However, many beginners get frustrated when they start their blogs because they get absolutely no traffic. If they do happen to get some, it seems like hardly anyone signs up for CashCrate or whatever they are selling which is equally frustrating.  

One of the ways you can get targeted traffic is to print business cards and distribute them around town. I want to stress that this is a short term solutionwhile you are working on your website by creating content, getting anchored backlinks, guest posting on other blogs, commenting with on other blogs with your anchored link, creating Hubpages, and all the other things that need to be done to eventually get your blog seen by Google searchers.

You can get  500 Vista premium business cards for $1.99 and you can pay by credit card or PayPal. That is a pretty cheap investment if you want to give it a try and you use them intelligently. Once you have picked your card and added all your info, you will have to keep hitting the “Continue” button till you reach the checkout and payments screen. (they will try to upsell you lots of stuff along the way which you don’t need)

First of all, DON’T PUT YOUR AFFILIATE LINK on the card. You need to put your website name on the card so that people will go to your website and then click through your affiliate link. If you make the mistake of just putting your affiliate link on the card, you are trusting that everyone will type it in correctly and that just won’t happen.

So, with your website prominently displayed on the card and a good call to action, where do you put the cards. I would put them on bulletin boards at grocery stores, schools, colleges, libraries, and anywhere else you can that has some walk through traffic. You could try putting them on windshields of cars but I would only put them on the cars that are a little run down. In other words, don’t bother with the Lexus’s and BMW’s as those people probably don’t need the money.

Be creative and you have 500 cards to get out their with your website on them and hopefully get some CashCrate referrals. The good thing about bulletin boards is that multiple people can see your same card so it is not wasted on just one person. The shorter and more catchy your website name is, the easier it will be for people to remember it.

Remember, the 500 Vista premium business cards for $1.99 is not a solution to getting traffic to your blogs but just something temporary that you might try. If you use your cards smartly, you will probably be able to get enough sign ups make it worth your while.

This question is typical of the frustration of anyone just starting out trying to make money online. Not only is there tons of confusion about what to do, but if they do continue on and work hard, will it all pay off? Will their blog ever make money? Will anyone ever see it?

It is easy to get discourged and that right there is why most people quit. Much of it has to do with the keywords you target. If you target something too competitive, you will never make it to the first page of Google. If you target something too easy, you will get to the top but there may be no one searching for those keywords and that is why it was easy to get there. Either way you may never get any search traffic and it is all because of the words you targeted.

Of course that is all if you even know what keywords are and know how to plan a blog with a specific course of action. People who are in tune with current events and the things happening around them are best able to make money online. They are able to figure out what words people are searching for.

Take my blog that you are reading and look at the content I have written. It contains tons of content by most people’s standards (47 posts I think) and now I am really trying to figure out what direction to go. I have mentioned this before but it seems like I may have targeted some bad keywords like online surveys for money. I don’t want to go into my whole thought process for this blog but right now I have spent more time than it was worth.

However, I still have an asset. I have a blog that is getting older by the day (that is good) and it has a PR 2. I can use it for link exchanges and I can also change course at any time and target different keywords. Just because it is not producing right now like I want it too doesn’t mean it is and always will be a failure.

My advantage is that I know I can make money online and most beginners don’t know that. I know that not every blog I make will be a success and that is why I have many blogs. Most of you have one blog and all your eggs are in that one basket.

Back to the readers question: you should write at least 4 more Ezine articles and link to your main page for one link and an inner page for the second link using anchor text. You need to get your Hub score above 75 and keep it there. You need to write more content for your site. And after that you need more content again. The more you write, the more words Google has to pick from when looking at your site. Sometimes people search for things you would have never thought of and if you have tons of content on your blog, maybe those combinations of words are there.

You can write guest posts for other people’s blogs and they will let you put in a do-follow anchored link or two to your blog. That is why you need a good looking blog with MORE content so that other blog owners will accept your posts. You would need to save your best writing for those guest posts so they are accepted. Don’t just ask anyone though: find a blog that has a little PR or some authority and has been around a while. Try this one as I and many others have done guest posts here:  http://moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com/. But you need a bigger blog before you do that so you have some credibility.

Finally, you need to find people to exchange links with. This is hard but if you have the guts it will help you greatly to contact other blogs and try to work out 3 way exchanges. That is why it is smart to have 2 or 3 blogs for every niche you have and to make them look better than some of the crappy CashCrate blogs that are out there.

If you want to see an example of a successful blog please see my review of make money online free and click through to Trini’s blog. She has turned that into a money making blog that anyone would like to exchange links with. Look at the work she has done there.

The reader who asks this question has a blog that has about 3 posts and is brand new. Seriously, if anyone thinks they can slap up three posts and a few articles, they need to go back and read my whole blog again. IT ISN’T EASY AND YOU HAVE TO DO TONS OF WORK AND IT MIGHT NOT PAY OFF FOR SIX MONTHS! In fact, if you target too competitive keywords, you might never get any traffic. That is why 99 out of 100 fail and give up. Sorry, but its true.

The reality is that the only way you will ever succeed is to keep on trying and keep targeting different keywords. You have to slap things up against the wall and see what sticks. Did I mention that just about every CashCrate blog I have seen is NOT A BLOG and need more original content? If you can’t put up some original content then your chance of making money online is pretty slim.

BTW, I might be trying some things and looking for new keywords on this blog very soon myself. You might see some weird posts that don’t teach you much.

The concept is that you have a choice when you start a blog and write posts for it: you can try to make money with or without bullshit.

Most of you might know the “without bullshit” part which means you write the best blog posts you can in an effort to entice your reader to sign up for something. You want to sound credible and give a good review of the product or service in the hopes of convincing your reader to click through to sign up. Your blog is the written pretty much as well as you can because you want to sound professional. This blog, for instance, is pretty much “without bullshit” as most of the writing is done a bit deliberately and meant to be read and followed (even though most readers don’t give a shit and click away because all they want are quick CashCrate referrals the easy way because they are lazy).

The other way to make money online with blogs is by writing bullshit. For this you really need to use Adsense, Chitiqa, Yahoo publisher ads or maybe even some affiliate products but probably NOT CashCrate. You will be composing blog content that is not your best writing and quite general in nature. This works well for many niches like home improvement, gardening and many others where you can write very unspecific posts about a topic and never answer the readers question. The longer the posts the better and the more boring they are the better too.

The goal here is to write accurate yet long and boring posts that will bore the hell out of the reader and have them trying to get out as fast as they can. Many will hit the “back” button but some will click on an Adsense ad or an affiliate ad just to get out. Rather than wanting people to stay and read what you have to say, you WANT them to leave…preferably through one of your ads.

Most CashCrate blogs I see are not really either of these two options. They are just a page or two of copied verbage from the CashCrate site. Those will never get referrals which is why there are threads started everyday in the forum whining about “I can’t get any referalls, booo hoo hoooo”. Well if you got off your butt and started writing and putting some EFFORT into your blog and got anchored backlinks, you might get somewhere.

BTW even though I don’t care and there are not many hits to be had for the word “CashCrate‘, this blog is now often on the first page of Google for that term. And where are all the blogs that actually have “CashCrate” in the URL? Several people bragging in the forum about buying URLs with great CashCrate names. Where are you guys? No where to be found! Oh, THAT’S BECAUSE YOU DON’T HAVE ANY OPTIMIZED POSTS AND ANCHORED BACKLINKS! 

As I mentioned earlier, the bullshit strategy is probably NOT a good strategy to get online surveys for money referrals for sites such as CashCrate. For that type of referral you want to convince your reader through your honest writing or through payment proof in the form of check pictures and videos that good money can be made. CashCrate is legitimate and you can make a lot of money with them which is what you will be trying to prove to your reader. You can’t prove anything with bullshit so use that for one of your other niches.

The casual blogger puts up a family blog of photos or their life’s journey and they have no intention of ever making money. Yet other bloggers and potential bloggers have heard about blogging for a living and easy money making by blogging and so they set out to try to do it. Unfortunately for them, they have no clue how it’s done and have all the wrong expectations.

I am not a blogger but I do make money blogging. Does that make sense? I have a lot of blogs (including this one) and on none of them do I ever want to become well known, famous, or have a huge following. Really, I don’t care about anything other than making money. The blogs, and blogging, are the instruments I make money with and nothing more. All I care about is learning how to make money and getting more CashCrate referrals.

I am an Internet marketer and not a blogger. I set up a blog and from the first post I try to strategically figure out what to write about, what keywords to use, how to get links, and how to get traffic. If I do succeed in getting traffic, then and only then does the fun start. Once I get traffic I then can figure out how to monetize it. Of course I have an idea before hand of what I will do but sometimes things change.

Being an Internet marketer instead of a blogger means that I pay special attention to figuring out what affiliate products to sell, where to put the ads, where to put the Adsense ads if I have them, and all things to do with ad placement and making money. Each blog is a big puzzle and when you get traffic to it you need to be able to figure out how to capitalize on that traffic and turn it into money. Internet marketing is a business and blogging is just how I do my business. With each new blog I begin, I am starting a small business online, or at least I am trying to.

Many of the CashCrate newbies set out to make a blog as they hear that is the best way to get referrals. CashCrate tends to get a young audience and many of them are teenagers and people in their 20’s. Blogging for 15 year olds is not something many of them want to do or have any interest in. All they end up doing is copying and pasting a few things from the CashCrate website and putting them on their “blog”. They think that is enough to get paid online surveys referrals but you can’t make money being lazy.

Blogging can be a business if you set out to make it a business and get search engine traffic. You can make a lot of money with the right kind of targeted traffic but you can’t make much money from return visitors which is what most bloggers are hoping for. The standard make money blogger hopes to create a following and become so popular that everyone will buy affiliate products from him. This is a dream that will never happen to 99% of the bloggers out there. Yet they are too naive to ever recognize this and they keep on trying.

Do you want to make money or do you want to be a blogger? That is the question you need to answer before you go to far with your blog. If you are writing blog posts and hoping they get Tweeted, Stumbled, and Digged, then you are a blogger and are not going down the right path to making money. If you want to learn how to make money blogging, then you need to learn about keywords, keyword research, getting links, on and off page SEO. You need to also learn how to sell things to your readers.

Ok so I’m not the type to bother people, but I need help!

How the hell do you do it?

I’ve been constantly reading up on this site, and now when I search google for certain terms, you’re already on the first page! If I remember well, I’m one of the first people you gave that link. I just had a few postings to read “backwards”.. so it’s pretty recent compared to mine I think.

I’ve been doing this “seo” thing for 7 months or so now and I’m still no where close! I manage to get just about 10 hits a day or so from google or yahoo but nothing big.

I’ve been doing everything that I’ve read up on… anchored backlinks, etc, etc,

Just please tell me where I’m going wrong, or what I’m “missing”. I’d really like to see my site raise in the rankings on Google.

And just to clarify, I’m not the type that sit around and wait for people to do stuff for me. I’m a pretty hard worker, but I just don’t understand where I’m going wrong.

Thanks for any kind of reply. I know you must be super busy.

First lets talk about this blog that has not been as productive as I had hoped. It’s that way with this sort of thing and you just have to accept it. This blog is about 2 months old and it only gets between 10 and 20 hits a day so it is not a big a success as the question leads you to believe. Unfortunately, many of those hits are not necessarily what I want either.

Paid online surveys for money .com now ranks on the first page of Google for things such as “CashCrate referrals” and a few other terms like that specifically about how to get referrals for CashCrate. I have been getting backlinks for that term so that has been a success but I had hoped to be higher up as that is not a very competitive keyword phrase.

This blog is also on the first page of Google for “today.com scam” (which does me no good) and for “comment blog demon review” which could make me a sale of that software someday maybe. All in all, not too impressive actually. For those two keyword phrases, there is little to no competition so that is why this blog ranks on the first page.

My blog doesn’t rank anywhere for the terms I have really targeted which are “surveys for money” and “paid online surveys“. Those are the two terms I want to rank for in the long run and I am not even in the top 100 for either of those. That is very disappointing and I had hoped to at least show up in the top 100 by now.

Blogging and getting traffic and making money is frustrating. Period. It is also something that takes time and lots of it. Again, that is why 99% give up and quit. Any blog I start I assume I WILL NOT make any money with for at least 6 months. 6 months!!! That is too long for most people right there.

THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT THINGS

The two most important things you can do is pick keyword phrases that have low competition that you will be able to rank for and then get anchored backlinks for those terms. Maybe my choices of “surveys for money” and “paid online surveys” have too much competition and I will have to give up and switch gears. That could happen but I will give it at least another 4 months before I make that kind of decision.

You can always find keywords that have little to no competition (like “Today.com scam”) and then you will get some readers but they won’t be TARGETED and won’t sign up for CashCrate. You need to spend time with the two free keyword tools and pick some keywords that you can target that have medium to low competition.

After you pick some keywords you want to target, you have to go get backlinks. Then you have to get more backlinks. And then when you have gotten more you need to still go out and get more. If done correctly, you will spend 80% of your time getting backlinks. You get CashCrate referrals and make money by getting your site on the first page of Google. You get on the first page of Google by getting anchored backlinks. Therefore, the act of getting backlinks is what ultimately makes you money.

How many backlinks do you need? I hear that question asked all the time. You need more backlinks than your competitors have and better ones. The sites with the most anchored backlinks coming from the highest quality websites are the ones who make it to the top of Google. So, if you are in a niche that has very little competition, you might need just a handful of anchored backlinks. But if you are competing for a keyword phrase that has a ton of competition, you may need THOUSANDS of backlinks and you might have to keep getting them to stay ahead.

That is how the game is played. He (or she) who has the most anchored backlinks wins. You also want to vary your backlinks so they are not all for the exact same terms. For instance, your links may be “make money with surveys”, “money with surveys”, “how to make money with surveys”, and so on. You want your anchored backlinks to have some variety so that it looks more natural to Google.

USING HUBPAGES FOR LINKS

On a side note, when you make some  HubPages to link back to your sites, you have to have an author score of 75 or over to have them be “do-follow” backlinks. I just started doing HubPages myself and that is what I have learned. I am not sure how you get and keep your author score above 75 but that is a drawback of using them. Also you are only alowed to link out to the same site twice in any Hub as I understand it. I see tons of HubPages authors with authors scores in the 90’s so it may not be too hard to keep it above 75.

MAKE FRIENDS AND TRADE LINKS!

How do you get more backlinks? That is always the million dollar question. You can buy links which I will not discuss on this blog and there are other services that cost money. In the end, one of the best ways to get links is to MAKE FRIENDS WITH OTHER BLOGGERS AND TRADE LINKS WITH THEM! The more blogs you have, the easier it is to arrage 3 way links and the more friends you have the easier it is to exchange links.

I have thought of and perhaps will start a page here on this blog in the future where you can list your name and contact info if you are willing to exchange links. If everyone who is in the CashCrate community got together and understood what they were doing and exchanged links, it would help everyone. Unfortunately right now, there are many people that have very poor 1 page blogs which are pretty much spam blogs. So that is a bit of a problem as I would never want to link to a spam blog.

That’s all for now.

StatCounter will work on all Wordpress self hosted blogs and most importantly it will work on Blogger blogs. There is a whole list of blog platforms it is compatible with so if you have something else, sign up and investigate. Again it is free for the basic account and that is all you will ever really need.

You will have to follow instructions on how to set it up properly but once you do, it will keep track of the most recent 500 hits to any of your blogs or websites that it is installed on. Five hundred hits is more than enough and you will never need to upgrade to get more although you can if you like. You can see a picture of what some of the traffic looks like for this blog so far below.

Right now, you can tell that there is just a hodgepodge of words and no real trend that has materialized yet. A couple of the searches were for backlinks, a few for survey referrals, and a few more for some sort of proof of payment search. At this point, all that information is useless to me because I am interested only in finding a trend that I can identify. Maybe something like get paid for surveys or some other keyword phrase that might have potential.

You need a stat tool like this because you need to see what keywords people are using to find you and then you can go get anchored links for those keywords and move up even further. When you write your posts, you may be targeting a certain keyword or keyword phrase but sometimes you will find that people find your blog by searching for groups of words you never thought of. This is the tool that will help you find those hidden keyword phrases that you can take advantage of. If you don’t have such a tool and you never keep track of how people are finding your blog, you can never do the proper link building you need to do to get your blog higher in the search rankings.

Many people who start CashCrate blogs just have a few posts and one or two pages. This limits the amount of material that is on their blog and the different ways people can find them. The longer you make your posts and the more posts you make ulimately will help you find keyword phrases that you might never have thought of that can make you money. Getting CashCrate referrals is not easy and you have to work to get them. Those that work harder and put more material on their blog and make their blogs look professional will have a better chance (with correct link building) of getting referrals than someone who just slaps something up and calls it a day.

Of course there are exceptions to what I have just said. You can put up a one page blog and if you hit the exact right set of keywords or are in the right niche, you might get traffic and be able to keep it coming. That doesn’t happen very often though and the best way to increase your chances of being successful with getting referrals to the surveys for money sites is to make a good looking blog, write long targeted keyword posts, and constantly get anchored backlinks. Then you need to keep track of the hits you are getting with a tool like StatCounter and look for keyword trends so that you can take advatage of those opportunities as well.

Wait a minute, there is no easy way to get paid for surveys referrals. I can already tell by some of the comments that many people just want to start a blog, whip up a few posts, and sit back and watch the referrals come in. THIS IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN! Unfortunately in our society everyone wants things right away. That’s why there is so much credit card debt: because people have to have things right now and can’t wait until they actually have the money or have earned them.

99% of the people who go online to make money fail or quit. You know why? Because they never figure out how and if they do, they realize it will be too much work. Most people who read this post and this blog will give up or never try. That is because making money online and getting CashCrate referrals is HARD and it takes WORK!

I’m sorry but that is the truth. There is no easy way to make money online. Period. If there were, we would all be rich right now. If anyone could jump online and make quick easy cash wouldn’t everyone be doing it? Who would bother with a job if it were that easy to make money on the Internet? Who would be waiting tables, checking people out at the grocery store, and growing the food we all eat? Everyone would be online getting rich.

This is a short message I got from someone yesterday after they took a look at my blog:

So…basically I get traffic from google onto a blog; refer people with a signup link that has me as their referer, and thats how I get 1.5k a month? haha, I dont think i have the technology savvy to do that.

Unfortunately many of you will give up for that reason too. You will determine it is just too hard to figure everything out. I can tell you I have spent thousands of hours learning what I know now including hundreds of hours doing things the wrong way and basically spinning my wheels. But if you read this blog, I can cut much of that learning curve out for you. But it still won’t be easy and you will have to do a lot of work if you want to make good money.

Why does everyone think it will be so easy? You study 12 years in school and then many of you go on to 4 or more years in college. Was that easy? Why did you bother? Why do you keep going with your education but end up quiting this when you find out it will take some work? If you want to make money online, just like anywhere else, you will have to learn how to do it. There isn’t any other way. You can’t just slap up a blog and start making money. IF YOU THINK THIS IS WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN THEN YOU ARE GOING TO GIVE UP AND FAIL.

I know many of you will always think there is some easy formula or secret and you will keep searching for it. You will probably blow off this blog and go elsewhere convinced there is an easier way. When you fail to find it you will probably quit. But instead of quiting, why don’t you come back here to learn how to make money and CashCrate referrals the right way.

I am aware you want to know how to get traffic to your blogs. Again, you are hoping it will be simple. “Just tell me how to get traffic to my blog” you are probably thinking. WELL GUESS WHAT? I have already started to do that in all the posts before this one and probably for six months after this one.

Making money online is all about the traffic. This blog is about 3 weeks old now and I have very little of it. IT MAY BE 6 MONTHS OR MORE BEFORE I START TO GET DECENT TRAFFIC. Do I wish I could get traffic sooner? Of course I do! But so do a BILLION other websites out there. If you want to learn how to get targeted traffic keep reading my blog and keep getting anchored links. I will cover some ways to get them in the next post.

Lets hypothetically say that Lisa discovers CashCrate and wants to start a blog and get referrals. She starts a free Blogger blog and calls it “CashCrate is Great” and it’s URL is http://cashcrateisgreat.blogspot.com.

Let’s also say that Lisa, like most bloggers, knows nothing about search engine optimization, keywords, how to get traffic, how to get links, what links are, what anchored links are, etc. She just wants to start a blog to tell the world how great CashCrate is and hopes people will read it and sign up. She has no plan and she has no knowledge of how to execute a plan even if she did have a plan.

This, unfortunately, is what many people do when they first start out to try and make money online. Many of the people who sign up for CashCrate hang out in the forums or hear one way or another that the best way to get traffic is by starting a blog. They don’t know anything more than that so they start a blog. Then they put up a few posts, maybe a few CashCrate tips, maybe even a picture of their last check.

And then they wait for people to come.

And they wait.

But no one comes.

And so they wait some more.

And still no one comes.

Then they get discouraged and either quit or go back to the forum and proudly put their blog URL in their forum signature and tell people “Hey I started a blog come check it out”. They might even go to other forums and put their blog in their signature and then make lots of posts hoping to get traffic from those forums. They might spend hours a day doing this: signing up to all the forums they can find and trolling the boards looking for threads where they can make a comment and leave their links. That is a lot of hard work.

And then they go back to their blog and wait some more.

And wait some more.

They keep checking their stats but hardly anyone is showing up.

Oh, they might get a bit of traffic and they might even get a few signups. But nothing to write home about and it is extremely boring trolling those boards everyday looking for threads where they can post a comment and leave their signature with CashCrate link. 

Finally they give up or go back yet again to the CashCrate forum just to hang out. One thing they don’t realize is that the people at the CachCrate forum have already signed up for CashCrate. You can’t make many referrals at a place where everyone has already signed up! Yes, you can make some money at forums where they haven’t heard of Cash Crate but again, who wants to spend the rest of their life leaving meaningless posts on forum message boards hoping someone will click their link? I know I certainly don’t.  

What you need is for people to be able to find your blog on their own without you having to scour the forums every day. You need to get your blog on the first page of Google for as many CashCrate and make money related keywords as you can so that they will come to you. You want your blog to be a store with an open door where the customers just come in all by themselves from the street! 

So, why then should you care about getting anchored back links? If you choose a plan of action and the right keywords, with enough anchored back links the people will come to you. Your blog will be on the first page of Google and you will just sit there and people will find you. If they are targeted visitors who need or want money, you will have a good chance of signing them up. You will have a good chance of making lots of survey referrals and making money.

Unfortunately, getting anchored back links is hard work. Unless you have a spectacular blog with extremely interesting articles and posts, people will not just link to you. And if they do, most of them will not link to you using the anchor text you want them to. Alas, nothing is ever that easy is it?

What you will have to do is go out and get those anchored links. This can be done in many different ways using many different methods but in order to get your blogs to the top of Google and get those Cashcrate referrals, it has to be done. Those methods will be the topics of many of my future posts I am sure.

The temptation for noobs to hang out in forums and social networking sites like Twitter is apparently overwhelming. One of the reasons for this is because newbies have absolutely no idea how to make money and they want to hang out with people who seemingly do know how. I know this because I did it too when I first started out. I had a handful of forums where I read all the posts and all the replies and it seemed like everyone knew so much.

Every day I would log on hoping to read the magic post that would give me a secret way to make a cash generating machine online. The Internet is so complicated that I thought everyone knew some quick ways to make money online that I didn’t. I also hoped to read about some way to make easy, quick, effortless, instant cash. Be honest with yourself, is that you? You know it is but its OK because almost everyone does it when they are just starting.

The desire to be with like minded people is fine except when those people are just as clueless as you are. Unfortunately, make money forums are populated by newbies telling newbies how to make money. Noobs helping noobs. Noobs trying to fake it until they make it. All you do on forums is waste your time hoping to learn something from someone else who doesn’t know a damn thing. I guess misery loves company and that is why all the losers hang out there.

Sure there are some stand up people on the forums and some of them even genuinely want to help others. But probably 95%+ of the people on these online forums don’t really have a clue about making money. Remember, the Internet is the one place where you never have to prove yourself to anyone and you can even fake it if you know how.

But my CashCrate check proof is real and I can tell you I hardly ever go on forums anymore. Do you know why? It is because I am way too busy doing the things I need to do to make money. Time is precious and I don’t have time to waste reading all the junk pumped out by forum noobs pretending to be gurus. Once you start making money online you will understand this more than you might now. Until you start making your own money, I know the desire to “be part of the group” will keep you hanging out at the forums hoping to find the magic money making potion.

The social sites like Twitter, FaceBook, StumbleUpon, and others are much the same story. These sites are really social gathering places and if that is your sort of thing that’s great. There is nothing wrong with making friends and acquaintances online, just don’t expect to make much money from those sources. I know it’s cool to hang out with others and make friends but that is not how you make money.

You need targeted traffic to make money and not social traffic. You will never make money until you understand that and believe it. I know social traffic is a lot more fun and so you need to make a decision. Do you want to have fun or make money? There are a few people who are talented enough to combine the two and they do that by having a VERY popular blog. If you get thousands of visitors to your blog every day, you might be able to pull it off. But for most of us average Joes, we don’t have the writing talent and an interesting enough life to make thousands of people want to read our blogs every day. For us, we need targeted search engine traffic to make CashCrate referrals and you won’t find that in the forums or social websites.

online surveys
paid online surveys
surveys for money
online surveys for money
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paid surveys for money

When you pick your blog domain and plan out a strategy for your blog, keywords that you want to target are extremely important. Without a plan targeting specific keywords and keyword phrases, your blog will probably be ranked nowhere and  never found by anyone. Choosing your keywords and your overall plan of action is perhaps the hardest thing you will have to do to make CashCrate referrals online and make money on the Internet in general.

To pick keywords you have to get information about how many people search for specific groups of words. For that I use GTrends and the Google Adwords keyword tool which are both free. Listed below is a chart of 5 of those keyword phrases showing how many searches per month there are for each as well as what people are paying for Adwords for them.

So these are the main keywords I hope to target along with “CashCrate” and “referrals”. If I  can get this blog on the first page for those terms I will start to see some generic search engine traffic which is what every blog owner should want.

It should be noted that the numbers you see on this tool or any other tool you ever use might be incorrect. Even if you are using a tool you paid for the numbers may be wildly incorrect. Sometimes the only way to really know how many searches a term gets is to get into that number one position on the first page and see what kind of traffic results. This is not what you wanted to hear and sometimes it will mean you waste time on a term or blog thinking it will get more traffic than it acually does. There is not much to do about it other than move on to some other term. It’s all part of the Internet marketing game we play.

Now an important point I want to make, and I will write a whole post about this later, is that most people wanting to make Cash Crate referrals would only think to target the word “CashCrate’. That word does, according to the keyword tool, get about 12,000 searches per month but you need to expand your mind and think out of the box.

Bloggers build their whole blog around CashCrate hoping to get people searching for “CashCrate”. The problem with this is that some of the people, maybe even many of the people who search for “CashCrate” have already heard of it. You know they have already heard of it otherwise they couldn’t be searching for it. So, it stands to reason, that some of them have already signed up for it and are just looking for opinions or tips and tricks. You can’t make a referral with these people no matter how great your site is because they are already members!

You need to figure out other types of people who want or need to make money and are likely to sign up. You need to figure out what those people would be searching for and then target those terms. For instance, if you could get your blog to the top of Google for the words “make extra money” or “how to make money” then you would have people finding your blog who are very likely to sign up to CahsCrate and who have most likely never heard of it! Bingo! You would then have a great opportunity to make tons of CashCrate referrals and to sell them other things too. Again, I will cover this concept more completely in a future post.