The best part about earning money online is….

You continue to get money rolling in even when you are not working hard on your sites.

Despite my neglect (and trust me, I HAVE ABSOLUTELY neglected my blogs and sites and earn money online project in these few weeks), I am still seeing some $$ rolling in. In fact, my online income is increasing.

Okay, okay. I’ll quit gloating and get to the basics of how I go about still getting some income (increasing one, some more) even when I am not glued to my computer screen 24/7.

And no, this is not a scam. AND, I am not about to sell you anything.

Once upon a time, I wrote a really long post about link building and how it benefits a site BUT some stupid virus destroyed it and my posts for that week in April disappeared. So, I will now explain in basics about link building, traffic and online income.

And yes, they ARE all related.

Again, no, you sceptics out there, I am NOT selling you anything. But if you want to give me money, I don’t mind… I’ll give you my paypal account where you can transfer the money. Double, triple, quadruple figures only, please.

On Link Building

What is link building?

In simple terms, it simply means building links to your sites.This means, getting other sites to link to your site in order to give your site more prominence and importance (in the eyes of the G-God).

How to build links?

I only use two main ways to do it.

1. Link trading – I ask other site owners to trade links with me. I usually go for three-way trades. This means, non-reciprocal link trades. For example, Blogowner A link to my blog from his Blog A and I link to his Blog B from my blog. So, there are no reciprocal links and looks like one-way links which is considered more valuable than reciprocal links. Doing this may sound simple but it is not because most ‘veteran’ blog/ website owners are pretty arrogant. They either ignore your emails to trade links or turn you down. So, you can send out hundreds of emails to blog owners and you could possibly only get one or two link trades out of that. I know, it’s sad but that’s life. Veterans tend to look down on new blog owners or new make money onliners a lot. Only a few are helpful or nice enough to trade. Also, many seem to think that trading links with someone who’s site PR is lower will drag their site’s PR down (which is a whole load of hogwash, if you ask me) so if you have a PR0 or PR1 or no PR site, it is even harder. Also, remember to trade links only with similar interest sites. Say, if you have a site on photography, you’d want to look for trades with other photography sites or even camera sites. As long as it’s related, it is relevant.

2. Article submission – this is probably the most tedious and the hardest part about link building. You have to write loads of articles and submit it to loads of article sites like ezinearticles.com, hubpages, squidoo, etc. In those articles, you will have to add links back to your site.  The best way is to get your articles submitted to hundreds of sites so that you get hundreds of links back to your site. These are all pretty valuable links that can build up your site’s relevance in the eyes of the G-God.

And now, here’s my sales pitch… heheheh…couldn’t resist throwing this line in. Well, I saved a lot of time using Unique Article Wizard to submit my articles to thousands of websites with just the click of the mouse. Using UAW, I was able to double the traffic to my sites and after two months, it has tripled my income. And no, you don’t have to buy the programme if you can’t afford it or you refuse to believe that it’s such a good programme. I am recommending it because I simply LOVE it. I probably won’t be still getting $$ coming in if not for UAW. But heck, you don’t really need it if you have loads of time to post articles at hundreds of article sites.

Why build links?

Okay, a lot of people think this is a waste of time. They think they have a fabulously great site and they will naturally get loads of links so they don’t need to do any link building. Well, when you want to earn money online, humility and staying down to earth is darn important. Even if you have a PR7 blog with thousands of visitors each day, building links still do help. It helps you to go on to PR8 and perhaps to getting several more thousands of visitors. You see, when you want to make money from your site, there is no such thing as too many links to your site or too many visitors (except when you have bandwidth problem so make sure you have loads of bandwidth to cope with the traffic). For example, my food blog used to have a PR3 from natural links I got from other food bloggers. There were quite a few reciprocal links too. Then I started my link building efforts, about two months back, and the results now are:

I doubled my daily traffic.

I doubled my income from that site.

The site is now a PR4.

And I will continue to build links for that site and my other income earning sites indefinitely. This means, if someone email me about exchanging links, I’d reply (although not immediately since I need to rest a lot because of this parasite problem) and do some link trading.

On Traffic

Any earn money online expert will tell you that the regular readers who come to your site will not make you money. It is true to some extent. This is because if you are making money through Google Adsense, then you need loads of organic traffic. You need people who chance upon your site from Googling because they are looking for something. When they land on your site with that particular keyword, say, about ‘how to get rich’, and you have a post on ‘how to get rich’ and Google ads along that same subject, then it is highly likely that those who found your site through Google will click on the ads because they are looking for it.

Now, say, if you have a brilliantly wonderful site or even an entertaining site like mine (ahem!), you may have subscribers and loads of regulars. Sure, it looks great to have loads of regulars but then, remember, the regulars are here to read your posts. NOT to click on your ads. But that’s not to say they are not important. They are, in a way, because it means your site is still being visited by actual people which the G-God will take note of.

So, in short, you need A LOT of organic traffic, preferably 80%, and some regulars to keep your site going and your money continue to roll in.

How to get organic traffic?

1. SEO

2. Link building

SEO is important. You will need to focus on money earning keywords and drive more organic traffic suiting those keywords in order to get more clicks. So, you use SEO but be careful. Overkill will make Google view your site suspiciously and not rank you that well.

When you build links, you are pushing the importance of your site higher up for a certain subject. Say, your site is about football shoes. You put up posts with great SEO on football shoes and link from loads of similar sites. So, when someone search for football shoes, your site may even turn up on the first page of the search. Which means only one thing: Organic traffic!

On Online Income

By now, you will probably have gathered that with the right link building, SEO skills and loads of organic traffic, you will naturally get more income.

Wrong.

The next thing you need to do is to monetize your sites. Like me, my main online income is probably from Google Adsense. So, you will need to put in some Google ads in your site. And by this, I don’t mean at any corner of your site. You will need to study the position that is most ‘clickable’ and place the ads there. I can’t tell you exactly where is the most highly ‘clicked’ ads site but it must be prominent and can catch the readers’ eyes especially if they are looking for something.

Also, there is no such thing as sitting idly and earning loads of money. Maybe in your dreams only. Even when you are getting clicks and some income, you will still need to work on your link building, your SEO to improve traffic. To maintain the PR. To ensure you keep getting traffic.

No such thing as easy money.

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