Affiliate Marketing: Make Money From Your Blog

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

You can make money by selling products or services on the Web. But what if you have no products of your own to offer?

If you run a popular informational Web site--perhaps a blog--there are several ways to capitalize on the value of your Web visitors and develop a new source of business income. One of the most popular methods is affiliate marketing, which lets you earn money by marketing other businesses' products and services on your Web site.

A new service from PopShops.com lets you create virtual storefronts to advertise affiliate products on your Web site or blog. PopShops doesn't work easily with every type of blog, but it can make quick work of designing and setting up a storefront. The basic service is free; editions with more capabilities cost up to $30 per month.
How Affiliate Marketing Works

Some businesses let you sign up directly with them to sell their products, but many have joined affiliate networks. An affiliate network eases the administrative burden for both the business with something to sell and the information publisher who wants to earn money by marketing third-party products.

As a publisher, when you join an affiliate network, you gain access to dozens or even hundreds of potential advertisers at one fell swoop. Advertisers benefit since they don't need to cut thousands of little checks each month to pay each of the publishers selling their products. They pay the network, which makes one monthly payment to the publishers, accumulating earnings from all advertisers on the network. Generally these networks set a minimum amount that you must earn before they send you payment--for example, if you earn $40 per month and the minimum is $100, you won't get paid until the end of the third month, when you'll get a check for $120.

Typically, publisher earnings are based upon visitor purchases or some other desired action. In other words, the publisher makes money only when someone clicks an ad link on their site and makes a purchase from the advertiser. The publisher's earnings might be either a percentage of that sale or a flat fee.

Some affiliate network advertising merchants are well-known and established businesses, such as Kodak and Panasonic. Others you may have never heard of.
How PopShops Helps Publishers

There are many affiliate networks: LinkShare and Commission Junction are two established ones. Each network has its own conditions for accepting publishers and its own methods for how you must add advertiser links to your site.

The ad-linking requirements can read like so much technobabble to new publishers. That's where PopShops can help. The service integrates with several popular affiliate networks to ease the burden of designing a virtual storefront, selecting suitable products for it, and creating the ad-linking code for your online store.

Once you sign up with PopShops, you can use its Shopbuilder tool to view a list of all advertising merchants it supports. Clicking on an advertiser lets you drill down and view its products. Then you can click on a product to add its image and link to your virtual store.

The ad-linking code for the store is created by PopShops. When you're done, you publish your store by inserting the PopShops code into your Web page.

The beauty of PopShops is how easy it makes creating a store that mixes and matches products from different merchants from several affiliate networks. Currently, PopShops supports five affiliate networks (Commission Junction, LinkShare, Performics, Red Galoshes, ShareASale) with data feeds from over 1000 merchants offering more than 22 million products.
PopShops Limitations

You can set up a PopShops account in 5 minutes, but you're on your own when it comes to creating accounts with the affiliate networks that the service supports.

To join an affiliate network you'll need to do your homework and gather some information. Most networks want details on the number of your monthly site visitors, the content that your site contains, targeted visitor demographics, and so on. Count on spending at least 20 minutes to complete each affiliate network publisher application.

Once your application is approved by an affiliate network, you can enter your affiliate account name into your PopShops account.

Not all advertisers on affiliate networks offer data feeds; PopShops limits you to those which do.

PopShops has a widget that you can plug into a Blogger or TypePad blog. Support for WordPress is weaker, though a plug-in is planned. For now, WordPress bloggers will need to play with JavaScript or PHP settings to use PopShops. Frankly, if you have the technical savvy to do this, you probably don't need the training wheels that PopShops offers.
Can You Make Money With Affiliate Marketing?

You must welcome a significant number of site visitors to make money using affiliate marketing. If your site receives just five or ten unique visitors per day, don't waste your time joining an affiliate network or setting up a virtual store; your time would be better spent increasing the popularity of your site and improving its content.

I recommend holding off on affiliate network marketing until you receive at least 1000 unique visitors per month. Even at that level, your affiliate earnings will likely be skimpy. Perhaps you'll earn enough to pay your Web hosting bill with enough left over to treat yourself to lunch. However, your site won't deliver a sizable supplemental income.

Another key element to success is matching the interests of your visitors to the products that you offer in your virtual store. For example, if you publish a blog related to outdoors activities, camping gear may be a good choice.

If your site receives many visitors and you select appealing products and services, affiliate marketing can be profitable. You may earn thousands of dollars each month--I know, because I've done it.
Is PopShops Worth It?

PopShops' basic free service lets you establish up to ten virtual stores, marketing up to 100 products per store. You risk little using the freebie service--just an investment of some time to sign up and then to modify your Web site.

PopShops Pro ($5 per month) can create an unlimited number of shops and lets you add search engine-friendly code. PopShops Enterprise ($30 per month) also lets you manage multiple affiliate IDs, which could be useful if you run several different Web sites. A 15-day free trial is available for Pro and Enterprise accounts.

If you already run affiliate marketing sites and have your ad-linking procedures worked out, I recommend you test the free service to check out PopShops on one site. You can upgrade to a more-capable paid account if you believe the service is worth it.

Richard Morochove is an IT consultant and writer. Send him questions about using technology in your small to mid-sized business via e-mail. PC World may edit your query and cannot guarantee that all questions will be answered. Sign up to have the Business Solutions newsletter e-mailed to you each week.

by: Richard Morochove

How to Make Money with your Blog!

There are many ways with which you can make money online easily. Making money online is not happened over night! For that you will need some patience and time! Keep that in mind!
You can make money online with:

* Advertisement Networks - Most popular way to earn money online on internet. Most popular online ad network is Google AdSense. Users by this way shows contextual (text) and graphics advertisement banners on their blogs and earns money when someone clicks on them. There are many other ad networks available on internet allowing many types of advertisement formats with which you can earn money!
* Affiliate Programs - Affiliate and Referral programs are also very popular these days on internet. Affiliate programs can easily gets you more money even from "regular" ad networks. These programs usually gives commissions from advertisers if you lead to them or make sale on ad site or product page.
* Other Ways - Many sites and services on internet allows you to earn money doing many things like reviewing products or services on your blog (for money of course), uploading/downloading videos or files, sharing, clicking on advertisements, reading ad mails and much much more. You can read my blog for more related offers or deals (links on bottom)!

Above ways to earn money online are most popular (specially Ad Networks and Affiliate Programs), and you can make money with them easily.

To make money on internet you need to attract visitors to come on your site. Without traffic you won't earn much money that's for sure. Best way is to write some quality articles on your blog and publish them regularly! Write quality and if it's possible unique articles that may attracts visitors to your site.

Everything above you can find (and much more) on my blog that's specially related to Making Money Online completely for free. You can find how to get traffic and make money with your blog - all above services and more you can find on my blog! Additionally, you can download and use free software and games, learn about SEO or even download Blogger related e-book completely for free! Want to find out more, and become professional blogger? Then visit below link!

Make Money with your blog.


Not so long ago, blogs are maintained and used by computer aficionados as a tool to publish personal experiences, pictures, videos and events that will be of interest to internet readers and surfers. Aspiring writers would use blogs as a venue to publish their writing. Computer geeks would use blogs to be in touch with peers.

Nowadays, blogging is the in thing if you want to make money online. A blog is a source of passive income available to people who can only spare 2 to 3 hours daily in front of a computer. Stay at home moms can find ways to augment the family income thru blogs. Many people make a comfortable living with blogging as the main source of income.

Making money from a blog is pretty simple and uncomplicated. The most important aspect of blogging is that it doesn’t really need large capital outlay in order to realize income. What a blogger needs is a steady and regular readership and a more than fair amount of search engine traffic. Google would ensure a steady amount of search engine traffic if you set up your blog account with Blogger or with WordPress.

One way of making money with your blog is by signing up to promote affiliate programs. A certain percent of the sale is paid to the blogger for the service rendered-that of providing a link to the affiliate companies. Reviewing and promoting affiliate programs need more than being merely advertised in your blog. To maximize conversion, you need to carefully review the programs in order to be credible and to gain the trust of the readers. Visitors would need assurance that you have tried and benefited from the programs before they buy.

A blog is an ideal advertising space to be sold to merchants, affiliates and to other bloggers who wish to promote their products. The value of the blog advertising space is dictated by the blog’s popularity. A more popular blog would naturally command higher price for the advertising space. Adsense is another blog income earner. This advertising network would provide you with ads relevant to the context of your blog and you earn money every time visitors click on the ads.

Writing reviews that promote merchants and/or sites is another way to make money with your blog. Advertising products and services in your blog is a sure income earner. A word of advice – you need to try the product or the service before you make the review. This is to ensure that the review is truthful and that you have a considerable knowledge of the subject. Gaining the trust of the readers will ensure that readers will come back to your blog every time they need points to be clarified. Increase blog traffic means increase blog income.

All the above mentioned ways of making money with blog is not possible if the content of the blog is boring and does not appeal to the readers. A fresh and attention catching content is vital to the achievement of blog traffic. Take advantage of the rush to write. This happens to all of us. Ideas seem to flow effortlessly. By writing several blog posts at one sitting, posting one blog and keeping the others to be posted later will ensure fresh blog content for the days to come.

Applying and practicing these simple tips would ensure a steady income from your blog.

Making Money from Your Web Site

If you hadn't already guessed, the Web is not going to be the wellspring of wealth that a lot of people assumed it would. Some people will get very wealthy, but other people will earn nothing, and, in the nature of business fail and go out of business.

However, if your goals are a bit more modest, it is not unreasonable to expect your Web site to bring you some extra cash. Perhaps pay for the Web service it's running on and take your family out to eat once or twice a month. Perhaps more.
Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are a simple way for you to get some extra cash coming from your Web site. An affiliate program is where you partner with another company, usually an ecommerce company, to sell their product from your Web site. For every product you sell, you get a portion of the proceeds. The best known affiliate program sells books for Amazon.com, but you can sell anything from car ads to fishing flies.
Advertisements

Many sites have advertising on them, and they are another way to add a revenue stream from your Web site. The money from advertising comes in two ways: first from the number of people who view the ad and second from the number of "click-throughs" on the ad. Basically, if your site gets a lot of hits (and so a lot of people will see the ad) it will get a better rate for advertisements. But even sites that have lower hit rates might have high numbers of clicks on the ad, and this will get you a better rate as well.

Advertising can take the form of banner ads, which usually cost a lot, or just sponsored links. You can see examples of each of those on About.com as well. The banner ads on the top, bottom and sides cost more than the sponsored links on the bottom, and they each bring in different amounts of revenue.
Other Resources

There are lots of articles and information on how to raise money from your Web site. If you're interested in advertising, look at my Advertising resources. Affiliate programs (also called Associate programs) are listed on my Making Money resources page, as well as information on how to get started with associate programs and advertising on your site. If you are ready to move on to more advanced money making, then you should read my ECommerce resource page.

10 Ways to Run Your Own Advertising Campaign


Taking on your own advertising campaign is no easy task. You can do it on your own but get ready to roll up your sleeves and get to work.

Your Marketing Plan
Nothing can help you identify your goals more than your marketing plan. You learn a lot about your company, your competitors and your long-term goals by creating and following your marketing plan. This is crucial to knowing what type of advertising is best for you.

Create a Plan of Action
Once you have your marketing plan, you must create a plan of action. This model shows you how freelancers and agencies put their own plan of action in place. Your plan of action also gives you crucial info you can use in executing your ad strategy.

Define Your Advertising Budget
How you advertise depends on your ad budget. You need to strategically use your advertising money. If you're only allowing a small portion of money to advertising, you wouldn't want to throw it all into the production of one commercial that runs at 2 a.m. Know exactly how much you will spend on your advertising first so you can make wise decisions in the creation and placement of all ad mediums.

Hunt for Affordable Opportunities
Running your own ad campaign means you have to be your own media director. You've got to find the best ad placement and the most affordable opportunities to fit into your budget. If you're limited to a very small budget, you can find many ways to bypass high advertising costs.

Know Your Target Audience
You can't advertise effectively if you don't hit your target audience. Know who they are before you start creating your ads. If your company sells scooters to seniors, you don't want to invest in cable ads to run on MTV.

10 Tips to Promoting Your Web Design Business


Know what makes your Web design business unique - and promote it.

The first thing you should think about when promoting your Web design business is what makes your business unique. Ask yourself the following questions, and be honest in your answers - after all, you only hurt yourself and your business if you lie:

* What does my company offer that no other company can offer?
* What makes my services unique or special?
* Why should someone choose my company over any other Web design company?

Create a portfolio of your best sites.

A portfolio is the best way to show off your abilities and that of your business. So you should always have a list of the sites you worked on, what made them unique or interesting, and screen shots of the site as well as a link to the live site (if it's still available). Remember that when you're creating a portfolio, you should keep screen shots or if your contract allows, copies of the site you developed on your own server. Web sites change all the time, and if you're not the design firm that the site owner chooses for the next redesign, your portfolio will quickly get out of date.

I recommend having at least 5 portfolio sites that showcase your strengths. Having a (color) print version of your portfolio is great for client meetings, but an online portfolio can demonstrate dynamic aspects of the pages like DHTML, Ajax, and Flash.
Be willing to design sites for low cost or free to get started.

Many designers recommend never doing work for free, because it sends the wrong message. But if you have no portfolio items, it can be hard to get any without doing some free jobs. Contact organizations you know, like your church, local clubs, or up-and-coming politicians, and offer to build their sites for free or reduced cost. This gets them additional exposure, and gets you portfolio pieces. And just because a group you know has a Web site doesn't mean they won't accept help. Many non-profits have a difficult time keeping Web designers around once the initial site is built. If you can provide suggestions for how they can improve their site, they will often be willing to let you do a redesign.
Include your business information on every site you build.

It helps to have a small (around 100 x 50, no larger) logo that you can use to promote your business unobtrusively. And then make sure to get that you want some acknowledgement of your work on their site in the contract. Many businesses don't want a Web designer logo on every page of their site, but if you can at least get something on their "About Us" page, along with a logo and link to your business site, that would help. If they are pleased with your work, chances are they will be more willing to link to you.
Don't be afraid to provide contact information.

Your customers will appreciate having multiple ways to contact you including postal mail, telephone, email, and Web form. Yes, there is the concern of spam, but if you're trying to get customers, hiding from spammers means you're hiding from customers too. Invest in a quality spam blocking program and make your email address available.

Free things are always appreciated.

There is a reason why freebies are so popular - they work for both the customers and the companies. If you specialize in Flash menu design, offer a free, simple Flash menu for anyone to download and use on their site. Once you've hooked them with the quality of your free product, they'll be more interested in hiring you to build a full-blown Flash site. Other free things you could offer are:

* Free simple Web templates
* Free hosting with purchase of a design package
* Free site evaluation
* Free domain maintenance with mention of some ad
* Free estimate - you should always provide this

If you have articles, information, or links on your Web site that go beyond just what you're selling, you'll attract more customers. Be careful if you decide to put up articles that they don't turn into "infomercials". Most Web surfers these days are very savvy and get bored quickly with strong armed sales pitches when all they wanted was to learn how to do something.
Promote your business wherever you can.

If there is a Web designer listing you should get your site on it. But read any submission requirements before you start spamming the world. You won't get additional customers because you submitted to more places, but you might get banned or blacklisted if you're particularly annoying.
Keep your business site up-to-date and of high quality.

It's often amazing to me how poorly written many Web designer sites are. Remember, unless you're independently wealthy or have a day job, your Web design business should always be looking for clients. And to look for clients, you need to put your best foot forward. No customer is going to come to a poorly designed Web site and think "well, their portfolio sites were nice, I guess they just don't have time for their corporate site." If they think anything it will be more like "Oh wow! That is completely not what I expected from a site who designed ____. Maybe they didn't really design ____," and hit the back button.
Remember SEO for your Web design site.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is just as important for your business site as it is for your clients' sites. Use the unique facets of your business to optimize on - so that you can get better ranking for the niche designs you want to build. Remember that there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of other Web designers out there. And they all want the same business you want. The better you optimize for a specific niche, the more likely you'll get the client that another, more generalized Web designer would have missed.
Be very careful with your spelling and grammar in all your promotional materials.

Whenever you are promoting your business, whether on your company's Web site or in a Web designer listing, remember that spelling and grammar are very important. If you make a simple typo in your promotional material, someone will see it and decide not to use you because of it. Don't give people a reason to turn away from you.

This also applies to "unique" spellings or grammatical choices. For example, a very popular chocie by many Web designers is to write everything in lower case. In English grammar, this is incorrect. And while it may have worked for e.e. cummings, in most Web design promotional material it looks silly at best, and juvenile or lazy at worst. If you're doing something with your writing to look "cool", chances are it will just look wrong to many of your potential customers.

How to Improve Your Website's Google Ranking

Google's search engine, www.google.com, uses a variety of methods to determine which pages are displayed first in the results. Their exact formula is a secret, but there are a few things you can do to improve your positioning. The term for this is Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

These tips may not make your website the first one to appear in the list, but they just may help you move up a little.

Ignore spam and websites that offer to submit your website to hundreds of search engines. At best these are wastes of time or money and at worst they can actually hurt your ranking.

Keyword Phrases
Rather than focusing on a single word, try adding a few words to make a keyword phrase. You may want to read about effective Google searches to see how keyword phrases help with searches.

The software behind our search technology conducts a series of simultaneous calculations requiring only a fraction of a second. Traditional search engines rely heavily on how often a word appears on a web page. We use more than 200 signals, including our patented PageRank™ algorithm, to examine the entire link structure of the web and determine which pages are most important. We then conduct hypertext-matching analysis to determine which pages are relevant to the specific search being conducted. By combining overall importance and query-specific relevance, we're able to put the most relevant and reliable results first.

* PageRank Technology: PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.

PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance.

* Hypertext-Matching Analysis: Our search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), our technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. We also analyze the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user's query.

Our innovations don't stop at the desktop. To give people access to the information they need, whenever and wherever they need it, we continue to develop new mobile applications and services that are more accessible and customizable. And we're partnering with industry-leading carriers and device manufacturers to deliver these innovative services globally. We're working with many of these industry leaders through the Open Handset Alliance to develop Android, the first complete, open, and free mobile platform, which will offer people a less expensive and better mobile experience.



3. The search results are returned to the user in a fraction of a second. 1. The web server sends the query to the index servers. The content inside the index servers is similar to the index in the back of a book - it tells which pages contain the words that match the query.
2. The query travels to the doc servers, which actually retrieve the stored documents. Snippets are generated to describe each search result.

Marketing Blogs - Blog Catalog Blog Directory

Make Your Website Rank Higher in Major Search Engines! Benefits of CSS in SEO


Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language that permits web designers to attach style like spacing, color, font, etc. to HTML documents. Cascading style sheets work similarly to a template; permitting web developers to label style for an HTML element and after that apply it to the number of web pages required. Thus, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are collections of formatting rules, which control the appearance of content in a web page. With CSS styles you have great flexibility and control of the exact page appearance; from precise positioning of layout to specific fonts and styles.

There are many benefits of using CSS. One of the major benefits of using CSS is the easy maintenance of the website. Maintenance of a website made with CSS is much easier compared to the ones which are table based. CSS splits the presentation style of documents from the content of documents and makes the maintenance of the site easier. Aside from being able to make site extensive changes with no trouble through one CSS file, the clean code it generates makes it easier to update. Webmasters can characterize the appearance of a site in one place, and change the whole site by changing just one file. With CSS, when you decide to craft a change, you simply alter the style, and that element is updated automatically anywhere it appears in the site. So, if you have to alter the color of all pages in your site, you only have to edit one style sheet. This saves you enormous amount of time, particularly if you have to edit each page independently. CSS generally requires less code compared to table based. This makes your code lighter and cleaner. Clean code makes a huge difference in maintaining your site.

Cascading Style Sheets Benefits and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Another major benefit of CSS is that it makes your website SEO friendly. The reason behind this is simple. The search engines spiders are actually very lethargic. They do not go through the bundles of HTML codes to get to the indexed codes. Font tags and tables make the HTML code very cumbersome; thus, reduce the accuracy of the results. If you use external CSS files to design and determine the design attributes; the HTML code will be clean and it will result to better search engine rankings. With some knowledge of CSS you will be able to change the code layout without destroying the actual visual layout. For instance, you could easily make the main content of your site to show up above the header or navigation menu in the code of your website; thus will help to show search engine crawlers the importance of your content. I personally saw a huge boost in rankings in fully CSS web sites. When I look at someone's website that was built using old school HTML code with tags such as: TABLES, TD, TR, FONT and so on, I feel awkward and immediately convert that site to a fully table-less CSS layout. There are many tools on the Internet that shows the actual code over text ratio weight of your site. Do you know why? Because modern search engines such as: Google, Yahoo and MSN love light-weighted websites. They want to see your content; the text, not the code. With CSS everything is possible. You practically externalize excessive code into external file, thus leaving the actual page clean and simple.

Website Accessibility


CSS makes your website more accessible. The number of users browsing the web through hand held devices are continuously growing tremendously. It is estimated that by 2008, one third of the world's population will be using hand held devices for accessing Internet. It is always important that your site is accessible to them also. You can make an additional CSS document particularly for handheld devices like cell phones, which will be called up in place of the regular CSS document; which is not achievable with a tabular layout. CSS benefits accessibility chiefly by separating document structure from presentation. By separating style from markup, webmasters can simplify and clean up the HTML in their documents, making the documents more accessible.

Increases Download Speed of Your Website

CSS code downloads faster than tables. Browsers read through tables twice previous to exhibiting their contents; first to work out their structure and then to determine their content. Moreover, tables are shown on the screen as a whole, no part of the table will be displayed until the entire table is downloaded and rendered. Tables support the use of spaced images to assist with positioning. CSS generally requires less code than cumbersome tables. All code to do with the layout can be placed in an external CSS document, which will be called up just once and then stored on the user's computer; while the table layout stored in each HTML document, must be loaded up each time a new page downloads. Also with CSS, you can manage the order of the items downloaded into the screen. You have the control to make the content appear previous to the slow loading images, which is liked by most of the web users.

Cross Browser Compatibility

For all webmasters out there! CSS makes your website more professional. Taking the benefits of CSS like making your websites load faster and easy to maintain, you save a lot of time and labor. This in turn makes you lots of money. CSS makes links of the website look more attractive and dynamic. Using CSS, you can slot in rollovers easily and effectively, without having to use a single character of JavaScript. Thus, CSS gives your websites a professional look. It is wise to use CSS to jive with the current trends of the industry. All major browsers like Firefox, Explorer, and Netscape presently recognize CSS and it is definitely safe for web designers to use CSS now.

by: http://www.webdesign.org

10 steps to making your website rank top

Their is simple way of making your website rank top and search optimized.

Step 1. Before buying the domain name think what your business/website services. Try to get the same meaning URL. ...or if you already have a website try to make your website starting page content matches the URL.

Step 2. Define your website content in 6 to 10 words and make that as Title

Step 3. Make your heading start with short heading and match the content.

Step 4. The first heading what you place is very important, many search engines even google-bot grab the first body text as the description. You should start this heading with explaining your website or list your services on the top as menu etc.,

Step 5. a. Do not place too many keywords of one or b. do not place too many diffrent keywords. In a. case it will narrow your search optimization to only one set of keyword family In B case it will confuse the search engine while categorizing

Step 6. Place your keywords in the Meta-Tags which are used to detail your website. Write keywords 30 to 60 which are related to your website, and what user should type to see the services Write the Description related to the starting para of website, URL, couple of keywords and services but not more than 100 words.

Step 7. Place each link with a short hint what it is. This will also be your keyword indirectly

Step 8. Place comment tags inside the script in such a way you can edit in futur and this will help now.

Step 9. Make the title Attribute even though these does not influence any search optimization but helps in keywords in content

Step 10. Keywords in text links. When you are keyword is a text link then it sounds very close that the keywords is a website contect for you.

When your site is ready:

* Submit it to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl.html.

* Submit a Sitemap using Google Webmaster Tools. Google uses your Sitemap to learn about the structure of your site and to increase our coverage of your webpages.

* Make sure all the sites that should know about your pages are aware your site is online.

13 Ways to Earn Money Fast

Everybody needs a quick infusion of cash from time to time. These ideas bring in money fast, and many can also be done at flexible times, so it's easier to arrange child care with a friend or family member for free.

1. Have a garage sale. By using a few easy tricks, like posting fliers at grocery stores and Laundromats, making signs that can be seen from nearby busy streets and displaying your items in a department-store style, you can increase the amount your sale brings in. Find out how to earn more with Garage Sale 101 tips.

2. Sell on eBay. Books, CDs, unused sports or exercise equipment, clothing, novelty items -- people buy all kinds of things. Even if you're selling several small items, the money can add up. Just make sure the buyer, not you, pays the cost of shipping.

3. Put clothes on consignment. This is an especially good way to get rid of clothing like fancy dresses (think old prom gowns and cocktail dresses you'll never wear again), but anything in good condition can be put on consignment. You share the money from the sale with the consignment shop, but it's an easy way to squeeze some money out of clothes that would otherwise just take up closet space.

4. Perform household services. You can earn some money informally by letting friends, family, church members and others in your community know that you're available to clean their houses or apartments, or to take in ironing. If you find you have a knack and stamina for cleaning quickly and thoroughly, you can turn this into a regular, reliable way to earn extra money every month.

5. Have a bake sale. Do you make killera chocolate chip cookies? chocolate chip cookies? Are yummy breakfast burritos your specialty? If so, why not bring in your items once a week to your job and sell them to coworkers and other businesspeople in the vicinity? If you don't have a job, what about a friend's workplace, a community center or a nursing home? Put the word out beforehand and gauge the response as you go, so you don't end up with a lot of leftover food. By talking up your home-baked goodies and arriving at the same time every day or every week, you may find that people start to anticipate your arrival. You can start a cottage industry along the lines of Mary's Monday Cookie Break when you come around to hawk your wares.

6. Sell homegrown fruits and vegetables. You don't have to have a farm to produce delicious, organic produce. By presenting your goods in an appealing way (save the plastic or cardboard produce containers from the grocery store and tie them with a distinctive ribbon or desktop-printed label), you give them niche appeal, and you can sell them much the same way as baked items, listed above.

7. Have a family car wash. Enlist your spouse, your kids and their friends on a Saturday to hold a car wash. Talk to local merchants who have parking lots and ask them to donate the space, or set up an assembly line on your street. By naming the event ("The Annual Jones Family Car Wash") and highlighting an upbeat family goal ("We use this car wash to pay for the kids' extracurricular school activities"), you give people a reason to join your cause.

8. Do gardening services. Mowing lawns is a perennial summer job for kids. If you have a mower, encourage your children to launch a business—or do it yourself. In addition, you can also weed or haul gardening rubbish to the dump (often garbage services won't remove it).

9. Provide man-with-van services. Or, in this case, woman with van (or truck). This service is great for people who need to move a single piece of furniture or for young people who don't have a lot of stuff. If you're able to do moves on your own or with a helper like a friend or spouse, you can position yourself as a mother's helper (a woman living alone might feel more comfortable having another woman moving something into or out of her home). If you don't have a lot of physical strength, your husband and a cousin, uncle or son can do the heavy lifting and you can take care of scheduling and follow-up. A small classified ad in the local paper is an economical way to advertise.

10. Get a paper route. While we often think of paper delivery as a job for a boy on a bike, all kinds of people pick up extra cash this way. Because papers are delivered in the morning, it's possible to complete a route before the regular workday starts, or before your kids are up. (Just make sure you catch up on your sleep by going to bed early at night!)

11. Dog walk and pet sit. Owners are always looking for reliable pet-care services. Plus, if you stay home with your kids during the day, a regular dog-walking gig is a great way to get everyone out of the house for some fresh air and earn extra money. Put the word out at pounds, the ASPCA, the local veterinarian's and dog runs. Be prepared to provide references from anyone you've ever sat for before. Learn how you can also turn pet sitting into a home business.

12. Babysit. To provide regular child care in your home, you'll often need to be accredited and registered with the state. But occasional babysitting in your home or someone else's is more straightforward. You might already babysit for friends for free, but by reaching out in your community you can find parents whom you would feel comfortable charging a reasonable fee -- such as those belonging to common churches, PTAs or playgroups. Depending on your schedule, you can position yourself as a last-minute resource, a Saturday sitter while Mom does errands, a date-night sitter and so on.

13. Rent out a room. This option might take longer than some of the others listed here, but it can provide steady income for a set period of time, or even indefinitely. It might require that your kids share a bedroom or that you give up a family room in the house, so everyone in the family should be prepared for the changes. And of course care should be taken to pick carefully to ensure you get a trustworthy boarder. This is an especially good option if you live near a university or technical college. Eighteen- to 22-year-olds will more likely be fine renting a room with kitchen privileges than older people, and you'll be able to rent on a semester basis.
by: Jennifer Howze in http://home.ivillage.com

How to Make Money Blogging


It's possible to make money online with blog ads and paid posts. Making money with a blog is relatively easy and can be done by most bloggers, even if their blog is new.
For many people, blogs are a fun way to communicate with others. They make it easy to share interesting ideas, links and pictures. But, making money is also a worthwhile blogging goal. It's possible for any blog to make money as long as it is not plagiarized and does not contain purely adult material.

Blogs that contain either of these types of content are generally not eligible for most of the sites that provide bloggers with payment opportunities. Because there are so many sites that provide bloggers with money from their blogs, blogging has become one of the most popular ways to make money online.

Pay Per Click Ads

Pay Per Click ads are ones that pay the blogger each time a reader clicks on the ads placed on the blog. The best-known PPC ads are from Google AdSense. Google ads are generally low-paying but they are incredibly easy to install and use. After signing up, choose the size, color and types of ads that will go on the website.

Google then generates a JavaScript code that is placed on the blog. Google automatically selects relevant ads that correspond to the keywords on the site. The ads change frequently to reflect changing content on the site and new advertisers. Nothing more is required from the blogger.

Kontera is a similar system in that it requires the simple installation of a code. A blog can make money by allowing Kontera to place ads in links located in specific keywords that Kontera chooses.
Banner Ads

A banner ad is an ad that is displayed across the top, bottom or sides of a webpage. Most banner ads are displayed at the very top of the page and use animation or other eye-catching images to capture attention. Many bloggers negotiate directly with advertisers for the placement of banner ads on their blogs. This can be done by advertising the space on the blog itself, or by listing the ads for sale on third-party sites. Some people even place their banner ad space up for auction on eBay.
Other Ads

Text Link Ads is a site that places small, square ads on blogs and other sites. The blogger must apply to Text Link Ads and can be turned down if the blog gets too little traffic. TLA pays a fixed rate that's based on the blog's traffic and page rank.

BlogAds places ads of varying types on blogs, but it can be tough to be accepted. Bloggers can't apply directly- they have to get a BlogAds ad seller to invite them. The upside, though, is that the ads are lucrative and BlogAds gives 70 percent of the ad revenue to the blogger.
Paid Blog Posting

Blogsvertise, PayPerPost, Smorty and many other sites pay bloggers to write blog posts about their advertisers. These are an easy way to earn money online and can be done even with relatively new blogs. PayPerPost requires blogs to be 30 days old before they are eligible. Other sites have a one to three-month blog age rule.

For those who already have a blog, a few simple monetizing steps can turn a labor of love into a way to quickly and easily earn money online. For those who don't already have a blog, there are free blogs available. Free blogs are generally easy to use and don't require any programming knowledge. Blogger is one of the simplest free blogs, providing even the newest blogger with a way to make money online.

The copyright of the article How to Make Money Blogging in Blogs is owned by L. Shepherd. Permission to republish How to Make Money Blogging in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

by: http://blogs.suite101.com

Why You Should Promote Residual Affiliate Programs

Are you a webmaster or blogger in need of additional income?

Or are you planning to set up an online business but you still don’t have any product to sell?

If so, affiliate marketing may be the best solution for your problems. With affiliate marketing, you won’t need to worry about the products you have to sell. All you need to have is a website with sufficient contents that are related to the products of a certain online company offering affiliate programs. By becoming a member of the program, or by becoming an affiliate, you can start earning a certain amount of money right away!

Affiliate marketing is some sort of business relationship established between a merchant and his affiliates. In affiliate marketing, an affiliate agrees to direct some traffic to a merchant’s website. If that traffic is converted into some kind of action, like a visitor purchasing a product on the merchant’s website or a visitor becoming a lead for the company, the affiliate who directed the traffic will be compensated. Compensation may take the form of either a percentage sales commission for the sales generated or a fixed fee predetermined upon the application of the affiliate on the merchant’s affiliate program.
Promising a lot of benefits both for the merchants and the affiliates, affiliate marketing has become one of the most popular online marketing methods today. In fact, almost every merchant or retailer site today offers an affiliate program that any one can join into. Most retailers would entice people to become affiliates or members of their program by promising great benefits like large commissions, lifetime commissions, click through incomes and a lot of other benefits. But would all these affiliate programs bring off the same benefits?
Most affiliate programs would pay you, as an affiliate, a one-time commission for every sale or lead you brought to the merchant’s website. Commissions for this kind of affiliate programs are usually large, ranging from 15% to a high of about 60%. Other affiliate programs would pay you a fixed fee for every click through or traffic you send to the merchant’s site. Programs like this often pay a smaller fee for every click through, usually not getting any larger than half a dollar. The good thing about this kind of program, however, is that the visitor won’t have to purchase anything in order for the affiliate to get compensated.

Another type of affiliate program is the residual income affiliate program. Residual affiliate programs usually pay only a small percentage of sales commission for every sale directed by the affiliate to the merchant’s site. This commission often comes only in the range of 10% to 20% sales commission. Because of this, many people ignore residual affiliate program and would rather opt for the high paying one-time commission affiliate program. Are these people making a mistake, or are they making the right decision?

We can’t tell, for sure, if people are making a mistake by choosing a high paying one-time commission affiliate program. But we can definitely say that they are making a large mistake if they ignore residual affiliate programs. Residual affiliate programs would indeed pay at a lower rate, but merchants offering such kind of programs would generally pay you regular and ongoing commissions for a single affiliate initiated sale! That means, for the same effort you made in promoting a particular affiliate program, you get paid only once in a one-time commission program, and a regular and ongoing commission for a residual program!

So, are the benefits of promoting residual affiliate programs clearer to you now? Or are they still vague? If they are still vague, then let’s make them a bit clearer with this example.

Suppose there are two online merchants both offering web hosting services on their sites. The first merchant offers a one-time commission type of affiliate program that pays $80 for every single affiliate initiated sale. The second merchant also offers an affiliate program, but this time a residual affiliate program that pays only $10 for every single affiliate initiated sale. As an affiliate, we may get attracted at once at what the first merchant is offering, as $80 is definitely a lot larger than $10. But by thinking things over before actually getting into them, one may be able to see that the second merchant is offering us more opportunity to earn a larger amount of money.

Supposed you have directed traffic to the merchant and it converted into a sale, you’ll get paid once by the first merchant for the sale you have initiated. But with the second merchant, you’ll get paid monthly for as long as the customer you have referred to the merchant continues to avail of the web hosting service. That means that for the same effort of getting one customer to avail of the merchant’s service, you get paid monthly in residual affiliate programs while you only get paid once in a one-time commission type of affiliate programs.

So, are residual affiliate programs worth promoting? Definitely yes, because you virtually get more money from these types of affiliate programs in the long run! And would residual affiliate programs work best for you? Probably not, probably yes. It is not really for me to tell. But with the benefits that residual affiliate marketing can provide, it would really be unwise to ignore such programs.

by: http://www.peiprofit.com/

The Basics On How TO Start Making Money With Adsense

Adsense is considered as one of the most powerful tool in a bloggers’ arsenal. It enables a person to monetize their blogs extremely easily. If used properly, it can generate a very large and healthy income for them. However if you are not using them rightly and just maximizing the income you squeeze from it, you are actually leaving a lot of money on the table. Something all people hate doing.

How you can start making money blogging with Adsense can be done easily and quickly. You will be amazed at the results you will be getting in such a short period of time.

Start by writing some quality content articles which are also keyword incorporated. There are a lot of people given the gift of being good with words. Writing comes easy for them. Why not make it work in such a way that you will be earning some extra cash in the process.

There are actually three steps to put into mind before you begin writing your ads and having an effective Adsense.
Keyword search. Find some popular subjects, keywords or phrase. Select the ones which you think has more people clicking through. This is actually a keyword selector and suggestion tool that some sites are offering to those who are just their Adsense business.

Writing articles. Start writing original content with keywords from the topics that you have achieved in your search. Take note that search engines are taking pride in the quality of their articles and what you will be writing should keep up with their demands.

Quality content site. Build a quality content site incorporated with Adsense ads that is targeting the subject and keywords of your articles and blogs. This is where all that you’ve done initially will go to and this is also where they will prove their worth to you.

The proper positioning of your ads should be done with care. Try to position your ads where readers are most likely to click on them. According to research, the one place that surfers look first when they visit a certain blog is the top left. The reason behind this is not known. Maybe it is because some of the most useful search engine results are at the top of all other rankings. So readers tend to look in that same place when browsing through other sites. View My Recommended Adsense Placement Here

Some of those who are just starting at this business may think they are doing pretty well already and thinking that their clickthrough rates and CPM figures are quite healthy. However, there are more techniques and styles to generate more clicks to double your earnings. By knowing these techniques and working them to your advantage, you will realize that you will be getting three times more than other people who have been previously doing what they are doing.

Finally, Adsense has some excellent tracking statistics that allows webmasters and publishers to track their results across a number of blog on a blog by blog, page by page, or any other basis you wanted. You should be aware oft his capability and make the most of it because it is one powerful tool that will help you find out which ads are performing best. This way, you can fine tune your Adsense ads and focus more on the ones being visited the most rather than those who are being ignored.

Another thing you should know. Banners and skyscrapers are dead. Ask the gurus. So better forget about banners and skyscrapers. Surfers universally ignore these kinds of ad formats. The reason behind this is that they are recognized as an advert and advert are rarely of any interest that’s why people ignore them.

To really start making money blogging with Adsense, you should have a definite focus on what you wanted to achieve and how you will go about achieving them. As with any other kind of business ventures, time is needed coupled with patience.

Do not just ignore your blog and your Adsense once you have finished accomplishing them. Spare some time, even an hour, making adjustments to the Adsense ads on your sites to quickly trigger your Adsense income.

Give it a try and you would not regret having gotten into Adsense in the first place. I have written a couple of articles and tips on using adsense. Feel free to browse through them under Adsense Tips.

by: http://www.peiprofit.com/

7 Ways to Make Money from a Blog


Blogs aren’t just mainstream any more; they’re ubiquitous. In Why Should My Business Have a Blog? I talk about how a blog can be a valuable adjunct to your existing business. But what about the flipside? What if you have a blog and want to turn it into a business, using your blog to make a profit?

Making money from a blog is possible and isn’t even particularly difficult any more. You don’t have to be famous or even have huge traffic (although how much money you make from your blog will depend on both of these factors to some extent). The seven ideas below will get you started. To make money from your blog you can:

1. Use advertising programs.
These are more advertising program options for bloggers than ever before. Here are just five of the ever-expanding possibilities for making money from your blog by putting ads on your pages:

* Google’s Adsense
* BlogAds
* Chitika eMiniMalls
* Text Link Ads
* AdGenta

Besides placing ads on your blog pages themselves, there are also programs for RSS advertising such as Pheedo.

You might also try something such as Jim Kukral’s BlogKits BlogMatch Network, a network designed to match bloggers with advertising opportunities.
2. Use affiliate programs.

With affiliate marketing, a company agrees to pay you a commission for helping to sell their products. Visitors see the company’s ad on your Web pages and, if they click through to the company’s Web site and do a particular thing, you’ll get paid. The particular thing the visitor has to do varies; some affiliate programs pay per click while others pay per lead or even per sale. These are four of the biggest (and most established) affiliate programs on the 'Net:

* Amazon
* Linkshare
* ClickBank
* Commisison Junction

3. Get sponsored by a company.

Blog sponsorship is a growing trend as more businesses realize the popularity of blogging and the potential marketing reach of bloggers. Company sponsorship deals appear to range from obvious “advertising” blogs that are squarely focused on a company’s product(s) through adding a company’s name, logo and brand to an existing blog (“sponsored by….”).

The main problem with this way of making money from your blog is that you have to be known already (and have enough traffic) to attract sponsorship.

4. Get hired by a company.

Many businesses would love to have blogs, but just don’t have anyone currently on staff who has the time and the talent to put a blog together and keep it going. You could be the answer and make money from a blog in the process. The trick to landing such a gig is finding the businesses that want/need the services and persuading them that you’re the blogger they need; diligent research and some cold calling will probably be needed unless you already have a high profile and a track record that will bring the businesses calling.

5. Sign on to be a blogger.

Hubs or networks of blogs appear to be springing up all over the ‘Net, some of which are looking for people to write blogs and are willing to pay for it. Payment models vary. At Creative Weblogging, for instance, bloggers have the option of choosing either a fixed monthly payment in exchange for 10 posts a week, or a percentage share of the ad revenues. Two more examples of blog networks looking for bloggers at the time of writing are:

* Weblogs.Inc.
* AllBusiness.com’s Business Blogs

6. Create a blog to advertise a specific product/service.

Blogs are fast becoming the trendy alternative to the classic salesletter site. In this case, the format is the only real change; the message is the same. Typically, the pitch is woven into as many blog entries as possible – or even used a tagline to every blog entry.

Jim Kukral’s 99 Ways to Blog for Business blog is a good example of a blog designed to move a product (in this case, his strategy guide for creating blogs for businesses).

7. Sell other intellectual property, such as ebooks, telecourses or consulting services, through your blog.

This idea is closely related to the previous way to make money through your blog. The difference is that in this case the intellectual property you’re selling is just part of or incidental to the blog you’re writing; it’s not the raison d’etre for the blog. For instance, you might have a blog about beekeeping and be selling an ebook about how to build a mason bee house on your pages.

So the answer is, yes, you can make money from your blog. And with blogging becoming increasingly popular, there will be even more opportunities for making money from your blog coming – ideas that haven’t even been thought of yet. For the moment, for maximum income, you will need to focus on multiple income streams and perhaps even multiple blogs.

by: http://sbinfocanada.about.com

Make Money Blogging


Do you want to make money blogging? If you do - you’re not alone. More and more bloggers are finding that blogging is a profitable medium. Whether it be to earn a few extra dollars a week to feed their coffee habit, or making enough money to stop them having to get a part time job to get through college, or whether they’ve got it to a point where they are able to make a full time living from their blogging - there are tens of thousands of bloggers making money from blogging.

In this page I want to share some information for beginners on making money from their blogs.

I will start by sharing my own top Money Making Methods (updated regularly) but below that point you to some great resources and teaching on how to increase your income from blogging. What follows is a quick summary of my main income streams from blogging. Before you read it though - keep in mind that every blog is unique in how it can make money. Some of the following income streams will work on some blogs a lot better than others - the key is to experiment with as many as possible and see what works best for you.
The following income streams (from a number of blogs) have helped me to earn a six figure income each year for the last three years from blogging. I’ve ranked them from highest to lowest.

I hope you find it useful to see the mix and variety of ways that I earn a living from blogging.

1. AdSense

AdsenseDespite not using it here at ProBlogger any more (here’s why) I continue to use AdSense with amazing effect on my other blogs. I have them all set to show image and text based ads and find that 250×300 pixel ads work best (usually with a blended design). I don’t have much luck with their ‘referrals’ program but their normal ads work a treat and continue to be the biggest earner for me.

2. Chitika

ChitikaChitka continues to be a great performer for me on my blogs. They work best on product related blogs although their recent announcement of their Premium ad unit is exciting as they now offer ads with a non product focus that I’m hearing great conversions on (I have one reader who is getting $28 CPM on this ad unit).Chitika offers a range of ad units that I experiment with. I find their eMiniMalls work best and that Related Product Units are also good. Their Shoplincs product isn’t performing as well as it once did for me - mainly because I’ve been promoting it less and have driven less traffic to it. Over the time I’ve been using Chitika they’ve now earned me over a quarter of a million dollars - I can’t recommend them enough!

3. Private Ad Sales/Sponsorships

private-ad-salesPrivate ad sales directly to advertisers have continued to grow over the last few months and as a result they’re now my third highest income stream. I expect them to overtake both Chitika and AdSense in the coming months. This includes ad sales of the 125 x 125 ads here at ProBlogger as well as a campaign or two at Digital Photography School.
4. Amazon Associates

Amazon-Logo-1
Amazon’s affiliate program has been one of my big movers in the last 12 months. I used to make a few odd dollars from it - however in recent times it has become a significant earner for me (as I’ve shared previously). This quarter it grew even more than previously as a result of continued growth of DPS where I recommend books, software and cameras.

5. Miscellaneous Affiliate Programs

miscellaneous affiliate programsI run a variety of affiliate programs on my blogs - most of which bring in smaller amounts of money that don’t really justify a category of their own. These include - - Digital Photography Secrets (a camera technique series), Pro Photo Secrets (a great photoshop product) , Yaro’s Blog Mastermind Mentoring Program (about to open the doors again), SEO Book (Aaron’s legendary resource) and the excellent Teaching Sells course (which just continues to grow in what it offers to it’s members in terms of content).

The great thing about many of these programs is that they are of such high quality that they sell themselves and I am being emailed from readers who sign up to them thanking me for the recommendation!

6. Shopzilla

shopzilla.jpgAs I wrote recently - Shopzilla has really impressed me with how it’s performed over the last few weeks. It’s actually doing well enough to debut in this list at #6. The ads are similar to Chitika but the click values have been higher for me to this point. They don’t offer quite as many options as Chitika does in terms of types of ads but for a new ad network there’s definitely promising signs. I’m looking forward to seeing how they continue to develop!

7. ProBlogger Job Boards

Jobboardheader The job boards here at ProBlogger continue to grow each month in the number of advertisements that are being bought. This enabled me to invest most of the money that they’d earned a while back into getting a new back end for the boards and to redesign them. It hit me today that the boards are now bringing in around $1000 a month in revenue which is pretty nice considering that they are so low maintenance to run. They also offer a service to readers and add value to the overall blog.

The only problem that I face with the job boards is that there are so many bloggers looking for work that the demand for jobs far exceeds the supply. On the good side of things is that advertisers are reporting getting amazing quality of applications.

8. WidgetBucks

widgetbucks.jpgAnother newcomer to this list is WidgetBucks - another ad network that ProBlogger readers will be familiar with.

WidgetBucks is similar to Chitika and Shopzilla in many respects and works well on product related sites. It does best on sites with US traffic (the reason I’ve not used it as much as I get a lot of international traffic) so if you have a product related site with a US audience it’d be a no brainer to try out WidgetBucks. I’m hoping they’ll continue to expand their offerings in terms of ad types and visitor location.

Disclaimer - WidgetBucks are an advertiser on ProBlogger

9. Miscellaneous Advertising Programs

miscellaneous ad networksI also play with a number of other ad networks. Some I run as tests to see if I should review them here - and some are just advertising that run in the background on some of my smaller blogs. These include ShoppingAds, Feedburner RSS ads, Vizu (a poll advertising system), Kontera and Bidvertiser. Together these don’t add up to major earnings for me - not because they are not good, but because I don’t use them heavily (a blog can only run so many ads on it).

I think that that covers most of it although it’s worth mentioning that last time I did this list I also included TextLinkAds which used to be every bloggers favorite way to make money blogging by selling text links. I’ve stopped using them due to Google cracking down on them (read more about this here) but it’s worth noting that many bloggers still use them successfully - I advise to proceed with caution. Disclaimer - TLA are an advertiser on ProBlogger

By: http://www.problogger.net/

Ways to Make Money Online


There are many ways to make money online. I like to group them into three main categories:

1. Making money selling your stuff
2. Making money selling other people’s stuff
3. Getting paid to do something

Let’s talk a little more about each of these categories…

Way #1 – Making money selling your stuff
When most people think of starting a business they think of selling their own stuff. Here are some of the ways that people sell their own stuff online:

1. Selling products
When I started out online my intention was to create educational software and sell it online. Like myself, most people that start a business online start off with the idea of selling a product. Almost every product imaginable can be sold online. Arguably, the easiest to create are information products. 2. Selling Services/Freelancing
One of the quickest ways to start making money online is by selling your services. You call sell all kinds of services online. Some of the more common online services being sold are web design, freelance writing, coaching/teaching, virtual assistants, copywriting, traffic generation, and software development.

3. Domaining
Domaining is essentially the process of buying and selling domains. While I own quite a few domains, most of them were bought with the purpose of developing them at some point in time. Although, I would be willing to sell some of them. For example, when John Reese bought trafficjam.com I wish he had contacted me about buying one of my domains blogtrafficjam.com, since I am not sure I will develop the idea I had for it when I bought it several years ago.

4. Website Flipping
Website flipping is a very tempting business model to me. Flipping websites is a lot like flipping houses. You buy a website with the sole purpose of making it better so that you can turn around sell it. Much like house flipping, you should buy a website with good potential that is not properly monetized and/or not properly designed and marketed. After “rehabbing” the website, you can sell it at a much higher price. This process sounds like fun to me, except that I would have a hard time parting with the site after fixing it. I am more likely to buy a website, fix it up, and keep it for the residual income.

There are other ways to make money selling your own stuff, but the ones listed above are the most common.

Way #2 – Making money selling other people’s stuff

1. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money online, and I will be discussing it in much more detail in a future series (or a free mini-course). Essentially, affiliate marketing is revenue sharing between online advertisers/merchants and online publishers/salespeople, whereby affiliates(publisher/sales people) are paid based on performance measures, typically in the form of sales, clicks, registrations, or a combination of methods. In layman’s terms, it means you get a percentage of a sale when you sell someone else’s stuff or cause someone to take an action that might sell someone else’s stuff. It is currently my primary method of making money online.

2. Advertising Income
Many websites make money by selling advertising space on their site. This is most commonly done on content sites. Advertising income can also be gained through other methods like selling ad space on website templates and selling ad space in newsletters.

3. Drop Shipping
Drop shipping is a technique where you sell products from one or more suppliers who take care of shipping the products directly to the customer. All you do is take the order and get the money from the customer, then you send the order details and and part of the money that you charge to the supplier. You make profit on the difference between the suppliers price (including shipping) and the price you charge the customer. This is essentially running a wholesale business without the inventory, although you will usually pay somewhere between true wholesale and retail prices for the goods. I have seen a lot of people run drop shipping businesses on ebay.

4. Retail commerce
Retail commerce is where you buy products at wholesale prices from wholesale distributors, carry an inventory and turn around and sell said products. Many of the ecommerce shops you see are doing this. This model is similar to drop shipping. The advantage of this method is that you can make a higher profit margin then with drop shipping, the disadvantage is that you store the inventory and you handle the details of shipping the products.

These are the most common methods for selling other people’s stuff online, although certainly not the only ones.

Way # 3 – Getting Paid To Do Something

1. Paid to sites (Paid to surf, Paid to take surveys, etc.)
With “paid to” sites you can make a little extra money online every month. You can’t really use these sites to make a living online (at least not that I’m aware of), so I won’t be devoting more space to them here. If you’re interested in a little extra cash, and this method appeals to you, there is plenty of information available on the internet. And if you ARE making a living from these sites, and you’d be interested in writing a series on the topic, contact me.

As you are considering how YOU want to make big money online, this list should prove a good starting place . In my next post in the getting started series, I will be wrapping up with a list of resources to help you continue your quest to make money online.

by: http://www.canimakebigmoneyonline.com/

How to Make Money From Your Blog - Direct Methods


Having thought through whether you should blog for money it is now worth taking a look at some of the different models for doing so.
I tend to break the different models that bloggers are using to make money from blogging into two areas - Direct and Indirect methods.
Direct Income Earning Methods - these methods are where a blogger earns an income directly FROM their blog.

Indirect Income Earning Methods - these methods are where a blogger earns an income BECAUSE of their blog.

Most blogs tend to fall into one or the other of these methods - although there is nothing to stop bloggers experimenting with elements of both ( I’ve seen a few bloggers get into trouble with this (example: Scenario 1 in the previous post).

In this post I’ll look at 8 direct income earning methods and in the next post of this series I’ll explore indirect methods. Please note that on occasion in the following post there will be few affiliate links to services that I use and have had some success with. These will be marked with (aff) after them.

Direct Income Earning Methods for Bloggers


1. Advertising

There are many ways of selling advertising space on a blog (this could almost be a series of it’s own) but some of the different advertising options that I see bloggers experimenting with include:

* Contextual Advertising - Programs like AdSense and YPN (beta) are very popular with bloggers and are probably the most common income stream being used by them today (MSN are developing one too). In short - these programs scan the content of your blog to assertion what it’s topic is and attempt to put contextually relevant ads (text and image) onto your blog. They are generally simple to use and involve pasting some code into your blog’s templates. Payment is on a ‘per click’ basis (referred to as CPC or ‘cost per click’ ads). Contextual ads suit blogs that have a particular niche topic, especially if it has some sort of commercial angle (ie it has products and services associated with it). They are not so good with ‘general’ type blogs (ie many topics) and/or political/spiritual blogs which argue just one side of a case (this confuses AdSense). I write much more extensively on how to use AdSense on your blog here.
* Other CPC Advertising - There are a variety of other ad systems that pay on a per click basis which are not contextual in nature (which is important as systems like AdSense do not allow you to run contextual ads on the same page view as them). These systems include Chitika’s eMiniMalls (aff) which I reviewed here.
* Impression Based Ads - Impression based ads pay a small amount for every person who views the advertisement. The amount that they pays varies from program to program (and ad to ad) and is generally a fraction of a cent. There are a variety of ad systems around like this including Fastclick (aff) which I reviewed here and Tribal Fusion. Impression based ads won’t earn you much if you don’t have a lot of traffic but can be great if you do.
* Blog Ads - BlogAds have become something of an institution when it comes to advertising on blogs. They traditionally have had a focus upon monetizing political blogs but are expanding their focus lately. The beauty of them is that bloggers set their own rates and can accept or reject advertisers that apply to them to be featured on their blogs. These ads put the control of what ads show and how much they earn into the hands of the blogger. The downside is that if you price them too high you could never have any ads showing at all. They can also be difficult to be accepted into as a publisher as these days they only accept people into the system if they have a someone who is already in ’sponsor’ or recommend the new publisher.
* Text Ads - Another increasingly popular way to sell ads on your blog is to look into text links. The beauty of these are that they don’t take up much room and that depending upon the system you choose to run them you can have control over which advertisers you accept and reject. AdBrite (aff) is one such system that gives you control in a similar way to BlogAds in that you set your own prices and approve all ads. They also other other formats of ads. Text Link Ads (aff) is another text link seller that more and more bloggers are using. The beauty of both of these systems is that they have a pool of advertisers already so you don’t have to go looking for your own advertisers. Their systems are also both very automated and are just a matter of pasting some code onto your blog. I use them both and while they don’t earn anywhere near as much as AdSense or Chitika for me they add up over the year and have done well for me. Bidvertiser and Adzaar are other system that I know are popular with some (we’ve used them quite successfully on b5media although I have little personal experience with them).
* RSS Ads - An increasingly popular way for people to read blogs is via RSS. As a result publishers and ad providers have been keen to find ways to place ads in feeds. These attempts have been met with a variety of success levels. I’m yet to hear of too many people making big dollars with RSS ads yet but the ad systems seem to be improving. AdSense offers RSS ads to some of it’s publishers (you have to have a certain number of impressions first) as does YPN. Feedburner is a tool I’ve used to help monetise my own feeds - they give publishers three options (1. AdSense if you’ve been approved by them, 2. Amazon affiliate program and 3. if you have a lot of subscribers (over 500) they have an Ad Network). Pheedo is another system that you might like to try (although I’ve not had much experience with it).
* Other Ads Systems - In addition to the above systems (most of which I’ve used myself) are many other advertising options which I’ve not had experience with and so won’t personally recommend. I’m sure they are worth experimenting with however as I see many of them being used by bloggers every day. Here they are in no particular order:
* AdGenta, CrispAds, Clicksor, Intelli Txt, Peak Click, Double Click, Industry Brains, AdHearUs, Kanoodle, AVN, Pheedo, Adknowledge, YesAdvertising, RevenuePilotTextAds, SearchFeed, Target Point, OneMonkey, and TextAds. Feel free to add your own and tell us how you’ve gone with them in comments below.

2. Sponsorship

Another form of advertising that a smaller number of bloggers are using is to find their own advertisers. All of the above systems have the advantage of finding you advertisers (or at least assisting in the automation of ads to your blog) but as your blog grows in profile and influence you might find other options for private deals come up.

The big blog networks have people dedicated to the task of finding advertisers (often working through ad agencies) but smaller bloggers might find this worthwhile also. I’ve been selling ads on my Digital Camera Blog for two years now and as it’s grown in traffic and profile and managed to attract larger companies (who are willing to pay more) to buys space. Currently the blog features ads from Adobe who have bought a combination of banner, newsletter and text ads.

The key if you’re going to take this approach is to target advertisers in your niche that have products that closely relate to what you’re writing about. There are a variety of ads that you can offer them including banner ads, buttons, text links, mentions in newsletters and even individual post sponsorships. I would highly recommend that you always make it clear to readers that your post is a sponsored one when you’re writing a sponsored post.

3. Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are where you take a commission for referring a reader who purchases a product or service to a company. Probably the most common of these for bloggers is Amazon which has tens of thousands of products that you can link to (I reviewed it here). Other affiliate programs that represent many different companies and products include Linkshare, Commission Junction and Clickbank.

Affiliate programs take some work if you want to get the most out of them (perhaps more work than advertising) but can be lucrative if you match the right program with the right blog/topic. If you want to explore affiliate programs more you might like to read 10 tips for using affiliate programs on you blog.

4. Selling/Flipping Blogs

The idea of selling (or flipping) your blog is one that many bloggers have in the back of their minds for ‘one day’ but in reality it is not something that is overly common… yet (I think this is changing). Probably the largest sale is that of Weblogs Inc (a network of blogs) which sold to AOL for a reported $25 million. Of course this is the stuff that most of us can only dream of - but there are examples of smaller blogs being sold, either privately or via auctions on sites like eBay and SitePoint. One such auction was that of the Blog Herald which took place here.

Starting a blog with the main goal of selling it down the track is one that I’ve heard of a number of bloggers doing but few have been successful. Rather than starting with this intention I think if you start with the intention of building a quality site that has a large readership and it’s own good income stream you are more likely to find buyers down the track.

5. Donations and Tip Jars

A very small number of blogs have a history of making good money with these (Jason Kottke being one of them). To be successful with asking for money from readers you’ll want to have a large and loyal readership (and a rich one might help too). Most bloggers just don’t have the critical mass or the cult following to make it work.
6. Merchandise

Another method that some blogs use with reasonable effect is to sell T-Shirts, Mugs, Stickers etc with the blog’s name, logo and/or taglines on it. This is another idea that will probably only work if you either have a brilliantly designed merchandise range and/or you have a cult-like status as a blogger with some fanatical readers who are a little obsessive about your blog. Some blog topics lend themselves to this more than others.

7. Selling Subscriptions

The idea of charging readers for content is one that surfaces from time to time. While there are numerous websites around the web that do this successfully (community membership sites) I’m yet to see many (any) blogs do it well. The problem that most bloggers who have tried it have run into is that most topics that you could think to start a blog about already have free sites available. To make it succeed you would need to have some sort of premium/exclusive content and/or real expertise on a topic.

8. Blog Networks

Another emerging income source for bloggers are blog networks. There are two ways to make money here. Firstly you can start a network and contract bloggers to write for you or secondly you might like to join a blog network as a writer. There are many networks out there and all have their own strengths and weaknesses. I’ll attempt to write a post on what to think about when you’re looking at whether to join a network later in this series.

Next in the series we’ll look at indirect ways of making money because of your blog.
by: http://www.problogger.net

How To Make Money off Your Blog


You pound on the keyboard each day, broadcasting your unalloyed truths to the world (or at least to friends and family) via your blog. Unfortunately, earning such singular authority demands serious time and energy, and what begins as a hobby can quickly start seeming like Job No. 2 -- sans paycheck. But haven't you heard? You can turn your Web log into a digital cash cow. Simply choose among these techniques (but keep in mind that it's not all free money -- come tax season, Uncle Sam gets his fair share).

LET GOOGLE WORK FOR YOU. Selling ad space might be the oldest way to make a buck, and with Google's free AdSense service (www.google.com/adsense), it's way too easy. AdSense allows bloggers to display up to three content-specific "ad units" (boxes that can hold up to four ads each) per page. "If you're writing about sports cars, they'll be ads about sports cars," says Biz Stone, Blogger senior specialist at Google. Each time a visitor clicks these ads, you get paid. Google doesn't disclose its exact share of the revenue, but a personalized report page lets you track your own earnings. Earn at least $100 and Google sends you a check.
PLAY AD-SALES EXEC. If you want more control over the ads on your blog, hit www.blogads.com. BlogAds lets you join its database free and set your own ad prices. Companies (including media bigs such as Paramount Pictures and Random House) then search for suitable blogs and purchase ad space for a set period -- say, one month. In contrast to the way AdSense works, your earnings don't depend on whether a reader clicks the ad. All you have to do is give 20 percent of your net revenue to Mr. BlogAd, and you keep the rest. Perhaps best of all, you can indulge your megalomaniacal tendencies by approving or declining potential ads at will.

BE THE MIDDLEMAN. Many companies run "affiliate" programs: Post an ad provided by Amazon.com or Lands' End, for example, and receive a small commission every time your readers click that ad, go to the company's Web site and end up buying a book or splurging on a down parka. Referral fees -- the cash you get from these transactions -- vary (you can earn as much as 10 percent per sale from Amazon). LinkShare (www.linkshare.com) claims to run the Internet's biggest "affiliate marketing network," with more than 600 companies on its roster of advertisers. Another service, Commission Junction (www.cj.com), runs programs for eBay and Expedia.com, among others.

PASS THE CUP. If you're toiling away to maintain a blog that people enjoy, why not ask your guests to show a little monetary appreciation? The online payment service PayPal (www.paypal.com) lets you add a donation button to your blog. You can opt to receive money in U.S. dollars, Canadian dollars, Japanese yen, pounds sterling or euros. When visitors give money, PayPal sends you an e-mail to let you know. Amazon's Honor System (www.amazon.com/honorsystem) and BitPass (www.bitpass.com) offer similar donation options.

SELL SCHWAG. Don't dig ads? Uncomfortable asking for handouts? Then create your own blog-branded gear at CafePress.com, which offers more than 50 products begging for your unique logo. Choose from standard fare such as T-shirts and coffee cups, or, if Grandma doesn't read your blog, opt for sexy thong underwear (ooh la la). You get to sell each product at whatever price your entrepreneurial heart desires. CafePress gets back the original base price ($13.99 for T-shirts, $10.99 for mugs); you keep the markup. Just add your online store's link to your blog, and all that's left to do is wait for CafePress to send you a monthly check. See? It's practically like your real job. Mike Peed

Want to know how to do something? Send your questions to howto@washpost.com.

How to make money from your blog: 5 tips


Many of the people who write blogs today simply want to share their opinion on something. But then there are the business-minded folks, who have found a way to use blogs, or Web logs, to bring in a little extra cash too.

I recently wrote a column detailing how

to get a blog up and running to boost your small business.

If you're interested in taking it further — blogging for bucks, if you will — here are five strategies that could turn your blog into a moneymaker.

1. Sell advertising. This is likely the most common means of leveraging a blog to generate income. If yours happens to become a well-known blog, or one that is well-received in a particular niche, it's always possible to sell ad space on your own. For lesser-known blogs, services such as Google's AdSense or BlogAds enable bloggers to establish ad programs.AdSense's — which lets you select several ads that

are consistent with the content of your blog — pays you based on how many readers click on the ads for further information. Even better, it's free. BlogAds, on the other hand, hooks bloggers up with would-be advertisers and levies a commission in return for any ad placements that result. "The nice thing, too, is that the

ads are relatively unobtrusive," says Scott Allen, co-author of "The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online."

2. Help sell others' products. Here is another click-through opportunity. Affiliate programs enable your blog to serve as a conduit between readers and online sites offering various goods and services. One popular choice is Amazon.com. If, for instance, you offer book reviews or even just mention a book in passing in your blog, an affiliate program provides a means for your readers to click directly from your blog to Amazon to obtain further information about the book. If they break

out the checkbook or charge card, you get paid as well.

3. Solicit contributions. Not every blog-related income opportunity involves hawking goods or services. As Blanche DuBois did in "A Streetcar Named Desire," consider relying on the kindness of

strangers. Ask for contributions. If, for instance, your small-business blog supports a cause or issue in some fashion — say you repeatedly mention tax reform, health care or some other topic — you can always ask for reader support.Even if you've attracted a group of regular followers who

simply enjoy reading what you have to say, they may be willing to underwrite their loyalty with a little financial help. Programs such as PayPal make it easy to establish a simple on-site contribution collection button. "There are lots of worthy 'cause' blogs that would qualify for donations from grateful members of the blog community," says

Las Vegas communications consultant Ned Barnett.

4. Market your services in your blog. Many people associate blogs exclusively with a cyberspace-based soapbox — a place to shout your opinions and little more than that. Granted, blogs are an

ideal venue to share your thoughts with others, but don't overlook their capacity to generate new business as well. When appropriate, work in references to what you do and, in turn, what you may be able to offer any would-be client or customer who may be reading your blog. That can spread your opinion and your business moxie at the same time."Instead of short commentaries that begin a dialogue with readers, as many blogs do, I write the equivalent of journal articles that demonstrate my abilities, strategies and perspectives on specific issues," Barnett says. "When it resonates, it means money. Since starting this approach, I have generated

three new paying clients and brought in about $10,000 on revenue — directly attributable to specific blogs."

5. Use a blog to deepen your existing customer relationships. Nor does any marketing material inserted in blog content have to be limited to bringing

in completely new business. By using a blog to regularly communicate with existing clients as well as other readers, you can take advantage of the opportunity to fully inform them about everything your business does. That may expand your readers' understanding of the full scope of your products or services."My blog has helped existing clients determine the range of my skills and services," says Ted Demopoulos of Demopoulos Associates, a Durham, N.H. consulting and training concern. "One client who had only used me for training in the past was surprised at my range of expertise and is now using me for a consulting

project. Another who only used me on technical projects is now considering me for a more business-oriented project."