February 3, 2012

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Making Money Before You Even Have a Product

November 18, 2011 By 12 Comments

Waiting until you have a product of your own to make money online means you’re missing out on a lot of potential profit that you could be making while you get your own products ready.

You don’t want to waste the opportunity. First, create a plan or a map of how much money you’d like to earn online and then take the steps to fulfill that plan. If you don’t have a plan or a marketing strategy to use to make money, then you won’t be as successful.

You don’t always have to go with what you know when you want to make money as an online entrepreneur. Pick a market or a niche than interests you. If it interests you, it’ll show through your efforts, and you can promote as an affiliate.

If you can write, you can earn money writing for other online businesses or marketers while you’re building your own products. You can write blogs, reports, articles and even eBooks. And other service jobs are out there too – like building backlinks for marketers, creating blogs and more.

If you can’t write or are not comfortable with it, then teach. Set up a teaching website sharing information about whatever you’re knowledgeable in and charge for lessons or online classes – ad do them via video.

Create a how-to workshop. There are many people who want to learn from the comfort of their own homes. Just make a list of the topics you know and pick a few of those to expand. Create a lesson plan, put up a site (you can even use free ones) and announce your site through free press releases, forums or blogs.

You can also let your site be used by marketers who are already making money. Sell them some advertising space on your site and promote their products. You want to make sure that what they’re offering is legitimate – because if it’s not and people get upset, you’ll get tainted with the same brush simply by association.

You can also create a site and promote the products that Amazon or other retailers sell via a link on your site. You’ll earn commission based on the products that people buy. You might start out with small amounts of money, but it will grow and it’s a fairly easy way to make money online.

This is known as affiliate marketing of tangible items. You can also check out marketplaces such as Clickbank and PayDotCom for digital download products to promote.

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Filed Under: Internet Marketing Tagged With: advertising, articles, backlinks, blogs, clickbank, digital products, ebooks, lessons, making money online, marketers, online businesses, online classes, product, reports

Answering the Question, “What Do You Do for a Living?”

October 27, 2011 By 13 Comments

 

When you make a living online, a lot of people won’t understand what it is you do.  Some of them will think you’re nothing more than a spammer – just because you work on the Internet.  You might even run into people who automatically assume you’re into promoting porn, because they think that’s all the Internet is used for!

You need to be prepared to deal with people like this.  Some of them may even be close friends and family members who are simply ignorant about the various marketing uses for the World Wide Web.

The first thing you need to explain to people is that very few people who work on the Internet are spammers.  Spammers actually make up a very, very small minority of those who make money online.

If you do any sort of email marketing, you should explain that every single person you send email to has signed up specifically to your newsletter, and clicked a link to confirm that they really want to be on your list.

Explain to them that subscribing to your newsletter is a lot like signing up for delivery of the newspaper, or a magazine subscription.  People sign up to your newsletter, and then you send them valuable information, not just advertising.

If you sell eBooks online, you can explain to people that you’re a bit like a book publisher, but all of the books you publish are in digital format.  You can tell them that instead of paying a lot of extra money for the printing, binding, marketing, and shipping of a physical book, you eliminate those costs by selling all of your books as downloadable products.

If people still don’t understand, you could even show them what an eBook is by letting them view one on your computer. If your main business is advertising affiliate products, you can tell people you’re in advertising.

Explain to them that you run a website (or websites) and you place advertising on that website.  Every time someone clicks an ad and purchases something, you receive a commission. If you make most of your money through AdSense or selling advertising on your sites, you can simply tell people that you place advertisements on your websites, and you charge advertisers for that ad space.

If you want to, you could show them some of your sites or blogs to illustrate the point. Some people feel more comfortable just telling people they design websites.  If you’re a decent website builder, this will probably really impress people, but be prepared to get requests from people asking if you’ll make them a site, too.

If you don’t want to deal with all of the questions about spamming and porn, just telling someone you design websites will usually be enough to throw them off your trail.  If people are particularly persistent with their questions, you can start to point out some examples of people who have been very successful making money online.

Don’t just use examples of famous Internet marketers like John Reese or Yanik Silver! Use some examples with verifiable “proof” in mainstream media.  For example, the famous “make money” blogger John Chow has a number of stories out there about him.

There’s also teenaged entrepreneur Ashley Squalls who has made mainstream news in a big way by making over $70,000 per month with advertising on her site that gives away MySpace layouts. And of course, the infamous Perez Hilton – a celebrity blogger who cashes in on the ad space his blog has.

You should try to realize that some people will just never understand what you do.  Try to explain it the best way you can, and if it doesn’t work, accept it.  Some people just won’t get it. If the in-laws or your spouse are nagging you because your money isn’t yet streaming in, and you feel pressured, put together a simple presentation that answers all of their questions and puts their minds at ease.

 

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Filed Under: Work from home Tagged With: advertising, Affiliate Marketing, email marketing ebooks, living online, make money online, marketing, website

Advertising as an Income Stream

October 20, 2011 By 35 Comments

Advertising as an Income Stream

While most of you are hopefully developing more than one stream of revenue for your blog, today I wanted to talk about one in particular and that’s advertising.

A typical blog can incorporate several advertising methods and locations throughout the site without detracting from the overall user’s experience.  Remember, it’s never a good idea to try and confuse your readers so they aren’t sure where the ad ends and the content begins.

Another consideration when choosing which advertisers and products to align yourself with, is do they fit with the demographic that currently visits your blog? If you write about photography, then showing ads for sailboats might not be the best fit for you. Try to tailor your ads with products that can actually benefit your readers, and enhance their lives.

You may also want to consider rotating your ads so that readers aren’t continually faced with offers for the same product. You may even end up increasing your sales, because after a reader has purchased a product it won’t matter how many impressions you flash in front of him…he’s not going to buy it a second time!

Here are a few of the more popular ad models that are available to you throughout your blog and its assets.

Banner Advertising

Banners are visual ads that can be placed throughout your site. A few of the more traditional spots include (but are not limited to):

- The header
- The Footer
- Sidebar
- Above, below, or even within the post itself
- Post specific (If your post on the Canon rebel becomes popular online that would be a great place for a Canon dealer  to actually advertise the camera itself)

Often going through a broker will result in more advertisers; the tradeoff of course is that they take a percentage of the sale each month.

Text Link Ads

There are plenty of sites who are willing to pay for a contextual link from another ranking site within their industry. A typical PageRank 3 website or blog can expect to pull in $25.00 per month per link with these. You should always specify that you are selling the link, and not the PR benefits.

Sponsored Reviews

Companies are more than willing to pay you for your time in writing out a review on their product, service, or even their website. Depending on the length of the review, the quality of writing, and of course the value you place on your skills It isn’t uncommon for blog owners to charge anywhere from $100.00 to $500.00 per review.

Sponsored Tweets

Most of us have incorporated social media into our blogs, and have invested time and energy into building a loyal following using platforms such as Twitter and can reap the rewards that come with those numbers. When you consider there are users with 50,000 followers getting $50.00 per tweet you start to get an idea of the potential these lists have for their owners. As with any type of advertising you look at, try to keep the subject relevant to the topics you already cover.

E-Mail Marketing

Depending how long you’ve been blogging for you may or may not have started building a subscriber list of people who have opted in (usually for a gift or reward of some kind), and which is known as permission based marketing.

You can choose to sell ad space within the emails themselves, or you can sell them the entire mail out after you’ve approved the message being sent of course.

Contextual Ads

Using services like Google’s AdSense, or Kontera’s contextual text to show your readers advertisements that are relevant to the material on the current page is probably one of the easiest methods to get started earning with. With these ads you get paid either after showing a certain amount of ads, or when a visitor clicks on an ad and you then earn anywhere from a few cents to a few dollars depending on the type and quality of the ad that was being shown at that time.

Feedburner Ads

Integrating AdSense into your feeds can also be a great way to give your AdSense earnings a boost. Google has made it a fairly simple process that will likely take you no more than a few minutes to implement, and depending on the size of your subscribers base could result in a few more clicks a day for you. The tradeoff will of course be the showing of ads in a spot where readers have already become accustomed to none.

When it comes to earning money with your blog there is no shortage of opportunities lying around awaiting your decision and subsequent use. The thing will often be choosing the best methods that fit in with the topic and style of your blog and strike a balance between offering up high quality content for your readers, while also allowing you to earn a living.

 

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Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: advertising, banners, contextual, email marketing, feedburner ads, Google, sponsored reviews, Sponsored Tweets, text link ads

What is Network Marketing?

July 18, 2011 By 10 Comments

Network Marketing

Introduction

Network Marketing is the current term for what was originally known as Multilevel Marketing, or MLM. Social Marketing is also sometimes used, but they are all the same business system; one where a manufacturer of products or services uses common people, you and me, as distributors to sell their products/services directly to the consuming public without commercial distribution or advertising and marketing.

 

The original MLM companies were pioneers, starting in the late 1940’s and 1950’s, in nutrition and green household products, but now almost every consumer product and service imaginable is offered through this method.

 

Innovative Pay Plans

The “Multilevel” in MLM comes from the other significant innovation of this business, that of being able to recruit new distributors into their personal organization, or “downline”, and get paid on their sales efforts, for as long as they are in business! This was, and still is, a radical concept in sales compensation, and the key to a very good and stable income for you!

 

Network marketing companies use what would otherwise be advertising, sales, marketing and distribution funds to pay commissions directly to its distributors and their downline organizations. This is what makes network marketing such a powerful wealth vehicle for the average person.

 

In no other business, can you get paid not only for your own efforts but also for developing and mentoring others to help them achieve success similar to yours. Tens of thousands of millionaires have been made by motivated people in the network marketing industry who started with nothing more than their own ability to tell others about the products they offer. Think of the possibilities for your success with the availability of inexpensive websites and online traffic generation methods.

 

Everyperson’s Franchise

The start up costs for a network marketing business are minimal. Typically it is nothing more than paying a distributor fee and the initial cost of products for personal or demonstration use and whatever marketing methods, online and offline, that you will use to attract business builders and product users.

 

Compared to a conventional franchise business, or even the cost of training to be a realtor, MLM opportunities are truly available to almost anyone with a desire to build a business, and the equity that comes from it, for themselves.

 

And, like other businesses, network marketing businesses have equity in the marketplace. That is, they can be willed to heirs and bought and sold outright because they have a market value that can be independently determined by gross sales, history and good will.

 

Downside

The most significant downside to a network marketing business is the bad name that has been associated with the term, MLM, by some people. It has often been wrongly called a “Ponzi” or pyramid scheme because of the lack of understanding of the pay plan and distributors who have taken advantage of naive newcomers and some unscrupulous MLM start ups that cheated investors and early distributors. Even one or two of the pioneer companies in the field have been in legal trouble in the past for overselling the business opportunity to prospective new distributors and other unsavory practices.

 

But, keep in mind that pyramid schemes are illegal and that detractors and the unmotivated will use any bad rumor to try to distract you from your personal improvement goals. A business start up of any kind is not for everybody!

 

The other downside to a network marketing business is that it is a commission only business. You will only get paid after you have sold products. These are self funded businesses, so you need to either start part time or have some reserve funds to draw from while you develop your business. This can be a serious problem for some, but, the rewards of building a business from scratch, from nothing, to something that can provide a large and stable income for the rest of your life are invaluable to those who take on the challenge!

 

Matrix Plan not Pyramid

Think of the compensation plan of a typical network marketing company as a “Matrix” of companies that exist because you helped those business owners become successful enough to be independent. You are paid for your leadership efforts as those companies become more successful by building new business leaders in their “matrix”.

If anything, according to Robert Kiyasoki, it is an upside down pyramid, that is, one with few at the bottom and many at the top.

Choosing a Network Marketing Company

As I stated earlier, there are many different companies in the MLM field, so choosing which company to join can be difficult.

As with any other decision of this type, look to yourself first for guidance, here a few suggestions:

  • Do you enjoy talking about technology?
  • Are you interested in health and wellness?
  • Are you a “greenie?
  • Are you a “Power Shopper”?
  • Do you like helping others?

 

Next narrow the field by researching the company’s history

  • How long have they been in business?
  • What is the business background of the owners/founders?
  • Do they manufacture their products?

Manufacturers are preferable to companies that offer “private label” products

  • What is their reputation?

Have they had legal problems?

Have they ever had compensation plan disputes with their distributors?

Have they ever been sued?

Have their products hurt any users

Have their products killed any users?

  • What is their product return policy?

Anything less than an unconditional satisfaction policy for consumers is unacceptable!

 

  • Talk with other new distributors
  • Talk with product users
  • Use the products

 

Take a good look at their compensation plan:

  • How will you get paid?

Do you get paid only for selling products? (This is good)

Do you get paid for recruiting? (This is bad!)

Getting paid for product sales, only product sales, by your downline organization is the only legal method of compensation

How many first level distributors will you need for the maximum pay plan levels?

How deep does the pay plan go?

This means on how many levels of distributors below yours you get paid

  • Test the plan

Use a spreadsheet to understand how the plan will work for you

Talk with the person recruiting you about how they get paid, in detail

If they don’t understand it, don’t sign up with them!

 

Finally, go with your feelings about the company, products, people and, most importantly, is network marketing the right opportunity for you?

 

Summary

A network marketing business can provide you, and your family, with the kind of lifestyle that you have dreamed about. It is the “Everyperson’s Franchise” that, in today’s stagnant economy, you can use to improve your financial circumstances, build equity and pass along to your heirs. And, you can enjoy the additional benefit of helping others to improve their lives as you improve yours!

 

But, do the research to make certain that you are joining a reputable company who’s products you will use and one that will stand with you for years to come. You are making a decision that you must be proud of as you build the life of your dreams!

 

About the Author

Ken Duggan is dedicated to offering secure, entrepreneurial career alternatives for motivated people. Create a financially secure, abundant and healthier life for yourself and your family by building a network marketing business rapidly, using the most effective online marketing strategies available. Visit my site, now, to learn more!

 

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Filed Under: Work from home Tagged With: advertising, Business, distributors, downline, MLM, multi level marketing, network marketing, recruit, sales, social marketing, wealth

Text Links Versus Image Ads

June 24, 2011 By 4 Comments

text links vs. image links

Most visitors pass through one of two types of links.  Text links are when you string together a word, phrase or sentence that’s hyperlinked to another domain.  Image ads are things like banners, button, and pictures – graphical images that are hyperlinked with a URL.

Both types of links have their benefits and drawbacks.  Which type you use will be based on your site and your traffic – and you should ideally test both types to see which performs best with your particular demographic.

In general, text ads tend to pull a lot more clicks than image ads, because people have become “banner blind.”  That means people have learned to ignore banners, because they know they’re ads.

Text ads are a part of every website, so they’re harder to ignore.  This is one reason why AdSense is so successful.  Of course, some sites could benefit from a few image ads.  If your site is primarily text, you might be able to make it look more appealing through the use of a few graphical banners.

Choose attractive banners with a clear call-to-action, such as banners that clearly state, “Click here for ____!”  New Internet users may not realize they can click graphics, so it’s important for banners to have this kind of call-to-action.

Just be careful not to overdo the ads on your site.  Two or three graphics per page is plenty.  If you put more than this, you risk your site looking like a banner farm, and visitors may leave before they even have time to read any of your content.

Text links are generally more effective than banners.  They can be blended in with your content and can look more like recommendations than ads.  For some reason, people prefer to buy through recommendations rather than blatant ads, so text links can help you get a higher click-through ratio than you might get with banner ads.

Coding a text link is very simple.  To create a text link on your site, you need to use the “a href” code.  A simple text link code might look something like this:

<a href=”http://www.domainname.com”>Here’s where the text you want hyperlinked will go.</a>

Coding a banner link is only slightly more complex.  You still use the “a href” code, but you also have to use the “img src” code along with it.  It should look something like this:

<a href=“http://www.domainname.com”><img src=http://www.yourdomain.com/images/banner1.jpg></a>

So the first URL in that piece of code is the URL where you want your traffic to go. The second one is the URL where the image is being hosted on your server. This will make the image show up and when the user hovers his or her mouse over it, they’ll see that it’s clickable.

Make sure you test your links to be sure they’re going to the right place.  If you accidentally link to the wrong place, you could end up losing a lot of money in commissions or sales, so it’s very important to make sure your links are in working order.

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Filed Under: Internet Marketing Tagged With: ads, advertising, banners, content, image ads, text links

Success Series Goal – Advertisers

May 12, 2011 By 1 Comment

Advertisers

Attracting advertisers to your blog is just one of the income streams that you’re able to develop in order to earn an income online. By taking the time to write high-quality posts and articles we then open ourselves up to higher traffic levels which advertisers tend to find attractive, especially when those visitors are niche specific or in an industry that is regularly in need of their services or products.

There are certain things that we can do to make it easier to attract advertisers to our site, and one of those is to ensure that we have an advertising page set up for them with statistics, locations, pricing and availability, and don’t forget to include a method for ordering.

Having a dedicated advertising page streamlines the entire process for you. It not only tells the potential advertiser that your blog does accept advertising offers, but it then goes into details about pricing traffic statistics, and contact information all at a glance.

You can choose to handle the advertising yourself using plug-ins like OIO-Publisher, or you can go with an ad agency who typically take anywhere from 25 to 50% for acting on your behalf. The good thing about going with agency is that they typically have access to a wider pool of potential advertisers who might be interested in listing on your site. I personally use buysellads.com, and have been for the past four weeks and enjoying the hands-off approach to dealing with advertisers.

Obviously, the more advertisers that you can attract to your website, the more income you can generate each month, so it’s important to try to not only try and attract new ones, but also to keep your existing advertisers happy, after all they too are in this for branding purposes as well as to make sales for their products or services.

For me advertising is one of the income streams I rely on each month, so it’s easy to see why it made it into my “Success Book” and its list of goals. The more advertisers, and the higher the quality of those advertisers will reflect directly on the income that I’m able to make.

Ideally I’d like to keep advertising revenues around 20% of the total income generated by the blog, so for a $3000.00 month I’d have to sell $600, and for a $30,000 month, I’d need to generate $6000.00 from advertising efforts.

It’s important to establish early on just what your priorities are for your site so that you can keep focused and on track. You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to get side tracked on something that isn’t productive, or in line with your goals.

Personally I ranked each area that was important to me, and to the growth of this blog, and assigned them a number with 1 being the most important. (There can only be one most important goal)

1.       Information – Now what this means is that the number one goal of this site is to provide people like yourself with information that relates to internet marketing, and building your own online business.

2.       Branding – Since the new kid on the block, I had to establish a presence with my site, my logo, my fan page, Twitter, etc. I’ve invested time and a ton of energy into building up a brand that thousands and thousands of people can recognize. Over time as I achieve my goals, these priorities will change position, and flex with my business and its development.

3.        Lead Generation – I’ve written a high quality e-book titled “E-Business; “The Insider’s Edge” and rather than selling it, I chose to give it away to my audience in exchange for their email address. I’ve then made it easy for them to opt in at multiple points of contact they might have with my site, and then can start sending them information (remember priority #1?) that is related to our industry, and when I include an affiliate link to a product I’m discussing they are more likely to purchase through it if it’s something they happen to be in the market for, or that they feel would be of benefit to them.

4.       Ad Revenue – Now in order to live; feed, and cloth myself I do still need to generate an income, and part of that income is going to come from advertisers, who promote their own sites, products, or services on mine in exchange for a monthly fee.

5.       Sales Revenue – Now this can come from selling my own products like Blog Traffic Tactics, or selling affiliate products that tie in with our industry. I use tools like Market Samurai, or Tweet Attacks on a daily basis in order to be as productive as possible, and many of my readers are in similar situations. An easy way to reward a blogger for providing great information day in and day out is to purchase something you are planning to purchase anyway, through their affiliate link. You get your product, they make a commission, and you’ve now contributed in part to their success.

 

Now just because Sales are listed last doesn’t mean that they aren’t important to me, on the contrary it absolutely is. Money means freedom, shelter, food, time to learn, time to invent, opportunities, charities, and so much more. It’s just that I set my goals up this way in order to build a solid foundation first with which to grow upon. I’m now starting my second year, and my priorities will start to change as I move into my “growth” year.

Launching your own business is the best feeling in the world! It’s a lot of hard work, and creative thinking, as well as never ending need to learn and know more about your chosen niche or topic, but the feeling you get from your accomplishments are also never ending.

If you are starting or considering starting your own e-business, make sure to grab a copy of my free e-book. It’s filled with some great information that I still use today!

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: advertisers, advertising, blog, Blogging, Business, e-business, goals, growth, income streams, internet marketing, make money online, planning, priorities, revenue, success series, The Insider's Edge

Blog or Business

March 2, 2011 By 3 Comments

Blog

When you’re first starting out in the world of blogging it can be confusing as to whether or not you should be treating it like a mere blog, or something more that could potentially someday make you some money, or perhaps even replace your offline income altogether as mine has, thus allowing me the freedom that comes from working from home, and owning my own business!

If you happen to be fine with keeping it strictly as a creative outlet where you can express yourself and you have no intention of adding in ads like Google’s AdSense, or banners or anything of that nature, and you really don’t care if anyone other than yourself reads it then by all means treat it as a blog.

If on the other hand you’d actually like have the posts you write read by as many people as possible, and you might one day like to have this exciting hobby of yours start contributing to your income then you should start out early on treating it as you would any other business, with goals, plans, budgets, and clear ideas about what it is you are trying to achieve with it.

While the decision to treat your blog like a business should be started at the very beginning in order to maximize the effect on all aspect of your blog from the domain name choice and theme topic, it is really never too late in the process to start. By making a conscious decision to treat it as you would any other business you are effectively telling yourself you are going to take it more seriously.

Here are some things you can do to start treating it like a business and get yourself rolling in the right direction, don’t worry you’ll add to this list as you and your blog grows into something of its own. We all have similar but different lists because we all want different things where our blog is concerned and we all bring different skills to the table. Build on your strengths, develop the skills you’d love to have, and outsource the ones that you couldn’t be bothered with, or have no aptitude for. Just because I’m bad at coding html or php doesn’t mean I can’t find and use someone whose passion happens to be coding websites.

Passion for your Topic

The very first thing you should have, and I’m assuming you do so I won’t spend much time on it, is passion for the topic you are looking to write about. Hopefully it is something you bore the relatives with during the holiday meal because you just can’t seem to stop talking about it, and the excitement you feel comes out in your voice. It is this passion that you will tap into when things are tough, progress slows down, or halts all together, and you wonder what you were thinking in 6 months when you realize you still only have 100 readers coming to visit on a daily basis. Passion is an amazing revitalizer, and is great to have on your side.

A Clear Focus

You need to set out exactly what it is you wish to achieve with this blog of yours. By having a clear set of ideas in hand in the beginning, you’ll know just where it is you are trying to go with this blog business of yours. You’ll need a clear focus before you move onto the next one.

A Roadmap or Checklist

Ok so you know what it is you want, and where you’d like to see your blog in five years, now what? Well we need to map out the steps you need to take in order to get you there. If you said you want 1000 visitors a day reading what you write then you know you need to focus on traffic generating techniques each and every day alongside of writing that great content you intend to write. This will quickly branch out into other areas as you’ll soon see, such as developing a social network, and setting up a Facebook fan page, or Twitter profile in order to capitalize on the traffic they can send. Your roadmap will be long and daunting to look at, and in the beginning it will seem impossible and overwhelming. Don’t worry though, with each step you take forward you’ll be one closer to your goal, and you’ll soon realize that it isn’t arriving at the end result that is the best part, but the journey along the way.

Tracking Methods

I don’t know too many businesses that don’t bother to track progress on the different metrics they’ve deemed important to their business. If traffic is important to you (as I’m sure it is) then programs like Google Analytics are a great help, but you’ll need to dig deeper, and take a look at where and why these visitors are coming to your site in order for you to tweak and improve it in order to make that 1000 visitor goal you set out for yourself.  Tracking keeps you focused on what’s important and allows you to see if you are making progress, stalling out, or perhaps slipping behind and need to redouble your efforts, or perhaps explore new options regarding that particular method.

I recommend using a calendar to track when you need to enter your tracking data. It generally isn’t hard, but is often forgotten or left to slide. Adding it to your calendar will help keep you on track, and also make you more productive at the same time!

Separate your Income and Expenses

Most people don’t see the need for this in the beginning because the blog either isn’t bringing anything in, or it has such low expenses it doesn’t warrant the time needed to keep track of. Nonsense! It takes very little time, and gives you an accurate reading on what your business is costing (or making) you in a day, week, month, or year, and goes a long way toward making you feel like this is an actual business rather than just a hobby to be financed out of your back pocket. While some people will go as far as opening a separate business account specifically for their blog you don’t have to go quite that far (unless you want to) and can easily add $1000.00 into the running of your business, and track the results that way.

This also focuses your attention on the income streams that are most profitable to you and perhaps warrant a little extra attention in order to provide you a 3% return over a 2% return which can be huge at the end of the year. I personally recommend diversifying your income into at least five or six streams, and preferably into ten or twelve in case anything ever happened. People were making killings off of single websites until Google made a simple change in their algorithm that dropped their traffic, and hence their earnings down to zero. Those people were left scrambling to find a new method of earning money while they had to then learn a new way to drive traffic, and make money online.

Here are some example income streams for you to focus on. Now depending on your chosen theme, or topic these may or may not fit, but they should give you an idea of what you can expect.

Advertising

If your blog receives traffic then you can make money with advertising other people’s products and services to the people visiting your blog. If you have higher traffic levels this can result in this being your primary source of income as it is for many of the top blogs out there. Also if your blog is quite specialized you might be able to fetch a higher than normal price based on that fact alone. If you blog about the Bugatti Veyron (a high end car) then chances are you’ll be able to ask a higher price of a local Bugatti dealer looking to advertise on your site than if you were discussing something more common such as 4×4’s or pickup trucks!

Affiliate Income

Affiliate marketing is where you earn money for promoting someone else’s product or service. This is different than advertising in that you will seek out products and services that fit in with the topic of your blog, and also have an affiliate program in place. Then you can promote those products or services to your visitors, e-mail list, Fan page members etc. in exchange for a commission on the sale. Affiliate marketing is great because it allows you to choose the very best products from the very biggest names in any industry without having to create the product yourself, or even build the relationship for that matter.

Affiliate Income (as a vendor)

Having your own product goes a long way toward establishing yourself as an expert in your field and allows you to showcase your knowledge while also making a profit. Even better if it’s a product you can sell through an affiliate network. Digital products such as e-books, software, audio recordings, and video courses work extremely well, but can be just about anything you can think of.

If I have a $20 dollar product and I sell one a day then I can make $600.00 a month. If however I have 5 affiliates selling one a day at a 60% commission (leaving me 40% or $8.00) then I’m able to make double that. If I want to increase my sales it is now a simple matter of adding more affiliates to my network, or by adding more products for them to sell for me!

E-Mail Marketing

You’ve heard people talking about the money being in the list for a long time now, and it’s because it’s true. Having a group of people who are interested in the topic you write about and promote is more valuable than you can believe. One of the hardest things in business is to acquire the customer in the first place, and having a pool of people that you can access whenever you want will go a long way toward the profitability of your blog/ business. Growing your list and developing a relationship with them should be something that you start right from the beginning. I personally use Aweber and love their service and will be a customer for life!

Here is a special discount if you’d like to sign up. (Affiliate link)

www.plrinternetmarketing.com/aweber

Selling a Service

If you have a specific talent that you can market to your peers, or others who might be interested then this will probably be one of the quickest sources of income you’ll experience. You can literally hang out your shingle this morning, and be working this afternoon if you try hard enough, and there are enough people needing your service. Say you are a better writer than marketers, perhaps offering to write quality articles at a discounted price for other people would be a great place to start. People are always looking for quality writers. Even if you haven’t yet developed your writing skills to the point you feel you’d like to start selling them you could offer a blog commenting service or something similar where you go out and write relevant, quality comments for blog owners on blogs within their industry using their website as the backlink. I know I don’t have time to do as much blog commenting as I should, and I’m sure there are millions of others out there!

These are just a few sources of income and there are many more out there waiting for you to implement them, and develop them into being profitable. Even the one’s listed above can be broken down further. There are thousands of affiliate programs out there with even more products. Instead of focusing on finding just one or two to promote, you could develop ten or twelve of these into their own separate income stream sources.

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Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: advertising, Affiliate Marketing, blog, blogger, Blogging, Business, checklist, develop, email marketing, focus, goals, income streams, marketing, multiple sources of income, passion, product, roadmap, selling a service, succeed, success, targets, visitors

Protecting Your Online Reputation against Defamation, Slander and Libel

December 4, 2010 By 3 Comments

Brand Protection

by Concetta Lopez

Building up your online reputation can take years but with the internet, you can do that with relative ease. Blogging, forum participation and Tweeting offer great opportunities for you to create a good impression on the product image you are building online. However, the internet opens up a vast market where people can say what they want freely, and it is not uncommon to read negative and misleading opinions on the same sites that promote your name or brand. Let’s not forget that the internet is also accessible to unscrupulous people who enjoy spread falsehoods to destroy reputations.

With nearly everyone blogging and posting to forums, message boards, and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, the World Wide Web is one democratic melting pot of opinions and assertions that can be good or bad for a brand’s online reputation. There’s just no way you can control free speech online and if you happen to be a victim of malicious slander and libel online, there are ways to reverse or mitigate the unsavory online content. Here are some.

Your first option is to do nothing. Be patient, maintain your composure, and hope that the negative posts disappear from the face of the Internet soon. Even if you have a lot of friends and have established a pretty good reputation online, these derogatory comments can still tarnish your image. But they will go away given the time.

You can also sue the person who caused the negative publicity and hope that you win and get some compensation, as well as have the negative posts removed or the site taken down. The process for this takes quite a while but it’s worth a try. Just make sure that you have enough funds for this since court action can be costly. Your business could also suffer while the case is on-going because persons who see the negative feedback might lose interest in doing business with you.

Also, you can try to push the negative post 5 to 7 pages down the search results page with brand protection repair services. This way, people would be less likely to see the bad publicity regarding your business. This might also cost you some money, since you’ll be hiring other companies to do this for you. But it’s still worth a try.

When contemplating this option, look for the company specializing in brand protection repair services and online reputation management. SEO companies are known to harness various techniques to promote your site and achieve brand protection concurrently or when called for. Search engine reputation management can be your best arsenal to manage online reputation and counter defamation slander online.

With the options for dealing with offending online content, you can be confident that your image remains intact and prevent future defamation of character against your brand. It can be difficult and challenging, but brand protection can be done. In the meantime, you can elect an option to harness web technologies to mitigate their unwanted consequences.

Always remember to take good care of your reputation and protect it from people who might have bad intentions. Your reputation is important because it tells your audience or target market how credible and trustworthy you are. No matter how bad the publicity is, you can get back on track as long as you know the right techniques.

About the Author:
Removing libel out of cyberspace. Grab a no-cost brand protection anaysis immediately by calling (800) 825-9500.

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Filed Under: Internet Marketing Tagged With: advertising, Business, defamation of character, internet defamation, law, legal, libel slander, marketing, reputation repair, seo

Attracting Advertisers to your Blog

October 25, 2010 By 4 Comments

Advertising on your blog

Blogging is a great outlet for expression of thoughts and ideas, but for many of you reading my blog, you’d like to take it to the next level and actually earn some money with your blog. Some of you will simply be looking for a couple of hundred extra dollars a month to pay server and other online costs, while still others will be looking to make thousands a month doing something that they love and are passionate about.

For the first group, you can probably make enough money without selling advertising space on your blog, but for the second, it’s an income stream that shouldn’t be overlooked. If you look at some of the top earning blogs like Lifehacker, Techcrunch, and Mashable, you’ll notice that their major source of income is coming from banner advertising. These sites are making millions of dollars each and every year; let’s pretend they know what they’re doing, because I think they just might!

Sure these sites are at the top of the food chain, but you can learn a lot from these guys that will help you to earn with your own site. One thing you’ll notice if you visit any of these sites is they all have a prominent advertising page complete with statistics on how much traffic they each receive, awards won, prices and commitment, and all the info needed for potential advertisers to make an informed decision about whether or not they want (or can) advertising space on their sites.

Once your blog hits a certain level of traffic, you’ll start getting requests for advertising and if you don’t wish to be answering the same questions over and over, you might want to set up an advertising page on your blog to answer some of the most common questions that advertisers might have.

It’s a good idea to give statistics like unique visitors a month and how many page views your site receives and where you’re getting your traffic data from. Most advertisers will prefer it is coming from Google Analytics because it is much more accurate than some others like Awstats, or other built in stat programs your server might have. Don’t be afraid to mention any awards you’ve won or been recognized in the past for, or any other items of interest to prospective advertisers.

Listing acceptable types of media is also important, list the banner sizes that are available and there locations within your site, are they site wide, on the homepage? You get the idea; also if you don’t want certain types of banners, you might want to mention that also.

Some people prefer to put the price right on the advertising page, while others prefer to keep it private. I would rather have them know up front what is required of them financially so they can make an informed decision based on the information provided.

Here are some stats that a potential advertiser might be interested in looking at, you can decide which to implement into your site:

-          Unique visitors you get each month and which source this information was pulled from.

-          Page views you receive each month.

-          Page Rank might be something to mention

-          Alexa ranking

-          Technorati score

-          Awards your blog has won

-          Honorable mentions regarding your blog

-          Number of RSS subscribers

-          Number of Twitter followers if this is a strength

-          Number of fans of Facebook (lends itself to social proof)

-          Prices for each banner as well as the locations and sizes.

-          Average number of comments if that is a strength

-          Average number of Retweets your site receives.

-          Any addition bonuses that might be included

-          Tell them why they should advertise with you; make it as easy as possible.

-          How to order.

-          And anything else that you think might be relevant or lend itself to more sales.

I won’t go into when is the proper time to advertise on your blog, because that is another discussion in and of itself, and tends to be a controversial one. Suffice to say, I believe that if it is your intention to make money with your blog, and you’re going to implement ads into it sooner or later, then you might as well get your reader used to seeing them there rather than pop them in after you’ve built up a loyal base of readers. (People generally don’t like change)

My site had ads right from the beginning and they started making money right from the beginning which allows me to write the posts I write, do the research, put out products and eBooks related to my topic, all of which is made possible by the money that this site makes.

My readers know that the right side contains navigation, widgets, and advertising space, and the left side contains the articles, I’ve separated the two as much as possible because I want to provide the best possible experience for my visitors, but at the same time, if my readers are in the market for an internet marketing product I’d also like them to click through from my site as well, it’s a mutually beneficial relationship.

Podcast version

 

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Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: advertising, alexa, banners, blog, bloggers, Blogging, Facebook, Google Analytics, income, Lifehacker, Mashable, pagerank, Prices, rss, stats, subscribers, Techcrunch, twitter, visitors

Social Media and Business

October 22, 2010 By 1 Comment

Social Media

In today’s world, businesses are realizing more and more the role that social media is playing in in the lives of people, and in the choices they make. It used to be that we were bombarded by advertising, and commercials telling us about brand x and why we should buy it, but in today’s society we can turn to a vast network of contacts and see what is being said about brand x, or any other brand for that matter. Are you more likely to consider a cell phone provider based on the fact that they spend seven million dollars each month to attract and retain customers? Or would the recommendation of several of your close friends or colleagues carry more weight regardless of whether it was positive or negative to the product?

Television, radio, and print ads once created are permanent and cannot be altered, however changes online can be seen and heard almost immediately and are more fluid in nature. If a product comes out, and is raved about by the company and others, but experiences issues with safety, the world will know almost immediately through editing, advisory warnings, or even just comments that are left on social networking sites or blogs related to that product.

Timing is another emerging trend that can be found in social media, where we relied on newspapers and television networks to “Break” current events, and news, it is now becoming more and more common for events to spread first through social media, and networks long before the newspapers have a chance to publish, or even television producers to air information about it. Any witness with an IPhone or mobile device can easily be the first to announce situations as they occur.

It’s important for businesses to recognize this paradigm shift, and to factor it into their business model in order to not be left behind wondering just what happened, and how. Social media is an important aspect of any business regardless of size, product, or geographic location.

Implementing a social media strategy can be as simple as launching a Facebook fan page, and responding to issues that customers post. Setting up a Twitter account, and Tweeting about your business, promotions as well as helpful advice related to your particular industry is another great way to stay connected to a global audience on a daily basis. Some companies go so far as to setup Google Alerts using their company name (I know I do), and whenever a topic comes up on a blog or website anywhere in the world, I can personally respond to both praise or criticism. This is also a powerful method of protecting and promoting your brand, and it shows the people who are interested in discussing your brand, that you actually care about what is said online about it.

YouTube marketing is not a new phenomenon by any means, yet how many of you actually have gone to the trouble to have a video or short commercial created in order to promote your brand, business or simply an individual product? The cost of a 60 second video is generally under $200.00 and is within most budgets, and provides you with just one more avenue of exposure.

Whichever route you decide on, or how in depth you decide to take your social media campaign I highly recommend you at least implement one, and start to develop and grow it over time. You won’t regret it!

Podcast version

 

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Filed Under: Internet Marketing Tagged With: advertising, brand, Business, businesses, Facebook, Google Alerts, marketing, social media, Social media campaign, social media strategy, twitter, youtube
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