Matthew Allen

My Backlinking Strategies for Niche Sites

August 21, 2013June 7, 2013 by Matthew Allen

I’ve been dabbling with building niche sites for about a year now. I’ve got to be completely honest and admit that backlinking strategies were something I tried to avoid like the plague. I wanted nothing to do with them, as most of the stuff I was reading about at the time revolved around black-hat tactics. Luckily for me, the first Google Penguin update hit right around the time I was starting out. Many of the tactics I had been reading about became obsolete, as sites that were using only those methods for backlinking got wiped out. I was relieved because I had neither the time or money to do some of those crazy tactics. Things like tiered link-building and using spun content on article directories and web 2.0 properties and things like that. I wanted no part of any of that. It seemed too complicated and risky and definitely too time consuming. So what did I do? I started to build niche sites with a zero link building strategy in mind. Has it worked? Let me show you…

One Year of Being Dumb and Creating Passive Income

May 6, 2013 by Matthew Allen

It was about this time last year that I decided to quit my old money blog and start Dumb Passive Income. One year ago today, I was probably up at 5am trying to figure out how to self-host a WordPress blog. My only experience to that point with blogging was on the free Blogger platform. My decision to move over to WordPress is one that I will never regret. Everything I’ve done online has been totally self-taught. At this time last year, I was messing around with WordPress – playing with different themes, trying to create a logo, learning the platform and browsing some of the many available plugins. I did this for about three weeks before I finally published my first post, An Introduction to Dumb Passive Income. I’ve been rolling ever since and my mission here hasn’t really changed. Basically, this blog is about all of the things I am doing, or have done, to try to create passive income. I’ve had successes and failures along the way and I share it all on the blog. Here is a synopsis of what I’ve done so far and where I am headed…

How to Increase Traffic to Your Blog by Optimizing Older Posts

April 22, 2013April 19, 2013 by Matthew Allen

Want to know how to increase traffic to your blog – specifically to your older blog posts? Does the following statement sound like something you could say?

I have a blog with a ton of old content on it that never seems to get viewed anymore. When I first published many of these posts, the reaction was great. I got a whole bunch of comments and engagement from readers and fellow bloggers. After just a few short weeks, or even days, the number of page views for these posts dropped dramatically to almost zero. It’s a little bit frustrating because I spent so much time writing these articles. Some of them are really great and are the type of content that could benefit readers for years to come. I wish there was an easy way to attract new readers to my blog and back to some of my older articles.

There definitely are several different ways. Since this is a passive income blog (I’m assuming you want to make income with your blog), I’m going to focus on what you can do to your blog posts just one time in order to attract and keep traffic flowing to them in a passive manner.

Passive Income Report – March 2013

July 17, 2013April 8, 2013 by Matthew Allen

Welcome to my (Dumb) Passive Income Report! This blog is all about what I am doing to create several different passive income streams. This monthly income report details my results. I work very hard and dedicate many hours each week to working on my different online endeavors in an attempt to create passive income. So why do I consider it passive income then? Because I am not trading specified amounts of time for a predetermined amount of money like I do at my day job. Most of the income you will see in this report results from work I have done in the past.

Why am I sharing my income publicly? Hopefully to gain credibility with you (the readers) and to maintain a certain degree of accountability for myself. I could blog all day long about what I am doing to create passive income online, including some of my unique strategies. But why would anybody trust me and believe that what I am doing works if I don’t prove it by sharing my results. This is what I mean by gaining credibility and this is one of the main purposes for sharing my income. I also share my failures on the blog, which holds me accountable. Knowing that I will be publishing a monthly income report will keep me motivated to keep pushing forward and plugging away on the things I need to do to create future passive income.

My Niche Blog Project – Offering a Valuable and Useful Free Resource

March 25, 2014March 30, 2013 by Matthew Allen

My Niche Blog Project - Creating Passive Income with a Free Resource — Totally relevant image from Flickr by Stuck in Customs

It’s been a little while since I’ve updated what is going on with what I am calling, my niche blog project. This project was born out of my frustrations and failures with trying to create small niches sites that rank well in Google and earn passive income with Google Adsense. One of my original posts about this project talks about how I decided to combine my blogging know-how with my niche site knowledge to create something bigger – a niche blog. It started off slow, as I knew it would. But what I had envisioned for the site is finally starting to come to fruition. I’m not 100% there yet – but one of the main aspects for what I wanted to do with the site is finally in place. I’ve created that free resource and have plans and forms in place for getting people to sign up for it. Now all I have to do is build traffic and everything else will take care of itself. By everything else, I mean that I hope to get to that goal of attaining 100% completion for everything that I envisioned for this site. This includes, but is not limited to, monetization and the possibility of creating a good passive income stream. Since this blog is about my efforts to create passive income, I will focus on telling you about that. Bear in mind though that me making money isn’t the only goal with this site. Keep reading to learn more…

Passive Income Report – February 2013

March 11, 2013 by Matthew Allen

For Those Who Wonder – Is Lending Club Legit?

June 11, 2019March 1, 2013 by Matthew Allen

Is Lending Club legit? Yes. I happen to know that 170 people per month in the United States wonder about this very topic. I have to ask myself – who are these people that are wondering whether or not Lending Club is legit. They have to be one of two types of people. Either people who are looking to borrow money via personal loans or people who are looking to invest money. It is perfectly reasonable and rationale that they are skeptical. Borrowing or investing money 100% online in a peer to peer format seems a little bit sketchy. Is peer to peer lending safe? Is it safe to borrow money online from a P2P site like Lending Club? How much risk is involved if I am considering investing on a site like Lending Club? All of these are fair questions and I will do my best to point you in the direction to answer them and prove that Lending Club is in fact 100% legit.

Should You Get Long Tail Pro or Market Samurai?

November 19, 2013February 27, 2013 by Matthew Allen

Several people have asked me why I think they should get Long Tail Pro, especially if they already own and use Market Samurai for keyword research. I’ve even been asked specifically, by more than one person, to write a Long Tail Pro vs Market Samurai post. I’ve been meaning to write this post for a long time, but have been procrastinating. The reason for this is partly because I don’t feel 100% qualified to write anything good or bad about Market Samurai. I’ve only used their free 10-day trial, and that was nearly a year ago when I did that. However, I do have access to all kinds of information and sources on the topic that I can share and point you to. I do own and use Long Tail Pro and am a huge fan of the product, especially since the release of the Platinum version. I tell you this up front so you understand that this post might come off as a little bit biased. I am okay with that though, as I feel it should be biased when my findings clearly show that one tool is better than the other for how and what I use it for.

Mini NSP – WordPress Setup and Choosing a Niche Website Theme

February 21, 2013February 20, 2013 by Matthew Allen

Mini NSP - WordPress Setup - Niche Website Theme — Looks like somebody who is probably frustrated with trying to set up their niche site!

Setting up WordPress and choosing a good niche website theme can be a daunting task if you are brand new to building niche sites. I know this to be the case for me personally, as I spent many hours figuring all of this stuff out on my own in the past. I combed through the internet and read several posts from other niche site builders to see how they do things. I spent many many hours playing with different free themes to try and get the look and functionality that I wanted for my niche sites. As a total rookie to WordPress and building niche sites, you can imagine my frustration! Now that some time has passed and I have learned a great deal, I feel like I can share some of my findings so that hopefully others won’t have to waste as much time as I did. Building a niche site both effectively and efficiently has gotten so much easier for me. As an example and part of this Mini Niche Site Project – I want to share exactly how I do things and what I use now.

The Miniature Niche Site Project – Mini NSP

February 20, 2013February 14, 2013 by Matthew Allen

When I started this blog in May of 2012, my efforts to create passive income online were targeted mostly at building smaller niche sites. I had some early success with my very first attempt at building a niche site. I got over-confident and decided that I was qualified to teach others how to obtain the same success that I had found. So I decided to do a Niche Site Follow Along, inspired mostly by Pat Flynn’s very popular Niche Site Duel series. I started to show my exact processes for how I build a niche site. I failed on my first attempt and started over from scratch, all within that same follow along series. I was plugging away on my next attempt, and then the EMD update hit and completely burst my niche site bubble. So what did I do to keep my burning desire to create passive income online alive?

Passive Income Report – January 2013

October 11, 2013February 8, 2013 by Matthew Allen

Foliofn Note Trading Platform for Lending Club Investing Review

August 11, 2013January 31, 2013 by Matthew Allen

Lending Club Investor Availability by State

Foliofn Note Trading Platform for Lending Club - Michigan Lighthouse — Michigan’s West Coast

As an investor at Lending Club, and a resident of the great state of Michigan, I currently have only one of two options available to me for how I am able to obtain notes. I must purchase notes via the note trading platform by Foliofn, which is the secondary market used by Lending Club, for trading peer to peer (P2P) notes. The other option is to fund notes directly through the more common retail platform, which is not currently available to investors in all 50 states. The difference between these two options is basically this – the retail platform is for notes that are not yet fully funded or acitve and the note trading platform consists of notes (or loans) that already exist and are active. After reading through several blog posts and blog comments, I am finding that a lot of people prefer the retail platform and feel that the secondary note trading platform by Foliofn is inferior. I am the exact opposite. Although I am not able, or even allowed (currently), to take part in the retail platform – I actually think I like the note trading platform better. Only three months in to my Lending Club investing experiment, and I’ve been able to maintain a Net Annualized Return of over 22%!

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