Since the new fiscal year just started for us yesterday, there are a lot of tax increases 2009 that are taking place. If you’re in the states, a lot of people will be affected even more during this hard time in the economy. And I can guarantee that every online entrepreneur making money online will be affected by this in some way.

Let’s start with the tax increases in Massachusetts, since that’s where I currently reside. They will be raising sales tax from 5% to 6.25% which is the first time it has increased since I have lived here. (And I’ve been here most of my life).

That will affect a lot of spending I do because anything I purchase will be slightly higher. So, say I purchase a new computer, desk, chair or whatever for my mini office, the extra sales tax accumulates over time.

In addition, they are trying to increase gas taxes as well. That sucks even more with the high gas rates as is, now traveling to business meetings by car will be just a little more expensive than it usually is.

So, outside of my state, almost every other state is being affected in some way with the taxes. I believe Florida is increasing cigarette taxes, Hawaii is increasing hotel taxes, etc.

If you guys have more details on your state, please drop a line by commenting.  I would definitely like to know.

Many of these states have different tax increases but ultimately, all of us are affected. Below is a breakdown in states on who will be increasing taxes and fees. It’s from May so it’s a little old but you’ll get some rough idea for your state.

Now, as an online entrepreneur, we all have to pay taxes. Technically, you’re supposed to report everything you make to the IRS and if you work from home, that basically means you’ll be writing a check out every April. But next year, I believe you will be writing a bigger check.

I read that people making over $250,000 a year will have their taxes increase, but now, even those making less than that will have their taxes increases as well. So, in essence, everyone that pays taxes will be paying just a little more.

In addition, there might be a slight increase in taxes for health insurance which would drastically affect middle-income homes. But nothing has been confirmed about that just yet but as things are slowly having the snowball effect, I wouldn’t be surprised.

The reason why I am posting about the tax increases 2009 is simply the fact that it will affect all of us making money, buying things, or just living in the states during these hard economic times. I’m not a big fan of taxes but unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about this.

I guess we have to sit here and just watch us get dug into a deeper hole.

It looks like there has been yet another Google Pagerank update in June 2009 and some unfortunate news, this blog remains the same at PR2. But like I said before and I’ll continue to say it, Google Pagerank doesn’t really mean much!

If you live by Google Pagerank, more than likely you’ll die by Google Pagerank. A majority of the times when I talk about Google Pagerank and the updates, I usually emphasize the fact that you can still make money, still get traffic, still be successful with a PR0 or a PR10. Honestly, it doesn’t matter just as long as your site gets ranked in search engines.

And yes, your site can get ranked in search engines without a Pagerank.

But instead of discussing the whole thing about Pagerank doesn’t really matter, I’m going to switch it up a bit. I’m going to tell you the various changes in PR with some of my sites. And I want to hear from you guys to see if your PR has changed at all.

So, DatMoney remains the same at PR2. The main reason is the fact that I haven’t been building links for this site for a while now. Matter of fact, I haven’t been doing much promotion in general for this site because I’ve been focusing on a few other projects.

I was going to do a couple of link exchanges with blogs with similar stats and niche but I’m just not sure if I’m going to do that. I may consider it, though.

If you guys have been following this blog for a while, my Pagerank history went from PR0 to PR4 to PR3 to PR2. It has stayed at PR2 for the last couple of updates, I believe.

Some of my other sites have gone up and down but none have gone back down to a PR0. I think a few of my brand news sites have become PR1. And those are the sites that I’ve probably had for only a month or so.

Others have gone up to PR3 while some have dropped to PR2. Overall, I believe most of my sites have some sort of Pagerank.

Unfortunately for me, it doesn’t really mean much. Because Pagerank or no Pagerank, I can still manage to make money online and get traffic.

So, how did you guys fair with the Google Pagerank Update - June 2009?

Now this isn’t a guarantee but I figured I’d just write a post on it because of the chance and initiative I took. And by taking this chance and initiative, I may get $500 for 10 minute of my time.

I’m sure you guys are wondering how in the hell I may possibly get $500 for 10 minutes of my time. Well, honestly, it wasn’t hard. But then again, I’m not even guaranteed it.

Last night I received an e-mail from my contact form titled “$500″ on the subject line. Naturally, I thought it was going to spam until I saw who was e-mailing it to me. It was Tyler Cruz of tylercruz.com whom is a pretty cool entrepreneur and successful one at that.

He was basically informing me of his weight loss competition and the status of it.

So, what does that have to do with me getting $500?

Well, do you guys remember when I wrote that post titled “Working as an Online Entrepreneur = Weight Gain?” That post was written to also enter in the competition/contest to win $500. And just by taking 10 minutes to write that quick post, I have the opportunity to win some cash.

But the best news was the fact that my chances of getting that $500 increased drastically. I also found out by reading Tyler’s lastest weight lose update that I’m the only person who actually took the initiative to vote against his opponent, Jonathan Volk.

It was quite surprising too because only two total people voted for this competition (one for Tyler and one for Jonathan). So, in essence, if Jonathan doesn’t lose 6.5 pounds within the next 30 days, I’m going to be $500 richer than I was.

I know what most of you guys are thinking, this is all based on luck. But the purpose of this post isn’t about hoping to win or luck, it’s more about taking action, taking chances with your online projects and if you have nothing to lose (besides some time) and everything to gain, you should jump on that opportunity when it arises.

Honestly, I wasn’t even going to enter the contest because I was being lazy and I didn’t think I would win. But I just decided to take a shot at it because I wanted to cover the topic on weight gain and living as an online entrepreneur and of course, the chance to win $500.

I hope this is a lesson for all of you guys, if you see a great opportunity, take a chance but more importantly, take action! Because who knows, you may end up with better rewards than just $500!

If you’re starting from scratch when it comes to flipping sites, you need to pick a niche to start on. Now there are people who randomly pick and get lucky while others don’t. I do that sometimes but then again, it’s not exactly random because I look at keywords that are getting high search engine traffic, usually. But there are plenty of steps you can take on how to pick a niche for site flipping.

Personally, I like to pick a niche that I’m actually interested in or something that will keep me entertained while I’m doing it. I don’t like picking niches that bore me because when I do that, I feel as though I’m just working online for money instead of enjoying it.

Don’t get me wrong, if you are just working for the money, no ones stopping you. I’m just not a big fan of working, working, working just for a check unless I really have to. And speaking of working for money, if you have any site that’s making money then you should be able to sell it with no problem.

But let’s get into picking a niche.

What’s Hot and What Do Buyers Want?

Like I said in the previous paragraph, buyers want money making sites. Or at least the potential the site has to make tons of money. That is pretty obvious because no one wants to invest in something without getting some return back plus more. They want to invest now and in the long run, they get their money back and with some additional work, they profit from it.

A good place to start is to head over to Sitepoint’s “Want to Buy” section. But I’m only looking for things that I’m capable of doing and interested in.

If you guys take a look within the past week or so, there are a lot of people that are looking for sites that I’m probably not going to attempt to do. For instance, directories, applications for social sites, forums, etc. I think those would be too much work so it’s pointless to try to learn something brand new.

What I’m looking for is something in a niche that I’m actually interested in, that I know I’m capable of doing and something that will put money in my pockets while I’m doing it.

Since I didn’t find anything that would help me pick a niche (most people wanted something that I wasn’t interested in, something that I couldn’t do or was just asking for sites that made money) let’s try the other Marketplace sections.

The thing you have to really look for are sites that people are actually bidding on. If they get no bids, it’s either because they are overpriced, not worth it or people don’t see potential (or possibly just missed the listing).

After looking through the different sections on what people are bidding on, the main ones that I would be interested in doing are: health-related, sports, games and cars/bikes.

Is the Niche Competitive? Are Their Keywords I Can Rank In?

Out of the four niches that I’d be interested in making a site for, there’s only one that is probably highly competitive no matter what you create the site for. The health site.

People are so crazed about getting healthy and losing weight that the niche has become similar to make money online niches: they are over saturated.

You can probably say the same for the other niches that I’ve picked but every single one of those have so many sub-niches that you can work with.

I’m a big sports fan but I also want to do minimal work and sports would require me to keep up with everything daily so I’m going to pass on that.

Now video games and cars/bikes are things that I’d be interested in and I wouldn’t have to update daily or anything like that. So, let’s pick some random things relating to video games and cars/bikes and see if there’s low/high competition and if there’s good keywords for us to rank in.

Instead of using both examples, I just do the cars. What I did was Googled “new cars 2009″ because people are always into the new things. Of course, cars have the same models each year, just different. I found an article based on my search and found “the best new cars of 2009.”

After looking through, I picked some random ones and I typed it into the SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool.

After looking through, I decided to go with the Nissan Skyline GT as my pick. So I typed in “Nissan” into the suggestion tool and saw:

As you can see, “Nissan Skyline” and “Nissan GTR” are highly searched for. Don’t worry, we’re going to be focusing more on the long-tail keywords rather than those specific ones.

Time to see how competition it is. All I did was a simple Google search for “Nissan Skyline GT” and “Nissan Skyline GTR” and both came up with just a little over one million search results. I know that’s a lot but I’d say if you can get a highly searched for keyword with a million or less search results, then that’s actually pretty good.

Does the Niche Have Potential in the Eyes of the Buyer?

Now it’s hard to say since we didn’t even set anything up. But based on the above, it definitely should. It’s highly searched for, I don’t foresee the car models going out of style soon and more than likely it’ll make some good money.

Our goal is to basically get all our stats up so we can have proof to potential buyers.

Now that is how I would potentially select a niche for a potential site flipping project. Don’t get me wrong, I was just showing you guys an example, I may not necessarily use the car site as the example site for you guys to follow. But don’t worry, once I actually pick it, you guys will know and be able to follow along.

Stay tuned for more on the site flipping series!

I’ve been getting more and more proposals for joint ventures and possible challenges and I tend to turn most of them down. Don’t get me wrong, I like a challenge just like the next person, and if you know me, you know I’m extremely competitive. But there are plenty of reasons why I simply will reject your offer or even ignore it.

Some of you guys may remember when I wrote “5 Reasons Why I Won’t Sponsor Your Contest” and some of those reasons apply to these joint venture proposals or possible challenges or whatever.

Don’t get me wrong, I consider a lot of challenges and although I may contact some of you guys about it in the near future, currently it’s on hold for me.

Anyways, let’s go over some reasons why I will reject your potential challenge or joint venture proposals:

1. E-mail message is a generic one (not personal) - This is the same exact thing as the contest sponsoring, why would someone want to reply to you at all if you’re sending some generic message you probably sent to a bunch of other people? At the very least, you can find out who you’re writing to and address it to them.

If your e-mail begins with “To whom it may concern” or “Hello” or something equivalent then more than likely you won’t get a response. I mean, when you write a cover letter for a job and you’re writing to the hiring manager, you usually address it to them, right? Like “Mr. Somebody: I am writing to you because…”

2. Not Very Organized - I’m not saying I’m the most organized person but I know how to be. And if you’re really serious about a proposal or challenge, you should at the very least know what you’re going to do before you contact your challenger.

You don’t want to contact someone with a challenge and it’s half-assed and not even complete. It’s like “hey, I challenge YOU but, um, I’m not fully sure how this is going to work?”

3. No Benefits at All - What’s the point of a challenge or proposal to someone if their are absolutely no benefits? I mean, a competition or a contest usually follows with a reward, right? Don’t get me wrong, you don’t have to have a physical prize or anything but there should be some sort of benefit like links, publicity, money, possible networking partners, etc.

Any type of benefit should be included.

4. You Have a Bad Reputation - Believe it or not, but you can actually look people up on the internet. If you’re a somewhat reputable online entrepreneur, then you are definitely searchable online. And if you are or were a previous spammer, no thanks! I don’t think I would consider spammers that went through rehabilitation either because I think it would lead to something that may potentially hurt my own reputation.

5. Other Reasons (no time, not worth it to me, etc) - Lastly, and hopefully this is the only reason why I reject your proposal or challenge: because its my fault.

I’m hoping this will be the main reason why I reject your offer, its because I don’t have time to commit to another project. And although, I love working with other people, most of my online partnerships usually end in some sort of break and doesn’t work out fully.

Anyways, I hope it helps clear some things and hopefully it doesn’t scare people away from proposing!