Ok, I’ve about had it with the Internet.  I feel like I’m beating a dead horse.  If anyone tries to tell you it’s easy to make money online, they are lying.  Especially if they are trying to sell you an eBook for $97.00.  By the way, think about it… how do they come up with the price of $97.00 for an eBook?!  What a rip-off!

Anyway, I’m going to take a few days and take a break from slaving away on web sites and try to come up with a list of resources to help myself and others find popular web sites.  More than likely – if you want to make money online you will want to make a site that is like something that already exists.  Or… put a new twist on an existing site.  Find stuff wrong with it and make improvements.  The new, improved site can be the one YOU build to put the popular one out of business.

Then…. you get to live on the beach!

Well, maybe not.  But anyway here are some techniques on how to find popular web sites that you can clone or borrow ideas from.  Ideas are in no particular order.

Alexa Top Sites – This is a great place to start.  See the top 500 global sites or narrow down by country or category.  This is a great way to find popular sites you may have never heard of before.  Search for topics and when you find a site that looks interesting try going to “related links” to see similar sites.

StumbleUpon – An awesome toolbar you can download.  Click the stumble button and it takes you to a random web site in areas that interest you.

Google Adwords Placement Tool – If you have a Google Adwords account, click on the “Reporting and Tools” menu and select “Placement Tool”.  Then on the left site you can select broad categories and narrow them down to show specific web sites on the main screen.  Sort those sites by impressions per day to get an idea for sites that are doing well.  The impressions aren’t totally accurate, but should give you a ball park idea.  Visit sites you are interested in and see how active the site is.  Has it been updated recently or has it been a few years?  A profitable site will be updated frequently more than likely.  Does it get a lot of comments?

Compete.com – Another awesome site.  Enter in a URL and it will give estimated traffic stats for the site.  You can see competing web sites on the left under “Competitive Rank”.  I just entered a site I found on the previously mentioned Google Adwords Placement Tool and found this cool product… a genius idea if I may say so.  Test drive tattoos before you make them permanent.  Hmm… time to check GoDaddy to see if a similar keyword domain is available

Ok, that’s all my brain can handle for now.  I’ll add more tips soon!

Ok, I’m back.  Here are some more:

Delicious.com – A social bookmarking site is making a comeback.  Keep an eye on it for possible popular sites to clone.

Digg.com – I dunno about this site anymore.  It use to be cool and a good source, but questionable now.  I’ll put it on the list anyway.

Twitter Search – Keep an eye out for popular retweeted sites and trends.

Google Trends – Find the latest trending items searched for in Google.

Google Insights for Search – An awesome way to find keywords that are being searched for.   You can narrow down to categories/niches and location.  Great for coming up with ideas for local web sites.

Domain-Daily – Find out what domain names have been registered today or by date.  There’s at least one better site than this out there that is more accurate.  I will try to find it and post it soon.  Oh, here’s another one for now – TasteReports.com.

Found a couple more gems – Traffic Estimate and Netcraft Top Sites.  Most of these seem to be pretty much the same.  The rankings are different, but should give you an overall ballpark idea.

Oh, here’s another – DoubleClick Ad Planner by Google.  Check out their list of top 1,000 web sites and find similar competing sites when you click on the stats for each site.

October 11, 2011 UPDATE! 

Howdy… ok, found a couple more sites to play around with to see popular web sites.  I forgot about this one.  It’s called The Truth Laid Bear.  Click on different categories on the right and  you can see several thousand web sites sorted by popularity.

I’ve been working on a web site I’m calling Start Frog.  It’s not even close to being finished by you can take a peek if you like.  I’m building a start page for myself, but perhaps one day others will be able to use it, create their own start page, etc.

Here’s another place where you can find popular web sites.  Visit Blog Ads “buy ads” section.  You can then browse by category or search by keyword.  Get a rough idea of traffic and how much that site is making from ads.  If they have a lot of spots filled up and are charging a lot, then you can assume that is a good niche to get into.

Here’s another one – Technorati Top 100 Blogs and many thousands of other blogs in their Blog Directory.

Thinking of trying a super simple technique for raising moola.  Start with a small goal like $100.  Then set a goal to make an extra $100 in one week.  Keep doing this and increase the amount of money and eventually do it over a monthly time frame or something….

So it would sorta be like lifting weights.  Keep increasing the weights (money goal) and you get stronger (richer).

And after awhile you’d have a sort of swiss army knife of techniques to make money… and might find a good niche eventually?

I’m gonna give it a shot and see what happens.  So I’m officially starting this today, August 22, 2011 at 2:33 P.M.  So, I need to make an extra $100 by next week August 29, 2011 at the same time.  There are no rules… except to make $100 extra any way possible.

Update… just found this interesting article: 25 (Unusual) Ways to Make Quick Money

Update!  I just made my first $1.00.  I logged into Microworkers.com and did a few BS jobs.  It’s really kind of a slimy place though.  Whether I see the money is another story.  I’m going to count it towards my $100 goal though.  LOL.  Only $99 to go.

Update!  Ok, I’m going to retract my above statement.  I’m back to $100.  Microworkers sucks big time.  They don’t pay out via PayPal and use a couple of shady payment services… which means you will likely never get paid.  Also, there’s a minimum payment threshold you have to reach before you get paid.  It’s likely you will get burnt out before you reach that level … so basically you are then slaving away for nothing.  Don’t waste your time with Microworkers.com.

So I’m doing an experiment with eBay – basically selling something that I can buy on another site (that I think is underpriced).  Many times people will buy stuff on eBay without researching to see if there’s a better deal out there.  I know this for a fact as I’ve sold a bunch of stuff this way.  Maybe this is the ticket?  Sell stuff I don’t have… and/or sell stuff other people sell (cheaply) and be the middle man and take a piece of the action.  I won’t give away this niche … but maybe I will if it fails.  So my eBay listing is supposed to cost 80 cents, so now I’ve got $100.80 to go to reach my goal.

Making money is a bitch in this sucky economy!

Update… so far my brilliant eBay auction is a total flop.  60 something views and not a bite.  Man people are cheap these days.  Maybe because everyone is broke?

Well anyway I’m going to do some research on how to find hot selling items to sell on eBay.  Found this article which has a few good pointers: Top 10 Sites to Find The Hot Selling Items on eBay.

Update... still nothing.  Another shitty day on the Internet.  There’s simply too much noise out there… everyone’s talking but nobody’s listening.  I have another random idea in my head to get web traffic.  A sort of link bait idea I’ll give a try.

One thing’s for sure it’s nearly impossible to start any kind of business when you have a baby.  There’s simply no damn time to do anything.

I hope some asshole buys what I put up on eBay.

Update… Ok, I’m starting to think I shot too high with my $100 in one week goal.  LOL.  I think it would be better to start with a really small goal.  $5, $10 or $25 and build from there.  My main problem is I can’t get shit done in the day because I have to watch da baby.  Another problem is it seems everything in the world is over saturated and everyone is too cheap to buy shit.

But, I’m going to keep trying.  I think I will make a little motivating sign or something to help me out with my goal.  Something that says I will make an extra $100 by August 29, 2011.  Read it once in the morning, and once at night before bed.  This is an old Think and Grow Rich Napoleon Hill trick.

I also need to start a list of SPECIFIC TECHNIQUES / ideas, etc. I can use to make money.  Something I can refer to any time I need to make money.  This has given me another idea I may work on in the near future….

Update… (9/10/11) – Well, that was a massive failure!  Man I’m depressed and feel screwed as ever.  Feels like the Internet is simply over saturated.  Too many people trying to make money… and everything is saturated.

I did have one tiny piece of luck though.  I made $5 (which I’ll probably never see) from Fiverr.com.  I got a creepy ass clown and made a video for someone.  It’s a pretty cool site and great concept.  But, at $5 a pop I can’t imagine anyone is making a living off the site.  You need a great idea and/or you need to be talented as a mo-fo.

So now I’m thinking about focusing on affiliate marketing for a little while and see if I can make some money.  Affiliate marketing is SUPER over saturated, but perhaps with some clever tactics I can squeeze 50 cents or so out of the Internet.  Should I buy a separate domain and document my progress?  Hmm.. maybe.  Let me think about it for awhile…