Blog Archives Archives • Page 8 of 12 • The Dumb Passive Income Blog

How to Increase Traffic to Your Website with Viral Image Sharing

August 6, 2013August 6, 2013 by Matthew Allen

We’ve all heard or seen of examples of where something has “gone viral.” Has it ever happened to any of your content or images? You may be thinking, why would it ever happen to me? The type of content I produce will never go viral. Well, you just never know. By simply adding a catchy, provocative, funny, interesting, ridiculous, [insert adjective here] image to your post and giving readers an easy way to share it – your boring old content actually could go viral. In this post, I’m going to show you how to increase traffic to your website with viral image sharing. I’m also going to show a very specific example of how this worked on one of my small niche sites. Plus, I’m going to share with you some tools and resources that I use to increase my chances of getting viral traffic through image sharing.

Bookmarking Sites and Social Networks – Getting Links for Niche Sites

November 28, 2016July 31, 2013 by Matthew Allen

Getting links from bookmarking sites and social networks is pretty easy. Any post from any site can be submitted by any person at any time. The question is this: how valuable are these types of links? I’m not going to pretend that I’m an expert and tell you that I know. Does anybody even really know exactly how much weight Google gives to these types of links? The general consensus is that they don’t hold a lot of weight when it comes to ranking sites for specific keywords in Google. The other general consensus feels that social signals and these types of links are becoming ever-more important and are a bigger factor when it comes to Google rankings.

My personal feeling is that they can’t hurt. Links from bookmarking sites and social networks have to send some sort of positive signal to Google. They tell Google that the content is worth sharing and/or saving for later reference. Usually, this means that the content has some sort of value – which is something you would think Google somehow works into their algorithm. Google wants their search results to display the best and most relevant content. They want searchers to find what they are looking for on the first page. This means that Google wants the best information from the best sites displayed in the top 10 for the respective keywords. If content built around a certain keyword is bookmarked and shared a lot, this could be a signal to Google that this particular content is valuable and should get a boost in the search results.

Passive Income Report for April, May & June 2013

August 11, 2013July 18, 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.

How to Drive Traffic to Your Blog – Proof that Keyword Research Works

June 15, 2013 by Matthew Allen

This is kind of an interesting post that I’ve been thinking about writing for quite some time. I actually have some proof that the keyword research for blogging strategies that I talk about for how to drive traffic to your blog really do work! Although I didn’t do it on purpose, a perfect opportunity presented itself when I didn’t publish any new content on this site for an entire month. I published a post on May 6th of this year, and then didn’t publish the next one until June 7th. The funny thing is that I did something almost identical on my old money blog almost exactly a year ago. I stopped publishing over there to concentrate my efforts over here on my new blog. I just took a look at my Google Analytics account for each site and compared some statistics. The differences for similar time periods are kind of astounding. Admittedly, I knew nothing about keyword research or SEO when I was trying to grow my old money blog. I did do everything else I could think of to try to drive traffic to that blog. When I moved over to this blog, I made the conscious decision to NOT go out of my way to promote it but to only let it grow organically. Check out my results…

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

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

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.

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.

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