Earn Money Online

Adsense Accelerator

2007-06-03T12:17:00.000-07:00

Hi guys, I came accross this very interesting keyword tool which basically helps you to find high paying keywords about a certain generic term like "bad credit".

Okay a keyword list, nothing special here you might think but that's not all that nice software does.

It also analyzes the "bid quality" of a keyword.

Means: Not only the top bidder willing to pay 40 bucks per click pays a lot of money but also those bidders willing to pay the second, third etc. highest price.

So even though only the ads from the bidder on rank 10 for instance appear on your website, you will still earn somewhat like at least 3 bucks per click.

Okay You are maybe not overwhelmed yet but wait, I am not ready explaining the adsense accelerator yet.

On the other hand, the adsense accelerator software also shows keywords related to your generic term ("bad credit") with a LOW bid quality.

Means: The first bidder is willing to pay 40$ per click, but the bidders on position 2-10 are only willing to pay much less than the top bidder.

Now how does this help you ? Of course you already know that it would be stupid to optimize your page based on the keywords with a low bid quality

BUT

You can use these bad quality keywords to buy traffic yourself !

For example:
You use the bad bid quality keyword "debt consolidation" (just a guessed example) to buy clicks yourself for maybe just 10 cents or less to send visitors to your website optimized for the keyterm "consolidate debt" which has a much better bid quality and earn at least 2$ per click, but most likely much more than that.

Okay now you are maybe wetting your pants already, I did, but the problem is that they do not accept new people using this software.

That's why I want to partner with someone already using it.

Anyone ?

mGinger

2007-06-03T12:10:00.000-07:00

Got a Mobile phone ?

Then pay off your monthly bills .. Check it out...mGinger pays you to read ads on your cellphone! These ads are only about your interests.# Earn money for reading ads on your mobile

# Earn much more money by inviting family and friends

# Get 20 paisa for every ad you receive

# Get 10 paisa for every ad your friends receive

# Get 5 paisa for every ad your friend's friends receive

# Accumulate Rs.300 & receive a cheque

The ads shown are far better than the ****ty ringtone download SMSes we receive each day. Based on my calculations, if your have some referrals, you can earn a decent sum monthly.

Click Here To ApplyCLICK HERE

The Google Freshness Factor

2007-06-03T11:47:00.000-07:00

If you've ever used the removal tool, you'll notice that the page count of the website in question has not been changed, but rather the pages simply fail to show up. Why is this? Because with the URL Removal Tool, these URLs have not been deleted; they have only been filtered out. So even though these pages appear to have been removed, they are certainly still in the database somewhere.

There is a patent application in the US Trademark Office from Monika Henzinger, published in July, 2005, that certifies that she has figured out a way of determining a document's "freshness." In an attempt to associate this new term with Google's other patented terminology (namely PageRank and TrustRank), forum posters are now referring to the concept as "FreshRank."

The abstract of this patent application states that one of the problems of determining the freshness of a document indexed in a search engine is that the "last-modified-since" attribute isn't always correct. Some webmasters have figured out they can change the modify date, but obviously a pattern of abuse developed. It doesn't fool Google, because what Google looks for is actual modified content. As far as how Google determines how old or "fresh" a document may be is still somewhat of a secret. Lately, in the estimation of many, Google has done a very poor job in determining which web sites present as the freshest content in relation to relevancy.

This brings to mind a pertinent question. How does the freshness factor rank in determining relevancy? It has been determined by some that it doesn't necessarily matter how fresh a document is to Google, especially if that document has many inbound links pointing to it. Henzinger is attempting to patent a more explicit form of freshness, since not all search engines use the "last modified since" attribute anyways, and stating that search engines need a more reliable way of determining overall updated content.

Unfortunately, with the implementation of the duplicate content penalty, we've been seeing problems with the freshness attribute of documents. With Google, in particular, the filter employed to whittle out duplicate content doesn't appear to be taking into consideration the actual origin of the content. For many, this is becoming a great frustrating point. With the onslaught of the technological advances that Google has placed into the public realm within the last decade, it seems impractical and almost ridiculous that they would leave out the very concept of being able to determine the source of the fresh content. Yahoo and MSN do not appear to have this particular problem, so why does Google?

Another particular problem recently presented to the freshness factor, is Google's own Removal Tool. Experiences with this tool have been much on the side of unpleasant, if at all useful. For some, the Google removal tool has been often mentioned "as a cure against many diseases." Diseases such as duplicate content or temporary redirects, for example. While I have used it from time to time, I have done so with a cautionary tone, and never used it on a commercial website; rather only on my personal website or blog. Some of the side effects observed are definitely worth mentioning here, and I know I'm not alone.

The period of time Google uses to remove these URLs from their index is anywhere between three and six months. I say from three to six months, even though the Google documentation tells us 180 days; in my personal experience, it has been more like 90 days. Regardless of the period of time, rest assured, they are actually still there. How do I know this? Two reasons: one, I mentioned before that the number of pages are still listed as the same amount before the pages were removed; two, after the removal period, they show right back up in the index, as if they'd never left.

About the AuthorSteve Buchanan writes article on many topics including Article Submission - http://www.cheap-directory-submission.com/ Services, http://www.hondageneratorstore.com/ and http://www.snowblowersfact.com/

10 Reasons You Failed at Affiliate Marketing

2007-06-03T11:42:00.000-07:00

These are 10 things you should avoid when dealing with affiliate marketing. If you have found that you have been unsuccessful being an affiliate one or more of these 10 common mistakes may be the reason.

1. Get rich quick syndrome - If you are like I was when I first started I got into affiliate marketing thinking I can advertise a few links and the profits will start rolling in. Not only did I find this wasn't true, I found myself actually losing money with advertising programs such as Google Adwords.

2. Inaccurate keyword research - Many times I find people jump into PPC advertising without knowing how to accurately target the most effective keywords. This can cost you big if you're getting lots of clicks that aren't converting into sales because they are outside of your target market. Before starting every campaign I suggest running test ad's to accurately define your target market.

3. Lack of persistence - If at first you don't succeed, try again. That saying was made for affiliate marketing. The first time around you may lose a few dollars promoting a product or program. You have to learn to not quit when you're down. When first starting out it is very common to lose money before you start earning profits. My first month in affiliate marketing I lost around $300 with Google Adwords.

4. Not Analyzing Stats - Analyzing you're stats is very important when it comes to affiliate marketing. You have to know what works and what doesn't. Checking which advertisement produces the highest conversion rate is often times overlooked by new affiliate marketers. If you are running 2 ads and 1 of them is converting at 20% and the other is not converting at all, it would be in your best interest to stop the non converting campaign. How would you know this if you are not analyzing your stats?

5. Promoting the wrong product - I guess this would be an obvious one. If you just aren't having success with marketing a product, it may be the product itself. It could be a bad pitch page or a sub par product. If you have tried everything and you still aren't having success with a particular product it may be time to pack it up and move on to the next product.

6. You aren't pre-selling - A while back when I first started I remember throwing affiliate links in Google Adwords. This was never effective. Not to mention Google has since banned this type of promoting. I suggest registering a domain and enticing people with a short sales page to buy the product. Your sales page could be just a positive review about how the product has helped you.

7. Promoting too many products - The saying "less is more" definitely applies to successful affiliate marketing. I use to believe the more products I promoted the higher chance I had of making a sale. The problem is your being stretched to thin, usually resulting in not being able to provide the required focus on a particular product. You want to be able to analyze your stats and focus on promoting one product more effectively.

8. Quit promoting get rich quick schemes - I hate them so I had to add this to the list. Many people are catching on to these worthless schemes. They are nothing more than useless information that people buy in hopes of pursuing their dream of financial freedom. Please if you are promoting that garbage please stop, and try promoting a useful product.

9. Not trying before you promote - How can you entice someone else to buy a product that you have not tried yourself. 9 times out of 10 if you find the product to be junk, other customers will also. It's important to run tests to accurately review all aspects of the product. You want to avoid having your sales page sound like a regurgitation of their sales page.

10. Promoting niches with too many affiliates - Competing with other affiliates can never be avoided. The key is minimizing the competition by promoting products that don't already have too many affiliates. This is good because generally certain keywords may have lower bids for the top spot in less populated niches. The higher the bid on a keyword the lower profit you make from each sale.

About the AuthorDaniel Taylor is a known internet marketer who has helped many marketers reach success. He shares his knowledge and many secrets of making money online at http://www.onlinehustlers.com/

The secret of getting one way links

2007-06-03T11:34:00.000-07:00

One way links are considered more important that reciprocal linking . Most search engines including google lays more emphasis on inbound links . Here are some great ways to generate One way links for greater link Popularity and higher search engine rankings

One way links are one of the most important factors to implement for a website to rank well in s any search engines. However getting one way links however much intimidating it may sound is not all that hard. Here are some time tested secrets of getting one way links for your website that will enable your site to rank up the search engine in a matter of weeks if not days

Quality Content : Content whatever said and done is still the king .Write Content on such topics that very few people write .or develop a niche is an area which you are an expert in and aim to be the best in your area of expertise , and soon you will see people linking back to you . Remember this simple rule in marketing. Don't try to be everything to all people .Try to be something to some people

Offer a Tool or Product or service that is hard to resist. This is also called link baiting .Offer a few tools for your visitors to download, distribute or mail to their friends which serves as a value addition to its main business. For example 123greetings recently added a download this card to your desktop feature. This feature added value to the visitors of 123greetings who knew the site core competency as providing cards for holidays and occasions. The idea is not to move away from a business core competency but provide a viral tool to increase the sites popularity manifold

Write Articles and Submit in on Article Directories: Writing articles in your specified niche is one of the most reliable and efficient ways to get one way links for your site. The author bio area of your article is the marketing proposition for your site. The Author Bio has the name of the author along with their area of expertise and hyperlinks to their websites. These articles once posted and approved are a great way to fetch one way links .In addition good articles that are relevant and informative also gets re -published by other websites, blogs and ezine sites giving your more coverage, exposure and more one way links since they publish your original article along with the author bio which in turn gives you added links and thereby increasing your link popularity

Enable RSS Feeds For your site: Syndicate your content to other sites. Create a content syndication feed (RSS feed) and include a link to your site. Use PHP rather than JavaScript to ensure search engines parse your headings and links. Submit your site and bog to RSS Directories and RSS Feeds. RSS feeds apart from ensuring your content distribution, is also a rich source of one way links.

Press Releases; Write frequent Press releases on your website and distribute them to various PR distribution channels. Press release can be written for announcing a new product or a service which you are launching, a break through research or a critical analysis in your area, or even a simple act of starting a new website of a specific vertical can be announced by a press release . Since these releases have hyperlinks to your website they are a great way to bring one way links

Write Testimonials : Write testimonials for products you love. Companies often post testimonials on their site with a link to their website to the submitting site .They result in a win-win situation for both since the company is happy with the word of mouth popularity it gets through testimonials while the webmaster that is submitting the testimonial gets added branding and one way links by writing these testimonials. Start a Blog :Start a Blog on your vertical, and update it regularly with content and a hyperlink to your main website .Search engines love blogs because of new content that's updated regularly .Additionally submit your blogs to the blog directories and Blog Feed readers . Also find a authority blog in your niche and comment in their blog with a hyperlink to your blog . Please do not spam their blogs but write something that would interest the owner to come you're your blog . Try networking with your industry both online and offline .

Make E-books and Submit them ; If you consider yourself and expert in your field ,make e-books and submit them to various e-books directories along with a hyperlink to your website . Make use on Online Forums ; Forums are a great way of promoting your brand in the form of signature marketing . What is means is for every post in your forum you can add your website name and description like a signature .However keep in mind that not every forum allows you to promote your site this way . Find out forums that allows you to market your brand along with the forum discussions.

About the AuthorMichael Ringwood is an internet marketer and is an expert on online marketing, search engine optimization and social media marketing .He has worked for several start ups websites and several top digital media online properties including http://123greetings.com/. he also writes on Holidays and Events round the World

Playing Dirty Is The Only Way to Succeed on the Interet

2007-06-03T11:27:00.000-07:00

Nowadays, on the internet, you have your average Joe doing what every 'guru' and expert tells him or her to do. In the end, the only person that comes out on top is the expert themselves.

Yes, affiliate programs are an excellent way of making money on the internet, and I for one have profited tremendously from them. But think about this...

You're making money from this guy who has a website, and you might get a huge cut of the profits...maybe 75% per sale. Where, 25% goes back to the author. But how many other people do he/she have promoting their product?

So, he/she has many people promoting their site on their behalf, bringing them sales that they don't have to work for. They're making off like bandits off of your hard work.

Of course, that's how affiliate marketing works...and that's why product vendors implement these programs for their products online.

IT'S A VIRAL SYSTEM OF MARKETING, BABY!!!

But of course, you already knew that...right?

So, why aren't YOU creating your own system of viral marketing for your own products, websites and affiliate links?

With viral marketing, it can be set up for little or no money down, and the promotional value of it can be truly tremendous.

Using a couple viral tactics, I made over 300 sales on an ebook that I whipped up in 10 minutes, and created the website and ad copy in an hour. This totalled out to over $1500 in pure profit (minus hosting fees). And the affiliate sales I made afterwards were beautiful as well. All this, from traffic I didn't even have to work for.

One of the easiest and most effective ways to use viral marketing, is of course the YouTube method. Create a spectacular or funny video, paste your link in it at the right times, and let your viewers pass it on to others.

You'd be amazed at what you can do with a viral video that has your website pasted on the screen during playback.

Of course, there are many other viral tactics you can use. Some cost money, but a majority of them do not. It's up to you to research these tactics, and implement the ones that you feel most comfortable actually doing.

T.M. Harris is a master viral marketer and affiliate marketer, whose tactics make him over $3K a month on autopilot. You can read more about his tactics at http://www.timetoplaydirty.com where he has dozens of never-before published viral marketing methods.

Time to Play Dirty - Only Nice Guys Finish BROKE!
(Good for traffic and business)

Play Dirty on Myspace - and Get PAID

Number 1 in Google

2007-06-03T11:24:00.000-07:00

With the preliminaries out of the way, there is an important thing to know about Google; it's that Google is very "link centric." In other words, ranking well is determined largely by who is linking to you and who you are linking to. There are other factors which we'll get into later, but that is the bulk of it.

This article started as a challenge. I have a membership site with an enormous amount of information on SEO, traffic generation, sales conversions, and so on. A friend of mine however made a bet. He bet me that I couldn't show the steps to ranking well in Google in 45 days or less, and do it in less than 2,000 words. Now ordinarily I'm not really the betting kind, but let's just say he made the bet interesting.

Don't think that getting a #1 spot that fast is something you can do working on it only five minutes a day. You can't, not anymore. There's simply too much competition and EVERYONE is trying to rank well.

Before I go into the actual techniques to getting a #1 listing in Google in 45 days or less, let me say something that should be obvious: "It isn't easy." Also, please keep in mind that this is not a scientific dissertation on the subject meant to cover all angles of the subject.

However, the rewards for getting to the #1 spot on Google are enormous, as I am sure you are aware.

Therefore, if you want to rank well, your site has to be "link worthy." Or better put, your site should have reasons why someone would want to link to you (and if you have a plain ecommerce site we'll get to how you do this).

You see, unless you want to spend a small fortune buying links (which largely don't work), the only way to get them, and therefore the only way to rank well, is to have something on your site worth linking to.

This is one of the best and easiest methods of getting traffic and links, yet it is also the one that is most often done wrong. All too many blogs for ecommerce sites are nothing more than "product posts."

About the Author
Steve Buchanan writes article on many topics including Article Submission - http://www.cheap-directory-submission.com/ Services, http://www.hondageneratorstore.com/ and http://www.snowblowersfact.com/

Paid Survey Scams; Read the Shocking Report

2007-06-03T11:18:00.000-07:00

I'll have to admit that I'm not the expert on Paid Survey Systems and their money making strategies. Before I did this report, I did have a small bit of knowledge about these programs, but these systems don't really apply to the business niches that I've chosen to pursue, Thankfully I've managed to make a few friends in the online world in the few years I've been involved in Internet marketing. One of these friends happens to be an expert in the survey field and was glad to help me with this review. You'll find out as you read on why I HAD to get this report out.

From the Desk of : Leila Gabrielle Tuesday : 11:10 AM

Paid online surveys are one way companies collect market research for their products and/or services. Companies spend billions of dollars each year on advertising so they are always looking for ways to get a competitive edge in the marketplace. To give you an idea on what these companies are looking for, are your opinion on different shows you watch, to find out what your shopping habits are, and why you buy certain products. They need this information to make money so they are willing to pay consumers - like you - very good money in return for their opinion.

Because it is an easy way to make money at your convenience and in the comfort of your own home paid online surveys are quickly becoming one of the easiest ways to earn extra income on the Internet. Many of the paid online survey sites out there claim that you can make $50 to $150 per hour. But is this claim to good to be true?

If you have ever conducted any research for paid surveys on the web like I have you will quickly find out that there are millions of sites all claiming the same thing. Plus, how do you know which ones are legitimate and which ones are not without spending a ton of time and money?

Well, after consulting with my friend I'm extremely glad I had him to help, otherwise I would have wasted a ton of my money without learning anything useful, other than how many scammers are really out there. That is why I've done the survey review; this niche market is just full of scams. Here's the Shocking Truth:

Only 3.6% of the sites offer the number of paying companies they advertised! (87.6% of them actually have less than 1/6 of their advertised database of paying companies.)

Only 5.8% of them updates their database regularly to ensure valid companies and working links! (An astonishing 90.5% of them have not updated their database for over 2 years resulting in a large number of outdated directories and non-working links!)

More than 4/5 of the sites require you to pay additional fees in order to gain access to their so-called "premium high paying companies". These companies are actually listed for free on other reputable sites!

Over 90% of them never replied our emails and those that did completely denied our requests for refunds! Once they got our money, they insisted on keeping it. Imagine the number of people who got scammed and couldn't get their money back!

Overall, my friend has rated 93.1% of the paid survey sites as Complete Utter SCAMS and has reported them to the Better Business Bureau (BBB), in the hope that their sites will be taken down and less people scammed.

The Survey Income System seems to be the Diamond in the Rough.

A housewife has discovered the Survey Income System, which has allowed her to retire early. She works only a few hours a week, and earns as much as $150 per hour. For the reasonable membership fee, you get access to a database of nearly 500 companies that will pay you for your opinion, over and over.

I found the website organization to be fairly straightforward and the survey links and opportunities to be very adequate. There were commentary descriptions on each of the survey products, which also included user comments and reviews, which, were very informative in choosing paid survey sites. This system has plenty of high quality and high paying survey links.

You can discover how to:

* Take online surveys: from $5 to $75 each (sometimes more) * Participate in Focus Groups: up to $150 per hour * Try new products: $5 to $10 or even more (plus you get the products free!). * Take telephone surveys: up to $120 per hour. * Preview new movie trailers: anywhere from $4 to $25 per hour.

This is a great system for the price and offers a number of money-making opportunities that you can participate in from home with no investment.

About the Author

Leila Gabrielle is an expert on Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization. Working with Caden Pratt and iWill Media, she has reached new levels of success and an authority status amongst the Internet Marketing World. Click here to learn more about Making Money Online and the http://lazy-money.com

2007-06-02T13:34:00.000-07:00

join myLot

We've heard reports of many myLot users who spend most of the waking hours of any given day enjoying myLot.

"Nothing can be that interesting?" you might ask. Well, then you've probably never experienced a place like myLot.

It can be addicting enough to kill days on end, but also functional and useful enough for the millions of internet users who only have a few precious moments in their busy days for "online time."

customize your internet experience

View the latest discussions, news, and blog postings all tailored to your interests and personal experience on myLot.

Make myLot your default home page and take advantage of everything myLot has to offer. Oh yeah, we have the weather too!

participate in discussions

Discuss topics about anything and everything under the sun.

Join one of the hundreds of thousands of discussions already started by our members, or start your own! We guarantee you'll find many others who share your interests.

Ahh, it's fun to be a fast growing community!

make money

Did we mention that you get paid (cash!) for your valuable contributions here?

That's the best part of myLot for many users.

Learn about the earnings program and find out how you can earn some extra spendng money.

build a profile

myLot users can express themselves with their own personal profile page. Every myLot user has one!

It's kind of like MySpace, only much cleaner.
Share photos with your friends and family.

Your profile is completely customized to your style, so let the world know what you're all about!

communicate with and make new friends

myLot has built-in private messaging which is a great way to communicate with your friends. It's 100% spam-free because YOU choose who can send you messages.

Only users who are on your "friends" list (which you have 100% control over) can send you a private message.

read and discuss the news

Never miss what's going on in the world.

We have breaking news stories, as well as articles tailored towards your specific interests.

You can even debate current events with other myLot users.

search and find

myLot has a comprehensive searching experience unlike any other.

Whether you're looking for web sites, discussions, news, blog articles, photos or private messages, you can easily find them!

With Yahoo! Search powering our web results, there's absolutely no reason to search anywhere else.

Give it a try. We guarantee you'll like what you find!

not a mylot member?

read and discuss articles from leading blogs

The blogging community produces some of the best information on the internet, and now we've brought this information onto myLot.

Blog articles are tailored towards your interests, or you can subscribe to specific blogs that interest you.
Do you own a blog? Then Along with the earnings program mentioned above, you're compensated for each and every new user that you refer to myLot who participates.

Instead of blowing our advertising budget on television, radio, or online ads, we've decided to pay our loyal users instead. After all, the myLot users are our best ambassadors!

If you're reading this, then chances are that you yourself were referred by a myLot member. This is a great program, and many members are making a LOT of money each month helping myLot grow!

2007-06-02T13:15:00.000-07:00

The Truth about Building a Business on the Net

We've all read claims of fast money; the alluring siren-call of the Internet 'get-rich-quick' scheme can be hard to resist.

Most of us have also heard the saying, "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is..." We know in our hearts that 'get-rich-quick' can't possibly work, yet we can't help but be intrigued by it.

Instead of pursuing the fruitless search for a quick and easy way to make money on the 'net, drill the following into your brain right now: There is NO SUCH THING as 'get-rich-quick'. You CAN earn a solid income from the Internet, if you're willing to put in the time, effort, and money. Here's a quick summary for those of you who are thinking about starting a business online. Let's start with the disadvantages first, to get them out of the way...

Hard work and long hours. Just like any business, building one online requires a great deal of effort. Most people do it while still working a full-time job elsewhere; you may find it hard to keep doing what you have to do when you're always 'exhausted'.

Always changing. What works online today might not work tomorrow. When you do business on the 'net you have to constantly 'keep up' or you may find profits beginning to lag. Educating yourself is a continuing process. If you hate change then the Internet is probably not for you.

Need to be able to cut through the 'hype'. You'll find plenty of misleading promises on the Internet, many of which will tell you that there's some sort of 'magic bullet' to getting sales. There isn't. Sorting through marketing techniques that work and those that don't can
be very time-consuming.

Definitely *not* a quick-rich-quick scheme! Regardless of what you may read, the Internet is *not* the path to quick, easy money and not everyone will be successful online. An online business contains an element of risk, just like any other business.

"Build it and they will come" does NOT apply to the 'net. Your web page is only one of billions. Learning how to get the *right* people to see your site is a tough job.

Persistence is vital to your success. Just like with any business, there's a lot to learn. It's very easy to give up and try something else online... but playing 'biz op tag' isn't going to help you make money any faster.

That being said, there are lots of advantages for doing business on the Internet! It truly offers one of the best opportunities for the 'average' person to test their entrepreneurial spirit. Some of the advantages of being an online business owner are:

Affordable startup costs. You can get started with just a few hundred bucks.

Flexible. Because your work is done on your computer and from home, you get to choose when you work.

Possibility of more free time -- eventually. Some online businesses can be automated to a certain extent. Automation will help to reduce your workload and eventually give you more free time.

Testing and research are relatively cheap. Need to find out what your potential audience thinks of a product idea? Chances are, there's a message board (or a hundred) where your potential audience gathers. Need to research your competition? Use the search
engines. There's so much you can do online for little or no money.

Exciting! If you thrive on change, the Internet is one of the best places to get it! You can experiment and test to your heart's content for minimal cost.

Ever-growing. Every day more people get 'connected' to the 'net. That means there your potential audience is always growing.

Multiple streams of income. You have the ability to sell lots of different products online -- including other company's products, in return for a commission -- which means that you can potentially earn several 'pay cheques'! A bunch of 'smaller' cheques may not seem like much on their own, but add them all up and they can become a solid stream of income.

Opportunity is everywhere! The Internet reaches a worldwide audience with a wide variety of interests. There are countless niches on which you can focus your energies!

Some people turn a profit within just a few months; others take years. There are lots of 'little guys' -- small, home based businesses -- who are happily and successfully earning
a living from the Internet. Will you be the next?

This article may be reprinted on your website or in your opt-in newsletter, provided that it is reprinted in its entirety and without modification, and the following resource box is left
intact:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Angela operates the Online Business Basics
website, which offers free marketing tips and articles for beginners to
the 'net. Visit www.onlinebusinessbasics.com
for more tips on how to effectively market your business on a limited
budget.

2007-06-02T13:00:00.000-07:00

Mystery Shopping for Fun and Profit

How would you like to get paid to go shopping? That's right! Get paid to shop for clothes, eat in restaurants, watch movies, play golf, travel, and so on.

You can have your cake and eat it too! Enjoy the best of both worlds. Make money and have fun at the same time as a mystery shopper.

What is a Mystery Shopper?

Sometimes known as a secret shopper, a mystery shopper looks like any other customer but is working undercover to perform market research or other tests on business establishments.

For example, a mystery shopper may check on the quality of service and products at a particular fast food outlet.

Were the staff friendly, courteous and helpful? Were the washrooms clean? Was the food hot and tasty? Did the staff attempt to upsell? Was the order filled accurately and quickly?

Why the Need for Mystery Shoppers?

Companies are concerned about the quality of your shopping experience. If there is a problem, they would like to know about it so that they can take corrective action and keep you as a customer.

For this reason, businesses hire mystery shoppers to check on their locations and report the results.

As well, comparison shopping can reveal pricing and service differences of the competition.

Mystery shoppers sometimes uncover safety or security concerns and otherhelpful information.

How To Make Money as a Mystery Shopper?

You can make money as a freelance mystery shopper. Contact market research companies and other businesses to obtain clients.

As an independent contractor, you will invoice clients your fees for services rendered. As well, you will be reimbursed for any direct expenses incurred (such as the cost of store purchases).

It is also possible to run your own market research company and subcontract out the work. You would need to get business clients who are willing to pay for these secret shopping assignments. Then, find suitable people who are willing to perform those assignments for you.

Variety is the Spice of Mystery Shopping

Your assignments as a mystery shopper can be varied and interesting.

One time you may eat in a fast food restaurant. Another time you may be asked to see how long it takes to get service from a company by telephone.

Perhaps you may be asked to shop at a website to check out its user friendliness. Still another
assignment may require you to rate the helpfulness of store staff.

So, if you would like to have fun while making money, consider becoming a mystery shopper. More.....

Free Movies

2007-06-02T12:40:00.000-07:00

6 Ideas To Improve Your Dropshipping Website

I talk to a lot of people who are doing business online everyday (no surprise given my industry). Come to think about it, almost every single one of my conversations are with Internet business owners and 90% of them ask me the same question; "Would you please take a look at my website, and give me any ideas on how to improve it?" Besides helping business owners find products to dropship, I own my own business online and have been where these people are. I love to help in every area that I can, or have time for.

I have narrowed down what I think are the top 6 ideas to improving a dropshipping website -

1. Site Structure - Make sure your site loads fast, and that the code is clean. If you built the website yourself, or had someone else build it, did you make sure (you or) they used CSS, and that it validates. When using CSS you make sure that everything on the site is uniform. The font size, style of font, colors used etc. You will lose more customers then you realize by having a site that looks like it was designed by a 6th grader in a computer class. I know you have seen them. Text that is a rainbow of colors. First paragraph green, second paragraph red, next yellow and so on (just repeat any color you can think of and you get the point). Creating a site like this is very unprofessional and you will not be taken serious.

2. Images, graphics and banners - Make sure that you are using the cleanest looking, fastest loading and most optimized images you can. There are several programs out there that will help you optimize your images for the web. You may even have some software on your computer and not even know it. Most programs like Photo Shop, or Paint Shop Pro (even the basic operating system photo programs) have image optimization programs that can help speed up the load time and clarity of the photo. The more images that can help describe the product you are selling, the better. Remember the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words.

3. Site Navigation - If your potential customers can't browse through your site easily, or feel they are lost, you will lose them 80% of the time from my experience and website analytics tracking. I try to follow the "3 click rule", meaning that it will not take people more then 3 clicks to get to your shopping cart. Also make sure you add an html site map and a universal search engine site map so the search engines can know about the pages you are offering and when they are updated. Doing this will help you have the freshest content from your site on the search engines.

4. Amazing Unique Keyword Rich Content - The more information you can provide the better. People get on search engines to look for what? Information. If you are not providing information that is at the very least better then your competition, then you might as well give up. For example, if you are working with a supplier, and so are 1000 other people, how many of those people do you think are just copy and pasting the product descriptions and not doing anything they can to make it their own using the keywords they want to target? Most of those people are not doing anything to make their content better (from my experience) so even just changing things around a little and making the content better by being more descriptive and using more keywords will put you ahead of the competition 100%.

5. Make Me Feel Safe - If you do not have any kind of SSL certificate, BBL logo, or "hacker safe" logo on your site, then you need to research these out and do whatever you can to get at least one of these added to your site where visitors can clearly see. With all of the talk going on about identity theft people are very weary these days about giving credit card info online. So, anything you can do to help people feel safer on your site (even a little bit) will help increase sales.

6. Contact Info - People are curious by nature, and the thing that runs through my mind more then anything when I am visiting a site is - "Who is the person behind this?" I want to know that I can talk to a human if needed and that someone will be there to actually answer my email or return my call. Make sure you have a phone number where people can contact you, email address and mailing address. When people know they can contact you they feel safer and will be less hesitant to purchase from you.

I have blogged a lot about these topics in the past, but i wanted to do a new post and talk about what I believe are the most important things you can be doing right now to improve how things are going on your website. These are not hard or costly steps, but will take some time and planning. If you get started implementing them now it will pay off in the long run.

More information about Matt Siltala can be found on his Squidoo page here - http://www.squidoo.com/matt-siltala

2007-06-02T12:33:00.000-07:00

The Top 10 Steps to Extraordinary Personal Wealth

I recently came across startling figures about the average American’s finances. Only 4% of us have significant savings when we hit age 65, and a majority of Americans have less than $1000 in savings. Perhaps even more troubling, nearly one-fifth of us have a negative net worth, meaning that we owe more in debt than the total value of our combined assets. In a land of wealth and opportunity, and in an age of unlimited freedom, attaining wealth is primarily a matter of choice and determination. The following are my suggestions for rapidly increasing your personal income and wealth.

Develop a healthy awareness of money. Most of us either ignore our cash flow and don’t have a budget, or we think of money as a "problem". Instead, begin thinking of it as energy, as a resource and as a tool to be managed and used wisely.

Develop a healthy desire for money. Money is neither evil nor the source of happiness. It is a tool that can be used well or badly, but most importantly it can be used to achieve many of life’s dreams and priorities. Having more of it increases your choices, and your responsibility.

Develop a healthy personal foundation. It is difficult to attract or keep money if your life is in chaos. To achieve significant wealth, pay attention to your attitude, your relationships, your values and your integrity. Money tends to flow to those who are prepared to handle it well.

Resolve ALL addictions. Substance abuse will obviously undermine any real ability to attract and manage large amounts of money, but other addictions are equally dangerous. Addictions to shopping, drama and excitement, to power or sex or a need to have the newest gadget will all destroy freedom of choice, and your ability to handle money responsibly.

Spend less than you make. An obvious point that most of us ignore. Have and use a budget, track your cash flow, decide what you need compared to what you want. Unless you use credit cards as a tool to monitor your spending, avoid using them at all. If you’re living on credit, juggling one card against another, get professional help!

Save a significant amount. Most experts recommend paying yourself first and saving anywhere from 5% to 20% of your income. The amount or percentage that you save is probably not as important as the principle. If at first you only save 1%, make that deposit every single week, do it without fail, and congratulate yourself! Even 1% is a great beginning!

Cut your spending by 25%. That’s a huge amount! For most of us, it’s also entirely possible. Take your lunch, buy less junk, rent a movie instead of going to the theater, make a picnic instead of dinner at a restaurant, re-cycle and repair rather than throwing things away and buying new. Live cheaper, simpler and closer to the earth.

Learn the principles of investing. Most community colleges have courses on investing in stocks, real estate, commercial property and even collectibles. Pick your preference, study hard, buy smart, and let your money work for you rather than you always working for money. But, never try to get rich quick! We’re talking about investing, not speculating.

Develop long-term passive income. Whether this is interest from bonds, profits from a business, or residuals from your last TV commercial, develop assets that will generate positive cash flow for years to come, whether you are working or not. Rental property has been a favorite, but so are stocks and mutual funds.

Develop wealth consciousness! This is a conscious, specific desire to be aware of money, to have money, and to use money to reflect your values and your priorities. Some of us virtually choose poverty because of our refusal to take responsibility for how we handle money. Others, live as misers and never use money to expand their horizons and develop their lives. You can decide to have a healthy, exciting and profitable relationship with money. Choose
wisely. Start today!

2007-06-02T12:24:00.000-07:00

Generate additional revenue by displaying ads related to the content on your web site.

Benefits

Increase your revenue by monetizing the content of your web site.
Satisfy your users by offering them ad content related to their interests.
Leverage our knowledge of how best to optimize your contextual advertising.
Get paid quickly via a convenient PayPal payment option and earn a return on the money in your PayPal account by depositing your funds in PayPal's Money Market Reserve Fund.

Features

Advanced ad targeting and display capabilities can improve the relevance of your results.
Ability to filter competitive listings from appearing on your site—to protect your business.
Access to a wide range of tools, services and programs that enable you—and your users—to get the most value from your site.
Four ways to collect your revenue, including a PayPal option that lets you get paid more quickly.

Getting Started is Easy Take a Tour

Apply Now

Interested in participating in the Yahoo! Publisher Network Beta?
Get started now

*See Terms and Conditions

Taken from Yahoo.com

And if you feeling like watching a movie online after this... CLICK HERE

2007-06-02T11:40:00.000-07:00

Successful Money Making Opportunities

You can very easily earn an extra $200, $500, even $1000+ every week with only 15 minutes of your time... Discover the automated power of the Affiliate Cash Vault! New fail-safe system virtually runs 100% on autopilot... Just set it and forget it! Start Earning Money 15 Minutes From Now... HONESTLY!

This guy is a jerk but he knows how to make money online. He's obnoxious. He's lazy. And he doesn't care, because he's FILTHY RICH. He makes several million dollars every year on the internet, doing almost nothing. Heard that before? Well you can see proof of his earnings on his web site.

Earn $5 to $150 an hour taking online surveys! Did you know it's possible to get paid $10 to $150 an HOUR just for giving your opinion? Companies all over need you to try new products, review Web sites, take surveys, participate in focus groups, even preview movie trailers! This is a great opportunity to make a few hundred, even a few thousand dollars every single month!

Read the amazing true story of how one woman, with no previous business experience, earns $435,000+ per year selling other people's stuff online!

Take the "Lazy Man's" path to online riches! Discover the secret of working less, getting paid more and having tons more fun!

Discover the goldmine hiding in your own neighborhood. This is not a business opportunity... just lots and lots of do-able business ideas that you can duplicate

Discover how you can gain the big money secrets to building a successful consulting business - for just pennies on the dollar! Give them just a few hours of your time and I'll show you how to build a prosperous future as a successful consultant in your chosen line of interest.

Sell your business the easy way. Imagine increasing your sales and profits to the point where a buyer walks in and writes you a big fat check to buy your business at your asking price! Sound too good to be true? Well, it isn't if you have the know-how.

Start making money from the index futures markets within minutes from now. We simply show you how to make cash!

Get paid $10 for every email you read!

Earn $200,000 a year, in pure profits working from home, using nothing but affiliate programs

Get Paid To Shop...Eat in Restaurants...and Go to the Movies

Get Paid To Be A Mystery Shopper! $10 to $40 an hour

Get A FREE New Car Plus Get Paid

Free Money Making Opportunities

How to start a candle and soap making business

How to start a cosmetic business

How to start a delivery service

How to start a handyman business

135 Ways to be successful in mail order

Getting into the light hauling business

How to start a profitable house painting business

How to start a home-based import / export business

Make big money in real estate

Tips To Creating A Successful Home-Based Business

21 Steps To Home Business Success

Marketing

BACK

And if you are a movie fan please have a look at this blog CLICK HERE

2007-06-02T11:27:00.000-07:00

Top Money Making Opportunities
Could you use an extra $500-$1000 a week? Learn how to make $175 an hour online from the comfort of your own home! Simply sign up and start giving your opinions for cash. Their database of companies actually pay you for taking online surveys and participating in focus groups.

This company will pay you $5 to $75 just to fill out simple online surveys from the comfort of your own home. Get paid $50 to $150 for participating in focus group panels for 30 to 60 minutes. THAT'S IT! No catch, no gimmick.

Dave's Cool Little Website. Get yours and earn a thousand bucks or more every month. It's so cool - he'll even set it up for you at no additional fee (even though it's really easy to do it yourself).

How to make an extra $54,000 part-time your first year in your own office cleaning business. No investment. No experience. Start right away!

Can you Type? Internet companies are looking for people to fill out product evaulation forms online. You can start earning real money within 30 minutes. Log in daily to see how much you are making and receive a check every two weeks. 50% Discount Ends Today!

How to write and publish your own outrageously profitable
ebook in as little 7 days - even if you can't write, can’t type or failed high school English class. That's right. Discover the secrets to having your own profitable ebook written and published within one week.

Turn 50 Minutes into $50,000 a Month!
This Automatic system has helped countless people out of financial desperation. It does not require any special computer skills and you don't need any special talents either. Find out how to earn Six Figures working just a few hours a week at home!

Start your own internet business. NO MBA... No rocket science required. Take 60 days to put it to the test! If you aren't completely satisfied with the "Super Affiliate Handbook" at any time within 60 days, They'll give you your money back ... no questions asked!
Learn how to become a successful concert promoter. This step by step manual will have you living the lifestyle of a rock star, and having the financial freedom you've always dreamed of.
Start your own Booking Agency. Learn how to book music and entertainment engagements and earn $10,000 or more a month. Work at home!
Hundreds of products all drop-shipped from your website. Get your own turnkey website & free domain name. You sell, you profit, we do all the work!
Find out how to make between $200,000 to $350,000 year after year just by using the power of Google, PayPal and ClickBank.

New Money Making Opportunities
Discover the 'street-smart' secrets I use online to make $33,000 a month, working less than 30 minutes a week. You don't even need a web site.
Discover how you can make $20 in less than 5 minutes with our unique system. If I told you that you could make between $500 and $3000 a month extra, doing nothing but sitting in your pajamas typing on your computer, would you do it?"
We specialize in locating people who want to find work in the "Mystery Shopping" field. Our system allows you to get paid $10 to $40 an HOUR just to go to your favorite mall to shop, eat at your favorite restaurant, golf at your favorite course, or enjoy a movie at your local theater. Not only will you get everything for FREE and get a paycheck for it, but someone pays for the gas in your car!
Make $1000 per day. Start making money in just 15 minutes from now. Work from home on your computer. Hidden secrets revealed
Read this page and learn how to make $25 in 7 minutes (or less), sitting at home in front of the computer...And the best part is, you can do it over and over again without risking a penny of your hard-earned money.

Process online ads for this company and they will pay you $250-$1250 Daily! They have immediate job openings for people interested in processing ads for companies that pay commissions on each sale. You do no selling on your part. You only process the ads that convert into sales by merchants. The program is 100% automated and there is no hard or complicated work involved. They will provide everything you need to get you started right away!

Get paid for your opinion and earn top dollars
for every survey you complete at home in your spare time. Anyone can do this kind of work. Start today!
Additional Money Making Opportunities
No catch. No gimmicks. We have compiled and researched hundreds of research companies that are willing to pay you between $5 and $75 per hour simply to answer an online survey in the peacefulness of your own home.
Worldwide Home Typists Needed! Get Paid $200-$950 Daily Typing Ads Online!

The Money-For-Nothing GUARANTEED Instant Income Generating System, once you're set up, the Internet does all of the WORK FOR YOU!

Successful internet business owner shares her secrets. Turn your business idea into your own profitable online business. Don't have a business idea? You can still make money on the internet. She'll show you how!

Get up to $99 just for filling out 10-25 minute online surveys.
Plus, get paid to work from home, work your own hours, whenever you want. They currently have nearly 700 of the worlds most elite Market Research Companies and other paid opportunities in their system.

Multiple Streams of Income System. Start In Just 15 Minutes. This system is a complete turnkey money making opportunity. We have identified the hottest and most lucrative opportunities for making money on the internet and we provide you with steps for plugging into these opportunities. If you can read and follow directions, you can make thousands of dollars per day with very little work.

Earn $200+ per day simply taking photographs. Banking and insurance institutions nationwide need to continuously have updated and accurate information on the condition of their properties. It is simply not cost effective for them to have "field reps" in every single town in the United States. So, these institutions "sub" out their work to local independent reps all over the country.

More money making opportunities

Also visit our free movie blog CLICK HERE

2007-06-02T10:49:00.000-07:00

Earn Extra Cash The Easy Way
With Hits4Pay, it's easy to earn some extra cash visiting and viewing our advertiser's offers and by referring others to our website. You pay absolutely nothing to join as a
member, ever.

How Are We Able To Do This?

Since 1998, we have been maintaining one of the largest free membership website that helps our advertisers to gain exposure to their offers quickly by reaching their specific target market.

Tens of thousands of advertisers rely on our capability to reach their targeted consumers in a safe and secure environment. Depending on the rates we charge our advertisers, we share a portion of the revenue generated with our members.

Highest Paying Advertising Program!

Quite simply, Hits4Pay is one of the few companies which pays the highest in the industry. You can earn a monthly check from the efforts of 2 levels. All credits are recorded in real time and can be viewed from your members area 24/7.

1. Signup Reward: Earn $10 in your Hits4Pay account as soon as you signup for a free account.

2. Direct Income: Earn $0.02. Earn $0.02 for each advertiser's email that you read from us.

3. Direct Referral Income (level one): Earn $0.01. Refer us to a few friends and earn $0.01 for each email that they read. You will get credit for your direct referral reading emails.

4. Referral Income: (level two): Earn $0.01. When your direct referrals refer others, you earn $0.01 for them reading the emails we send them.

5. Payout: Any account that has reached the minimum payout of $25.00 or more will be zeroed out on the 1st of every month, and checks mailed out on or before the 15th.With our compensation plan, your income is leveraged and could add up to a substantial monthly income, just by reading emails from
us.

State-Of-The-Art Tracking

Included in each email there is a confirmation link. Click this link once and our advertiser's website will show up. All your earnings and the activities of your referrals are tracked, recorded and reported in real-time.

Get Paid Monthly

Checks are sent directly to your mailing address on the 15th of each month as soon as the balance in your account reaches $25. If your balance does not reach the minimum then your balance will roll over till it does.

A Win-Win Situation!

You Win by reading emails of your choice and getting paid for it up to 3 referral levels.
Our advertisers win by getting more exposure to their websites and offers and reaching their targeted audience.
We win by keeping our affiliates and advertisers happy.

Its Free To Join - Get $10 Sign Up Bonus!

Simply signup and you will begin receiving emails from the category of interest that you choose during signup process. You can choose a minimum of 10 categories and a maximum of 25 categories of interest.

2007-06-02T05:51:00.001-07:00

b5media

is looking for a

Tennis Blogger

Category: blognetwork
Description

b5media is looking for a tennis blogger to write a well-established blog on women's tennis (www.ladiescourt.com).

The ideal blogger will have strong knowledge of and interest in women's tennis. Requirements are to cover the WTA -- top players, tournaments, strategy, analysis, etc. You also will be expected to develop and maintain a sense of community through social networking sites, related participation in forums and blogs, etc.

Knowledge of WordPress and image editing software is a plus. Passion for tennis and for blogging about tennis is an absolute must. This is a paid position.

How to Apply

If you are interested, please fill out the application
at http://www.b5media.com/jobs/ and be sure to include
the URLs of any blogs you currently write.

2007-06-02T05:48:00.000-07:00

ClickGolf

is looking for a

Golf Blogger

Category: corporate
Description

We're looking for a blogger to cover general golf news, new products releases, competitions etc at www.clickgolf.co.uk/news.

You will be expected to build up a community around the blog, building it up into a highly relevant authority over time.

You must be highly familiar with Wordpress. You will be required to upload images, float them into text and link to previous posts on our blog as well as to other relevant sites.

We would prefer a blogger who is a keen golfer and whose enthusiasm is evident through their writing.

Payment will be made monthly via PayPal. We pay a flat rate per post. Clear and accurate UK English is required.

How to Apply

If you are interested please email andy [at] webmaint [dot] com. Please include:

Previous experience with golf
Technical abilities
Sample of writing

2007-06-02T05:46:00.000-07:00

BusinessBlogAngel.com

is looking for a

Typepad Config Assistant

Category: corporate

Location: UK Description

I'm looking for someone with excellent knowledge of Typepad to assist me with my client projects.

This position is less about writing (although there may be some) and more about setting up custom design templates to my instructions and creating Typelists etc.

REQUIREMENTS

The successful candidate will have:

- basic HTML knowledge

- their own Dreamweaver and Fireworks software for adapting form code and graphics etc

- excellent communication in English

Experience with 1shoppingcart, Constant Contact and eWeber would be an advantage.

LOCATION

You can be anywhere at all in the world, but the work would need to take place between the hours of 10.30am and 5.30pm GMT.

WORKLOAD

Each project will only take a couple of hours and is unlikely to exceed 3 projects a week at this stage, so 3 days x 2 hrs work to fit within the times of day mentioned.

How to Apply

Interested parties should email hireme@businessblogangel.com explaining why they think they are right for the role and indicating desired hourly rate.
Many thanks and happy blogging!

2007-06-02T05:44:00.000-07:00

Single Grain

is looking for a

SEO Blogger

Category: corporate
Description

Single Grain is looking for several experienced writer to blog on different internet marketing topics such as: SEO, PPC, Link Building, Link Baiting, Social Media, Blogging Tips.

How to Apply

Send an Email to Sj@singlegrain.com along with few samples of your work and blogs that you currently write on.

Consumer Generated Media Manager

2007-06-02T05:40:00.000-07:00

Category: corporate
Location: Louisville, KY Description

The new position plays a key role in leading the companyâ??s overall corporate and brand communications digital strategy in the public relations function. Specifically, this position will set the strategic direction for all internet communications including proactive and crisis management to promote and protect brand image using a blend of traditional media and CGM experience. Responsibilities include creation of pro-active, innovative and creative annual plans for activities that span the entire spectrum of Consumer Generated Media, blogs, podcasts, RSS Feeds, social networks, social media technologies - as well as traditional public relations communications materials (press releases, Q&Aâ??s, b-roll, video production, etc.). The role performs technical/creative activities on the internet and those related to web site. The individual will work with Yum! PA and the brands to identify issues management topics and to monitor and manage those messages online. The position will also provide on-going best practices and education to continually improve the companyâ??s CGM/on-line presence.

JOB FUNCTIONS:

- Lead strategy and execution for internet communications spanning pro-active, brand-building and crisis management activity. Use blend of PR communications skills including media relations and on-line strategic and technical expertise to create overall internet plans and employ tactics.

- Responsibilities include creation of pro-active annual plans for activities that span the entire spectrum of Consumer Generated Media, blogs, podcasts, RSS Feeds, social networks, social media technologies - as well as traditional public relations communications materials (press releases, Q&Aâ??s, b-roll, video production, etc.). Help drive creative Buzz and WOM to cut through the clutter. Write materials and execute plans.

- Work with Yum! and individual brands on developing online media plans to compliment the traditional PR plans.

- Manage monitoring tool for regular analysis, insight and action steps. In addition to pro-active plans, create clear, formalized process for early identification and rapid response plan.

- Perform technical/creative activities on the internet and those related to web site.

- Conduct and cascade on-going best practices to continually improve CGM communication. Conduct regular reviews of CGM-activity to ensure optimal experience for internet/web site customers.

- Continually increase organization knowledge about CGM through presentations and teaching.

- Measure on-going activities and their effectiveness â?? use ROI measurement tool.

- Responsibilities also include traditional media role such as acting as spokesperson, writing press materials, creating b-roll, etc.

Requirements

EDUCATION:

- Bachelors Degree, ideally in journalism, marketing, technology or telecommunications. Masters or MBA preferred

EXPERIENCE (and other qualifications)

Â· Track record of leading successful on-line PR communications strategies that blend strong media relations skills with internet skills (pro-active, crisis plus web).

Â· High expectation for in-depth knowledge of traditional media relations and CGM including setting strategy and ensuring flawless execution of tactics. Experience developing pro-active CGM PR plans that deliver results.

Â· Experience with traditional media relations, spokesperson duties, creating annual plans, etc.

Â· Deep understanding of consumers and their needs.

Â· Leader and strategic thinker â?? creating vision for future.

Â· Outstanding judgment and ability to react effectively and strategically during crisis.

Â· Broad understanding of public affairs issues, consumer trends and competition.

Â· Demonstrated creativity and innovation with Buzz/WOM.

Â· Understanding of the total business and how communication will have a direct impact on driving results and building the culture.

Â· Team player working with brands and cross-functional departments.

Â· Excellent communication skills (written/verbal skills including public speaking).

Â· Results-oriented â?? ROI Model for on-going measurement to show impact of activities.

Â· Avid learner â?? always seeking new and better ways to improve processes.

How to Apply

email sarah.beauerle@yum.com

AdDynamix

2007-06-02T04:32:00.000-07:00

From http://www.addynamix.com/

AdDynamix is one of the most trusted, long-standing online ad networks around. We help Web Publishers, such as yourself, maximize their revenue generating opportunities by providing a comprehensive yet flexible solution.

Whether you need a fully outsourced sales force or are looking for an extension to your existing team, AdDynamix Network provides Web Publishers software and services to generate and maximize revenue from their ad inventory. Streamline your efforts and focus on adding value to your online property with our help.

Few Advantages of Being an AdDynamix Network Publisher.
Maximization of all your unsold inventory
Online and in business since 1997
Fortune 500 Advertisers
Audited and Certified Technology
No exclusionary contracts
The best payout rates in the industry to ensure your profitability
Access to top advertisers with new ones added daily

All ad management handled for you by advanced AdDynamix(sm) technology, including ad rotation, auditing, Real Time reporting, and more.As one of the longest standing and most trusted ad networks around, we are committed to providing you with an easy, profitable turnkey solution to maximize your ad space.

Network Ad Format
Banners 468x60 CPM/CPC
Skyscrapers 160x600,120X600 CPM/CPC
Leaderboards 728x90 CPM/CPC
Medium Rectangles 300x250 CPM/CPC
Pop Unders, Various Sizes / CPM only
AdFlys® (Floating Ads) 300x300 ** / CPM only / One ad per user per twenty-four hours

** We do not run a large quantity of AdFlys® (Floating Ads) to protect your user experience. To View samples of all our ad formats click here.

To be a AdDynamix Network affiliate, you must meet the following criteria:

Qualification
Primary contact must be at least 18 year old.
Adult, Warez, ROM, Passwords, MP3, or Emulator sites will NOT be accepted.
Must have a fully qualified domain name (i.e. http://www.company.com).
Affiliates may not place links in newsgroups, unsolicited emails, chat rooms, etc.
Affiliates may not artificially inflate traffic counts to an advertiser site(s) using any device, programs, hidden frames, Java pop-ups, robots, or other means.
No sponsored incentivized clicks or pay to surf sites.
No sites under construction.
No more than two 468x60 banners or 120x600 skyscrapers per page.

Those not meeting these requirements or found in violation of our Terms & Conditions at any time will not be paid for any

AdDynamix Network campaign they are running and their accounts will be cancelled immediately. Please review our Terms & Condition PDF before proceeding.

High traffic sites can contact a Network Development Representative at 888.867.3669 to discuss the best opportunities for your web site.

my free movie blog CLICK HERE

AuctionAds Referrals

2007-06-01T14:45:00.000-07:00

Did you realize that you can make money when visitors click on your “Ads by AuctionAds” link in your ad unit? AuctionAds offers a unique referral program where you will earn a percentage of all your referred publishers, meaning you can make a nice additional tidy sum of referral revenue on top of the money you make from the actual ads themselves.

Ever click on the “Ads by ___” link on some of the other ad programs? If you did, you would discover a landing page that would get new signups or advertisers for those programs but would leave the publisher high and dry when it comes actually getting any credit or revenue from those those signups. And not only are you not earning any money from those referrals, it is also a non-money-making leak where visitors can leave your site without you making a penny off of them. This is one area where AuctionAds strives to be different.

With AuctionAds, we don’t want you to worry about the loss of revenue caused by the branding we use to identify the ad units as ads on your site. So we have implemented a referral program that is imbedded right into your ad units. So anytime anyone clicks on the “Ads by AuctionAds” and signs up for the program, you will earn 10% of those new publisher’s earnings. Pretty sweet deal. This means every single click made from our ad units, even the clicks on the “Ads by AuctionAds” gives you the potential to earn money.

Do you have other ways you wish to promote AuctionAds outside of the ad unit itself? You can also generate referral links that do not have to appear in conjunction with your ad unit, so you can just include a link in your blog entry talking about AuctionAds, or include it in a sidebar of a blog or website. Just login to your account and you will find the code right on the front page.

And with AuctionAds being such a new program, chances are good that if a visitor likes your new revenue stream on your site, they just might click that link and sign up themselves. And since nearly all of those signups would have clicked on the links to see how they worked, you will still earn money from that signup if they also end up placing an eBay bid as well!

Wondering just how many people you have already referred to AuctionAds? The front page of your AuctionAds account shows the number of referrals you currently have, so you can see how many people have signed up using your link. And soon, you will also be able to login to your account and see your referral reporting separated out from your regular earnings, so you will be able to see just how much money you are making from your AuctionAds ads versus strictly the referral revenue. If you tend to send a lot of referrals, this will be especially handy for you.

Ready to start earning referral revenue from AuctionAds? Either use AuctionAds ad units, if you aren’t already, or simply login to your account to generate the referral javascript so you can create regular links for AuctionAds and start earning right away.

Taken From ActionAds

Want to have a look at latest available movies over Net? if Yes CLICK

Bid4prizes.com

2007-06-01T14:29:00.000-07:00

I came across Bid4prizes.com when surfing the net. The site allows people to enter into bidding games to win great prizes such as car, motorcycle, watches, electronic products and many other lucrative prizes. And the best part of Bid4prizes's auction games is that, the person with the lowest unique bid will win the prize of an auction. Doesn't these sound too good to be true?

To find out whether Biz4prizes.com is real or not. I went to Google and did some searches. I didn't found any scam complaints on Biz4prizes. Biz4prizes is actually owned by New Motion Inc, a digital entertainment company that specializes in products for mobile phones and making a net sales of $18.7 million in 2006. Biz4prizes also posted a list of testimonies of the winners recorded in audio. So I conclude Biz4prizes is real.

How Bid4prizes Works?
There are many auctions running in Bid4prizes and each auction has a prize. Member look for the prize he/she like then bid in the auction to win the prize.

- Member with the lowest unique bid in the auction win the prize. What is lowest unique bid? Here's an example to help you understand.

- Let say there are 10 persons bidding for a TV in an auction and the bids result are:

Bids
$1 - 2 persons
$3 - 1 person
$4 - 3 persons
$5 - 1 person
$7 - 3 persons

$1 is the lowest bids but not unique because there are more 2 persons, $5 is unique but not the lowest. The $3 bid is the one that match the criteria "unique and lowest". So the person with the $3 bid win the prize.

- Bid start $0.01 and each member can only bid up to 20 times daily.

Bid4prizes accepts US residents only
The bidding games open only to US people only. This to me is a downside of bid4prizes.

Taken from : http://moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com/

Do you want to Watch Movies Online? if Yes CLICK

Text Link Ads

2007-06-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

I have discussed about Amazon Associate program in the previous post. This time, I would like to introduce another monetization method that is compatible with Adsense. It is Text Link Ads. I have been reading good things around the blogosphere about Text Link Ads, so I decided to check them out.

First of all, the most important advantage of Text Link Ads (TLA for short) is that it is compatible with contextual advertising such as Google Adsense. Hence, putting TLA together with Adsense will not violate Google's TOS. At TLA, there are two ways to monetize your blog. One is by Affiliate banners + buttons and the other one is by Text links/ ads.

The Affiliate banners + buttons, just like other affliates program, promotes and widespreads the word of TLA. This method of monetization is recommended if you have a site that has anything to do with earning money from the blog.

The second method of monetization (Text links/ads) offers flat-rate monthly non-context sensitive text-only link ads to advertisers. TLA advertisements are bought by the advertisers on a monthly basis. For your reference, the amount you will get is approximately USD15-USD50 per link per month. To an extreme end, some sites may even sell their links for USD100. And once the ad link is sold, we get the income without worrying if it will be audited, fraudulent clicks or anything like that.

Earnings depend on several factors, for example, the position of the ad block on your blog, whether you sell blocks on just one page or your entire site and how many text link ads you sell per block. You can set the number of ads in your member's control panel after you signup. You can also choose to accept advertisers automatically or to be part of the acceptance process.

Payment is on monthly basis, and you can either choose cheque or Paypal as payments. If you choose cheque as the payment method, you need to cross US$25 threshold in a month, or payment gets rolled over to the next month. When this compare with the USD$100 threshold in Google Adsense, it sounds more easy to recieve cheque. On the other hand, if you choose Paypal, there is no monthly minimum. Payout is 50/50 on each ad sold for your site, which sounds high compared to other ad networks. However, because of the strategy used for TLA, lower-traffic sites that have trouble monetizing with contextual ad programs report making much more money with TLA.

How does it work? Simply go to the TLA website, and sign up to be a publisher. It can take a few days to get your approval ( or rejection! ) so be patient. You’re approved based on your site, its content, and traffic. Once you receive your approval, you get to configure your ads to your liking. You can choose how many ads you’d like to display, and whether they’ll appear on a single page on your site, or on the entire site. Once you’ve made these decisions, you can customize the colors to match your site.

After that, simply select your site’s blogging platform, and follow the instructions or you can add the link manually. You can, of course, request that you personally approve each link. That’s pretty much it. Once your script is installed, your site is listed on the TLA website. You’ll get an email each time a link is sold.

Below are some FAQs:

1. Can I control what links appear on my site?
Yes, you can choose to be emailed every time a new ad is sold so you can approve it or deny it from being published. You can set this option up here.

2. Can I run Text Link Ads along with other ad systems I am currently running?
Yes, Text Link Ads can be run along any ad system as we are not a contextually served product.

3. How do you price the ads on my site?
We use our own pricing algorithm that factors in: the traffic of your website, theme of your website, and link popularity of your website.

4. What is the revenue share of any ads sold?
We feature a 50/50 split from the final sale price of any ads sold. We handle serving, scheduling, billing, customer service, and sales.

5. I have a Blogger account, how do I implement your script?
You need to make sure you have updated to newest version of Blogger, then you are all set to login and install our ad script! Just follow the directions for installing our advertisements in the "Get Ad Code" section of your account.

6. How long does it take for TLA to review a new site submitted?
It can take 24 hours to be approved. Then you need to add the code on the exact same page that was approved, then 1-3 days to get packaged on and placed on the site depending on number of submissions.

Taken From : http://www.dagsensecodes.com/2007/01/adsense-alternatives-3-adbrite.html

If you like to watch free movies online CLICK HERE

AdSense

2007-05-31T23:37:00.000-07:00

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

AdSense is an ad serving program run by Google. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image and, more recently, video advertisements on their sites. These ads are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-thousand-impressions basis. Google is also currently beta-testing a cost-per-action based service.

Google utilizes its search technology to serve ads based on website content, the user's geographical location, and other factors. Those wanting to advertise with Google's targeted ad system may sign up through AdWords. AdSense has become a popular method of placing advertising on a website because the ads are less intrusive than most banners, and the content of the ads is often relevant to the website.

Currently, the AdSense uses JavaScript code to incorporate the advertisements into a participating site. If it is included on a site which has not yet been crawled by the Mediabot, it will temporarily display advertisements for charitable causes known as public service announcements (PSAs). (Note that the Mediabot is a separate crawler from the Googlebot that maintains Google's search index.)

Many sites use AdSense to monetize their content and some webmasters work hard to maximize their own AdSense income. They do this in three ways:

They use a wide range of traffic generating techniques including but not limited to online advertising.

They build valuable content on their sites which attracts AdSense ads which pay out the most when they get clicked.

They use copy on their websites that encourage clicks on ads. Note that Google prohibits people from using phrases like "Click on my AdSense ads" to increase click rates. Phrases accepted are "Sponsored Links" and "Advertisements".

The source of all AdSense income is the AdWords program which in turn has a complex pricing model based on a Vickrey second price auction, in that it commands an advertiser to submit a sealed bid (not observable by competitors). Additionally, for any given click received, advertisers only pay one bid increment above the second-highest bid.

History

The underlying technology behind AdSense was derived originally from WordNet and Simpli, a company started by the founder of Wordnet — George A. Miller — and a number of professors and graduate students from Brown University, including James A. Anderson, Jeff Stibel and Steve Reiss.^[1] A variation of this technology utilizing Wordnet was developed by Oingo, a small search engine company based in Santa Monica founded in 1998.^[2] Oingo focused on semantic searches rather than brute force string searches.^[3] Oingo changed its name to Applied Semantics, which was then bought by Google for $102 million in April 2003, to replace a similar system being developed in house.^[4]

AdSense for feeds

In May 2005, Google unveiled AdSense for feeds, a version of AdSense that runs on RSS and Atom feeds that have more than 100 active subscribers. According to the Official Google Blog, "advertisers have their ads placed in the most appropriate feed articles; publishers are paid for their original content; readers see relevant advertising — and in the long run, more quality feeds to choose from".

AdSense for feeds works by inserting images into a feed. When the image is displayed by the reader/browser, Google writes the ad content into the image that it returns. The ad content is chosen based on the content of the feed surrounding the image. When the user clicks the image, he or she is redirected to the advertiser's site in the same way as regular AdSense ads.

AdSense for search

A companion to the regular AdSense program, AdSense for search lets website owners place Google search boxes on their pages. When a user searches the web or the site with the search box, Google shares any ad revenue it makes from those searches with the site owner. However, only if the ads on the page are clicked, the publisher is paid. Adsense does not pay publishers for mere searches.

How AdSense works

Each time a visitor visits a page with an AdSense tag, a piece of JavaScript writes an iframe tag, whose src attribute includes the URL of the page. Google's servers use a cache of the page for the URL or the keywords in the URL itself to determine a set of high-value keywords. (Some of the details are described in the AdSense patent.) If keywords have been cached already, ads are served for those keywords based on the AdWords bidding system.

Abuse

Some webmasters create sites tailored to lure searchers from Google and other engines onto their AdSense site to make money from clicks. These "zombie" sites often contain nothing but a large amount of interconnected, automated content (e.g.: A directory with content from the Open Directory Project, or scraper sites relying on RSS feeds for content). Possibly the most popular form of such "AdSense farms" are splogs ("spam blogs"), which are centered around known high-paying keywords. Many of these sites use content from other web sites, such as Wikipedia, to attract visitors. These and related approaches are considered to be search engine spam and can be reported to Google.

There have also been reports of Trojans engineered to produce fake Google ads that are formatted to look like legitimate ones. The Trojan Horse apparently downloads itself onto an unsuspecting computer through a web page and then replaces the original ads with its own set of malicious ads.^[5]

Criticism

Due to concerns about click fraud, Google AdSense has been criticized by some Search engine optimization firms as a large source of what Google calls "invalid clicks" in which one company clicks on a rival's search engine ads to drive up its costs.^[6] Some publishers have been blocked by Google, complaining that little justification or transparency was provided.^[7]

To help prevent click fraud, publishers can choose from a number of click tracking programs. These programs will display detailed information about the visitors who click on the AdSense advertisements. Publishers can use that data to determine if they've been a victim of click fraud or not. There are a number of such commercial scripts available for purchase. An open source alternative is AdLogger.

Google has also come under fire for allowing AdWords advertisers to abuse trademarks. In 2004, Google started allowing advertisers to bid on any search terms, including the trademarks of their competitors.^[8]

The payment terms for AdSense customers have also been criticized.^[9] Google withholds payment until an account reaches US$100 ^[10], but many small content providers require a long time - years in many cases - to build up this much AdSense revenue. These pending payments are recorded on Google's balance sheet as "accrued revenue share". ^[11] At the close of its 2006 fiscal year, the sum of all these small debts amounted to a little over US $370 million - cash that Google is able to invest but which effectively belongs to its customers.

Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdSense
check out my free movie blog CLICK HERE

Get paid surveys - cash

2007-05-31T23:21:00.000-07:00

We hope you've enjoyed our free
ring tones and web marketing and development
sections. Now we'd like to offer you the opportunity to get paid to take surveys -
it's easy, free to join, great fun and a good way to make some cash online for your opinion!

"Get paid cash" online survey companies have been
around on the Internet for a long time, but very few have paid people for their
valuable time properly. We've reviewed all the offers below and have found
these get paid for online surveys offers to be some of the best around - you can begin to earn cash
today!

We even have paid surveys to take that are available to people worldwide!
All the companies we list are free to join. Any company that
tries to charge you a membership fee to take surveys or online opinion polls on the promise
that you will get paid cash or other rewards should be approached with caution.

Check back regularly as we'll be updating this page with the
best new get paid cash for surveys offers on the web. Sign up for all of them and start
making money online for your opinion from multiple sources!

Quality Online Survey Companies - get paid cash money for your opinion

Note: All of the offers listed in this get paid cash for surveys
directory are free to join

NEW! - What’s your
opinion? (USA and Canada) Sign up for Opinion Outpost’s research survey panel and start
getting paid cash for sharing your opinion. Make money on each survey you complete. Membership is free and confidential.
Click Here

The American Consumer Opinion™ (Available worldwide)
-Get paid cash to take online surveys. Earn $4 to $25 for each survey you complete! Evaluate new products, test new advertising,
provide feedback to companies - your opinion will help refine the products of
today and tomorrow! - free to join! Click Here

Inbox
dollars (USA only) pays you to:

* Sign Up ($5.00 INSTANTLY)

* Read E-Mail (1 to 10 cents each)

* Join Survey Sites (get paid $0.35 to $4.00)

* Play Games (UNLIMITED)

* Refer your Friends ($5.00 EACH)

* Complete Offers (up to $50 per Offer)

(US only) Click Here

Be a part of a Global Test Market - get paid (Available worldwide). Your feedback in
online surveys projects will determine how companies develop
services and products to meet consumer needs. Get paid cash to influence the next generation of
quality services and products. Join Global Test Market Online Surveys now! Click Here.

Get paid surveys! (US and Canada only) And they’ll give you a chance to win $10,000 when you register for
this consumer survey panel.
**Take surveys & tell businesses about the products YOU want.
**Reward points convert to cash & prizes. Click Here

Complete online surveys and get paid cash, prizes, and rewards! (US, Canada &
UK). Tell researchers what you think of their products and services and give your opinions on the issues of the day. Join
today and let your opinion be heard...and win! Click Here

Get paid surveys (USA only) - $5 to $35 for every survey and offer completed.
Your opinions are worth money , now get paid for it! Click Here

(USA only) Join in national opinion surveys from the comfort of your home
and earn cash and other rewards – tickets, gift certificates, music & ringtone
downloads. Join the Datatelligence ONLINE panel today. (US only)
Click Here

(USA only) Memolink turns your time into money.
Take surveys, get paid, receive rewards!.
Get started today! (US only)

Click Here

(Canada) - Greenfield Online Surveys, get
paid to speak your mind - earn some cash! Tell them what you think about everything from entertainment to computer games to holidays. The surveys only take a few
minutes. Click Here

(UK only) Get paid for your opinions by Ciao'. earn
cash for completing surveys online! (UK only)

Click Here

Join the NetRatings Internet
Survey Panel (USA only) and get the chance to win prizes, including
$50,000 CASH or a new car! Click Here

Participate in national opinion surveys (US only) from the comfort of your home or office and earn cash and other great rewards. Join the Datatelligence
online survey panel today.
Click Here

Earn great prizes and get
paid cash (US and Canada Only) just for visiting websites and
taking quick and easy online surveys. Free to join! Click Here

Make your opinion count! (USA and Canada) Win $5,000 for joining the i-Say Panel.
Each time you complete an online survey, you have a chance to be paid cash and win
prizes. Share your views, influence decision-makers and win cash! Click Here

Share your opinion and get free movie tickets just for rating upcoming movies and
taking entertainment
surveys! (US only) Click Here

Don't forget; the more online survey
offers you sign up for, the more you can get paid and receive other
rewards - all offers on this page are free to join! - Keep
reading, more below!

Taken From http://www.tamingthebeast.net/misc/online-surveys.htm

Have a look at my free movie blog CLICK HERE

SiteHow to Really Make Money on the Internet With an Amazon.com Affiliate Site

2007-05-31T22:56:00.000-07:00

You've probably heard before a lot of hype about how much money you can make with affiliate programs. Maybe you've even set up a site yourself, only to find that after buying the domain, a few bucks a month in hosting, software or a web designer to design your site, etc., that the piddly affiliate fees hardly even covered your cost. Well, here's the hype-free way to really make money with an Amazon.com affiliate site. And it'll only take a day to make the site. The secret? Low cost, low effort.

Difficulty: Hard

Time Required: One day

Here's How:

If you don't already know it, learn some basic HTML. You have to do this to keep your costs down and still get what you want. Even if the site is basically laid out for you, you're going to need to know how to insert images, create hyperlinks, and do some basic text formatting. Our HTML Guide offers a free 10-week HTML class and a great collection of beginning HTML tutorials. Get over any anxiety you have about this. Just do it. You'll thank me for it later.
Decide on your topic. You're going to be doing product reviews and recommendations, so pick a topic that you enjoy and know something about. If you can't stay passionate about the topic, that will show, and it also won't hold your interest. Choose a narrow enough niche to be distinctive, e.g., bands from your city, left-handed guitarists, music for a certain kind of dancing, authors of a certain religion, books about arts & crafts, etc.
Choose your domain name. Make it keyword-rich, not clever. Think how people will find your site in the search engines. Here are some ideas (all available, by the way):
Music: BandsFromTexas.com, BandOutOfBoston.com, SouthpawGuitarists.com, ClassicPsychedelia.com, Non-Stop-Hip-Hop.com, Merengue-Music.com
Books: Mormon-Authors.com, Arts-and-Crafts-Books.com, Books-by-Stephen-King.com, ClassicBusinessBooks.com
Others: Best-Baby-Toys.com, MomsMags.com, FelliniMovies.com
Register your domain name. If you're not technically inclined at all, register your domain wherever you set up your hosting in step 5. Otherwise, you can save a few bucks by choosing a lower-cost provider. Not a big deal for one or two sites, but it can be for ten or twenty. I use GoDaddy, who have great domain management tools and are less than $10 a year. The least expensive I've found from a reputable source is 1&1, whose price is under $6 a year (last I checked).
Set up your web hosting. This is where most people get burned. For this kind of site, you do not need $10 a month web hosting! Check out Discount-Hosting.com for no-frills hosting with adequate functionality and bandwidth, for around $10 a year! If you want more features, or especially if you're planning to run multiple sites, see GeekHosting.com or Multidomain-Hosting.com.
Install weblog software. "Weblog, you say?" Yes. It will give your site all the structure you need, plus make it easy to quickly post new content. My pick is WordPress, which is open source (i.e., free), easy to install and use, and yet very powerful. Download it and follow their installation instructions. Turn on notifications to Weblogs.com and Blo.gs. In WordPress, this is under Options RSS/RDF Feeds, Track-Ping-backs.
Make it pretty. Free templates for WordPress are available at Not That Ugly. Choose a style you like and then tweak it to suit your tastes and the theme of your site.
Set up categories. Most blog software allows you to create sub-categories to help organize your entries. This will help visitors narrow in even more specifically on their interests. For example, BandsFromTexas.com might have one group of categories for genre — rock, country, blues, etc. — and another for city of origin — Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, etc.
Sign up as an Amazon Associate. It's simple and free. Just visit Amazon and click on the Join Associates link at the bottom of the page (here's a direct link for your convenience). Your site should already have at least the basic setup done, even if you don't have any content there yet.
Create your blog posting bookmarks/links. There are two links that are going to be essential for you to make this easy. First is the blog posting link. In your blog software, on the posting page (see their instructions), at the bottom of the page there should be a "bookmarklet". Click on the link (and hold the mouse) and drag it up to your Links toolbar in your browser (assuming Internet Explorer), or your Favorites menu. This will allow you to blog a product with one mouse click.
Create your Amazon Build-A-Link bookmark/link. This will make it easy to build the link with your affiliate ID built in. Log in to Associates Central, look in the left navigation sidebar, go to Build-A-Link, and under Static Links, find Individual Items. Click and drag this onto your Links toolbar or Favorites menu.
Build your first link. Go to Amazon and find the product you want to review. Scroll down to Product Details and find the ASIN or ISBN. Double-click on the number itself to select it, then right-click and choose Copy. Click on your Amazon Build-A-Link link. Right-click in the search field and choose Paste. Change the selection from Served Link to You Host. Click Go. Your selection should show up. Click Get HTML. Choose the kind of link you want, select the highlighted text and copy it.
Blog your review. Now click on your blog posting link (Press It! by default in WordPress). If you're using WordPress, you should now see two pieces of link code in your posting form, the first one ending with "Associates Build-A-Link >< /a >". Delete through that point. The second part is a link to the product with your Amazon Associate ID built in. Now just write your product review, choose the appropriate categories for it, and hit Publish.
Build out your site. Before you promote your site, you want to have some substantial content there. Write several product reviews. Have at least 2-3 in each category you've created. You may also want to make a categories for articles, news, and commentary about your topic. The more content your site has, the better. And the great thing is that while you're writing all this, the search engines are getting notified automatically, assuming you turned on the notifications mentioned in step 6.
Promote your site. The best free way to do this is to communicate with other bloggers writing about similar topics, and to participate in online communities where your topic is discussed. See the Online Business Networking category for ideas, as well as the Internet Marketing category.

Tips:

You have to learn some basic HTML and basic concepts about running a web site. It's just not that hard. If you have to rely on purchased software, you won't be able to get exactly what you want, you won't know what to do when things go wrong, and you'll end up spending money you don't need to. Spend the time to learn it. It will be well worth the investment.
I slightly recommend music over books and other products, mainly because you can listen to the clips of an entire album in about 10 minutes and get a good enough feel for it (without buying it) to do a short review. If you have another topic that you're passionate about, great, but make sure you have a unique angle on the topic. People can get reviews about a lot of those consumer products anywhere. You need to give them a reason to come to your site.
To draw repeat visitors, create a newsletter. Frequency should depend on how often you're posting new content. Start with monthly. EZezine will let you send up to 1,000 messages a month for free, with no ads. By the time you exceed that, you should be able to justify paying for the service.
To pick up some extra pennies, sign up for Google AdSense. It probably won't generate a lot of revenue, but it's free to sign up and completely effortless to maintain.
Set reasonable expectations for earnings. You've only invested $20. You're going to make 5% on most products. That means that you need to sell $400 worth of stuff to make back your investment. To make $20 an hour, what you write must generate $400 worth of purchases. You get credit for other purchases made while at Amazon besides just the product you linked to, so it's not as hard as it may sound. It won't make you rich, but it's not hard to be profitable, and it builds over time.
From Scott Allen Published at http://entrepreneurs.about.com/
Have a look at my movie blog CLICK HERE

Make Money Over Internet - Avoid the Scams

2007-05-31T22:46:00.000-07:00

Do you want to make money over Internet? Beware of all those operators who are out to exploit and benefit from the dreams and aspirations of all such people. If you do some browsing, you are sure to come across countless offers that are simply too-good-to-be-true. Most of these offers are actually robbing all those who wish to make money over Internet. So better be careful when you are selecting a plan. These operators are dream merchants who promise that with a little effort daily, you can make money over Internet easily. The fact is, nothing can be so easy. So do not fall for their bogus claims. If it was so easy to make money over Internet, everyone would have become millionaires by now.

Popular among all these make money over Internet scams is the much hyped pyramid scheme. As the name suggests it works like a pyramid where you start at the lowest end and then climb up gradually. You enter the scheme by either paying some money or by providing a service for those who are above you in the pyramid. When you climb up, you should be having people below you who will do the work for you – that is the expectation.. But in reality, this never happens. The fact is, for you to benefit from the pyramid scheme, it needs millions of people as members. Since this is not the case, your money and effort in such make money over Internet schemes go to waste.

There are many other make money over Internet plans that are full of holes. Such as the storefront kit. You may believe that you have something unique that buyers will simply love to have, but the fact remains that there are hundreds of other websites who are thinking alike. So it becomes almost impossible to create a niche and make money over Internet in this manner. It is really extremely difficult to offer something unique online. And even if you do – it is sure to be replicated fairly quickly, so your unique nature will vanish. It is not easy to operate an Internet business, and just creating an online store might not be enough to make money over Internet. To succeed online, you will need a business strategy and have to put in hours of hard labor.

For more tips and articles on how to make money online and run a Web business check out our website at Internet Business

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ian_Henman

Want to have a look at my movie database CLICK HERE

Alarming Credit-Card Tricks

2007-05-31T22:26:00.000-07:00

Found an article titled Alarming Credit-Card Tricks at Smart Money that states "credit card companies are finding creative new ways to separate you from your money." Oh, great, that's all I needed to hear. Those sneaks are getting sneakier. Here's the scoop:

"According to the 2005 Credit Card Survey, released Thursday by Consumer Action, a San Francisco-based advocacy group, some of the new tricks are among the most aggressive yet. Companies have begun increasing borrowers' interest rates to 30% or more simply because they've applied for a mortgage or car loan, or because the company has decided the borrower has too much available credit. Consumer advocates warn of other trends like socking people with overseas fees even when their purchases are made with U.S. dollars, and penalizing them for not using their credit cards.

"It's like a trip wire," says Curtis Arnold, publisher of Cardratings.com, a credit-card information web site. "If you're not a very diligent, savvy consumer, you're more than likely to get tripped at some point." "

According to Smart Money, here are five of the sneakiest tricks that credit-card companies are pulling on unsuspecting customers:

1. Applying for a Mortgage? We'll Bump Up Your APR -- Creditors often increase your interest rate when they notice negative activity — say, a late payment or an over-the-limit fee — on any of the accounts that show up on your credit report. This practice, known as "universal default," has become increasingly prevalent during the past few years. Today, 45% of credit-card providers engage in this practice, according to Consumer Action, compared with 39% in 2003. But while universal default has existed for some time, Consumer Action's 2005 survey found an alarming new trend: You no longer need to do something wrong to be hit with a universal default rate.

According to the survey, 43% of creditors who practice universal default would enforce it if they deemed that a cardholder had too much overall debt. And 33% would do it if they thought the consumer had too much available credit. Even things like getting a new credit card (33%) and an inquiry related to a car loan or mortgage (24%) can trigger universal default.

2. Beware Two-Cycle Billing -- Two-cycle billing is a sneaky and complicated practice. It affects people who usually pay off their balance in full each month, but end up in a situation where they have to carry a balance for one or more months. (This is a likely scenario around the holidays, for example, when Christmas presents add up and people find themselves unable to pay the whole bill at once.) A cardholder in this situation will end up paying more in interest than with a credit card that doesn't have a two-cycle billing.

"That's where it gets you," says Gerri Detweiler, author of "The Ultimate Credit Handbook" and founder of DebtConsolidationRX.com. "It affects consumers in a limited number of circumstances, but it can be expensive." Her advice: Avoid credit cards with two-cycle billing.

Last year, only two providers — Discover and Bank One, which consequently merged with J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM) — used two-cycle billing, according to Consumer Action. This year, the number has grown to five: Chase, Discover, Providian, National City Bank, and First National Bank of Omaha.

3. Prepare to Pay More -- In 2003, banking regulators issued a directive requiring banks to change their minimum-payment formulas over the next few years. The goal? To make people's minimum payments higher to enable them to pay off their balance faster. Minimum payments are going up at many banks — a trend that will continue into early 2006, credit experts say. That, of course, isn't entirely bad news. With minimum payments as low as 2% of the outstanding balance in recent years, many consumers were unable to make a dent in their balances and watched their debt soar. "Long term, [the new rules] will keep more people out of bankruptcy," says Travis Plunkett, director of the Consumer Federation of America. "Short term, we have a difficult situation because issuers have lulled many consumers onto an endless debt-repayment treadmill."

4. Overseas Rip-Offs -- Foreign-currency-exchange fees are also on the rise. Not long ago, many credit-card issuers — particularly big banks — charged fees equaling only 1% of overseas purchases, effectively passing on the 1% that Visa and MasterCard charge the bank for those transactions. Recently, however, most of the big banks — including MBNA (KRB), Bank of America and Citibank — have started tacking on an additional 2%. Capital One has also indicated that it will be adding a fee in the near future, according to Arnold. American Express (AXP) charges a flat 2%.

Here's where it gets complicated: Many foreign merchants, especially in Western Europe, offer consumers the option to convert the local currency on the spot and make the transaction in U.S. dollars. The benefit, ostensibly, is that the consumer avoids the foreign-currency-exchange fee. (And in the instances when the merchant's exchange rate is lower than the bank's, you end up saving some bucks.) Here's the sneaky bit: Some card issuers will impose a foreign transaction fee anyway — even though no conversion has been made. Chase/Bank One, for example, states in one of its term sheets that it charges "3% of the U.S. dollar amount of the transaction, whether originally made in U.S. dollars or converted from a foreign currency."

5. If You Don't Use Our Card, We'll Punish You -- With Americans carrying an average of seven credit cards in their wallets, according to Cardweb.com, it's normal that they use only a few of them while keeping the rest for emergencies. Now, some banks are trying to make money from those customers as well. How? They increase their interest rates, so that when consumers make charges, they pay more in interest. "Most people don't realize it until they start charging," says Robert Manning, author of "Credit Card Nation." "And they don't understand what it was about their payment history that justified the increase. People have seen their interest rates double, not because they were late, but just as a punitive charge for the bank trying to reduce its costs."

Watch out, these guys are tricky. Be on your guard and make sure you know all the details about how your credit card(s) works.

Taken from http://www.freemoneyfinance.com/

and if you like to watch the latest movies online CLICK HERE

Hit the Jackpot- How to Find Money-making Domains

2007-05-31T14:02:00.000-07:00

Investing in registered or expired domains can increase the visibility of your Website and help direct traffic that will convert to sales. However, with over 60 million domains currently registered, it can be daunting to try to find the right domain -- one that will drive quality traffic to your Website or parked domain.

How can you ensure you're making the right decision when you purchase registered and expired domains? Do your research and you'll feel confident in your purchase.

In this article, I'll explain the tools and techniques domain pros use to determine -- or at least reasonably guesstimate -- how much, and what type, of traffic a domain receives. Armed with this knowledge, you'll be able to predict approximately how much money a given domain will make, and thus gain a better understanding of the domain's true value. We'll discuss three methods for evaluating the traffic a domain receives:

Trackers/Direct Methods

Predictors/Indirect Methods

Traffic Source

The educated buyer always comes out ahead, so read on to unlock the mysteries of domain traffic and learn how to determine scientifically if a domain is really worth buying.

Trackers/Direct Methods

Ideally, you could skip all of the guesswork and find out how much traffic a domain receives directly from the domain owner. The easiest way to do this is simply to ask the seller. However, the seller may make a mistake (or simply be dishonest), so it's always a good idea to double-check the numbers using one or more of the following methods.

Developed Website

Traffic counting scripts are one of the simplest and most reliable methods for determining traffic to a developed Website. Many free professional statistics programs are available. These can be integrated easily into Website code to give buyers the additional reassurance of a third-party-verified system. Most trackers will provide sellers even more information, such as top referrers, the geographic and chronological breakdown of visitors, and more.

Parked Domains

If a domain name is parked, the parking program may make traffic statistics available automatically through the domain's sales listing page. For example, at the time this article was written, the traffic attracted by the parked domain, Wifi.com could be viewed on the domain's sale page.

It's worth noting that visitor numbers can be manipulated by malevolent sellers, but in general, parked domain visitor stats serve as a very helpful guideline for potential buyers.

Predictors/Indirect Methods

What should you do if a domain is not parked and the seller is unable to provide you with visitor statistics? Fortunately, a few handy tricks can be used to help you get a rough indication of whether or not a domain receives any traffic.

I wouldn't recommend relying exclusively on any of these tricks as a bulletproof way to guesstimate traffic. However, taken as a whole (and with a hefty spoonful of salt), they can shine a bit of light on the question of whether or not a domain will receive valuable traffic.

Alexa.com

Alexa ranks web sites based on the number of visitors they receive. For example, at the time this article was written, Yahoo.com ranked first, while blue.com ranked at 212,093 and camera.com at 717,298. These rankings are based on data derived from Alexa toolbar users. Translating these numbers into unique views, Camera.com received over 10,000 unique views in the month of September while Blue.com received over 70,000 uniques. (Statistics from Sedo.com).

Many high-traffic domain names will receive an Alexa ranking just from their type-in traffic. In general, an Alexa ranking under 1,000,000 for an undeveloped site is a good indicator that the domain receives decent traffic (e.g. several thousand monthly uniques). Rankings over a million are less reliable, but usually any sort of Alexa ranking means the domain receives at least some traffic. As with all of these methods, Alexa should be used as a guideline only: sometimes even domains for which Alexa returns "No Data" (too low to rank) will still receive traffic. Ranking.com offers a tool that's similar to Alexa's.

Overture Searches

Yahoo! Search Marketing's Keyword Selector Tool (known to many of us as Overture) tells you how often a given keyword was searched on the Yahoo! network. For example, "Yahoo" was searched 17,858,229 times in September 2005, while "Blue" was searched 178,124 times.

Naturally, a domain that contains a highly-searched keyword is more likely to receive traffic. However, the Overture Tool's usefulness goes beyond that: if you use the exact domain name (with extension) as the keyword, Overture results can be used as a predictor for whether or not a domain name receives traffic. For example, "Yahoo.com" was searched over 11 million times in September, according to Overture. Our comparison sites fared as follows: "Blue.com" was searched 794 times, while "Camera.com" was searched 258 times.

Research has shown that Overture searches do sometimes have a rough correlation with traffic (especially type-in traffic), but as with other methods, there are many exceptions to the rule.

Traffic Source

If you want to better understand something, go to the source. This aphorism applies to domain traffic just as well as it does to other information. Thus, in addition to using the above methods to guesstimate the quantity of traffic a given domain receives, you may want to use these techniques to try to determine the source of that traffic.

Traffic source will affect the longevity and conversion of the traffic. In simpler terms, it will have a huge impact on how much money the domain will make.

Link Popularity

A web site or formerly-developed domain name may receive traffic from old incoming links and directory listings. There are many online tools for checking link popularity; Marketleap.com offers one of the best tools.

The important thing to look for here is not the quantity of links, but their quality. A single link from a major web site may be worth thousands of links from smaller sites. The longevity of link traffic varies widely: a link from a news article may generate a flurry of traffic that lasts only a week, while a directory listing may continue to generate steady traffic for years. Another similar tool worth checking out is URLtrends.com.

Search Engine Listings

Search engine listings are a major source of traffic for many sites. You can guesstimate how much search engine-derived traffic a web site receives by looking at its "search engine saturation". This is an indicator of how often the domain appears in the various search engine indexes. Again, Marketleap.com offers an excellent tool for evaluating search engine saturation.

Just keep in mind that it's also important to look at how high the site is listed and how often the keyword is searched. And don't forget that search engine listings change frequently, so if this is the primary source of traffic, expect fluctuations!

Paid Fluctuations

Some traffic may be coming from PPC advertisements, exit popups or banner ads that the seller has bought. This is the shortest-lived traffic, because as soon as you buy the domain, the seller stops paying for the ads! The best way to determine traffic origin is to ask the seller about traffic sources and view the traffic logs. To ensure the logs are not modified, ask for access to the logs instead of screenshot of the statistics.

Without access to the logs, it can be difficult to determine if a domain is receiving paid traffic, but a savvy domain buyer will look for a few key pieces of evidence: do the domain statistics align with the Alexa ranking and the number of incoming links? For example, a domain that receives a couple hundred views a day, and has no Alexa ranking and very few incoming links from low-traffic sites may likely receive paid traffic. But don't discount such domains out of hand: they may be receiving typo traffic (see below for more information) or may be a seasonal domain (such as one related to the World Series).

Expired Traffic

If a domain was formerly developed, some users may continue to visit because of old links and references, or simply because they remember the domain name. This traffic may continue for years, but naturally, it decreases with time.

If it's not possible to speak with the current owner about the past development of the site, a few simple searches can help. In particular, use the hints above to examine the types of sites that link to the domain. With that information, you may be able to get some idea of the type of traffic that's visiting the domain in search of old content. After the content is removed, many of the links will be updated or removed and this traffic will eventually dwindle or expire.

Typos and Variations

Don't ignore traffic that's diverted to the domain name as a result of typos from other high traffic sites. Check out the traffic that flows to similar or mistyped domains using the tools above. Also consider traffic generated from variations of names, such as an abbreviated form of your domain name, or an acronym. If these domains experience high volumes of visitors, there is a possibility that this will translate to high traffic levels for similar sites.

Alexa can be useful tool for doing this -- it offers a feature that lists other web sites that visitors of a given domain also visit. For example, an Alexa search on the domain hotmial.com shows that many visitors to this domain also visit hotmail.com.

Find the Right Domain

Traffic is crucial for any revenue generating business on the Web. Finding the right domain with targeted traffic can take your business -- and profits -- to new heights. If you haven't quite had the time to build that web site, simply park your domains, let your parking company place relevant advertisements on the domains' pages, and sit back and monetize the traffic. Use the tools listed above to determine domain traffic and never make a wrong buying decision again.

Taken From http://www.sitepoint.com/

5 ways blogging can help your business

2007-05-31T12:45:00.000-07:00

By Jeff Wuorio

Not long ago, a diary was a deeply personal thing — a journal of thoughts and observations, kept under lock and key and often buried in a dresser drawer.

The Web has a way of changing things as we know them. Now, a diary of thoughts, observations and insight — posted on the Internet — may be a way to boost your business.
Web logs, or "blogs," are more than a passing Internet fancy, and they're not confined to the worlds of politics and high-tech. They also have become a way to engage readers and potential customers of businesses big and small.

"Blog" is simply an abbreviated way to say "Web log." It's a journal posted on a Web site, updated on a regular basis and containing news, opinions, ideas and brainstorms, plus links to other sources of information, other Web sites and other blogs.

Many blogs cut both ways, inviting readers to post feedback on what they see. While that can apply to everything from sports and entertainment to rants about high school math, it can also generate interest — and, ultimately, income — for your business.

No, blogs aren't for everyone. But see how they can accomplish these five basic business objectives.

Expose a new or little-known product or idea.
For Grant Smith, blogging makes a world of sense on a number of levels. Smith operates FirstStream, a Santa Cruz, Calif., provider of streaming video e-mail and related video communications products. Since many prospective clients might know precious little about video e-mail, Smith says his blog is a natural way to lay out specifics.

"I began blogging to get established in the technology," Smith says. "It can have a positive impact for business. Readers are always looking for more ways to find out information about companies and for ways to interact."
That, in turn, can lead to a more informed customer and a more time-effective sales process. Rather than your taking the time to pitch your product or service to a client who may not need it, a blog supplants you as an information source. If a prospect contacts you with an urge to do business, great. If not, you've wasted no time in explaining something that generates nothing in return.

2.
Improve your search engine rankings.

Blogging also puts you in touch with prospects in other ways. As any company with a position on the Internet realizes, hits via Google, MSN and other search engines can provide a groundswell of leads. Blogs can add further leverage to the frequency with which search vehicles identify you and your company, particularly if your blog allows readers to post a response.

"Blogs, if done properly, have a tremendous benefit vis-à-vis search engines," says Brad Fallon, president of SEO Research, a search engine marketing firm in Atlanta. "Search engines tend to prefer bigger Web sites, for several reasons beyond the scope. With blogs that allow comments, every new post and every new comment becomes an additional Web page filled with additional keywords to be picked up by the search engine spiders."

Position yourself as an expert in an industry or field.

Blogging also can also prove an implicitly effective marketing tool to establish yourself as an authority in your field. Not only can that generate leads, it also sends a positive buzz about your credentials through the marketplace.

"My blog has generated massive traffic and lead flow," says David L. Carpe of Clew, a Lexington, Mass., consulting concern. "But it also serves as a stamp, furthering my credibility as a real research wonk. It also generates many leads and inquiries, some of which are actionable proposals, others pure networking contacts."

Blogging also addresses other needs, some of which supersede simple profit motive. For instance, doctors and other health-care providers are reportedly using blogs to vent their frustration about everything from malpractice suits to public misconceptions about health care. That sort of emotional catharsis carries over into other areas. In September 2004, blogs were filled with remembrances about where people were and what they were doing when the first airliner struck the World Trade Center towers on 9/11.

Influence public opinion.

Blogging also allows users to bypass traditional journalistic venues and, in effect, become a publisher of their own thoughts and viewpoints. For Steve Rubel, vice president of client services at CooperKatz & Co., a New York public relations firm, they're also fast becoming a powerful influence on public opinion.
"Blogs have evolved into legitimate alternative sources of news on niche and micro-niche topics," Rubel says. "Anyone with a passion and dedication could become an amateur journalist. I feel some of these sites — in aggregate — are having just as much sway on public opinion as larger, more established media brands."

Engage in a forum openly with your customers.

Just as important, blogs that solicit reader comments can provide a sense of immediacy with your customers. In one respect, that's a ready source of feedback on what you're doing right and what you need to polish. Even better, it can also prove an ample supply of marketing muscle.

"My blog provides a forum for customers to give feedback after plunking their money down," says Fallon. "The result? While the normal market is lucky to have one-half of 1% of customers send an unsolicited testimonial, I have already collected glowing testimonials from over 15% of my customers."

Lastly, blogs offer a means to access one of the most human of needs — the desire to communicate. And, whether that's on a personal or professional level, that can prove every bit as enjoyable as it is profitable. As Fallon puts it: "I like to hear myself talk as much as anyone."

Interested in writing your own blog? See my companion piece on how to get started.

Taken From http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/resources/marketing/online_marketing/5_ways_blogging_can_help_your_business.mspx

Watch Free Movies !! CLICK HERE

How to make money from your blog: 5 tips

2007-05-31T12:32:00.000-07:00

By Jeff Wuorio
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."

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.

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.

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."

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."

Taken From http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/resources/marketing/online_marketing/how_to_make_money_from_your_blog_5_tips.mspx

Want to Watch Free Movies? CLICK HERE

How to Make Money From Your Blog

2007-05-31T12:19:00.000-07:00

How to Make Money From Your BlogMay 3rd, 2006 by Steve Pavlina

StevePavlina.com was launched on Oct 1st, 2004. By April 2005 it was averaging $4.12/day in income. Now it brings in over $200/day $300/day $400/day $1000/day (updated as of 10/29/06). I didn’t spend a dime on marketing or promotion. In fact, I started this site with just $9 to register the domain name, and everything was bootstrapped from there. Would you like to know how I did it?
This article is seriously long (over 7300 words), but you’re sure to get your money’s worth (hehehe). I’ll even share some specifics. If you don’t have time to read it now, feel free to bookmark it or print it out for later.

Do you actually want to monetize your blog?

Some people have strong personal feelings with respect to making money from their blogs. If you think commercializing your blog is evil, immoral, unethical, uncool, lame, greedy, obnoxious, or anything along those lines, then don’t commercialize it.

If you have mixed feelings about monetizing your blog, then sort out those feelings first. If you think monetizing your site is wonderful, fine. If you think it’s evil, fine. But make up your mind before you seriously consider starting down this path. If you want to succeed, you must be congruent. Generating income from your blog is challenging enough — you don’t want to be dealing with self-sabotage at the same time. It should feel genuinely good to earn income from your blog — you should be driven by a healthy ambition to succeed. If your blog provides genuine value, you fully deserve to earn income from it. If, however, you find yourself full of doubts over whether this is the right path for you, you might find this article helpful: How Selfish Are You? It’s about balancing your needs with the needs of others.

If you do decide to generate income from your blog, then don’t be shy about it. If you’re going to put up ads, then really put up ads. Don’t just stick a puny little ad square in a remote corner somewhere. If you’re going to request donations, then really request donations. Don’t put up a barely visible “Donate” link and pray for the best. If you’re going to sell products, then really sell them. Create or acquire the best quality products you can, and give your visitors compelling reasons to buy. If you’re going to do this, then fully commit to it. Don’t take a half-assed approach. Either be full-assed or no-assed.

You can reasonably expect that when you begin commercializing a free site, some people will complain, depending on how you do it. I launched this site in October 2004, and I began putting Google Adsense ads on the site in February 2005. There were some complaints, but I expected that — it was really no big deal. Less than 1 in 5,000 visitors actually sent me negative feedback. Most people who sent feedback were surprisingly supportive. Most of the complaints died off within a few weeks, and the site began generating income almost immediately, although it was pretty low — a whopping $53 the first month. If you’d like to see some month-by-month specifics, I posted my 2005 Adsense revenue figures earlier this year. Adsense is still my single best source of revenue for this site, although it’s certainly not my only source. More on that later…
Can you make a decent income online?

Yes, absolutely. At the very least, a high five-figure annual income is certainly an attainable goal for an individual working full-time from home. I’m making a healthy income from StevePavlina.com, and the site is only 19 months old… barely a toddler. If you have a day job, it will take longer to generate a livable income, but it can still be done part-time if you’re willing to devote a lot of your spare time to it. I’ve always done it full-time.

Can most people do it?

No, they can’t. I hope it doesn’t shock you to see a personal development web site use the dreaded C-word. But I happen to agree with those who say that 99% of people who try to generate serious income from their blogs will fail. The tagline for this site is “Personal Development for Smart People.” And unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your outlook), smart people are a minority on this planet. So while most people can’t make a living this way, I would say that most smart people can. How do you know whether or not you qualify as smart? Here’s a good rule of thumb: If you have to ask the question, you aren’t.

If that last paragraph doesn’t flood my inbox with flames, I don’t know what will. OK, actually I do.
This kind of 99-1 ratio isn’t unique to blogging though. You’ll see it in any field with relatively low barriers to entry. What percentage of wannabe actors, musicians, or athletes ever make enough money from their passions to support themselves? It doesn’t take much effort to start a blog these days — almost anyone can do it. Talent counts for something, and the talent that matters in blogging is intelligence. But that just gets you in the door. You need to specifically apply your intelligence to one particular talent. And the best words I can think of to describe that particular talent are: web savvy.

If you are very web savvy, or if you can learn to become very web savvy, then you have an excellent shot of making enough money from your blog to cover all your living expenses… and then some. But if becoming truly web savvy is more than your gray matter can handle, then I’ll offer this advice: Don’t quit your day job.

Web savvy

What do I mean by web savvy? You don’t need to be a programmer, but you need a decent functional understanding of a variety of web technologies. What technologies are “key” will depend on the nature of your blog and your means of monetization. But generally speaking I’d list these elements as significant:

blog publishing software
HTML/CSS
blog comments (and comment spam)
RSS/syndication
feed aggregators
pings
trackbacks
full vs. partial feeds
blog carnivals (for kick-starting your blog’s traffic)
search engines
search engine optimization (SEO)
page rank
social bookmarking
tagging
contextual advertising
affiliate programs
traffic statistics
email
Optional: podcasting, instant messaging, PHP or other web scripting languages.

I’m sure I missed a few due to familiarity blindness. If scanning such a list makes your head spin, I wouldn’t recommend trying to make a full-time living from blogging just yet. Certainly you can still blog, but you’ll be at a serious disadvantage compared to someone who’s more web savvy, so don’t expect to achieve stellar results until you expand your knowledge base.

If you want to sell downloadable products such as ebooks, then you can add e-commerce, SSL, digital delivery, fraud prevention, and online databases to the list. Again, you don’t need to be a programmer; you just need a basic understanding of these technologies. Even if you hire someone else to handle the low-level implementation, it’s important to know what you’re getting into. You need to be able to trust your strategic decisions, and you won’t be able to do that if you’re a General who doesn’t know what a gun is.

A lack of understanding is a major cause of failure in the realm of online income generation. For example, if you’re clueless about search engine optimization (SEO), you’ll probably cripple your search engine rankings compared to someone who understands SEO well. But you can’t consider each technology in isolation. You need to understand the connections and trade-offs between them. Monetizing a blog is a balancing act. You may need to balance the needs of yourself, your visitors, search engines, those who link to you, social bookmarking sites, advertisers, affiliate programs, and others. Seemingly minor decisions like what to title a web page are significant. In coming up with the title of this article, I have to take all of these potential viewers into consideration. I want a title that is attractive to human visitors, drives reasonable search engine traffic, yields relevant contextual ads, fits the theme of the site, and encourages linking and social bookmarking. And most importantly I want each article to provide genuine value to my visitors. I do my best to create titles for my articles that balance these various needs. Often that means abandoning cutesy or clever titles in favor of direct and comprehensible ones. It’s little skills like these that help drive sustainable traffic growth month after month. Missing out on just this one skill is enough to cripple your traffic. And there are dozens of these types of skills that require web savvy to understand, respect, and apply.

This sort of knowledge is what separates the 1% from the 99%. Both groups may work just as hard, but the 1% is getting much better results for their efforts. It normally doesn’t take me more than 60 seconds to title an article, but a lot of experience goes into those 60 seconds. You really just have to learn these ideas once; after that you can apply them routinely.

Whenever you come across a significant web technology you don’t understand, look it up on Google or Wikipedia, and dive into it long enough to acquire a basic understanding of it. To make money from blogging it’s important to be something of a jack of all trades. Maybe you’ve heard the expression, “A jack of all trades is a master of none.” That may be true, but you don’t need to master any of these technologies — you just have to be good enough to use them. It’s the difference between being able to drive a car vs. becoming an auto mechanic. Strive to achieve functional knowledge, and then move on to something else. Even though I’m an experienced programmer, I don’t know how many web technologies actually work. I don’t really care. I can still use them to generate results. In the time it would take me to fully understand one new technology, I can achieve sufficient functional knowledge to apply several of them.

Thriving on change

Your greatest risk isn’t that you’ll make mistakes that will cost you. Your greatest risk is that you’ll miss opportunities. You need an entrepreneurial mindset, not an employee mindset. Don’t be too concerned with the risk of loss — be more concerned with the risk of missed gains. It’s what you don’t know and what you don’t do that will hurt you the worst. Blogging is cheap. Your expenses and financial risk should be minimal. Your real concern should be missing opportunities that would have made you money very easily. You need to develop antennae that can listen out for new opportunities. I highly recommend subscribing to Darren Rowse’s Problogger blog — Darren is great at uncovering new income-generating opportunities for bloggers.
The blogosphere changes rapidly, and change creates opportunity. It takes some brains to decipher these opportunities and to take advantage of them before they disappear. If you hesitate to capitalize on something new and exciting, you may simply miss out. Many opportunities are temporary. And every day you don’t implement them, you’re losing money you could have earned. And you’re also missing opportunities to build traffic, grow your audience, and benefit more people.

I used to get annoyed by the rapid rate of change of web technologies. It’s even more rapid than what I saw when I worked in the computer gaming industry. And the rate of change is accelerating. Almost every week now I learn about some fascinating new web service or idea that could potentially lead to big changes down the road. Making sense of them is a full-time job in itself. But I learned to love this insane pace. If I’m confused then everyone else is probably confused too. And people who only do this part-time will be very confused. If they aren’t confused, then they aren’t keeping up. So if I can be just a little bit faster and understand these technologies just a little bit sooner, then I can capitalize on some serious opportunities before the barriers to entry become too high. Even though confusion is uncomfortable, it’s really a good thing for a web entrepreneur. This is what creates the space for a college student to earn $1,000,000 online in just a few months with a clever idea. Remember this isn’t a zero-sum game. Don’t let someone else’s success make you feel diminished or jealous. Let it inspire you instead.
What’s your overall income-generation strategy?

I don’t want to insult anyone, but most people are utterly clueless when it comes to generating income from their blogs. They slap things together haphazardly with no rhyme or reason and hope to generate lots of money. While I’m a strong advocate of the ready-fire-aim approach, that strategy does require that you eventually aim. Ready-fire-fire-fire-fire will just create a mess.

Take a moment to articulate a basic income-generating strategy for your site. If you aren’t good at strategy, then just come up with a general philosophy for how you’re going to generate income. You don’t need a full business plan, just a description of how you plan to get from $0 per month to whatever your income goal is. An initial target goal I used when I first started this site was $3000 per month. It’s a somewhat arbitrary figure, but I knew if I could reach $3000 per month, I could certainly push it higher, and $3000 is enough income that it’s going to make a meaningful difference in my finances. I reached that level 15 months after launching the site (in December 2005). And since then it’s continued to increase nicely. Blogging income is actually quite easy to maintain. It’s a lot more secure than a regular job. No one can fire me, and if one source of income dries up, I can always add new ones. We’ll address multiple streams of income soon…

Are you going to generate income from advertising, affiliate commissions, product sales, donations, or something else? Maybe you want a combination of these things. However you decide to generate income, put your basic strategy down in writing. I took 15 minutes to create a half-page summary of my monetization strategy. I only update it about once a year and review it once a month. This isn’t difficult, but it helps me stay focused on where I’m headed. It also allows me to say no to opportunities that are inconsistent with my plan.

Refer to your monetization strategy (or philosophy) when you need to make design decisions for your web site. Although you may have multiple streams of income, decide which type of income will be your primary source, and design your site around that. Do you need to funnel people towards an order form, or will you place ads all over the site? Different monetization strategies suggest different design approaches. Think about what specific action you want your visitors to eventually take that will generate income for you, and design your site accordingly.

When devising your income strategy, feel free to cheat. Don’t re-invent the wheel. Copy someone else’s strategy that you’re convinced would work for you too. Do NOT copy anyone’s content or site layout (that’s copyright infringement), but take note of how they’re making money. I decided to monetize this site with advertising and affiliate income after researching how various successful bloggers generated income. Later I added donations as well. This is an effective combo.

Traffic, traffic, traffic

Assuming you feel qualified to take on the challenge of generating income from blogging (and I haven’t scared you away yet), the three most important things you need to monetize your blog are traffic, traffic, and traffic.
Just to throw out some figures, last month (April 2006), this site received over 1.1 million visitors and over 2.4 million page views. That’s almost triple what it was just six months ago.

Why is traffic so important? Because for most methods of online income generation, your income is a function of traffic. If you double your traffic, you’ll probably double your income (assuming your visitor demographics remain fairly consistent). You can screw almost everything else up, but if you can generate serious traffic, it’s really hard to fail. With sufficient traffic the realistic worst case is that you’ll eventually be able to monetize your web site via trial and error (as long as you keep those visitors coming).
When I first launched this blog, I knew that traffic building was going to be my biggest challenge. All of my plans hinged on my ability to build traffic. If I couldn’t build traffic, it was going to be very difficult to succeed. So I didn’t even try to monetize my site for the first several months. I just focused on traffic building. Even after 19 months, traffic building is still the most important part of my monetization plan. For my current traffic levels, I know I’m undermonetizing my site, but that’s OK. Right now it’s more important to me to keep growing the site, and I’m optimizing the income generation as I go along.

Traffic is the primary fuel of online income generation. More visitors means more ad clicks, more product sales, more affiliate sales, more donations, more consulting leads, and more of whatever else that generates income for you. And it also means you’re helping more and more people.

With respect to traffic, you should know that in many respects, the rich do get richer. High traffic leads to even more traffic-building opportunities that just aren’t accessible for low-traffic sites. On average at least 20 bloggers add new links to my site every day, my articles can easily surge to the top of social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, and I’m getting more frequent requests for radio interviews. Earlier this year I was featured in USA Today and in Self Magazine, which collectively have millions of readers. Journalists are finding me by doing Google searches on topics I’ve written about. These opportunities were not available to me when I was first starting out. Popular sites have a serious advantage. The more traffic you have, the more you can attract.

If you’re intelligent and web savvy, you should also be able to eventually build a high-traffic web site. And you’ll be able to leverage that traffic to build even more traffic.

How to build traffic

Now if traffic is so crucial, how do you build it up to significant levels if you’re starting from rock bottom?
I’ve already written a lengthy article on this topic, so I’ll refer you there: How to Build a High Traffic Web Site (or Blog). If you don’t have time to read it now, feel free to bookmark it or print it out for later. That article covers my general philosophy of traffic-building, which centers on creating content that provides genuine value to your visitors. No games or gimmicks.

There is one other important traffic-building tip I’ll provide here though.

Blog Carnivals.

Take full advantage of blog carnivals when you’re just starting out (click the previous link and read the FAQ there to learn what carnivals are if you don’t already know). Periodically submit your best blog posts to the appropriate carnivals for your niche. Carnivals are easy ways to get links and traffic, and best of all, they’re free. Submitting only takes minutes if you use a multi-carnvival submission form. Do NOT spam the carnivals with irrelevant material — only submit to the carnivals that are a match for your content.

In my early traffic-building days, I’d do carnivals submissions once a week, and it helped a great deal in going from nothing to about 50,000 visitors per month. You still have to produce great content, but carnivals give you a free shot at marketing your unknown blog. Free marketing is precisely the kind of opportunity you don’t want to miss. Carnivals are like an open-mic night at a comedy club — they give amateurs a chance to show off their stuff. I still submit to certain carnivals every once in a while, but now my traffic is so high that relatively speaking, they don’t make much difference anymore. Just to increase my traffic by 1% in a month, I need 11,000 new visitors, and even the best carnivals don’t push that much traffic. But you can pick up dozens or even hundreds of new subscribers from each round of carnival submissions, so it’s a great place to start. Plus it’s very easy.

If your traffic isn’t growing month after month, does it mean you’re doing something wrong? Most likely you aren’t doing enough things right. Again, making mistakes is not the issue. Missing opportunities is.
Will putting ads on your site hurt your traffic?

Here’s a common fear I hear from people who are considering monetizing their web sites:
Putting ads on my site will cripple my traffic. The ads will drive people away, and they’ll never come back.
Well, in my experience this is absolutely, positively, and otherwise completely and totally… FALSE. It’s just not true. Guess what happened to my traffic when I put ads on my site. Nothing. Guess what happened to my traffic when I put up more ads and donation links. Nothing. I could detect no net effect on my traffic whatsoever. Traffic continued increasing at the same rate it did before there were ads on my site. In fact, it might have even helped me a little, since some bloggers actually linked to my site just to point out that they didn’t like my ad layout. I’ll leave it up to you to form your own theories about this. It’s probably because there’s so much advertising online already that even though some people will complain when a free site puts up ads, if they value the content, they’ll still come back, regardless of what they say publicly.

Most mature people understand it’s reasonable for a blogger to earn income from his/her work. I think I’m lucky in that my audience tends to be very mature — immature people generally aren’t interested in personal development. To create an article like this takes serious effort, not to mention the hard-earned experience that’s required to write it. This article alone took me over 15 hours of writing and editing. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to earn an income from such work. If you get no value from it, you don’t pay anything. What could be more fair than that? The more income this blog generates, the more I can put into it. For example, I used some of the income to buy podcasting equipment and added a podcast to the site. I’ve recorded 13 episodes so far. The podcasts are all ad-free. I’m also planning to add some additional services to this site in the years ahead. More income = better service.

At the time of this writing, my site is very ad-heavy. Some people point this out to me as if I’m not aware of it: “You know, Steve. Your web site seems to contain an awful lot of ads.” Of course I’m aware of it. I’m the one who put the ads there. There’s a reason I have this configuration of ads. They’re effective! People keep clicking on them. If they weren’t effective, I’d remove them right away and try something else.
I do avoid putting up ads that I personally find annoying when I see them on other sites, including pop-ups and interstitials (stuff that flies across your screen). Even though they’d make me more money, in my opinion they degrade the visitor experience too much.

I also provide two ad-free outlets, so if you really don’t like ads, you can actually read my content without ads. First, I provide a full-text RSS feed, and at least for now it’s ad-free. I do, however, include a donation request in the bottom of my feeds.

If you want to see some actual traffic data, take a look at the 2005 traffic growth chart. I first put ads on the site in February 2005, and although the chart doesn’t cover pre-February traffic growth, the growth rate was very similar before then. For an independent source, you can also look at my traffic chart on Alexa. You can select different Range options to go further back in time.

Multiple streams of income

You don’t need to put all your eggs in one basket. Think multiple streams of income. On this site I actually have six different streams of income. Can you count them all? Here’s a list:
Google Adsense ads (pay per click and pay per impression advertising)
Donations (via PayPal or snail mail — yes, some people do mail a check)
Text Link Ads (sold for a fixed amount per month)
Chitika eMiniMalls ads (pay per click)
Affiliate programs like Amazon and LinkShare (commission on products sold, mostly books)
Advertising sold to individual advertisers (three-month campaigns or longer)
Note: If you’re reading this article a while after its original publication date, then this list is likely to change. I frequently experiment with different streams.

Adsense is my biggest single source of income, but some of the others do pretty well too. Every stream generates more than $100/month.

My second biggest income stream is actually donations. My average donation is about $10, and I’ve received a number of $100 donations too. It only took me about an hour to set this up via PayPal. So even if your content is free like mine, give your visitors a means to voluntarily contribute if they wish. It’s win-win. I’m very grateful for the visitor support. It’s a nice form of feedback too, since I notice that certain articles produced a surge in donations — this tells me I’m hitting the mark and giving people genuine value.
These aren’t my only streams of income though. I’ve been earning income online since 1995. With my computer games business, I have direct sales, royalty income, some advertising income, affiliate income, and donations (from the free articles). And if you throw in my wife’s streams of income, it gets really ridiculous: VegFamily.com advertising, direct book sales, book sales through distributors, web consulting, affiliate income, more Adsense income, and probably a few sources I forgot. Suffice it to say we receive a lot of paychecks. Some of them are small, but they add up. It’s also extremely low risk — if one source of income dries up, we just expand existing sources or create new ones. I encourage you to think of your blog as a potential outlet for multiple streams of income too.

Automated income

With the exception of #6, all of these income sources are fully automated. I don’t have to do anything to maintain them except deposit checks, and in most cases I don’t even have to do that because the money is automatically deposited to my bank account.

I love automated income. With this blog I currently have no sales, no employees, no products, no inventory, no credit card processing, no fraud, and no customers. And yet I’m still able to generate a reasonable (and growing) income.

Why get a regular job and trade your time for money when you can let technology do all that work for you? Imagine how it would feel to wake up each morning, go to your computer, and check how much money you made while you were sleeping. It’s a really nice situation to be in.
Blogging software and hardware

I use WordPress for this blog, and I highly recommend it. Wordpress has lots of features and a solid interface. And you can’t beat its price — free.

The rest of this site is custom-coded HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL. I’m a programmer, so I coded it all myself. I could have just as easily used an existing template, but I wanted a simple straightforward design for this site, and I wanted the look of the blog to match the rest of the site. Plus I use PHP and MySQL to do some creative things outside the blog, like the Million Dollar Experiment.

I don’t recommend using a hosted service like Blogger if you want to seriously monetize your blog. You don’t get enough control. If you don’t have your own URL, you’re tying yourself to a service you don’t own and building up someone else’s asset. You want to build page rank and links for your own URL, not someone else’s. Plus you want sufficient control over the layout and design of your site, so you can jump on any opportunities that require low-level changes. If you use a hosted blog, you’re at the mercy of the hosting service, and that puts the future of any income streams you create with them at risk. It’s a bit more work up front to self-host, but it’s less risky in the long run.

Web hosting is cheap, and there are plenty of good hosts to choose from. I recommend Pair.com for a hosting account. They aren’t the cheapest, but they’re very reliable and have decent support. I know many online businesses that host with them, and my wife refers most of her clients there.

As your traffic grows you may need to upgrade to a dedicated server or a virtual private server (VPS). My web server is hosted by ServInt.net. What I like about ServInt is that they have a nice upgrade path as my traffic keeps growing. I’ve gone through several upgrades with them already, and all have been seamless. The nice thing about having your own server is that you can put as many sites on it as the server can handle. I have several sites running on my server, and it doesn’t cost me any additional hosting fees to add another site.

Comments or no comments

When I began this blog, I started out with comments enabled. As traffic grew, so did the level of commenting. Some days there were more than 100 comments. I noticed I was spending more and more time managing comments, and I began to question whether it was worth the effort. It became clear that with continued traffic growth, I was going to have to change my approach or die in comment hell. The personal development topics I write about can easily generate lots of questions and discussion. Just imagine how many follow-up questions an article like this could generate. With tens of thousands of readers, it would be insane. Also, nuking comment spam was chewing up more and more of my time as well.

But after looking through my stats, I soon realized that only a tiny fraction of visitors ever look at comments at all, and an even smaller fraction ever post a comment (well below 1% of total visitors). That made my decision a lot easier, and in October 2005, I turned blog comments off. In retrospect that was one of my best decisions. I wish I had done it sooner.

If you’d like to read the full details of how I came to this decision, I’ve written about it previously: Blog Comments and More on Blog Comments.

Do you need comments to build traffic? Obviously not. Just like when I put up ads, I saw no decline in traffic when I turned off comments. In fact, I think it actually helped me. Although I turned off comments, I kept trackbacks enabled, so I started getting more trackbacks. If people wanted to publicly comment on something I’d written, they had to do so on their own blogs and post a link. So turning off comments didn’t kill the discussion — it just took it off site. The volume of trackbacks is far more reasonable, and I can easily keep up with it. I even pop onto other people’s sites and post comments now and then, but I don’t feel obligated to participate because the discussion isn’t on my own site.

I realize people have very strong feelings about blog comments and community building. Many people hold the opinion that a blog without comments just isn’t a blog. Personally I think that’s utter nonsense — the data just doesn’t support it. The vast majority of blog readers neither read nor post comments. Only a very tiny and very vocal group even care about comments. Some bloggers say that having comments helps build traffic, but I saw no evidence of that. In fact, I think it’s just the opposite. Managing comments detracts from writing new posts, and it’s far better to get a trackback and a link from someone else’s blog vs. a comment on your own blog. As long-term readers of my blog know, when faced with ambiguity, my preference is to try both alternatives and compare real results with real results. After doing that my conclusion is this: No comment.

Now if you want to support comments for non-traffic-building reasons like socializing or making new contacts, I say go for it. Just don’t assume that comments are necessary or even helpful in building traffic unless you directly test this assumption yourself.

Build a complete web site, not just a blog

Don’t limit your web site to just a blog. Feel free to build it out. Although most of my traffic goes straight to this blog, there’s a whole site built around it. For example, the home page of this site presents an overview of all the sections of the site, including the blog, article section, audio content, etc. A lot of people still don’t know what a blog is, so if your whole site is your blog, those people may be a little confused.

Testing and optimization

In the beginning you won’t know which potential streams of income will work best for you. So try everything that’s reasonable for you. If you learn about a new potential income stream, test it for a month or two, and measure the results for yourself. Feel free to cut streams that just aren’t working for you, and put more effort into optimizing those streams that show real promise.

A few months ago, I signed up for an account with Text Link Ads. It took about 20 minutes. They sell small text ads on my site, split the revenue with me 50-50, and deposit my earnings directly into my PayPal account. This month I’ll make around $600 from them, possibly more if they sell some new ads during the month. And it’s totally passive. If I never tried this, I’d miss out on this easy extra income.

For many months I’ve been tweaking the Adsense ads on this site. I tried different colors, sizes, layouts, etc. I continue to experiment now and then, but I have a hard time beating the current layout. It works very well for me. Adsense doesn’t allow publishers to reveal specific CPM and CTR data, but mine are definitely above par. They started out in the gutter though. You can easily double or triple your Adsense revenue by converting a poor layout into a better one. This is the main reason why during my first year of income, my traffic grew at 20% per month, but my income grew at 50% per month. Frequent testing and optimization had a major positive impact. Many of my tests failed, and some even made my income go down, but I’m glad I did all that testing. If I didn’t then my Adsense income would only be a fraction of what it is now.

It’s cheap to experiment. Every new advertising or affiliate service I’ve tried so far has been free to sign up. Often I can add a new income stream in under and hour and then just wait a month and see how it does. If it flops then at least I learned something. If it does well, wonderful. As a blogger who wants to generate income, you should always be experimenting with new income streams. If you haven’t tried anything new in six months, you’re almost certainly missing some golden opportunities. Every blog is different, so you need to test things for yourself to see what works for you. Failure is impossible here — you either succeed, or you learn something.

Pick your niche, but make sure it isn’t too small

Pick a niche for your blog where you have some significant expertise, but make sure it’s a big enough niche that you can build significant traffic. My wife runs VegFamily.com, a popular vegan web site. She does pretty well within her niche, but it’s just not a very big niche. On the other hand, my topic of personal development has much broader appeal. Potentially anyone can be interested in improving themselves, and I have the flexibility to write about topics like productivity, self-discipline, relationships, spirituality, health, and more. It’s all relevant to personal development.

Pick a niche that you’re passionate about. I’ve written 400+ articles so far, and I still feel like I’m just getting started. I’m not feeling burnt out at all. I chose to build a personal development site because I’m very knowledgeable, experienced, and passionate about this subject. I couldn’t imagine a better topic for me to write about.

Don’t pick a niche just because you think it will make you money. I see many bloggers try to do that, and it’s almost invariably a recipe for failure. Think about what you love most, and then find a way to make your topic appealing to a massive global audience. Consider what will provide genuine value to your visitors. It’s all about what you can give.

A broad enough topic creates more potential advertising partners. If I keep writing on the same subtopic over and over, I may exhaust the supply of advertisers and hit an income ceiling. But by writing on many different topics under the same umbrella, I widen the field of potential advertisers. And I expand the appeal of my site at the same time.

Make it clear to your visitors what your blog/site is about. Often I visit a blog with a clever title and tagline that reveals nothing about the site’s contents. In that case I generally assume it’s just a personal journal and move on. I love to be clever too, but I’ve found that clarity yields better results than cleverness.
Posting frequency and length

Bloggers have different opinions about the right posting length and frequency. Some bloggers say it’s best to write short (250-750 word) entries and post 20x per week or more. I’ve seen that strategy work for some, but I decided to do pretty much the opposite. I usually aim for about 3-5 posts per week, but my posts are much longer (typically 1000-2000 words, sometimes longer than 5000 words, including the monster you’re reading right now). That’s because rather than throwing out lots of short tips, I prefer to write more exhaustive, in-depth articles. I find that deeper articles are better at generating links and referrals and building traffic. It’s true that fewer people will take the time to read them, but those that do will enjoy some serious take-away value. I don’t believe in creating disposable content just to increase page views and ad impressions. If I’m not truly helping my visitors, I’m wasting their time.
Expenses

Blogging is dirt cheap.

I don’t spend money on advertising or promotion, so my marketing expenses are nil. Essentially my content is my marketing. If you like this article, you’ll probably find many more gems in the archives.
My only real expenses for this site are the hosting (I currently pay $149/month for the web server and bandwidth) and the domain name renewal ($9/year). Nearly all of the income this site generates is profit. This trickles down to my personal income, so of course it’s subject to income tax. But the actual business expenses are minimal.

The reason I pay so much for hosting is simply due to my traffic. If my traffic were much lower, I could run this site on a cheap shared hosting account. A database-driven blog can be a real resource hog at high traffic levels. The same goes for online forums. As traffic continues to increase, my hosting bill will go up too, but it will still be a tiny fraction of total income.

Perks

Depending on the nature of your blog, you may be able to enjoy some nice perks as your traffic grows. Almost every week I get free personal development books in the mail (for potential review on this site). Sometimes the author will send it directly; other times the publisher will ship me a batch of books. I also receive CDs, DVDs, and other personal development products. It’s hard to keep up sometimes (I have a queue of about two dozen books right now), but I am a voracious consumer of such products, so I do plow through them as fast as I can. When something strikes me as worthy of mention, I do indeed write up a review to share it with my visitors. I have very high standards though, so I review less than 10% of what I receive. I’ve read over 700 books in this field and listened to dozens of audio programs, so I’m pretty good at filtering out the fluff. As I’m sure you can imagine, there’s a great deal of self-help fluff out there.

My criteria for reviewing a product on this site is that it has to be original, compelling, and profound. If it doesn’t meet these criteria, I don’t review it, even if there’s a generous affiliate program. I’m not going to risk abusing my relationship with my visitors just to make a quick buck. Making money is not my main motivation for running this site. My main motivation is to grow and to help others grow, so that always comes first.

Your blog can also gain you access to certain events. A high-traffic blog becomes a potential media outlet, so you can actually think of yourself as a member of the press, which indeed you are. In a few days, my wife and I will be attending a three-day seminar via a free press pass. The regular price for these tickets is $500 per person. I’ll be posting a full review of the seminar next week. I’ve been to this particular seminar in 2004, so I already have high expectations for it. Dr. Wayne Dyer will be the keynote speaker.

I’m also using the popularity of this blog to set up interviews with people I’ve always wanted to learn more about. This is beautifully win-win because it creates value for me, my audience, and the person being interviewed. Recently I posted an exclusive interview with multi-millionaire Marc Allen as well as a review of his latest book, and I’m lining up other interviews as well. It isn’t hard to convince someone to do an interview in exchange for so much free exposure.

Motivation

I don’t think you’ll get very far if money is your #1 motivation for blogging. You have to be driven by something much deeper. Money is just frosting. It’s the cake underneath that matters. My cake is that I absolutely love personal development – not the phony “fast and easy” junk you see on infomercials, but real growth that makes us better human beings. That’s my passion. Pouring money on top of it just adds more fuel to the fire, but the fire is still there with or without the money.
What’s your passion? What would you blog about if you were already set for life?

Blogging lifestyle

Perhaps the best part of generating income from blogging is the freedom it brings. I work from home and set my own hours. I write whenever I’m inspired to write (which for me is quite often). Plus I get to spend my time doing what I love most — working on personal growth and helping others do the same. There’s nothing I’d rather do than this.
Perhaps it’s true that 99 out of 100 people can’t make a decent living from blogging yet. But maybe you’re among the 1 in 100 who can.

Artical Taken from http://www.stevepavlina.com/

Want Free Movies online? CLICK HERE

Hits4Pay

2007-05-09T10:30:00.000-07:00

Still Reading Commercial Emails For Free? Receive Emails On Topics That Interests You And Get Paid For It!
If you have access to your own email account, you can get paid. Refer others and get paid up to two levels. Hits4Pay is one of very few highest paying advertising program in the industry.
Signup for free and receive $10 as a Free Reward:http://hits4pay.com/members/index.cgi?anuraw1977

Want to make money online?

2007-04-29T00:05:00.000-07:00

Its not that difficult today to make online money but you have to devote a lot of time at start. and who the hell dont what to earn extra money thats too online.

Here is the list of some sites which can help you to earn money slowley but surely!!

Make Money Online with ProBlogger Blog Tips

That's the one site that can help you to earn money through your blog, but as i said earlier it can take a lot of time when you start bloging. This site contain all the information for starters to professional to make money online with a little efforts.

Earn Money Online

Adsense Accelerator

mGinger

The Google Freshness Factor

10 Reasons You Failed at Affiliate Marketing

The secret of getting one way links

Playing Dirty Is The Only Way to Succeed on the Interet

Number 1 in Google

Paid Survey Scams; Read the Shocking Report

customize your internet experience

participate in discussions

make money

build a profile

communicate with and make new friends

read and discuss the news

search and find

not a mylot member?

read and discuss articles from leading blogs

Mystery Shopping for Fun and Profit

Generate additional revenue by displaying ads related to the content on your web site.

Benefits

Features

Getting Started is Easy Take a Tour

Successful Money Making Opportunities

Free Money Making Opportunities

b5media

Tennis Blogger

ClickGolf

Golf Blogger

BusinessBlogAngel.com

Typepad Config Assistant

Single Grain

SEO Blogger

Consumer Generated Media Manager

Category: corporateLocation: Louisville, KY Description

AdDynamix

AuctionAds Referrals

Bid4prizes.com

Text Link Ads

AdSense

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

History

AdSense for feeds

AdSense for search

How AdSense works

Abuse

Criticism

Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdSense check out my free movie blog CLICK HERE

Get paid surveys - cash

Quality Online Survey Companies - get paid cash money for your opinion

SiteHow to Really Make Money on the Internet With an Amazon.com Affiliate Site

Here's How:

Tips:

Make Money Over Internet - Avoid the Scams

Alarming Credit-Card Tricks

Hit the Jackpot- How to Find Money-making Domains

Trackers/Direct Methods

Predictors/Indirect Methods

Traffic Source

Find the Right Domain

5 ways blogging can help your business

How to make money from your blog: 5 tips

How to Make Money From Your Blog

Hits4Pay

Want to make money online?

Category: corporate
Location: Louisville, KY Description

Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdSense
check out my free movie blog CLICK HERE