Google Analytics

Google offers some great features to enhance the effectiveness of your blog.  One of those features is Google Analytics.  It is a feature that tells you who comes to your blog, where they are from, how long they stay and what they look at while they are there.

We have noticed lately that whenever we blog about a specific place, people from that place tend to show up and read our blog.  When we blogged about Nauru, people from Nauru came to our site (and left a nice little comment).  When we blogged about Luxembourg, people from Luxembourg came to our site.

As you can see from the map below (a screen shot from our Google Analytics account), people from most of the U.S. have visited our site... but not someone from every state.  We are going to try and change this.  Keep your eye out for posts about how to make money in states that have not visited our site yet.

Market Research

Based on our extremely rigorous polling, Howtomakeadollar is pleased to report that its basic business model  (millions of one dollar ideas) is the best.

This poll was conducted for several days in January, 2010, and found that 60% of all people everywhere in the world, including Nauru, believe that a million one dollar ideas is the best way to make a million dollars. The poll also found that taking Christmas trees out is 20% likely to make you a millionaire. The margin of error on this poll is estimated at 20%.

A special thank you to all of our readers who participated!

How to make $1.13 on Ebay

Howtomakeadollar is pleased to announce its first profitable idea!

Shortly after Christmas, I got on Ebay and sold a few items that I didn't want. I sold an old DVD of Good Will Hunting, a devotional book called "A Year with C.S. Lewis" that I never read, and never planned to read, and a box of body butter and shower gel that I "won" from some guy at a gift swap at work.

If you've ever bought anything on Ebay, you already have an account, and it is really easy to sell something. If you've never used Ebay before, I don't know what to tell you. You are clearly not the kind of person who is likely to be very successful in life, and you should quit trying.

I didn't know what the demand for these items would be, so I just marked everything for a dollar. All three items were bid higher, and I made a total of 9.75.

You are probably wondering why the title of this blog is how to make $1.13 right?
Shipping costs

You have to list shipping prices on your item, but I didn't know how much it would cost. Also, Ebay was being weird and would not let me charge more than $3.00 for shipping. I don't know why that happened, or how to avoid it. Anyway, I lost a lot of money on shipping and only came out with $1.13

That being said, I assume the people who bought these items are *regular readers* of this blog. If so, you can feel free to send a few dollars to me to cover the total shipping. You seem like nice people

*Howtomakeadollar is pleased to announce that our readership has expanded significantly around North America and as far away as Nauru, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and our daily reader numbers have multiplied by a factor of 20 in the past month.

**Seriously. Two people from Nauru have visited our site and spent time reading it. One of them even left a nice comment that we had to delete because it was too nice. See our post about Nauru

How to make $310 million in shady international political deals (Not making this one up)

Ok everybody: Greetings, salutations. I hope you are doing well, eating right, and preparing for global warming.

Now listen up. Big things are happening at Howtomakeadollar. We are changing our whole philosophy and throwing down our savings for our best idea yet. Drop all your one dollar ideas, and drop all your ethical grey areas. Quit your job, sell your stuff, and dump your girlfriend. Also, cancel Twitter. It is kind of dumb and will probably be made fun of in a few years, like things from the 1980s.

(You will need Facebook for this idea, so keep that.)

Thats right. We're moving to Nauru. No, Nauru is not a made up Star Trek place. Its the awesomest island paradise in the South Pacific, where everybody has a beachfront, it never snows, and shoes are optional. An island so dominated by fantasticness that they just got paid $50 million to "friend" two new countries.

Nope, not kidding.

Here's how it happened.
For years, Nauru was a tiny, isolated, and poor island nation that survived by exporting fossilized bird poop. Yep fossilized bird brownies. (I swear, everything in this post is true). I don't know what the world has come to. I have no idea who was buying this stuff, or what they were doing with it. My guess is it went like this:

Guy from Nauru: "I have an unpublished copy of the next Harry Potter book in this bag. I'll sell it to you for a dollar. 
Unsuspecting Canadian Guy: "A dollar eh?"
Guy from Nauru: "I think thats about 1000 Canadian."
Unsuspecting Canadian Guy: "Can I see it first?"
Guy from Nauru: "No."
Unsuspecting Canadian Guy: "Eh. ok."
they exchange cash
Guy from Nauru: "LOL!!!" (runs away)
Unsuspecting Canadian Guy: (opens bag) "Bird poo fossils eh!?" (Shakes fist angrily)

Suffice to say, the fossilized poop industry was not kind to Nauru, and by the late 1990s they had run out of it. Yep, the world bought out all their bird poop fossils. Nauru sank into complete poverty.

However, when your entire national economy is based on selling poop fossils, you learn a lot about salesmanship. In 2003, they found a better way. A much better way.

In 2003 China paid them $130 million to officially "derecognize" Taiwan. This is the equivalent of unfriending someone on Facebook, only at a national level.

You would think that $130 million would be enough to last for a while, especially considering that only like 4 or 5 people live on Nauru.

You'd be wrong. In 2005 an unnamed nation gave them even more money (the total was not disclosed) to "re-recognize" Taiwan. Ok. Now we are up past $260 million. Surely that would be enough money right?
Nope.
In December 2009 Russia paid $50 million to Nauru for "friending" the nations of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Now thats a total of at least $310 million in six years for doing nothing at all.

This is all well and good, but how do I get my hands on that?
Glad you asked. Howtomakeadollar has two recommendations
1. Move to Nauru
Or...
2. Build your own island and charge massive amounts of money to friend and unfriend other countries
2a. Take over a small country and do the same.

You probably think I made this up. But I didn't. You can read about it here. its all true. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/nauru/6813915/Nauru-recognises-South-Ossetia-and-Abkhazia.html