I first started making some decent money online back in November of last year.  I started to read some of the big name blogs such as John Chow, John Cow, Tyler Cruz, Shoemoney, etc.  I’d like to warn anyone that reads these blogs that reading them is a waste of your time!  They will not help you earn any money online!  Why’s that?

They are already making good money online - The bigname bloggers meantioned above are already making good money off there blogs.  Tyler Cruz is earning $1400+ a month from his blog alone while John Chow is earning over $30,000 a month from his blog.  They already have sites making very good money and have no need to post about there progress.

Their posts are hardly relevent - Lets take a look at JohnChow.com first.  If you read most of his posts, you will find paid reviews, posts about his dinners, and lots of stuff.  None of them will really tell you how to make money online.  As his header says, he makes money online by telling you how much money he makes.  Now lets look at Tyler Cruz, a fairly sucessful web entrepreneur.  He has over 1500 RSS subscribers but almost none of his posts will tell you how to make money online.  If you look at his most recent posts, you will see ones telling you how much money his blog is making, ones about his vacation and his server crash and even more paid reviews, but do any of them give beginners tips to make money online.  Again, the answer to that is no.  I could go on forever with this post talking about MMO blogs which won’t help the readers, but that would end up getting boring.

Why you should read newer blogs - I tend to subscribe to newer blogs such as The University Kid, The Net Fool, etc because they are newer to the MMO niche, yet they blog about their progress making money online.  These guys are the ones who will provide you with first hand information about making money online.  You can follow their successses and failures, while a big name blogger will only bloat about how much they are already making and not help out the reader.

With MooneyQuest, I will try and guide you guys to make money online.  I have written one major tutorial so far and will have many more to come with ways that you can make money online.

As for the contest, I will be tallying up the entries and picking the winners within the next day or so.  Stay tuned for the announcement of the winners.

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Its been over a week since I last posted on MooneyQuest and I feel very ashamed of it.  Basically, I finished my final exam on April 24th and have been working ever since.  I finally got a decent high speed connection setup yesterday, I’ve been on satellite internet for years and finally found a cellular wireless service.  My ping is now down to 100 from 800+, my speeds are up to 1.3mbps from 700kbps and my upload speeds are now 500kbps, up from 70kbps.  Overall, I’m very happy about this.  I can finally use skype!

As I meantioned above, I’ve been working a lot since I finished exams.  Making $13 an hour is nice but I would certainly like to get a long-term money making website going soon.  I’m getting a little sick of people posting on DigitalPoint asking “How can I make $1500 a month online without any investment”.  I see so many of these threads every week.  I finally have an answer for you.  Most of you won’t like it, but here it is!!

wait for it…

wait for it…

wait for it…

still waiting….

GET A F**KING JOB!!!!!

So many kids on DigitalPoint assume that you can make thousands, even millions online without any work.  If you are one of those, you are so wrong.  I won’t deny there is money to be made online, but whether you work online, at a 9 to 5 job, or whatever, you will need to put effort into what you do.  Nothing is easy, but if you work at something hard enough for a long time, you will have a good shot at making a lot of money.

Anyways, I hope to get back to posting daily now.  I’m very sorry about being away for so long.  The contest will go on as planned, don’t forget to enter today if you have not already!

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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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