Passive income with Cafe Press
I think the real key to being a successful online money maker is creating a large stream of passive income. Unfortunately this is not the kind of thing that can be done over night. Yet it is something that I have been working on this past month.
One of the quickest and easiest ways to create some passive income is through Cafe Press. The bad part about using Cafe Press for passive income is that it is such a small stream that it is almost a trickle.
However, creating an image and uploading it to Cafe Press does not take much time at all. At least for me, but I am doing simple designs. Something a bit more complex would take longer but it would also probably sell better. So, go figure. For now though I am fine with simple designs and a trickle of passive income.
Take this design for example.
I threw this together in about a minute and uploaded it to Cafe Press last Thursday. By the weekend I had re-uploaded it because someone had flagged it as inappropriate and made $2.00 off of it. The whole “flagging things as inappropriate” is really the only problem with Cafe Press. Apparently some douchebag Republican took offense to it and flagged it which just meant that I had to rename the file and re-upload it. A pain but not a deal breaker. I made $2.00 for about 5 minutes worth of total work.
Whenever I hear a funny phrase on TV or in real life I make a design like this and throw it up on Cafe Press. That’s where this design came from. I heard someone say it and thought it might be something that would sell pretty well. Looks like I might have been right.
RIP Cash Quests. Kumiko, I miss you!
I used to read Cash Quests back when it was the hideously pink Kumiko’s Cash Quest on Blogspot. Even though I hated the pink I loved the content. Kumiko always seemed to push the envelope with her (his?) posts. I also enjoyed the relentless bashing of AGLOCO.
It wasn’t too long before the blogspot transitioned to CashQuests.com and the pink was gone. The great content continued until this past December. It just kind of stopped. Then we learned why - CashQuests was sold for a hefty sum. I still have it in my reader but the content SUCKS now. I don’t know anything about these iEntry,Inc. douches that bought the domain but they really should have ponied up some more money to keep Kumiko on board.
I’m hoping Kumiko will turn up on a new site. So, if you’re out there Kumiko, I miss you. I’ll even take reading your posts on a pink webpage again if you come back!
More ways to make more money online
After realizing that I needed to up my online income by five I have been looking for new ways to make more money online. Like all of the other schmucks that are trying to make money online I read a bunch of other people’s blogs that have to do with making money online. Sadly though I seem to be the only one on the quest for one million pesos. Don’t people have goals anymore?
Well, after reading the latest post on Mike’s Money Making Rants & Raves I saw a lot of things that he is doing that I am not. So, I got to work. I signed up with
and I am hoping to get approved for that for my blogs. It would only let me submit one blog though, which is kind of a bummer. From what I can tell it seems like a good way to make some cash. What I like most about it is that they seem to send you the opportunities for peso makin’ by email. That’s great as it means I do not have to sit and hit refresh all day long to snag an opp. And I also signed up for
However I found their rules to be a bit over the top. I do not see us having a lengthy love affair, but I thought I would give it the benefit of the doubt.
A peso maker after my own gringo heart
I came across a January income report on Online Money Dot.com today and it made this gringo weep. If I could bring in this kind of cash from online endeavors each month then I could reach my goal of being a peso millionaire. Think of all the tacos I could buy with that!
If you look at the link you will see that the earnings are:
ebay: $2400
Blogs: $1550
Affiliate programs: $1500
e-commerce site: $1500
Domain parking: $800
Adsense: $100
Others: $660
Total: $8510
I am not sure what is being sold on eBay so I have no idea how to recreate that. And ‘blogs’ is kind of a vague category. I suspect it could be private ads on the blogs. Affiliate programs are something I have been trying to implement. I’ve not done any domain parking. And well, you know about my AdSense issues this month. And what the heck is ‘others’ ?
So, looking at this I basically need to quadruple my peso makin online. Yikes. That is intimidating.
The Google AdSense conclusion
Well, after a week I finally got a response from the Google AdSense team. Unfortunately they could not give any real insight on how to fix the problem
Here is an excerpt of the email I got from them,
Thanks for your patience while we investigated this matter. I understand you are concerned about the fact that public service ads are appearing on your site instead of paid ads. Our specialists investigated and found that
pornographic links have been injected into the bottom of your pages. These links are only visible to web crawlers so you may not see them if you view the source of your pages. Because our system does not return ads to pages detected to have adult content, ads will not appear until the links are removed. These links may have been placed on your site without your knowledge in an attempt to boost other sites’ search engine rank.We’d recommend that you contact your webmaster to fix any site vulnerabilities which may have allowed the links to be placed on your site. For more information about security for webmasters, see
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/quick -security-checklist-for -webmasters.html.
You may also with to perform a search for results related to “wordpress spam injection” for more information about the issue.Once the links have been successfully removed, paid ads should start appearing again within a week.
For additional questions, I’d encourage you to visit the AdSense Help Center ( http://www.google.com/adsense_help ) or the official AdSense blog ( http://adsense.blogspot.com ?utm_source=txft ). Alternatively, feel free
to post your question on the AdSense Help Forum ( http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help?utm_source=txft ).
Now, on some of the sites I was able to take out some coding in the footer of the theme and then my AdsSense ads showed up immediately. I was not so lucky with my other sites. And hello - within a week?!? They should appear within a week?!? That is so not user friendly Google!
After much research I discovered that using a free theme like this one is what can get you those spammy links in the footer. So, unless you know php and such you have to end up paying for a premium theme from someone.
I also took the afternoon today to upgrade all of my blogs to Wordpress 2.3.3 and I have also installed the Bad Behavior plugin as a means to prevent any more spammy links from showing up on the page. Oy. Sadly, that cut into my peso makin’ time today.
The problem with selling digital items
I make about an average of $300 each month selling digital items online through e-junkie. What I love about it is that it is totally passive income. However, it is not without its headaches.
Just today I have had someone email me in regards to an item that I sell for $4.99. She wanted me to send her a screen cap of it. The item is a template in MS Word. Sending a sample would in fact be giving away the item for free as she could just see the format and make her own. Ferchrissakes it’s only five bucks cheap-ass!
What’s worse about selling digital items is chargebacks. Thank you PayPal. See, PayPal does not cover you for digital items. So even if you have emails between you and the buyer that basically confirm that the buyer got the product PayPal does not care. And there are people that will pay the $4.99, tell me how great the item is and then do a chargeback on PayPal. Douches.
Associated Content - good money maker or not?
When I first started blogging about a year ago I knew pretty much nothing about making money online. It was not too long though before I heard about the giants - John Chow, Shoemoney and such. Seeing how much money a couple of douches like that could make online made me realize that my dream of a million pesos could come true.
Not really knowing where to start, one of my first ways to make money online was by using Associated Content. If you are not familiar with them I will give you the Reader’s Digest synopsis on them - they are a bunch of douches that pay you pennies for your content while they rake in the AdSense money. And when I say pennies, I truly mean pennies.
Let’s just look at their call for content board. (emphasis below is mine)
- AC is publishing first-person experiences, stories and anecdotes from Content Producers who have attended Chinese New Year events. Your 500-word submission should include concrete, specific details and your original photos will increase its likelihood for featuring….You should submit as soon as possible after the event. You could be declined for payment if there is too much of a delay. Overly broad or vague submissions will not be accepted. (500-word minimum) You MUST cite your sources …Payment: 4.00
- Hot Search Topic: Some celebrity magazines are reporting that actress Kirsten Dunst has checked into rehab, but the facility says that’s not true. In at least 400 words, detail the rumors, but devote most of your submission to recent cases in which high-profile celebrities have entered rehab. (400-word minimum) You MUST cite your sources. Payment: 1.00
So, in the first example they are paying $0.008 per word. That is less than one cent!! That is outrageous!! And in the second example they are paying $0.0025 per word. That is even less!!!
It’s official Associated Content is a joke. In my opinion Associated Content screws you - they really screw people that can’t do math.
Now in all fairness I made almost $3000 from AC last year. Of course, that was before they lowered their payment rates. They used to pay way more per article. And they used to have special calls for content that actually paid a decent amount for a short article. Soon after the lower pay rate and the new call for content board was introduced I stopped wasting my time with them. Now I just log into the site a few times a month to pay sure I get my share of my crappy little page view bonus each month.
Luckily I discovered easier ways to make money online. Ways that pay you WAY more than $0.0025 per word.
A Google Adsense update
If you recall I was having some issues with Google Adsense showing PSAs on a few of my sites for no good reason. So, I bit the bullet and sent them an email about it over the weekend.
My first reply from them came quickly. It was one of those canned responses.
I replied and got another reply on Feb. 3rd that my case was being “escalated to a specialist.” It is now the night of the 6th and I am still showing PSAs on several sites. That is seriously hurting my peso making. ¡No me gusta!
Getting serious about affiliate programs
So, I spent a little time this afternoon poking around Commission Junction. I was looking for some good money makers to help me get to the goal of a million pesos.
Here are some observations:
–There are literally tons of affiliate programs on Commission Junction.
–Why do some of them deny you immediately? What is is that they are looking for? Cause I wanna get it.
–I have some applications that have been pending for months now. Literally months.
–Getting going with affiliate programs requires a lot of groundwork before there is payoff. God, I hope that there is payoff.
Progress update #1
Well now, after an entire month working towards my dream of being a peso millionaire you might be wondering how I am doing.
Not so bad.
Not so great, but not so bad. I would have liked to have made more. However I did not get to implement all of the techniques that I wanted to.
Disclosure: The CafePress total actually had some money in it previously. I did make some sales this month though. So, going forward it is not likely that you will see quite that large of an amount under CafePress.
Now, this marks the first month that I have tried out making money with affiliate programs. So far it has netted me a whopping $6.00. Clearly I have a lot more to learn about making money with affiliate programs.
So, my grand total for January 2008 is $1,865.09 USD or 20,168.76 MXN.
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Sponsors
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Progress
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Goal: 1,000,000 MXN
Current: 64,288.69 MXN
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The Donation Piñata
Help this gringo out with a little donation!
I'm trying to get to one million pesos by 12/31/08.
As of March 31, I am at 64,288.69 MXN.
For more on my progress, click here. -
The exchange rate
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The goal? 1,000,000 Mexican Pesos.
Current exchange rate as of 4/15/08 is 1.00 MXN = 0.10 USD.
So, 1,000,000 MXN = 95,350.23 USD.
Check out the Currency Converter at XE.com.
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Mexican Flavor of the Moment
Laura Elena Harring
