Anyway, the first weekend of the New Year found me running a few errands into town. I browsed Craigslist that morning before leaving the house. I always check out the ‘Free’ section to see what people are giving away. Saturday morning I found a lady giving away 2 wheels and tires to a Chevy pickup. They were out by her Garage and she wanted them gone. Also near the same place was a Family cleaning out their Garage and they had some Sports equipment set out on the curb. Since I would be going by there, I decided to stop and check it out.

As luck would have it, the 2 tires and wheels came off of a late model compact Chevy pickup so I took those. I think they were factory originals. The tires had some wear, but still had life left in them.

I didn’t make it to the Family with the stuff from the Garage until later, by then most of the stuff was gone but I did score on 4 rods and reels that were left. They were pretty junky except one, which I kept for myself.

One the way home, I stopped by a Tire store and sold both tires and wheels for $45. I figured they were worth more, but I didn’t want to waste time with the guy. Besides, $45 for a few minutes work isn’t bad.

I stopped at a Pawn Shop to offload the rods and reels (except the one I kept for myself). Since they were pretty crappy, I could only manage to get $20 combined for the 3 that were left.

Oh well, I made $65 that morning simply by taking a few minutes out of my day. I had to go in that direction anyway, so stopping by those homes wasn’t a big deal.

Craigslist is an excellent place to find stuff to sell offline or online!

Sunday I logged on to my Project Payday account and filled in some offers. It’s been a while since I’ve used Project Payday, but filling out offers is still as boring as it ever was. I spent about 3 1/4 hours Sunday and made $45. Not bad for sitting at the Dining room table pecking out offers in my shorts and T-shirt!

Sunday evening I start getting calls from Clients and for the next week and a half I was on the road a bit. I did manage to type out 10 articles, in two 5 article sets, on a competitive subjects and sold them on Digital Point. These articles ranged from 600 to 1100 words each. One set I got $30 and the next set I received $35 for.

These were just rewritten PLR articles. They were well researched and written in SEO copy for websites. One gentleman has already emailed me back asking if I had more. I’m not sure if I’ll do that again. I hate having to set down, research and write lengthy articles on subjects I know little about! As you can probably tell, my attention span isn’t very long

I also started creating some Squidoo Lenses and HubPages. I’ll probably use some of these to help push offers and I might try and flip a couple of the Squidoo Lenses. I’m not sure yet, but I know there’s a chance that I’ll need them later on.

Now I’ve known how to make Squidoo Lenses for a while. But it wasn’t until I read “Flip That Lens” by Tiffany Dow that I found out how to trick a Lens out that I could flip. While there are some people selling Lenses on DigitalPoint Forums for $30, she gets anywhere from $125 to $250 for her Lenses. One look at them and you’ll know why. She takes building Squidoo Lenses to the next level!

Start Small and Work Your Way Up

As you can tell, these small sales will not get me to $2500 this month alone. But there is an important reason you want to start with these small sales.

1. They give you a little bit of confidence. There was a time long ago that I was ‘between jobs’ and made yard sales, estate sales and grabbed up free stuff off of Cragslist to make some extra money until the next job came along. I either sold this stuff locally or I would put it on eBay. So I knew I could make some quick cash that way. But if you’ve never done this before, these are easy ways to make money while you learn.
2. I know I’m going to need more than $50 in the future to buy stuff for bigger projects. These small sales gives me some operating room to buy what I’ll need later on.

Back To Making Money From Home

Once I was back at home, I started doing some keyword research to see if I could find a niche to make some serious amount of money before the end of the Month. Now that I only had about half the month left, it was going to be a big challenge.

I found a few niches I thought I could make some money off of. So the first thing I did was start visiting some of the Affiliate Networks to see what kind of offers were out there for these niches.

Tips For Choosing An Affiliate Offer

I visited ClickBank, Azoogle, CJ, Copeac and ROI Rocket looking for the best offers. Now, when I say ‘Best Offers’, I don’t necessarily mean the highest paying offer. What I look for first and foremost is what the Customer has to do in order for me to get paid.

For example, for this niche there were several offers that I found. One offer paid $37 per sale. In order for me to get paid, the Customer would have to buy that product. Another offer for the niche paid $22.50 per lead. In order for me to get paid, the Customer has to fill out a contact for and pay $2.95 shipping & handling.

Another offer paid $9 per lead and all the Customer has to do is fill out a contact form with a valid email and address before I get paid.

Now, which one do you think I chose?

For this niche, I chose the $9 offer because I know it’s easier to get someone to give their email address than it is for them to whip out $37 or even $2.95. If this Challenge were longer, then I would come up with an action plan to make money with the $37 per sale offer.

Even though I’m making less money per lead with the $9 offer, I can get people to sign up quicker than making them pay for something. In essence, I can make money quicker in the short term.

As I said before, I have several other niches that I’ll be looking at and finding offers for those too. I’m not sure if I’ll have time to start working them, I’ll just have to wait and see.

Getting Started Promoting Affiliate Offers

Here’s how I started getting ready to push this offer. Again, this is not how I would do it if I had more time. This short term promotion isn’t the best way to make money with these offers in my opinion, but I have to work in the constraints that I set for myself.

I started off by buying two domains for 8 bucks and change from NameCheap for niches. They’re normally $9.69, but I used the NameCheap Promo Code of ‘Happy2009′ to get a discount of $8.81 per domain. If that NameCheap Promo Code doesn’t work for you, then just Google “NameCheap Promo Code” and you can find one that does.

I also signed up for the Pro Hosting Plan at NameCheap because they will let you pay by the month. It’s not the cheapest plan, but it’s the cheapest plan you can get and still pay by the month. You can also host multiple domains on one account for the $6.95 where you can’t with the cheaper plan.

I then went to Blogger and built two Blogger Blogs for that Niche.

Next, I’ve started writing some articles that I will be promoting my Niche with. I’ll use both EzineArticles and GoArticles since they are both free. I’ve written 10 articles and have submitted them to promote my niche.

I’m nearing the point now that I’ll be setting up the WordPress blogs and designing them the way I want to push the offers. I hope to generate some quick targeted traffic and start making sales!

Finally, I used www.big-boards.com to find forums relating to my niche. So far I’ve found 8 forums where I’ve set up accounts at and have started posting some general information post and answered a few questions to get my post count up.

I’ve also set up accounts at MySpace, Twitter, Yahoo Answers and Facebook to do the same. I’ve started using these accounts and building up friends and post.

The reason behind doing it this way is because I’m going to need a lot of traffic and need it fast. These places have a lot of traffic. Not great converters, but some will take the offers I push. It’s very important that you get started on the Forums and Social Media sites early and build up a reputation. Do not Spam them. You should be actively involved and asking real questions or giving real help. This will pay back huge dividends down the road as you’ll see with the next update.

As you can see, just getting ready to push an offer can take quite a bit of time!

The next update should be at the end of the month and I’ll let you know how well it’s gone. Don’t be surprised if I don’t make it with the unforseen time I spent on the road, I ended up with about half the month to work on this. But I think I’ll still have a pretty good show!

A Word About Making Money Fast On the Internet

These tactics that I’m using to make money quick aren’t the same ones I would normally do. I don’t want anyone to get the idea that making money online is quick or easy. It’s hard work, at least it is for me. I spend a lot of time working on my online businesses.

Whenever I start up a new website, I plan on working on it a year or more before I start seeing any tangible results. Especially if it’s in a competitive niche. For smaller niches with less competition, maybe 6 to 8 months before I start seeing any real rankings and sales.

I like to use organic traffic to drive sales to my websites. I’ll admit, I’m kinda lazy and don’t like spending all my time on one website. I like to build them and forget ‘em as they say. Still, it takes a lot of time building content and backlinks to these sites to get them making money.

The only reason I decided to do this little Challenge is to show you that money could be made rather quickly online. It’s been my experience that these little quick cash cows don’t last long. With more work, you can generally turn them into long term money makers. Sometimes they do well, other times they don’t. That’s just the fact about making money using websites and organic traffic on the Internet.

I’m kicking around the idea of starting a new website after this Challenge is done and doing a 1 year challenge where everyone can follow along with me. I’ll have to wait and see how this idea pans out and whether or not I think I’ll have time to take on another project! I do think it would be ver beneficial to many of you just getting started in Internet Marketing though.

The Janurary Make Money Online Challenge Financials

Okay, I wanted to share a little bit with you about how much I’ve made and spent so far. Here’s the breakdown.

Startup: $50

Craigslist Sales: $65

Article Sales on DP: $65 (two article packs, one sold for $30 the other for $35)

Project Payday: $45

Total not including initial $50: $175

Total money including $50 seed money: $225

Expeditures

Two domain names at NameCheap: $17.62

Web Hosting: $6.95

I’m not counting the Gas I used to get the Craigslist items because both places were in the same area as I was going to run errands. (less than 3 miles away) The cost of gas is minimal for these items.

Total Spent so far: $24.57 (this will start changing here soon)

Subtracting the money made from the money spent leaves me with a Grand Total of $200.43

Only about $2300 to go in about a week and half! WooHoo!

Once I get into really pushing these offers, you’ll probably see the expenditures go up a little.

Be sure to sign up for my RSS feed so you can find out how this all ends at the end of the month. I’ll be  sharing with you more details about how I set up the offers, reactions and lessons learned.

Anyway, it was probably a troll email, but it did get me to thinking.

Could I start out with nothing and make some decent money online without all my tools and resources? Yes, I think I could.

So I decided to challenge myself for the month of January. I’m going to start a Challenge to make $2500 online during the month. Why $2500? I don’t know, it seems like a decent number. Plus, that’s $30,000 per year before taxes. I’d say that’s pretty close to what the average household brings home in the U.S. At any rate, that added income would sure come in handy to many families across the World right now, not just here in the U.S.

I’m setting some guidelines for myself to try and make it as fair as possible.

Here are some of the guidelines I’m setting.

• I’ll only be using free or low cost resources that are available on the Internet and accessible to the general public.
• I’m only going to start the Challenge with $50. Nearly anyone can beg, borrow or steal (just j/k’ing about the stealing part) fifty bucks. Sure, you can get started with nothing, but in reality, an online business is just like any other business. You’re going to have to put up a little money. Any money I make, I’ll reinvest it into the challenge if I need to.
• I won’t use any of my existing websites for help. It would be much easier, but I realize many people do not have a network of websites in place, so mine will be off limits to help me with this challenge.
• I’ll use a variety of techniques to make money online. I haven’t sit down and figured all the ways that I’ll try, but I will do a weekly post and let people know what I did the previous week and how much money was made or lost for that week.
• At the end of the Challenge – win, lose or draw – I’ll be giving away a lot of my resources to a few lucky readers. (I’m thinking a website here, tools, ebooks, etc…) Since I don’t know where this will take me, I don’t know yet what I will have to giveaway!
• To be elgible for the giveaway, all you need to do is leave a comment on any of the post relating to the January $2500 Challenge and ask to be entered. You must let me know through the comments you want entered as some people will not be wanting to enter but yet want to comment. Extra entries will be given to people who blog about the January $2500 Challenge.

Although I sincerely believe anyone can make money online if they just put forth a good effort and stay focused, I know that many people don’t have a clue where to start. I’m of the mindset that making money online is a long term proposition, but I believe some money can be made rather quickly in certain areas. These short term money making projects can help you get by while waiting on your long term business to become profitable.

I’d love to hear from you folks. Suggestions, comments or just to enter the giveaway that will happen at the end of the Challenge, leave me a comment. I’ll keep you updated as I sit down and plan how I’m going to make money online with the January $2500 Challenge.

Could you make extra cash online in a week to buy your Family’s groceries? Could you make enough money to pay your electric bill?

Believe it or not, many people find their self in this situation or one very close to it every day.

Here are 7 Techniques you could use to put some cash in your pocket within a week working online.

1. Project Payday – As an experiment one day, I tried Project Payday just to see how long it would take me to make extra cash. It was free to join so I signed up at their website, downloaded and watched the training video’s they provided. I followed the directions for getting set up to a ‘T’.  All total, between the sign up, watching training video’s and implementing the instructions, took me a little over 3 hours. I then spent about half a day just browsing and reading to get a feel of how this program worked.  I then put my name out as being available for some “offers” and I made $20 by the end of the first day. Next day I put about 6 hours into the program and made over $60 total. They have a $100 guarantee that states that if you follow the simple 4 step process and do not make money in the first 24 hours, they’ll give you $100. Pretty cut and dried and the best guarantee I’ve seen. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a get rich quick scheme. You’ll have to work at it but you can earn money quickly. I personally found it very tedious though! I’m not cut out to spend long stretches at the computer. You can sign up for free with Project Payday and get started today by clicking here. It’s one of the few places where you can start making a little bit of money relatively quick.
2. Read Emails – Taking Online Survey’s, etc: In my opinion, this takes about as much time as Project Payday. There are companies that receive thousands of emails every day that need to be read. Obviously the CEO or other employees can’t spend every day reading emails, so they outsource this. There are several companies where they outsource this type of work as well as other tedious, time consuming chores such as product testing, online surveys, online mystery shopping and other. Send Earnings is one such company that have these offers. Consumers such as you sign up and are normally paid on a per assignment completed basis. The pay varies by what type of assignment you choose. You also won’t get rich doing this, but you can make a little money with some effort. Click Here to learn more or to sign up for this opportunity.
3. Become a Freelance Writer. It’s easier than you might think and you don’t need to be an English major to make money with this. In fact, it’s probably better if you’re not! You can sell your articles at Forums like DigitalPoint Forums and SitePoint Forums. Each has a market place. Don’t expect to make a killing here but you can make some extra cash. If you really want to ramp up your earnings from Writing, then I’d suggest signing up for a service like Freelance Home Writers. This is a service like a job board where you log in to see what kind of Writing Jobs are available. Some will have the prices they are willing to pay for articles, some won’t. There’s also a couple of other benefits to signing up for their service. Check them out if you’d like to make money from home Writing.
4. One word. Ebay. There are so many ways to make money with eBay that it isn’t funny. Ebay has allowed many people who would not have been able to support their self or their Families to make more than enough money to live well. One technique that I used when I was between jobs many years ago was to visit Garage sales and Estate auctions and buy products to sell on ebay. You have have a good idea what something is worth in order for this to work. Looking at something and saying “Oh, this looks like it’s valuable” isn’t good enough. You’ll wind up with a house full of junk! One way many people are starting to make money on eBay is with their own stores. Heck, eBay will even help you get started. They offer beginning or advanced entrepreneurs a site that helps you get started selling products with your own site. This takes a lot of time and effort away from getting started and gives you more time for promotion and other money making ideas. Take a look for yourself -  One Month Free Trial! ProStores – an eBay Company
5. Are you a Photographer? There are several freelance photography websites on the Internet where you can sell your photo’s. You don’t have to be a Professional either. Just as long as your photo’s are clear and eye catching, you can sell them on sites like iStockPhoto.com. There’s a huge demand for stock photography and illustrations. You might as well get your share of the cash! There’s also a huge market for other types of photo’s, but I’ll let you figure those out for yourself
6. Sell your Service. Do you know how to use a specific program inside and out? Can you take QuickBooks or any of the MS Office programs and make them beg for mercy? Then you have skills that are in need. Places such as eLance, RentACoder and others have forums set up to help you sell your services. Some of these pay really well also, they’re worth checking out if you need some quick cash!
7. Set up a local directory site. I’m telling you people something right now. I think the future of the Internet is in the local markets. Remember when the Internet got off the ground and the buzz word was “Think Globally?” I’m going to tell you now to “Think Locally!” You treat your local market like a Niche, which it is. Build a Niche site about your local area and charge advertising or use Adsense. The best training I’ve seen is over at The Keyword Academy. Court’s course takes you through everything you’ll need to know to set up a profitable Niche site. From finding the right keywords, to setting up WordPress to learning how and WHERE to get backlinks, it’s all there. I paid $597 for this course and I can honestly say this is one of the few legitimate courses about learning how to make money online that you’ll find. I earned my money back in a very short time

Update: Court has since opened up the Keyword Crash Course as a subscription based model. Now anyone can sign up for just $1, take a look at the Training video’s (everything I paid $597!) and ask questions. If you decide to become a subscriber, then you’ll get new training each month, free webinars, forums and a lot more. Click here to learn more and take advantage of this offer for $1.

Whether you’re a college student needed a few extra bucks for the keg party, a stay at home Mom who needs some extra cash for the heating bill or just found out your company doesn’t need your services any longer, you can use the techniques above to help bring home the bacon.

There is no reason anyone has to lay back and go broke. I’ve known people who were dead ass broke and would not lift a finger to do anything except complain about being out of a job and having no money.

There are opportunities all around us to make money online. It’s up to you to get up and do it though, no one else will do all the work!

Some online entrepreneurs have used the above techniques plus others to start part time cash businesses and grew them into small fortunes. You don’t have to become the next Donald Trump, but there is no reason why you can’t make extra cash online to live off of if you had to.
What are some ways you’ve made quick cash from the Internet in your local market?

Generally, making money online is a long term project. No, wait. What I mean is, making a sustainable income online is a long term project. I don’t want you to get the notion that making money online quick is common or a long term solution because it isn’t. Now having said that, I do know some places you can legitimately make some quick cash. You won’t be able vacation in Paris with the money, but you just might be able to keep Johnny from breaking your Knee Caps over that $100.

To begin with, if you’re reading this, I’m assuming you know how to operate a computer and get yourself around the Internet. If that is the case, then you need to check out Project Payday. This is a service that helps you make cash by filling out those offers you see all over the Internet. Project Payday is free to sign up for and they have loads of training Video’s and even a mentoring program (which, I highly recommend if you want to maximize your earnings over a long period). As if that wasn’t enough, they even have one sweet guarantee. It simply states that if you follow the easy 4 step process and don’t make money in 24 hours, they’ll give you $100. Now that’s a guarantee you won’t see many programs make! It’s one of the few legitimate ways I know of that allows you to make some quick money online. Click here to learn how to get started making money today with Project Payday.

If I needed a $100 within a few days and had no other means to get it, this is the program I would use.

Many people make full time incomes from home by selling things on Ebay. When I used Ebay for income, I visited Garage sales, Estate auctions and classified sites like Craigslist for stuff to resell. You can still make money this way, but it’s not as easy as it once was now that eBay has increased their listing fees and the auctions are full of commercial companies auto listing their products.

Do you also realize that there are people that have no Sam’s Club or Cosco nearby? These people shop the internet for household items you and I take for granted. There are many people on eBay who do nothing but buy bulk items at these Warehouse stores and resell them. Sometimes they break the bulk items down into single units, other times they can sell the whole product at a nice profit. Again, make sure you know what you can buy a product for, how much it will cost you to ship it and the price range of what you can get for it. You don’t want to be sitting on a basement full of Tang you bought from Cosco!

Another way many people are making money with Ebay is starting their own online stores and populating them with products and ebay auctions. ProStores, an eBay company, offers several packages for people wanting to use this technique to take advantage of eBay products. You can start out small or go Big. These packages offer you a quick start method to get up and going without having to know any code or web design skills. Currently they’re offering a free one month trial. Click here to see how their sites work —-> One Month Free Trial! ProStores – an eBay Company

A lot of people have turned to Freelance Writing to make money online. They either sell articles on Forums like DigitalPoint or sign up for services like Freelance Home Writers. This is like a job board for Freelance Writers where you sign in and view Writing jobs that Companies and Individuals have posted. There are other benefits and features to this service, so visit their site to learn more.

One more place you can make money online quick is Etsy. Etsy is an auction site where people go and sell their crafts. This site has really exploded lately and many people find they can stay home and make crafts to sell. If you’re especially crafty, handy or other wise capable of making something useful or beautiful, you may want to give Etsy a try. Some people are raking in the money with their crafts.

Have you ever thought about selling an ebook? Do you know you can sell it on Amazon? You can thanks to the Amazon Kindle. You simply become an Amazon publisher and you can write ebooks and Amazon will publish them. They go into a library where Kindle users can download them, for a fee. You get a percentage of the fee each time someone downloads your ebook. The ebooks don’t have to be your’s either. You can grab some PLR ebooks and publish them as well.

These are only a few ways you can make money online quick. There are others I’ve discussed throughout this blog. These will get you started. Just use some common sense and don’t panic if you suddenly find yourself needing money. Just turn on the computer and go to work.