Extra Income Archives - Page 47 of 51

Improving your Alexa Rank and Weekly Roundup

October 27, 2012 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 37 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Hey everyone! It's finally the weekend and I'm excited.

I finally decided on a costume. I'm going to test my craft skills and try to make this Pocahontas costume. I bought a plain brown shirt and already have fringe boots, blue necklace and a braided headband, so I am pretty set! Cheap costume and it's exactly what I wanted to be anyways.

We plan on going on a haunted hayride pub crawl tonight. Sounds like fun right? Yeah, if only it weren't only 35 degrees tonight 🙁

Then tomorrow we are going to a pumpkin patch with the boy's family. It'll be fun, I surprisingly haven't been to one since I was really young.

Alexa Rank

Earlier this month I made a post on increasing your Google Page Rank. Now I would like to help you all decrease your Alexa! A lot of you have been e-mailing me about how to decrease your Alexa.

If you check my Alexa, I am currently at around 80,000. It has been dropping quickly ever since I switched to WordPress.

So what is Alexa? The lower your score, the better your website ranks. Facebook has a ranking of 1 and Google is a 2 if that gives you a better perspective. Blogs below the 200,000 mark are said to be in the top 1% of all websites/blogs/etc. out there.

Why does your Alexa ranking matter though? 200,000 and below is said to be when advertisers will start flocking to you. I definitely believe this is true because once I dropped below that, I received numerous requests.

1. Install the Alexa Toolbar.

Your Alexa score is mainly determined by how many people view your blog that already have the toolbar, so install it! Then having your regular readers install it as well will help also. It is said that you need to click around to more than one page when you do visit a website as well.

2. Increased traffic to your site/blog.

The more traffic that you have, then generally the lower your ranking. Creating good quality content which engages and entertains your readers is key here. You want people to keep coming back.

3. Increased specialized traffic.

Another way to have a lower ranking is to have a lot of traffic from people who have the Alexa Toolbar installed. If you have a lot of readers, but hardly anyone has the toolbar, then you will most likely have a very high ranking.

It goes without saying that to lower your Alexa traffic rank you would need more web traffic, but as the above references show, what you actually need is specialized traffic – traffic from visitors who have Alexa Toolbar installed.

Posts that I love:

Is It Possible to Reduce Your Monthly Grocery Bill with Coupons? @ Tackling Our Debt
Are High School Reunions Worth the Cost? @ My Money Design
Would You Be A Human Guinea Pig For Money? @ Call Me What You Want Even Cheap
Why We Have Separate Finances (Sort of) @ Edward Antrobus
Things I Couldn’t Do If I Had A Car Payment @ IHeartBudgets
What to do about a black mark on a credit report @ Frugal Portland

Have a great weekend!

10 Ways To Make Extra Income During the Holidays

October 3, 2012 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 39 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

A lot of you were wanting to know about the different ways to make extra income during the holidays, such as how to make extra money for Christmas, for many different reasons: to increase your monthly income, to save more money, to help pay for the holidays, to have more Christmas money, and so on.

Are you looking to make extra money for the holidays? Check out this post for 10 great ways to make extra money for Christmas so that you can have more Christmas money! And this leads to my post today about making extra income during the holidays! After reading this, you'll learn about the many different ways to make extra money for Christmas so that you can have more Christmas money and money for all of the other great holidays that you may celebrate.

There are a ton of seasonal jobs out there, so if you want to make some extra cash and not have to do anything long-term, then start applying! I recently read that Macy's is hiring 80,000 employees just for the holidays, and I know that UPS usually hires around 50,000 just for the holidays.

Related articles on how to make extra money for Christmas:

There are many positives to getting a part-time holiday job or finding other ways to make extra money for Christmas.

One positive of finding a part-time holiday job is that you can get a discount (and possibly do your shopping with this discount), fill up your time, network, make friends, and of course, MAKE EXTRA MONEY FOR CHRISTMAS!

I always kept the same job when I was younger during the holiday season, but I was able to thankfully work overtime and extra when the holidays came around. I should've applied for part-time jobs so that I could've made even more. [Read more…]

How to Make Money in College

September 11, 2012 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 2 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

As a follow up to my post recently titled: Reader Question: College Budget, I'm going to talk today about making money while in college.

Money in college can of course pay for a lot of things. Your tuition, commute (cars, gas, maintenance, etc.), food, drinks, clothes and everything else. Maybe you also want to go on a fun vacation with your friends? Books also cost a lot as well, but luckily you can always try selling your old books online.

I really recommend not getting a credit card if you can't control your spending, and especially don't get one if you have no income coming in.

I've worked full-time ever since I was 16, but I also was a full-time nanny starting at 14. The extra money was always nice, and it GREATLY helped me with finding a great job right after I graduated from college in 2010.

I started as a sales associate at a retail store when I was 16. I also was a nanny for a baby in the summer of that year and I watched the child 40 hours a week (at $10 an hour so I definitely felt the money rolling in at 16!). [Read more…]

Top 5 Ways to Make Money Online

September 2, 2012 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 1 Comment

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Whether you're looking for ways to pay off student loans or simply bolster your savings account, the internet provides a number of money-making opportunities. While some of these are completely free, others will require a small amount of start-up cash.

Related: How To Earn Money Online

1. Write a Blog In Order To Make Money Online.

Blogging is one of the easiest ways to make money online these days. It's free to set up a blog account using one of the popular platforms such as WordPress. You could either choose to write a blog about a specific topic of interest, or you could keep a personal blog. It's important to keep your entries fresh, original, and frequently updated in order to build up a readership.

The money comes in when you link your blog to advertising programs such as Google's Adsense, which pay you for every visitor to your website who clicks on one of their ads. Although you won't become rich overnight, blogging can be a steady source of side income.

[Read more…]

Goals and Extra Monthly Income Update

August 1, 2012 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 6 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

The summer is flying by! I feel like I just made my goals update post for June. Overall, July was very good, except for our food spending. This is something that we really need to reign in. I think August will be easier (and so will future months), since I will have time to cook after work and not let laziness and my tiredness take over.

August will be a good month. I graduate with my MBA, get my big raise, go to Vegas for 5 days, then go to DC for 5 days for work.

I can't remember if it was the end of June or July where we kicked out our second roommate, but we kicked him out. Didn't last long. He's still a loser just in case any of you were wondering.

Rent income for August will be going up to $325. My sister said she wants to pay more because she feels like she isn't paying enough. I will be giving some of her money back when she moves out as described here. I tried telling her no, but she insisted (so, no I am not evil).

You can find my 2012 yearly goals update here.

Last time I had a goals update post, I talked about how we were planning on going on vacation to Turks and Caicos in November. We decided to save the money (since we already went to Kauai this year) and because the boy is about to get a new job (I will talk about this soon once everything goes through. don't worry though, he still has his current job but wants to quit), which would erase all of his vacation time and make taking a vacation impossible.

JulyGoals

Cut my food budget down to $400. FAIL FAIL FAIL. Yes, we only spent around $150 on groceries, but we ate out a ton.
Workout at least 4 times a week and run with my dog. FAIL. I did better at the beginning of the month, but towards the end it was just too hard because I was getting too stressed with school.
Make an extra $1,000 this month. PASS. A lot of this extra income was from selling clothes, so of course that is not attainable in the future. I will have to try and figure something else out.
Study everyday for at least 2 hours for part 4 of my work certification test. The test is coming up very quickly! PASS. I haven't studied a lot lately, but I was studying for around 5 hours a night earlier in the month.
Read 2 books. PASS. I read lots of books! This is surprising for me (usually I'm just reading text books…).

August Goals

Cut my food budget down to $400. Laziness took over last month. We were both really busy and found happiness when we would go out to eat. Not no more!
Workout at least 4 times a week and run with my dog. This will stay as my goals until it's completed. Now that I will never have school again for the rest of my life, this is much more possible.
Make an extra $850 this month. This will be harder since I won't have as many items to sell and we are only getting rent from 1 person, but I want to try and make this work.
Start thinking about my CFA. I don't have to take this just yet, but I do want to start reading up on it more, looking into books, etc. Who here has passed?
Look for a pilates or boxing class to enroll in. I will have a lot more free time, and doing this sounds good for me.
Find some sort of hobby to take all of my extra time. If I find a good boxing class, volunteer work, etc. then that will of course fill this 🙂

Blog Goals

Twitter followers: Goal was for 850, I'm currently at 820. My goal for August is 900.
Alexa rank: Goal was to be under 90,000. I'm still stuck at around 89,000.
RSS readers: Goal was for 950, I'm currently at 937. My goal for August is to have 1,000.
Guest post at least 2 times this month. PASS!Would anyone else want guest posts?

Extra Monthly Income in June

Online Income – $350
Selling Clothes – $750
Mystery Shopping – $75
Rent – $250

So I actually made $1,425 extra last month!

How did you do in July? Any extra income?

How I Make Money Blogging

July 18, 2012 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 2 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

I am e-mailed nearly everyday on how I make money from blogging. I love your e-mails, but truthfully, I'm not positive that everything I do actually works. I have learned a lot from other bloggers.

I include an extra money update every month ($994 in June, $672 in May, $485 in March, and more in other months as well). A lot of my monthly income is from blogging income.

As most of you know, I also started blogging in August of 2011. My blog is almost 1 year old and while I have a way to go, I do think I have been doing ok.

I didn't actually start to monetize from my blog until around December of 2011. Much thanks to Crystal. She runs an advertising service which has helped me greatly! I don't make all of my blog income from her, but I have learned how to talk to advertisers and other things.

Crystal started Budgeting in the Fun Stuff in February 2010 and she then grew it into a site which has made more than $42,000 as of the end of June of 2012.

WHAT??!?!?

She is doing really great! She has also bought other websites and co-owns some as well, which increases her blog income even more. She was able to leave her $35,000 a year job and now works from home.

She has now written an ebook so that all of us can learn her secrets and hopefully do something similar to what she has done.

What's included in her book?

Her Background with Blogging
Picking a Name, Host, and Blogging Platform
Main Parts of a Blog
Building Up Your Blog
Making Connections
Search Engine Optimization
Plugins
Rankings
Types of Ads
Ad Rates
Handling Offers
Tracking your Ads
Other Ways to Make Money Blogging
Action Plan to Get You Started Right Now

The price for her ebook is $17 in July and will go up after that. Get yours hands on it while you can!

Click here to buy her ebook.

As a disclosure, I was not paid to write this post, and everything was written by me. I honestly do think Crystal is very smart in the blogging world and that she has tons of tips to share. I do get a portion of sales if you buy through my link though.

Extra Money Ideas

July 12, 2012 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 1 Comment

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Shorter post today. Super busy with all the car stuff, work and school. But of course I don't want to leave you hanging 🙂 and I also have a lot of stuff on my mind that I love getting your opinions on.

Yesterday, I made a post about maybe getting a part-time job. A lot of you said just relax, and a lot of you said I should try and find something and come up with extra money ideas.

There are a lot of things out there that I could do. I'm still not sure how much time I would want to dedicate to it though. Once I graduate and get promoted at my work, I'm sure there will be a lot more stress involved and I probably won't want something that takes up too much time.

However, I have no kids or anything, so I know I will have time.

Here's a list of things that I could do:

Create another blog. I could start being more professional with this and start learning what all the blog terms like SEO and everything really mean, and then apply it to my blog.
Tutor. I have a lot of people who are always asking me to tutor them, but I always say no. It wouldn't be a bad idea though.
Work at the tanning salon with my friend. She doesn't make the greatest money, but it's not hard work.
Bartend. A lot of my friends are bartenders and make decent money. Plus they get free drinks from other bartender friends that we know and free drinks at their bar.
Volunteer. Yes I wouldn't make any money, but I could finally start volunteering at the animal shelter.
Retail store. I could maybe ask for my job back at where I used to work, and I'm sure she would say yes. She still loves me.
Do medical research tests. I would never do this. I hate shots, needles, blood being drawn. But my friend does work at a medical research facility and she's always telling me about the awesome pay they give. This is something I'd never do, but I thought I'd throw it out there for others.
Find a temp job. Some of you mentioned this, what type of skilled temp jobs are out there that you guys were mentioning?
Babysit/nanny. I did this when I was much younger, and haven't watched a little kid in forever. But I do remember that the pay was good when I was in middle school. I got paid $10 an hour which was pretty nice.

What would or do you currently do for extra money?

Alexa Rank

1. Install the Alexa Toolbar.

2. Increased traffic to your site/blog.

3. Increased specialized traffic.

Posts that I love:

Have a great weekend!

1. Write a Blog In Order To Make Money Online.

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