You may have heard me mention AuctionAds a few times already in the posts I have made, and you might be wondering what it is exactly. Well, to describe it simply, it is a way to post dynamic listings from eBay on your site. Why would you want to do this? To make money of course!

You make money as an affiliate to eBay. For every sale that is completed through an item that was clicked on via one of your AuctionAds, you receive a percentage of the fees eBay charges.

Below is an example of AuctionAds in action. I used the keywords “iPod Touch” when setting it up so it should display relevant ads.

If you would like to set up an account of your own, you can get $25 deposited into your account instantly when signing up! Sign up today and start making more money on your site!

Today I discovered a kit you can buy that will help you make money if you decide to start your own blog. It is called Blogging For Dollars. If you are looking for a way to earn some extra income from home, while you are going to college, or if you are still living at home this is a great resource! Best of all, for a limited time this offer is free!

This offer includes the BlogToolKit 4-Step Success Program, Instant Traffic and Writers Guide, Make Money With Google Set, and Your Own Blogger Website!  The initial kit is free, plus shipping and handling.  Shipping and handling is $1.97, but I can tell you a quick trick to get the shipping and handling for only $.99.  Here is what you do, when you are on the site, simply try and close the window.  A little box will pop up asking you if you really want to leave, say no and stay on the site and they will automatically reduce the offer to you to $.99. Enjoy!

As if AuctionAds hasn’t had enough bad press lately with disappointed customers.  It seems that they had a PHP leak recently that could have exposed their whole system.  You can see a writeup about it over at adClustr who experienced this first hand.

As you know from my previous post, I recently purchased the site tiger-army.net for $10 with the hopes of turning it into a revenue producing site for me.

Step one in this process was to redesign the site. The purpose of redesigning the site is to 1) make it more visually appealing, and 2) to blend in more advertisements that will hopefully make me money. Here is what the Tiger Army site looked like when I bought it. And this is the Tiger Army site now with the redesign. However, I did not reinvent the wheel here, I used the design I had for another site of mine about Secondhand Serenade.

So, the real question is how are we going to make money? For starters we are going to include Google Adsense on the pages. I have also included an affiliate link to Amazon for various Tiger Army Albums. And lastly, I am using AuctionAds to display some eBay auctions on the Music page. I will be discussing AuctionAds in more detail in a later post.

The next part of this case study will involve linking the site, discussing SEO, and submitting to search engines.

I have been thinking about this blog for a long time. And during that time I have read numerous other blogs that have inspired me. One day I read a great motivational tip that I am going to share with you. Research suggests that if you discipline yourself to follow a regimen for 20 days that it will become habit. No longer will it seem like work or effort since it is now simply part of what you do. This applies to dieting, exercising, and in my case blogging about making money online.

I have decided to commit to myself and my readers that I will post at least once per day for the next 20 days to form this great habit. Here we are on day 3!

Ok, I am not just going to write about how to do things online that can make you money, I am going to give you real world examples and allow you to follow along with me and my techniques to see if they are successful. This is not only going to be my journey, but hopefully yours too!

Today is my first example. One of the ways I have learned over the past year and a half to make money off of sites is to purchase an existing website and retool it with a better design, better ad placement, and a little promotion to try and make my investment worthwhile.

There are various places to purchase sites online which I will blog about in a later post. However, the place I found this particular site is the V7N Websites for Sale forum.

The site I bought is a site about the Psychobilly Rock Band Tiger Army . Here is what the site looked like when I bought it: Tiger Army website - I bought the site (including the domain name) for only $10! I couldn’t resist even though I really don’t have that much time to work on it. However, blogging about my progress will motivate me to report back to you the steps I will take to retool the site and try to get it to make me some money. Stay tuned for updates, and please feel free to ask any questions in the comments!

Welcome!

I am very excited that you have chosen to read my blog. And I am very excited to be able to write for you. In case you don’t know me, I am going to give a brief history of who I am, what I do, and the purpose of this blog!

First off, my name is Sean Cantkier. I have been designing websites for 10 years now and have been in the “business” of web design for 7 years. My web design company is called Darwin Studios. You can view a sampling of my Atlanta web design portfolio if you wish to see some of my work. This has been a very successful venture for me the last couple of years, but it has still not gotten to the point where I can quit my day job and support my family.

This brings me to the reason I am starting this blog. I have learned over the years that I can make a decent living designing sites for other people, but I don’t know if this path will ever lead me to financial independence. Because of this, I have been on a quest for knowledge about how to create sites for MYSELF that can make ME money too instead of just my customers. All the while I will continue to design and develop for businesses.

This blog will focus on my journey to achieve financial independence by making money online using my own websites. This includes creating sites that use Google Adsense, Text-Link-Ads, Commission Junction, and other affiliate publishers.

I have already been doing this sort of thing for about a year and a half and have already come a long way (for me anyway). I plan to share with you my successes, secrets, and ambitions on this topic as well give you hard numbers as to what I am making on certain ventures to help you along with yours. In particular, I will tell you monthly how much I am making on this blog and how it was earned. As of today, I have earned $0.00!! In fact, I am $8.95 in the hole for registering my domain name

Please feel free to comment on any article. Your feedback is greatly appreciated. And if there is anything in particular you would like me to discuss please let me know!