Passive Income? Is it possible to earn a passive income online

Yes you Can Earn a Passive Income Working Online - and I will prove it.
What is passive income and why do we strive to achieve it?

Passive income is an income received on a regular basis, with little effort required to maintain it.

I wanted to write something about a recent event in my life that made me realise, all the work I have been doing online has indeed lead to me earning a passive income online.
Meaning I could actually take some time off and still earn online without worrying.

When I first started out working online it seemed the amount of effort I was having to put in > to how much I was earning was way below national minimum wage? You know what I mean, that first payday, when you eventually reach the payout threshold, and see not even dollars but....cents.... and you are just about ready to give up working online and go back to the regular job of 70 hours weeks.

 Looking at this graph of my earnings I could have easily given up in March, but I did not I just kept going, I knew it would work, I believed in myself. Can you see the graph just keeps rising? (date shows Oct11, but actually it is until January payout.)

This Christmas I had a great Christmas I had worked hard to make sure all my web pages were updated, good products, great content, I had also at this point started to replace affiliate links with my own affiliate links (this is a huge job, but worth it ...as you will find out) then a disaster happened in my family.

I basically spent nearly 3 months in an intensive Care unit, willing my big brother on. Nothing was further from my mind than my online work. Sadly my brother passed away, and I was left devastated. I took a lot of time off.
now before this happened I would spend nearly every waking moment checking, updating, republishing, checking again and again..... I thought that was what was making me money, during this off period of time, I did not update, I did not check nothing, my little account just ticked over itself.

But one day an envelope arrived in the post, it was from Amazon.com it included a cheque.....holy moley Christmas had been great! I rushed online to check the stats and could not believe my eyes, earnings from Squidoo had basically still risen! Even although I had changed 50 % of links on page to my own affiliate account to amazon,
**Someone just emailed me to ask a Question: I'm just starting on Squidoo should I just use my own affiliate links
In all honesty NO,  to start with I would not recommend you use ALL your own affiliate links? why not?
 Squidoo rewards you on lensrank and within their system there is an extra boost for sales via them, yes you share the revenue with Squidoo however whilst you are building your online profile, your knowledge about working online,
Amazon has different % to reach and it is difficult to maximise that % unless you have built good traffic to your pages.
The law of averages kicks in the more traffic clicks through to amazon the higher your sales....
So in the beginning use the modules like Amazon Spotlight,(my favourite and googles too!)  working with Squidoo, when you are able to see what is selling, and you have a solid lens with good organic "google" traffic, what links are being clicked on then start to replace these with your own affiliate links.

This will mean you will probably find your lens will drop in lensrank BUT your earnings will RISE in Amazon commissions. 
This is where you are heading, where you are not dependant on lensrank or any sites internal payment structure, will these sites be around forever?  If they disappeared tomorrow how would you still earn money? have you created blog posts or websites to compliment your pages

By the way, I am no good with maths, I just seem to work get paid and don't work things out, My outrageous habit of saying ooohhh....look at my earnings on paypal, and not really looking at to where it has come from!

But my husband loves figures, and he worked out that even in the 3 month period of doing very little I still had an average increase of 20% a month  (and this is the man who used to question what I was doing? wasting my time online.... who has now given up his full time job to allow me to work online full time and more! He is now a proud house husband, and does the Maths part for me...lol...) 


Wait - I did not nothing for 3 months yet still had increase, yes it was Christmas time, which he tried to include for and put into context. (By giving the average increase. )

So yes you can earn a residual/passive income from working online. But I do indeed work hard but it did indeed pay off when I most needed it.


I do not know anyone who has gotten to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but it will get you pretty near.....Margaret Thatcher (Britain's first Woman Prime Minister)

I lost not only my brother, but indeed my biggest supporter of my dreams, no matter how crazy my little ideas for webpages, he was there telling me how fantastic they were, thanks Gav x

Page of NOTE: update for Penguin 2.0 is this the end for Affiliate Marketing

Should I delete a Lens? How can I help a Failing web page....

Never, ever delete a lens and this is why...


So now you want to know how to help your failing web Page.

I cannot take credit for this, I learned how to work out how to SEO optimise my pages, from a great on line friend @Thrivingmom on squidoo and I love to share her fantastic tips of how to check HOW does Google See your Page?
and then we can start to work out why our lens is failing and how we can fix it.

Keyword Research
Good Quality original content
Backlinks

all contribute towards a great page.

but if your lens is failing then we need to know how to fix it

I am going to send you over to Thriving moms post,
STEP 1: why is my lens failing because it is so easy you will want to go straight away and check all your pages!


and have a great look around as you will also find Thrivingmom shares her tips freely and great advice especially the post about STEP 2: Using your Keywords throughout your post, and how to do it easily!

Use the Step 1, Step 2 process on a failing lens/ web/ blog / post
your keywords more focused= your page being more focused.

Good SEO does not need to be complicated.

You can see more of thrivingmoms work on squidoo

Wow Traffic, how to get lots of visitors to your pages....

My Top Tips to get more Visitors to your Webpages - There are no secrets here.

Sorry I have not posted in a while however I have not been very well, glad to say on the mend, just taking it slowly.
I wanted to share with you some exciting news, My Squidoo Account broke 10,000 in November 2011  Visitors
Someone said something about it being thanks to Halloween lenses,

(March 2012 23,000 smashed one of my New Year Goals so will need to set another one!)

Just a side note: I have NOT made any Halloween niche specific lenses this year, these are all last years Halloween lenses. That have matured with age. and a little bit of tweaking.

Even though I have been away for some time from the computer, that does not mean that the hard work that you do when you start working online in the beginning, does not pay out in the end.

YES hard Work! good old fashioned work.
People are always wanting to know the inside secrets. How are you doing it?  they must know something I don't?
Well I can tell you there really are none. Focus on 1 project at a time  Work, are you honestly "working" are you doing every step you have been told to do?
Religiously, everyday are you "working" or are you kidding yourself on, and moaning when payday doesn't happen.

Are you focused, or do you go off on a tangent, and spread yourself to thin that your pages all crumble, as you have not spent the time or effort required for every page to survive online. 
My biggest hurdle to overcome, was getting "niche" on my subjects, and creating a niche that I owned. basically focusing on a certain subject and building good pages.

I help a lot of people online, they ask me for help, later I will pass them and ask how its going, "its not working" so I feel bad, I go and check out their pages, and instantly, see that they have not done ALL the steps I told them they need to do.
My biggest thing is to keep adding value to your pages, nurture and tend to those pages, like this blog post, I first wrote it when I had 10,000 visitors to my pages, then 15,000, then 20,000 see what I mean fresh updated content google loves it,

 How committed are you to making it work, do you think you should write a page and then move on to the next one?  What is holding up your structure, spread thinly it Will collapse, building building and securing your pages future is what works.

So If it is not working, work out what You are not doing to make it work.

That's what really does annoy me. People saying this does not work, yes it does, but what are you doing to make it work.

 Do you complain you are not making anything when you have been told give it time, nurture those lenses/pages

giving it time? how long is "Give it Time?" Well guys for me it took around just under a year to break that 10,000 visitors mark.
Yep you heard me, but all that hard work paid off as I told you I was very unwell and my pages were "working for me" giving me the best payout yet, ever.

A recent life event meant I had to take 2 months off  and I still made increase in earnings proving Squidoo and other online platforms can provide a passive income.

General Advice to getting more visitors to your pages -
Write about what you know  Write and publish even more. Create even more pages than you have already. Nurture and cherish and care for those pages, let Google see you care about them and so should they! Google is smart real smart, they are like big brother they  are watching you! Add in your own perspective.

Top tip 1: Learn SEO, inside outside upside down, type into google SEO and just work your way through it to be honest Google webmaster Central taught me everything I wanted and ever need to know! Get a google account!  they are the masters learn from them.

Top Tip 2: Be careful who you follow/take advice from/listen to online.
 Are they cleaner than a whistle, do they give good information, or do they suggest you do things that are unethical?  Take Shortcuts.....are you a sheep and follow the crowd, or are you your own person.....see this post about Who really is in charge of Your Online Business.

Yes using these techniques may give you an initial boost, but fly very close or does in fact break sites Terms of Service? And getting kicked off, all your hard work down the drain.
 but in the same turn if someone tells you hey you should be doing this, and you DO NOT do it, then you complain saying it did not work.

Top Tip 3: recognise who is working hard, follow THEM! Who is walking the talk...there is a lot of smoke and mirrors online, look for the hardworking producing results, follow them, be supportive of them and always encourage others, I have built up a fantastic network of online working friends!
 If someone is to say, hey try this Shortcut, its a bit dodgy might get your account locked but it brings in good visitors, hey you might even be infringing every law under the sun, but you can get some visitors!

Would you really?

I love my Digg pals, I read, follow and Digg their stuff and they Digg my stuff! I facebook like just about every lens I come across that I like, I google+1
...Ask yourself do you shamelessly self promote or do you promote and encourage others?

Google is counting "interest" in your page in their calculations! If others are talking about your page, then Google will be impressed and send lots more people to it too.
Social networking is going to be the way forward in ranking - watch this space. 

We may be in competition with each other, but the information I have learned from joining Places where lensmasters hang out has been priceless. But more importantly the connections I have made are invaluable

Top Tip 4: Stay away from anything that smells too good to be true! It always is.

Top  Tip 5: Make a daily plan! Make yourself accountable, stick to it and execute it, until I do this (and sometimes I forget to too!) I wander aimlessly around.

I now switch the computer off at dinner time, and after eating together,  will sit down with my husband, talking about his work day....boring but I have to give him time too..lol, and then I get to talk about my day, what have I done, making myself accountable.
My husband has a very renewed interest in my online work,  since we worked out over the last year, I average 20% increase in "wages" a month.  And notifications daily on my squidoo points stream.

We then discuss what I could put on my to-do-list for the next day - This works, working at home is difficult enough, the phone goes, people pop in for coffee, people think you skive on the computer and Facebook all day, trying to get them to take me working at home seriously was a nightmare!!!

webpages, to promoting them.  I will then write a post around YOUR Questions. I will answer as I can, based on MY personal knowledge, based on MY working practice. Based on what I have been doing and has been working for me.

Now someone asked me a question on here before, however forgot to say who they were, they knew me, and my work but I just answered on the comment, so PLEASE if you are a lensmaster (squidoo) add in your lensmaster name, so I can properly accredit you!
 Add in your Question, or wondering how to.....I will try my very hardest to answer as best I can to my ability however if not I will try to direct you in the best direction.

Remember Question, NAME, contact (or where I can find you online)

So If you are wanting to see these kind of notification daily on your pages, what have you got to do.....
Do the Work!

NOTE: Google Penguin 2.0 and what it means for Affiliate Marketers