What got me over the hump when I wanted to make money online.

There was many things that I did that made me money online and some are just out there. I use to buy and sell a lot on EBay, mostly baseball cards and sports stuff. I saw many things that sold there that just shocked me like my friend John from Missouri who sold an Orange ring ding box for a few hundred dollars.

In the beginning of EBay you could make a small fortune off stuff you had in your attic. Now everyone has opened their attic so the market is flooded with junk.

The thing with making money online is jumping on your idea and running with it. I saw it from time to time and wish I had these ideas. My friend Joel Comm with his 500 words site was just brilliant. He sold all the words and made a ton of money. You know what he did then? He sold the software that he used to people and made money off that too. Sometimes you just don't stop with your original idea.

One of my early ideas was when the New York Yankees signed the Japanese star Hedeki Matsui to play baseball in the Bronx. When he hit a homerun on opening day he was on the cover of all three New York Newspapers. I went to the store and bought 30 copies of each newspaper.

Knowing he was a huge baseball star in Japan I put up 30 auctions and sold the newspapers for $30 each. Quickest money I ever made online and all I had to do was make an auction page and go to the store.

I only regret that I didn't save all the email addresses as that would have made a nice list of baseball fans to inform them of other Hedeki Matsui auctions I may have had in the future. I think I took that money and bought myself a boat on EBay. I am not sure if that was one of the auctions that I used for the boat. To sum it up I bought a boat for the price of 30 newspapers.

One thing that I have noticed online is people that just do the same thing over and over and expect the money to flow to them. That is so not me on many levels. I see something and jump on it! Sitting around waiting for the Google fairy to index your site isn't going to happen unless you do something proactive about it.

My Jump into Affiliate Marketing

When I first found affiliate marketing I didn't even know how to make a website. Some people still may say my sites stink and in a way I agree. Thankfully making money online isn't a beauty contest, my sites wouldn't even be entered in the competition.

I see a lot of people going to websites and asking people to review the sites. This is probably the stupidest thing I have ever seen as you are not only showing your site to someone you don't know you are also giving the competition your idea. This is a double no-no and just plain stupid.

If you want someone to look at your site find a family member and have them look at it. A fresh set of eyes can do wonders for your idea. That id if you are smart enough to humble your original idea and take their thoughts into consideration.

The trick is to listen to that set of eyes and learn from your mistakes. I normally have a younger member of the family look at the site as they can spot things since they have been online their whole life and don't have the NON online trust factor preinstalled in their brain.

My affiliate marketing sites are still going strong but you have to expand your thinking all the time. If you know me it should come as no secret that I have been using other contextual ads on my sites for some time now.

I am sure as that advertising vehicle starts to change I will jump on something else.