Josh Here: If you liked this post, please leave a comment!

No, this is nothing racist. Or a scapegoat, as a matter of fact. But in times of recession, many people are looking for alternative ways of making money. Of course, the majority find themselves trying to Make Money Online.

Here’s the typical scenario: You buy some eBook online priced at $27, $47 or $97 (these are the best converting prices) promising you thousands can me earned online easily, with little or no effort. You finish reading the book, and starting signing up for Web Hosting, a domain and install WordPress (probably through affiliate links in the eBook) and place a few AdSense ads on your blog. You write a few blog posts, and give up. Where’s the little effort the eBook promised?

Blogging is hard. Seriously. Admit it. I’ll admit it’s hard.

You give up and wasted $250 on your hosting. Yes, some people can make thousands while they’re sleeping, but it does require (a lot of) effort, at least initially. In my case, I’ve made nothing for 9 months until my first AdSense cheque. Nowadays, I’ve made the same amount, if not more, in one month then I did in 9 months. Your income experiences geometric growth, and not a linear growth.

The great America Dream – this was the idea of opportunity of Italian immigrants in the 18th century, with the dream of jobs and money. The first glimpse of the American Dream for 8 million immigrants coming through Ellis Island was the Statue of Liberty – which represents freedom, liberty, justice and friendship. Did the Italian immigrants experience true freedom and justice? Not really.

The Californian Gold Rush is another great example of a false opportunity. Again, it’s the idea of copycats. Desperate times calls for desperate measures. People following others. Yes, the early gold miners (aka the 49-er’s) did find gold and got rich quick. But when the 300,000 people followed in their footsteps, the place was over saturated with gold miners. Most of the easily extracted gold (mainly by panning) was already collected by early gold miners. So, many often gained little (if anything at all) from the Gold Rush. Is this the real California Dream? I don’t think so.

So how does this relate to the Internet? Or being an Entrepreneur?

Look at Twitter. It’s an innovation in communication. Yet with all innovation comes the copycats. Look at Jaiku and Pownce, Twitter’s main competitors in 2008. Where are they now? Pownce is in the deadpool, and Jaiku is pretty much dead, except for the (small) Finnish population, where the founders are from. It’s now been sold to Google, whose interests are in Twitter, not Jaiku. After all, Google does have 42 Twitter accounts.

What about all those Facebook copies? Look at StudiVZ, a German Facebook clone. Facebook is now Germany’s biggest Social Network. In July Facebook had nearly 6.2 million unique users in Germany, by contrast StudiVZ had only 4.28 million uniques. On the contrast, Vkontakte.ru is still Russian’s biggest social network (it’s the 2nd most visited website in Russia), while Facebook is the 30th. Big difference? Yes, especially when Russia is the 9th biggest country by population size.

Conclusion
You need innovation to succeed.  Copying some hot Web2.0 Social Network (or a trend) will get you no where. The same goes for Making Money Online. You can envy John Chow or Shoemoney, but it’ll get you no where. You need to be committed to what you’re doing. If not, you’re wasting you time. Shoemoney may make $400 for a tweet while I make $100 a tweet using Sponsored Tweets, it’s still a beginning. A beginning to a great success.

To your success,
Josh Lam

The App Store has over 170,000 Apps. Not all of them make farting noises, but can actually be helpful when you Make Money Online while on the go. Here are my favourites, which I probably use all of them on a daily basis.

- PayPal (Free)

In case you have no idea what PayPal is, it’s a service that allows you to send and receive money online. It’s usually the preferred payout method to most Internet Entrepreneurs, being the most widely used one online. Away from your computer? Is your hosting bill due? Simply use the PayPal app to pay for the bill. After all, you don’t want to lost your site just because you haven’t paid your bills!

iTunes Link

- Mint.com Personal Finance (Free)

Did you overspend? If you haven’t signed up for Mint.com, you should. It’s a free online tool which helps you to manage your money. Now, with an iPhone app, Mint allows you to check your Bank Account Balance and budgets, on the go. No more logging in at Mint.com. Mint also allows you to budget your spending per month, For example, Mint will alert me when I’m over my $20 monthly budget for software.  Mint can also alert you if there’s a large deposit / withdraw in your account, which doubles as a security alert.

iTunes Link

Gallery:

- Ego ($1.99)

Yes, everyone has an ego. My blog’s better than yours. I have more followers than you on Twitter. Well, you can’t prove it without stats, can you? That’s exactly what Ego does, in an elegant interface. Your stats, at one glance. Ego supports data from Google Analytics, Mint, Google PageRank, FeedBurner subscribers, Twitter followers and SquareSpace.

iTunes Link

Gallery:

- Analytics App ($6.99)

It’s a tad bit expensive, but  if Ego’s Google Analytics statistics aren’t good enough for you, there’s always the Analytics App. I daresay, unless you’re a serious stats junkie and want to know your average bounce rate for the 21st week into 345 hours of the year, you wouldn’t need this.

iTunes Link (iPad version avilable too!)

- WordPress (Free)

Blogging, on the go. Sweet!  With the earlier versions, I always had trouble logging in with my credentials. The current version (2.4 at the time of writing), finally works, allowing me to login with no problems. It can also support multiple WordPress installations, moderate comments, edit pages and posts. It requires a WordPress blog running 2.9.2 or above.

iTunes Link (works with iPad too)

- Twitter for iPhone (Free)

Twitter for iPhone, previously known as Tweetie 2, is one of the best (if not the best) Twitter client for the iPhone. There is support for saved searches, trends, geotagging, retweets and lists. If you’re an iPhone user still using the web interface, you’re missing out not using this app. Tweetie has one of the most gorgeous interfaces I’ve ever seen.

iTunes Link

Gallery:

- Evernote (Free)

Your Notes. Anywhere. What more can I say? If I have an idea, I quickly add it to my Evernote on my iPod. When I get back to my computer, the note would have synced to my computer already, ready for me to work on the idea. Forget all those napkin drawings. This blog post idea was actually noted using Evernote.

iTunes Link (works with iPad too)

Gallery:

- Facebook (Free)

This is a no brainer really. Yes, it’s an app for Social Networking. But with the recent v3.0 update to the iPhone Facebook App, the new app now supports Facebook Pages, which allows me to check and post updates to my Facebook page on the go. For example, here’s the Josh Lam Fan Page on Facebook.

iTunes Link

Gallery:

And while we’re on the subject of the iPhone, joshlam.com has a mobile version. Simply enter joshlam.com in your iPhone browser. An iPad version is coming soon

Do you use any of the above apps? Which apps do you use? Share with me in the comments below.

To Your Success,

Josh Lam

MyLikes is a brand new Twitter Advertising Network. Again, with all advertising networks, some tend to be scams.

Here’s a quick overview of MyLikes:

MyLikes makes it extremely easy for you to earn money from Twitter ads, regardless of how big or small your number of followers figure is. I understand that the other networks that I have introduced in the past may be more suited to people with large number of followers (e.g. Sponsored Tweets, ad.ly) where they pay you per tweet. With MyLikes (like RevTwt), they pay you per click. And it’s not just $0.001 per click or something ridiculously low. They pay a whopping $0.5 a click. Two clicks could buy you a McDonald’s burger already.

Here’s something about MyLikes that’s also unheard of in the Twitter Advertising Industry: A $2 minimum payout. Some networks have higher payout rates, which means smaller publishers may have to wait a long time before being able to cash out. That’s not the case with MyLikes.

How do I know it’s not another scam? Well here’s why:
1. I have personally received payment from MyLikes.  Here’s a screenshot of my PayPal payments from MyLikes:

So far I have made $165.97 just from MyLikes ads, from my followers clicking on the links.

This Is NOT a scam.

2. The company MyLikes is actually founded by two ex-Googlers,  the former tech lead for AdSense, Arvind Sundararajan and his wife Bindu Reddy, the former head of product management for Google Apps. That’s right. I told you their names. You could knock on their door demanding your money

3. Discloses are compulsory. MyLikes won’t be a company that the FTC will be chasing anything soon for its non-compliance of its rules.

4. Their system only allows you to tweet up to one ad per day. This will cut the chances of you spamming your followers, as well as allowing your account to be potentially suspended by Twitter.

If you sign up for a MyLikes account, you’ll get a chance to win an iPad every month. Sign Up below:

Sign Up for MyLikes

How’s your earnings amount? Tell me in the comments below.

Josh here: Happy New Year guys, thanks for all your awesome support over 2009. Have a great 2010, and here’s the first blog post of the year! Want to Guest Post? Contact me.

This is a guest post by Danny Topping.

Since 2007, the world economy has been going downhill with banks and large corporations needing help and many companies closing their doors. As a result, many people have lots their jobs, and thus a way to bring home money to support their families. Lots of folks have found since then that the ability to make money online will help supplement an income or in many cases replace it all together. People have learned ways to make money online and quit their full time jobs.

This is not easy to do, but can be done with three simple steps.

First, one must do some research. There are many business and money making opportunities on the internet and it would serve you best to research this first. Go to websites that you like and follow people who are successful at making money on the internet. Follow what they do, watch them for the changes they make to their websites, blogs, videos, and press releases. This should show you how they make money online and it is important to constantly be thinking about what they are doing, and if you think it could be something you do also.

Second, copy and replicate those who are successful on the internet by planning. Learn how they make money online, and stalk them. You cannot be successful if you are not copying and replicating those who have gotten there first. In this step, decisions must be made. Things like signing up for opportunities, paying entry fees or starter package fees, and creating accounts with blogs and videos and article sites. Do not expect to be generating income in this step. This is the game plan and the starting point for where you will be taking your online endeavors. Do not do too much in this stage because you will end up getting burnt out and you will not make money online.

Third and lastly, you must take action on your plan. Whether it is writing articles, creating videos, posting to blogs, or sending postcards you must take action in order to receive results. Do not expect to just sit back and relax at this stage but once things get going and moving in the right direction, your plan will get easier to do as you master it and do it over and over. This is where you will make money online and watch the cash roll in.

Danny Topping is an Internet Marketing guru and is loving the Home Income Alliance opportunity by teaching you how to make money online. You can learn more by visiting his website at: http://www.MakeRealMoneySolutions.com

If you want to stop working for someone else and finally start working for yourself by making money online, go to: http://www.MakeRealMoneySolutions.com

Make Money by Tweeting Adverts

1. MyLikes – So Far I’ve made $65.90
MyLikes is a new advertising network created by two ex-Google employees as an advertising alternative to Google’s AdSense. MyLikes allows you to create “Likes” of certain products. Advertisers can then allow publishers to post “Sponsored Likes” on to their twitter account as a tweet (as well as Blogger blogs posts). MyLikes is currently the best advertising network for those with a low number of followers, as the payout amount is an industry-low of just $2. Instead of trying to reach $50 or even $100 just to cash out to PayPal, any small publishers can rely on MyLikes. The payments are also automatic, meaning that you won’t have to manually request a payout. The average cost per click is $0.48 – this means you only need 5 clicks per ad to cash out to PayPal! That’s amazingly easy.
Recommended for Twitter accounts with low number of followers.

2. Sponsored Tweets – So far I’ve made $552.13
Sponsored Tweets is IZEA’s brand new advertising network. IZEA is a social media marketing company and the world leader in sponsored conversations. IZEA operates a network of over 250000 bloggers and 25000 advertisers. Izea has numerous sponsored advertising networks prior to SponsoredTweets, including PayPerPost and SocialSpark. This being said, SponsoredTweets is geared more towards Web Celebrities like John Chow and Shoemoney, although smaller tweeters will still get opportunities.
Recommended for those with high number of followers (ie. 10,000+).

3. ad.ly – S0 far I’ve made $750.62
ad.ly, not to be confused with adf.ly below, is the latest Twitter Advertising network, having just launched on the 22nd of September. Again, similar to Sponsored Tweets above, this service mostly caters to highend advertisers (my two advertisers were Microsoft and NBC) wanting to connect with celebrities and other high-end Twitter users. In fact, founder and CEO Sean Rad says that he wants Ad.ly to be the Federated Media for Twitter. They have an impressive list of high-profile celebrities, including Kim Kardashian, Brooke Burke, Nicole Richie, Brody Jenner, Dr. Drew and Samantha Ronson. ad.ly also allows you to donate a portion of your earnings to a charity of your choice (similar to AdCause).
Recommended for those with high number of followers (ie. 10,000+).

4. TwittAd – So far I’ve made $407.96
TwittAd is the original (and the first) Twitter advertising network. Currently, the payment system is “Pay Per Opportunity”,where you sell your background and allow 3 advertising tweet on your twitter account for a sett time (usually 7 days). Although there aren’t many opportunities, once in a while an opportunity once pop up, and it can be quite high paying too (one was $100! for just 7 days).
Recommended for those with a medium number of followers (ie. in the thousands).

5. RevTwt - So far I’ve made $121.51
Although RevTwt‘s website does look like a scam, I’ll admit it’s not a scam. RevTwt advertising are placed as a tweet, which is displayed on your Twitter Profile. There are no disclaimers for the ads, so your followers may find it hard to distinguish between ads and real tweets. Unlike Magpie though, RevTwt pays per click, not per view (a.k.a. Pay-Per-Tweet). This allows the system to be more open to click fraud, similar to Google AdSense, although their system in place seems to be able to detect fraud pretty well, by looking at RevTwt’s Twitter profile. If you have over 8,000 followers, you become part of RevTwt‘s Elite program, with higher paying ads up to $0.20 per click. Normal adverts pays around $0.05 per click.
Update: MyLikes’ average is $0.48 per click. You can earn 5 times more with MyLikes compared with RevTwt.

6. Be-A-Magpie – So far I’ve made $429.70
Be-A-Magpie, a company located in Germany, places relevant advert “tweets” which are placed along with your existing tweets. They pay according to 4 different models: pay per view, pay per click, pay per lead and pay per sale. Just like any other Entrepreneurial Teenager would do, I signed up for this service (with a sub account) to experiment with it. At first, the adverts were about Magpie itself, or Magpie’s parent company’s other product called Stock Pilot. And then I discovered they paid an extremely high €20-30 per pay-per-view tweet. You can cash out after you reach €50. Now, simple maths can tell you that with only 2 magpie tweets, you can get up to €50 in your PayPal already! So you might be asking, I made $429.70 (or €323.90) from something as simple as this? Well, it’s the truth. Read the blog post about Magpie, with the PayPal payment proof.
Update: Seems pretty inactive now. I’m not receiving any more ads from Magpie.

7. PayMeTweets
PayMeTweets pays you to retweet sponsors. In my opinion, they pay so ridiculously  low (less than $0.100 CPM per retweet, or less than $0.10 per 1000 followers) it’s not even worth it. With my @joshlam account (with 45,000+ followers), the ads pay $0.20-$0.80, which is really low when compared to Sponsored Tweets ($110 per tweet) or Magpie (€32/$46 per tweet).

8. TweetROI
Unlike PayMeTweets,  the payment terms are more reasonable. The highest tweet pays $2.5, and with a $50 payout, this isn’t too bad. Similarly to the other smaller advertising networks, there doesn’t seem like many opportunities available.

9. AdCause
AdCause is a Twitter advertising network with a twist. They allow you to donate a portion (or all of) your earnings to a specific charity of your choice. While this seems like a good idea, there doesn’t seem like a load of advertisers on this network once again.

10. twivert
Twivert is a Pay Per Click advertising network, similar to RevTwt above. On average, the payment terms is $0.01 per click. Sign up though this promotional link to get a $5 bonus. Overall, the payout is one of the lowest compared to the other networks, although the earning potential seems quite low.

Make money by Shortening URL’s

11. adf.ly
Adf.ly or “AdFly” is a Pay-Per-Impression advertising network. Unlike other networks, adf.ly shows an ad while your visitor is being transfer to their link – which might be an annoyance to your followers. Payment is based on CPM, with up to $1.5CPM for US visitors to $0.50CPM for International Visitors. View this sample shortened link http://adf.ly/59/joshlam where an ad (in my case this was simply adf.ly‘s website) is shown before being redirected to joshlam.com. Notice the “Skip Ad” button at the top right.

12. Tweetbucks
Tweetbucks allow you to make money via affiliate links, abet Tweetbucks will take a portion of the affiliate earnings per sale. To be honest, this is really a lazy man’s way to not signing up to ClickBank, Commission Junction or Amazon Associates and just create the links yourself. By signing up to these networks yourself, no third-party will take a portion of your earnings, which will mean more money for you.

13. adjix.com
Those shortened URL’s contain an iFrame which contains ads. The payouts are quite low compared to the two other service I mentioned above. I only suggest using Adjix if you have a large base of followers, otherwise you’ll find it quite hard to monetize this service. Personally, I don’t actually like this service much.

(14. Revtwt)
Revtwt has been previously mentioned above as a Pay-Per-Click network, but they also allow you to make money by Shortening Links.

Scams

As much as I’ll like to promote some of these companies, I have to shame some companies as well.  These companies are unlikely to pay you any money, even though you’ve tweeted their ads. Do not sign up for these networks. Here’s the list: 

YakBurst
YakBurst is a scam. They will not pay you any requested funds from your account.  It states that payments will be made from the 1st to the 15th every month. I’ve still haven’t received a singly payment from them yet from a request made 2 months ago. www.yakburst.com

Network	Advertisting Model	Disclourse	Referral Program?	Mininium Payout	Payment Options
MyLikes	Pay Per Click	Required, Shown as: #ad	Yes	$2	PayPal
Sponsored Tweets	Pay Per Tweet	Required, Customizeable	No	$50	PayPal
Ad.ly	Pay Per Tweet	Required, Shown as: (Ad)	Yes	$50	PayPal, check
RevTwt	Pay Per Click	None	Yes	$20	PayPal, check at $100
TwittAd	Pay Per "Opportunity" (usually 3 tweets and your background)	Required	Yes	$30	PayPal
Be-a-Magpie	Pay Per Lead and Pay Per Tweet	Required, but Custom	Yes	€ 50	PayPal
AdCause	Pay Per "Opportunity"	None	No	$25	PayPal
Pay Me Tweets	Pay Per Tweet	None	No	$50	PayPal
TweetROI	Pay Per Tweet	None	No	$50	PayPal
twivert	Pay Per Click	None	No	$30	PayPal
adf.ly	Pay Per Impression	None	Yes	$25	PayPal
tweetbucks	Pay Per Lead	None	Yes	$25	PayPal
adjix	Pay Per Impression	None	No	$25	Cheque

Changelog:
18/04 Update 2: Added MyLikes, new jQuery sortable table and updated earnings amount
20/10 Update 1: Added ad.ly and updated new earnings amount

7th Jan Update: Magpie used to be a great money-maker. But there doesn’t seem to be any advertisers anymore. Visit this blog post comparing 12 Twitter Advertising Networks to join other networks.

Okay, I lied. I didn’t just use Twitter. I signed up for Magpie as well.

So what is Magpie? As many of you know, there’s currently a controversial new Twitter Advertising Company called Magpie, a company located in Germany. Magpie places relevant advert “tweets” which are placed along with your existing tweets. They pay according to 4 different models: pay per view, pay-per-click, pay per lead and pay per sale. Many people don’t like having adverts in

Just like any other Entrepreneurial Teenager would do, I signed up for this service (with a sub account) to experiment with it. At first, the adverts were about Magpie itself, or Magpie’s parent company’s other product called Stock Pilot. And then I discovered they paid an extremely high €20-30 per pay-per-view tweet. You can cash out after you reach €50. Now, simple maths can tell you that with only 2 magpie tweets, you can get up to €50 in your PayPal already! An example of the tweets are shown below.

So you might be asking, I made $429.70 (or €323.90) from something as simple as this? Well, it’s the truth. Check out my PayPal history:

Not Bad. So that’s all there is to the Magpie program. There’s so little work involved, anyone could earn a few euros with no experience.

I know Twitter  is for real people, and asks the question “What are you doing right now?”, not “What are you advertising right now? “.  But these magpie are actually relevant to your normal tweets, making them less like “advertising”, and sometimes they make it hard for someone to realize if it’s an ad or a real tweet.

Therefore, I’m closing the experiment down. But if you’ll like to experiment with Magpie and prehaps earn a few dollars euros, I suggest you to sign up for Magpie. Who knows, you might even get a few hundreds euros just like me!

Tell me how Magpie worked out for you in the comments! I’ll love to know!

Twitter is a social network which simply asks the question, “What are you doing?” And you reply in 140 characters or less by mobile texting, instant message, or the web. It okay if you’re still new to this Twitter “thing”, you’re not alone. 26% of the U.S. population don’t even know what Twitter is yet. Hopefully after this post, we’ll change your mind.