CyberWyreMaking A Living 100% Online |
I have prepared a press release and scheduled it for publication on March 7, 2006. I am using services provided by PRWeb to post the release which is costing me a total of $40 for preferred publication to thousands of news outlets, submission to Yahoo News, Google News, etc, and adding attachments.
We will find out what happens one week from today if this experiment was successful or not.
No matter how good your content is, or how good your SEO (search engine optimization) is, you still need to find a way to drive users to your site. CyberWyre has received hundreds of link-backs, is at position #43 on the Top 100 most popular links on Digg, and made the most popular list on del.icio.us numerous times, however there is only so much traffic which can be created from these sources.
Traffic = Money. The only way to increase earnings from your website is for more people to know about the site. For decades now, when an organization wants to gain media attention, it will publish a press release. As an experiment, I will be writing and publishing my own press release in order to gain some attention from the media here in Toronto as well as nation-wide. I believe that this site is unique, and that my intentions are good: earning money to pay for school, while teaching others how I did it, and I hope that others may find the records of my successes and failures helpful in their own ventures.
I will document the status of this experiment as I progress, and am targeting to have the press release public one week from today on Tuesday February 28th. If any news agency is reading this I will be more than happy to participate in an interview to discuss this site, or other side-businesses I have run in order to support myself throughout school.
Fighting comment spam has become a daily activity for me. I have heard that this has happened to other blogs but hadn’t yet hit my own until recent weeks. Everyday I clean up about 10-15 spam entires on CyberWyre. These comments have ranged from links to affiliate sites to comments with no text other than a link to another blog.
In order to keep your readers coming back, you always have to be on top of the comments being left on your site. You work hard on your content, and blending your advertisements in with your layout — why are you going to let someone else ruin all of this hard work?
The two biggest suggestions I have to fight comment spam are:
1) Install the Spam Karma plugin for WordPress. It’s an amazing tool and has greatly cut down the time I spend dealing with spam comments daily.
2) Report the spammers. If their affiliates cut them off, then they won’t have any reason to spam the link on your site, or other sites again.
I have setup a new discussion forum on CyberWyre available at this link:
Hopefully we will get some useful suggestions from readers — especially regarding the latest developments in the 12DailyPro / StormPay scandal.
Good luck to all. Thank you for your helpful comments.
For all of you out there with AdSense on your site, I’m talking to you!
Unfortunately, Google AdSense income is taxable income. Remember, Google takes income from clients who pay money for their ads to be run through AdSense. In order to reduce their overall income (and thus reduce their taxes) they will declare payouts to you as an expense. To Google, you are an independent contractor, being paid via 1099-MISC and this relationship will be reported to the IRS.
If you reside in the United States and made over $600 in one year through Google AdSense, Google has to send you a 1099-MISC form outlining exactly how much has been paid to you over the year. If your income was less than this, you may or may not receive the form but, you still have to report your income!
Remember: Taxable income = Total income – Related expenses
It is so easy to reduce your AdSense income, or even report a loss in your submission, you just need a good record of all your expenses.
Reducing your AdSense Taxes:
The very first question you should ask yourself is: “Is my website for business or hobby purposes?”. The reason is if your website is for hobby purposes, there is a limit to how many expenses you may record for your site. In short, you are not allowed to declare a loss. If the site is for business purposes however, you are allowed to record a loss. This is what you want!
Reference:Â IRS: Is it a Business or a Hobby?
If you have determined that you are a business or are going to declare that you are a business, there is a good chance that you will be declaring as a Sole Proprietorship. You should note that if you are declaring as a sole proprietorship, then by definition you are both the employer and employee of that business. You are self-employed. If your net earnings were more than $400, you must pay self-employment tax on that income.
Reference: IRS: Sole Proprietorship, IRS: Tax Guide for Small Businesses
As a self-employed individual, you will now have expenses related to your business which you may declare. These include expenses such as domain registration and website hosting charges. Do you travel for your website to do research for articles, etc? You may also be able to record this as an expense, as well as others such as rented space in your home to run your business. Some suggestions for expenses are below:
- Domain Name Registration
- Web Hosting and Maintenance charges
- Advertising For Your Site (Adwords, Overture, Magazine, Newspaper)
- Home-Office Deductions:
- Portion of rent or mortgage
- Portion of internet access
- Portion of telephone bill
- Portion of cellular phone bill
- Portion of other utilities
- Equipment
- Computer purchases & upgrades
- Digital Cameras, Printers, Scanners, Fax Machines
- Office Supplies
- Software
- Mileage on your vehicle used for business purposes
- Relivant Magazine or Newsletter Subscriptions
- Post-Office Box Rental
- Even Tax-Preparation Expenses!
As you can see, the expenses you can declare are only limited to your creativity! Remember that I am not a tax professional, nor do I claim to be one, nor will I be filing taxes with the IRS as I am in Canada. I am just writing about my own experiences and planning ahead for my own taxes filed to the CRA.
Last winter I decided to buy myself a new Braun 8595 electric razor. As it wasn’t sold yet in Canada, and thinking that I would probably find the best price on eBay, this is where I headed first. It cost me about 300 dollars and I received it in the mail a week later. The surprising part was that when I received it, it was in a retail bag with the retailer’s sticker on the box.
This got me thinking…. somebody had a great idea! Back in school I would always have my mind active on finding a way to make a bit of money on the side. One way I found might actually be surprising: buy retail, and sell on eBay. I assumed that I would always find the cheapest price on eBay so I never bothered to check sites like bizrate.com to see if it actually was the cheapest out there. I started to assume that others might also make this mistake!
Sure enough, after a few searches on bizrate and eBay, I was able to find a few items which were about 50-60 dollars less than the current market price on eBay. They weren’t cheap though – the ones I can remember now were a Toshiba A30 laptop, and a Nikon CoolPix 5.1MP digital camera. Once I found a product that I liked and found a decent enough profit margin, it would usually sell after about three days and make a couple bucks in the process.
Why don’t I do this often? Simply because it takes too much time searching bizrate and eBay constantly until you find a large enough margin to make it worthwhile. If I ever had a couple hours to spare (unlikely though) IÂ might try it again…
I’ve been following the latest events between 12DailyPro and StormPay and it all seems a bit too sketchy for me. After writing my last post about 12DailyPro, I decided to wait for a pending cashout to clear to my StormPay account before putting anything more into the scheme (it wasn’t much money, just referral earnings). This cashout never happened, and shortly after all hell broke loose between 12DailyPro and StormPay.
It seems that the end for 12DP is near. Just as a precaution, I have ordered a full withdrawl of my StormPay account. I somehow just don’t give them as much trust as I would a PayPal or another online money transfer system.
Over the past few days, I’ve started to notice something interesting when analyzing my site statistics. I use AwStats to analyze my log files, and one of the more interesting outputs is frequently searched keywords.
The top few searched keywords which generated hits to my site were directly related to my content: “ebay”, “12dailypro”, and ”blogging”. No surprise here. What caught my attention was that just below these hits, still near the top of the list were search terms which were not at all related to my site. These were results like “Eminem”, “Awards”, “Super Bowl” and I started to think what the heck?.
All of these hits were directly due to my Current Top 15 Internet Searches page, which is updated dynamically. This made me start to think that writing about these terms actually really does drive traffic to your site.
If you are short of ideas for your blog, or are looking for some quick traffic, try writing about something on this list.. chances are you will get a few extra hits.
It’s time to start to make some cash from your blog! One of my first recommendations would be to go and check out LinkConnector. LinkConnector helps you find potential sponsors for your site and allows you to register for, and apply banner campaigns to your page.
An example could be if you run a blog about credit cards, through LinkConnector you could probably find a link to a credit card company, and whenever one of your visitors applies for a card, you get a referral fee. These can range from $2 to hundreds of dollars, depending on the referral.
Check it out. It’s worth signing up for and clicking through the campaigns — maybe you will find something good for your site.
Loading ...