So, do I have your interest yet? Would you like to hear more?

OK, OK. Who am I trying to kid? If you’ve read this far, you’re obviously interested and you can’t wait for all the juicy details, so, without further ado, here they are.

1. Create and Schedule “Smart” Tweets.
Smart tweets maximize your time online, allowing you to create, schedule, and automate many common tweeting tasks. Just imagine being able to create templates for your tweets, where you can re-use common messages and schedule them to occur whenever you like. With TweetSpinner’s easy-to-use tweetscript, you can create dynamic tweets that automatically change their content based on conditions you specify.

This feature is super easy to use and extremely flexible. You can use it to create tweets that rotate certain highly targeted keywords of your choosing from a list that you create. These “smart” tweets can be scheduled to be posted repeatedly with changing text to your Twitter profile at set intervals. Or, if you prefer, you can post them manually as you see fit. This is a huge time saver if you have multiple products that you promote, because you can also configure your smart tweets to tweet a completely different message from a list of messages (links included) completely on auto-pilot.

2. Schedule Rotation of Profiles and Designs.
Twitter gives you only a few options to play with regarding your profile’s look. A tiny bio. One URL. And some design colors. With TweetSpinner, you can rotate your bio, URL, and design features on schedule — every hour, every day, whenever you like. This helps you maximize the effectiveness of your profile by giving your followers more information and helps keep it fresh.

3. Smart Friends and Followers.
Now this is a feature worth getting excited over! This feature alone is worth the $15/month for the Pro Upgrade! This feature has dramatically increased my Twitter following with targeted followers that are genuinely interested in the topics that I tweet about. The click-through rate that I’m getting to links posted since using this feature to increase my following has more than doubled!

Sure, there are other products and applications out there on the market to increase your Twitter following that boast much more spectacular numbers, but number aren’t everything when you’re talking about a quality Twitter following. I would much rather have 100 targeted followers who are genuinely interested in my Tweets than 1000 followers who are just following me in hopes that I’ll follow them back and increase their own following.

This incredible feature is actually made up of numerous sub-features and options that you can configure to your liking.
- View your friend-to-follower ratio to find out who is or isn’t following you back and how many or your followers that you’re not following back. This feature uses filters that you set-up and you can even schedule it to follow back anyone whose follow you don’t return manually.
- “Smart purge” (unfollow) anyone not following you back. It’s smart because you can configure when and how it’s used.
- “Keyword follow” any user who tweets a certain word. Schedule it, too.
- “Mimic follow” any other user’s friends. This is a great way to follow all of your competitor’s friends.
- Create “nofollow” and “immunity” lists to never follow, for example, user XYZ or any user with “XXX” in their name. This feature also looks at each user’s recent tweets to avoid following “spam” accounts.
- Clean-up your DM inbox. Wouldn’t you like to purge old messages? This feature lets you purge up to 40 old DM’s from your Twitter inbox at a time.
- Configure sophisticated filters to only follow people who: are from certain locations, have a good friend/follow ratio, who have a certain number of friends, who you’ve previously purged, and so on.
- View pie charts showing you follower overlaps with any other user. “Close the gap” by mimic following.
- View reciprocity scores and pie charts for any keyword or mimic, showing you the percentage of users who return your follow. You can then focus on the keywords and mimics that result in the best ratio of new followers for you.
- View color coded lists of every person you follow by date, keyword, and status. Easily see when you followed them, if they’ve followed you back or if you’ve purged them.

Interested? If you tweet, you should be. Like I said, I have been using this application for about a month now and I’ve been able to increase my Twitter following from a measly 120 followers to close to 2000 targeted followers that are actually interested in what I tweet. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. That’s just one profile. I’m using TweetSpinner to increase my productivity and following for all four of my twitter profiles from one easy to navigate account interface.

Go ahead. Check out TweetSpinner for yourself and give it an honest test run by spending the $15 for the Pro Upgrade. You won’t be disappointed.

OK. So, hopefully by now you have taken some time, visited the links that I recommended in the first two posts and read all of the information available. Some of you may have even already started writing and publishing blog posts. If you’re one of these new bloggers, congratulations and welcome to the blogosphere!

Now, let’s get down to business. As I said in How I Make Money From Blogging Part 2, in this post I want to cover how to monetize the content of your posts and provide your blog yet another income stream. There are a few different ways you can do this. When you’re first starting out blogging, your audience may not be large enough for your to command big dollars when trying to sell links within your posts, but don’t worry, there are other ways to make money within the content of your posts.

An excellent way for new bloggers to start earning some money from the content of their posts is by promoting affiliate products. I have written about how to make money with affiliate marketing in the past. It definitely has it’s advantages, especially when you’re just starting out. Be sure to be sincere when writing about the products you promote. The best way to do this is to actually purchase or use the products and services that you intend to write about before you promote them. Believe it or not, it is very easy to tell when reading a post about an affiliate product whether the writer is actually speaking from experience with the product/service or if they’re just writing their review from a press release or copying and pasting product info between some of their own words.

Yeah, it happens. Unfortunately, more often than you would think it would.

Remember, when you blog, your readers are your life line. Write for them and give them your honest feelings about the products, services or programs you promote. Give them the quality they deserve and they will return to read more. In time, they will readily follow your links, buy the products you recommend and maybe even tell their friends about the great info they receive from your blog posts.

Once you’ve been blogging for a while and you’ve grown your reader base, you should be able to start selling links within your posts through a service like Inlinks. If your reader base is large enough and active enough, you may even be able to command a pretty decent price for links within your blog posts. That’s right, when your blog starts to get enough traffic, people will actually pay to have links to their products, services or websites placed right within your blog content!

As I said earlier, Inlinks is a great service for selling links within your posts. In fact they even provide a service that helps you promote your blog or website in the same way. Those of you just starting out, can purchase links through their service to be posted on higher traffic blogs from within their network of bloggers for a low monthly fee starting at just $10 per month. A link from a high traffic blog is a great way to gain much needed exposure for your blog and help you to spread the word about yourself and your blog.

Now you know How I Make Money From Blogging and you should be able to follow my advice and do the same for yourself. Of course, your success will depend on how consistently you post to your blog, the quality of your posts and how effectively you promote yourself and your blog.

Hmmm, do I smell a blog series about promotion on the horizon? The only way you’ll know for sure is to come back and read some more! If you want to be sure you don’t miss out you can always subscribe to my RSS feed or get this blog delivered directly to your email inbox. See you soon.

I gotta tell ya, it sure beats the typical week.

While we’re packing today and getting ready to go to the airport for our flight home, this blog post has been automatically published here. In fact, this post has also been tweeted to 2 of my 4 twitter profiles, along with several other updates to all 4 of those twitter profiles.

Remember, this is all being done on auto-pilot. I don’t have a laptop, I didn’t bring a cell phone and I do not have Internet access where I am staying while in Florida this week. This brings me back once again to the point of this series, which is very straight forward and simple.

While I was out enjoying my vacation with the family this week, the little bit of time I spent last week putting together this series of blog posts, scheduling them with WordPress and scheduling tweets to my Twitter profiles with HootSuite is taking care of my business, driving traffic to my blogs/websites and hopefully making me some money.

Don’t forget, you can check out the all the updates that were tweeted to my Twitter profiles this week yourself by visiting @SteveWestfall, @GetPaidBeSocial, @Where2Look and @TrendyJewelry. Please feel free to follow any of the profiles you like.

Oh yeah, if you’ve enjoyed this series please feel free to post your comments or discuss the techniques being presented on any of the posts. We can all learn from the input of others. I hope that those of you that followed the series have learned something or at least got some ideas about how you can put these techniques to work for yourself or your business.

That’s the end of this series, but there will be many more posts here in the future filled with money making tips and techniques. Following the Twitter profiles listed above is a great way to get updates. Feel free to come back as often as you like.

I gotta tell ya, it sure beats the typical day.

While we’re having a great day, this blog post has been automatically published here. In fact, this post has also been tweeted to 2 of my 4 twitter profiles, along with several other updates to all 4 of those twitter profiles. My comparison shopping blog has also been updated again. Check out the post. It’s titled: NHL Playoff Fans Find Deals Here.

Remember, this is all being done on auto-pilot. I don’t have a laptop, I didn’t bring a cell phone and I do not have Internet access where I am staying while in Florida this week. This brings me back once again to the point of this series, which is very straight forward and simple.

While I’m out enjoying my vacation with the family, the little bit of time I spent last week putting together this series of blog posts, scheduling them with WordPress and scheduling tweets to my Twitter profiles with HootSuite is taking care of my business, driving traffic to my blogs/websites and hopefully making me some money.

Don’t forget, you can check out the updates being tweeted to my Twitter profiles yourself by visiting @SteveWestfall, @GetPaidBeSocial, @Where2Look and @TrendyJewelry. Please feel free to follow any of the profiles you like.

Oh yeah, if you’re enjoying this series please feel free to post your comments or discuss the techniques being presented on any of the posts. We can all learn from the input of others. I hope that those of you following the series are learning something or at least getting ideas about how you can put these techniques to work for yourself or your business.

Stay tuned for more.

I gotta tell ya, it sure beats the typical day.

Anyway, back to the business at hand. The point of this series is simple. While I’m out enjoying my vacation with the family, the little bit of time I spent last week putting together this series of blog posts, scheduling them with WordPress and scheduling tweets to my Twitter profiles with HootSuite is taking care of my business, driving traffic to my blogs/websites and hopefully making me some money.

Don’t forget, you can check out the updates being tweeted to my Twitter profiles yourself by visiting @SteveWestfall, @GetPaidBeSocial, @Where2Look and @TrendyJewelry. Please feel free to follow any of the profiles you like.

Oh yeah, if you’re enjoying this series please feel free to post your comments or discuss the techniques being presented on any of the posts. We can all learn from the input of others. I hope that those of you following the series are learning something or at least getting ideas about how you can put these techniques to work for yourself or your business.

Stay tuned for more.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot! I plan to show others how do this themselves along the way. In fact, this post should be published just as I am about to sit down and write the Final Exam for my Algebra class the day before the start of my vacation. Did I mention that I’m also currently working on getting a degree in Computer Science? If not, now you know and maybe that will convince you just how much time this technique can save you.

Just to refresh your memory, I want to remind you, that in order to accomplish my mission, I am using WordPress 2.7.1 to publish my blogs, which makes it easy to pre-write my posts and schedule them to be published at a later time or date.

How to Automate WordPress Post Publishing:

Login to your WordPress administration panel and begin to write a post as usual. However, don’t publish the post just yet. Once you have finished writing the post, proceed with the following steps.

1. Locate the Publish Box. It should be to the top right of the admin panel and have the options: Status, Visibility and Schedule for.

2. Move your mouse over to the “Schedule for” option and click “edit”.

3. Choose the date and time that you want your post to be published in the future.

4. Click OK

5. The blue “Publish” button at the bottom right of the Publish Box should now say “Schedule” instead of “Publish”. Click it.

Your post should now be scheduled for the later time/date that you chose. This is all very simple. However, if you are using the latest version of WordPress (2.7.1) there is a known bug in the scheduler that for some reason is causing scheduled posts to “Miss” their scheduled post time. This is a major issue and the wonderful people from WordPress have said that it will be fixed in the next release. Hopefully soon. If you are using an earlier version of WordPress, here is a good tutorial on scheduling posts.

In the meantime, there is a great little plugin that can take care of this problem with version 2.7.1 and fix it for you. It’s a simple PHP file that can be copy/pasted then uploaded to your blog’s wp-content/plugins folder.

It’s called the Scheduled MIAs (Missing In Action) Wordpress Plugin and it works great. You will have to register for the blog in order to get access to the plugin, but it’s a small price to pay for this easy, efficient fix to the WordPress 2.7.1 scheduling problem. Just copy and paste the code provided into a text editor and save it as MIAFix.php (or whatever you like) and upload the file to your wp_content/plugins folder. The plugin should then be visible in your WordPress dashboard. Simply activate it and it will do all the work. If you have any previously scheduled posts that “Missed” their scheduled post time, they will be posted automatically and timestamped with their appropriate scheduled post time. Any posts that you have scheduled for the future should post on time, or within 5 minutes or so of their scheduled post time.

You may notice that when you click on “Schedule” to schedule posts after adding the Scheduled MIAs plugin that WordPress announces that your post has been published and provides you a link to view the post. Don’t worry. The post has not been published publicly yet, but the permalink has been created and you can view it. If you check your post list in your Dashboard, you will see that the post is scheduled for a later time.

You will also notice that the post has not yet been posted to your blog’s homepage, nor is it directly accessible on category pages, archive pages or search pages. Once the schedule time arrives, your post will become publicly accessible. Make sure that you have your WordPress time settings set the way you want before scheduling posts or you may not get the results you’re after.

By the way, vacation starts tomorrow at 6 am EST. Stay tuned.

OK, OK, I know, big deal.

Lots of people post to their blogs or posts tweets from their laptop or mobile phone while on vacation. Well, I don’t have a laptop, I’m not bringing a cell phone and I will not have Internet access where I am staying.

Now do I have you’re attention?

Are you curious about how I’m going to do it?

If all goes right, I’m hoping to accomplish this with relative ease. I plan on using the great TimeStamp tool provided by WordPress in their blogging platform to post some pre-written posts to my blog for me at pre-scheduled times throughout the week while I’m away (a quick tutorial on how to pre-schedule posts can be found here).

I also plan to combine this with the tools provided by HootSuite to post pre-scheduled tweets to each of my Twitter profiles. All the while, I will be soaking up the Florida sun and enjoying a much needed, relaxing week off with the family.

Hopefully, this will keep my readers/followers engaged while I’m away, continue to send traffic to my blogs and continue to make me some money even while I’m absolutely unplugged from the Internet for an entire week.

What could be easier?

Now, don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of more complicated, technologically advanced ways to make money on the Internet, but most people out there trying to make a buck online don’t have the necessary skills to implement those types of strategies. Whenever I encounter someone that is a relative newcomer to trying to earn an online living, I advise them to start out simple. As simple as you can get. I tell them to start out with some simple Affiliate Marketing. It’s something that anyone can do, it’s easy to learn and absolutely free to get started.

The phrase “Affiliate Marketing” often raises an eyebrow or two with the newcomer and I usually get the quick response: “I don’t want to be in any pyramid scheme or have to refer other people to a program in order to make money”. To which I reply: “Then don’t!”. When I refer to Affiliate Marketing, I am not talking about Multi-Level-Marketing (MLM), Shopping Clubs or pyramid schemes. To become an affiliate marketer and make money online, all you need to do is share links to great products, deals, sales and promotions with your friends and/or anyone else that might come across your link on the world wide web.

So, how does one get started with affiliate marketing and how do you make money doing it?

Well, the first step is to join an affiliate network. I personally prefer and use the LinkShare and ShareASale affiliate networks.

An affiliate network is a company that provides a sort of advertising service to many large scale online retailers/service providers. Affiliates like you and me sign up as a publisher with the affiliate network, and are provided with trackable links to products, promotions etc., that we can easily copy/paste to share around the web on Social Networks (like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter), on Internet forums, discussion boards or through email. When people like our friends click on those links, we as an affiliate get credit for referring a customer to the product or service and become eligible for a commission. No website needed. No inventory to keep. No customer service. Just pure referral marketing at it’s finest. There’s no need to pressure your friends. If they find the link interesting and follow it to something they want to buy, then you provided them a service by pointing the way. If they make a purchase, you get a commission. It’s just that simple.

Now, let’s be frank here. This is not going to make you a millionaire overnight, but with consistent effort and practice, you can earn some pretty good commissions this way. Since becoming an affiliate marketer is free, the only cost you will incur is the time it takes you to sign-up for your account and share links. This can be done in minutes a day. Over time, you should be able to build yourself a nice little monthly income. If you’re savvy enough to write your own blog, you can create a nice steady stream of traffic to your affiliate links through your blog posts, as well as place affiliate banners or links in the sidebar , header or footer to make even more money.

Don’t have a blog? Join the GetPaidToBeSocial Community and you’ll get a free blog where you can post as many affiliate links as you like. You can also use the Discussion Board or create a group to promote your links. It doesn’t get easier than this.

Now it’s all up to you. Join LinkShare or ShareASale or both, become an affiliate marketer, share your links on Social Networks, Internet forums, discussion boards, in emails or write a blog and make some money.

Since joining, I have found that Twitter is not only a supremely valuable tool useful for acquiring information from other members posting “Tweets”, but it is also a great way to promote yourself, your business, your product, your event etc. Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? All in 140 characters or less.

Now, you’re probably asking yourself… Why should I use Twitter?

Well, if you’re reading this blog post, chance are that you are trying to find ways to make money through the use of Social Networking, right? If that’s the case, then twitter is definitely for you. By posting regular updates to Twitter, you can place links to your business, products, websites, blog posts and/or affiliate links in a place where a TON of people can see them and follow them. Better still, the more quality information that you provide to other Twitter users, the greater the chances become of you acquiring more followers.

You see, followers are other people on Twitter who have found the updates that you post to be worthwhile and so they have decided to “follow” your “Tweets”. That means that whenever you post something to your Twitter account, it also gets posted into your followers feeds so that they can see your updates without having to leave their own page. Better still, if the “Tweet” that you have sent is quality information, your followers may want to Re-Tweet it themselves, so all of their followers can see it to. Talk about getting your link spread virally!

This brings me to a quick tip: Keep your “Tweets” short. That way, there is more room for your followers to Re-Tweet them. You see, a Re-Tweet actually requires that the person Re-Tweeting the original update adds some text to your message. You don’t want to run out of room in the 140 character update limit so that you ensure your followers get a chance to Re-Tweet your update.

So, in conclusion, I have found Twitter to be an extremely valuable tool for anyone that is trying to make money online through the use of Social Networking. It’s a great way to promote yourself, your business, your product, your affiliate program, your event, etc. to a HUGE audience. If you’re not using Twitter to promote yourself, you are missing out!

Check it out for yourself! Follow GetPaidBeSocial on Twitter and see what it’s all about.

You can also follow Steve Westfall on Twitter here (that’s me!).

So, how can this help your blog?

It can help your blog tremendously. Many social networks come equipped with some sort of service, application or gadget that lets members share links with their social friends. If you write a blog, this is a great avenue for you to put every single one of your blog posts in front of each and every one of your friends on the network that you are using. This can provide you with a steady flow of traffic from your social network to your blog for free. If you have properly set-up your blog with quality posts and ads that generate revenue, this traffic increase can also mean an increase in revenue!

It’s easy. Every time that you complete a new post, make sure to share the permalink to the post using your social network’s “share a link” service. Most of these “share a link” services (like the one on Facebook) will actually post a brief summary of your post along with the link to help entice people viewing the link at your social network to click through and continue reading your post. That is, as long as you’ve written something that will attract your friends attention and make them want to read the full story.

Some social networks (like MySpace and Yuwie) even allow you to have your own free blog. If your a blogger with your own stand alone blog, you can use this free blog provided by the social network to post a short summary of your posts that include the permalink back to your original post on your blog. More free, targeted traffic! Another bonus of using this method is that it creates more incoming links to your blog which can help increase your blog’s visibilty in the search engine results. Better visibilty in the search engine results, can also lead to an increase in traffic!

Once you get the hang of spreading your blog posts around the social networks this way, you can branch out and try to place even more links back to your blog throughout the social networks. Many social networks have discussion boards, forums, clubs, groups, etc. that are focused on a particular activity, event, place, or product. Search around your social network and find discussions, clubs, groups etc. that are related to your blog or blog post and add your post summary that includes the permalink back to your blog. Other members of your social network that regularly view that discussion board, forum, club or group will see your summary. Peak their interest and they will visit your blog to read the rest of the story. More free traffic!

Remember, more traffic to your blog means more people are viewing and/or clicking on the money making ads that you have placed on your blog. If you’re blogging about products that you’re selling through your blog or website, more traffic may also provide you with an increase in sales. Don’t expect miracles. It takes a while to develop a strong blog following. Keep writing and posting. Eventually you’re target audience will find you.