Phone (Call or Text): 559-871-1613|brandonchopkins@gmail.com

Make Money Online

Earn Money Online with Vector Art

I don’t normally tell you about ideas that I don’t do myself, but I do see a huge opportunity for the right graphic and vector art designers. There are a handful of great companies that play the middle man in finding buyers for photography and vector creations.

My favorite is iStockPhoto.com. I’ve been buying stock photography for over 4 years from iStockPhoto and am a huge fan.

In the last year there has been a shift from traditional photography towards vector art. Take a look at this search for “trees”. Out of the 32 pictures for sale on the first page, 15 of them are vector. That’s almost 50% of the top pictures of trees are not real trees, they’re digital art.

If you are talented, browse the popular files, or just do a search like I did and you’ll find people selling stuff that you can make at home that will earn you money. Each time you sell something, iStockPhoto.com will pay you a royalty on that picture or graphic. The more you sell, the more you earn. The more you design, the more you sell. Design one or two each day and you’ll be earning a lot of money online in no time!

By |February 22nd, 2009|Make Money Online|2 Comments
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How To Sell A Website for Maximum Profit

This is part 4 of 34 in Poker and Making Money Online, a 34 Part Series.

Act weak when strong, act strong when weak. Know when to bluff.

Poker Bluff

Selling a website for top dollar is similar to bluffing in poker and here’s why. You want to sell your website for the most your buyer will pay, your buyer wants to buy your website for the lowest amount possible. Good old negotiation.

In order to sell your website for top dollar and get the most money out of your buyer, you need to really sell the features and benefits. In poker, when you’re bluffing, you want to do the same thing. You want the other people at the table to know everything about your cards, that is, you want them to think that you have something worth folding to.

So in order to win this melee and come out with the most money, you need to show the buyer why he should pay top dollar. This includes listing all of your stats, income, and generally unspoken benefits such as:

1. RSS subscribers
2. Newsletter members that are opt-in (or double opt-in)
3. Type in traffic
4. Organic search engine results
5. Current backlinks on popular sites
6. Unpublished content
7. Ideas for future development
8. Domain age
9. Popular content
10. Accounts (Twitter, Technorati, Blogspot, etc)
11. Multiple revenue streams
12. Relationships with others in the same industry
13. Affiliate company contacts

Explaining these benefits to your buyer is like going all in. You are telling your buyer that you have the nuts. If your site lacks value, by showing more quantity of features, you’re bluffing. Sometimes it works and sometimes you bust out!

By |January 28th, 2009|Projects|0 Comments
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It’s OK to Switch Horses

This is part 2 of 34 in Poker and Making Money Online, a 34 Part Series.

It’s okay to switch tables if you discover it’s too hard to win at your table.

Horse Crossing River

We’ve all heard it said, never change horses while crossing a stream. In essence it means that when you’re in the middle of something, see it through. I couldn’t disagree more. I’m notorious for not seeing things through. A recent example is my free hosting website.

I designed a site, rented a full server, bought software, spent countless hours setting it up and then went live. I estimated that I would need 200 members in the first month, 600 after 2 months, and 2,000 after 3 months, in the 4th month I hoped to break even with 4-6,000 members. After 15 days, I had 60 members, and only 7 had actually taken the time to switch their domains to my free web host. So in reality, I was 193 members short, by the end of the month I had 14 domains switched and websites built and 7 subdomain websites created. So after 31 days I was 179 member websites short and couldn’t see how it was going to work. After the first month, I emailed the members that had created sites, and arranged a deal with another web host to get them set up somewhere else and closed 22Gigs.com.

I had thought about this idea consistently for about 3 months before diving in. I had done market research, had a plan, marketing lined up, sponsors, contests, etc. I realized pretty quickly that my horse wasn’t going to make it across the river. Should I stay on that horse and keep digging my financial hole, or should I get off the horse and find a stronger horse to cross the river?

So if you’re in a market that is beating you down and you can’t see an end in site, maybe it’s time to move on. Keep that site in the background and try something new for a while. You never know when you might want to give it another shot.

When the going gets tough, the smart find an easier way.

By |January 26th, 2009|Projects|0 Comments
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