After reading this first lesson, you will be able to launch your first project and start building a profitable career, a successful business. I hope and pray that you will learn how to make money from the series of lessons in this section and from your own resources.
Cash Courses are crash courses on making money using online and offline opportunities. Cash Courses will help you build your business, your career, your individuality, your future and your life.
If you are looking for get-rich-quick and short-cut methods, Cash Courses will not be of much help to you.
Cash Courses will discuss about specific income opportunities that you can make use of, and will give you specific, relevant, hands-on, step-by-step instructions on how to convert the income opportunities and potential for opportunities into cash.
You will earn money from your own projects that you will create as you learn how to make money using the course material in this website.
I repeat, after reading this first lesson, you must launch your first project and start building a profitable career, a successful business.
About Your Guide
My name is Chan. I made friends with a micro-mini computer in 1987 when I was still in college. I started using computers actively in 1993 and the Internet in 1995. I have been spending 15 hours a day on computers and the Internet for the past 10 years. I have developed dozens of software products and created hundreds of websites. I have worked as a freelance software and ecommerce consultant to many small and medium sized Australian, New Zealand, American and Indian companies. If you wake me up from my sleep in the middle of the night and ask me a difficult question on ecommerce security for a multinational website, I can give you the correct solution and go back to my sleep.
I shed a bit of my humility and boasted 'just a little' to make you feel comfortable that you are reading the course material written by a man with reasonable knowledge and work experience. From this moment, you will not hear anything personal about me.
Welcome to Cash Courses
About You
It does not matter whether you are educated or not, professionally qualified or not, young or old, employed or unemployed, working or retired, man or woman, rural or cosmopolitan...
No matter what you are, who you are and where you are, you can discover opportunities around you and start making money. You will, with the help of Cash Courses, learn how to make money and will actually make money hopefully in the near future.
I believe in your infinite, tremendous potential to accomplish great things in your life. You too must believe in your capacity for great accomplishments.
If you have depression, dejection, disappointment, and doubts about your capacity, throw away all these dirty Ds out of your window right now and start your life afresh from this moment.
Legal Disclaimer
Even though I give free cash course materials with the best of the intentions and goodwill for all, I have to make a legal disclaimer. You must proceed to use the contents of this website and Cash Courses, only if you have read the Terms of use, Privacy policy and copyright policy, understood them and accepted them. You can find the links to these web pages at the bottom of this web page.
Now, let us light the lamp of prosperity...
Earn as you Learn
What do you do when you want to learn typing? Do you read tons of books on typewriters, endless standard operating procedures and typewriter or keyboard manufacturing process manuals?
Or do you have a look at the keyboard for a few minutes to understand the placement of keys and start typing asdfj ;lkjh?
We all go for the second method.
The second method gives you practical skills as you enrich your mental knowledge. Driving. swimming, walking, running and all essential life skills are learnt in that way.
And, money making is the most important life skill.
How about earning some money as you learn this important life skill and work to build on your profitable self-employment career?
I am not going to tell you anything serious about ecommerce, websites and many other online opportunities now. You will learn them in the future lessons. Today you are going learn about a simple project.
Even though it is not necessary to be a computer literate to be self-employed, the fact that you are reading this web page makes it clear to me that you have some basic knowledge about computer and browsing internet. I am not talking about expert knowledge, Just bare minimum skills such as switching on the computer, clicking mouse, sending emails and browsing web sites are the skills I expect from you at this moment.
So, are you ready now to build a small project that will start generating revenue - money, cash, dollars - for you within the next few weeks, with whatever skills you already have?
Operation Blog
Today you are going learn how to build your first income generating business using Blog and Google AdSense. You will build a blog, create a small community of people interested in your topic and then add income generating components to your blog.
You will not spend any money or invest in this test project. Your 'expenses' would be your time, your energy and Internet charges. Certainly your time and your energy have money value. Don't underestimate their value and waste them.
You will do this project to understand a process of making money online.
Your success in your project depends on two factors, Knowledge and action. SeekLuck.com will take care of the knowledge part. So, your success depends on your action - your hard work and your commitment.
You can learn about Blogger and AdSense in detail and sign up for these programs for free on the following websites:Blogger: http://www.blogger.com/AdSense: http://www.google.co.in/ads/
Before proceeding further, I want to make a thing clear:I don't get paid referral commission for recommending Blogger and AdSense. So, you can take my recommendations as genuine.
A few weeks from now, you may earn $1 a week or $100 a week or even more. But, don't be carried away by the good earnings. or lose your heart by the bad earnings. What you do now is a sort of training - an apprenticeship that will help you become a highly successful entrepreneur in future.
Even if you are already an expert in blogging and AdSense, I am sure you will find some useful information in the following pages that will improve your blog's performance.
What is a Blog?
Building content websites with hundreds of articles or ecommerce websites, and marketing them through search engines have a steep learning curve and the process takes considerable time. However, such difficulties don't exist in blogs.
A blog is a non-technical man's website. It is a web page made up of usually short, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically — like a what's new page or a journal. A blog is a kind of website that is usually arranged in chronological order from the most recent entry at the top of the main page to the older entries towards the bottom. A blog is also known as a web blog. It is a type of online journal or diary that can be frequently updated.
For example, if you start a blog on cooking, you will publish your thoughts, ideas, experiences, advice, stories, jokes and tips on cooking on your blog regularly using internet. Each thought is an entry. Your readers will post their comments on your thoughts on your blog site.
You can even blog about your daily mundane activities such as buying vegetables, watching television episodes and let your family members and friends know what you have been doing today and they can comment on your blogs.
You can start a blog on any topic. Some blogs are for play. Some are for work. Some are for business. Some are for career. Some are for self-promotion. Many are for making money. If you want to make money out of your blog, your topic must be useful to others. Only then they will come to your blog site and read your blogs.
The content, aims, goals and purposes of blogs vary greatly — from website links or advertisement links, to reviews about products, to discussion of ideas, to news about a person, to stories, photos, jokes and poetry.
The blog's money earning power is activated when you get your thoughts, ideas, views and opinions - about a topic useful to others - out in the world and develop a small or big community of like-minded readers.
Blogs are different from online forums. In an online forum any member can start a thread – topic – and others can join the discussion. However, in a blog, only the blogger or the person he authorizes can start a topic. Others can only comment on the blogger’s topic. Maintaining and updating a forum is cumbersome.
Blog Hosting
When you want to start blogging, you need to buy a blog domain name and blog space. Fortunately, there are excellent free blogging services that will host your blogs and allow you make money.
When you sign up for a free blog account, you will get the name in the format yourblogname.blogspot.com. If you buy your own domain name, the format would be yourblogname.com. At this moment, let us accept what Blogger gives for free.
Wordpress and Blogger are popular free blog servers. Wordpress does not allow you to commercialize your blogs.
Blogger is a free service from Google. Blogger is completely free. You can create, publish and host your blog all for free. You will use Blogger for your first project. You don't need any special hardware or software for your blogger blog. I will explain the setup procedure in a moment.
Publishing Blogs
Writing blogs and updating them are the 'technical know-how' for your first project. You must be able to write well on the topic of your choice.
You want to write like Shakespeare. But you slept through your English grammar in the school? No problem. You can collect interesting materials from other people and publish them on your website.
The third option is to motivate, with 'a stick or carrots', a friend or a relative who can write well on your thoughts. Hiring professional writers at this point of time will not be a viable option.
If your visitors, the blog readers, are personally known to you, they wouldn't mind mistakes in your writing. However, when you grow these small things will have a great role to play in the growth of your business.
If it is possible to you, get a high school grammar book and refresh your knowledge.
You must keep your blogs fresh and must update the content regularly. Be prepared to spend at least 3-4 hours a week. If you are hardworking and have plenty of time at your disposal, you can spend 2 hours or more every day on your website.
Don't worry about internet connection charges. You can compose messages offline using Microsoft Word and then connect to the Internet when you are ready to publish.
Blog Visitors
Without visitors your blog has no life. You must somehow bring people to your blog. Professional bloggers use paid and free search engine placement, networking and syndication methods to promote their blog sites.
So, you will start your blog with your friends and relatives. If you have 5 to 10 friends or relatives - I am sure all of you have more - you can confidently launch your blog.
Request your friends to tell their friends about your blogs. Don't feel shy to ask. That's the best way to promote your blog. Each of your relative or friend may have 5 to 10 friends. Within a few days the number of people who know about your blog can go up to 100. If you provide great content or a great service, people will come back to your blog again and again.
Once you have added some content, submit all your pages to big search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. Whenever you add new pages, submit them too. Over time, search engines will index your pages - if your content meets their criteria. Search engines are the biggest source of traffic. Go to search engines and find out the procedures for submission. Read the guidelines carefully and make sure that your adhere to these guidelines.
There are community halls, clubs and associations in most cities and towns. If possible organize a circular to announce your blog.
Exercise your creative intelligence. You will find many ways to promote your blogs without spending any money.
There are many other promotional methods. We will not take up them now.
Blog Topics
The king of your blog is the content. People come to your blog site for content. So, you must be careful in deciding about the topic of your blog.
You must work on topics that you love. Only then you will be able to produce great content. But, what you like may not be a favorite topic among your visitors. If this happens, then you will be the lone visitor to you blog.
Both you and your visitors may like the topic. That does not mean income will follow. There must be a business value in your topic.
For example, if you write on stones in Mars or Moon, and your visitors like the blog, there is not much here for the advertisers. The advertisers do not know what products they can market on this blog. So, they will keep away from your blog and you will not make money.
If you write about lucky stones for people whose ruling planets are Moon and Mars, then jewelers, astrologers, psychic readers and many others will happily advertise on your blog. That means money to you.
You love the topic, your visitors love the blog and advertisers like it. All are happy. It is a win-win-win situation. Your blog must focus only on such topics.
If you have time and are good in many topics, you can start as many blogs as you like and as can manage.
Deciding on the topic and the content is the most difficult part of the blogging venture. Some of the key factors in deciding the topic are:(1) You know the topic(2) You like the topic(3) There is an audience for the topic(4) The topic has a business value(5) You can supply new content or add value to existing content(6) Your topic is not a dead end topic; you can keep the content fresh(7) You can build a community with the topic
Contextual Advertisements
After you add a few pages of good content and get regular and new visitors every day, you are ready to place advertisements on your blog and it's time to earn some money.
When you sign up for contextual ad program, the ad agent will provide you with a piece of code that you will add to your blog. Now, a small box will appear next to your content.
When a visitor reads your blog, the Ad box will display information about other sites that are related to the content of your blog page. For example, if your visitor is reading about how to prepare well for examination, advertisements for products and services such as educational loan, exam preparation guides and jobs will be displayed. Some of your visitors may like to explore those ad offers and click on those offers. For introducing a visitor to that offer, the ad agent will pay you some money.
Though there are many contextual ad programs, we will first try our hands on Google AdSense. Why?
Google AdSense
Google AdSense is the most popular ad program in the world. Google AdSense is the program that can give you advertising revenue from each page on your website—with a minimal investment in time and no additional resources.
If you have good content, it is easy to get approval from Google. Blogger is a product of Google. It has built in tools to add AdSense to your blog.
Becoming an AdSense publisher is simple. All it takes is a single online application. Once you are approved, AdSense takes only minutes to set-up.
AdSense delivers relevant text and image ads that are precisely targeted to your site and your site content. And when you add a Google search box to your site, AdSense delivers relevant text ads that are targeted to the Google search results pages generated by your visitors’ search request.
The Google AdSense program represents advertisers ranging from large global brands to small and local companies. With Google's extensive advertiser base, there are ads for all categories of businesses and services and for practically all types of content, no matter how broad or specialized.
Since Google provides the ads, you have no advertiser relationships to maintain.
Ads are also targeted by geography, so global businesses can display local advertising with no additional effort. And you can use AdSense in many languages.
You can log in into your AdSense account at any time and find out how much you have earned. Once in a month, Google will send you a cheque for the money you have earned.
You will learn more about the AdSense program, when you sign up for it.
Other Revenue Opportunities
There are many other revenue opportunities for every blog. I will not bother you with all those details now. First let us set up your blog and make it work. Once everything is in order, we will add others one by one. I believe such methodical and rational way of building your business will prove to be highly profitable both in the long term and short term.
Traffic Statistics
How will you know how many people visit your blog every day? You need to add a piece of code to your blog pages.
Sitemeter.com is a popular web statistics reporting services company. Go to their website and sign up for a free account. If you give your blogger account details they will automatically add the code to your blog. You will do this, after you have set up your blog.
You can get your report every day by visiting their website. If you ask them to send a report every day by email, they will send it automatically by email. Don't forget to select this option. It will save you a lot of time.
Blog Templates
Blogger provide many easy to use templates. You can select the design you like. Unless you are comfortable with HTML and you know very well what you are doing, don't try to change the code your template.
Use the template as provided by blogger. When you learn a bit of HTML, you can tweak and personalize the templates.
AdSense Code
When you sign up for AdSense from your Blogger account, AdSense code will be automatically installed on your blog.
(Update: I am redesigning this blog, It will take a few days for me to complete it. The ideas that I wanted to publish on the blog can be found in this website.)
I have given you just the minimum information you need to get started. I would like you to do some research on your own.
Don't worry. I will be with you. Depending on the comments and feedback, I get from you, I will add more tips of this subject.
After reading this article, if you are inspired to jump into blog wagon...
... welcome aboard.
In the following pages, you will get an action plan. Prepare your own action plan and implement your ideas. Your dreams will come true.
Action Plan
Have you understood what blog is and what AdSense is? If yes, you are ready to do some real life action now.
General
(1) Get a new note book and a few pens to note down your ideas, thoughts and business plans. Did I tell you that you would not have to spend any money for this project? OK, then some old school note books would serve the purpose.
(2) Get a new folder - a new file - to keep print outs of web pages and newspaper clippings.
(3) Open a new email account for your business transactions. Though there is nothing wrong with yahoo and hotmail, too many people are using them. If you go to mail.com you will get many creative and interesting email addresses. Anyway, it is not going to make much difference. Use your email address only to sign up for Blogger and AdSense. Keep your log in user name and password safe.
Topic Selection
(1) Note down all the topics that interest you. Don't qualify anyone now.
(2) Note down all the topics that you are knowledgeable of.
(3) Think about the above topics from others' point of view. Will they like these topics? Will these topics be useful to the visitors?
(4) Can you do research on these topics on internet or in local library and get interesting and fresh ideas?
(5) Can you think of 10 commercial products or services that are directly related to your topics? This is important because only then you will be able to attract ads to your blogs. (10 is not a magic number. Even 3 popular products will do.)
(6) Find out the topics that are common to all the four points and that have some business value. Decide on three or four topics
(7) If you like, discuss your topic with your well wishers and note down their views.
(8) Note down a few ideas from the website. Can you improve those ideas? Can you combine some of them? Can you use them directly without any modification?
(9) Visit other blog sites related to your topics and note down how many visitors those sites attract. By looking at the number of comments and/ or statistics provided, you can know whether that blog is a successful one or not. If you feel it is a successful one, note down the content of the popular posts. Note down the topic.
(10) Now, you have a list of several topics from action 6 to 9. From this list select a topic for your first blog. Keep the other topics in reserve. If you have time, you can start even 10 blogs.
(11) Do you experience mental block or what I call as BlogBlocks? All of us get mental blocks from time to time. When you want to develop a business idea, you will feel like a river that could not find its sea. Here is a list of common topics. Use them as a starting point to warm up your brain.
Advertising, Antiques, Agriculture,Collectibles, Apparel, Building,Fashion, Arts, Automobile,Auction, Trade, Chemicals,Books, Cleaning, Children,Computer, Design, Communication,Education, Weather, Electronics,Consulting, Sports, Construction,Games, Food, Employment,Home, Health, Entertainment,Hobbies, Romance, Environment,Law, Finance, Engineering, Love, Research, Ergonomics, Science, Real Estate, Government, Mineral, Software, Manufacture, Music, Transport, InformationToys, Security, Hospitality,Retail, Publishing, Spirituality.
(12) Read the article Success Strategies in the section Income Ideas. It gives you dozens of principles to make sure that your ideas are commercially viable.
BLOGGER
Blogger
(1) Go to www.blogger.com.
(2) Take a quick tour.
(3) Sign up for a new account
(4) Create a blog, select a template and start publishing your posts.
(5) Don't fear to experiment with all the features of the blogger. Read the help pages and practise. Nothing will go wrong. Within a day or two, you will be an 'experienced' blogger.
(5) Once you are happy with the progress you had made, invite your friends and relatives to your blog.
AdSense
(1) You can apply for Google AdSense from within your Blogger account. If you sign up for AdSense account, your AdSense code will be automatically added to your blog.
(2) Don't apply for AdSense as soon as you sign up for a Blogger blog. Build your blog with many good posts. Only then you must apply for AdSense account.
(3) Read the terms of service. Never violate these terms.
Visitors
(1) Write down the names of all persons who have a computer and an Internet connection. Note down their telephone numbers.
(2) If you know their email addresses, note them down along with their names.
(3) When your blog is ready, invite them to your blog, Encourage them to post their comments on your posts.
(4) Never send unsolicited mails, also known as spam, to others.
I don't want you suffer from information overload. So, I have just scratched the surface of the blog business.
I have not given detailed instructions about Blogger and AdSense. I want you to do some work and find out the information for yourself. Go to http://www.blogger.com to know about signing up for your own blog and to http://www.google.com/adsense/ to know about AdSense.
If you face any difficulty, please post a comment using the feedback form.
I wish you all the best.
Now it is time for you to take your second step in becoming prosperous. (You have already completed the first step. It is reading this lesson!)
