I would like to have one day a week where I answer questions that readers have asked me.  If you have a question on any topic, email it to admin at mooneyquest dot com and I will do some research and give you a proper answer.  Each Friday I will post the answers to at least one question which I have received.  I hope to use this as a way to give back to the community.  I know that starting to make money online is tough, and that there are a lot of blogs that say how much they make, but won’t help you make the money.  Shoot me your questions and I will give you my best answer.

Stay tuned tomorrow for part 1 of a 3 part series on how to start your own forums.

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Over the past week or so there has been quite a bit of controversy between a few people in the MMO niche. Many of us know that One Mans Goal was bought by Marc Galeazzi for the sum of $10,500. Marc has not had any expereince with blogging prior to buying the site. Would I have bought the site if I had no experience with blogging, no, in my opinion wasn’t worth that much.

Once the sale was announced, Vic from BloggerUnleashed.com made an extremely insulting post called “Another dumbf**k is born lmao”, minus the *’s. In less than 100 words, Vic has completely shut Marc down as being a complete idiot and has managed to refer to him as a f**king idiot at least 13 times in his post and comments. I found that to be quite disturbing, so much for the welcome to the community Marc.

A few days later, Garry Conn made a post talking about the MMO niche being full of scammers and assholes. He first refers to a blog which was sold for $2500 with false traffic stats, and then moves onto defend Marc from Vic’s attack. It was nice to see someone defending Marc. Garry goes on to cut up Vic in only 64 words.

Later Garry Conn goes on to cut up John Cow’s blog. He says that John Cow’s “blog is no different that the rest of the bullshit MMO sites that do nothing but spin off the same stupid information found on the other 100 or so other MMO blogs”. I find it interesting that he’d go and cut John up when on the first page was a post promoting Joel Comm’s AdSense Secrets 4 eBook, a similar post to one I’ve seen on many other blogs. I will admit that a lot of blogs post similar content, but I’ve been a long time reader of the Cow and don’t think this insult was necessary. Going down to read the comments, I found that Vic wasn’t the only person being an ass. Garry had changed all Vic’s links to direct people to this picture:

Need I say more? How can you cut a person up for being an ass, and then show yourself as being an ass as well. The word hypocrite suits Garry very well.

Conclusion:

I have not read Blogger Unleashed prior to finding a link to Vic’s post regarding Marc. I did not like what I saw and can honestly say that I won’t be going back to visit again. The same thing goes for Garry, I’m unlikely to go back to read his blog either.

Jason (The University Kid) once told me that the best way to get traffic is to be controversial. While I agree that controversy can drive traffic, being an outright ass will end up hurting your traffic in the long run. Quite a few of these bloggers received a little boost in traffic from these posts, but I bet you that I’m not the only one who was offended by them.

In conclusion, I’d have to advise everyone to watch what they say. I have no problems reading controversy, but if you are a jerk, what you say might just go back to bite you in the butt. So as my rhyming title says, don’t be an ass, show some class =D.

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If you haven’t signed up for the MooneyQuest contest yet today, check it out here, you could win some of the $900+ in prizes.

One of the half dozen blogs I frequently visit is putting on a very nice contest. JohnCow.com, is putting on a contest where you can win an Xbox 360 and a copy of Grand Theft Auto 4. The contest has been sponsored by TopHostingCenter.com. The Xbob 360 looks awesome, it comes with a 120gb hard drive, wifi and High-Definition via HDMI. I would really like to get my hands on one of these, my last console I bought was a Playstation 2 (the old version) probably 5 years ago. The Xbox360 is certainly todays hottest system, my friend has one and I love it.

The contest is very easy to enter. There are a few different ways to gain entries:

• 250 tickets - Write a small blurb about this contest on your blog, 100 words minimum. Please make sure you linkback to our sponsor and to this post so your readers can find it.

• 250 tickets - Become an affiliate with THC for free. This is really a no-brainer as Top Hosting Center offers 50% commission for each sale you make for them! Within a few sales you can buy your own 360 if you don’t win this one! (We’ll check if you have one of their banners on your blog!)

• 25 tickets - Every comment, about this contest, you leave on another blog’s latest post will get you 25 tickets, as will leaving this link in a new forum thread somewhere, or when you mass message your myspace or facebook friends. Perhaps even use Twitter to let all your followers know

• 25 tickets - Subscribe to our RSS feed and THC’s blog feed.

I hope you all will sign up, and if you win give the prize to me since I referred you .

On another positive note, I think I’m going to go ahead with the $15,000 challenge. Shoot me an email at admin -at- mooneyquest dot com if you want to participate.

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I arrived home tonight after my second exam (Yay!, 2 out of 5 exams done) to notice that John Cow’s Alexa rank jumped from 22,100 to over 100k. I went and checked out Alexa and it says that they have updated their ranking system.

After a few minutes checking Alexa ranks on various sites, I can tell you the following. Quite a few forums benefited from this update, while bloggers seem to have been hurt by the update. JohnChow went from 5k to 16k, but surprisingly mine increased a little bit.

I think this update goes to show you how unreliable of traffic stats Alexa produces. I like to look at it for comparison to other sites Alexa ranks, but I certainly wouldn’t rely on its stats. I know a forum earning 500k a year that had an Alexa rank of 80k, while with the update it went up to 50k. This forum usually has 500+ users online at a time, it should definitely have a higher rank.

You can read the full details of the Alexa update here.

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As most of you know, my goals for my online earnings are set quite high.  $600,000 is a lot of money to earn, and it will take a long time to do so.  I thought I would share some of my plans to earn money towards the airplane.  I hope to launch some of these plans when my exams are finished April 24th.

Forums - Most people will tell you right off the bat that forums are a crap way of making money online.  In part, I’ll agree, you will not make money any time soon when you launch your forum.  The click-through-rate on them are usually horrible and without major traffic, you won’t earn a lot.  Before I start making forums sound like a bad idea, you should also know that there are a lot of forums around banking some major cash.  I have a friend who works for some popular forums, earning over $500,000 a year.  Forums tend to make better money off private advertisers / sponsors than they will off of AdSense.

My plan is to launch 3 forums by September, with hopefully more in the horizon.  I’m going to allow for a few months in between each launch to allow time to dedicate to that forum to make it succeed.  Here are some of my forums which will launch this year:

• A Webmaster Forum - most people will tell you this is a saturated niche.  They are right, but I believe I have something which will make this forum stand out.  I also have quite a few people interested in making this forum succeed due to the fact that DigitalPoint sucks (more on that later) and they want a better forum to go to.
• An Aviation Forum - It fairly obvious that I’m interested in aviation.  I would really like to launch an aviation forum to suit the wide range of aviation topics.  I know there are a few forums specific to pilot jobs, but not much in the range of general aviation.  I believe that this is a niche which will earn a lot of money.
• A Detailing Forum - Detailing is a hobby of mine which I enjoy.  During the summer I like to keep my car in pristine shape, and I would like to start a forum about this.  I would likely earn money through this forum with the detailing stores sponsorships and affiliate links.

Other ways to make money:

• This Blog - I’m hoping to get this blog earning $500 a month by the end of the year.  I think this blog will be successful due to the aviation twist I’ve added to it, something that no other bloggers done as far as I can see.
• Proxies - I might be tempted to start up my proxies again.  I was earning $400-500 a month last year with them, what can it hurt to get theme up and running again.  Its only more money in my pocket.
• eBooks - I’ve earned quite a bit off eBooks in the past, I’m hoping I’ll think up a topic for a new one since each eBook I release earns me an average of $600.

If anyone is interested in any of these ideas, more specifically the forums, let me know.  Any help would be appreciated, I think we would be able to make some great communities.

Sorry for the semi-self centered post.  I started exams today and this is really all I could think of, I won’t be online much for the next week but I’ll try to post as often as possible.

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Back in November a few friends and I had the idea for a contest. This would be a money-making challenge where we try and earn $15,000 in 6 months. The challenge started off fairly well, but I had to stop because of school and while I still earned some money online, it died once a few of us stopped participating.

I believe that a challenge like this would be great for a few reasons. I know a lot of people that want to make money online, myself being one of them. Quite often people get on these goals to make a whole lot of money very fast and fail to set realistic goals. I know my Mooney aircraft won’t be here in a year, its going to take years of work before I ever get to place that order. $15,000 in six months is a goal that I’m sure I could easily meet if I work hard to achieve it.

A challenge like this would be a great way to gain publicity for my blog, and the other participants blogs. It would also be a great way to network. I’d love to hear your opinions on this and if possible, plan to launch this competition on April 25th.

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Well, after a few days of begging looking for sponsors I am proud to announce the first MooneyQuest contest. As many of you know, starting a new blog can be tricky. Writing content is certainly not as hard as gaining traffic and subscribers. I have contacted a few of my friends and they have put up some very nice prizes for me to give away to the winners!

The Prizes:

Advertising:

• 125×125 banner on ThatBlogSite.com for 1 month ($10)
• 125×125 banner on Oibo.org for 3 months ($180)

Cash:

• $100 PayPal from MooneyQuest.com

Consultation:

• 1 hour consultation with Jason from TheUniversityKid.com ($80)
• 1 hour consultation with Reid / Knight Rider from MooneyQuest.com ($60)

eBooks / Videos:

• 4 copies of the Referral Madness video series ($25 value per copy)
• Infinite number of copies of “Seven Ways to Live a Better Life” by Jason at BlogPremiere (everyone who enters gets a copy)

Entrecredits:

• 2000 Entrecredits from Cant Get Rich
• 500 Entrecredits from EcoInsomniac
• 500 Entrecredits from The WWW Observer
• 500 Entrecredits from The World Wide Web Blog
• 500 Entrecredits from That Blog Site
• 500 Entrecredits from Donace
• 128 Entrecredits from Foolsville 2.0

Hosting:

• 1 Year of Shared Hosting (Swamp package) from Hostgator ($179 value)

Paid Reviews:

• One paid review on ThatBlogSite.com ($30)
• One paid review from Oibo.org ($80)

Software:

• 2 license to Fruitful Time ($60 value) - FruitfulTime is a software development company specialising in productivity software. FruitfulTime TaskManager, is a to do list software which will help you to organise your life and get things done.

A few quick words about the prizes. First of all, everyone will recieve a prize for entering the contest. Jason has kindly given me enough copies of Dollar Million to give out to everyone who enters this contest. Hostgator has been very generous to give such a large prize. With Hostgator being one of the largest and in my opinion, best hosting companies around, it is very nice to see them recognize this blog and sponsor the contest. I have moved many customers to Hostgator and have found their server speeds to be very high and their customer support to be great.

Just a quick word about the consultation prizes. These one hour consulation sessions mean you can basically ask us any questions you want. If you need advice in writing eBooks, starting or marketing websites, or any other questions about blogging, we’re all yours for an hour.

How to Enter the Contest:

I’m sure this is what you’ve been waiting for. Entering this contest is very easy. By doing certain things, people will receive entries. On May 4th I will tally the entries and use a randomizer to pick the winners. To gain entries, you can do the following:

Subscribe to our email RSS feed (required) - 10 entries - By subscribing to our email RSS feed, you will be able to get updates when I make a new post. This is an easy 10 entries and is required to be eligible for the contest.

Commenting on a Post - 2 entries -By commenting on our posts, you will receive 2 extra entries in the contest. You can comment as many times as you would like but only one comment per post will count.

Blog about this contest - 20 entries - Write a small blurb about this contest including the list of prizes on your blog. Make sure you linkback/pingback to this post so I know about your post. Your blurb must be a minimum of 100 words plus the prize list.

That’s it! This is an extremely easy contest to enter. The winner will be picked on May 4th. Thanks to all the sponsors and I look forward to seeing everyone participate.

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As many of you know, there is a lot of quick money to be made online. Proxies, MFA sites, content writing, etc can earn you some decent money for a short while. There are other ways of making a very nice long term income online, and one of those is blogging.

JohnCow.com launched in July 2007 as a parody of JohnChow.com, and quickly became a very popular blog. It was obvious from the beginning that ‘The Cow’ was going to milk the blog for the money, but hey, thats what all of us are online for. The blog has earned a very modest income in the range of $2,500 a month, not including its sponsorships (a dedicated server and contest sponsorships), which the cow gets for free because of his fame.

The auction launched this morning on SitePoint with a starting price of $25,000 and a BIN of $50,000 (10 and 20 months revenue respectively). In only 10 months, John Cow has created a blog earning $30,000 a year, thats above the average income in many countries, just by posting an article once a day. You can read todays post with his reasons for selling.

Does this mean I would put in a bid on the blog? No way, at least I wouldn’t! Could you imagine the blog you could make if you had $25,000, even $5,000 to spend. I think that buying a ready to go blog would be a very poor idea. You could buy a premium domain, have a custom theme made, and market your site like crazy for far less the price of JohnCow.com.

I wish John Cow the best of luck selling his blog, I’m sure the site will receive some bids, but I certainly won’t be bidding on it. Now I just have to make sure my blog hits that level =D

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I’ve told quite a few of my friends and family that I’m taking flying lessons. One of main things I’ve been asked is how to start flying. The first thing I always recommend is going out to your local flying club and booking an introduction flight.

An introduction flight is just what the name implies, a flight to introduce you to flying. An introduction flight usually costs approximately $60-80 and gives you a 30 minute briefing on the airplane you will be flying, and a 30 minute flight in a Cessna 150 or a Diamond DA20.

In an introduction flight, you will get to learn about the airplane and even fly it yourself. The instructor will do the takeoff and landing, but once you are flying at a safe altitude, you will be able to take over the controls.

I highly suggest that any of you that are even remotely interested in aviation go up for a flight, it is a lot of fun. Even if you don’t go on to get your license, I’m sure you will have a great time. For most of you making money online, this will be $60 well spent.

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Over the past few months, I’ve written 4 eBooks on proxies which have earned over $4000. I think that it would be nice to share some of these secrets with my new readers. I’m going to try and condense the basics of proxies down into this one post, so don’t mind me if I’m being a bit general on the subject.

Domains: Picking a quality proxy domain is very important. You can register a domain at Godaddy or NameCheap. I prefer NameCheap because they give you WHOISguard for free. Avoid proxy domains with the words myspace, facebook or proxy in it, the filters and firewalls will block these sites faster. Make sure your domain is a .com as you will retain more of the type-in traffic as opposed to a .info which will receive hardly any. Here is a list of names I use for my networks, fill in the _____ with a generic word and you’ve got your network domain names.

Unblock_______.com

Surf_______.com

Hidden______.com

Hide______.com

School______.com

Hosting: One thing many people fail to realize is that most hosts such such as Godaddy, Hostgator, etc do not allow proxies to be used on their servers. If they catch you, they will shut off your hosting. For quality proxy hosting, I recommend www.Hagiohost.com. They offer 3 different proxy packages. I recommend that you start off with their cheapest one and move up as your needs change.

Picking a Proxy Template:

Picking a proxy template is fairly easy. First I’m assuming you will be using the PHProxy script, which I believe is one of the best proxy scripts available. Check out www.freeproxytemplates.com or www.sourcustoms.com. Sour Customs has some very nice templates that will cost you $5, but free proxy templates has lower quality templates that are free. If you can afford the $5, I consider it to be a great investment in having a good proxy.

Advertisers: You will earn money from your proxies by placing advertisers ads on your proxy. The two advertisers I recommend are Google Adsense and AdBrite. You should place Google AdSense ads on your proxies homepage and the AdBrite ads on your proxified pages. Please note, you may not place AdSense ads on your proxified pages or it will get your AdSense account banned. There are other publishers you can use, but these are the main two which I have used and earned upwards of $400 a month with.

Setting up your Proxy: You should now have bought a domain and hosting, downloaded a proxy template, and signed up and have been accepted to the 2 recommended advertisers. You can now setup your proxy by doing the following.

1. Set your hosting nameservers (eg. ns1.hagiohost.com) provided by your host in your domain control panel.

2. Setup your proxy by configuring the config file of the template which you downloaded. You will need your AdSense PUB-ID from your AdSense account. Your PUB-ID shows in the top right of any page once you are logged into your AdSense account. You will also need your AdBrite code. For instructions on how to install AdBrite, check out this tutorial.

3. Once the DNS has propagated (this may take up to 24 hours), upload your proxy files to your FTP server.

Your proxy should now show up when you go to your proxies domain. The next step is advertising your proxy.

Promoting your Proxy: Promoting your proxy is the best part of working your proxy. This is the part when you are going to get your visitors who will use your proxy and hopefully click on your advertisers ads, earning you money. The best way to advertise your proxy is using Google and Yahoo groups.

Google / Yahoo Groups: Advertising via Google and yahoo groups is easy. You will need to post lists of your proxies in the following groups 2-3 times a day for at least a week, then once a day afterwards. Doing this will allow bloggers to find your proxies and post them in their own blogs. This is the best way to gain backlinks and traffic to your proxy. Here is the list of groups you should advertise on:

http://groups.google.com/group/proxy-rank
http://groups.google.com/group/free-proxy-list
http://groups.google.com/group/Proxy-Web
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/BLACK_PROXY/
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/free-proxy-lists/ http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/free_proxys_list
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/proxy-sharing/
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/PROXY_PROXY/
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/bypass_filter_by_proxy/
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/free-proxy-lists/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/khorramdin/
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/mygmproxy/

StumbleUpon: StumbleUpon is another decent way to get traffic sent to your proxy. I have a StumbleUpon bot which I will allow you access to, just subscribe to my RSS feed and I will email our the access url, username and password later tonight.

Other Advertising: There are other advertising methods which I will share with you in the future, remember to check back often for new advertising methods for your proxy.

I hope this information helps you start your own proxies. There is a lot of money to be made with them; I was earning approximately $400 a month earlier but my server went down and I never bothered to start them up again. I will certainly be doing that soon in an attempt to boost my earnings.

Notice:  If you liked this post and would like to share this information with friends, please link to them to this post.  Please don’t copy this post elsewhere.

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