Make Money Online With SEO Marketing

If you have ever looked into seo marketing (search engine optimisation) then you may have thought to yourself that there is alot involved and alot to learn in order to get good results. If you follow a few simple rules then you can cut out the learning curve and get started right away.

Its a fact that with this simple guide, you can make money online as an affiliate with strategic seo marketing. Below i have outlined the steps you must take in order to gain first page rankings within google, which will send targeted traffic to any offer you are currently promoting. I will also give you a simple method that sends the traffic directly to the offer.

First off, i would like to say that targeted traffic is the life blood of any affiliate campaign. Without lots of targeted traffic, you will not get the results you expect from the hours of hard work you put in. I can tell you that you do not have to spend hours in front of the computer to get results.

Finding A Market To Target

I always start off any campaign by visiting the clickbank marketplace or any other affiliate or cpa network that i am a member of. If you use clickbank then look at offers that have a high gravity as this means that there are lots of other affiliates promoting the offer.

Dont look at competition as a threat, when you see lots of competition, the chances are that theres alot of money to be made, or the other people promoting it would not waste their time otherwise.

- For the purpose of this article, i will choose the "Make Money Online" market. So i have been over to the clickbank marketplace and have seen that "Miracle Traffic Bot" has the best gravity. This is a type of software that would increase traffic so its on a popular subject.

Finding Your Keywords

Once you have found a market that you wish to target, its time to find the keywords. I use the google keyword tool as this gives you a great idea of whats popular within the market. Your seo marketing depends on these kind of tools to find the best words to target.

Choose two keywords that have a high monthly search volume so you know that theres enough traffic to convert into sales. Ideally you would target a keyword with at least 5,000 monthly searches. When you have two of these keywords, you can move on to the next stage.

- As an example for this article, i have visited the keyword tool to find keywords for the product i picked from the "finding a market" section shown above and i would choose "increase targeted traffic" and "targeted website traffic". These are the two keywords that you want to rank on the first page of results within google.

The Method You Can Use

As you are using seo marketing to advertise your affiliate program, you would need to use a strong domain in order to gain the best rankings. If you use a new domain then google will not take much notice of your site for a long, long time, so its easier to use a popular domain that has a high authority within google such as hubpages, ezine articles or squidoo.

For the purpose of this article i will say that im going to use ezine articles to gain first page rankings for the keywords i have picked.

When i write my article, i must make sure that my keywords are visible within the title, the summary and within the body of my article to make it as relevant as possible for ranking purposes. I usually place each keyword in my article "once" every "100" words.

TIP: For my keywords picked above i can merge them together which is ideal, so my title could be
"Increase Your Targeted Website Traffic Using Automated Software". This allows me to then increase my rankings for the keywords chosen as well as making the article nice to read.

Write a good, 500 word article that is related to the offer you are promoting, making sure that you explain the issues surrounding this subject and then a brief outline of how people can overcome the issue. Dont write the article in a way that would advertise what you are promoting or your article may be rejected. The resource box is used to recommend a product related to the article.

Direct Linking Approach

I have used direct linking alot in the past and have had great results. All you have to do is register a domain that is related to the product you are promoting. Use the forwarding feature within your domain control panel to redirect any visitors to your affiliate link provided by google.

You can then include this link within the resource box of your article which is the section you can use to advertise the cure to the issues you raise within your article.

This method is ideal for newbies who cannot yet create landing pages. I would personally always use my own simple landing page that would capture the name and email address before sending the visitor to the offer as i can then sell other related products later on. The direct linking approach is not for everyone but if you cannot make a landing page then you can use this method to break down this barrier and make sales.

Increasing Your Rankings

In order to increase the rankings for your keywords, you must build relevant backlinks to the web address of your ezine articles page. You must use anchor text which include your keywords with a link to your article. The more backlinks you build, the higher your rankings will become.

Write a few articles per day and link back to your main article within the resource box. Use many different article directories and accounts on squidoo, hubpages, wet paint, zimbio, weebly, blogger and wordpress to build quality links to your main ezine article.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this article as it explains how you can make easy money online as an affiliate using seo marketing. Get stuck in and take action or you will never make money online.

The Five W's of Popular Blogging

So you've decided that you have opinions and information that you simply must get out to the rest of the world. You simply know that what you have to offer is original enough that there will be people clamoring for your wit and wisdom, but you're simply not sure how to get started, and once you get started; you're not sure how to get people to start reading.

There's an old adage in journalism that when you set out to write a story, you need to cover the five W's: Who, What, When, Where, and Why. That adage certainly applies to blogs as well, though it might be slightly adaptive considering the blogosphere as a whole, and the challenges that meet any young blogger just looking to get on their feet.

The first W - Who - covers you. Who are you, why are you doing this, and what makes you stand out to prospective readers. Blogs are generally considered far more personal than newspaper articles, people don't come to blogs for dry information or an Associated Press release. They want your personality to shine through in your blog posts.

The second W - What - is fairly self explanatory. The way the internet is set up, you can blog about literally anything, but make sure to establish an identity. Don't blog about quilting for a week, and then change topic and start blogging about how to establish peace in the Middle East the next. Unless you can find a way to blend the two. If you can combine two widely different topics, you might be able to establish yourself that way, but it's a task that may prove unsuccessful.

The third W - When - is more about when you post, then the time frame of the subject you're covering. It's important to be as prolific as possible when blogging in order to keep whatever audience you've managed to build. Posting once every two months isn't enough. Do it at least once a day.

The Fourth W - Where - applies to where you choose to market your particular blog. You could be the foremost expert on a subject, but if you're unable to get out the word on your blog, no one will ever read it. Message boards that cover your topic are a good place to start, as well as specialized sections of social media such as Digg will gain readers, as long as you're topical.

The final W - Why - is also fairly self explanatory. Why are you blogging? What drives you to continue to post? If you're in it for an economic gain, realize that it may be quite a while before you see any real return. If you're doing it simply to share you enjoyment, or disdain for a certain topic, know there will still be a struggle before you see your blog take off, but if you stick to the five W's sooner or later, the formula will pay off.

How to Increase Direct Ad Revenue for Your Blog

If you have been blogging for a while, you know that selling ad space directly to the advertisers on your blog can become one of the lucrative sources of revenue for you. When you have started selling ad space on your blog, you always want to sell off all the available ad space or ad spots on your blog to make the most out of direct ad selling. In this article, I'll be sharing with you the techniques that I have used to maximize my blog direct ad revenue. These have been good ways for me to maintain and increase my blog ad revenue. I hope you'll find them useful too:


Create an Advertising Page

An advertising page is basically a page that tells what ad space you are selling. It usually describes everything you are offering (text link, banner ad, sponsored review, etc) with price details included.

With an advertising page posted on your site, the visitors who are interested on placing an ad in your blog can find the advertising info they need immediately. This will potentially generate some fast sales for you.

Writing an advertising page isn't very difficult. The content of advertising page usually starts with an introduction, followed by the info of the ad options you are offering and lastly providing your ordering details and also your email address for the prospective advertisers in case they need to contact you to get more advertising info.

You might want to see example of advertising page before writing one fir your blog, you could take a look at my advertising page at:

If you need more examples, you can visit other blogs that have an advertising page posted. By looking at other blogs' advertising page, you'll get an idea of how to write your own advertising page.

The important information you must include into your page are the introduction, your blog traffic stat or other stats, (e.g. Google ranking, Alexa ranking, etc), The ad options you are selling with price details included and details of how to order an ad spot on your blog.


Set the Right Price

It's important that you are charging reasonable prices for the ad spaces you are offering for sale. This is not just to appeal your prospective advertisers to advertise on your blog but also to keep them as your long term advertisers which will ensure steady ad revenue for you.

It seems to be easy task to set the prices for the different ad spaces you are offering. The assumption is that the banner ad on highest position such as banner ad on the header of your blog should be charged at a highest price and ads on the lower location such as at the sidebar should sell at a lower price because ad on higher positions will generate more traffic for advertisers. Well, this isn't always right.

An effective way that can help you set the right price for each ad space you sell on your blog is by putting up your own affiliate ads (Clickbank, CJ, etc) on the ad spaces of your blog to test the click-through rate and traffic before opening those ad spaces for sale. The testing period doesn't have to be long; just one week is good enough.

Once you have tested each ad space, you would know the average daily clicks of each of your affiliate ads that placed on the different ad spaces on your blog and so you can set the price accordingly. Let says your 125 x 125 banner ad which places on the top right sidebar of your blog get an average daily unique clicks of 10. This means the advertiser who places a 125x125 banner ad on your blog is estimated to get 300 unique visitors (10 x 30) monthly. So you can decide what is the reasonable charge for a banner ad that generates 300 unique visitors for the advertiser each month.

If you think each unique visitor that you direct to your advertiser should cost $0.30, then the price for a 125 x 125 banner ad on your blog will be $90 per month (300 x $0.30). $90 for 300 unique visitors every month, seems reasonable enough right. But you certainly can charge more if you are in a highly profitable niches such as Forex, debt consolidation and etc.

By setting your price based on the traffic level, you can also avoid over-charging for different ad space on your blog. For instance, a 468 x 60 banner ad on the header of your blog seems to be expensive than a 125 x 125 banner ad at the top right sidebar because the 468x60 banner ad is located at a higher position. However, when you test the traffic level, you might find that the 125x125 banner ad is actually attracting more traffic than the 468x60 banner ad. So, the 125x125 banner ad was supposed to be expensive than the 468 banner ad.


Post Testimonials on Your Advertising Page

You know the Internet users like to find supporting information about the product or service they're interested before really buying it. It's no different when it comes to buying ad spaces on blogs. The real testimonials from your previous satisfied advertisers are much like supporting information which will convince your potential advertisers to order an ad spot on your blog.

Testimonials often are short and sharing the real positive advertising experience on your blog. These are certainly powerful supporting information that can convince your potential advertisers.

So how you can get real testimonials from the advertisers?

If your blog has generated a couple of sales for some of your advertisers running an ad campaign on your blog, they are the happy advertisers willing to give you a testimonial if you ask for one. The satisfied advertiser may occasionally contact you to tell you that they are happy with the result from the ad campaign they run on your blog. You may reply the advertiser and invite him/her to publish a testimonial on your blog advertising page. You will include the advertiser's name, photo if possible and the advertiser's website link. The advertiser will certainly be happy to send you back an testimonial because they can include a link in the their testimonial.

Another way is to send a thank you email to the advertisers who have advertised one month on your blog and decided to renew their ad campaign on your blog. These are probably satisfied advertisers as well. Your email will thank them for renewing their ad on your blog and invite them to publish a testimonial on your blog. Tell the advertisers you'll be including their website link in the testimonial. You might then get one or two replies from them with a testimonial for you to publish on your blog.


Provide Helpful Customer Service

The prospective advertisers can be your paying customers. Many advertisers often like to ask questions before they place an order. So, make sure you read their questions and give the answers that they are looking for.

Also advertisers often like to test the click-through and conversion rates. This is to find out the performance of their ads. When they aren't satisfied with the result, they'll request for ad changes. Thus, you should allow ad changes on anytime. This way the advertisers can test different ads and landing pages to get the performance that they expect. When the advertisers are freely to request changes, they will probably renew their ads. This will secure your ad revenue.

Moreover, you might think about running discount campaign from time to time. It's helpful to boost up your ad sales. Also offering something like one week trial or two week trial could also push the advertisers to order ad space from you.

The above are the techniques that I have applied to maintain and boost up and blog revenue. Hope these techniques will work on you as well.

How to Write a Better Blog Post?

When you have decided to blog either as a source of residual income or just as a hobby, you need to know how to write blog posts. No matter what your motives are, the blog posts have to be interesting. If this is not the case, then your blog is going to be a failure. Writing blog posts is a process which needs to be carefully thought and acted. You will have to start by selecting the niche. Niche will be the most important thing. It will help you to write better as you will be narrowing the topic and will be targeting a specific audience. Now you need to choose the exact topic by conducting a research. This research will play a very important role. You will have to decide about the topic and the angel from which you will have to write and all this information will be collected from research data. The research data will also give you the access to the liking and the desire of the readers. You will be in a position to know what your readers want to read about. You can base your research on many things. You should also make sure that you are reading the feedback of the readers via the email, the comments and through the other methods. This feedback will give you good ideas to write about. You can also search in the forums and can come up with the different ideas what people are talking about and what they are interested in. Once you have done all that, you can go on and select a few topics to write about. You can then decide about the one topic that you want to write this week. While writing the blog posts, you will have to look at the topic and will have to decide about the style which you are going to use in the blog posts. You can choose conversational style or can go for a formal style. This depends on the topic that you are going to write about. You will also have to know whether using the bullets and numbering would be better or going for simple 6-8 paragraph blog post would be better. Once you have decided about these things you will have to research the material for the blog post. While researching for the material, you have to understand what you need to research. Write down all the things that you are going to discuss and then go online and look for the solid facts and information regarding that. Always verify the information so that you are not guilty of providing disinformation to the readers. Now that you have the material and you are all set to write the blog posts, you need to understand that you are writing for the readers. While writing the blog posts, just keep the fact in mind that the blog posts are for readers and you should write the things that they are interesting to read.

How a Well Written Guest Post Can Take Your Blog Over the Top

How would you feel if I told you that you missed out on potentially thousands of visitors by publishing your amazing article on your own blog?

I’m sure that we all would love it if traffic flowed to your blog each time that publish button was pressed. But how can writing things for others result in you reaping the benefits? Let’s take a moment to talk about guest posting. What it is and why it is such a successful technique.

Guest posting is the act of creating a post/article on another person’s site (with permission of course). Guest posting on other sites has long been proven to be a successful marketing technique because you have the advantage of traffic to your niche while another blogger just got a great new post for his/her own readers.

This means that a guest post on a site receiving 5,000 daily visitors can bring in those visitors back to your site. I’m sure you can see the potential in that! So how do you go about with the guest posting process?

First, I suggest finding some popular blogs in your niche. Search for the keywords you would like to be found from to get a list of sites relevant to your sites topic. For example, if your site focuses on the keywords, make money online, a Google search on it would lead you here, to Money Maker Info. Repeat this searching process for a few more potential sites and your ready to move on.

So once you have found some good sites, examine them in further detail to find a hot topic that you can write about. It is important to read through the sites archives as no blogger likes duplicate content on their site.

Take your time to write a post for the other blog owner. Always, always, ALWAYS make sure that guest posts written are the best you can make them. Spend an extra day to clear your head and re-read your post. Ask a friend to read through your article to make sure everything checks-in. Just do what it takes to be the best out there.

Almost any site you can find will have contact information leading to the site owner(s). Take this to your advantage by sending them a kindly worded e-mail about whom you are and why you would love to guest post on their site. It is important to make it look like they are the ones gaining the biggest benefit from the post.

Remember, some sites are very open about guest posting while other sites will take long conversations, just for the chance to talk to the person in charge. Persevere through the process and your post will lead to a traffic bringing success.

One last note. I would love to hear what you guys (and gals) think about guest posting. Have you ever done a guest post? Do you plan to in the near future? I invite you to share in the comments below.

Why Your Online Business Needs a Backend Marketing Strategy?

Backend marketing is a form of marketing method that involves the use of strategies and tactics to sell additional products or services to your existing list of customers.

In this rapid changing and competitive e-commerce industry, it is important that you don't neglect the backend marketing if you have an e-commerce website built to make money online. The backend marketing can avoid you being taking over by your competitors.

Below are some reasons that why backend marketing is important and necessary.

Easier to Close Sales
The marketing estimate shows that the success of selling to a old customer is 8 times higher that selling to a new customer. So, it means convincing an old customer to buy from you is far easier.

Thus, backend marketing is really a powerful technique to grow your online business and increase your profit. You should care about your old customers. Whenever you launch a new product and the product is highly relevant to your existing product, it is always best to start with these older customers as many of them have already bought and used your product before and were satisfied with the purchase. They are more likely and willing to try your new products as they are familiar with your brand and confident on you.

Fast Profit
You can potentially crank out a nice and quick profit from marketing a backend product to your existing customers. The trick is to offering them a good discount. This method has been widely used by the Internet marketing gurus when they are releasing a new product. Giving them a limited time discount will simply make your offer irresistible.

If offering rebate doesn't seem to be suitable to your marketing plan, then you may consider offering bonus products. This also can trigger the buying interest of your existing customers because they will get more for paying the same price.

Minimal Cost and Effort
Selling to your existing or old customers not just easier but also the save a lot marketing cost and effort. Imagine you want to convince a visitor to become your customer, it will cost you money in advertising to get the visitor to visit your e-commerce site and then invite the visitor to subscribe your newsletter so that you can get his/her email contact and follow up with them. You got to put in effort to write quality newsletters and email copies to get a sale from your newsletter subscribers.

With a list of existing customers, you can just inform them by email of your new interesting offer and the happy old customers may immediately buy the new product after reading your new offer. There is only little marketing cost in the process and it involves less time and works to reach your product to your potential buyers.

Conclusion
Since you can make second, third or even fourth sales from your first time customers, a backend marketing system or strategy is really necessary. Your backend marketing strategy may focus on developing new product specifically for your old customers. Your old customers have other need needs and wants. So, you may create new product to meet this needs or to provide a new solution to a problem.

Make Money Online in Record Time by Building Your List!

If you're new to making money online then I have three words that will hopefully transform the way you look at your new business. This article will help you make money online in record time and I only wish I had this information when I started out!

Build Your List

All the top internet marketers out there have the ability to generate wealth on demand and the reason they can do this is because they have spent time to get people onto their mailing list.

This means that when they release new information products, they instantly have a list of prospects to sell items to. This usually means an instant pay off every time a product is launched and is extremely powerful.

How do you Build a Sizable list?

Building a list is actually pretty easy. Here are the steps that you need to follow:-

1. Create a one page web site where you offer a free gift in exchange for the name and email address of your visitors

2. Create the gift that you are going to give away to your visitors – often this simply needs to be a short report. There's no need to create a whole book to give away. Generally speaking, less is more, because people are always after quick fixes to their problems.

3. Drive traffic to your one page web site

And that's really all there is to it.

So, let's assume that we were in the male dating niche. We might have a one page web site that offered a free e-book that people could download. The e-book might tell them how to approach any woman confidently and successfully.

Of course, a male who's having dating problems would visit the page, see the free e-book and feel enticed to enter his name and email address into the opt-in box.

How do you Make Money from your List?

Here's the clever part. You can use software services called autoresponders that allow you to add emails in advance of them being sent. This means that you can set up a year's worth of emails to be sent out, sit back and let the whole thing work on autopilot.

So, firstly, you should focus on providing top quality information to your prospects on your list. Make sure that they enjoy receiving emails from you and that you're providing real value and helping them to solve their problems.

After the initial relationship building stage, you can then start make soft and hard sells of products. You can either sell your own products or you can be an affiliate for products that other people have created.

So continuing our example from earlier: Once the prospect is on your list, he'd received some really helpful dating tips from you that he could go out in the “field” and try out on women. After a week or so, you'd then recommend a product, or mention your own product, that is specifically aimed at helping men have more success with women.

Of course you'd mention this product in each of the further emails that you send out.

The Money Making Machine....

And that's really all there is to making money online – it's not rocket science – but learning the skills to get everything set up the first time round takes a little learning.

If you want a rock-star lifestyle then I truly believe that internet marketing is your quickest ticket. If you just take the time to learn the skills you can really create a desirable lifestyle for yourself.

Quick and Easy Ways to attract More Traffic to Your Site from YouTube

YouTube is one of the most common and biggest social networking websites online today. Millions of web surfers browse through the YouTube site monthly in search of videos that in their chosen niches. There are traffic generating potentials from YouTube but you may not be able to leverage this fact if you don't know the right steps to take and how to perform certain simple traffic-oriented tasks using your YouTube videos. If you had been reading how lots of other website owners had been getting loads of traffic from YouTube, it is time for you to join the successful train and start experiencing very meaningful traffic to your website from YouTube. The right step to take are outlined in this brief discuss.

What You Must Know In Order To Drive More Traffic to Your Site Via YouTube

It isn't rocket science to drive traffic from YouTube irrespective of the type of business you are doing. Saying this is important because some site owners may unnecessarily be intimated by the huge results of those that had been there before them. The skill you have or whatever qualification you may have wouldn't count if you fail to read and digest the following three important YouTube traffic tips.

1 - The first thing is to submit your videos to YouTube. Don't be deterred if you don't know how to create and upload any video at the moment because it doesn't take more a couple of minutes. Essentially you will need free 'Camstudio' which is readily available on the internet to create any prolific video to be shown on YouTube. If you are among those internet marketers that still find it difficult to join the social marketing 'war-fare'; you have to wake up today if you really want your online business to survive.

While using YouTube as a traffic-driving medium, you have to ensure you give your videos adequate titles. This is important because there are lots of marketers that make the mistake of titling their YouTube videos for the search engines. This may not yield the desired popularity for such video because the search engines are becoming smarter than they were few months back. The best option is to give your videos proper titles that will appeal to humans and be sure of its popularity once it starts getting shared and voluntarily linked to on the internet.

The basics concept of any video you upload online should be to either entertain or educate so you have to carefully make it worth your viewers' while. If you have some educational or informative tips to give, nothing prevents you from sitting in front of your computer and recording 2 or 3 minutes clean video of yourself talking. This is quite acceptable online and can go viral as long as you have useful or informative content in the video.

2 - You shouldn’t forget to include the link to your website or blog in any video you create and upload to the YouTube. This is very important especially if your sole aim of uploading such video is to drive traffic to your online or offline business. The time you spent on the video creation may have been wasted if you fail to provide link back to your site so that those that view your videos can click-in to your blog or site to see more of your offerings. It is common to believe that many viewers wouldn’t type in the URL in the YouTube videos but the truth is that many actually do.

You Can Create a Community of YouTube Video Viewers

3 - This is similar to asking potential clients to subscribe to your newsletter but in this case, they would be subscribing to your YouTube channel so that they will know when you post new videos. This can effectively bring repeated traffic to your site especially if you have very insightful videos on display. You can simply ask people to subscribe to your YouyTube video channel by mentioning it at the beginning and the end of your videos but be sure to make your videos are informative as possible.

How To Make Money Using Credit Cards

Most of us only think of credit cards as ways to spend money and not ways to make money. But, if you really think about we could all stand to make a bit more money using the same kinds of tricks that card issuers use to get our business. Credit card companies have become infamous for luring new customers with the offer of no interest on purchases. While this sounds great in the beginning, consumers quickly find that once the introductory period runs out they are slammed with a high standard rate. For those who carry a balance on their credit cards this usually means spending loads of extra money on interest. Of course, the easy way to avoid that cost is to pay off your bill each month, but that also means taking money out of your checking account which just means breaking even on your finances.

Imagine if you could have the best of both worlds. You could spend on your credit cards without having to empty out your cheque account at the end of each month and also not have to spend a bunch of money on interest. In fact, you can do just that with a unique spending plan that gives you the freedom of using credit cards but comes with a profit instead of a cost. This plan is not for everyone, only those people who can spend wisely and save carefully. Those that fit the bill can make a neat little profit through nothing more than normal spending.

Making Money With Credit Cards

Step 1: The first step to making easy money with credit cards is to seek out those zero interest introductory offers. Make sure that you find a card that offers you an interest free period of several months, the longer that period lasts the better more money you can make. If you can find a deal that is also free of annual fees then you stand to knock up your profit a bit more. You will have to fill out an application and be approved for this card, so having a fairly good credit file is necessary.

Step 2: Once you have procured the credit card the next thing to do is to use it as often as possible. You should switch all of your spending to your credit card instead of using cash or a cheque. This means every time you go out to dinner, buy groceries, or fill your car with petrol you should use your credit card. At the end of each month pay only the minimum payment. Make absolutely sure that you pay your bill on time each month so you do not lose that zero interest deal.

Step 3: After you have paid your minimum payment and any other necessary bills, take the remainder of your cash and put it into a high yield savings account. This is how you will make money. Over time the money that you put into the account will grow far past what you need to pay off your credit card bill. Since that card has zero interest it should cost you nothing to revolve your balance, but you will be earning big money on your savings account.

Step 4: Finally, when it comes time for your zero interest promotional offer to expire, simply pay it off with the principle money in your savings account. This will leave you with a net profit of all of the interest you earned. There you have it, free money just by doing your normal spending. The only trick is to maintain good credit so that you can continually get those zero interest cards and good accounting skills so you can count up your big profits.

How To Find Genuine Work At Home Opportunities

The Internet has exploded with opportunities for those who are looking for an additional stream of income or want to break away from their current 9-5 and have more flexibility while working at home. There isn’t a single type of person that wants to work from home. It can run the gamut from the stay-at-home moms who want to find opportunities to the executive who has recently been laid off and needs to find something in the meantime to tide himself over. Whether you simply want to make a little extra cash or you are trying to bridge the gap between full-time to flex-time work, there is something for everyone who is looking to find a work at home opportunity. But, how do you find the right opportunities for yourself? If you have done any research at all, you will realize that there is not a shortage of scams out there. You have to be prudent in your choices so you don’t end up spending time or money on a so-called opportunity that is of little to no worth. Here are some legitimate sources that will help you on the road to freedom and flexibility. What Opportunities Are There Out There?

1. Freelance Writing
Freelance writing is an opportunity that does not necessarily require a lot of experience though it is helpful if you have it. There are countless topics that clients are willing to pay to have content written for and you do not have to be an expert in order to write about it. If you do the right kind of research, freelance writing can be a lucrative endeavour. There are a many reputable sites such as oDesk and Freelance that offer thousands of opportunities at a time. Another way to find resources for freelance writing is to network. If you know someone who is already writing from home, then ask him or her how they got started. You may be surprised how many opportunities come from putting yourself out there and asking the right questions.

2. Customer Service or Technical Support
If you want to continue working in a field that you are familiar with or have experience such as customer service, sales or technical support, there are sources out there that can help. Sites like Arise and Solo Gig have listings for a variety of consulting or contract positions. For Arise, you must become certified as an Arise Certified Professional. Once this happens, you are in control and have the ability to choose which clients you will work for, how many hours, etc. Solo Gig lists offers that need to be filled quickly. If you are skilled in the technical or professional arena, you can find positions that need placement as soon as possible.

3. Odd Jobs and Tasks
There is a growing community of employers who do not have the time to complete a variety of tasks. These tasks can range from the very simple to the more complicated. For example, there may be jobs that require creating a spreadsheet or another that wants to have forms filled out online. It really could be anything but the common factor is that it is a task that usually does not require a lot of time. There are sites where you can find many different types of short term offers. A couple of examples are Short Task and Live Work. Finding legitimate work opportunities from home can be extremely time consuming if you don’t know where to look. If you are able to streamline your efforts then you can put that energy into finding the right job that will allow the flexibility and freedom you have been longing for!

The Internet Marketing Tools that Make Money for You

Internet marketing is a good way make a living online. Through Internet marketing, you can promote affiliate products, sell freelance service or market your website; and in return you can make even more money than you make from your job. But Internet marketing has more competition so you need to be more creative and hardworking.

There are various tools for Internet marketing. These are the tools that can help you market your products successfully. Below are some of the Internet marketing tools available today:

Blog
Blog is one of the powerful Internet marketing tools that most of the online marketers are suggesting these days. Blogging will not cost you anything and it can potentially generate targeted traffic to your page for long term. Starting a blog is free using the blogging platforms like Blogger and Wordpress. Then you can introduce yourself, let other know what you are doing and start posting useful and interesting content that your targeted prospects are interest on. Keep updating your blog with good content to build traffic and creditability.

Once you have blogging for some time, your readers and visitors would have known you and you may then write blog posts about your products or write reviews on the affiliate products that you want to promote to your blog visitors.

Article
Articles are another great way to get exposure for anything that you want to market online. The process of using articles to market your online business isn't complicated. You start by writing informative articles or 'how to' articles that are relevant to your product or business, include your website link in author bio of each of your articles and submit them to online publishing websites.

Your articles mustn't be written like sale pitches because the online publishing websites and article directories will not accept them. Make your articles easy to read, straight to the point and give some value to the readers. This will make the readers interested to click on your website link to find out more good information from you or know about your offer once they have finished reading your article.

Forum
Whatever product or service you are trying to sell online, there will be forums that are discussing topics related to what you are offering. The forums might not talk about products but what they are discussing and posting have a relation to what you are selling. For instance, say you are promoting online games and they are forums that discuss about how to play online games, the strategies they can use and so on. These forums certainly related to your products. The members of the forums are your potential customers. The question is how to direct these potential customers your site to buy your game products?

Participation is the answer. Joining and participating discussion in the related forums will enable you to establish an image in the forum communities. The key to building a good image in the communities is to contribute useful and valuable information that the members are looking for. Always be helpful in the forums and sharing good tips will gradually build up your name.

Add your website links in the signature line. Since you are providing valuable information frequently in the communities, the members who read you messages will see your link in your signature and probably follow your link to check out what you are offering or to get more useful information from you. So another free targeted traffic source to your business website.

Ways To Succeed in Facebook Marketing

Facebook is said to be a very efficient avenue in online marketing. It is easy to start up with a social networking site like Facebook. After you are aware of the Facebook basics, you can set up your profile on Facebook, you can begin with Facebook marketing. You will need to get your page listed in search results. Further, you can try and improve the traffic into your pages by appropriate techniques.

To improve the traffic into your Facebook page, you will certainly need to promote your pages. You will need to reach your potential customers with things that interest them. If you are selling a product or service, you can use Facebook to promote it better among your customers. You can even provide good offers or discounts to people who claim to be your fans. You can also try and collect their feedbacks on the products or services you are trying to propagate. But, you should be prepared to take in both positive and negative feedback from your customers. Further, these comments can help to find popularize your product or service.

When your customers provide you with feedback, their friends will also be able to view the comments you were provided, and if the comments are positive, they will certainly help to boost your sales. This instance will show how powerful Facebook marketing can be.

Many online marketers will try and gain more fans. But, it is not completely true that more fans can gain you a stronger campaign. Instead, you should be able to engage your fans. You will need to regularly try and converse with them. If you are not able to keep up this communication, your fan page may lack any movement and you may have to part with the fans you have already gained in this website.

You are required to spend a good amount of time on your Facebook site. You will have to have time to read the comments that your fans or customers have provided you with and also visit their pages to comment on them. If you need more fans into your page, you will need to spend enough time on them.

You can find several features in Facebook to interact with your customers. You can poke or send messages to your customers. You can put up videos and images to keep your profile complete to the fullest extend possible.

Further, you can keep your audience in several segments, based on specific characteristics like their age, place of residence, nationality or gender. So, you should be able to communicate with the right segment of people in the right way. You can plan your strategies according to the kind of audience group. So, learn who your audience is and cater to their tastes accordingly.

5 Great Ways to Use Twitter for Your Business

Twitter has taken the world by storm from the moment it first went online. It is already on par with Facebook, mostly because all people use them both. Facebook is used for their status updates and communication with others, and Twitter… well, for the same things, except at a much faster rate (if Facebook is used daily and mostly from a PC, Twitter is accessed every few minutes by the most prominent users from their mobile devices).

Of course, big and small businesses alike couldn’t possibly stand idle while a whole new market is forming and are getting into the game, too. From clothing companies to car dealers, almost everyone has at least an account for their advertising and public relationships management. A lot of the messages that they are Tweeting are advertisements, which, along with useless junk from spammers, are not really liked by the other users.

But there are those who do everything right and benefit greatly from an almost instant increase in popularity and therefore, sales and profit.

So, how can your business that just registered an account at Twitter start benefiting from it without annoying other users and gaining negative reputation?

Here are five great tips that will help you get started:

1. Answer questions and be helpful. Whether it’s related to your business, to the industry you work in or you personally, you should always try to answer all questions as well as possible. This will show other people that you are active, helpful and know what you’re doing, which will just lead to an increase in your follower count and business popularity.

2. Share information about your business. The whole idea that Twitter is based on is constant and fast updates about the users’ life. Your business account shouldn’t be different, either! Share facts, news, activity updates and anything else that isn’t classified as a secret. It’ll be like talking directly to a lot of reporters at once, and chances are high that word will spread about your company on other sites, especially if your information is useful, interesting and/or entertaining. This, in turn, will get you popularity, links, traffic, and… you guessed it, more money :-).

3. Talk about the industry. Your company is doing business in a certain niche or industry, and if you are at least somewhat successful, it means you have a bit of expertise on the subject. Don’t let that go to waste or just internal projects, talk about it on Twitter. Share your thoughts on the latest news, on what other companies and individuals are doing, predict things that you think will change in the future, etc.

4. Use it for social marketing. Create anticipation of new products, offer special, unique invites for beta testers, give away discounts, organize contests and viral campaigns and do other things which will attract attention and get people talking about you and your company.

5. Share interesting links… and Twitpics. If you found something interesting and useful, don’t keep it to yourself, share it! If you won’t, then someone else will, so there is no point in not doing it. And share Twitpics – Twitpic.com is a service that lets you share photos and images on Twitter, and their links are the most clicked on, by a large margin. If you’ve got something interesting going on at your office or you’re attending a great seminar with lots of important people, take a few pictures and share them. Everyone will like that!

These are just five of the many, many ways you can use Twitter to promote yourself, your business and your brand. If you come up with a great, innovative idea, try it! If you succeed, the benefits are excellent, and if you fail, it will be forgotten soon anyway, so why not do it?

5 Simple Steps to Posting Your First eBay Auction

It's surprisingly simple to get started posting your very first auction on eBay. Here's what you need to do.

Step 1: Open an eBay seller's account
If you've bought things on eBay, then you already have an account - just log in with it and click 'Sell' in the toolbar at the top of the page, then click 'Create a seller's account'. If you've never used eBay before, then you'll need to open an account first using the 'register' link underneath the toolbar, and then click 'Sell' and 'Create a seller's account'. The eBay site will then guide you through the process. For security, this may involve giving card details and bank information.

Step 2: Decide what to sell
For your first little experiment with eBay, it doesn't really matter what you sell. Take a look around the room you're in - I'm sure there's something in there that you're not all that attached to and could put in the post. Small books and CDs are ideal first items.

Step 3: Submit your item.
Click 'Sell', and you're on your way to listing your item.

The first thing you need to do is choose a category - it's best to just type in what the item is and let eBay choose for you. Next, write a title and description. Include key words you think people will search for in the title box, and all the information you have about the item in the description box.

Now set a starting price. $0.01 is the best starting price, as it draws people in to bid who otherwise wouldn't, and items will almost never finish at such a low price. The next thing to set is the duration of the auction: 3, 5, 7 or 10 days. This is up to you: longer sales will usually get more bids, but will also seem to drag on forever. If you've taken a picture, add it now - items with pictures always sell for more. Finally, tick the payment methods you will accept (just PayPal is best for now), and where you will post to (limit yourself to your own country to begin with). Submit and you're done!

Step 4: Wait for it to sell
This is just a matter of sitting back and letting eBay do its thing - buyers will find your item and leave bids on it. Some bidders might email you with questions about the item, and you should do your best to answer these questions as quickly as you can.

Remember that if your item doesn't sell then you can list it again for free.

Step 5: Collect payment and post it
eBay will sent your buyer emails guiding them through the process of sending you payment for the item. Make sure you have the money before you send anything.

Once you've got the payment, all you need to do is pack the item for posting (make sure to use some bubble wrap), take the buyer's address from the confirmation email eBay sent you, and write it on the parcel. Put some stamps on, post it, and you're done!

I hope you enjoyed selling your first item. Now that you're starting to get into it, the next email will give you a checklist of things you need to do to be a successful seller.

The Pros and Cons of Selling on eBay

Are you interested in becoming an eBay seller? If you are, you are definitely not alone, as eBay has become a relatively quick and easy way to make money online. Each day, a large number of individuals use eBay to make extra money from home and a few lucky ones are even able to make enough money to support themselves or their families. Before you jump on the eBay selling bandwagon, you are advised to take a few minutes and examine the pros and cons of selling on eBay.

One of the many pros, or plus sides, to selling on eBay is the fact that is it is relatively easy to do. Once you create an eBay account, you can start listing items that you have in your possession for sale right away. When doing so, it is also easy to do. eBay has a step-by-step process for listing items for sale, in traditional auction formats or buy it now formats. In fact, eBay also has a program that lets you compile your auctions, with pictures and descriptions, when you aren’t even connected to the internet. As soon as you connect to the internet, you can begin to upload your listings and have them start right away.

Another one of the many pros to selling on eBay is that just about anyone can do it. You don’t have to have big fancy, expensive items to sell on eBay. In fact, a large number of those selling on eBay are just selling items that are taking up space in their homes; items they don’t want anymore. If you are interesting in becoming an eBay seller, but you aren’t sure as to how much you can depend on eBay for income, you may want to think about testing the waters. You can do this by listing the items have you have around your home for sale. Items that tend to sell relatively well are lots, or groups, of toys and infant clothing.

While there are a number of pros, or plus sides, to selling on eBay, there are also a number of cons, or downsides, to doing so as well. One of the biggest cons or downsides to selling on eBay is the competition. As it was previously mentioned, a large number of internet users have started using eBay to make extra money or even make a living. This is what leads to multiple auction listings for the exact same items. While this is nice for the eBay buyers, it can hurt you as a seller. When the supplier is higher than the demand, you may not make as much money off of your items as you had originally hoped to, if they even sell at all.

Another downside to selling on eBay is the fees associated with doing so. In recent years, eBay has redone their fee structure, often to raise their fees. Although these fees are still considered relatively low, they could put a damper on your profits, which alone are sometimes hard to come by. Of course, there are ways that you can the most out of eBay fees. For instance, if you have a “hot seller,” you could start your auction out at a low price, as the fees are less for doing so; however, you are taking a gamble, as you never have any guarantees as for how much your items will sell for. Perhaps, the unknown is one of the biggest downsides to selling on eBay; you never really know if you are going to make money or even if you will end up losing money.

As you likely already know, the decision as to whether or not you want to become an eBay seller is yours to make, but, when making your decision, you are advised to keep the above mentioned points in mind. With a relatively equal amount of pros and cons, you may be wondering what your best option is. For more accurate information, you may want to think about testing the eBay seller waters, as you are able to sell whenever you want, with no minimum auction requirements.

Tips for Selecting a Good Affiliate Program to Promote

Your success in affiliate marketing part depend on the kinds of affiliate programs your are marketing.To make your affiliate marketing campaign works, you obviously need to participate in an affiliate program that offers worthy and quality products. Below are some tips that can help you choose an affiliate program that is good for you:

1. Affiliate programs that are associated with many experts in that particular niche usually are in certain level of standard and quality. Joining one of these programs will assure you that the products of the program you will be promoting are in good standard.

2. The program that is catering to a growing target market. This will ensure you that there will be more and continuous demands for your referrals. Ask question. There are forums and discussions you can participate in to get good and reliable feedbacks.

3. A program with a compensation plan that pays out a residual income and a payout of 30% or more would be a great choice. There are some programs offering this kind of compensation. Look closely for one. Do not waste your time with programs that do not reward substantially for your efforts.

4. Be aware of the minimum quotas that you must fulfill or sales target that is too hard to achieve. Some affiliate programs imposes pre-requisites before you get your commissions. Just be sure that you are capable of attaining their requirements.

5. Ask for program recommendations in the community forum of your niche. The experienced marketers who see your question may recommend you the reliable programs they have success with. Other things you can ask about are like is the program offers a real and viable product? Does the program provide a lot of free tools and resources helpful to affiliate? and any other questions you think are essential.

Maintaining Your Blog for Long Term Income

Online blogging is one of the fastest growing platforms on the internet and every other individual who is aware of some basics of blogging is considering blogging as a tool for generating some extra income. However, a person can start a blog quite easily but the big concern comes into play when it comes to the maintenance of the blog.

Online blogging is not about making a blog and doing nothing after the creation of the blog instead, it is about creating and then maintaining a blog for a long period of time. If your blog is properly maintained, then users will remain attracted towards your blog for a long period of time, if not maintained properly, then they won’t be considering your services or products for their queries and concerns.

Below are some blog maintenance tips that can help you make money from blogging for long period of time:

The quality of the content
This is the most important aspect to consider and to maintain. The blog without quality content is just like a body without soul. The content should have characteristics of freshness and quality should be there each and every time. The reader will again and again come over to your blog if he finds some useful and fresh information for his/her concerns. You should maintain your blog on timely basis like daily, weekly or on monthly basis whichever suits you according to your schedule. Different types of blogs need different kind of maintenance but quality content is the major aspect of almost every type of blog apart from a video blog which needs to be maintained at every cost.

Management of the time
Time management is also required from your part if you want to properly maintain your blog. You must devote some time to your blog on regular basis in order to keep your blog active. You must post new and unique content on regular and consistent basis. You can outsource this task to someone else if you don’t have sufficient time available for posting content on your blog.

Keep your blog up to date
Always keep your blog up to date. You must discuss new and trendy topics on your blog related to the niche. If you have a blog related to the computers then you must discuss about latest technology rather disclosing the features of Pentium III and Pentium IV. People are only interested in new and up to date content, out dated content or information will surely leave a question mark on the overall reputation of your blog.

5 Money Making, Recession Resistant Home Businesses.

In a recession, or in other times when the economy is lagging and jobs are being lost, most people consider it to be a very poor time to start thinking about starting a home business. However, tough economic times can also present great money making opportunities to those who prepare and are willing to take a chance on being successful.

Starting a home business in the midst of a recession may seem scary, but not having a backup plan in case you should suddenly lose your job can be even more scary.

Here are 5 relatively recession resistant, money making home business ideas to consider.

1. Internet Marketing Services

Internet marketing services are in high demand in an industry that is growing by leaps and bounds. Anyone who has an online business presence needs to know how best to effectively market their website on the Internet and most will consult an Internet marketing firm for assistance. That's where the independent Internet marketing specialist comes in.

As small business owners look for ways to build traffic and increase sales in a tough economy, a knowledgeable Internet marketer can help them gain a strong return on investment using very cost efficient means, which makes this a potentially recession resistant business you should include with any money making ideas you might be considering.

2. Medical Billing

A medical billing career could be very promising, either as a home business or a work from home medical billing job. Medical billing and coding lends itself well to working at home, and many in the medical billing and coding profession have been able to do just that, either by setting up a home business and working for themselves with independent physicians as their clients, or by working from home in medical billing jobs with larger health care firms that make and track medical billing work assignments electronically.

In a tough economy, medical providers still need to handle their billing and health care is generally seen as an industry that's highly resistant to recession and has strong money making potential.

3. Home Staging Home Business

If you have an eye for interior decorating and want to run your own money making home business,a home staging business can provide a great, low-cost start up opportunity for you and it's a great home business to start part-time on weekends while you're still employed.

A recession or down economy can often mean a real estate market flooded with homes for sale, including homes held by banks and mortgage companies in foreclosure. A home stager can show clients how to make their homes stand out from the competition and get it sold more quickly. Real estate agents and home lenders may also be fruitful contacts for anyone engaged in this type of recession resistant home business.

4. eBay Trading Assistant

eBay Trading Assistants help people sell their items on eBay. eBay Trading Assistants who operate a home business typically go out to client's homes or businesses to photograph and pick up items and then sell them on eBay on consignment, with the Trading Assistant handling all of the details of the sale and collecting a commission once the item is sold.

In a recession, people are looking for money making ideas to help pay bills. Selling unused and unwanted items on eBay is one way to that. However, not everyone knows how or wants to put forth the effort to sell the times themselves, so making money on eBay as a Trading Assistant could be a very lucrative recession resistant business in hard times.

5. Virtual Assistant

The Virtual Assistant (VA) industry is growing fast and becoming a popular for those who want to run their own home business to get started - usually by doing the things they have done well in the past for prior employers.

As businesses attempt to cut costs and lay off workers in a down economy, they may decide to outsource some office functions in order to save money. Additionally, for small business owners who are trying to pull in extra business during down times, hiring a virtual assistant can allow them to focus on more profitable activities. A virtual assistant business can be a low cost, recession resistant, money making business that just might keep you very busy and help get you through hard times.