CTR Theme Review

Posted on April 13, 2011 by admin

I’ve been toying with the CTR Theme for wordpress lately, and have had some pretty good success with it. I’m not very good at graphics or theme design, etc, so I usually just pick up some of the free ones that they have in the wordpress theme area. Though, I’ve had to be extra careful lately, as it seems some people put in some embedded links to their sites that they hide away that go to unsavory places, and can get your website marked as a “security risk” from google, which you do NOT want to happen.

I have quite a few sites that I am using adsense to monetize. It’s a great program, and I know that I am always going to get paid, as it’s owned/ran by google, and I don’t think they are going anywhere anytime soon.

On googles site they show heatmaps that show where people like to click on a website. Most themes are made to be pretty, and not as functional, for a internet marketer. This is where I found CTR Theme while I was searching around the internet.

One low cost, and you can use it on UNLIMITED domains. Pretty cool. Still testing it out now, but so far, I’ve seen an almost immediate increase of activity on the sites that I tested it out on.

For those that don’t know, adsense brings up ads based on the content of your site. Everytime a surfer sees something they like and clicks their way to an advertiser, you make a cut of googles profit. There are people out there that use this as their only source of online income, and do quite well with it (there are a few really good ebooks on the subject that I will tell you guys about in an upcoming post, after I get all the way through the last one).

Anyway CTR Theme takes googles heatmap to the next level, and totally integrates it into the theme to put your ads on the most prime areas of website real estate. It even has a few different layouts that it will randomize in order for return surfers to see something different each time they go there, which will increase the chance something will stand out and catch their eye. If you don’t like the random feature, you can turn it off in the backend as well.

Anyway, I like it, and if you are going to use that as your method of monetization, it’s definitely worth a look. At least hit up their website and check out the video about how it works. It explains things way better than I can. The video can be found here at their homepage.

Thanks for stopping by, hopefully this has helped out some of you work at home dads looking for a bit of direction in internet marketing :) . Until next time.

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Herman Miller Mirra Chair Basic. Aaaaah

Posted on April 7, 2011 by admin

Herman Miller Mirra ChairOk, my wife totally scored today. Her boss picked up this amazing Herman Milller Mirra chair from a mail order company, and ended up not liking it because the arms weren’t adjustable to where he likes them. Anyway, long story short, he didn’t want to bother taking it apart and sending it back, so he offered to sell it to her for $200, instead of the $600 he paid. Score.

I came home from spending the afternoon with the kids in the park, and my broken down old staples executive chair was out by the trash, and this beauty is under my desk.

I’ve been putting off getting a new chair for ages, even though I’ve had some back issues. If you can afford it, get yourself a quality chair if you are going to be spending your days in front of a computer. Totally worth it. This bad boy is so comfortable. I always scoffed at paying so much for a simple chair, but those folks at Herman Miller really know what they are doing. This work at home dad is one happy camper.

Sorry, just had to share, I’m so excited, lol! Till next time guys.

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If You Have More Money Than Time, Outsource!

Posted on April 6, 2011 by admin

Today’s post is about outsourcing parts of your business. Sometimes when you are first starting it’s going to be very difficult to have some cash to set aside to outsource anything. In these situations, it’s better to use this time as a learning experience and do the work on your own.

At some point though, if you want to make good money, you are going to have to employ the services of others.

It could be writers, it could be software/script developers, or it could be designers. Sometimes there are areas that you are just not good at, or don’t have the time to bother with, in those instances outsourcing makes a lot of sense.

Say you have a idea for a great piece of software for a website that is going to help you do things quicker, or add benefit to your surfers. Are you really going to spend the months it takes to learn to program to make it yourself? Unless programming is your ultimate goal, it’s totally not worth your time.

I’ve had things written for me that cost $30-$40 bucks, which would have probably taken me 8-10 hours to figure out on my own. Not sure about how you guys feel, but time with my kids is worth way more than 4-5 dollars an hour doing it on my own.

Always start with small orders if you can, as sometimes finding a good writer or designer can be a bit of a chore. Try to set up deals where you only pay 50% up front, or pay on delivery. Also, if at all possible, go through some of the freelancer companies out there that offer up reviews of their clients. That way you know if someone else has been ripped off, or projects came in late, or whatever. Most of us stay at home dads don’t have extra cash to waste getting screwed over!

Other options are looking in your local area, putting up fliers at your local college, or even hitting up craigslist. It’s sometimes nice to have a few people that are local that you can have face to face discussions with so that you know you are getting exactly what you are looking for. Have a relative that is a hungry college student? They are great sources of reasonable priced labor for all your businesses. Plus, you are helping them out in return!

Hopefully this has sparked some ideas for you. I know some people that do pretty mucy 90% of their businesses outsourced. You just have to figure out a formula that makes you more money in a month than you are paying out to your workers, and you will be golden. Why not make some cash while sitting back having a few chicken strips with the kids? lol.

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Stay at Home Dads Stigma

Posted on April 4, 2011 by admin

I thought it was about time that I dealt with this issue. There are many issues people out there have about gender issues, and the role of being a father, a provider, etc, that make some people uncomfortable.

I really have never had this issue. yeah, sometimes some of my friends will poke fun at me, but I always come back with something funny and let it roll off my back. I know they are just playing around, and it doesn’t really bother me.

There are many situations out there that can result in you becoming a stay at home dad. Job loss, injury, or it just being the right decision for your family.

I’m lucky enough to have a wonderful wife that makes a pretty good living. We started out with my parents watching the kids while we both worked. This worked alright for a while, but my parents are getting older, and I could tell that it was wearing on them a bit. I mean, they would forever do it, but I didn’t want them to feel that they HAD to.

My wife’s stake in a career was always more important to her than career was to me. She takes a lot of pride in her upward mobility in the job that she works, and enjoys the work. For me, a job has always felt like a job. I enjoy doing things on my own terms, and become uncomfortable in the confines of corporate life.

After working out the numbers of how much it would cost to have someone take care of the kids, as well as the above factors, me staying at home with the kids just made sense to us. Also, we are a bit overprotective, and I’m sure trying to find a nanny would end up a fruitless effort anyway.

In the end, your family has to do what is best for your family. Taking care of your kids doesn’t make you any less of a man, or any less of a provider for your family. Every time you teach them something new you are providing for them. Every time you take the time to create them a healthy meal from scratch, you are providing.

Once they get back to school will probably still stick to internet marketing. It’s quite an adventure, but the constant change of strategies, pace, and subjects I am finding works out really well with the way that I work.

Us work at home dads gotta stick together and change societies views on things.

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Making Money Offline

Posted on April 2, 2011 by admin

Though this blog focuses on my quest to make money online, it’s important for you guys to not forget that there are many areas where you can make money freelancing in a “offline” manner in your area.

You just need to think outside the box.

One good way is to create a hybrid approach to things. Learn your online marketing craft, and then use that knowledge to sell products to brick and mortar businesses in your area.

I have a friend that purchases domains for citynameprofession.com (or whatever) does some work to get the site ranked up high in google, and then contacts businesses in his area to sell them advertising monthly, or outright sells the domain to the businesses.

Imagine you live in, say, Dublin California and you created a website that listed plumbers in the area, and you managed to get to a #1 ranking in google for the term Dublin California plumbers (just throwing that out there, I haven’t done any actual keyword research for it to make sure it’s a viable option, lol). Even if the site only gets a handful of hits per day, they are VERY TARGETED hits.

If you limit the amount of advertising to say 3 plumbers, and each one pays you a set amount per month, that’s a totally passive income that you have just created. With minimal maintenance you should be able to keep a first page ranking for the subject.

Now, it may be difficult to get some clients on board, and you can always come up with deals ranging from first month free, or a discount for the first few months, or whatever just to test the waters.

This would of course work best with businesses that have a high pay rate so that each lead you generate to them would be worth quite a lot, so advertising would be a given.

One tip is to see who in your area is actually paying for advertising in the yellow pages, newspaper, etc, and those are the guys I would hit up first. Some people just don’t advertise, and you are not going to be able to make them budge either way.

This is just one example, but there are unlimited ways to rake in a few extra bucks here and there. The secret is finding something that makes you cash on a continual basis, but doesn’t require that much time from you after you initially set it up.

You can even outsource the finding of clients to someone else looking for work, if you are not comfortable with it, and give them a finders fee.

Anyway, us stay at home dads gotta stick together, lol. Hopefully this sparked your imagination a bit. Good luck, and keep on plugging away!

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Make sure to keep a backup of EVERYTHING

Posted on March 31, 2011 by admin

Got a harsh reminder today to make sure I keep a backup of everything that I do. I had my 1.5 terabyte hard drive crash on me today. Luckily I keep redundant backups on a secondary drive (well, actually on two smaller 750gb external hard drives that I have), or I could have lost a lot of work.

I know this is something everyone says, and doesn’t quite do enough, but it really is important. I learned this the hard way when I was in school and lost a 30 page paper I had been working for weeks on to a hard disc crash. Every since then, I’ve been very careful about backing things up.

Don’t just backup your files, pictures, and videos. Make backups of your websites. Even if your hosting company offers free backups make sure to store a copy on your computer in case something happens. Better to not leave your destiny in the hands of someone else. I recently had a hosting company totally shut down, and vanish off the face of the earth. They did give me a full 2 weeks notice to get all my files off the server, but it was in a email that I only rarely check.

I didn’t have backups of these sites, but luckily they were all fairly new, and I had backups of the actual written content on my hard drive (also always a good idea to keep, in case a hosting company goes away, or if you are using free hosted servers, and they end up vanishing or removing your content for one reason or another).

For especially important files I keep redundant backups, and also make use of a couple online file hosting services. I create a truecrypt drive that I upload there, for security reasons. Always a good idea. Though, I’m a bit paranoid, lol.

Now, off to Costco to make use of their awesome return policy, and return this broken drive. What a headache. Ah, the trials and tribulations of a stay at home dad ;) . At least it stopped raining, so getting the kids going won’t be such an issue.

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Just Get Started

Posted on March 29, 2011 by admin

Sometimes we can get hit with information overload. I know I spend way to many hours reading the latest ebook courses on how to make money online, increase traffic, etc. Sometimes it’s just hard to get to the most important aspect of making a living online. Doing the work!

I was talking with a friend that was interested in making a little bit of money on the side by “blogging.” All the stories about the few people making big money online has started making the rounds on news outlets, and when that happens, people start wanting to jump in on it.

Well, the big problem is that people think this is an alternative to work, instead of being work. They end up chasing the magic bullet that will bring them untold riches. There really is no magic bullet. Let me tell you. It’s just a combination of hard work, research, a bit of luck, and sticktoitiveness (is that a word? it is now!).

I told my friend to go online and get himself a free blog hosting account at blogger or wordpress, and an account to googles adsense to try to monetize things. Pick a subject. Do some research on it. I taught him how to use the google keyword tool to make sure people are actually searching for the terms that he is trying to target.

This was one month ago. I set him a target of doing 20 blog posts on his one blog in one month. That’s only 1 per day, with Saturday and Sunday off, which is a minimal amount of work for anyone to get done. Even if you have a full job, this should be no problem.

I gave him a call. He got further than most that I offered help to. He actually setup a blogger account, and filled in the profile information. Lol. No posts beyond the initial welcome to my new site post. Nothing else. No articles written.

He then went on to have a 25 minute conversation with me about what is the best method to market CPA (cost per action) offers. He has zero traffic, and he wants to maximize that zero traffic, lol.

Anyway, there are times when learning as you go is very important, and internet marketing is one of those times. There are no correct answers out there, everyone has their own methods, and you have to find yours. Start small, figure out how to make money, any money, even if it’s only a few cents a day.

Then take that knowledge, and replicate it. Scale it up to the point that you can make a living of things. Most importantly. Build something. Have more pages out there on the internet today than you had yesterday, and you will be 1000% times further in your journey than 99% of the “internet marketers” out there.

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The Importance of Quality Web Hosting

Posted on March 22, 2011 by admin

If you are using your website as your business, then it’s very important that you get yourself quality hosting to serve your websites to the masses.

I know that some people start out with free hosting services like wordpress and blogger, etc., which is ok, if you absolutely have no start up capital (which kind of makes things rough).

It’s important to get your own domain and host as soon as possible though. You are building a brand, getting links, etc, and why would you waste all your time doing that to a site that you don’t truly control?

There is also the problem of low budget hosting out there. Many sites advertising “unlimited” bandwith. Let me tell you, there is NO such thing. Once your site gets popular enough (which it hopefully will) they will quickly suspend your account. Here is the trick. It’s not the bandwith that does you in, it’s the load that you place on the server. You will see that is the case with most of the budget servers around (you can find the information on page 119 of the 300 page super tiny font terms and conditions contract they will make you digitally sign, lol).

Save yourself the future headache, and just get things as right as you can the first time. You can get good hosting which really isn’t much more expensive than some of these budget hosts. I have been hosting with Cyberwurx for years, and they have never let me down.

I once got them to install a script for me at 3am on Christmas day when I couldn’t sleep. Their techs were on the job, god bless them.

Also watch out for hosts that don’t have 24/7 support. I have used hosts before that just completely closed down on the weekend. If your site went down Friday night, that could be up to 48 hours that your site isn’t earning any money for you. Is it really worth saving that extra $1-2 bucks a month? Not to me.

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New Google Update

Posted on March 13, 2011 by admin

Hey guys. Man, it’s been a rough couple of weeks. Both kids sick. Then my wife got ill, and I believe that I’m starting to get a scratchy throat. lol. Don’t you just love those little germ factories?

Anyway, been reading about a new google update that hit quite a few sites very hard. The new update has had an impact on sites that republish content from other sites. The so called “duplicate content” penalty has become much heavier.

If you don’t know what duplicate content is. It refers to if you have the type of site that republishes articles, or news, from other websites instead of creating your own. Sometimes this is done because sites steal from others, but usually it’s just a rss feed that you put on your site for the benefit of your readers.

Like say I had it setup so that my site would republish some articles from a variety of my favorite sites about working at home that I think you guys would enjoy. Instead of my site (possibly) ranking better in google than the original author, they try to give credit to the site that created the content.

I think it hurt quite a few sites, but in the end, I think it is going to help out by giving people using the search engines better results, while also rewarding sites with fresh content.

So, remember to all you bloggers out there, make sure to keep your sites updated with original, informative, content and keep those rankings alive ;)

Thanks, and now this at home dads job is going to be cleaning up baby puke for the next few minutes. Ah, living the life.

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Make Money Writing.

Posted on March 4, 2011 by admin

Todays money making idea is using your writing skills. To make money on the internet, you at least have to be able to write fairly well. On blogs, things can be conversational, but if you are writing articles for companies, then you may need to be extra careful in your wording.

If you are not up to snuff, I highly suggest taking a remedial class at your local community college, or picking up one of the many great books on basic grammar. You would be surprised at the amount of knowledge you can forget after being out of school for a while, lol.

The internet is based around content. It can be written. It can be video. It can be pictures. When trying to make a living on the internet, it’s good to get into one of these areas. Not only can you create content for your own blogs that you can later monetize, you can sell your services to webmasters that don’t have time to create their own.

Right now I’m doing some writing for a few friends. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to give me some money to create my own network of domains. Everyone has to start somewhere, and right now, our cash situation is pretty tight.

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