1/14/2007

How to make $300,000 money per month at home

September 25th, 2006 by John Chow

The following is a list of the Internet’s eight biggest Google AdSense publishers. The information was compiled from interviews and articles found on the Internet. Whenever possible, I list the source of the information.

I apologize in advance if I missed anyone on the list. If you make more than the people listed, please send me proof of your Google AdSense earnings and I will add you on the next time the list is updated. This is a list of individual site owners - people just like you and me. Big corporate AdSense publishers like AOL are excluded.

1: Markus Frind: PlentyOfFish.com - $300,000 per month

Markus Frind is a local Vancouverite who is turning the online dating world upside down. His site, Plentyoffish.com is the biggest free dating site on the Internet. Plentyoffish.com receives up to 500 million page views per month and make over $10,000 per day for Markus, who runs the site from home.

You think a site this big would be staffed by a hundred people but the only employee that Markus has is his girlfriend, who helps to answer the emails. Markus coded Plenty of Fish all by himself. The site is lean and mean and requires only four servers to handle all that traffic.

Doubts about Makus’s Google earnings were silenced when he posted this $900,000 check from Google. According to Markus’s blog entry, the check represented two months of AdSense earnings.

2: Kevin Rose: Digg.com - $250,000 per month

Kevin Rose started Digg in December of 2004 with just $1000. Today Digg is one of the biggest news sites on the Net, with over 400,000 members and over 200 million page views per month. According to this article from Business week, Digg will make $3 million this year from a combination of Google AdSense and Federated Media ads. Unfortunately, only Mr. Rose and his accountants knows how much came from Google and how much came from Federated Media. I can try to take a guess based on the number of times I have seen a Federated Media ad vs. a Google ad on Digg but, being in Canada, it’s almost 100% Google ads.

Whatever Google’s share of Digg’s $250,000 per month in ad revenues may be, one thing is for sure, it is not small.

3: Jeremy Shoemaker - $140,000 per month

If ever anyone can be considered an Internet marketing superstar, ShoeMoney would be near the top of the list. Jeremy Shoemaker is a search engine marketer who knows how to take advantage of both Google AdSense and AdWords. In the above photo, you see him with the biggest Google AdSense check he has ever received from Google. The income was earned back in the month of August 2005. Since then Mr. Shoemaker has moved to wire transfers. No doubt, he got tired to dealing with the bank tellers when trying to deposit $100K plus checks every month.

Unlike the other Google whores on this list, ShoeMoney, as he likes to be call, does not own just one site. He makes his enormous Google checks using hundreds of sites and thousands of domains.

4: Jason Calacanis: Weblogs, Inc. - $120,000 per month

Before Jason Calacanis sold Weblogs, Inc to AOL for $25 million, he got the network of blogs making over $4,000 a day from Google AdSense. So impressive was his AdSense performance that Google used Weblogs for a case study.

Now that AOL controls Weblogs, you can bet it is making a lot more than a measly $120,000 a month.

5: David Miles Jr. & Kato Leonard - $100,000 per month

According to this Washington Post article, David Miles Jr. and Kato Leonard, claims they make $100,000 a month from their site, Freeweblayouts.net, which gives away designs that people can use on MySpace.

The only problem with the revenue figure is it is not 100% AdSense. Free Web Layouts use other advertising networks in addition to Google. However, with a claimed $100,000 per month in revenues, I am fairly confident that the AdSense portion is higher than our next Google whore.

6: Tim Carter: AskTheBuilder.com - $30,000 per month

Tim Carter is a licensed master plumber and carpenter with his own radio show. He also makes frequent television appearances. He founded AsktheBuilder.com in 1995, The primary focus has been catering to an avid following of fellow builders on the site. According to the Google case study, Mr. Carter did such a good job tweaking the Google ads on his site that it now makes $30,000 a month.

Tim’s AdSense revenues now average $1400 a day and growing. Overall, Carter is enthusiastic about AdSense: it allows him to focus on content development, and gives him built-in tools to measure ad performance and make changes to maximize revenues. “People come to me for help,” says Carter. “They get what they need from my columns and advice - and also from ads delivered by AdSense.”

7: Joel Comm - $24,000 per month

Joel Comm is get rich quick guru. He wrote the best selling e-book, What Google Never Told You About Making Money with AdSense. The e-book, along with the website that promotes it has a screen shot of Mr. Comm AdSense earning from November 19, 2005 to December 15, 2005. Whether or not Mr. Comm still makes this much from Google is anybody’s guess.

8: Shawn Hogan – DigitalPoint.com $10,000 per month

Back in January of 2005 the New York Times had an article about AdSense, featuring Shawn Hogan, founder of DigitalPoint. The article states that Mr. Hogan makes $10,000 per month from Google AdSense using a very unique revenue sharing model.

Google pays Digital Point about $10,000 a month, depending on how many people view or click on those ads, said Shawn D. Hogan, the owner and chief technology officer of Digital Point.

Mr. Hogan said he started the revenue-sharing approach in 2004 “as kind of a marketing gimmick.”

“But everyone seemed to think it was a cool idea,” he said. “I saw a lot of other sites doing the same thing maybe six months later.”

DigitalPoint have grown a lot since that article and while Mr. Hogun would not say anything, the DigitalPoint forum members speculate that he is making at least twice that amount now.

1/08/2007

Five Principles for Happiness in 2007

by David Bach
The arrival of the new year marks a symbolic time for fresh starts. Many of us take it as an opportunity to set goals, contemplate decisions, and renew commitments. It's special because of the revitalized sense of hope it brings.

Before you make your New Year's resolutions for 2007, I'd like to share some thoughts about how it's never too late to start living a rich life.

The Live Rich Factor

Most people believe that if they just had more money, the things that make them unhappy would disappear and their lives would be better. The truth is that your life can be better without more money. It can be better today, but you need to make some decisions and take some actions.

You don't need me to tell you what will make you happy -- only you know that truth.

I believe each of us has the power to discover our purpose and become joyful in the process of journeying toward that purpose. It's not easy, however. Nothing important and meaningful ever is.

What you need to do is create what I call the "Live Rich Factor" in your life. I call it this because those who find the purpose that leads them to joy are truly the luckiest people in the world, because they're living richly.

There are five basic principles involved in creating your Live Rich Factor:

Principle 1: Give Yourself a Break

We all tell ourselves the story of the one that got away. You can't move forward if you spend time focusing on what you shoulda-woulda-coulda done in 2006 or before. It's over, and its time to move on. The fastest way I know to do this is to write all of your regrets down on paper.

Make a list of all your personal and financial if-onlys. For example, "If only I had saved more money. If only I hadn't quit that job. If only I hadn't taken the job I have." You get the idea.

After reading the list aloud to yourself, get rid of it. Let it all go by literally burning the list (safely). Now you're ready for a fresh start in 2007 -- a new beginning.

Principle 2: Get Connected with Your Truth

The hardest thing to do is be honest with yourself. Asking yourself some key questions will lead you to some amazing discoveries, and possibly motivate you to do what it takes to create the life you envision for yourself.

I suggest writing your (honest) answers to the following questions in a new journal for the new year:

* What makes you happy at work?
* What makes you happy at home?
* What makes you happy with your friends and family?
* What makes you happy when you're by yourself?
* What do you love to do?
* What would you do with your life today if you weren't afraid of failure?
* What's not working in your life?
* What are you currently doing that prevents you from experiencing joy?
* What's working in your life?
* Who's not working in your life?
* Who in your life is subtracting value from and adding misery to it?
* Can you fix any of these relationships, or should you let them go from your life?
* What relationships are working in your life?
* If we were getting together one year from today, what would have to happen for you to be able to tell me that you now have more joy in your life?
* What's the single most important thing you've learned about yourself as a result of answering these questions?
You'll find that by putting your answers down on paper, they'll become clear more quickly and the actions you need to take more obvious and easier to initiate.

Principle 3: Stop Judging Yourself

Be nicer to yourself in 2007. Many people talk to themselves in a way they would never accept from a stranger, friend, or loved one. If this describes you, try stopping the negative conversations you have with yourself immediately.

For one week, simply commit to saying "stop it" when you think a negative thought about yourself. If you're in the habit of saying negative things to yourself, you'll find this is one of the most difficult exercises you'll ever do. Carry a notepad with you and make a mark each time you catch yourself thinking negatively. You'll find that as the days go by, your negative thinking can quickly be reduced.

Principle 4: Stop Judging Others

It's hard to be joyful when you're always judging others. In fact, it's close to impossible. Judging others creates a huge amount of stress in our lives. It affects our marriages and our relationships with our kids as well as the way we relate to friends, co-workers, and society in general.

We're not here to judge one another.

The next time you find yourself upset at someone or some situation, catch yourself and ask, "Are you judging?" Judging others is often an unconscious habit. But it's a habit that can be changed the moment you decide to stop doing it.

Principle 5 : Pursue Fun with a Vengeance

It's OK to pursue fun. It's what children do. My greatest joy these days is the simple pleasure of playing with my three-year-old son, Jack.

This holiday season with Jack taught me the simple power of pursuing fun -- again and again. What was fun for Jack this Christmas? It turns out it wasn't the Big Wheel that my wife, Michelle, and I stayed up so late building on Christmas Eve. And it wasn't the Star Wars Lego toy (although he was pretty excited about that).

Instead, what Jack found the most fun was a new game I made up to keep him entertained. The game was called Geronimo -- and it involved Jack jumping from the bed onto a stack of pillows yelling "Geronimo!" This silly little game ended up bringing us both hours of fun. The price of the game: nothing. The fun: priceless. And the laughs? Endless.

Why do we stop pursing fun as we get older? Fun shouldn't be squeezed into a few weeks of vacation each year. And it shouldn't be squeezed into the last chapter of your life when you "get to" retire. Fun deserves to be a part of your life now -- in 2007.

But fun doesn't just happen. You have to make it a priority in your life or it'll go missing. Life's too short to not have it.

So here's to a fun, happy, and healthy New Year. Cheers!