It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, it’s that I don’t want to tell you yet. And, that’s especially true since, as many of you are aware, I have a habit of changing my mind.

Experiments in Viral Stories

At any rate, I am trying different things. For example, instead of doing viral links where you just post a list of different links, I do viral stories. It all started with the “Drunken Virals,” which I believe is still pretty much the most popular of my viral stories.

I followed up with “Pirate Links” (and “Lost Links” for those I left out). Next was “Web Trek,” which was followed most recently by “Web Trek II: The Wrath of the Single Blogolope.”

Since I started doing these viral stories last year, the use of viral links has largely fallen out of favor, likely because the search engines were catching on. But, really, what most people were after was the Technorati rank.

Since there was a six month gap between “Web Trek” and “Web Trek II,” I was concerned that even my viral stories were taking a hit. On the first day of “Web Trek II,” the comments weren’t coming in as quickly as I expected. It was beginning to look like a bust…

But, the comments started coming in, and eventually they surpassed the number of comments on the original “Web Trek.” Thus, that tends to validate my notion that viral stories trump viral links.

Of course, viral links were all about Technorati rank. Few people read through those lists. They just copied them, added their links and posted them. We may skim and even check out a few blogs, but after a few rounds, you just pass them along without paying much attention to them. Sooner or later, you get tired of doing even that, which is another reason I think that you don’t see viral links being passed along as often anymore.

But, a viral story is more likely to be read. Plus, it’s more interesting than a list of links, so you get a few more backlinks from them too because people do read them and want to share the link with their readers.

Most importantly, people like to read about themselves, even if it is in a fictional way. Plus, they get a link out of the deal too, and, in my opinion, not a link that’s going to be as easily brushed aside as a basic list of links might be by the search engines.

The downside is that a viral story takes a lot longer to put together than a simple list. The upside is that viral stories still attract attention while not so many bloggers are excited about a viral links post anymore.

Experiments in Content

I’m also going to try some experiments in content. There are, as you know, many different ways of delivering and monetizing your content. Most people pick one. I am trying several.

One is, of course, this blog. Though I don’t expect this blog to be a big moneymaker (though one can hope!), I do have some ads and affiliate programs running, and I have seen a small (very small) amounts of revenue from that, but, while it is increasing, it’s nothing yet to get excited about.

Another experiment is Practical Points in Nursing, which I’ve neglected as of late (though I will have more stuff going up soon–I haven’t been completely neglecting it behind the scenes!). I’ll diversify the monetization on the site once I’ve added some additional content to the site (beyond the content of the book itself).

Another experiment is to do an eBook, which I do have in development. Speaking of which, how many pages do you think an eBook should be? I’m at a little over 150.

What I hope to answer is whether it’s better to give content away freely and hope to earn income through advertising and affiliate programs, or to package the content and sell it to earn income? I’m going to try both and see how things work out.

Mind you, the particular niche may be a larger factor in determining the best way to monetize something than the distribution and monetization factors.

At any rate, once I finish the eBook and start selling it, I can start sharing more information on how things are going and how the content site compares against the eBook site.

And, I’ll expect all of you to buy the eBook and sign up for the affiliate (maybe) program.

Popularity: 3% [?]

So, you want to make more money, but you don’t want to have to spend money on a correspondence course to get a dubious degree that no one will likely take seriously anyway. Okay, then herein follows some tips to help you make some additional money.

Read. How Come That Idiot’s Rich and I’m Not? is one example. You don’t necessarily have to read whole books either. You can still glean useful information from articles and reviews of books.

Create Niche Sites that You are Passionate About. I don’t necessarily buy into that theory, but to each his own. Need a place to host your niche website empire? Need a place to register your domain names?

Don’t necessarily want a blog or website empire? Here are Ten Ways to Translate Your Passion into Additional Income. Mind you, one of them is blogging, but there are nine ways other than hosting a website.

Hopefully, though, politics is not your passion.

Do you use affiliate programs on your WordPress blog? WordPress Affiliate Pro is a plug-in that offers to help you manage your affiliate links, from entering new links to seeing what links are working and which you ought to change.

Worried about the economy? Don’t. There are ways of Finding Sales Success in a Recession. Don’t believe it? Read this (registration required).

Just starting a business? Here are some ways to save money running your startup.

How to Make a Million Before You Turn 20. Already older than 20? Try these Twelve Steps to Becoming a Millionaire.

Finally, learn the biggest obstacle standing between you and success.

Popularity: 5% [?]

What began as an effort by Republicans to shield affiliate marketers from inclusion in lawsuits against the companies the marketers represent has turned into an outright ban on affiliate marketing by the Democratic majority.

Republicans argue that 72% of affiliate marketers are low-income households who need the additional cash and cannot afford nor should be held responsible for the deficiencies of any products they represent. Democrats argue that 94% of affiliate marketers make less than $20 per year, but use their home-based business as a tax write-off for their Internet connection fees.

Democrats say that affiliate marketing shields companies from false and exaggerated claims made by their affiliates. The companies pass the blame to their affiliates while claiming the lion’s share of the profits. Democrats argue that banning affiliate marketing will increase corporate responsibility.

Republicans argue that companies dump affiliates who do not play by the rules and that affiliate marketing provides an additional income, especially during these harder economic times when families need all the additional income they can get their hands on.

Democrats argue that the tough economic times were caused by the war in Iraq, and the debate digresses into finger pointing and the typical partisan bickering.

At any rate, the Democrats have the upper hand, and the bill has a good chance of passing both houses of Congress. Democrats expect Bush to veto the bill, but are confident they have enough votes to override a veto.

In a move that surprises few, John McCain has sided with the Democrats while Hillary Clinton has sided with Republicans. On the other hand, Barack Obama claims not to have seen the questionnaire on which he hand-wrote his response.

To learn more about this legislation, which could impact many bloggers and websites, click here. Be sure to write your Congressman as, at this point, only a grassroots effort has any hope of stopping this devastating bill.

Popularity: 5% [?]

At this point, I did not think you would believe me without photographic evidence. Thus, the above photo which clearly shows the absence of a computer from my desk. You can see where the computer’s little rectangular feet once rested and the square where the monitor once sat. The cords are from another computer, which previously wrapped behind and in front of (or over) the absent keyboard you don’t see here.

With that said, let’s review last week’s goals and see how I fared.

Finish archiving files and move the old computer off my desk. Done! Finished yesterday (and early this morning). Yay!

Take product photo for my eCommerce site and put it on the site. Took the photo last week, but still haven’t put it on the site. Did I mention that I did remove the old computer from my desk?

Setup printer/scanner. Yes, that did require the removal of the old computer from my desk, which was completed, but I have not yet set up the printer/scanner. I need to clear out some miscellaneous odds and ends that used to sit on top of the aforementioned removed computer and are now without a home. They currently reside in the space the computer once occupied.

Do some work on the redesign for my flagship website. Nope.

I also removed a phone/fax machine from my desk. It’s a new machine, never used, and was covered in dust. You see, that’s been waiting on the completion of my eCommerce site, so it’s just been sitting there. I have taken it to the office, where its phone line was relocated this week. You see, once I finish the eCommerce site, I plan to not work on that stuff at home anymore. All the production was moved out of the house last year, so the phone/fax machine is finally catching up.

Eventually, I would like to get to the point where I am not working 8 hours a day at the office and then coming home and working another 8 hours on the computer at home. Though, for the past while, those 8 hours at home have not been the most productive. It gets tiring after a while.

This past week, I did also finish some projects that were not listed. I just don’t want you thinking I just sit around making lists of things not to do.

Okay, onto this week’s goals…

1. Put the photo on the eCommerce site.
2. Setup printer/scanner.
3. Do some work on the redesign for my flagship website.

I should add more items, but I want to cross all of these off my list before getting into adding additional ones!

Popularity: 6% [?]

Here’s an interesting article: “How Retailers Trick You Into Buying Cr*p You Don’t Need.”

What I want to know is, how do I put a mirror up on my eCommerce website? Taking a photo doesn’t seem to work…

Popularity: 5% [?]

Another week, plus a day, and another week of not getting things done. Well, at least from the list. I did get other stuff done.

Here are the items I wanted to get done last week, and how I fared:

Finish archiving files and move the old computer off my desk. I did finish archiving the files, but have not yet moved the computer. But, halfway done!

Take product photo for my eCommerce site and put it on the site. Took the photo but didn’t get it on the site yet.

Setup printer/scanner. Since that required removal of the computer, that didn’t get done.

Do some work on the redesign for my flagship website. Nope.

Order a new hard drive for my server. Nope. Did some archiving, and that seems to have made it better. Still should probably order a new drive to have on hand, just in case…

What did I accomplish?

I did manage to keep putting up new sections of Practical Points in Nursing. I’ve not done so in the past couple days, because I reached a page where I need to scan something…

I also managed to put together this little gem: “50 of the World’s Greatest Blogging Links.”

I also did some general cleaning at home and the office.

I also started monetizing another blog, though I should probably update it!

I also did my first article on Associated Content: “Money Doesn’t Always Follow Your Passion,” which has finally gotten some readers!

So, despite not crossing much off my list, all-in-all not such a bad week for getting things done.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Sometimes you start posts and, for whatever reason, you don’t finish them and file them away for later. And, when later comes, you forget where you were going with it.

So, this is going to be your opportunity. I’ll provide here what I’ve started, and you finish it out in the comments with your own thoughts. Everyone who participates will get some “dcr link love,” which you know must be valuable if people are searching Google for it.

So, here is where I left off with the “What is Value?” post. As an indication of how long it’s been in my drafts, Jon was still blogging with words when I started it.

Something is said to have value when it provides us with something.

Too often, though, we instead judge value based on price, rather than true value. A song may provide us with more joy in our lives than a $2 trinket at the local hyphen-mart, but many people would rather pay for junk and download the song for free.

Okay, now it’s your turn!

Popularity: 5% [?]

Did you know that while four is generally expressed as IV in Roman numerals, it is also acceptable to use IIII? With that in mind, I suppose I could have used VIIII for nine, but I opted for the more common IX. Actually, while I’m sure IIII can be used in lieu of IV, I’m not sure if VIIII can be used in lieu of IX. At any rate, maybe you learned something new today, that being that IIII is acceptable for indicating four.

So, on to the progress update….

Two weeks ago, my goals were to (1) complete a client’s website which I did do that week, (2) clear off my computer desktop which wasn’t completed, (3) remove old computer from my desk which wasn’t completed and (4) organize scattered notes on the aforementioned computer’s keyboard which was, more or less, completed that week.

Number three was carried over to last week goal’s. While did not carry over number two, I pretty much accomplished it last week. Still a few odds and ends, but it’s mostly cleaned up now.

Anyway, last week’s goals were to (1) finish archiving files and move old computer off my desk, (2) take product photo for my eCommerce site and put it online, (3) setup printer/scanner, (4) do some work for the redesign of my flagship website and (5) start getting things together for my antiques’ blog.

Well, let’s see how poorly I fared this past week.

First, I did not complete archiving files and moving the old computer off my desk. But, I did make significant progress in doing so. So, there is that at least!

Second, while it should have been easy to take the product photo and put it online, I didn’t get around to it. I did manage to take other photos, and I should have done this at the same time, but pretty much forgot all about it during those periods the camera was in my hands. I could argue that the camera’s batteries went dead, which they did, so I had downtime when I was recharging them. But, since I had a spare set of batteries, I guess I cannot use that excuse.

Third, nope. Setting up the printer/scanner requires that the old computer be off the desk. Since that didn’t happen, setting up the printer/scanner didn’t happen either.

Fourth, nope.

Fifth, I did start getting materials ready for my antiques blog, including taking some photos! So, at least I remembered that when I had the camera out.

I guess it will be easy to figure out this week’s goals:

1. Finish archiving files and move the old computer off my desk.
2. Take product photo for my eCommerce site and put it on the site.
3. Setup printer/scanner. Shouldn’t be too hard. Once the old computer is off the desk, I can put the printer/scanner in its place and plug it in.
4. Do some work on the redesign for my flagship website.
5. Order a new hard drive for my server. It’s making a lot of noise, and I think I should order a replacement…

Yes, I did copy and paste some of that from last week’s goal list! You would think keeping the list short would allow me to finish more things, but you would have thought wrong!

So, what did I accomplish this past week?

I did manage to make excellent progress cleaning off my computer’s desktop, so it’s a lot better organized. I also made excellent progress in archiving the files off the old computer that needs to be moved. I spent most of Saturday on that alone, as well as some time during the weeknights.

Also, doing some double duty, while archiving on one computer, I was working on blogs on the other. I managed to get dcr Writes dot Com looking more to my liking.

Am I boring you yet? Hang in there, there’s an announcement coming.

Additionally, I did some website clean up, which was mainly deleting one website I had and forwarding its domain to another, similar website. The deleted one had an unappealing domain name–I’m not sure why I ever thought it was a good name–so I redirected it to the one that had the better name.

Oh, and I started a new blog. Sort of. But, I’ll explain that in a separate post. I started it here, but went too long so it’s best to have it as a separate post.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Sabrina posted a great meme today: “What early (before you were 10 years old) ideas did you have about money or finance that turned out to be totally (and amusingly) wrong?”

I’m going to do the same meme, the same way. If you’re reading this, consider yourself tagged. You don’t have to do a blog post and linkback; just leave a comment to this post. Easy!

If you want to see my answer, you’ll have to check Sabrina’s blog.

Everyone who responds here in the comments will get some link love!

I know that some of you don’t read John Chow’s site every day, but, even if you do, here’s a post that’s worth a first or second look: “Earn Money Online Just by Showing Up.” True, it’s not quite that easy, but you have little to no chance of success if you throw in the towel too soon or go about things halfway.

I pretty much manage to do #1, but am not quite there yet with #2. Numbers 3 through 5, well, I guess I need to work harder!

And, don’t forget that the root of all evil, John Chow, is giving away an $80 Waterman pen from the promotional pens maker, 1234Pens.com. To enter, you just have to blog about it, like this. Feeling a little deja vu?

Popularity: 5% [?]

Have you ever noticed that some of the most popular articles that get passed around are the ones that tell you things you already know?

Well, hopefully, this will be one of those, as I share some tips you already know.

Find a Bunch of Fools. If you can find some fools, it is not too difficult to separate them from their money. In fact, I won’t even make any suggestions as anyone with a modicum of creativity can easily develop some fool-proof methods. On the one hand, this may be the least ethical method of earning money. On the other hand, if they willingly fork over their cash without any force or deception on your part, perhaps you may be ethically okay.

The difficult bit here is finding a sufficient number of fools, or one wealthy fool, from which you can earn a decent income. Mind you, we all joke about how stupid people are and the dumbing down of society in general, and we see people all the time spending money on junk that isn’t worth it, yet it still seems hard to find a sufficient number of fools to give their money to you instead of the other guy.

For one thing, the other guy has slick marketing you can’t afford. You can’t afford to run TV ads, especially during prime time, so what shot do you have at getting the foolish masses to mail you checks?

While fools are plentiful, they do seem scarce when you need them. They’re scattered everywhere and, without the resources to reach them where they live (i.e., in front of the TV), it’s going to be an uphill battle trying to secure your income on the cash-dispensing fools among us.

Clearly, we need a better approach.

Create Something of Value. You can build a career out of selling nothing but junk, but it’s not easy. If you’re highly skilled at marketing, your odds are better. But, for the rest of us, in order to achieve some level of success, we need to create something of value.

Mind you, you may lose some of your foolish customers this way. Some fools just cannot recognize quality when they see it, and would rather spend hundreds of dollars on something that will break two years from now than spend a couple hundred dollars on something that will last a lifetime.

Although, you cannot judge them too harshly. They were probably raised in a disposable society where you simply toss things that are broken, instead of fixing them, or throw perfectly functional things away simply because they’re not the right color or style anymore. If you have the storage space, you could pick these items up from the curb and sell them for big bucks a few years from now when they become collectibles. Remember that when you begin seeing some nice looking analog TVs sitting curbside in your neighborhood. Today’s trash is tomorrow’s treasure.

But, I suppose I have digressed a bit, after all, you want to make money now, not years from now. You might want to reconsider that mentality and plan for both the short term and the long term. Oh, sure, you could believe that the world is going to come to an end any day now, but, if you’re wrong, you don’t want to be living in a van down by the river ten years from now when the world did not end and you ran out of cash.

So, what you need to do to separate people from their money is to create something of value. It can be a product or a service. You’re creative. What can you design, do or build that will make someone else’s life easier or better? Or, what existing product can you do a better job of selling and promoting than the next guy? It need not be something new; it can be something old. Heck, even in economic downswings, people still need to eat. There are plenty of opportunities and it is beyond the scope of this post to find that niche for you.

Go ahead and do some research. I’ll wait…

Okay, now that you have figured out your offering, how do you go about separating people from their money and buying it from you? Even with a solid product with a great value, it can be difficult to convince people of the value of that product, especially if they are in a foolish mind that day.

There must be an easier way, no?

And there is.

What you need to do is to offer them something that’s of greater value than the money they are parting with. Most people talk about having a fair exchange, but that’s something that’s difficult to get. Everyone wants a deal! They only talk about having a fair exchange when they’ve been shortchanged on deals in the past.

But, what everyone wants is a good deal for them. You need to offer them something that’s of greater value than what they’re giving you. Don’t tell them that, though! Don’t give them sob stories about how they’re ripping you off and all that. That’ll just make you sound like a slick salesperson, and they won’t believe you.

No, you need to convince them that what you’re offering is worth more than what they’re giving you, but in such a way that they think that you don’t know that what you’re offering is worth more than what you think it is.

That’s not to say that you’re going to try to trick them or anything. No, no, no. That would go back to the first point, and you can’t have a steady business relying exclusively on fools. No, you really have to give them something of value so that, even long after the sale, they still believe that they got the upper hand in the deal–that, if anything, they ripped you off, not the other way around.

Then, they’ll be back for more!

That’s why you’ll see add-ons for many products. Buy now, and get these free reports! Buy now, and get a year’s worth of refills! And so on.

You can add something to the deal that is inexpensive for you, but a great value for them. Imagine the refills cost you $10 and you normally sell them for $20. You can offer them as an add-on for $10 or, if the product markup is good, for free. The buyer saves $10-$20, plus shipping charges and the hassle of ordering later on.

That’s just one example. The point is to offer your customer something of greater value than the money they are parting with. It’s hard to part with your money, even when you know you’re getting a fair price. But, if you know you’re getting a great deal, it’s so much easier to hand that money over, isn’t it?

Because you’re still thinking of money. You’re thinking how much money you are saving in the long run by spending this amount of money now. Makes it easier to justify the purchase to yourself, and makes your wallet a little looser.

That’s the type of response you want from your customers! Once again, though, I should point out that you really must have a great offer. Someone who gets a good deal will tell a friend; someone who gets ripped off will tell 10 friends, their family, their co-workers and possibly the 5 o’clock news.

So, there you go. Start separating!

Popularity: 4% [?]