The Make Money Online Article

Entire books have been written explaining various ways to make money online. Yet several years ago when I first began my online business journey, I simply couldn’t find one article which explained the entire process. Instead, I spent my time reading a bit on domains, a bit on hosting, a bit on marketing, a bit on link building, a bit on advertisements, and wasted time bouncing from one article to another, often more confused than when I started. Such a hodge-podge, hit and miss approach to learning how to successfully make money online wasted months, while I spent countless hours while committing horrible errors.

One comprehensive how-to article would have changed my life.

This article is to fill in the gap, and provide you with a one-stop tutorial that covers the basics of making money online, specifically without spending more than $300. This is the basic investment, and can end up earning literally tens of thousands of dollars.

Why You Should Read This

This article is pretty lengthy. It would be easy to skip it for a shorter, “more fun” website, that is filled with hype. However, the information provided here is proven to work. Professional “make money online” “gurus” spend entire websites, filled with hundreds of articles explaining how to do what is listed in this one article.

Also, most websites are created to teach you how to simply make money online. We’ll be covering that as well, while also taking it a step further: we don’t want you to just “make some money”, we want you to become independently wealthy. That’s what this article teaches.

We’ll start with the very basics, and look first at how to succeed at anything. Then we’ll move on and cover the possible ways to make money online, and then will narrow those ways down to the one way that has the most earning potential. From there we’ll take a step-by-step approach to success so that anyone who follows each of the steps will be in a position to make money quit their job, work at home and manage their new home business.

This is an incredibly exciting topic, but, unfortunately, the guides found on other sites are often filled with hype and false promises. This is a no-hype zone, and will cover the disadvantages and difficulties of every step to making money online with reason, caution, and a healthy dose of common sense.

First things first, let’s talk about how to succeed at anything. This will be the foundation of the tutorial, and every point after this will be referencing this section of the guide.

A World of Systems

Children are notorious for constantly asking questions. Their reasoning is simple: people, even “little people”, try to organize everything they know so that it makes sense. Children ask “why” because they think there just has to be a reason. Everyone knows that things just work in a certain way. Most people who are looking for business opportunities know this as well.

This is why there are so many scams out there, with “automated” formulas for becoming a millionaire, with “systems” that will make you millions without any work. Of course, these systems are false. But it proves a point: these marketers are trying to take advantage of people who know that there has to be a system to everything, including making money online.

To get a system to work for you, you have to work the system. To work the system, you have to know the system. It’s been said that “the first million is the hardest”, and it’s completely true. There have been millions of millionaires who spent years building that first million, but once they hit the first one, the second and third and fiftieth suddenly were much easier to achieve. This is because to make that first million, these businesspeople had to have some sort of a system for making it. It’s all about having the right system.

Once you figure out the system, you can use the system to generate success over and over again. It’s like having a cookie cutter, only you aren’t making cookies, you’re making hundred-dollar bills.

The only question is “What system is best?” That’s where our next section in this tutorial comes in. There are an incredibly large number of people who earn their livelihood with online businesses, jobs and opportunities that they have taken advantage of.

Before we analyze the possibilities for success, let’s discuss what it means to be successful, and what the perfect opportunity would look like.

Know What You Want

This is one of the most vital sections of this tutorial. Lean back, and imagine a detailed “perfect” lifestyle for you. Think of having everything that you could want? What’s the ideal existence for you?

For some, it might sound kind of obvious. Travel, fast cars, big houses… but, of course, everyone is different. A perfect lifestyle for some would be to have enough money to live in a small cottage, have enough to eat, and spend most of the day with an adoring family and/or friends. For others, it would be weekly trips to Hawaii, monthly hikes in the Alps and shopping sprees in NYC. It’s completely relative to the person.

The amount of money we make is essential to achieving the lifestyle we want. It might not be a lot, or, for some, it might be an incredible amount. It depends on the person. The purpose of a dream is to achieve it. I’m a firm believer that the Internet has opened up the possibilities of incredible wealth to anyone who has the determination to achieve it.

Get a pen and paper out, and sit with a friend or loved one. Write down in detail exactly what you want in life. Once you are finished, post it somewhere you will see all the time. This is the goal of your online journey.

One word of advice: Don’t give up. No matter what happens, no matter what people tell you, no matter what — don’t give up. Having an achievable dream is vital to becoming the person you want to be and achieving the life you want.

If your dream is ambitious, it will be incredibly hard to achieve it. But barring the laws of physics, there is no limit to what you can achieve. It doesn’t take a high IQ, amazing writing skill, an amazing personality or anything else to make money online, as we’ll be talking about in a minute.

The Right System

The perfect way of making money is not to work for your money, but to have your money work for you. This is the secret of professional investors. They take what they have and double it, then double that, then double… you get the point.

The crucial key to the ultimate system of making money is this:

Build a money-making system, not a time-based job.

Billions of people around the world have their entire lively-hood on the line, every day. If they miss a day of work, their entire source of income is demolished. If an emergency comes up, they are completely wiped out. If they are fired, they are completely wiped out. They make money completely hands-on, meaning they have to show up to work. This leaves them incredibly vulnerable. They work for their money, their money doesn’t work for them.

Having an income that isn’t directly tied to the hours you work is vital to creating an income that has no limit. Few millionaires are paid by the hour.

Those who have spent their lives, not slaving for an hourly job, but instead to build a system that was designed to grow, with or without any more work — they’re the ones who are the millionaires.

Next up, let’s talk about a way you can establish your own system that doesn’t require you to constantly micromanage once you are established. This is what I have done, and am actually already doing with this website and every other website I own. I’ve spent almost no money, but generate my entire online income in this manner. It’s simple, but it’s not easy. But one thing is for sure: it’s completely changed my life.

Making Money With a Website

Every day, millions of people around the world head to Google or other search engines. They might have a question they want answered, or they might just be surfing. Thousands of people every day search for “make money online” and “work from home”. They are looking for ways to get some cash while at their computers. This is just the start. There are million of searches about real estate, base-ball cards, celebrities, movies, video games, gardening, travel — you name it, they’re searching for it.

So what does this have to do with making money online?

Next time you’re driving down the highway, notice the bill-boards on the sides. Someone owns the little strip of land next to the highway, and has rented a little spot of their property to someone else to put up advertisements. If it weren’t for the highway, and consequently the traffic on the high-way, the bill-board would have never been put up, and the property owner wouldn’t have that extra source of revenue. But the highway existed, and he recognized that that was a great income opportunity.

The same thing is true for the Internet. The Internet is the information super-highway. Billions of people use the Internet every day. Websites are kind of like the property that’s next to the highway — the highway traffic sees what’s on the property in the same way that Internet users see what’s on websites. All you have to do is recognize the opportunity the Internet holds for you, and act accordingly.

The Internet allows you to create a resource for people searching for a particular topic, regardless of anything. Internet users who are searching for that information will stumble across your website. You’ll have “bill-boards” and banner-ads, meaning that the traffic suddenly equals money, at least for you. You don’t have to actually sell anything — you just market information. This is how I make money online, and it’s incredibly simple. It just requires four steps.

First, find a topic to write about on your website, called a “niche”. Example niches would include “personal finance”, “recipes”, “movie reviews” or anything else. Some people even have made a full-income writing about birthday parties.

After picking your niche, you get your actual website. After this, you start writing and putting tother some quality articles and generate traffic. Then ad advertisements. It’s simple — no techy knowledge is necessary, if you use SiteBuildIt, a program we’ll be talking about later in this tutorial.

Let’s go through each of the steps in the process.

1. Find a “Niche”

Imagine spending all day, every day writing about the economic cycles of Brazilian currency. Can’t imagine doing that? Me either. Your interests will play an amazingly huge role in what will work for you when creating content for your website and/or blog. If you want to meet success, your blog has to be about something you know and care about.

Just ask yourself, “what are the top 10 most important things to me?” Whether it’s pets, politics vacations, algebra, books, philosophy or child-raising, the Internet probably has a slot open for you. You can be successful writing about almost anything. You just have to care enough about the topic to completely exhaust it — because that’s what you’re going to do.

Once you have figured out what the topic is going to be, you can move on to the next step — making a website.

2. Make Website

For some reason, many of my friends believe that I know lots of computer coding, and could rewrite the scripts for Facebook or Google. I can’t. I have a collection of websites, and I can’t even remember how to do HTML like links — I have to look it up every time. What’s my point in saying this? If I can make a website, you can. Don’t be intimidated by what popular culture might say about the Internet and websites — you don’t have to be a geek to unleash the Internet to your financial favor.

Getting a website is simple. You have basically two choices. You can get a traditional full-blown website, or you can get a blog. A regular website is one which focuses on having set, concrete pages, meaning that the website generally looks the same most of the time. A blog is a specific kind of website that is constantly updated, and is based upon information that’s importance is based upon time. A blog is a great way to write about news and current events, whereas a website is a great way to write about things that are not affected by time. Either way, I’ll give you the information you’ll need to get either.

A Blog

Blogs are incredibly fun, yet time-consuming. Most blogs are written for personal use, though the professional blog is on the rise, as evidenced by this blog along with dozens of others.

To have a blog, you first need a domain name and a host. By far, the best host and domain serving company I have run into is IX Web Hosting — that’s who hosts this website.

The process here is incredibly simple. Sign up — in a few hours, you’ll have access to your website. Plus, IX Web Hosting is so cool they give you the domain name for free. Yep, for free. Don’t get cheaper than that. All in all, they’ll charge you six bucks a month for some great hosting and a free domain. By far the best deal I’ve run into.

Once you’ve got access to the website, check out Wordpress.org. There you will find a great blogging platform called, well, “Wordpress.” It’s shnazzy. Once again, that’s what Shaun Connell dot Com uses. It’s a great blogging platform that is almost completely customizable, looks professional, plus has a nifty “page” feature, allowing you to have lots of regular webpages, much like this one.

Setting up the Wordpress on your website used to be hard. Note the past tense. Some awesome guys here have offered to hook it up for you. For free. That’s what I call service.

This is if you are interested in establishing a blog. I actually don’t suggest blogging for money at first. Blogs are a great way to market products and build links for your websites once you have more than one. Blogging requires that you constantly are writing and working and adding more and more content. If you miss a week or so you can lose a huge number of subscribers. If you’ve never made a website before, I’d suggest starting with a traditional site. If you are seriously considering a blog right now, and you haven’t made a website before, feel free to leave this page to read this.

Traditional Website

If you aren’t interested in blogging, but want a full-fledged website, there’s only one way to do it — the best way. After creating several successful websites, one thing I learned was that putting a full-fledged site up can be time consuming and a general all-around pain. Then I discovered a company that is, well, perfect. No, I’m completely serious. I read reviews of the program from website experts well over a year ago. I thought they were stretching the truth. Finally, I bought the product and tried it myself. They weren’t kidding.

The company sells a product called “SiteBuildIt!” SBI gives you a domain, host, a design program so that you can design the website without buying another product, it also gives you a special search program that allows you to look at the best ways to maintain your website, along with special “collaborative” options that allow your site’s visitors to /add/ free content (the more successful you become, the less your write), free “search engine optimization” software that brings you tons of free traffic from places like Google, along with thousands of dollars worth of other free software. SBI is essential to anyone who is just starting out on the Internet, and can pay off the original 300 bucks thousands of times over.

But why do you need the programs that are built in for free? Here’s the proof it works. Over 60% of all the websites created through SBI are in the top 3% of the Internet. SiteBuildIt makes money only because they market themselves to people who want to make money. Other hosts are often just for people who want personal blogs or websites with pictures. SiteBuildIt is specifically for people who have the goal of making money with their website. That’s why the success rate is so high.

SiteBuildIt isn’t just a way to get a website, it’s a way to get a website that makes money.

3. Get Traffic

The next step is to generate visitors to your new site, or “traffic” as the visitors are called. After all, with no traffic there’s no income. Traffic is the driving force for internet-marketers — that’s the whole reason we do what we do.

Remember, the number one source for free traffic is through search engines. This means that you’ll need to make search engines happy if you want any traffic at all. There are basically two general ways of making search engines happy — lots of good content, and lots of others linking to you. We’ll talk about content first.

Content

By far, the number one top priority that you can possibly have regarding traffic, is to have lots of relevant content. If your website is about philosophy, write about philosophy until it hurts — if your website is about politics, write about politics until you see politicians in your sleep. The same goes with every other topic that you could possibly choose — write, write and write. That’s how to increase traffic.

Obviously, though, you don’t want just random rants and raves on your site, you’ll need content that’s good enough to get you noticed. Writer and webmaster Steve Pavlina gives plenty of tips for generating great traffic through content.

Write Valuable Content

If your content is about something that no one wants to know or would be willing to read (for example, nothing but personal information), chances are — no one will read it. Or link to it. This means that your traffic will either die, or just never start.

Valuable content can really just depend on the topic. For example, if you’re writing about how to make money online, you don’t want to just say what all of the other “make money online” blogs are staying — no one would go to your site, they’d go to another one. Be valuable, and search engines recognize your value.

Write Original Content

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever seen regarding websites is their lack of creativity. Don’t rehash old news, and don’t just write about what the other websites in your niche write about — be yourself, stand out and the search engines will take notice. Why? Because the more original your content, the more likely other webmasters are going to be to refer your site to their friends, meaning that you get links pointing to your site, meaning that search engines love you more. Creative content gives you search engine love.

Be Honest

People can see through an insincere writing style. You need to actually care about both what you’re writing about and the people who will read it. Otherwise, you’ll just come off as an arrogant jerk. Search engines hate, and I mean hate jerks. Well. Other webmasters do at least, meaning you won’t get as many links as if you were sincere.

Links

Search engines like to list popular websites at the top of their results. If lots of people link to a website, chances are, it’s going to be a good website. Considering this, getting people to link to your website or blog is essential to getting free traffic on Google and other search engines. The only question is … how?

Content

As explained before, content is everything. Write good stuff, get good links. Write really good stuff, get lots of good links. It’s literally that simple.

Link Exchanges

Link exchanges are sneaky little clubs that people join to link to each other. This way everyone who joins gets lots of links pointing back to their website or blog. This sounds great, but search engines generally don’t care when they see that a website has lots of artificial links. But, if you want to try it, shoot for it.

The only link-exchange program that I’ve found that works quite well is BlogRush. It works by putting a little widget on the side of your blog. It’s professional and doesn’t look cheesy, but generates lots of relevant traffic. Most definitely a must-use for blog owners.

Link to similar websites

A link is “worth more” to search engines if it is from a website that is similar to yours. This way the search engine robots will think that it’s probably a legitimate link, rather than one that has been spammed all over the Internet. To find a website to trade links with, just do a quick Google search for your keywords either on Google or Google Blog Search.

Also, remember that by linking to my website, you’ll be getting an automatic link back to yours. I believe in sharing the link wealth. =)

Comment on similar blogs

It shocks me to no end how so many bloggers and webmasters expect to have millions of people read their website out of the blue. If people don’t know you exist, they can’t link to you. If you don’t link to you, then you don’t get a high ranking on search engines. If you don’t get the high search engine ranking, then people won’t know you exist.

Breaking this seemingly endless cycle is relatively easy. Go to the Google Blog Search type in some of your website’s keywords, and comment on the blogs with a link pointing back to your website. Doing this helps both other webmasters, and puts you on the map. Don’t expect everyone to link to you right off the bat — you’ve got to earn their trust first. How do you do that? It’s all about content.

4. Make Money

Here’s where we get to the good part — making the money. This is, interestingly enough, one of the easiest issues regarding the website. If you have a nice website with nice content and some traffic, monetization is going to make it all worth-while.

There are several ways to earn an income with your website, all without charging your visitors anything. How does this work? Remember the analogy at the beginning of the page, the one about the bill-boards? That’s just it. Traffic never has to pay to see billboards — the advertisers pay for the traffic to see the ads. The same works for websites.

There are literally millions of people who are willing to advertise on the Internet. These people will be your cash cow. But, the way the programs are set up, you’ll never have to deal directly with them. Instead, you just sign up for a program that automatically places the ads in the section of your website you decide.

In my experience, the best programs are AdSense, Bannerconnect and Kontera. The three programs work perfectly together, and split up the advertising styles. AdSense pays for every time someone clicks on the ad. Banner connect pays for every time someone sees the ad. Kontera pays for every click, but is special — changes random words into ad-links, meaning that it doesn’t look like an ad.

All in all, these are the best ad programs to use, by far. To learn more, just click the links/buttons below.

Sign up for Kontera.

Sign up for AdSense.

Sign up for Banner Connect.

Aside from these traditional advertisements, a killing is to be made through a system of advertising called referral marketing. Referral marketing allows you to earn money every time someone buys another product as a result of your marketing. For example, let’s say that I made a blog post advertising for a book that cost $49.00. I would only make money if I actually ended up selling the book — not just because people clicked the ad.

This is a great way to earn revenue if you can find products worth selling. There are literally hundreds of thousands to choose from. Check them out at Clickbank and Commission Junction.

Conclusions

The Internet is exploding. People are starting to turn to the Internet to answer their questions, learn new things, and discover valuable content. Because of this, millionaires are being made.

The number one way of tapping into this huge market is to establish a website. If it’s your first time to build a website, start with SiteBuildIt. It’s the cheapest way to have an entire organization guide you through the process. Their entire business goal is for you to make enough money online to work at home.

With an initial investment of hundred a hundred bucks, you can launch yourself into the online world of information marketing. The opportunities are, to put it simply, amazing and abundant. You don’t have to work your 9-5 — work for yourself online.

>>Click here to start making money online!< <

NOTE: Using SiteBuildIt is risk-free. If you decide you don’t want to do it after already owning it for months you can just contact them for your money back. So try it for a few months, and if you decide it’s not for you, just contact them.

Remember: those who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try nothing and succeed.

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4 Comments

An Example of Bad Journalism

This is the worst case of journalism I’ve ever seen. The purpose of the article is obvious: paint Wal-Mart as big, greedy, evil and naughty-naughty. Let’s analyze what actually is going on.

The contract with Wal-Mart and the lady was that Wal-Mart doesn’t have to pay for your medical expenses if you get someone else to pay them. That makes sense. The CNN report calls that the “fine print”. BS. That’s not “fine print” that’s obvious. You don’t need to have medical expenses paid for twice.

The only reasoning given in this case for the lady (yes, I would say that this reporter tried everything in her power to flex a little influence for the “underdog” in this situation, regardless of the facts or contracts) is that “In 2007, the retail giant reported net sales in the third quarter of $90 billion.”

Read that again. Wal-Mart is a “Giant”. Understood — yet loaded language. Now seriously, go read it. Why was that sentence placed there? To show a comparison between the rich and the poor. Wal-Mart had a single spokesperson represented — the man had tons of ways to make his points, even though HE AGREED THAT WAL-MART WAS RIGHT.

The point of the story? The poor lady might not have a right to the money. She might not “need” it for medical expenses — but daggumit, she’s poor. Wal-Mart’s not. Oh, and Wal-Mart is evil.

Journalism my foot. That’s pure argumentation. Get a blog lady, and leave journalism for journalists.

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7 Comments

Why I’m a Capitalist

A couple of months ago, I was with a group of radical anti-capitalists. They thought that government was the answer to life, the universe and everything. They thought that businessmen secretly cheat on their wives and beat their children, whereas the poor starving individual was heroically beaten down by the brutal financial leaders. Maybe I’m stretching it a bit. But when I announced to them that I was a capitalist, they just gave me a blank stare.

Why on earth?“, was the simple question.

Here’s a paraphrase of what my answer was. First I defined capitalism as being a simple idea. It’s where the government leaves the corporate world alone, and doesn’t try to do business work in a senate committee with people who have never done business. Capitalism is economic freedom.

There are six reasons I like capitalism. They are as follows:

6. I like big business

Restrictive economic policies target big business. No, this doesn’t mean it’s good for the workers. Think about it. Hurting big business hurts the whole business — workers are part of the business.

Every restriction for big business ends up trickling down and hurting their workers, either through fewer pay upgrades or through laying people off to increase efficiency. Restricting big business is restricting the little guy.

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Oh. And big business is actually good. Why? Because they became “big”. How did they become big? The market — or, for the socialists — society liked them. Big business only gets that way by offering the people nice stuff. If the people like it, then they aren’t evil.

It’s really not complicated. But we’ve been told by the restrictive forces of the world that big is bad, that little is good. I propose an alternative: both are good. Speaking of which, that brings us to reason number five.

5. I like small business

I work at a small business. My family runs a small business. This business is based on our family working hard. We’re not evil. We’re good. We help other business by helping them market their products and advertise to increase their profits.

By working hard, we only succeed through helping others succeed. Capitalism allows us to do that unhampered. But restrictive policies severely restrict our ability to do business.* Restrictions that might not seem like much to us on paper can be devastating in real life. Real people go under every time we pass another law. Every restriction destroys lives.

4. I like rich people

Rich people aren’t evil. I don’t care what Hollywood wishes me to think about “The Capitalists”. I won’t buy the commie propaganda. I like rich people. I don’t like snobs. There’s a difference. Poor people can be snobs. Rich people can be snobs. Rich people can be jerks. Poor people can be jerks.

The rich that I’ve met in my life are the hardest working individuals I’ve ever known. There’s a reason they are rich. And I appreciate their work, and recognize that their hard labor paid off both for them and the countless people who gained from the micro-economic impacts of their labor.

3. I like poor people

Liberals paint themselves as loving poor people. So they increase government programs, welfare, restrictions on the rich, etc. But their restrictions on business cause unemployment — liberalism causes poverty. Their welfare encourages dependence on federal aid, psychologically keeping the poor in their poverty. I am a capitalist because I hate poverty.

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I am a capitalist because I hate poverty. I am not a liberal because I care about the poor enough not to buy into emotional arguments that realistically destroy the working class. Freedom brings prosperity.

2. I like justice

Capitalism is where everyone is allowed to unleash their minds in order to produce and achieve. You don’t get rich being a moron. You have to use your mind or muscle. Or, for most, a mixture of the two.

Capitalism rewards the hard-working and punishes the lazy. It’s the only economic system on earth that does this. This is why it works.

As Ayn Rand said:

“The moral justification for capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice.”

1. I like money

I know. I’m supposed to pretend like the only thing on earth important is people and puppy dogs. But guess what? I like nice stuff too. And so does the liberal. And Obama. And Edwards. Especially them. See, they like being commies in theory. But in reality, they like “capital”. They like money. They like private jets, private islands, nice food, nice clothes and $500 haircuts.

And you know what? That would have been fine, if only they didn’t pretend that it was evil. In their hearts, they know there’s nothing wrong with working hard and establishing a fantastic house, expensive car and great lifestyle for your kids. They know there’s no reason to think that we should restrict business owners, or try to go against wealth.

But in policy, they stop. They pretend that greed is wrong, because other people want your money (read that a few times, and see what’s amiss). But when it comes down to it, they know that capital is good. They live like rich cats.

Ironically, it’s for the same reason as me. There’s nothing wrong with material wealth. The whole goal of economics is understanding how to get our wealth to be maximized. Well, I have news for the news people and the politicians of the world:

Try Capitalism. Capitalism sets mankind free to work and achieve his values. It lets people barter in peace and choice rather than being manipulated by Washington elites. Capitalism works because it’s based on that age old principle that the human mind works best when it’s set free. Capitalism works because freedom works.

So that’s why I’m a capitalist.

*Our family business is an oldies radio station. The FCC’s policies are often random, restrictive and expensive. They hurt our customers and communities by forcing us to keep prices artificially higher than they would be if we didn’t have the nearly random restrictions.

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107 Comments

Total Makeover?

As many of you know, I love blogging about Making Money Online — it’s a great hobby and part-time job for me. I’ve bought a lap-top and some other cool stuff with my income generated through my blogs. I’m the main author and operator of Reason and Capitalism, Rebirth of Freedom, Money Talks, Rational Christianity and several other blogs.

However, I’m thinking about merging several of them. My “Money Talks” blog is located at ShaunConnell.com/make-money-online. The URL is, well, obviously hard to remember. So I’m thinking about doing the following:

1. Turning “ShaunConnell.com/make-money-online” into a static tutorial on making money online. The blog part will be zapped out.
2. Turning ShaunConnell.com into a blogging-blog — a blog about business, money, making money online and the like.
3. Having 1-2 off-topic posts per week on ShaunConnell.com, both to spicen the site up, and simply as an outlet for my random ideas that I think the readers might appreciate.
4. All political writings will go to the RoFF.
5. All philosophical/religious writings will go to Rational Christianity.
6. All personal writings go to my facebook account.

Thoughts? I’ll obviously have to rename the blog to something else, like “Money Talks” or something similar. Any suggestions? :)

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2 Comments

Government and Morality

I present a challenge to any Christian who believes that governments have more of a right to use violence than everyday citizens. I want you to point out a verse, somewhere in the New Testament, that gives government an /exclusive/ right that the citizenry don’t have. Then tell me exactly what that is, from the Bible.

Be careful. If you are conservative, your entire political philosophy rests on this. Otherwise, you have a lot of explaining to do.

“There is in all a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are ‘just’ because the law makes them so.”

-Frederic Bastiat

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2 Comments

The American Dream

Wow. I rarely read a news story that makes me sit up, take notice and feel good about myself, but this one about income mobility did just that.

A kid took 25 bucks, a gym bag, went to the homeless section of a town in South Carolina, camped out, and set a goal. With no outside help or contact, he was going to start over and prove to the world that in America anyone can be well off. In 10 months, he went from having just a bag and barely enough money to buy supper to living in an apartment, driving a pickup truck and having nearly five grand in the bank.

To all the nay-sayers who think it’s impossible for the poor to leave their poverty:

PWNT!

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Presidential Canadidates

Earlier this week I was contacted by Andrew Axsom who has recently changed candidates. Rather than support Ron Paul, he introduced me to another mainstream candidate who:
1. Will be tough on crime
2. Will be tough on terror
3. Wants to end welfare

This candidate dedicated his life to good and justice after a tragedy in his life. He’s an American hero and and I support him 100% in his quest for the White House.

Find out more here.

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Philosophy of Liberty

This is a short explanation of the idea of liberty. I’m currently writing a much longer and more comprehensive version — it should be posted in the next few weeks.

Look down at your body. Who

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Legislate Morality!

I have recently decided to join the “legislate morality” camp. I was listening to an audio recording by a pastor of a two-family Bible church, and it just hit me all of the sudden. I believe that we should punish immoral actions, because, well, that’s just why we have government. To punish sin.

Now, of course, I’m not tyrant. I sin a lot, and as a Christian, I believe everyone sins and deserves death. But I won’t let this get in my way, because I want to punish evil people. Nono, I mean people more evil than the typical evil person.

So how do we decide? Simple. If it’s a threat to the foundation of civilization, then we outlaw it. If it corrupts the general morality, well dang, that’s bright-line enough for me. And pretty much everyone out there who wants to legislate morality agrees with this standard. So let’s get at it.

Lust, Sexual Immorality and Adultery

Now, I think porn should be illegal, because, well, do you really want that stuff legal? By banning it, we will stop males (and females!) everywhere from thinking lustful thoughts. Because you can’t lust or commit adultery without porn. And lust will destroy the foundation of civilization. You want proof? Well, heck, I got proof. Every civilization that has ever fallen had people who lusted in it. So we have to use government to stop it. Or kiss civilization goodbye.

Now, on that note, I think mini-skirts should be illegal too. Because those things are just ASKING for sexual attention, and cause little boys to lust. Oh, and pretty eyes have to be altered with orange contacts. After we do this, there wouldn’t be any lust. Now, we have to ban some other clothes, and a bright-line is hard, because it isn’t in the Bible. So we have to make one up.

Don’t worry though. I have a solution. It’s pretty simple to know if something is worn only to attract sexual attention. It’s something you know if you see, which is why there’s so much agreement on the issue. So I’ll leave it to the experts. Insert Rebecca Modestee, a Mennonite homeschool mom from Georgia. She’ll be the one deciding what we ban.

And if anyone disagrees with her, you’re living and sin and probably aren’t making it to heaven. Tough. Life isn’t fair. Get over it.

Remember, the goal isn’t just to ban porn — it’s to ban lust, to save civilization. And we have to ban the things that cause that lust. Porn is just part of the picture. We have to keep going from porn to miniskirts to sleeveless and other things. And makeup. Because unfortunately, all some girls need to wear is makeup and bam, you have guys thinking lustful thoughts. Hot girls are only “hot” because they come from Hell.

Now that we have the lust issue out of the way, let’s talk about the other biggy.

Pride

Pride is scary, and is condemned all throughout the Bible. If a heart doesn’t turn to God because of pride, God roasts it for eternity. This means that it’s more than slightly important. Pride is also the root of all other sin.

So I think we should ban pride if we ban ANY sin. Because this is the root of them all. This is so obvious, I’m not even going to waste pixels by writing any more about it.

Plan

Now, you might be wondering how I want to enforce the ban of adultery (including porn, indecent clothes and other stuff) and pride. It’s simple. I’m going to do it the way Jesus did it. With a good, old-fashioned stoning.

He who has no sin will cast the first stone. But after that first one, boy oh boy, we’ll save civilization.

Note: The above is satire. I’m not a moron. I am, however, a Christian. For a more biblically based argument against legislating morality, read the original “Stop Legislating Morality” article published by Reason and Capitalism.

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It’s Not Complicated

It’s the rallying thought, the theme behind every oppressed people in the history of man. It’s incredibly simple, yet political theorists have seemingly glossed this basic human desire for other agendas. The desire to be left alone. Moses, the deliverer of the Israelite people in the Old Testament, in the most famous of all deliverance stories, said over and over — “Let my people go.” Let us be — the rallying cry of the oppressed.

This basic human desire for exclusive control over their lives has been called many things. Nietzsche called it a “will to power”. It’s pretty simple. We want our person to be left alone. We own us, and no one else has a right to use or misuse us without our permission.

All of the political theories in the world have to factor this in. This is simple a law of human nature. It’s a law of nature. It’s a natural law. It’s pretty simple too. The legal philosopher John Locke said, “Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.”

If someone wrongs you, the natural law will become evident to you. It’s so obvious, it doesn’t even have to be reasoned out — it’s an empirical truth. Man wants to be free and let alone. Call it “self-ownership”, “liberty”, “will to power” or what have you — it’s all the same. Thomas Jefferson said this was “self evident” when he wrote the declaration of independence.

Even the philosophers who preach the restriction of men, and the redistribution of their wealth, believe this. If a poor man forced his way into their wallet on the street, they would be upset, whether the money would be used or abused — it doesn’t matter. That was their money, dangit. Lock also talked about this, saying, “I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.” Bingo.

This is natural law. It’s simple. There are complicated theories regarding axioms and philosophies of the individual verses the collective. But at it’s root, beyond the complicated theories and philosophy — it’s simple. Don’t hurt other people. Let them be.

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