop that. Keep it concise. So what's the value of today's post? Well, I revealed that I will post once per day.

Welcome

2009-10-18T15:27:00.000-07:00

Dear Reader:

Hehe, that's funny. I just started this blog and I'm 100% sure that there aren't any readers yet. But what do they say in the world famous movie "Field of Dreams"? If you build it, they will come. What do I build. Good question. I think a quick introduction is in order. I'm an engineer and make an acceptable salary, but still struggle to have enough money. Now, I'm not looking for the really big bucks like I want to buy a house in Monaco, or a yacht that can cross the atlantic, or a private jet. I want stop thinking about money all the time. I want to know that I can feed the family, can buy some healthy food for them, can feed the dog something healthy, saved enough for retirement, gave enough to charity, bought enough presents for the wife, took care of my car, took care of my apartment, and can spend a dollar here and there on a hobby of mine. Sounds not like a crazy wish, does it? In order to do that, I would only need about $1000 a month extra. $2000 for a really cool life.

At the same time, I have a few interests that I share with other people. Like helicopters, photography, sketching and drawing, news, cooking, staying healthy, and things like that. I doubt that my interest in helicopters will do me any good. But I have a flickr account and people just love a few of my pictures, and I started a little comic strip that people encourage me to put more time into.

So again, what do I build? To the point. I started this blog to let you take part in my journey to find those extra few bucks that I'm talking about. I will explore several ways of making money online, offline, or elsewhere apart from my regular job. Let's see what happens. I called the blog dollar donkey because I'm looking for exactly that.

Why do I blog about it? Well, two reasons. I think there are a lot of people just like me, they don't have a desire to get crazy rich, but want to get those few extra bucks that make them feel better. So reason one, I will explore ways to get those bucks and share my experience with it. Two, if I have a hundred readers per day, that will be the first part of my extra few bucks. Win win.

All the best,
Axel