Monday, March 31, 2008

Blogging for making money begins with a long term plan

There are two major types of business models that entrepreneurs use to make money blogging. Companies and brands who want to reach that blog's readers. The second kind of money making blog is one that helps a single brand improve its image by creating positive associations between the blog and the product in the mind of consumers. Both kinds of blogs can make a lot of money, especially if the creator has a keen mind for marketing. However, very few people manage to reap the profits they want from their blog. However, very few people manage to reap the profits they want from their blog.

Many people make money blogging by selling space through Google's AdSense program. The advantages of this program are numerous. People discover that they make less money through this method than they had hoped that their blog would earn. Selling advertising directly to companies who want to put banner ads or sponsored links on your blog can take quite a bit of time, but it is often fairly lucrative. To succeed at blogging for profit, the main thing that you will need is a large readership. However, cultivating the regular visitors that you will need in order to make a profit isn't easy. People who have a strong background in sales and are experienced at pitching proposals can make quite a bit of money by renting blog space to interested companies. As blogging becomes a more and more lucrative business, a lot of established companies are considering how they can get into the action. Often, a company will employ an established blogger to create a weblog designed specifically to appeal to that company's customers.

For getting more visitors you need to keep your blog high on blogrolls and high in blog search engines like technorati, and once your readers know that you update frequently they will return to your site on a regular basis. To make your dreams of blogging for profit a reality, try decreasing your number of posts and using some of that time to draw new visitors by setting up link exchanges with other bloggers, making contacts in the blog community, and following other established modes of winning traffic. Try to stay committed to your blogging project during this initial rough period. To stay motivated, set goals for how often you will update and how many readers you want to attract, and then reward yourself for sticking with your plan.



Sunday, March 30, 2008

Making Money with Articles

Content is money. One of the best ways of representing content is by writing Articles. You can either write articles by your own or find articles in article directories. Article directories are websites that house free articles. These articles are usually put there by whoever owns the copyright to them as a promotion method. Each article has the owners byline placed under it so that those who eventually read the article will know who wrote it (or at least who owns it) and will be able to get in contact with or visit their website for further information.

Get idea of writing articles by visiting several article directories. Articles directories are a great place to put your articles so that they will make you money. By using this method, people who are interested in your product or service will see your article, view you as an expert in the subject, and will visit your website. For example if you write an article on an accounting topic and place it on various article directories, you might get visitors of the article directories who are interested in accounting would read your article and visit your website to seek further information.

Furthermore, since you have posted it on a free article directory, others who have affiliate websites about accounting will inevitably use your article for their website. Since they must attach your byline to it, this will bring you even more exposure for every website that re-posts your article. There are numerous article directories out there for you to utilize and you could search for article directories using search engines.

Some webmasters try to use articles from free content directories to get visitors to their site and make some money. This is not a good idea. There would be problems in doing such act. Search engines will only look down upon your site if it has the exact same duplicated content than other sites. As more and more the sites that share your content, the less it will help you achieve good search engine rankings. Good search engine rankings are essential in getting visitors to your sit so that they have a chance to click on your affiliate links. If you cannot even get visitors, then you will never make money.

Although getting your site high on search engine result pages and acquiring site visitors is hard work, unfortunately this is only half of the battle. You must also be able to convince those visitors to click on your affiliate links. If your visitors see the same content they have seen on a multitude of other sites, they will be least likely to click on your links.

Most free content is only given to you if you agree to place the authors byline under the article (you can get into trouble if you try to use it without following the stipulated rules). This poses a problem because most author bylines include links. When a reader gets done reading a really intriguing article, there is a strong possibility that they will click on the author's byline link rather than your affiliate links.

Once you put these three problems together, you are looking at a serious decline in revenue simply because you used free website content from article directories. Although it may be the only option for some, if you have the funds to buy your own original content, then you should go this route.

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Introduction to making money online – Part 2

To whom you should sell?

After deciding what to sell, you should find the customer. Target the customers based on the product. For example if you are selling a weight loss product, you should target customers who are interested in slimming products. I know the next question that you have in your mind now. How to find customer to market your product? To understand this you need to do a research on patterns of customers searching for the product on the net. Taking the above example, customers searching for a slimming product would do a search using search engines like Google, yahoo etc., post their queries on forums, search the directory listing and sometimes search for articles. You should visit these pages and advertise your product. The next section explains on how to sell your product using different techniques.

How To Sell you product?

There are plenty of creative ways that you can start marketing your products to potential customers. Most of the methods listed below are more commonly used for selling information products online, but can be adapted to selling physical products also.

Generating the traffic

Using traffic exchange sites is a great way to begin sending floods of visitors to your online store or web site. The visitors would see your website to understand your product or business. If people don't know about your business, then how do you expect to make any money from it? Though this method brings tons of visitors to you web site, the conversion rate of the visitors to customers is very less. The massive hits that you generate would help in getting better ranking in the search engine. If you want to participate for free, then expect to spend lots of time looking at other participant's web sites to earn credits that go towards getting visitors to your own site. An alternative is to pay for traffic if this is in your budget. Please visit my blog Free Advertising Resources to find more traffic exchange resources.

Getting into forums

Forums have long been an incredible source for information. Use a basic search engine and find the right forum that discusses the subject matter that pertains to the products you are intending to sell.

Blog it!

Set up a product review section that describes your personal opinions on those products listed, and if you like them, be sure to add an affiliate link to them.

The Affiliate Method

Be sure that you read all information available on any affiliate program beforehand. Time is an extremely valuable commodity when doing business online, and you can't afford to waste it on crappy products or programs that bring you zilch results.

Using trial or stripped down versions

This is known as up selling. Using this tactic you offer a product to your customers, they purchase it, and then they are given the choice on upgrading. The stripped down version of the product can be given as a free gift. The customer will experience the product and found useful would buy the upgrade. There are plenty of products created out there that use this method to earn more profits.

The Back-End Method

What it does is gives you the power to pull in more profits after you have made the initial sale to your customers by providing you with specific links enabling the reader of the product to buy other related products.

The Membership Method

Creating your own membership site is a very profitable business. If you're more inclined to offer a place that is specifically for downloading products like those of the information or eBook nature, then a file hosting system like TradeBit may be the way for you to go.

The "Recycle" Method

Recycling old products for profit is not a new idea. When you are offering an unused or used product in your possession for sale, you are recycling it. So it is with information products too. When you sell a resalable information product, you can sell it as many times as you are able to, and can profit with back-end affiliate links or add a free sign up form for your mailing list, generating new leads and more profits over and over again. Now, when an information reseller has products that are a bit older, they will take these and package them up.

The Viral Method

Just what is a "viral" product? You create your own unique product on whatever topic you decide on, add lots of good information and affiliate links inside it, and then give it away. So you'll still generate profits or mailing list sign ups even though you're giving this specific product away.

Email Address Buying

This method is expensive in general. You could use this method if the price is cheap. You get this for free using safelists. But safelists are comprised of others trying to sell their products to each other. It doesn't work. Most of the time, if not all the time, your email ad will go unnoticed and deleted on site. But it creates lots of traffic.

Time-Wasters

Money rotator programs don't work. You've got to put those things on the back burner to be successful at selling products online.

Using Search Engine Optimization

SEO is one of the best techniques to pull visitors to your site. To talk about SEO, I need to write another 5 part article and I don't have plans to write in the near future. Searching for SEO in Google would give you lots of resources.

To conclude, selling products online can be an exciting and profitable business. I wish you all the very best that the internet has to offer and if you need help, use the comment and I would be glad to help you.

Friday, March 28, 2008

Introduction to making money online – Part 1

Advantages of selling online

Earning money online is virtually limitless. You can sell information or a specific product. Shopping on internet is a time-saver. Collecting information online is a time-saver. Any "idea" can be cultivated into a product.

What happens if you decide to get into this ocean of information and products business? You get confused with so many eBooks, articles, information products, and membership sites etc. promising millions overnight. Don't get overwhelmed with this massive information. I would like to give concise information to get started.

Where on the net would you sell?

Like physical products selling on shopping malls you should also require a virtual place on net to sell your products. Though it does matter what you're selling, it also matters where you sell it from. If you want do every thing for free, and then you may not succeed in business. Don't waste your time or energy. You can host your information or products for sale in a shared hosting service to start with. Shared hosting is simply multiple web sites that share the same server. Where you purchase your domain name is just as important as where you purchase your web space hosting. Now, if you're just beginning and don't really have the funds to purchase a domain name and website space, there is another way to begin if you are wishing to sell information products that can be automatically delivered by way of downloading. First of all, you can get a free 20 MB account, a sub-domain, web based FTP file uploading, built in shopping cart, your own affiliate program, and integrated PayPal/eBay selling with automated product delivery. You won't need a whole bunch of space if you use TradeBit to host your product files. Understand that any files you host you must have the right to sell them. Few more things are required before you begin. Create a merchant account on eBay if you are interested in selling there, an HTML editor for making changes to pre-designed sales kits or for creating a sales page, and an image editor for creating graphics for your sales pages and products.

Do you have anything to sell?

Information Products

This type of selling is probably the easiest way to make fast money without huge overhead costs. You may be expert in any one field. For example, you may be good at cooking, computers, science, education etc. Just write about what you know and do a research if that information is in demand. You can also do research on the net on a specific subject and write about it. Remember to give Master Resell Rights (MRR) along with the product. This would boost your sales.

The information product business excels in this capacity. That is why so many hop onto the resale rights information selling bandwagon. Just because the site says that the product is a niche product, doesn't mean that it is. A lot of times, authors of products will offer a free copy of their product in exchange for a testimonial. It's free publicity. Furthermore, the reason why those in the online business need these testimonials is to gain your trust in them and their product. Collecting your information products this way will most definitely save you money in the long run.

Physical Products

Of course, you can always sell physical products through the internet too. Practically anything can sell and fetch a pretty good price. So just make sure that you have a product to offer.

Don't worry if you do not have any physical products to sell. There are lots of affiliate programs available on the net where you get commissions on selling others products. The advantages of these programs are that you need not worry about the inventory of the products, shipping and after sales service. You just have to sell. I myself signed up lots of affiliate programs and earning decent money. I am not going to suggest any program since this write up is not meant for that. But I cannot resist telling about this company which is a pioneer on affiliate programs and survived for the past 20 years successfully. SFI has several high selling products and it is free to join without any obligation. It has also started a new program called Eye Earn. You need to pay $20 for their Eye Earn start up kit which contains T-Shirt and marketing materials. Eye Earn actually promotes Max Mall which has a wide range of products.

Okay, we figured out where to sell our products from, and what we should be selling. So now we need to understand to whom and how we should be selling these products. This would be continued in the next part of my blog.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Free Advertising Resources

These are good Advertising resources. I had already blogged on this earlier. This blog is a consolidated and formatted for better readability. You can also benefit from this free eBook. I also suggest signing up with Linkreferral for a decent traffic generation. Please keep on visiting this blog for more additions. If you find a good advertising resource, please leave a link in the comment and I would sign up for the same.

GOT Safelist is one of the best and it also gives you one free download like eBook, software etc. for free signups.

If you do not have time to sign up and use these methods, then I would suggest another alternative but you have to spend little money. It may be worth when compared to the time spent. Click here to know more.

Safelists

GOT Safelist

Adtactics

Free Safelist Mailer

Global Safelist

Modified 17 Racelist

Top Score Traffic

My Genuine Traffic

Utopian Safelist

Vital Ad Views

Blast 4 Traffic

Ads Express

Adsolutiononline

Active Safelist

Problaze

Safelist Prox

Bauser's Best

My Download Builder

Safelister

My Traffic Builder

Safelist Pro

Crocs Hideway

Dustys Magical

Maple City

Supreme Lists

My Safelist Ads

Net Profit Gold

Myad-Ventures

Advermania

Success4planetSafelist

Traffic Persuation

Traffic Speedway

ListJoe

Get Your Ads Read

Guaranteed Results

Heart Land 1

Pals Advertising

Professional Advertising

Safer Safelist

Bowest

Ads With Results 4 U

Responsivehits4you

Herculist

Traffic-Secret

My Free Safelist

Superad Response

Prince of Promotion

Elite Safelist

Golden Op Safelist

Viral Exchange

Oldies For U

Promote Your Biz 2

Real Visitors 4 U

Safelist RX

Target Safelist

Text Ad Profits

The Cyber Builder

Traffic Pro List

Tropical Oasis

Digital Advertising

Lighthouse

Source Ads

Blast 4 Kash

New Opportunities

Global Hits

A Lucky Day

Business World List

Electrical Marketing

Mike's Safelist

Easy Street

News Clicking

My Ad Explosion


Viral Marketing


Ad Blasters and List Builders

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Let your affiliate work for you

Running affiliates programs are easier. But keeping your affiliates motivated and selling isn't quit easy. If the success of your business rests upon how your affiliates perform, then you have to get in constant touch with non productive affiliates and make them creative. You should keep them informed of the changes in product lines, policy or procedures.

The following are some tips…

Always pay attention to the top sellers and make sure that you contact them on a regular basis

The main reason most affiliates don't perform that well is because they don't possess any leadership or guidance. This can easily be changed by writing a marketing course, which you can even offer for sale to non affiliates, although you should make it available to your affiliates at no charge

You should also provide new material for your affiliates.

Provide your affiliates with sales letters, reviews, ads, banners of different shapes and sizes, and anything else that comes to mind. Be sure that your affiliates know the material is there for them to use

You should also hold virtual meetings preferably on a weekly basis.

Giving your affiliates the credit they deserve is also very important. Each month, you should give credit to the best performers in your affiliate newsletter. Give small bonuses to those that perform well, and you can even set up a payment structure that rewards higher commissions for bigger volumes of sales.

Always make sure you do everything you can to help your affiliates succeed and make money in your program. If they are making money then you are succeeding and making money as well. In reality their success is your success.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

An Affiliate Program that gives you money automatically

Is the above statement true? It is no doubt that this is not true at all. There are many horror stories about affiliate programs and networks. Why to join in an affiliate program?

Affiliate programs have already created lots of millionaires and that is definitely partially true. How do you choose a good affiliate program to promote? Here are some tips.

1. A program that you like and have interest in. A passion and sense of ownership is required to earn lot of money.

2. Look for a program that is of very high quality. How do you find? You have to do some research on the internet. Look for number of affiliates, quality of the products and number of years in the field. There are some programs which are genuine. One such program known as SFI which I joined has earned me decent money.

3. The program that is catering to a growing target market. There are some programs offering this kind of compensation. Some affiliate programs imposes pre-requisites before you get your commissions. Not all affiliate programs have these capacities.

4. Check out if the program has a proven system that can allow you to check your networks and compensation.

5. The program that is offering strong incentives for members to renew their membership each time.

6. The affiliate program that provides continuous help and upgrades for its products have the tendency to retain its members.

7. If you know someone in that same program, there is ho harm asking if there are many downsides involved.

About SFI

The best part of SFI is it is free to join with absolutely no obligation. SFI is part of a growing global industry with annual gross revenues estimated at over $100 billion, involving major multinational corporations and tens of millions of independent business people in every country of the world. SFI has a wide variety of products and services! SFI has grown from just one product in 1998 to HUNDREDS today, including:

One of the greatest features of SFI is that success can be achieved using a variety of methods. You choose the methods with which YOU are comfortable, whether Internet marketing, direct mail, telemarketing, meetings, flea markets, in-home parties, or other methods.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Is Adsense a good option to earn money?


This is how Adsense works…

When the page in which the Adsense script is added is being accessed, the Adsense script will pull advertisements from the Adsense program. The advertisements that are targeted should therefore be related to the content of the web page or blog serving the advertisement. If a visitor clicks on an advertisement, the owner / author of the blog or website serving the advertisement earns a portion of the money that the advertiser is paying the search engine for the click or impression.

The search engine will handle all the tracking and payments, providing an easy way for webmasters to display content-sensitive and targeted ads without having the hassle to solicit advertisers, collect funds, monitor the clicks and statistics. The first reason why Adsense is essential for content sites is because it already has come a long way in understanding the needs of publishers and webmasters. The recent improvements in the search engines gives webmasters the capability to monitor how their ads are performing using customizable reports that has the capacity to detail page impressions, clicks and click-through rates. Webmasters and publishers can now track specific ad formats, colors and pages within a website. There would be time to sort out the contents that people are making the most clicks on. The ever-changing demands would be met while generating cash for the webmasters and publishers. The more flexible tools are also allowing webmasters to group web pages by URL, domain, ad type or category, which will provide them some accurate insight on which pages, ads and domains are performing best.

Adsense is all about targeted content, the more targeted your content is, the more target the search engines' ads will be. The cash generated only came into existence when the webmasters and publishers realized how they can make Adsense be that generator.

Start by writing some quality content articles which are also keyword incorporated. Please do not write article that is of interest to you. Your interest may not be the interests of many who surf the internet. Find the area of interests which is very popular so that you get quality visitors resulting in good click through rate. There are lots of keyword and suggestion tools that some sites are offering for free and some for a small fee.

If you don't want to spend time on writing articles, here is a beautiful product that creates quality article for free. Click here to get the automatic article maker.

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

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


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

If you do not have an Adsense account create one. Happy earning!

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Earning Tips

There are lot of ways to earn online. Affliate marketing, MLM, eShop etc. Everything requires selling. There are no quick rich schemes on net. You might have come accross many, but I bet that everything is scam. I myself have lost so much of money on these scams. But now I started earning. I am not earning huge amount but I earn for a decent living. I am going to give some advice and links free.
I will list some programs that you could join for free and earn by selling their products and services. I will also list some of the advertising tips that you might benefit. Remember to earn you must work. There is no second choice. To start with you must work hard. Keep looking at this list for more tips and links.
Earn Online Programs
SFI: I find this one as a very genuine program. This is a free to join program. It is worth giving a try since it is free and you dont get to lose anything. I am earning quite good from this program. They also give you step by step tutorial on how to earn online. Remember this is not a quick rich program. You can click here to join this program.
Advertising
Linkreferral: This is one of the best sites to advertise. Please check it and it is free.
Viral Advertising: This one is very effective to drive trafficto your site. I would recommend a couple of sites. Keep looking into this section for more links. Freeviral and T2000Ultra are two good viral marketing sites.
Safelist: This one is very effective. You actually get spam free email lists. Most of them are free to join. Following is the list of Safelist that you could join.
GOT Safelist
Adtactics
Free Safelist Mailer
Global Safelist
Modified 17 Racelist
Top Score Traffic
My Genuine Traffic
My Download Builder
Safelist Pro
Safelister
Success4planet Safelist
Traffic Persuation
Traffic Speedway
Ultra Safelist
Utopian Safelist
Vital Ad Views
Active Safelist
My Traffic Builder
Blast 4 Traffic
Problaze