If any of my friends or readers have some input, please post a comment pointing me in the right direction.  Fell free to leave a link in the body of your message to where I can get more information on any cool text programs you have come accross.

Thanks much!

TAM

I started blogging in Feb. 2008 on a Free Blogger Site with absolutly NO CLUE what I was doing.  As my friend at MoneyEnergy mentioned in one of her comments…it took like 6 months to get my first Adsense Check. 

While I still know very little about making money online, I am now making enough per month to cover a decent little car payment, and my site statistics are heading in the right direction every month.  That being said, I’ve got a couple of tips here that might save you some time if you are just starting out blogging.  If you post often enough, and follow a few good ideas, you should be able to get an adsense check or affiliate check within 2 months or so.

Tip #1 Forget Blogger, and go straight to a Hosted, Wordpress site with a theme that accents your content and is easy to use.  This was, BY FAR, the best thing that I did.  Hosting through HostGator.com is only $10 per month, and it is well worth the investment.  It gives your blog a much more porfessional feel than the basic blogger or wordpress.com package.

Tip #2  Invest in a good domain name!  Search GoDaddy.com for hours if you have to so you can buy a good online brandname to build your blog around.  I personally made a mistake on this one, as I probably could have done alot better than “The Almost Millionaire” as it is kind of long and most people don’t think or care about Almost Millionaires…but it has worked well, and made sense to me at the time.

Tip #3  Spend some time writing 4-7 of your BEST possible articles focused on what type of blog you are trying to develop, personal finance, SEO, marketing, private equity, investments…whatever.  Just focus your efforts on your best stuff within your chosen topic.

Tip #4  Spend about a two weeks finding blogs like yours.  Make meaningful comments to show your interest and support for those blogs.  Invest your time in developing friendships with those bloggers who are receptive to your comments and seem interested in interacting with you.  There are TONS of great bloggers who like to help newbies, but there are a lot of JERKS out there too, who will never support you or give you the time of day.  Focus on the friendly bloggers, and avoid those who show no interest in you…and don’t take it personally, there are just some guys who are so big they don’t have the time in the day to respond to comments and develop relationships.  FYI, a few guys who are great at developing online conversations are Sire from Wassupblog, Mitch from I’m Just Sharing, and Dave at Do You Dave Ramsey.  There are more, I wish I had time to name them all.

Tip #5  Invest your time and money in learning from others who have been successful at making money online and from blogging.  There is literally millions of pieces of good information out there that can help you learn how to do AdSense, or affiliate programs, or networking marketing.  I try to read something new every week as I try to figure out the endless possibilities that the Internet offers.

Tip #6  REPEAT STEPS #3, #4, AND #5 OVER AND OVER AGAIN.  Stick with it!  Worst case scenario, you will have all your thoughts online and organized, so you can easily write your autobiography when you are old, rich, and famous

I apologize to all of you who already know all this stuff, as I realize that most of you know WAY more than me about making money online.  I post this though, because this stuff would have seriously helped me when I started online, and I may not have wasted 6 months posting on blogger for my 3 visitors a day.  My hope is that all of you who read this blog will leave you #1 Tip for New Bloggers in the comments section.  That would be awesome!

Because I had no idea what a “meme” was when Sire “tagged” me, I asked him…Here is his response

As far as I can tell it’s sort of a ‘tag’ game bloggers play. Someone starts up a theme and then involves other bloggers by ‘tagging’ them. Those bloggers continue the theme and ‘tag’ other bloggers. In a way I suppose it’s a fun way of link sharing.

And here are the rules of the meme:

1. Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
2. Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged.

Well, seven things about me that I didn’t already include on that facebook “25 things” that I’ve plastered everywhere.

1.  I eat either popcorn or cookie dough ice cream (or both) almost every night of my life. 

2.  I wife and I got married about two weeks after she graduated from High School.  10 years ago, July.

3.  I bought a Hummer H2 in April 2004.  Gas prices jumped 11% the day after I bought it…I felt like God was just laughing at me.

4.  I am not sure why, but I keep a copy of my last 7 years tax returns with me at all times.  ???

5.  My oldest daughter starts indoor Soccer tomorrow and I’m really freaking excited!

6.  I graduated summa cum-laude from my university, which is amazing because I almost didn’t show up to high school my senior year, and couldn’t read until about 5th grade.

7.  I built a home in Michigan in Jan. 2006…the EXACT MONTH that the housing bubble really started to burst here…hence, the Almost.

And now on to keeping this mindless meme going.  I’m tagging Blake @ YoungDough, Todd @ Success With Todd, Mike @ Mike’s Life, Jeff @ jackcpunut, Trey @ SwollenThumb, Matt @ BiggbyJackson, and Trevor @ Financial Nut

I took the lead from Sire again and … As an added benefit to those of you who I have tagged, you will be happy to know that I have subscribed to all your feeds, so now it’s over to you to tag another 7 suckers willing participants.

I’m exceedingly thankful for the dozen or so other bloggers who regularly take the time to comment and add value to The Almost Millionaire.  The occasional stop ins are great too…but those bloggers who I consider “regulars”…(the ones that I try to support the most) are the ones that REALLY make it fun.  I will not visit the blogs of my regulars and friends without trying my best to leave something there of value…and you all seem to do the same.  Often I’ll post some Personal Finance ideas, and you all will leave BETTER advice in your comments and thoughts.  And I can’t thank guys like Mitch enough for all they have done to make blogging fun. 

You all are very appreciated…that is the bottom line.  So cheers to a fun and profitable future!  Let me know what I can do to help you be successful, because Blogging is an island if we don’t build a team!

I’ve always had the expectation that this blog would slowly grow and gain a couple of new readers a week…AND THEN SOMEONE STUMBLED UPON MY SITE.  The graph below shows what that meant for me.

As you can see, two days ago I had a HUGE SPIKE in unique visitors and page views.  I quickly went to statcounter.com to see where these visits were coming from.  Nearly every one was from Stumble Upon.  I have yet to figure out exactly how stumble upon works, but I’m going to, because my traffic has been through the roof since Feb. 2 and so has my site earnings.  Absolutely Amazing! 

So if you were the blessed person who decided to Stumble my site, THANK YOU!  When I figure out Stumble Upon and who you are, I will surely return the favor!