Two years ago I read about making money with domains (someone likened it to online real estate) and bought a few domain names. Last year I submitted my domains to the TRAFFIC EAST 07 auction to be considered and two of my domains were accepted into the Silent Domain Auction: NewYorkAnimalHospital.com and GroomingCats.com. Of the two NewYorkAnimalHospital.com received no bids while GroomingCats.com sold for $550. Buying the domain only cost $8.95 per year and I had it for two years before I sold it.

Even though I made money on this sale I want to let everyone know that it’s not that simple before they rush out and start hoarding domain names. I still own a bunch of domains which still haven’t been sold yet! Alot of research goes into choosing domains and alot of people make the mistake I did when they first started out. That is to register any domain that they think sounds good.

There are actually two ways to earn from domains:

1. Buy them and resell them for a higher price
2. Buy them and make money from the revenue made from parking them.

But even if you’re planning to sell them later on you should always park them while you’re waiting so they’re not just wasting away and not earning anything for you.

Submit your domains into Auctions

If any of you have domains which are just sitting there and haven’t learnt how to sell them then I definately recommend submitting them to auctions to see if they’re be accepted. What have you got to lose? Moniker is a place to submit names for consideration, make sure you check there often since you need to submit names way in advance for consideration.

What about Parking?

Parking your domain names basically consists of registering with a company who will host and place advertisements on your domain related to the name itself. So instead of a dead website when people type in your website they will be greeted with a variety of different templates containing clickable advertisements. You make money when people click on these ads.
But how many people are really going to just type in your domain name into the address bar? If you plan to make money this way you need to do research into the names you wish to buy. No one is really going to just type a random bunch of words and this is why what you think may sound like a good name actually isn’t. You need to do research into keywords and how often people search these words.

You could register generic domains such as chocolate(.)com which is a great domain since it’s short and you immediately know what chocolate is. But in reality most good generic domains have been taken. Another idea is to register typos of popular websites, but you also need to be careful with this since if you register a domain that infringes a copyrighted name then you could be in for trouble.

As you can see there is alot to think about when it comes to domains and I haven’t even covered half of it. If you really want to go into domaining then make sure you do your research. Look it up online and browse through forums. Make sure you don’t rush into it!

It’s been a while since I last posted an entry, been a little busy lately, sorry about that. Just wanted to post a tip for getting quality hosting for cheaper. If you’re planning to sign up for hosting from providers such as GoDaddy or HostGator then you can sign up from sites that offer hosting rebates. There’s no difference in the hosting you receive if you sign up from a hosting rebate site. These sites offer a rebate when you sign up through them for hosting, allowing you to get discounts of up to 1/2 off your purchase price after you receive the rebate.

Depending on the rebate site you can get rebates for many different hosting providers out there. My recommendation is that you decide which host is best suited for the website you want to start and then find a reliable hosting rebate site that offers a rebate for the host you wish to sign up for. A good hosting rebate site to check out is www.hosting-rebates.com. It offers over 25 different hosts to choose from that it offers rebates for.

Survey companies pay users like you and me money to complete online surveys. Usually you sign up at their site and they’ll send out online surveys for you to fill out. Each survey pays a certain amount of money or points and once you reach the minimum payout they will send you your money.

Personally I have only joined one survey site and have filled out 13 surveys so far. My total earnings for those 13 surveys are now $26.9, halfway to the $50 minimum payout.
I find the earnings to be a little slow since surveys are few and far between for me. But that may be because I have the wrong interests or am in a wrong target group. I have also heard that people in the US get a lot more surveys and I live in Canada.

Some people really get into it and sign up for more 5 or even 10 sites. Some sites obviously send more surveys out than others but I have heard of people earning over a few hundred from them.

This definitely isn’t like the paid to read emails where you spend more than half your day with your fingers glued to your mouse clicking emails for mere half pennies. Every now and then you get a survey and I find it much more relaxed. Definitely worth trying out if you have some spare time and don’t mind filling out random surveys. I certainly don’t and I can think of lots of times when I completed surveys for companies for free!

I got involved in this shortly after I found out about the free ipods thing. I spent about a year and a half clicking emails and earned maybe $200 from it all. Here’s how ptr’s work:

• You sign up for a site and choose your interests, such as sports, shopping, etc
• Advertisers buy advertising which get sent out as emails
• When you receive an email you read the advertiser’s copy and then click the link in the email
• This opens a new browser window containing the advertiser’s website with a timer which can last from 0 to 60 seconds. You have to wait for the timer to run out and therefore credit you for reading the email and viewing the website

It’s fairly simple, however, how much do you get paid for reading each email? Some sites say that they pay $10-100 per email read. This is absolute rubbish, sites such as these are a scam so please don’t waste your time on them. Think about it, if they pay $10 per email and have 500 members it means that for an advertiser to send out an ad it would cost them $5000 to send an email to 500 members. You can always tell it’s a scam by checking how much the site charges advertisers to send out email ads. They might say something like $8 to send 1000 emails to advertisers but for people signing up it says they pay $10 per email read. Does this sound feasible? Don’t think so.

The average amount paid per email is about 0.5 cents to 1 cent and when I was doing this I signed up for about 20 different sites. Everyday I got about 1000 emails and I would spend my days clicking each one and waiting for the timer to expire. I don’t think this is worth the time spent since you are basically clicking for pennies or even less.

So why did I spend more than a year doing this? I think I got addicted…lol…I got very attached to the community and didn’t want to leave it. Every time I got an email I thought it takes less than a minute to click it and I just lost track of time.

If you are thinking about doing PTR’s I really recommend you spend the time learning other ways to earn money online instead. If you still want to try them then make sure you research a site before signing up so you don’t waste your time on a scam site

Good luck!

I’m not sure where I first heard about the freebie scene but I first heard about it a few years back. Most of you have probably heard about it but passed it off as a scam. This is true for some programs but there are alot of programs that do payout. The premise is relatively simple. You sign up for a site, complete an advertising offer and then refer a specified amount of friends to do the same. Once you do that they will send you the free gift. Free gifts range from paypal to iPods to Nintendo Wii’s, Playstations and more

Here are some detailed steps to getting your free ipod, etc:

Overall I signed up for about 6 different freebie sites under 4 different companies. I’ve been paid by two sites, $250 Paypal and an iPod Nano. There are probably hundreds of different freebie sites out there now and some are better than others while other sites are outright scams. You really need to do your research before blindly signing up for a site. I definately recommend Transcendent Innovations sites as of right now. I’ve been paid $250 paypal from them for completing their free Wii site which required 5 referrals.

If you found this useful please think about signing up under me. These are some sites I’m trying to finish:

This was a bit of a fluke and I admit that I still don’t know what I’m doing. I found a baseball card of mine from my younger days and did a serach on ebay out of curiousity. I found an auction for the same card that ended at around $800 (but this card was graded at BGS 9.5). On an impulse I ended up buying about 10 more of the same card that were ungraded from ebay. I had this idea that the card would only increase in value over time and that if I got them graded they would be worth more. I realised soon enough that it’s not that simple so now it’s 4 years later and I still have them lying around in protected card holders. The card is the 1994 Alex Rodriguez Upper Deck Electric Diamond (#24), it’s a rookie card or something.

I think the lesson here is to not go on a whim when you think you have a great idea to make money and to do all the proper research before doing anything.

If anyone knows anything about these cards please let me know.

I got the idea for selling Neopet’s toys from a McDonald’s The Dog promotion they were having. I noticed that the Husky version of “The Dog” was going for $11-30 on Ebay. I was trying to get a hold of one myself because I had collected all the other dogs. This was in 2004 and I was really into this online game called Neopet’s so when I found out that McDonald’s was going to be doing a Neopet’s happy meal promotion a few weeks later I was really excited to collect them.

I’m not sure why I suddenly decided to start a money making venture with them instead but I realised that if people were willing to pay $11-30 for the Husky The Dog toy then maybe they would be willing to do the same with the Neopet’s toys. There were about 200 different toys to make a full set and I started eating McDonald’s like crazy, everytime I saw one I would go in. After about 10 meals I decided I couldn’t eat a happy meal everytime so I would just ask if I could buy the toy and even asked to choose them myself.

Each toy cost me about $2 if I didn’t eat a meal and since there were just over 200 in a set the whole set cost me a little over $400 to collect. I managed to collect two whole sets and also had tons of extras which I sold individually on Ebay. The two sets sold for over $800 on ebay and the individual toys sold for anywhere from $5 to $30 (for the rarer ones).

I ended up netting about $400 plus in profit alone from these toys! I also managed to keep some of my favourite toys for myself but I didn’t eat McDonald’s for about a year after =). This was my first venture and I think it was pretty successful. What do you think?

Ever see those ads saying you can make money from the comfort of your home? Half of them require some form of payment signalling a scam. I just wanted to start a blog detailing all my money making pursuits. Some are offline but I put most of my effort into learning to make money online. I’ve been at it for about a year or two now and thought I would write it all down. Partly for myself as a record and the other part so others can learn from my experiences and hopefully earn enough money online that they can quit their jobs and work from home.

My next post will be about my Neopet’s venture and how I made $400 from it. For now, good luck to all you out there!