Sunday, July 22, 2012

Page Ranking Checker



If you have wondered how your blog or website is ranking for a particular keyword you can use this free page ranking checker. It is super easy to use and does not require a download or login.  It definitely beats looking through one page at a time yourself.  This is a whole lot faster!



Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Make Money with Squidoo

I just started to Make Money with Squidoo.  It is my newest money making adventure. It is a fun way to make money online.  It is not fast but nothing (as far as I know) is fast when it concerns making money online.  What I like about squidoo is that you write an article (or lens as it is called on squidoo) and you can earn money on that lens month after month after month kind of like ehow used to be.  I also like that it is free to write for squidoo.  You don't need to buy in to any system or buy any manual.  All you do is sign up and start writing about what you know.  Recipes, running, vacations, parenting, job hunting, how to articles...The ideas are infinite.

Here are some of my lenses (articles) that I have created on Squidoo:

Teaching Spanish to Preschoolers

Easy Kid Friendly Recipes for Dinner

Traveling in Spain

Classroom Management Strategies

Spanish CSET

How to get cheap diapers

The 10k Challenge

My Big Dream: Move to Spain

Avon Business Review

Alameda, CA

Activities for Kids in the Bay Area

Back to School Savings

Spanish 1 Grammar

Everything Basketball

Ground Beef Recipes

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Making Money at Home-- My Story

My story is probably very similar to yours in that I’ve been through a lot of struggles in my search for making money online.  I'll start several years back.  I taught high school Spanish for 8 years.  During that time I got married and when we had our first child, almost 6 years ago, I started pursuing my quest to make money from home. After our second child my husband and I decided that I would become a stay at home mom. This was a big leap of faith for us since we would now only have one income.  I have done all sorts of things to try to make it work.  The worst one was a supplemental health benefits business.  Oh my.  The stories I could tell.  I sold Avon for a while and made a little money but mostly I found it added to clutter around my already toy-cluttered house and for me it really was not worth all the time and effort I was putting into it.  (If you sell Avon and are doing well with it that's awesome!  It just wasn't for me.)


Finally, I started blogging and writing online articles.   This is something that has finally tipped the scale for me.  I know it works.  I'm getting paid. This was definitely not an overnight thing for me.  In fact it was a very slow start because I was brand new to the whole idea of blogging for money.  If you are looking for something that will make you money tomorrow blogging is probably not for you.  If you have something that you are passionate  about and you are ready to buckle down and start learning from people who have already had some success then go for it.  (for me it was teaching Spanish


Are you ready to take the first step in blogging for money?

The first step is figuring out what you are passionate about, passionate and knowledgeable enough to write plenty of articles or posts about it.  



 

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

How to Add a Pinterest Button to Your Blog Posts in 10 EASY steps



Ready to add a pinterest button to your blogger blog posts?  I first wrote about doing this here. Pinterest is a great way to get more traffic to your blog.

If you haven't used Pinterest yet it is a virtual “bulletin board” featuring photos of things that interest you on the internet. Encourage your readers to pin your pictures by adding a pint it button to each post.  

I posted about this earlier here but I thought I would rewrite the directions to make it a little easier.  I have added a pin it button to two of my blogs now. 


So far I have the button on my Teaching Spanish Blog and now on this one.  Check out a couple of my pinterest boards here and here.

Thanks to Kelsey for making this button.
If you do this make sure to back up your template (copy and paste into a document) before doing anything.


Here is what worked for me: 

1) Click on template.

2) Then click on the button that says "Edit HTML.


3) At this point you may open a page with this message:  "Directly editing HTML may affect the way some features work and is only recommended for advanced users. Editing template HTML may unpredictably affect other Blogger features. We recommend using the Template Designer first, where you can Add CSS under the Advanced section." Don't worry.  You are going to be backing up your template so if you do make a mistake you will have yourself covered.  Go ahead and hit the button that says proceed.


4) Check the box that says "Expand Widget Templates."

5) Add this piece of Javascript right before the </head> tag:

<script type='text/javascript'>
function pinit() {
    var e= document.createElement(&#39;script&#39;);
    e.setAttribute(&#39;type&#39;,&#39;text/javascript&#39;);
    e.setAttribute(&#39;charset&#39;,&#39;UTF-8&#39;);
    e.setAttribute(&#39;src&#39;,&#39;http://assets.pinterest.com/js/pinmarklet.js?r=&#39;+Math.random()*99999999);
    document.body.appendChild(e);
};
</script>

It should now look like this:

<script type='text/javascript'>
function pinit() {
    var e= document.createElement(&#39;script&#39;);
    e.setAttribute(&#39;type&#39;,&#39;text/javascript&#39;);
    e.setAttribute(&#39;charset&#39;,&#39;UTF-8&#39;);
    e.setAttribute(&#39;src&#39;,&#39;http://assets.pinterest.com/js/pinmarklet.js?r=&#39;+Math.random()*99999999);
    document.body.appendChild(e);
};
</script>
  <head>

6) Next press "Ctrl f" and do a search for this bit of code: <!-- quickedit pencil --> 

7) Now insert the bolded code in between the second and third lines of this section. It should now look like this: (The new code is in bold)


<!-- quickedit pencil -->
        <b:include data='post' name='postQuickEdit'/>
      </span>
      <span class='post-icons' style='float: right;'>
          <a class='goog-inline-block share-button pin_it_button' expr:onclick='&quot;pinit(); return false;&quot;' target='_blank'/>
      </span> 
      
      <div class='post-share-buttons'>
        <b:include data='post' name='shareButtons'/>
      </div> </div>




8) Finally do another search for   /* Footer . If you don't have a Footer section, try search for '/* Content' instead.

/* Footer
----------------------------------------------- */



9) Copy and paste the following code right below the code above:



.pin_it_button {
    overflow: visible;
    width: 51px;
    height: 26px;
    margin-right: 1px;
    font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Arial, sans-serif;
    background-color: transparent !important;
    background-image: url("http://assets.pinterest.com/images/pinitbutton_sprite.png") !important;
    color: #CD1F1F !important;
    background-position: 0px 0px !important;
    background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat !important;
    cursor: pointer;
}


.pin_it_button:hover {
    background-position: 0px -27px !important;
}

 

It should now look like this:

/* Footer
----------------------------------------------- */
.pin_it_button {
    overflow: visible;
    width: 51px;
    height: 26px;
    margin-right: 1px;
    font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Arial, sans-serif;
    background-color: transparent !important;
    background-image: url("http://assets.pinterest.com/images/pinitbutton_sprite.png") !important;
    color: #CD1F1F !important;
    background-position: 0px 0px !important;
    background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat !important;
    cursor: pointer;
}


.pin_it_button:hover {
    background-position: 0px -27px !important;
}

 
 
10) Save and close.  Congratulations!   Your new pinterest button should now be at the bottom of each blog post.

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Does Anyone Make Money With the 10K Challenge


I have been blogging for about 6 years and can honestly say that I make the majority of my online money with my main blog now.

I average about
$30-40 per month with adsense
$10-20 per month with kontera
$10 per month with Amazon

For a while I was making more and more every month with Ehow but after they changed it I decided not to keep going with it.  I applied and was accepted to their new program but after working with it I decided there were too many hoops to jump through.

My adventures in making money online have all been free to start up and so was the stinkin' 10k challenge.

If you've ever heard of the 10k Challenge I'm here to save you some time.  Don't waste it.  Take my word for it.

Here is what the premise is: you are given a set of online tasks to complete each day and you are told that if you complete them that you'll be on your way to making 10k or more.  That's the short version but...

I learned everything I could about it and gave it an honest try.   Everything is all laid out for you as they say in easy to complete daily tasks.  I gave this a 90 day effort of doing everything just as was laid out and it did not work like they said it would.  Let me know if you're one of the few that made money with it.  I have a hunch that the only people that made money on it were the ones who started it and those who followed shortly after.