However, if you are serious about learning how to get paid for surveys and making money, you need to start building something of quality that will have a ton of anchored links. Someone who has guest posted on one of my other blogs just sold one of their main sites at SitePoint. Here is the link to the auction that ended with the site being sold for the “buy it now” price of $48,000.00.

Now that is not a blog but it really doesn’t matter. The reason it sold for so much is because of all the money making terms it ranked highly for. You can read the lengthy description and see all the keywords for which it ranked highly on Google. If you rank high, you will get search engine traffic which then equates to earnings.

Again, if you want to make money getting CashCrate referrals or from any other affiliate program, the sooner you start a flagship blog and start getting anchored links back to it the sooner you will start making money. After 6 years of getting links, Trent’s site was worth $48,000 which of course was in addition to all the money he had already made with it for the 6 years.

Can you make money online like he did? If you can write and strategically plan a blog around a set of high paying keywords or topic, you will, with the proper number of links begin to make money. It is simple. Get a real blog, start writing posts with lots of your keywords, and work constantly and getting links. That is how you can make some good money on the Internet.

Free blogs are great but, and it is a big BUT, you don’t own them and they can be shut down for no reason or any reason. It would be a shame to put in month, even years, into a blog on a free platform only to find they shut down or were going to shut you down. The only way to prevent that from ever happening is to own your own URL and pay for your own hosting. I discussed this previously here at the best hosting company for your CashCrate Blog.

I have a Today.com blog that I set up a couple of months ago and this morning I got the following email:

Dear VIP Blogger,

You have not consistently posted since becoming a VIP member.
We only retain VIP members who consistently post as this benefits
both the VIP member and our program.

As a result of this inactivity we have disabled your VIP account.

Thank you for trying out our program.

Best Regards,
The Today.com Team

I rifled back an email to them being polite and asking to be let back in but after I sent it I poked around on the net and found out I wasn’t the only one this was happening to. You see, Today.com tried to entice bloggers for blogging with them by saying they would pay them $2.00 for every 1000 unique visits and a dollar for every post.

It appears Today.com might be running into some monetary problems as a whole bunch of people are getting their blogs shut down and there is nothing you can do about it. There was no warning or anything and a lot of people are pissed right now.

I don’t care one bit about Today.com and whether it is a scam or just run by stupid people who are running out of money. The point of this post is that any free blog you have is not yours and can be shut down in an instant. That includes Blogger and Weebly.

Now I know 99% of the people trying to make Cash Crate referrals don’t have any money or even the knowledge of how to buy a domain and get it hosted but the point is that if you ever do start making money online, owning your own blog should be a priority. You should spread yourself out and have some blogs you own and some that are on the free platforms. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket or one blog!

Many people start out with a free blog from Blogger and that is fine as you can make just as much money from that as you can with a blog on a domain you pay for. If anyone tells you otherwise, they are either clueless or lying to you. Getting your blog to the top of Google’s search engines is what makes you money and not what platform your blog is on.

The only problem with having a free blog is that you don’t own it.  Having your flagship blog on a free platform like Blogger means that you don’t own your own blog and it can be suspended or deleted by Blogger (Google) at any time. Although this is unlikely if you play by the rules and don’t break their terms, it is unsettling knowing that all the work you have done to create a quality blog can go down the drain in an instant. If you start a blog and start earning money with it, it is nice to know that you own the blog. It belongs to you and you control what happens to it.

If you build your blog up correctly, it can be a source of CashCrate referrals and other affiliate  income for you for many years to come. It is something that you should want to protect as it is really an asset. For this reason, you will always see many people recommend you buy your own domain and get your own hosting so that you will own your blog free and clear. Another reason to own your own blog on your own domain is that you can sell it down the line to someone else. If all you have are blogs on the free services, you can never sell them.

The hosting company I use for this blog and all my blogs is HostGator. If you do an online search for opinions about Hostgator, you will undoubtedly find many more positive ones than negative ones. If you poke around on some Internet forums, HostGator will always be mentioned as one of the top 2 or 3 hosting companies. My experience has also been 100% positive and I am glad I chose them over some of the others.

There are many hosting companies to choose from and when I say many, I really mean a lot. They spring up all the time and advertise low rates and great service but many of them do not have a proven track record. HostGator is one of the biggest hosting companies and one of the most reliable and that is why I decided to use them. The main problem with the fly by night hosting companies is that you may have downtime with your sites. That is the #1 problem I hear complained about and with HostGator that has only happened once in two years and it was something we were notified about before hand. When your site is down, it just disappears and it is panic time so with HostGator I don’t worry about that.

With any hosting company, you want to know that you can contact a live person that will help you if you need help. I have had trouble three times now where I needed to talk on the phone to a real person. In each of those cases, I was able to contact HostGator and speak to a live person within minutes who was knowledgeable and answered my all of my questions. In each case, we got the problem resolved. Knowing that a reliable company with real people is there if you need them is very important when you pay that monthly fee. Your websites will become a source of income for you and you need to feel comfortable with your hosting company.

I use the Baby Croc plan that allows me to have as many domains as I want all for the price of $7.95 per month. You can get a cheaper plan at $4.95 per month but that will allow you to have only 1 website (domain). The Baby Croc plan is what most people should get and it is a plan that you will most likely never outgrow. Again, you can have as many different blogs as you want (separate domains) on that plan all for $7.95 per month. HostGator is the only web hosting company I would recommend because it is the only one I have ever needed to use and the word on the Web is that it is indeed one of the best.

I want to emphasize again that you don’t “need” to have your own domain and blog to make CashCrate referrals. You can make them with a free Blogger blog too, if you know what you are doing. At some point though, if you become successful and start to make money, you may wish you had started with your own URL and hosting so that you would actually own your blog and all the hard work you have put into it. Remember, with a free blog from Blogger or Weebly or wherever, you do not own your blog. That means you can never sell it and it can be suspended or deleted by the staff and you may have no recourse.