It took a lot of work and promotion, but it finally started to pay off. My best performing proxy was”The Blue Proxy” and it was getting 1.6million page views a month at its peak. You can check that out on my Best Proxy post I made a while back.

All together I made about $40 from just using Adbrite. I really dont think it’s that much because it was costing $7.50 a month, and I had the proxies for 3 months.

I finally decided to sell off all of my proxies because I wasnt spending any time on them (literally zero time) and they started to get less and less hits. I know they usually operate without any upkeep, you just setup the domain, promote and leave it.. but I want to move on to bigger and better things.

I managed to sell off all of my proxies for $40. It was a quick sale, and went fairly painless. I feel better now that theyre in someones hands who will actually care about them.

All of my income is coming from 1 specific method, while I have some money coming in from other smaller methods. Those methods right now are my proxies (which arent doing too well, maybe i’ll sell them off), and CPA marketing. Ive only made about $50 through CPA, but it’s a start. I havent spent as much time on it, but I am still looking for something that works.

I am making this post because I am trying something new to make some more money through a method im using right now. I have set up my Associated Content account to auto post any published articles to this blog, and another blog I set up specifically for articles. You can check out my new blog: Perfect Articles. It is just going to be used to help my search engine rankings for articles. I decided to just use a wordpress blog because I am tired of buying domains, I have about 19 .info domains that are just sitting there waiting for people to come across and hopefully sign up/buy whatever im promoting

I am using this method as well as a couple other methods to promote my articles. Hopefully it works out well for both my articles and this blog. I know the content is kind of weird, but dont mind that. If you find an article interesting please don’t hesitate to click on it and give it a read through.

Thanks for reading, I just wanted to give the people a heads up who are on my subscription Thanks a lot for subscribing.

It isn’t easy to make decent money as a musician. It might not even be possible unless you treat your band as the business it is, and do whatever you can to help your audience feel like they know you. Whether your band is just starting out, or whether you’ve been playing shows for years, there are ways to turn your art into a profitable lifestyle. Maybe you feel you can’t live without writing and playing your music. Well, you need to convince your fan base that they can’t live without you writing and playing your music either.

There are three basic strategies that will help make your band into a phenomenon that will one day pay the bills. You need to develop and polish your stage show, offer products that your fans will love, and make a steady, consistent effort to promote your band and keep your fans up to date with all of your goings on.

Live Shows

Your shows are probably where you, as a musician, have the most fun. Nothing can compare to looking out over a crowd that knows all the words to your songs. But satisfaction doesn’t make ends meet, so you need to use your shows not only as the giant group hug they are, but also as an opportunity for your fans to get their hands on some amazing merchandise tied in with your band.

The first step is to make sure your band gives live performances that turn the fans on. You can’t do this by simply booking a venue, showing up, and playing your set list. You need to win the crowd over with each and every show, reminding your fans why they like you so much. And a polished, well rehearsed show is the first step.

In the theatre that is your band’s live performance, every band member plays a different character, whether they want to or not. You need to make these characters relate to the people in the audience. That way, your fans feel like they are getting to know you as you perform. And though it sounds shallow, your band needs to have its most attractive member front and center. This isn’t always practical. If your drummer is your band’s most attractive member, at least make sure that he or she is well lit and not blocked by the other band members.

Take a look at everything that goes into one of your shows. Do you have a decent backdrop? Are you selling CDs and merchandise from a wobbly card table manned by the bassist’s little brother, or do you have a solidly built sales booth “branded” with your band’s persona? Are you selling the same t-shirts and CDs that you sold a year ago, or are you keeping the promotional merchandise fresh? And that brings us to the next topic.

Your Band’s Merchandise

You’ll want to mention your band’s website during the show, and you should also have your band’s web address printed on the merchandise that you sell. Giving away stickers with your band’s logo and web address is a great promotional technique. Sure, those stickers cost you money, but if it puts hundreds of eyeballs in front of your website ordering your new CD, then it is a worthwhile investment.

If you plan to sell t-shirts, offer a good quality product. It is worth the investment to have a talented graphic designer design your shirts for you. This doesn’t mean you have to shell out big money to hire a big name designer. You can often find local talent through sites like Craigslist. If money is tight, you could barter with the designer you want for, say a t-shirt design in exchange for a handful of tickets to your show, a mention of his or her name during the show, and a few CDs. You should price the t-shirts so that you cover production costs, and have a small profit. You can also gin up some serious goodwill by giving away two or three t-shirts to fans during your show.

Promoting Your Band

This is something you do consistently, just like rehearsing. Give fans who visit your band’s website or its MySpace page something new every week, or every few days if you can manage it. If none of the band members has much interest in or talent for keeping up a blog, you may want to hire a blogger to do this for you. Again, “hire” may mean “barter for.” But a good, consistent blogger will keep fans returning to your sites, building anticipation for your next show and/or album.

With regard to your website, there is one very important factor that it would be easy to overlook. Create a domain name that is easy to spell and that isn’t full of hyphens or underlines. Ideally you want your website’s domain to be easy enough for anyone to remember, so that they can find your site easily the first time. If you have a good website or blog that is updated regularly, your fans will want to bookmark it and return regularly.

Create a simple press kit and send it to local media outlets. Lifestyles editors love getting well made press materials because it does part of their job for them. Write a brief cover letter describing your band. Include a demo CD containing your best song as the first track. Also include a band photo.

You don’t have to hire an expensive photographer for this. You’ll need digital photos that will print at a size of around 5” by 7” at 200 to 300 dpi and that shows each band member’s face. The setting should reflect the image you want your band to have. Whether you hire a local photographer or set up a tripod and do it yourself, take at least a dozen shots to maximize your chances of getting that iconic picture that makes you say, “Yeah, that’s us!” Simple online programs like Picasa, and tools in photo sharing sites like PhotoBucket can be used to enhance lighting and clarity and crop out clutter.

If you’re new and relatively unknown, go ahead and do the “cheesy” shows every chance you get. This means weddings and proms. If you have a few of these on your resume, local venues will believe that you can draw in fans. They’ll be less likely to book you hoping to turn a profit with cover charges and drinks if they don’t think you’ll bring in an audience. Once you have a few weddings, bar mitzvahs, and school dances under your belt, you can honestly tell a venue owner that you have played before groups of 50 or 100, or whatever it was. This will give you room to negotiate when asking for a cut of the cover charge.

Conclusion

While making music is something you do from the heart, that doesn’t mean it can’t generate income too. Making money with your band doesn’t just happen spontaneously. You will have to treat your band as a business entity and use the tools you have available to advertise that business. You can’t do this haphazardly and hope to become rich and famous. Rather, you have to put some serious effort into making your fans anticipate your shows, offering fans merchandise that they love, and promoting your band in the print press, in person, and over the Internet.

Don’t give up! It won’t necessarily be easy, but the first time your band gets a check big enough to cover the rent will be a sweet memory that will make all the work worthwhile.

I make money primarily through Adbrite, as I dont have an Adsense account anymore.

Here is a screenshot of how much I’ve made so far since I started the network

I included November to show you I started in December. I think I started half way through, cant remember though.

I have my payment threshold set to $25 on Adbrite, so I should be getting a cheque soon. Im not too sure when Adbrite sends out the cheques, but from what I recall I think it’s net 60. So I get paid 60 days after I earn the money or something like that.

Im obviously not rolling in the money, but its the fact that I set it up and let it sit there and it makes me money. I like that idea hehe.

I have a few more projects on the way right now and they so far seem to be going pretty well. I also want to make a product to sell (ebook)… but that takes time and effort lol.

I made the goal to make atleast $100 USD a month online, and so far i’ve reached my goal. As of me writing this i’ve made a total of $104 USD! Im pretty happy. I live in Canada, so thats about $130 CAD. It’s good because that will pay for my lunches at the cafeteria.

Im going to be trying affiliate marketing. I signed up because there is a contest going on over at Iron Blogger. It involves the affiliate network Motive Interactive. Im pretty excited about it, and hopefully IronBlogger gives some decent information on how to make money if youre a complete affiliate marketing noob like me. So far he gave some tips on promoting an affiliate through YouTube, but it doesnt seem like good advice… it doesnt look like hes done it himself. He just basically went over what it is… not how to do anything or how to make any money.

I hope this all works out! I better not be wasting my time

But what I really wanted to write about was the fact that I sold one of my proxies!. I know its no bid deal but I thought, lets try this out. I bought it with the intention to sell it. I spotted it on the Digital Point forums and I knew it was a great deal, the guy didn’t know what he was doing.

How it went down
I bought the proxy for $10. It was getting about 200 UV a day, and not really making any money. It was also using the most ugliest theme I had ever seen. It also had porn ads all over it for some reason. So, I knew I had to setup a new theme on it, and get the traffic back up. Once the web site’s domain was in my possession, which was what I really paid for, I setup a nice fresh Glype theme on it. I have my own little unique description, meta description, and meta keywords I use, so I plugged those in and setup all the ads. I then had to go on to promoting it the secret way I do. Actually its no secret, I just submit it to a bunch of topsites and proxy lists. Surprisingly the guy who owned it before me never did this. I could tell because only about 10% of the sites I submitted to said “This proxy is already in our list”.

I started to get about 300-400 UV to the site. I also had to get rid of the site before it expired, which was in about 20 days or so. At this point the site was getting a lot of traffic, so I thought its time to sell this bad boy.

I listed it on DP with a starting bid of $1. I knew in a couple bids the site would be up to $10. It went from $1 to $10. I knew right when that happened, I would be making a profit on this flip. I had initially set a BIN (Buy It Now) to $80. I know this is ridiculous, but I set it really high so I can lower it every 12 hours or so to bump my thread.

Conclusion
Turns out I sold the proxy for $25. That’s a profit of 150%! I love it. I know its pocket change but hey, if I can do this 3-4 times a week – $15 x 4 is $60. I wouldn’t mind an extra $60 a week for little work!

Anyways I made this post to show that it is retarded how easy it is to buy, and flip a proxy, although I’m sure you can apply this to any website.

Recently I had an idea. Dude I made money off of those. So I found out, I had 2-3 domains that were sitting there doing nothing… pointing to nameservers that dont even exist on the interwebs. So I though, dude, im gonna sign up for some cheap-o vps, load up those domains, and fire up a small proxy network.

So it went pretty good. I started with promoting 2 domains I setup, and those are getting some steady traffic. Its so easy to promote proxies. People are literally begging for them. Check out Yahoo! Answers, there are a shitload of teenagers on there begging for proxies to unblock myspace and facebook.

Ive expanded from the inital 2 proxy sites to about 9 now. Some are just domains that need to be setup, but they will be wicked sweet proxies soon enough

Im monetizing them with Adbrite, and Widgetbucks so far. Ive actually sold a banner advertisement on one of them already $5 for 1 month. That paid for the domain 5 times over lol I love .info domains. $0.99 is amazing for a domain.

So far i’ve made $1.32 from Adbrite, and $0.19 from Widgetbucks Thats not too bad for 2 days of operation, and only from 2 proxies.

K so this is how I made money online. I found some people who were making money “flipping websites”. Flipping websites? What the hell is that? It involves very little work, and can make you some serious cash.

I dont want to sound like some stupid salesman saying how it will make you millions. To date, ive sold 2 websites and ive made a little under $200. Not too bad considering I bought one website for $2. The other website cost me $27 to make. Im not going to let you know which websites they were, just for privacy of the buyers and confidentiality and all that good stuff.

How do you make money? Well you buy a domain, make a website, add content, sell it for profit. Ofcourse it’s way more involved than that, but you get the jist of it. Honestly if I can do it anyone can.

Now you’re probably asking how you can learn more? Well I would go to the google machine and do a quick search on “blog flipping” or try “website flipping”. Now the key is, dont pay for anything. There will probably be websites selling you ebooks and such, dont buy them. You can get any information you want on the internet for free. Check the Digital Point forums, there are tons of guides on there.

You do need to make an initial investment though, usually $20-40. This is to cover the costs in the beginning. Dont worry though, you can easily sell your blog for 2-3 times the initial cost. What costs money in the beginning? Well you need a domain, which is usually $9. Then you gotta get other people to write the content for you, and get someone else to design a logo for you. You can find people to do this for you on the Digital Point forums.

Well so far i’ve made and sold 2 websites for about $150 profit, but total was around $200.

It’s really easy. The hardest part is finding a niche to blog about, once you find one, the rest is easy if you can replicate success.