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What I've done
is searched the Internet for these survey companies, made
sure that joining them was 100% free, that they paid the
survey takers for their time, and then I listed them in my
paid survey listings. I added the survey information page
half way through and recently added the FAQ's section
because of emails I received from visitors that had
questions about whether they are a scam, how much can you
make, are they worth my time and other questions like are
they really free to join which they are. |
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How did you get
involved in your particular "niche" for your chosen online
business. |
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I had been out
of college a few years and was still paying off my loan so
I started researching online income methods. I read an
article somewhere online and decided to see what paid
surveys were
all about but when I searched for survey listings I came
up with nothing and after a while I ended up with a list of
sites in my favorites folder. I joined
a few and made some money but then I became side-tracked
about my list getting larger and larger. I started making
posts at my blog about my list, others asked for the
entire list so I bought the domain name and that's where it all
started for me. |
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What is your
favorite part or what do you like best about running your
own online business? |
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The money.
That's where it all started with me even though I ended up
building a website I never planned for, it all started
with the money in the very beginning. I'm not embarrassed
or feel bad about it at all, it's a business and we all
work for money in our regular jobs, so having a
website that earns an income for me is OK in my book! |
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What is your
biggest challenge as a webmaster & site owner and how do
you overcome it? |
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With the way
companies come and go online, for me it's all about
keeping the listings updated. I only check them once every
couple of weeks, so sometimes a company will change the
location of their survey, sell out to
another company, and though it is rare I've experienced a
couple of them going out of business over the last few
years too which leaves a dead link on the site and gives
the visitor the dreaded 404 page not found. I overcome
outdated or bad links by setting my outlook calendar to remind me
every two weeks to go to my site and check links to see
if there are any issues. |
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If you had to
do it all over again, what is the one thing you would
change if you could? |
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I still want to
change it so that the links are automatically back link
checked and if there are problems then the
system will email a detailed report to me of exactly which
link needs to be checked. My biggest time expenditure is
link checking if you could imagine having to click on all
the listings to make sure they are working OK. Sometimes I admit I
don't make it past the first 40 listings but my surf
tracking says that 90% of the visitors visit the first
couple of survey listing pages the most. |
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What would you
tell a person reading this about starting their own online business? |
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There are those
that do and there are those that don't we all fit into one
of those categories. If you're happy with sitting on the
sidelines watching the game then that's OK, if you want to
be one of the players and make money through a website
then you can do that too. I'd say find your niche area of
interest and surf around to see if you can fill a need out
there. For me I couldn't find a website with a big list of
paid survey companies so I made my own. I started out with
a blog and that's a good option for you too, it'll get
your feet wet and get you used to writing and posting and that's
where it all starts, with doing something instead of
nothing. |
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 We
hope you gained some insight into what it's like to run
your own online business. We appreciate the time Mike took
for our Success Story interview and have asked him to
provide some great links for you - be sure to check them
out today! David &
Margie |
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Interviews with
people earning from their websites
