Day 15.1: First Paycheck!

It is now official: I'm getting my first paycheck from Clixsense on Friday. I passed the minimum $8 today, so it's already guaranteed. Quite a fitting note for the halfway point of my project! Honestly, I wasn't expecting to cash out money this soon. What am I going to do with it? Reinvest it! There are actually several options. First, I plan on saving up for another week or two until I can upgrade my account--but if my sponsor upgrades me before then, my money will be mine to do with whatever I want. I've decided that I should put it into a downline builder or something, or possibly upgrade my account on a traffic exchange site. Actually, according to Free Internet Money (or Traffic Exchange Profits, sometimes I get the two mixed up), that's exactly what I should do. I forget which site is the most important that I upgrade, but it could double my traffic and explode my downline. And I already know that traffic exchanges can work if you put enough effort into it.

Clixsense has definitely proven to be a real money-maker for me, and I want to get an upgrade there as soon as I can. I'd be collecting profits from nine more people and I'd have a lower threshold for cashing out checks, so I'd get much more money faster. A no-brainer, if you ask me.

Eight dollars isn't much for two weeks of work. I admit that. Amazon Turk is faster and higher paying, so why don't I just focus on that instead? It's because Amazon Turk isn't going anywhere. There's no mode of advancement or downline profits. I earn what I make and no more. While that's better for the short run, I don't feel like it will be as profitable in the long run. Also, I might note that I haven't even earned a dollar on all of my other PTC sites combined!

I'm excited to see what will happen after I upgrade. Will the difference be noticeable or just a faint touch? Will I go from making money to making serious money? I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but my ultimate goal is to be able to generate $100-$150 per week by the time I get married in the beginning of August. While I think I could do that on Amazon Turk, I'd prefer to have at least some of that money come in more automated by other sites. Fortunately, it looks like it might be possible!

Stay tuned for updates! In the meantime, please follow me on Twitter for tips, or join me in Clixsense or Free Internet Money. I'm already proving that it works, so why not give it a try for yourself?

Day 14.2: Sweet Success

I've made a couple discoveries this evening that have given me reason to celebrate! First, I've been discussing lately the success I've been having with Clixsense. After looking up my stats tonight, I realized that tomorrow I can easily take out my first payment! Not even ten bucks, but it should be enough to reinvest in something that will help out my traffic even more. Or I might just decide to leave it in until I can upgrade my account.

The second discovery is equally exciting: mailing lists work. I've heard it time and again in my research, but never wanted to get too involved with it. It sounded too much like spam, and I didn't need to be working on putting together a "list" on top of everything else. I'm busy enough as it is! But I did join a few safe-lists a while ago just to experiment with it. I get hundreds of e-mails to that address every day now, and so can only read a few of them in a sitting. Each one gives me "credits" for reading the email and clicking on the link, and each credit is one more person that I can send my own e-mails to. For the past week or so, I've been sitting around reading e-mails whenever I have some odd spare time and collecting credits. Yesterday I finally decided to try it out for myself. I sent out emails to two different lists and promptly forgot about them when I didn't get any immediate referrals. I was honestly puzzled this afternoon when I was checking up on my sites and saw that one of them had gotten nine views in the past day! I tried to think up what I was doing differently when I remembered the e-mails.

To put this into perspective, I've been using traffic exchanges right and left, milling through hundreds of sites every day on seven different exchanges. It's gotten me two views and one referral (with nine referrals under her). I didn't get any referrals with the letters I sent out, but I got nine views in one day for copying, pasting, and clicking--about five minutes total of work.

What does this mean? It means I'm going to be reading a lot more e-mails and storing up credits. It wasn't as responsive as the traffic exchanges, but hopefully it won't take many more e-mails to do that! If this e-mail thing works as well as I think it will, my Free Internet Money plan will have another step to it: join a safe-list. Any safe-list, and preferably two or three. Read e-mails for a week or so before sending your own, and you will get results. Period.

So those are my two bits of excitement today, and now I'm super encouraged to keep at it! For more information on the Free Internet Money plan I'm following, please click here. To join Clixsense and start generating your own online income, click here. And please come back tomorrow for more!

Day 14.1: Adaptability

As you can tell, if you're a regular reader of this blog, I did wind up deciding that I should spend less time here and more time out making money. I've had to adapt my plans to go along with what actually works, now that I've been in the game to get a bit of a feel. There are some things I've tried, like this blog, that haven't made me a cent, while Clixsense is proving to be more amazing with every visit.

That's one thing that's really hitting me at this point: adaptability. If you want to make it as a freelancer, you need to be willing to alter your plans. This is not to say that you should go hopping from one thing to another. Try several different plans simultaneously, and after a while shift your emphasis. Invest in what works, and drop what doesn't. I'm not ready to drop anything completely, yet. This blog has been a great success for me in terms of publicity, and it's been a fantastic log for me to record my progress, successes, and mistakes. But this isn't where the money's at.

The good news is that there is money out there and I am getting it, more every day. The Free Internet Money plan is actually working, and so I think that's where I should spend my time and effort!

Day 13.1: Investments: When Spending Earns

One of my unofficial rules for this 30-day experiment was to come into the game without a cent. The only money I was allowed to spend on advertising or optimization was money that I'd already earned. Fortunately, I've been able to keep that rule with little discomfort, using only free program to help me out. But what if I decided to break that rule?

I've had many options over the past 13 days to spend money as an investment to do better than I have been. Looking back, I'm glad I stuck to my rule, because there are so many things out there that I wouldn't have any funds left at this point, and most would have been spent on products I would later find were total ripoffs! But I've also begun to develop a strategy for when I do get enough money to invest (probably in a week or so, at the rate I'm currently taking it). How should I go about it? How can I know for sure something is worth it? I put together a bit of a list to help figure it all out:

1. Can I get a refund? Is there a money-back guarantee, and can I be sure to return the product/service if it doesn't pay for itself in the specified length of time?
2. Is it credible? Who is using this, and what success have they had? Can I find any dissatisfied customers on the Internet?
3. Is there a free alternative? I've been surprised at all the times I've found completely free alternatives to services that were charging an annoying amount of money.
4. Is this something I'd really use? There are some tools that I've gotten that, in the end, didn't do a thing for me. They did everything they were guaranteed to do very well, but it wasn't something that helped me. This goes back the the notion that you shouldn't go into online business unless you have a defined strategy to begin with. Does this service fit my strategy perfectly?
5. Is it a one-time payment or a subscription? Depending on the price and service, either one might be better than another. But frankly I don't want the horrible surprise of finding $20 taken out of my bank account every month for something that only gives me $5 in return.

There's my list so far, and I'll try to work on it more as the week progresses. I do think I could make a lot more with the right investment, but I don't want to be spending my money willy-nilly. Please follow me on Twitter (@onlineincome) for updates and tips, or join me in my Free Internet Money endeavor!

Day 12.2: Begging vs. Selling

"Please buy this. Please? It's a great thing to have. Super nifty. No, wait! Don't go. Please? Come back!"

That's just about what I sound like whenever I try to sell things, both online and in person. Whiney, annoying, and all-around obnoxious. No one wants to buy things from a person like that! I can't sell, and that's a problem. Pretty much every industry requires people to sell something--skills, impressions, tangible objects. Some people are fabulous at selling. They can get anyone to do anything just by saying things in the right tone of voice. How do they do that?

I've tried everything I can think of. I've tried to be bold; I've tried to be subtle; I've tried to make it as friendly and personal as I can, but nothing works. What do I do?

 Perhaps I need a new approach. I've quite proven that I am useless a salesmen myself... but there are others who can sell easily. What I need to do is find someone--or something--who can do the selling for me. I get frustrated when I see that sites that claim to be able to help with advertising only give me the tools but not the knowledge of how to use them. So far Traffic Exchange Profits has been the only company I know of that actually covers that part of the business, and it's very clever about it--it does its own selling. You'll notice that I haven't mentioned it very much on this blog, and there's a reason for it. I don't need to. Actually, the site advises against it. It's designed to be advertised only through traffic exchanges, and that makes sense. I'm selling something to people who, by definition, could use it. But it is a useful system, and if nothing else I'd recommend joining it just to see the training videos.

But that's the approach I need... a product that is literally designed to sell itself, placed in front of an audience who will actually like it. I know my sites are all awesome and that you should all join, but I just need to find a way to communicate that without getting you to tune out.

Please feel free to follow me on Twitter (@onlineincome) for more updates and tips, and by all means check out Traffic Exchange Profits or Free Internet Money. I'm going to keep saying that even if you don't respond.

Day 11.2: Free Internet Money

I've been out running errands ever since my last post, so I'm afraid I really don't have anything exciting to say. I don't even have a picture this time around because they're not loading onto the blog. As I can tell none of you have clicked on the link to the Free Internet Money site I keep mentioning, I guess I'll ignore your apathy and tell you a bit more about the strategy.

Basically, there are several good PTC (paid-to-click) sites out there, and it's a good idea to join the best ones. They're listed easily on Free Internet Money, so it's easy to go from one to the next and join the ones you haven't joined yet. The site also tells you how to bookmark them so you can open them up to open them every day easily.

There's also a lot of tools on Free Internet Money to aid with publicity and training for getting the best out of the sites. It's the training that's valuable. Learning from the experts how to get started is a great way to set out in the right direction, and all the sites listed have proven to be honest and paying sites.

Take a look! You'll be glad you did.

I'm sorry this post has been rather pathetic as far as my other posts, but I have been busier than usual. Hopefully if you visit the site, the information that you glean there will make up for it.

Day 11.1: What Kind of Online Worker Are You?

Eleven active referrals now for Clixsense. I decided to take money out of my Amazon Turk account to invest in an upgraded membership, because at this point I feel as if I'm practically losing money in not doing so. I didn't expect it to pick up so fast!

Anyway, this morning I've been thinking about all of the different approaches I've now tried to earn a profit online. As the list is getting rather long, I decided to jot it all down here along with my progress for each. Note that my own progress is affected very much by my personality, level of commitment and abilities. Feel free to try out any and every method here--people have been able to earn a substantial income from each of these.

1. Amazon Turk. A very dependable and controllable income, though it is hard to make more than a few cents at a time. You can do whatever kind of work you want, though, and new options are constantly turning up.
2. Writing freelance articles. Sites like Squidoo and Hubpages allow you to write articles without the responsibility of running a website. You can write about whatever you want whenever you want. However, your income depends on ads and selling products, so it's hard to earn a serious income from it.
3. Blogging. It's a lot of work to maintain a decent blog. I write three articles a day and then optimize them like crazy, and I've yet to make a cent. But the work is very independent, and you can focus on whatever area you want and specialize it. This blog has been as profitable as a college class in terms of education--as I maintain it and record my progress, I've learned a ton about online work.
4. PTCs. They felt like an amusing waste of time at first, but right now Clixsense is taking off like crazy, and a lot of the money is generated--meaning I'm literally making money in my sleep. It's nothing without referrals, but get even one person to sign up and it's very much worth it.
5. Online Marketing. I still feel like a little fish in a big sea here--so many people are clamoring for their ads to be noticed that it's easy to get overwhelmed when you're trying to market something yourself. I've had better success than most in this area--largely it just takes insane determination and long hours of work.
6. Joining an organized program. Free Internet Money and Traffic Exchange Profits are both programs that you can join on the side, promoting any business you want. This is my favorite form of monetization so far. You use plans made by others that have already proven to be successful. Wash, rinse, repeat. It's hard to find free plans, though, but it's a great learning opportunity as well.

I think that's it. I've had different levels of success with each one, and have actually had results very different than I was expecting. I honestly thought my writing would be the big moneymaker here, but it hasn't gotten me anything, whereas the silly paid-to-click sites are actually seriously paying. It's going to be interesting to see where I wind up by the end of the month!

Please follow me on Twitter for more tips and updates, and to see more of my personal strategy visit the Free Internet Money site. It's well worth your time!

Day 10.2: Is It Time to Invest?

Earlier I broke to you the thrilling news that I got my first referral on Clixsense. Well, now she has two referrals of her own. Yeah, all in one day, and my downline is building seriously! Unfortunately, when I read the fine print, I noticed something. I can get as much as I want through my referrals just fine... but that's where it ends. It doesn't matter that my referral has two referrals of her own now, I'm only profiting through her. Hmm. Well, the Premium membership would help fix that so I could profit through eight levels. Seeing how well things are growing, I'm starting to think it would be a decent investment, and it is a great price (seventeen dollars for the whole year). However, I've decided to invest only my own earnings, so... at this rate it could well be a couple months before I could afford that. On the other hand, my sponsor says he rewards active members with premium memberships. That would be awesome. Maybe I should ask him? I don't know.

At any rate, Clixsense is turning out to be an awesome investment. I mean, it was always good, but now it's awesome! And at this point I'm thinking that if I got it, it would pay itself off pretty quick. And that would be sweet. Oh well, we'll see where this goes.

I don't want to lose money in this venture. I've come across so many disappointing scams and "free" things that cost money that I don't want it to happen again. I set aside twenty-odd dollars to spend on things, but I'm trying to get by without losing my shirt.

At least I have a good plan now. Free Internet Money has been a fabulous way to manage my accounts, and if I can keep up steadily building profits, I don't think I have anything to worry about!

In the meantime, though, seriously. Give Clixsense a try. There's a lot to do there, and it's fun. And free. And easy. And... there's no reason not to. And that's it for my lame salesman pitch.

Please follow me on Twitter for more tips and updates, and check out my working strategy at freeinternetmoney.biz!

Day 10.1: When PTCs Pay Off

Today it happened. It finally happened. I was going about my merry way, clicking adds and collecting pennies this morning, when I noticed that my Clixsense account had more money than it had last night. What??? I quickly checked the referral page, and it's started! If you're reading this (and you know who you are!) I really want to thank you for totally making my day today, and I can assure you that you'll feel the same way when you get your first referral. One of the things that I like about Internet marketing and PTCs is how the more I work it, the more the money score adds up and the closer I get to cashing out my first Internet pay check. And for you skeptics out there, I'm actually intending to cash it out by Monday.

Referrals make it all worthwhile in the end. Even without referrals, you can earn a steady profit and work your way up in many sites, and often sites will allow you to rent referrals as well. But the feeling of actually having a downline lets you know that you're doing something right. So I can assure you, if you've been thinking about going into this but still aren't convinced, it's worth it. It's so worth it.

So, the Free Internet Money plan is working! All I had to do was to follow the instructions on the site. Easy peasy, as one of my professors used to put it. Just have patience and stick to it!

And, for current and future referrals of mine...

Again, thank-you very much for making my plan a success, and I hope it works for you too!