Welcome to “Make Money Online with Griz”.
Some of you may be familiar with my work online but for those who aren’t let me fill you in on what I do and humbly suggest that you heed my advice before wasting a lot of time and energy trying to earn money online. All because you followed the advice of people who make money off of you but don’t tell you how to do it yourself.
Regardless of what niche you pick your success always comes down to one single and simple barrier – traffic. If you can solve the traffic problem or lack of it that is, then you can make money online. It really does all boil down to that. Get traffic – make money. Get more traffic and make more money.
Simple.
Except…
Getting traffic is the hardest thing to do online. There are millions and millions of websites and blogs dotting the Internet landscape and getting people to come to your site, out of all the possibilities, is the hardest task to achieve.
Lucky for you I just happen to be pretty good at getting traffic. I also like to discuss how I do it. Moreover I give the info away for free. Right now you just said to yourself… “Oh great – free! It must be crappy advice if he isn’t charging for it”.
I’m the first to admit that nobody knows everything and I’m not an expert but I have developed some techniques that work well for ranking high in the search engines for every keyword I target. I will show you some examples below.
There are two schools of thought when it comes to publicizing a website or blog. The popular model is such that you set up a site and then join every social network you can and get yourself seen. Build up friends, who become readers and work at getting your RSS Feed subscriber total into the thousands. This will attract advertisers trying to sell something to your large readership. On paper this sounds good (and yes it works) but it is a lot of work, you don’t make any money for a long time and your readership won’t buy product. They are bloggers just like you and they come for information. They know what an affiliate link is and they sure as hell aren’t going to use your link to buy something – most will use their own. Yes, you can make a decent living following this model but the odds are against it. Only the very top bloggers make good money doing this and they number a few dozen out of millions. The chance of rising above the crowd and becoming one of the few is quite unrealistic for most.
The other school of thought for getting traffic is ranking high in the search engines – specifically Google.
If your website ranks number 1 on Google’s search engine result page (SERP’s) for the word (know as a “KEYWORD”) “Shoes” then you can expect hundreds of thousands of visitors. If you can’t find a way to make money from a site with that many visitors then you shouldn’t be online. Needless to say the site that does rank #1 sells shoes. I bet they sell a lot of them…
This model simply targets highly searched “keywords” and sets about building a website or blog that is relevant to the keyword. This is called search engine optimization (SEO) and it’s what I do. The idea is to rank on top of the search engines for keywords that get searched for by lots of people. Do this and you gain steady traffic that doesn’t change much from day to day and it’s the kind of traffic that is looking for something specific. They buy stuff. They aren’t other marketers and bloggers – just ordinary people looking for something online. Get a lot of this kind of traffic and you can make money with Adsense, Affiliate Products or Lead Generation to name just a few. You can also make a decent buck from advertisers who are after your traffic.
One of the most competitive terms online is “Make Money Online“. It is the holy grail of keywords – not the toughest but one of the most coveted keywords. Ranking number 1 for this term says one thing – your SEO is better than everyone else.
I have another blog that has been around for a year and a half. It is called “How to Make Money Online for Beginners“. If the title isn’t bad enough you’ll love this – it’s built on Blogger’s free platform. It’s a plain ugly free blogspot blog. Cost me nothing.
As of today’s post this is how my other blog ranks in Google for several of the main “Make Money Online” Keywords. I said I could prove I know a bit about SEO and I present the evidence below. These rankings change regularly and may not be accurate at the time you read this.
I rank 5th for the top prize – “Make Money Online” – only 42 million competing pages…
and number 1 for several related terms.
“How to Earn Money Online”
“How To Make Money”
“How to Make Money Online”
“Make Money for Beginners”
“Making Money Online”
“Make Money Online Right Now”
“How Can I Make Money Online”
SEO is what I do.
If you want to learn – for free – start by reading my “How to Make Money Online for Beginners” blog and then come back here and learn the rest of what I do.
ps. That free ugly blog makes several thousand dollars a month.
Cheers
Griz
Monday July 7 – Update.
Rhys asked the following question in the comments below…
“Can we infer from your Domain name that G can separate out(and use) the keywords in the name, without hyphens? Humans often can’t, and I feel not using hyphens leads to confusion.”
Rhys, as you can see G can decipher the words used in a long url. While this may confuse humans I am only interested in how the search engines see my url. Humans are given plenty of visible text in the Blog Title, Page Titles and Post Titles. Url’s are for the search engines. I have said this often – if you want top spot in the serp’s you really do need your main keyword in your URL or else you will need thousands and thousands of links to make up for this deficiency.
Hey Griz, nice blog!
And if I’m not mistaken, that is a rather unique theme you have there – and it looks damn good!
Here’s to the success of this new blog which I know is inevitable – maybe you’ll even knock that ugly blogger blog off top spot with it…
Terry
Gee Thanks Terry,
Seems the theme has your name all over it! Lol Thanks for all the help getting this off the ground Terry. Be prepared though – I have lots of questions for you but will parse them out slowly so you don’t run and hide on me!
Griz on an attractive WordPress theme blog. Say it ain’t so!
Let me know the keywords you want to use here and I’ll put them in a post and on my rotating blogroll.
Best of Luck Grizz,
However, I know realistically luck has very little to do with it. It will be fun watching you grow this blog. Have you prior experience with using wordpress on other sites you have? Just curious? I started messing around with it when I started blogging last Nov. As usual take care.
-D
Oh you are impressive Frank! How the heck did you find this so quick – Terry and I are still tweaking it. Thanks for the help Frank and you can probably guess the main keyword (MMO) but any related ones will do. I have a new post I’m trying to finish for the “ugly” blog which involves you and Terry and a few others so keep your eyes peeled.
BTW – now that I have got you here I don’t have to keep bugging Terry! How does one go about getting the akismet thing going and the fancy comment sections all you guys use – something like Vic’s?
Hey Dennis,
So much for keeping this quiet for the time being! Ha. You guys are fast. My WP experience has consisted of posting blog snippets – setup and code monkey stuff – well I’m allergic to that. Just ask Terry. lol. WP will be a learning experience but I am going to see if I can get these damn sites ranking as well as my Blogger blogs. Should be fun.
Thanks for the well wishes Dennis and I hope all is well with you.
Thought I’d stop buy and say hi. Looks good so far. much better than that UGLY post I was stummbling through to find out that you had a new blog. HMM wordpress and your own domain what has the world come too.
Gotafish
Grizz,
Thanks, all is well.. spent a week in the hospital (siezures- first time in 5 years). I wont say anything about this blog until you “officially” announce it. However, I will add some content for your next “make money online blog”. LOL.. Let me know if you would like me to include this site when I do some BMD runs for my other sites. I use the software maybe once or twice a week. Well peace and quiet is over- time to make breakfast for the 5yr old.
-D
Found you via Frank comment on BU.tv
The funny thing is that I noticed this morning that you were scrap in full for a post that point to my blog.
For askimet, you need an WordPress.com API Key. You will need that for some plugin but just a few.
https://faq.wordpress.com/2005/10/19/api-key/
You will also need Subscribe to thread plugin.
https://txfx.net/code/wordpress/subscribe-to-comments/
A list of plugin that Vic uses from Jan 17, 2008:
https://bloggerunleashed.com/tools/wordpress-plugin-list-and-set-up/
Some may not work with WP 2.5.1 or have new version for it
Have fun with the new blog.
P.S. Now have a new RSS feed to subscribe
In Settings, Discussion – Comment moderation, you should put a number of links so that when your will get spammed, readers won’t see those comments.
I theory, my comment above would had be held in moderation since I have 3 links in it.
Steve thanks, but that’s already set – I did that in the basic blog setup. I actually set it to one, but comment moderation is already set to on with administrator to moderate.
Griz, when you log in to the admin panel, the dashboard will show you all new incoming links – a nice touch! You should see one coming in from a certain Honest blog…
Welcome to the WordPress world Grizz. I am really looking forward to reading more of your posts. If there is anything I can do to help with the launch of this new blog, please just send me an email.
-Fred
Hey guys,
Thanks for all the advice and help. Just so you all know it only took me about 6 hours to figure out how to put the stupid screenshots on the post. Man this is work compared to Blogger! LOL.
I appreciate the support guys and I may just list all my problems here in the comments and await your collective wisdom. Nice to have friends online!
Strike number one for WP – I linked to this blog last night from the “Ugly” one and this is still not indexed. It usually takes less than an hour when I do that to another blogspot blog… tsk tsk tsk…
This will be interesting…
Thanks again all of you – much appreciated and I still want to know how Frank found this? Ha.
Well, you’re indexed now. I wonder why it took so long? My guess is its because its a new domain rather than the WP platform. Where Google may index new blogger blogs with in links faster it probably waits a little with new domains just in case its a sqammer.
Terry,
Yup, it’s indexed now. Do you think I’m a little spoiled – complaining because it took 12 hours instead of one! I don’t expect much do I? Lol.
Question – top of the post – my name is linked but goes nowhere – how does one fix this? This is the link:
https://makemoneyonlinegrizzly.com/author/Grizzly/
This is what comes up when the link is clicked:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING in /home/grizzly/public_html/wp-content/themes/wilderness/author.php on line 42
This can’t be good.
more questions…
Does feedburner work with WP 2.5 – does it work with Statcounter?
In both cases the setup directions don’t seem to apply and I am not getting any stats.
The Mybloglog widget is another one that doesn’t seem to work.
Am I just doing something wrong or is this all because nothing has been set up to work on the 2.5 platform yet?
Feedburner should work OK with 2.5 WP. I haven’t heard any complaints about it not working.
Statcounter should work, just put in the the footer. I use Google Analytics and Hittail on OpTempo so it should be about the same. Make sure the end of the footer.php file looks something like this:
...your tracking scripts here...
I hope that formats right!
The wp_footer section is important for some tracking to work right for some reason.
The author link should go to the author archive page. If that’s not working then that could indicate a problem in the theme’s code that would need to be corrected. I’ve ran into problems like this with some other themes that required roll-up-the-sleeves programming to fix.
Let me try that code again:
<?php wp_footer();?>
</body>
</html>
Thanks Frank,
Man… ask a simple question and you slap code in front of my face! Ack! Lol
“required roll-up-the-sleeves programming to fix.” – now that is why I love Blogger!
I get the feeling I will spend more time pissing around with “Things” than making money with this but I have big plans for us all so I’m just gonna have to grin and bare it. (Pardon the pun)
I just hope Terry has made a backup of everything because we are gonna need it by the time I’m done hacking around in the dungeons. If things start looking a bit screwed up you’ll know why – This is why I’m not publicizing it yet, I’d better get it figured out first.
Oh Joy…
Thanks Frank – glad you found it – your help is certainly appreciated. Btw – I noticed you are ranking well for Blinkweb. A sure sign G is giving you a lot of authority. Are you seeing good rankings for all those other keywords your targeting – a true multi-niche site. I have noticed that the MMO blog can pretty well target anything – related or not – and still rank well (with a few helpful links of course) Just wondering if you are seeing the same results?
That’s why I like Court’s themes, he (or the Indian he hired?) has already done most of the futzing around with the code. The nice thing about Blogger templates is that they’re one page and pretty straight forward. WP is a dozen or more separate pages but much more flexible. It’s a trade off.
I’ve been seeing good rankings, ie first page in my data center, about 75-80% of the time for targeted keywords. For example, I’m showing up #9 for ‘Bill Engvall Dork Fish’ right now in my DC and I just did that post this morning.
Of course, it depends a lot on the competition. Some keywords/products I’ve targeted have old, long established, sites controlling the first page. Plus there is always eBay, YouTube and Wikipedia to contend with. However, putting an additional long tail like ‘review’ or ‘how to’ will help it rank that way. I would say that right now I’m about 10-20% MMO posts and 80-90% general review posts on OpTempo.
Buddy welcome to the WP world LMAO!!! Now please let me know what term you will be working to the root to get it on the side bar. Frank I also need what term in the “MMO” you are working for Optempo to get it there also like Grizz said would eb cool for all of us in the group to dominate first page in the “MMO” arena LMOA!!!
Vic
Hi Griz,
Nice theme and blog you have here. Looking forward to hanging out and learning some great info from your new second home here:)
So you’re here! I had been looking for you for a while. Why did you leave your “ugly” blog? Actually, I learnt quite a few things from that blog, and I loved it. Anyway, I’ll be visiting this site from now on. Thanks.
Mrinal,
Have no fear – I’m not leaving the “ugly” blog. I’m just expanding a bit. I am hoping to use the ugly blog for what I built it for – to make money off of it’s search traffic. The problem has been that to do this means annoying my readers. Hopefully my readers will migrate over here where I will talk about what I’m doing while I will actually do what I talk about on the ugly blog. Did that make sense? ha.
Sunshine,
Thanks for that and please hang out as much as you want – tell all your friends as well! Let’s just hope I can give you info worth hanging out for.
Vic,
I guess the cat is out of the bag now! Lol
You said exactly what I’m thinking – it’s time the “group” starts looking after itself. Between us all we have a lot of authority and if we do things right we can create many more authority sites for all of us to benefit from – which will lead to even more…
As for keywords – I’m going for the big enchilada here – “make money online”. Thanks Vic. I’m trying to finish a new post that will lay out the groundwork for what we should all be doing regarding the MMO/Blogging niche as I have come to a few conclusions about G and how it’s rankings are now calculated. Stay tuned and I hope you are feeling better Vic. It’s always so damn quiet and peaceful when you aren’t around – some might think Peace and Quiet is a good thing… boring!
Talk soon my friend.
Griz, I’ll look at the code in the author.php file and figure it.
You can copy/paste the statcounter code straight into the footer.php file which you can edit throught the design/theme panels, or email it to me and I’ll add it via ftp.
Adding ad code blocks into the sidebar is the same – just make sure you add them above the bit of code that mentions widgets!
Yep, I’ve got a backup of all the files, just don’t go deleting any lines of php!
BTW maybe you’ve already spotted it but when you post, below the text box is a tab for All-in-One-SEO-Pack – you can add keywords to that as well as tags for extra on-site SEO.
WP is extremely flexible, although the WP bods haven’t quite figured out how to get it to make your coffee yet….
Terry,
I thought the stat code could be pasted in but the plugin instructions just asked for a few lines of code and nothing else – didn’t make much sense.
“just don’t go deleting any lines of php!” – why? Is all that gobbly gook important? lol
So can I just slap the Mybloglog code for instance into a text/html widget or does it need to be added elsewhere?
Feedburner requires the following code
to be placed “just above the line
”
in order to gather my stats but the info is for older versions of WP. Where the heck do I place it in WP 2.5?
Moreover the feed subscriptions seem to be working (you can sign up fine) but the feed stats aren’t showing up in the stats either. Something is amiss…
Thanks Terry… aren’t you glad you stopped by? Lol
Let’s try that again…
Feedburner requires the following code
< * script src="https://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/makemoneyonlinegrizzly/ePon?i=” type=”text/javascript” charset=”utf-8″>
to be placed “just above the line < * p class="postmetadata" * >
(remove spaces and *)
Deep breath… Ok, statcounter. First you need to enable the plugin (if I didn’t already do it) from the plugins tab.
Then go to “Settings” and click the “Statcounter” tab. There it gives you step by step instructions in what to add to the three fields below. This info you get from statcounter itself when you create the new project – its fiddley I know but saves pasting code into footers.
Feedburner. Again, activate the plugin if I didn’t do it. Then all you need to do is go to Settings/Feedburner and add the “feed.feedburner.com/yourfeed” url you get from feedburner into the box. That’s a nice simple one!
Mybloglog code – mmmm, I’ve always copied/pasted the code from mybloglog straight into the sidebar as is. You can add that at the bottom of the sidebar code after the widgets if you want it out of the way.
PS: That php file is nasty…
PPS: Fixed the php…
Terry
Good job with your new make money online WP blog.
As with your Make Money Online blogspot, nuggets are also in the comments. Can you add an rss feed for ‘subscribe to comments’ please?
Hi Grizz,
First time commenting on your site. Guess I needed to feel at home on a WP blog..though I’ve read everything on your blooger site and of course am still learning how to implement it all. I’m one of Vic’s students if you will – on his tv channel and unleashed site. I need to once again thank you guys and Court,Jason and Frank (luv that comment luv post builder). I’ve been online since 93 and making web sites since 95 but find that I’m still a total newbie when it comes to $$. Starting slowly but really enjoying it – and working it every day.
- I think you’ll love WordPress!
Bookshop Bruce
Congratulations on the new site. Best of luck in the land of the self-hosted.
Hey Griz: love the site and welcome to the world of WordPress. When I made the transition from Blogger to WP it was quite the learning experience. Looks like you’ve got folks with experience that can help – goodness knows you’ve helped us countless times!
Terry…
Breathe in… Breath out… ha
The three fields didn’t work for stat counter – it is working now that I stuck the “whole” code in the footer. The 3 fields thing is what buggered me up…
The feedburner “feed” isn’t the problem – it’s that if you want FB to add all the social buttons to the bottom of each post. (Stumble, Digg, etc) The code needs to be added to the template (the code I highlighted earlier). This is easy in Blogger but I haven’t a clue which template/page/sheet/file in WP contains the term p class=”postmetadata” – this is where the FB code has to be placed. You guys probably use something else to add buttons but that would be like learning something new and perish the thought!
Thought I would ask re “MyBlogLog” before doing what you suggested – don’t want to let that nasty PHP guy loose!
Thanks for fixing the author link – hope it wasn’t something I did? Give me enough time…
You know it’s not too late to let me send you some money Terry! I did warn you… lol
Thanks as always Terry – are you playing a gig tonight? Nothing better than a jam session to take your mind off of computers.
Ami,
Thanks Ami. Right – one feed for comments coming up. Now let’s see if I bugger that up too. Cross your fingers!
Hi Bruce,
Thanks for the encouragement although “Love” and “WP” are not found in the same sentence around here yet – maybe one day though… lol
No worries for not commenting on the Blogger site – even Vic hated leaving comments on it. I’m the first to admit that Blogger’s comment platform sucks! I wish I could connect to Vic’s TV channel and join in but my satellite system seems to crash when I try – I can watch the discussion but can’t login myself. Living on an Island in the middle of nowhere does have a few disadvantages – not many – but a few.
Thanks for stopping in Bruce and I hope you comment often now.
Vinny,
Thanks and please wish Terry luck as he still doesn’t know what he got himself into when he agreed to give me a hand. Nice of you to stop by. Much appreciated.
Chanya,
Long time no chat. Really nice of you to stop by. I must admit everyone should have friends like this. Sure makes life easier. (for me – not sure about my helpers though) I hope all is well and you seem to be plugging away just fine with all your sites. Is the money trickling in yet?
Note to myself…
38 comments and I just passed 100 visitors today. Good thing I’m keeping this quiet for the time being… lol.
Hi Griz,
Yep, blues gig this evening and a wonderful diversion from the computer!
Sorry about the feedburner/statcounter thing – its one of those situations that would have been easier had I been sitting next to you as you did it. Problem is the world isn’t quite small enough yet! Even trying to fix problems over the phone is not always easy – one of the chores I used to have to do many moons ago in a faraway life…
I’d love to be able to explain that statcounter thing as I’ve set it up on some of my WP blogs and remember what a pain it was to figure it out in the beginning.
As for putting in the social bookmarks after each post – I know where that goes (in a general sense – this template may be slightly different but the basics are the same) and it will have to go into more than one file – certainly the index.php and probably single.php and page.php too. I’ll have to look. If you email me the code, I can enter it for you.
I have other ideas that I’ll email you with…
Terry,
I’ve managed to get everything going save the social buttons. I now have an idea of what’s going on and see what Frank was saying about having more than 1 page to concern yourself with. The FB buttons will have to go on several files and would this also apply when adding BZ or sphinn etc? Anyway it is starting to make sense. I’ll email you the FB code but it isn’t a priority. More interested in figuring out how to add it than I am in actually using them.
Thanks as always Terry
Question to all:
Vic mentioned that his comment section doesn’t get read by G once long ago (don’t know which post) Just wondering if using a nested comments system means that G can’t crawl them. Too bad if true.
Good to see you switching over to WP Grizz!
Its a lot of fun =)
I’m excited to see you repeat your success on this blog. If you need any help with programming or anything, let me know. I’m not great, but more than comfortable with hacking up WP plugins and php.
I’ll throw you a link from my blogs.
Griz,
It’s really up in the air as to how Google treats WP comment sections and the links in them. On OpTempo I’ve seen comments bring in brand new long tails I didn’t have in the original article. For example, my Sarah Jessica Parker article still brings in a bunch of ‘horsey’ long tail searches.
Griz:
Yes, I just started making a little money with Adsense on one of my niche sites. I’m now working to build up my other sites.
It’s funny – earlier today I re-read your great post on Adsense Smart Pricing at your other site. Not because I think I’m smart priced but because I was considering putting Adsense on another of my new sites and wanted to know what to look for if I got smart priced. Thank goodness I reviewed your article. One mistake I’ve made in the past was slapping Adsense up on sites before the traffic was there. Or putting Adsense up on a site that didn’t have keyword focused content. Your article reminded me of that. I should probably print that article and put it on my refrigerator!
Griz on WordPress, that’s too cool. Looking forward to more great stuff!
Hi Grizz,
Wow, you are real secretive about this new blog. LOL! Glad I caught the link on Justin’s blog else I will be still in the dark.
As you can see, I used my “old” blog link here. It’s an old blog of mine catering for audiences in my country so I don’t publicise it much outside the region as the articles there are quite meaningless to people who do not know what is happening in the country.
Practising SEO is kind of limited in my area as what the SERPs shows over here are not what most will see, so we always gets the the wrong impression about our rankings. LOL.
Anyway, based what I have learned from you, I started an experiment a couple of months ago to see how that nonsensicle blog of mine, which has Page Rank taken away by big G for writing paid posts back when this was the fastest way to make some money, can rank on the term “Make Money” in my region.
I concluded the experiment today with a post I just did before catching this link and coming here.
And people, I personally endorse what Grizz has taught. It worked real well for me.
Grizz yes they do get read and if you are using the all in one plugin it creates a markov including the related comments plugin. Please if you need hep instaling both let me know all I would need is to ftp in and it takes me like 5 minutes to make the changes in your theme and you activate the plugins. Below are ht eplugins I suggest if not using them already.
https://semperfiwebdesign.com/ All In One SEO
https://organisiert.net/yatcp/ Nested Comments
https://rmarsh.com/plugins/similar-posts/ Similar Post
Grizz I am resting most of the day in bed right now but I check emails and BZ and BU at least once a day so please if I can help in something just shoot me an email.
I really like your theme Griz, it suits you.
I also found out about your new blog over at BU TV. It is comforting to know that sometimes one of those Ustreamers is actually you, Griz! Welcome to WP.
Hi Griz!
Welcome to WPWorld, there are some challenges, but lots of rewards.
Can we infer from your Domain name that G can separate out(and use) the keywords in the name, without hyphens? Humans often can’t, and I feel not using hyphens leads to confusion.
I saw a comment recently (Justin I think) that said hyphenated domains look Spammy?
Hope this new site exceeds your expectations – Your readers will certainly be wishing so!