I'll be hanging in the blogroom in Boston at Affiliate Summit Boston. I'll update this post throughout the day so check back and leave a comment:

Be sure to check out the photo stream from Triss Hussey.

Sam from Affspot offered a new laptop sticker:

The empty blogroom upon arrival:

Cory Booker giving the keynote:

Guitar Hero and the WII hooked up on the big screen:

The exhibit floor:

Ted Murphy from Izea

Working Hard:

Me in front of Boston:

Boston without me in front of it. The view from entering affiliate summit:

The building pictured is the Boston Trade Center, Affiliate Summit took place in there:

A nice yacht parked on the side of Affiliate Summit:

John Chow

Intermission:

The "ask the experts section" was a light attendance. CRAZY opportunity to learn and meet people on tuesday morning at affiliate summit. All the merchants are starting to hang out, experts are around, but most attendees are sleeping ;)

Jim Kukral

Triss Hussey

Ian Fernando

John Hasson

Zac Johnson

Shawn Collins

The draw of the internet for many of you is to work wherever and whenever you want. You want to work in the mountains or the the beach or the desert or wherever you may roam. One question though, how do you get internet in these places?

I called around to the satellite companies and they said I need a physical address where the dish would be installed

Then I bought an air card through at&t and when i got on the farm land it didn't get any signal, that's getting returned shortly.

After calling satellite companies again a hughesnet.com supervisor said it was ok to get service but there might still be some confusion with the installers, also they would throttle my connection speed if I used the internet much, like uploading/downloading bunches of videos ;(

Lack of posting here is not due to lack of interest but a lack of internet. Hopefully next week I'll be back online in some regular capacity.

In the meantime keep us updated on the make money online blogosphere and share with us how internet is had in the far corners of the globe.

Also, I don't think you need to be rich to sit on the edge of a lake and working online, you could do it on the weekends or evenings, you just need the internet.

I don't usually sell websites, the point of making money online for me is to create sites that make money and then keep them making money. However the wife and I are raising some funds for construction costs on our new home so I just sold one. Here are a few tips now that the sale is fresh in my mind.

The Site

The website I sold was registered and active since 2004 and has earning $500 per month for the past 12 months. I have not done anything to the website for over a year except check up on it from time to time.

Tip 1 - Patience

It takes time to get a site ready to sell. You want to change passwords, delete files you never did anything with, collect all the stats, etc.

So when the site finally sells and the offer is accepted, it's natural to want to get things moving along. However there is still time after the sale you need to consider.

You will need to transfer the site, give the buyer a period to review the site, get funds transfered, affiliate/adsense links/accounts transferred etc. This will take a few days.

I am not patient, especially when it's dealing with one of my assets, however by being impatient it sends the wrong signal to the buyer and they might begin to question your motives, "are they just trying to get this over with before the shady stuff shows it's face?"

Just know that selling a website takes more than a couple hours (unless it's a one page site and you don't care about verifying funds first) so know going into the transaction you will need to show some patience.

And be prepared to answer bunches of questions and to make yourself available to do so.

Tip 2 - Escrow.com

I HIGHLY recommend using the services of escrow.com. They do charge a decent fee, however it is well worth the fee to get some protection for the buyer and the seller.

How Buyers are protected:

• Escrow.com verifies with the Buyer and/or the WHOIS information that the domain is transferred.
• The Seller isn't paid until domain name is transferred to the Buyer.

How Sellers are protected:

• Escrow.com confirms when the domain name is transferred.
• The Seller is authorized to transfer the domain after Escrow.com verifies good funds.

You can read the entire escrow.com process here.

Tip 3 Set Your Bin HIGH

If you have a valuable site then make your Buy It Now price very valuable to you.

I'm not sure where I've heard the "10x earnings is what you sell a site for" but it's really wrong.

My site was earning $500 per month and 10X earnings would have been $5000.

However because I knew the site had a strong history of earnings I asked 16x earnings or $8000.

Guess what? That was cheap! I had FOUR buy it now offers within a few hours of posting the site.

The final sale price was actually $8500. You never know what could have happened if I listed the bin much higher but next time:

If I'm selling a site with long earnings history I will start with a bin of at least 24x earnings.

You can always lower it if the auction goes on without a BIN ;)

Tip 4 - Where To Sell Your Site

Marketplace.sitepoint.com. I would hit the other forums only to drive traffic back to that sitepoint. They have a great interface and a great audience of buyers and sellers

Tip 5 - How To Transfer Your Site

Domain transfers are easy and most domain registrars have step by step instructions to do this.

Transfering the site files might be a bit trickier because all hosts are different and so are everyone's skill levels. Your site might work on your server but not someone else's or the new owner could struggle setting it up.

The way we did the recent sale was to purchase a shared hosting account at hostgator.com.

I uploaded all the files there, gave them a quick run through, changed database passwords and uploaded the database there, and made sure everything was working.

When the time came to transfer the site I simply gave the new owner the login info and they had the site in their possession. (note: hostgator will allow you to transfer a hosting account. Just change the user info to theirs and have them contact sales to combine the accounts)

Tip 6 - IM

IM = Instant Messenger

Email is ugly, spammy, untimely, and gets lost many times.

I'm not a fan of IM but did use it during the sale. It's great to get questions answered quickly and easily for both parties involved. Having both of you on instant messenger talking can help smooth over the process.

Your Site Selling Tips?

I don't sell or buy sites very often. I usually buy a domain and build a new site. Hopefully my selling experience will help you. Have any tips I didn't mention about buying and selling websites you want to share?

The other day I mentioned buying popunder and dirt cheap traffic. After a week here are the results. If you ever see a claim for tons of traffic for little money then it's probably too good to be true. However it's fun to test.

Buying The Traffic

100,000 visitors purchased for $14.99 from www.webtrafficwholesale.com

In 9 days they claim they sent me 22,995 out of the 100,000 visitors already.

Sweet! That is some nice traffic for the price.

Directing The Traffic

Since I was buying "all" that traffic I needed somewhere to send them.

I chose a neverblueads.com offer. The one for gamefly.com that pays $18.75 per signup.

I thought if one conversion happened I would make money.

The Results So Far

0 conversions, go figure ;)

Neverblueads statistics show 91 clicks in the past 9 days.

So basically the people I'm buying the traffic from claim they sent 23,000 visitors so far and the place I'm sending them to say that only 91 actually showed up.

LOL, I reckon they must be getting lost somewhere.

It's also my opinion that the site I'm buying the traffic from is a scam, as probably most of these sites are.

Still 75000 More Visitors To Go

I don't see my conversion rate improving from 0% even though I'm still owed 75,000 visitors.

I think I'll stick with building real traffic to sites from links and mentions on sites or buying it from reputable sources.

And if you want to make money with junk traffic and crazy traffic claims then make a site selling the traffic, they are the winners financially from this experiment so far ;)

Youtube has a manual, they actually call it a handbook: Youtube Handbook.

My favorite section is the Producer Handbook.

I learned some new things about lighting and camera moves.

For those of you who aren't doing video yet but will someday (which is almost all of you from what I see), and for the ones that like doing video, you might be smart to bookmark the Youtube Handbook or make a mental note of it ;)

My favorite way to get traffic with youtube is to make videos on news items in the topic for which I have a youtube channel. It's easy and free traffic and there is tons of it ;) Of course you need to include a link and brand your video and maybe include a call to action or include a freebie back at your website to get maximum results.

Another video resource you might be interested in is the Online Video Toolkit from Jim Kukral. Give him an email address and he gives you the tutorials for free.

There are many contractors in your area that don't care about websites, they don't care if you can help them rank, they don't care about how pretty you can make their website, they just want to know who wants to pay them for their services.

In the process of building our house we have been dealing with contractors, people that do septic tanks, plumbing, electricity, excavating, etc.

Not a single one has had a website and I really don't get the feeling they really want one.

HOWEVER, I'm guessing they would be more than willing to pay me for live human contacts that my website collects that are interested in their services ;)

In otherwords, don't confuse the contracters with mumbo internet speak, go do the work of getting people who want their services and then ask them for money for that.

You Are The Affiliate King

I've never done this but I'm guessing the smart money is and I might give it a whirl shortly.

Basically you create a website geotargetted to your area and the type of lead you are trying to get. For instance people that need a septic tank installed.

You go and create a septic site for your area, get all the traffic you can, and then put a lead capture form on the page. Basically you ask your visitors to give their phone number and email if they want a free quote or something.

On the backend you work out deals with the local contractors to pay you for each lead you send them. I'm not sure you would ask but I'm guessing you could name your price.

Contractors charge ridiculous fees per hour, I swear they think they are brain surgeons. I wouldn't be surprised if they wouldn't pay $50 or more for a lead.

Finally

That is a way to make money with your online skills, Sell Leads To Local Contractors!

It isn't the usual structure, it isn't blogging, it isn't affiliate marketing, it isn't what most people are doing, but I'm guessing it could be quite profitable.

You can now advertise on 45n5.com for prices starting at $10 per month and up. If you have a product or brand you want seen by the "make money online" crowd then now is your chance to increase your reach by advertising here.

For more details, traffic stats, spaces that are open, etc please visit:

45n5.com/advertise.php

Advertising has been on again, off again, here over the years, so why is it on again?

The value of a blog decreases when it isn't actively earning revenue, this was an oversight on my part when removing ads. People don't care about "potential" value.

Therefore if I want to sell 45n5 and move out to our land to dissapear for a few months (or longer) and build a house then I want to get the most out of 45n5.com that I can.

Or because I just want 45n5.com to be as valuable as possible, or an asset to more than just me ;)

It's your gain! You can now advertise on 45n5.com, banner ads and with a bonus link in the rss feed. Click here for advertising options and lock in your space.

Chitika | AdPro is a hosted ad management platform, giving publishers the ability to work directly with advertisers and keep 100% of their ad sales revenue.

Yet another way to help you sell advertising on your website. Chitika recently rolled out their hosted ad version.

A few notable benefits:

Keep 100% of revenue. It doesn't seem to even take a paypal fee. 100% means 100%.

Manages ads for you and takes money for you.

Creates a stats admin area for your advertisers.

From their site:

• Free: No service charge. Publishers get to keep 100% of their direct ad sales revenue
• No software installation AdPro is a hosted service. Publishers need not worry about installing and maintaining any ad serving & management software
• Payment processing: AdPro will take care of campaign payment processing and billing.
• Full control Publishers get to approve and schedule all campaigns
• Detailed reporting Publishers and their direct advertisers will have access to detailed campaign reports.

A Couple Of Drawbacks (for me)

I don't like how the advertiser can choose to advertise for any amount of time they want. I would rather choose designated times like 1 week or 1 month.

Also, as I recently mentioned how much I liked subscriptions for recieving paypal advertising, there doesn't seem to be a way for advertisers to automatically renew their ads without manually having to pay again.

Overall though Chitika Adpro looks like a polished free product to help you sell ads on your blog.

Here are a couple thoughts to think when you are passively reading blogs that will help you make some money from them.

Pitch The Blogger's Advertisers

Advertisers are ALREADY buying ads if you see them on a blog you are reading.

Shoot them an email and let them know you have a similar audience, a chance to increase their reach, and give them more exposure.

Let them know what you can do for them, or at the least let each of them know you exist and you have advertising opportunites available on your own sites.

Pitch The Blogger You Are Reading

Many bloggers want more readers and are willing to pay for them.

If you are reading a blog that is similar to yours let the blogger know (via email) that they can buy some space on your blogs or sites.

Get Your Rate Card Ready

Before pitching anybody about your advertising opportunities, make sure your advertising page is top notch.

Any other thoughts to have to make money from the blogs you are reading?

10,000 visitors for $15.

50,000 visitors for $89.

Possible? That's what the advertisments say.

Recently on Top Affiliate Challenge I've seen it mentioned multiple times that people buy "popunder" traffic to send to affiliate offers. I've never done this myself but while researching popunders I've come across the crazy claims of tens of thousands of visits for tens of dollars.

Of course anything that sounds to good to be true usually is, however the people on the show are using it with apparently alright results.

Anyone use popunder, junk traffic? Who are the more popular traffic sellers in the space?

I reckon there is only one way to know if it works, test it myself ;) Look for the results soon.