Guide to make money online!

There are many websites that promise to make you lots of money but does anyone know of any good ones?

There are different kinds of money making schemes such as Blogging, surveys, selling items and cash back sites, they all sound very good but they never make you as rich as they claim, Some people say these are just scams but it is possible to make money but it tends to a little rather than a lot, Most Internet sites require you to earn a specific amount before you can cash out and this may take a very long time,

* On-line surveys: By giving your opinion you can gain points or money but the percentage of completed surveys can sometimes be low as they may be looking for specific targets, The best one i have found to date is LIGHTSPEED PANEL as after a few completed surveys you can exchange points for pay-pal vouchers, but there are many others such as Toluna, Globaltestmarket, and Opinion People,
* On-line Auction:There are a few with the most popular being EBay, this in my opinion is the best way of making money on-line, you can sell most unwanted items and is a safe and reliable method,
* Blogging: There are several different types, some offer points (Pointblog) others offer you a cut of the income that is made through advertisement revenue, (Triond) I have found these generally slow progress but it is possible to make money but yet again some require a minimum amount before you cash out,

Some other Internet sites that i have yet to try are My ALAMY and Picture Nation who are both sites that allow you to sell your photos, but they need to be of a certain standard to be submitted, one little gem is Slicethepie which is a Internet site for music fans that pays you a small amount for listening to new music, You can also trade contracts of bands if you decide to invest in any of them, However as like most sites the money does not come pouring in and they all take a lot of time before a reasonable amount of money comes in.

Great Online business ideas are all very well, but you won’t make money online using them if you don’t know how to. To make money you have to formulate a business plan, and for that you must set targets, and targets need a goal. Without a goal to strive towards you will not succeed, so it is important that in addition to the idea, you also know how to use it.

It has often been said that a failure to plan is a plan to failure, and nothing could be truer. A simple goal to set, though perhaps not easy to achieve, is to decide how much money you want earn this year. Don’t be unrealistic and decide on a million dollars in the first 6 monhts, but be realistic: say $75,000 in your first year.

You can then break that down into monthly amounts, starting small and increasing each month, which will give you the basis of your targets. You should then plan how to meet these monthly targets. That is a good sound basis of a strong business.

However, you now have the problem of how you are going to make that money online from your great online business ideas. There is a large number of ways in which you can make money online, some of the most popular being|:

1. Creating your own product or service.

Maybe you know about something or can do something that others will pay for. You might be a children’s entertainer or a hypnotherapist. Perhaps you can write en eBook about breeding dogs, or make a video series on maintaining your own car.

I know of one person that made a fortune by making series of short videos of how to carry out simple household maintenance tasks, such as changing an electrical plug, changing a tap or faucet washer, and even putting in a new sink and laying a carpet.

A simple idea, yet it is one that has a massive customer base. Just think about all these guys that don’t know one end of a screwdriver from another, or all those women that live alone and need some help. That’s one of the best online business ideas I have come across, and he makes a fortune from it.

Think of what you are good at, or what you have knowledge of, and work out a way of packaging that knowledge or these skills in a way that would sell. I am a professional article ghostwriter, and make money online by writing articles for others to use to promote their products and their websites.

2. Sell somebody else’s product

If you are unable to produce a product of your own, then make money online by selling somebody else’s product. Everybody involved in internet marketing is familiar with the term ‘affiliate marketring’ even if they haven’t been involved in it. Affiliate marketing is selling a product for somebody else in return for a commission.

If that product is able to be delivered online or by email - by email or downloaded - then that commission could be 50% or higher, since there is no replacement cost. Unlike a tub of vitamins, an eBook or software application doesn’t have to be produced again once it has been sold, so the vast majority of the selling price is profit. You can therefore be paid more for selling it. 50% is about minimum for such items, and some go as high as 75% or even 80%.

3. Others

Among other ways of making money online are multi-level marketing (MLM), where you recruit others to sell products for you, you receiving a commission on their sales, buying on eBay, and selling the same items for more than you paid for them, buying items in bulk when they are in high supply, and selling at a high price when they are scarce (e.g. certain toys at Christmas time), and many others.

Each of these money-making techniques has one thing in common: you must learn how to achieve your goals and how to market what you are doing online. Even your eBay business has to be promoted by means of your ‘product description’. If you have any great online business ideas that you believe could make you money, it is important that you learn how to use internet marketing properly, and how to take advantage of all the tools that there are out there to help you to succeed.

Most businesses need a web presence, either as a traditional website or some other presence on the web such as a Squidoo lens or participation in social networking. They will also likely require software, and have to learn how to use it, and also learn how to drive traffic to their wesbite and what to do with it once it gets there - potential customers. Your business cannot succeed without customers.

This is where most people begin to fail. In fact 99 people out of every 100 that try to earn a living online fail. They fail for one of 4 reasons:

1. Lack of Planning

They did not have a clear objective in mind and did not plan properly. The started their business on shaky ground and looked on it as a hobby. They fell into one of the main traps of working at home: worked part-time, and took time off whenever they felt like it rather than set out the daily tasks needed to meet their targets and work until they were completed.

2. Lack of focus: Information Overload

They did not focus, and jumped from one program to another. They had too much information, and were unable to give any one method of making money online the time to work for them. They tried too much at one time and so failed in everything.

3. Lack of Perseverance

They gave up to soon. It takes time to build up a successful online business. Unless you are extremely lucky, there is no such thing as ‘get rich quick’. It is not easy work, making money online, but the succesful are those that persevere during and after failure. Most don’t!

4. Lack of Knowledge

This is the least reason for failure. In this internet age nobody need fail through a lack of knowledge - everything you need to know is out there, yet many people try to do it themselves without getting the information they need. Learn from the work of others: do not reinvent the wheel. It may be trite, but it is certainly true.

Use whatever training courses are available out there. I know that it could cost a lot of money, but it is possible to learn everything you have to know without spending any more than twenty or so dollars each month.

You mjust not fail for any of these avoidable reasons. It is a shame that so many dreams are shattered for a lack of planning, focus, commitment and perseverance, and a lack of knowledge. All are avoidable. Put your unique online business ideas into practice by finding out how to do it the most effective way, and learning how to use the tools that are available to you.

You have created your own blog, optimised each aspect of your blog and diligently do regular blog postings. You feel that you are doing a fairly good job and then someone mentions guest blogging. Many people will immediately ask why on earth they should spend extra time doing guest blog posts on the blogs of others. The answer in a nutshell is that by guest blogging you throw out your net far wider to attract visitors to your own blog. Guest blogging expose your own blog to a far bigger audience than would otherwise be possible. The goal of having your own blog is to attract as many visitors as possible and guest blogging forms an important part.

New and fresh

Guest blogging brings you a whole new audience that probably have not read your work before. If your guest blog post is interesting enough they will click through to your own blog to see what else you have of interest. When you have been accepted as a guest blogger on another blog it shows readers that you are an authority in your industry. You have something valuable to say, that’s why you were accepted. Accepting guest bloggers on your own blog brings a new perspective to your own blog as guest bloggers will compliment your own blog topic.

Create a win-win situation for both bloggers

Both bloggers benefit from guest blogging. You as the guest blogger gets a much wider exposure with a new audience. The blog you guest blog for gets exclusive content that is free and fresh. There are many different social networks and guest blogging benefits you greatly here as well. Your own presence for instance on Facebook may not be high, but when you guest blog for a blog that has high exposure there, your own exposure shoots up.

In this way the combined efforts of both blogs bring huge benefits to both blogs. This is an excellent to boost the ratings of both blogs. If you keep an eye on your analytics you will see how well this works within days after you have done a guest blog posting.

Great links and new subscribers

An interesting guest blog post that grabs the attention of readers will have them come to your own blog. If they like what they find, this can lead to many new people subscribing to your own RSS feed as they want to be kept up to date with your new offerings. Guest blogging is a brilliant SEO tool as far as creating back links are concerned. When you guest blog you can include a short informational blurb about yourself.

This allows you to add one or more extra links to your own blog and good back links are highly sought after. Link building with guest blog postings are too valuable to neglect in your own SEO efforts. It is all about throwing your net out as wide as possible and wooing potential web traffic by capturing their interest. Guest blogging simply holds too many benefits for your own blog and website to ignore.

So you’ve put together a spectacular website, and you’re ready to go live on the Internet for the whole world to see. Not so fast there Bucky. In case you didn’t know, there are a few essential requirements that every site needs to include in order to be successful.

Let’s review, shall we:

1. Privacy Policy/Disclaimer:

Now, I’m not a Lawyer and don’t claim to be one, but these two documents should be standard issue for every site you have. People want to know how you’re going to use their personal information, and a “privacy policy” does just that.

In today’s litigious society you’ll also need to include a disclaimer/terms of use page. This protects you and spells out to your visitors what they’re agreeing to by using your website. If you don’t know where to start in generating these documents, you’ll find plenty of help online.

• DMA Privacy Policy Generator http://www.dmaresponsibility.org/PPG/
• OECD Privacy Statement Generator http://tinyurl.com/5plgpc
• Google Adsense & other Ad Networks Privacy Policy Generator http://www.serprank.com/privacy-policy-generator/index.php
• Privacy Policy Generator http://www.freeprivacypolicy.com/
• Free Site Disclaimer http://www.easyriver.com/free_disclaimer.htm

This is not legal advice, and if you need help in this department, consult with a local attorney.

2. Contact Us Information:

I can’t tell you how many sites I’ve been to that fail to include a way to contact the owner. If you can’t include a phone number, at the very least have an email address or a “contact us” form. By providing this information, you’ll make your visitors feel more comfortable knowing there’s a way to reach you should the need arise.

If you need a form and don’t know how to create your own, try one of these free form services.

• Bravenet: http://www.bravenet.com/webtools/emailfwd/
• Freedback: http://freedback.com/
• Email Me: http://www.emailmeform.com/

3. Search Box/Site Map:

If your site is rather large, you’ll also want to include a way to search, or have what is called a “site map”. There are many ways to add a search function to your site, the easiest being to use Google’s free service at- http://www.google.com/sitesearch/

or try PicoSearch: http://www.picosearch.com/

A site map sounds technical, but it’s just one web page that contains links to every page of your site, usually broken down by category. Another resource - FreeFind: http://www.freefind.com/

4. Google Analytics/Tracking System:

Once your site is up and running you’ll want to keep your eye on traffic. Who’s visiting your website, what pages are the most popular, where is the traffic coming from. All of these questions and more can be answered by using a good analytics program.

There are several ways to add a thorough tracking system to your site, but the easiest and one that won’t cost you a dime is Google Analytics http://www.google.com/analytics/ Once registered, you can add as many sites as you like all under one user ID and password. You’ll be given some code to copy and paste on your pages. Simple, easy, and you’re done.

5. Newsletter Sign Up/RSS Feed:

There’s an old saying that people won’t buy from you the very first time they come to your website, so you need a way to stay in touch with them to bring them back again and again. By offering a newsletter, also known as an ezine, you’ll be building a list of possible prospects which is invaluable to any site owner.

You’ll find a multitude of free and low cost newsletter services online. It’s up to you, depending on your needs and what you can afford. If you don’t want to pay anything, my favorite free services are:

FreeAutoBot: http://www.FreeAutoBot.com Yahoo Groups: http://www.yahoo.com/groups

You can also offer an RSS feed for your newsletter, or updates to your blog or site. This makes it easy for others to keep up with your most recent posts. The best service for this is… FeedBurner: http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/home

6. Consistent Navigation:

This might sound like a no brainer, but many folks get it wrong. No matter what type of menu system you decide upon, make sure it stays the same across the board on all pages of your site.

Your job is to guide your visitors through your website, making sure they always know where they are and how to get to where they need to go.

For more see:

• Eye on Web: http://tinyurl.com/dyh9fm
• Web Page Mistakes: http://www.webpagemistakes.ca/website-navigation/

7. Search Engine Optimized Copy:

At first glance you might not think this is so important, but trust me it is. You want your pages to rank well with the search engines and there are a few steps you can take to ensure this happens.

Each page of your website should be optimized for 2, or at the most 3 keywords/phrases. Weave the keywords into your titles and into the body of each page. You can also include them in your image titles, alt tags, even in the names you give your pages. Look at each page individually and decide what it’s about, then optimize accordingly.

For help see:

• MarketLeap: http://tinyurl.com/ce8ffd
• CopyBlogger: http://www.copyblogger.com/seo-copywriting/

8. Social Media Share Button:

With the popularity of social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace, you’d be foolish not to include an easy way for your content to be shared with others.

You’ll find many free services that will give you the code you need to instantly add a “share button” to your web pages so that visitors can instantly share them with their friends.

To generate your own buttons see:

• AddThis: http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php
• TwitThis: http://www.TwitThis.com

9. Meta Tags:

Some may tell you that meta tags are dead. Don’t listen. Meta tags should be included in your HTML code at the top of every page. Many search engines will read them to pull a description to include in their search results.

Again, each page should be optimized separately and have a unique title, keywords, and description tags.

For help see:

• Submit Express: http://www.submitexpress.com/metatag.html
• Submit Corner: http://www.submitcorner.com/Tools/Meta/

10. Copyright Notice:

Sounds simple but forgotten by many. All pages should include a copyright notice. If you don’t want to have to update it manually every year, find a simple Javascript that will automatically do it for you. You’ll find one such script at:

• Uncle Jims: http://jdstiles.com/java/copyright.html

11. Trust Seals/Testimonials:

I grouped these two items together as they both instil trust and confidence in your visitors. Remember, when someone comes to your website, they don’t know who you are and if you’re selling something, they may not feel comfortable giving out their credit card information. To help them feel more “warm and fuzzy”, include trust seals for any organizations you belong to:

For example:

• iCop: http://i-cop.org/
• BBB: http://www.bbb.org/us/Business-Accreditation/
• Honest E Online: http://www.honesteonline.com/index.html

Also, if you have testimonials from happy customers, or ezine subscribers, weave them into your site copy. People always love to hear that others have had a happy experience with your products/services. Make sure you get permission first from the testimonial writers before placing them on your website.

So there you have it -my short list of what every site needs to succeed online. Now that you’re armed with this information, get out the magnifying glasses and take a close look at your own website to see what may be missing.

The rage to milk money from Adsense continues into 2009. While there are many different ways to do this, it’s no secret Google is keeping a watchful eye on spam sites which automatically generate pages consistently on a daily basis.

Every now and then, Adsense ‘experts’ would introduce a ‘fresh’ new way of generating pages which Google “has not caught on yet”, be it article, directory or backlink generators.

While these software are very good at what they do, you can’t solely depend on them for long-term success. It’s a natural tendency that automatically generated content just doesn’t look like quality pages with highly informative, up-to-date content, but it’s my personal observation.

Most run-of-the-mill, ads-on-topfold Adsense sites lack substantial sections and deeper structures to be interesting enough to make visitors think they should come back to check them out more often. While generating as many pages as possible is crucial to get them indexed and thereby build substantial presence in search results, these types of pages should only complement principal content that reflects what your site stands for and the selling point it serves to maximize its overall value. There used to be a question that goes, “Is building Adsense sites a business?” My answer is: Adsense is secondary.

Of course, like you I do want Adsense to be my primary source of income. The secret is in emphasizing content and value, not Adsense ads. You may have felt resigned to say, “Does that mean more work?” Not really. Here’s another secret inspired by a quote from Albert Einstein: You can’t solve your Adsense income challenge at the same level of thinking.

Truth is: I have build a good number of Adsense sites, but my main Internet Marketing site which I treat as my core business earns more than some of them despite my intention not to make it Adsense-focused, all the more so when it has absolutely nothing to do with high-paying keywords and the tremendous amount of time that goes into keyword research…which leads to the next secret: create a site with a subject or niche you know you can continually express and expand on instead of getting stuck with a ‘lucrative’ keyword you may run out of ideas on in the long term.

This is as good as saying Adsense is not just a keyword value game; it is still the classic “How do I get and retain traffic” game, and traffic is not some scoreline, but real people with genuine interest.

eHow.com is an incredible example. It’s a free site that shows people how to do a lot of different things. The best way to explain the site is just for you to go have a quick look now. They have hundreds, possibly thousands of pages of content on all sorts of subjects and the way they get traffic to their site is through the search engines.

Every page on the site has an Adsense box on it and that’s how it makes money. They also have a Alexa traffic ranking of around 2000 which is great.

Of course, it doesn’t make sense to write or purchase that much content by yourself. eHow.com succeeds in getting its visitors involved in content contribution. There’s also a wikiHow to get contributors involved in constant update of a common topic or article.

For a start, here are suggestions on the type of sections you can integrate into a site:

1. Lead capture page with freebies or incentives
2. Article directory
3. A ‘Contact Us’ page
4. An ‘About Us’ page
5. Forum: The challenge lies in the time and effort needed to build up momentum to encourage forum participants to write in
6. An archive section of some kind, for selected articles for example
7. Blog/podcast pages
8. Reciprocal link directory
9. Sitemap

It doesn’t take much to think of these standard sections. Even a products section makes your site look good besides providing another source of income, and then you replicate these sections site after site, niche after niche.

4th secret: Only sites with a general theme can afford to be massive-looking. Examples: Entrepreneur.com and Dogomania.com. Then you break the theme down into specifics like gathering them under an umbrella: dog training, dog hygiene, dog naming, dog psychology, doggy habits etc. Accurate targeting of Adsense ads depends on specific subjects as reflected on page. One thing to note is it is better that specific sections are inter-linked in some ways. If you run a site on everything about cancer, because “colon cancer” and “breast cancer” are not intrinsically related, visitors interested in one section may not want to take a first glance at another.

5th secret about content: write from a ‘consumer’ perspective instead of the ‘opportunist’ or “how to make money” perspective. What is it your visitors are looking to buy? Ads normally target and appeal directly to consumers. It’s pointless to put up content about how to make money with car accessories when there are hardly ads on “how to make money”. Stick to introducing car accessories and let the ads do the selling. If an accessory or equipment catch visitors’ attention and they click on the ads, you got Adsense dollars.

That’s about all the ideas I have at this moment. You should be confident now and maybe have some more new ideas I haven’t thought of. For sure, Adsense is a major income source you should seriously explore and make it big if you haven’t done so. This is one of those money machines that will make you money-on-demand pretty much for the life of Google.

One of the best ways to get free advertising and links back to your site is to write good articles and publish them on blogs and websites around the Internet with a link back to your site. Doing this in a systematic way is usually called “article marketing.” I have done it for years and believe me it works! However, my enthusiasm for article marketing is started to wane due to an avalanche of poorly written articles which do not provide end users with useful information.

In the same way that reciprocal linking was destroyed by misguided users trying to “game” the search engines, article marketing stands in a precarious position today. I publish three article directories and I can assure you that most of the articles submitted should be consigned to the recycle bin because they go against the basic idea of providing good useful information in an easy-to-read fashion. In case you are writing articles, or about to have some articles written for you, here are three important tips for doing it properly.

1. Provide Information and Not a Sales Pitch

It is futile to write directly about your product and explain how great it is. If this is what you want to do, it is better to write a press release and explain the newsworthy features of your work. An article for publication on another website should be related to your area of expertise, but should not be bragging about you or your product.

For example, if you operate a garden supply business, then write “how-to” articles helping people to solve some of the gardening and landscaping problems that they might be facing. You don’t have to say how great your garden supply business is. If you write well and provide useful tips, then the readers will be impressed and they will want to click through on your link and find out more about you and your business

People who visit your website after reading a good article are high quality visitors, because they have been “pre-sold” on you. They already regard you as an “expert” and will be more inclined to buy your products or subscribe to your newsletters than someone who clicks through on just any old link.

2. Write the article properly or get the article written by someone who can write!

If you were to submit an article to your English teacher in high school or college, would you want to hand in something with obvious grammatical mistakes even in the title itself? Of course you wouldn’t but that doesn’t stop people from hiring unqualified ghostwriters to write tons of sub-standard articles for them at $5 per article.

Try writing an intelligent 500 word article. Can you do it in ten minutes or even twenty minutes? Probably not. Take the time to write your article well and if you are hiring someone then you should opt for a native English speaker who will give it a reasonable amount of time. You may have to pay more for it, but you will gain in the end.

How will you gain? Well written and informative articles get reprinted at a much greater frequency than the junk or filler articles. You will gain with more links and most importantly you will get more credibility as an expert in your field.

3. Format Your Articles Properly

One of the keys to effectiveness is the readability of your article. Do you like looking at a long block of printed words without any paragraph breaks? Take the time to divide your articles into short paragraphs punctuated by sub-heads. It will give your readers a chance to assimilate your message more easily.

The reason why I am particular on this point is that many people use automated article submission systems which push all the paragraphs together. Editors have no time to make these corrections for you and may delete the articles. Alternatively, your article may be published, but in a way that turns off the reader, rather than inspiring her to read the whole article. Submit your articles in a proper format and make sure that your submission system sends a well formatted version to the publishers.

If you follow these three tips then you will be “adding value” to the Internet rather than clogging it with useless filler. You will be doing a service to the public, and in the end it will work to your benefit too.

When internet marketing, please understand that to make money online, there are no fake smiles or harassing people into a purchase. What is special about this business is that you do not have to cold call people, find your own leads, or generate ad revenue. Internet marketing has a different approach to all of this. You make money virtually, which enables you to reap the benefits of automation.

Of course, there are traditional principles of marketing that apply to internet marketing. With the desire and dedication to succeed being very important to the motivation behind organizing precise actions with proven results. The consistent actions that are required are very simple, therefore expert or guru status is not needed to be successful in this business.
Marketing principles that apply, basically get your product in front of everyone. There are ways to do this that are simple and effective; such as SEO (search engine optimization). Using SEO as a strategy, considers what people search for and how search engines work; thus optimizing your website mostly entails editing the content and HTML coding. When you optimize your website, you increase the sites relevance to specific keywords and remove any barriers to the search engines indexing activities. By strategically using SEO, you will create revenue by generating traffic.

Random visits are not traffic. Traffic is best defined as targeted visitors in multitudes landing on your site due to a specific keyword search. People are looking to find what it is you are offering- information, a specific product, or just a good time. Each qualified visitor generated through SEO has a huge potential to follow through with your site. Keep in mind that though SEO is simple and there is a lot to the process, but so worth the time and effort spent working on it. Oh yeah, if you are looking for the fast track to wealth, sorry, this is a long-term method.

Another way to internet market simply and effectively is the use of CPA networks. When used in conjunction with Google Adwords and domain forwarding, you will have yourself a proven technique. This is an approach that simplifies and enables the best instant results; since you are creating a real internet machine. This includes your landing page, qualified targeted traffic, free trials and more. And the best yet, it is almost instantly!

Using this approach is a much faster way to draw in traffic. The reasoning behind this method is that you do not need content, optimizing, or a website. Yes, you read that right. Once you have something to sell or an address to market, you can upgrade your business quickly.

One last quick note, although the process is easy, there are parts that require previous knowledge of internet marketing. If you are not familiar with Google Adwords, please take time and learn everything about this program, as there are essential rules that are too costly to overlook, from experience, one slight oversight on your part, will ruin all chances of making money online.

There are a number of reasons why most people fail to make money online, and why their internet home business is doomed to failure from the outset. If you can understand these reasons why 99% that start fail to be successful, and consequently avoid them, then you can be one of those 1% that make a comfortable living working online from home.

Some of the major reasons for failure are outlined below: keep them in mind and do your best to avoid them.

1. A Failure to Plan is a Plan to Fail Although this is a massively abused cliché, it is true nonetheless

To achieve success with an online business you must have a strategic plan and must set targets over various time-frames. Get a sheet of paper and a felt tip marker, and write down in bold letters exactly what your objective is: “I Want To Earn Enough This year to Buy a New Dream House”, or “I Want To Leave The Day Job By Christmas”. Stick in a prominent place where you see it every day.

Set targets for your year, each month and each week. Have a daily list of tasks to be completed to enable you to meet these targets. Review your plan and your targets, and make changes to suit progress: IF YOU FALL BEHIND, THEN WORK LONGER HOURS. Which takes us on to Number 2:

2. It’s Your Job, Not a Pastime

Just because you have no boss to report to doesn’t mean an internet home business is not a job. Many people fail to make money online because they don’t take their business seriously enough: they take time off when they feel like it, finish earlier in the day than they did in their regular job and find it difficult to concentrate on tasks.

You must not fall into this trap, and setting daily tasks and targets to meet will help you to get through the work needed to be successful in making money online. An online business is hard work to start with, although it does get easier. However, if you enter into it thinking it easy money, then you are in for a shock and you will likely fail.

3. Get Rich Quick? No Chance

This leads nicely into the get rich quick syndrome from which many people appear to suffer. Those starting an internet home business looking for quick success and to become very rich in a matter of weeks - or even days - are in for a huge fall. Such people make up a good proportion of the 99% that fail to make money online, and if this is you then change your mindset immediately.

If you knew a foolproof way to get very rich by spending only a couple of hundred dollars would you tell everybody else about it? Of course not! You have no idea how many of these ’schemes’ involve you paying money to somebody who will tell you their system: to charge people money for a get rich quick scheme that is charging people money for a get rich quick scheme. Nobody has any online program other than telling people to do as they do - collect their money and then tell them to do as you are doing.

Keep completely clear of these because eventually there will an awful lot of losers.

4. Lack of Focus

Information Overload! How many different ways of making money online have you seen advertised? There are literally hundreds. I won’t go into any of them right now, but will just say that a very large proportion of failures is due to a lack focus on any one of them.

Many people spend an awful lot of money paying for loads of eBooks, ways to make money on the internet, ways to avoid failing to make money online, software, mentoring and everything else on offer out there. Rather than settling on one and targeting that they start on many different programs, and when they fins that they are not making anything they leave it and try something else, and so on, and so on.

Target just one and focus on that. Spend all your time and effort on it and you might be very surprised. Because the thing is that most of these programs and ideas actually do work! It’s just that people don’t give them enough time.

If you heard that jigsaw puzzles were fun to do would you buy up twenty of them and then start them all, and finally give them up because they are no good? Of course not: you would complete them one at a time and think that jigsaw puzzles were great, and eventually you would be able to work on twenty at a time. The same is true of online income streams.

5. Where Do I Start?

Lot’s of people just don’t know where to start. They are bewildered by the choices available; by the number of different ways in which the can make money online. There are so many that they don’t know what form their internet home business should take.

Sure, they know that they WANT their own business, and they know that they might even NEED a home business, but the problem is WHAT home business and HOW they find out what is available without getting burnt.

That’s when you should be looking for a site that offers regular information, teaching and product reviews, so that you can be helped by like-minded people that have been exactly where you are now and understands your problems and knows how you feel when that credit card bill comes through the door, but you haven’t the money to pay.

Internet business membership sites are ideal to help in this way, and not only do you normally have permanent information on the website that you can refer to whenever you feel the need, but also special members-only products. They are not gifts, because you pay for them with your monthly membership fee, but nice to get nevertheless.

If you want to make money online, and want to start up a successful internet home business of your own, then a good live online membership site can help you more than any individual eBook or program that is starting to get obsolete the day that you purchased it. Internet home business success is based upon sound knowledge and access to expert help when you most need it.

Whenever you look for information about SEO strategy and methods you will undoubtedly come across numerous examples. And to make matters worse, those examples are predominantly about popular search items like digital cameras, cars and such.

But what happens when you are not offering the world a popular search item. What if your products are completely in uncharted waters or off the beaten track? Do you need to worry about special treatment and special SEO for your specific and highly specialised industry? The answer is a plain and simple no.

Whether you are selling a popular gadget that half the cyber population wants to get their hands on or whether you sell something very few have ever heard of, keywords are king. Keywords and key phrases are the king in your SEO content and they will always be important no matter who you are and what you are offering. So, do you need specialized SEO tactics for a specialised industry? Definitely not. You still need a keyword tool and you still need to trawl the lists of possible keyword and key phrase candidates. You will still fall under the same Search Engine Optimisation guidelines as other, more popular businesses.

Benefit in an upper hand

The only thing that is really very different between specialised industries and popular ones is their popularity. Sure, you are not wining any broad-spectrum popularity contests, but you are still winning. You are scoring less competition than your popular counterparts are. This is simply because popular industry searches are crammed full. They are packed to the brink with websites offering the exact same thing. And the competition between websites is far fiercer than in a specialised industry. So be thankful that you have one thing going for you. You may not draw as many people as popular products or services but you have less competition for the searchers you do attract.

Keep it simple and play it straight

Your target market may be out there among the millions of cyber surfers that want nothing to do with you. You are in among millions, if not billions, of websites that have nothing to do with you. How on earth are you going to attract your target market, how are you going to find each other in cyberspace? The answer is simple. You are going to select key words and key phrases that are as closely related to your products as possible. There you are going to make sure that your website is maximally optimised so that you have a good search ranking. Then you are going to wait for the searchers to come to you.

Your target market will seek you out if you have the right keywords in place. Pick the most popular ones that have the most relation to your products. It is utterly useless using keywords that do not pertain to your products, no matter how popular they are. Keep your keywords industry and product specific so that your target market can find you with easy. Make it as easy for them as possible to find you, if you don’t they will go to your competition.

Change is something the human race does not always welcome. We get set in our ways, even the bad and nasty habits; we are used to them so let’s keep it that way. The internet has revolutionised how business is done. This of course brought new opportunities for the unscrupulous and amoral amongst us to try their tricks to cheat for quick profits.

Recently there has been loud squawking and lamenting about the new changes Google is putting into practice. The SEO world was up in arms about the new trust factor coming into the equation. It is worth thinking about exactly who the individuals are who most argue against this change. Google does not always have very flattering things to say about the practices of SEO.

Change is needed

Google’s intentions are to see all online businesses and websites take a proactive approach with branding. They want to root out people who cheat the system and cut corners. When unethical practices are used to manipulate high ranking, the search results turn to chaos that is making searchers mistrust everything. Too many people have taken the unscrupulous path to generate as much revenue as possible. That is when you get websites that are smothered in affiliate ads that are of no help to anyone.

Ethical SEO efforts have an important role to play in all this. They can be compared to the scavengers that sift through the garbage piles and clean up the mess. What is left behind for Google is clean search results to work with. What is happening is that websites need more and more of a trust factor to be able to rank high in the Google search results pages. The brilliant thing is that this trust factor happens naturally when a diversified online approach to branding is used.

New mindset

The aim is to develop the same mindset to online advertising as applies to offline advertising. Offline marketing involved paying for any advertising; this included TV and radio. There is no scope for cutting corners in offline advertising. This is what the search engines are trying to achieve; you do it by the book. You pay for your advertising and you promote you business in all areas of the internet. Too many website owners put ranking above everything else and for some this becomes an obsession. They will do anything, even if it is unethical, to get that coveted ranking.

Quality above all else

The search engines are evolving and making life very difficult for anyone involved in black hat optimisation efforts. The trust factor has now been added and the algorithms will keep changing and tweaks will be added to rid online marketing of the parasites. What this all boils down to is to keep your focus on the website visitors. It is all about their user-experience. The much-used saying of content is king is fact. Stay away from giving visitors garbage in the form of keyword stuffed content that is meaningless. Keep your website providing quality information and make sure your website is completely scam-free. This will ensure that all the factors fall into place.

Search engine optimization is the buzz word on everyone’s lips these days. SEO used to be simple; it used to be a no sweat operation. However, the internet has become a far more competitive place over the years and continues to do so thanks to exponential expansion. This expansion means that more and more people are squeezing into the online cyber universe to pedal their wares, socialize, network and live.

So where does that leave you? That leaves you in the position of needing to up your SEO tactics to stand a fighting chance. One thing you need to remember about SEO tactics is that copy writing plays a huge role. You will need to follow certain rules and regulations to make your copy writing effective.

Plan ahead

Planning ahead is something that is always on the cards of a well organized and efficient company or business. You need to plan ahead to budget your time, money, resources and such into your daily, weekly and annual schedule. So too do you need to plan ahead for copy writing when you are trying to up your SEO game. You need to be able to budget those key phrases in at just the right intervals. However, the biggest reason for planning ahead is so that you know exactly what those key phrases are. You plan your copy writing around your key phrases and not vice versa.

Lead under dictation

For once, you are not going to be in control. Your audience dictates to you here, they will make the decision for you as to what key phrases you must use. In order to be visible your keywords need to coincide with the phrases your target market uses to search with. Whether you like those particular phrases or not; you have to use what your audience is looking for.

Key headliners

Search Engines place more weight on headlines and sub-headers than the rest of the copy content. So make yours rich on keywords to attract the attention of the engines that drive your website visibility. Emboldening your headlines also adds extra oomph and so does including them within your tags. Headlines and sub-headings need to be bold and encoded to get some extra attention from the search engines and promote your website effectively.

Key into your copy

Key words and key phrases play a monumental role in gaining the attention of the search engines and their undivided attention is exactly what you want. So how do you go about getting what you want and not ending up on the second or even hundredth search page? You add popular keywords and key phrases to your copy. Remember to use key words and phrases that your audience targets. Do not stuff your key phrases into your copy just to try to attract more attention. You will attract bad attention and you will send your audience to your competitors. Use roughly 3 percent of your wording for your keywords and key phrases, but most importantly, make it sound natural so that it flows.

When you are involved in an internet marketing business, it is necessary to learn get enough traffic for your site. Most website owners are having a difficulty gaining and maintaining their traffic, and if you're one of them, it's time to pay attention to the tips below, find out which one works best for you, and start earning megabucks from your increased traffic.

A well optimized article is a good way to increase traffic for an internet marketing business. Article marketing is a form of link building that has grown popular to grab more traffic. All you have to do is to first find out which keywords are very popular, write articles about it and optimize your site through SEO or search engine optimization. As internet surfers look for those keywords using the search engines of Yahoo or Google, your website will belong to the listed websites falling under the same keyword and may be visited by those doing the search. Keep in mind to use only the right keywords and to continuously write articles for your keywords.


What to Avoid When Writing Articles

Limit the number of your keywords in the body of your article and do not overdo it. Most internet marketing business owners often make the mistake of writing the keywords in almost every line of every sentence of their article in the hopes of getting a higher page rank from search engines. But these search engines actually have rules and if you exceed their keyword use limit, that page could be removed from the ranking.

So, what can you do then? You can make the most out of your keywords and description by using Meta tags. Webbots often utilize the very first 200 characters of a websites body for the description. The description is the "teaser" of your page which can be seen in search engine results page, and more often this determines if the one doing the search may want to visit your site or not. You may also list down your keywords in the meta tags to make your site come up in the results.

Other Options to Increase Traffic

Your internet marketing business may also get more traffic as you submit your URL to major web directories. This helps improve the number of links going to your site which can convert to sales. You may also obtain a link from major search engines. You can also give out your URL when leaving meaningful comments in complementary blogs, forums, discussion groups, and etc. If readers find your comment interesting, then he could link to your site and increase traffic.

Convince those who own a complementary site to provide a link to your site. This is a way of sharing with the traffic that their site gets. Let's say for example your internet marketing business deals on beach resorts, you may collaborate with travel companies to have them place a link for you. You may complement the link they give by also linking to them. Links convert to traffic and clicks for your site, which can contribute to your rank in the search engines.

Do affiliate marketing. This is the best way to get free links and ads for your site that is free of charge and at no risk at all.

Promoting your site by spreading it through word of mouth to your friends and their circle of friends is also effective. Do not forget to place your URL on those business cards and letter heads.

Traffic exchange is one of the most popular methods in internet marketing. It aims to gather visitors for the sites for free. It is very effective in generating free traffic to a site. It is also a very powerful marketing tool in terms of promotion. Traffic exchange has a very big potential in promoting a business, product, or service.

It is a fact that most of the individuals engaging in traffic exchange wants to bring traffic to their sites; so it is a must to use the program properly. Traffic exchange must surely be a part of the marketing plan but there is a strategy to make it very effective. Aside from bringing traffic to a site, it must also be a goal to introduce the business, product, or service to more people; whether they are ordinary consumers or internet marketers.

One big factor that will affect business promotion within traffic exchange is the use of landing pages. The viewers have limited minimum timeframe to surely view the promotion page. It usually goes from 10 seconds to 30 seconds. For this reason, it is important to have a page that will load all the elements easily. It must be simple but very enticing, fresh and unique, in order to grab the attention of the viewers who initially just surf a lot to bring back huge traffic to their sites. This page is called a landing page. it is like a summary of the main site, business, product, or service.

The landing page can be a splash page or a squeeze page. The splash page contains a link that will direct the viewer to the main site, or to another site that contains more information about the offer or promotion. A squeeze page contains a form where the viewers can leave their contact details in exchange with a free offer, a trial offer, or a subscription.

Whatever the type of landing page is, the first thing to consider is that the page must move the viewers to action. This action could be to know more about the product or to leave contact details. When the viewer thinks about knowing more about the business, it is already the start of being a potential customer; when the viewer leaves his or her contact details, it is an opportunity to keep in touch with this prospect in the future.

Furthermore, it is important to build a mailing list. This will surely help in future marketing plans. Keeping in touch with the potential customers for pre-selling and other reasons that could lead to a sale is a good technique. It makes the customer more familiar and comfortable with the business.

While considering these, it is best to join several traffic exchanges at one time since not one program requires membership exclusivity. Once signed up for numerous programs, it is best to surf all of them at the same time through a multiple tab browser. This will save a lot of time and effort while driving the desired traffic to the owned sites. Additionally, it is best to have downlines ore referrals to have more bonus credits and have more traffic with less effort.

When you begin learning how to make money online you must first have goal. Without a clear goal in mind you will find it difficult to set targets, and without targets you will find it more difficult to make money. That is why all businesses have a gaol and set regular targets that are the subject of business plans.

It has often been said that a failure to plan is a plan to failure, and nothing could be truer. As a simple goal, decide how much money you want to make in your first year. You could be silly and decide on a million dollars, but you are unlikely to achieve that, so be realistic: say $75,000 in your first year.

You can then break that down into monthly amounts, starting small and increasing each month, which will give you the basis of your targets. You should then plan how to meet these monthly targets. That is a good sound basis of a strong business.

However, you now have the problem of how you are going to make that money. There is a large number of ways in which you can make money online, some of the most popular being|:

1. Creating your own product or service.

Perhaps you have a skill or specialized knowledge that others will pay for. You might be a children’s entertainer or a hypnotherapist. Perhaps you can write en eBook about breeding dogs, or make a video series on maintaining your own car.

I know of one person that made a fortune by making series of short videos of how to carry out simple household maintenance tasks, such as changing an electrical plug, changing a tap or faucet washer, and even putting in a new sink and laying a carpet. A simple idea, yet something that had a massive customer base. Think of all those women living alone, or even guys that don’t know why a screwdriver has a flat end.

Think of what you are good at, or what you have knowledge of, and work out a way of packaging that knowledge or these skills in a way that would sell. I am a good writer, and make money online writing articles to help others to promote their websites.

2. Sell somebody else’s product

If you are unable to produce a product of your own, then sell somebody else’s. Everybody trying to learn how to make money online has heard of affiliate marketing, even if they don’t recognise the word. Affiliate marketing is selling a product for somebody else in return for a commission.

If that product can be delivered electronically - by email or downloaded - then that commission could be 50% or higher, since there is no replacement cost. Unlike a tub of vitamins, an eBook or software application doesn’t have to be produced again once it has been sold, so the vast majority of the selling price is profit. You can therefore be paid more for selling it. 50% is about minimum for such items, and some go as high as 75% or even 80%.

3. Others

Among other ways of making money online are multi-level marketing (MLM), where you recruit others to sell products for you, you receiving a commission on their sales, buying on eBay, and selling the same items for more than you paid for them, buying items in bulk when they are in high supply, and selling at a high price when they are scarce (e.g. certain toys at Christmas time), and many others.

Each of these ways of making money online has one thing in common: you have to learn how to go about it and how to promote whatever it is that you are doing. Even your eBay business has to be promoted by means of your ‘product description’.

Most businesses need a web presence, either as a traditional website or some other presence on the web such as a Squidoo lens or participation in social networking. They might also need software, and knowledge of how to use it, and knowledge of how to attract traffic - potential customers. Without customers, your business will fail.

This is where most people begin to fail. In fact 99 people out of every 100 that try to earn a living online fail. They fail for one of 4 reasons:

1. Lack of Planning

They did not have a clear objective in mind and did not plan properly. The started their business on shaky ground and looked on it as a hobby. They fell into one of the main traps of working at home: worked part-time, and took time off whenever they felt like it rather than set out the daily tasks needed to meet their targets and work until they were completed.

2. Lack of focus: Information Overload

They did not focus, and jumped from one program to another. They had too much information, and were unable to give any one method of making money online the time to work for them. They tried too much at one time and so failed in everything.

3. Lack of Perseverance

They gave up to soon. It takes time to build up a successful online business. Except for a very fortunate few, there is no ‘get rich quick scheme’. Making money online is hard work, and those that persevere tend to succeed. Most don’t!

4. Lack of Knowledge

This is the least reason for failure. There is no need for lack of knowledge in the internet age - everything you need to know is out there, yet many people try to do it themselves without getting the information they need. Learn from the work of others: do not reinvent the wheel. Trite, I know, but true nevertheless.

Use whatever training courses are available out there. It could be expensive, I know, but there are ways to learn all you need to know without spending a lot of money.

It is important that you do not fail for any one of the above reasons because they are all avoidable. It is a shame that so many dreams are shattered for a lack of planning, focus, commitment and perseverance, and a lack of knowledge. All are avoidable.

The single biggest, non-renewable asset you have is your time. There are only three things you can do with it: waste it, sell it, or invest it. As an entrepreneur or a service professional, what you do with your time acutely impacts how much money you can make.

If this year you want to make clients come to you, earn a six-figure or beyond income, become the expert in your chosen field, positively impact lives of many people, gain fame and earn respect of your peers — you have to invest your time into creating marketing assets!

Just like the wealthy invest in assets that continuously appreciate and generate more money — like real estate, the savvy entrepreneurs invest in creating marketing assets that grow your business with no additional expense. What are those assets? Here is just a short list:

• Content
• Info products
• Referral partners
• Ezine subscribers list
• Customers list
• Incoming links to your website
• Testimonials
• Education

So if you want to become the ‘top dog’ in your industry, you’ve got to start doing what the ‘big dogs’ do.

To begin investing your time into creating high leverage marketing assets, use this short checklist:

DON’T design expensive logos. While establishing your uniqueness is important, people will not do business with you because you spent money on a cute graphic!

DO survey your ideal clients. Learning and understanding their needs allow you to offer them solutions they want — and that makes you incredibly attractive to them.

DON’T place ads that feature little more but your logo, phone number and address. Stop kidding yourself thinking you are the next IBM or Coca-Cola and that merely mentioning your name will get people pounding on your door!

DO create content that addresses the most pressing needs your prospects and clients are desperately trying to solve! Write articles, create special reports, publish an e-zine or e-book (or regular book), and record audio/video products. If you advertise — advertise those products not your services.

DO take time to learn and leverage free publicity. Research media contacts, take time to understand what type of information appeals to them, and become good at presenting your information in the format they like best.

DON’T attend every networking meeting you can find. Your time is much too valuable to try to attract business in one-on-one fashion. Contrary to the popular belief — networking isn’t cheap!

If you sum up the cost of your time, the price you pay to eat all that rubber chicken, and the energy to follow-up with people who will likely never do business with you — it’s a very expensive (and ineffective) way to find only a handful of qualified prospects!

DO develop informative presentations. Find large gatherings of your ideal prospects and become good at getting yourself invited as a speaker.

DON’T fiddle around adjusting the shades of colors on your website!

DO look for online communities that already attract your ideal clients and find a way to make them link to you. Ask them to post your articles. Make your site content rich so they will want to list it as a resource. Or sell an info product and invite them to become an affiliate.

DON’T beg for referrals!

DO create ways your current clients can easily ‘give you away’ (like an article or an audio CD)

DO build relationships with referral partners. Create ways in which they can introduce you to hundreds or even thousands of prospects at once!

DON’T try to figure everything out on your own — that’s a very expensive way to learn marketing and build your business.

DO invest in knowledge products and access to experts. An hour or two with a knowledgeable advisor can save you thousands of dollars in time and money wasted on wrong strategies and improperly implemented tactics.

Providing people with easily accessible information about solutions will position you as a valuable resource and an expert. These tools will not only attract all the new business you want, but they will allow you to charge the money you deserve and create the lifestyle you desire.

So stop wasting time eating all that rubber chicken and chasing people who will likely never do business with you nor refer a single client. Instead, start creating high-leverage marketing tools that over time will generate an avalanche of new business!

If you are looking to make money online to either supplement your current income or as a full time income, learning how to sell on eBay UK is by far the best place to start. This way, one of the hardest parts of running a successful online business has already been done for you. This is marketing. Driving potential customers to your products and making sales. Once you list your products ready to sell on eBay, you have the potential to attract millions of buyers from all over the world, not just from the UK. Worldwide, people spend more time on eBay than any other website!

Where else can you start an online business in just a few hours that allows you to attract immediate traffic to your products? Learn how to sell on eBay and you will find that this is a fantastic opportunity to make as much or as little money as you want. Whoever you are, you can learn how to sell on eBay and make money.

Here are 7 ‘How To Sell On eBay’ tips to help you:

How To Sell On eBay 1:

Your eBay listings must have a relevant title. This is extremely important when learning how to sell on eBay because if your title is not relevant and does not contain the right keywords relating to your product, then eBay buyers searching will not be able to find it. Include all the related keywords you can think of and don’t use up your limited title space with words that are not required.

How To Sell On eBay 2:

Write a detailed description. Make sure that your eBay listing includes all the important details about your product. This might include the size, colour, brand, model number, whether new or used, any special features etc. Highlight the good things about the product but don’t forget to mention if there are any flaws or faults with the item too, but make these less obvious. Learning how to sell on eBay includes being honest in your eBay listing description.

How To Sell On eBay 3:

Spell-check your listing. eBay buyers are put off by listings littered with spelling errors and it looks very unprofessional. When you are learning how to sell on eBay, thoroughly check before you submit your eBay listing and make sure that important points are bold.

How To Sell On eBay 4:

Use good quality photographs. People like to see before they buy. Use a good digital camera and take 2 or 3 photographs from different angles to use as your gallery picture and within your eBay listing. This will attract more bidders and buyers and will help you get more experience as you learn how to sell on eBay.

How To Sell On eBay 5:

Always answer questions from potential bidders. You will receive questions and queries from potential buyers. And you must remember that this is exactly what they are - POTENTIAL BUYERS. Always try and answer any questions that come through eBay messages, within 24 hours, sooner if you can, even if you feel that it’s a silly question. If you frequently receive the same question then post it to your eBay listing so that everyone can see it.

How To Sell On eBay 6:

Be polite and friendly. eBay buyers like friendliness and professionalism from eBay sellers. So, it’s best to be polite and enthusiastic when corresponding, but not too casual. Don’t use ‘text speak’ in your emails as this is very unprofessional, but show a good sense of humour, honesty and politeness.

How To Sell On eBay 7:

Dispatch goods promptly. eBay buyers do not like to be kept waiting! So, make it your business to dispatch all orders promptly, preferably within a couple of days maximum. This is good service and will ensure that you get positive feedback whilst you are still learning how to sell on eBay!

In practically every major marketing teaching, course, or seminar I’ve come across, I have found that almost all successful marketing on the Internet really boils down to two essential factors: traffic and conversion.

Visitors and sales.

In fact, I’ve been to two-day Internet marketing seminars and workshops, where the first day focused on generating traffic and the second on building sales.

That’s all well and good. However, I believe there’s one more key component. It’s one that’s growing not only in popularity, but also in need and importance. It’s the one factor on which the other two hinge. And it’s one that seems to be the least talked about.

Incorporate this third element in your business model and chances are significant you’re going to see substantial, continuous growth in your business - and with a lot less effort than you’ve originally thought possible.

What is it? What is this third, missing element?

First, let’s talk about traffic for a moment.

One of the most common sources of traffic is, without question, the search engines. It’s the largest source of traffic online for almost every website.

But when I hear marketers talk about search engine strategies, optimization techniques, submission software, etc, it befuddles me to see there are still some marketers out there who rely heavily and strictly on them.

Don’t get me wrong. Search engines are important and they are an essential part of a marketer’s strategy. Learning and applying SEO are undoubtedly crucial and necessary.

But search engines (or any other traffic-generation strategy) are not, and should never be, your sole source of traffic.

While marketers must never discount the search engines, a savvy marketer’s portfolio must go beyond them.

Since marketing requires an investment of time, money, and energy, and like all other investments, you should look at managing your marketing just as you would manage your investments in the financial arena.

A well-balanced marketing portfolio consists of a combination of diversified strategies that are executed synchronously, diligently, and intelligently.

Look at it this way: many reputable entrepreneurs state that the surest way to achieve wealth is through multiple streams of income. Online, the surest way to achieve success is through multiple streams of both visitors and sales.

Your traffic must originate from different sources. The adage “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” applies just as much with your traffic as it does with your income.

Whether you write articles, buy classified ads, advertise with banners, bid on keywords, publish fresh content, interact in social media, or submit to the search engines, your marketing efforts must never rely on a single source.

An individual traffic source may generate just a small stream of visitors. But when you invest in multiple traffic sources and add them together, the total equals a high and consistent stream of visitors.

Of course, a single source may be more rewarding and effective than others. But like prudent financial investing, the key is to diversify by investing your marketing efforts into multiple sources in order to reduce your risks.

Sales are no different. If your business consists of only one website, or if it sells only one product, diversify your sales and develop additional streams of income.

In addition to looking at multiple ways to increase individual streams of income (e.g., through split-testing, list-building, adding upsells, etc), you should also look at building various streams of income, too.

For example, join third-party affiliate programs to sell related, non-competing products. Sell back-end products to your current clients. Monetize your opt-in subscriber list with special offers. Sell ad space on your blogs. Develop joint-venture alliances to bundle products or traffic sources together. Create continuity programs and membership sites.

The list goes on.

In short, develop additional streams of income and traffic, as well as different streams of traffic for each stream of income, too. Just be careful not to overextend your core funnel, dilute your brand, or lose sight of your target niche.

In other words, don’t be a jack of all trades and a master of none.

Diversify, but stay focused.

Nevertheless, if you only have one stream of income and it slows down to a crawl, for whatever reason (e.g., the economy, the industry, the competition, etc), you’re dead. Similarly, if one source of traffic slows down, dries up, or depletes entirely, the loss is minimal when compared to the whole picture.

However, earlier I said there’s a third element that has become an essential process to building a successful online business. Why? Because visitors and sales are not enough.

While everyone on the Internet extols the virtues of driving traffic and increasing conversions, this one element seems to have slipped off of many people’s radars. It’s the one element that probably deserves more attention than the other two.

And that’s credibility.

With its vastness and lack of one-on-one, face-to-face interaction, the Internet adds this third dimension to the mix that’s often not as apparent. It’s the need to develop credibility, as well as to look at multiple ways to communicate it and boost it.

Don’t just be credible. Look for ways to increase credibility and maintain it, too. There are a great variety of ways for doing this, from adding seals of approval to your website and adding elements of proof to your sales copy, to interacting in social media.

However, one of the easiest ways to improve your credibility…

… Is to develop and nurture relationships.

You may have some traffic and it might bring in some sales. But if you don’t have credibility, you have nothing. Nothing will grow your traffic and your sales, let alone your business, more than the relationships you create and keep.

And relationships are built on trust.

So to that end, look at every relationship that’s tied to your business as a partnership - whether it’s with your subscribers, your referrals, your affiliates, your joint-venture partners, your suppliers, your service providers, and of course, your clients.

Every person connected with your business, regardless of how they are connected to it, is, and should be considered as, a partner in your business. And every relationship deserves the attention, care, and concern that a partnership typically requires.

When compared to traditional offline businesses, online people are more important than ever before. Why? Because the Internet is cold and impersonal, and takes away the human element from the sales process. So people are easier to forget online.

Too many marketers nowadays look at their clients not as partners or even as people, but as hits, clickthroughs, and conversion rates - or, as my wife Sylvie Fortin would say, as “nameless, faceless wallets.”

Therefore, it goes to reason that we can use the Internet to supplant what is often easier to do offline, such as meeting people and interacting with them.

It’s one of if not the key reason behind the rise of social media.

(It’s also the reason why I spend some time on social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, or any other social website. I don’t use social media marketing as a way to drum up traffic or sales, but to create trust and build relationships.)

Trust is also the area on which the other two highly depend. Why? Because it is never enough to simply attract visitors. And it is never enough to simply sell visitors, either - as strange as that may seem. If you don’t believe me, ask the following:

Are your visitors highly qualified or simply curious? Are they impulsive and trusting, or leery and skeptical? Are they only buying once, or buying again and again? Are they silent, or telling the world about you, good or bad?

All three (i.e., visitors, relationships, and sales) are essential in the development of a successful online business.

So regardless of the marketing tactic, a successful marketing portfolio consists of numerous strategies focused on three core elements, and on developing them equally:

1. Building Traffic
2. Building Trust
3. Building Sales

Solid, long-term, sustainable-growth businesses rely on those three key factors. It is no longer enough to simply build traffic and converting that traffic. Today, it is just as important to build and maintain credibility.

Therefore, keep in mind that every single marketing activity you perform, from search engines to social media, must revert to, result in, or improve upon all those three.

Look at the successful marketers out there. Many will tell you their success is not based on a single source but on many. They are focused on all of the above three areas in some way, shape, or form. You should do the same.

Unfortunately, the web is also replete with marketers who rely on one area alone, or on a mere handful of tactics that amount to meager results. If they do produce results of any significance, they’re short-lived at best.

In other words, if you work with only one traffic-building source, one income-building source, and one credibility-building source, your business will do poorly - or it will be built on a shaky foundation that could crumble at any time.

So, think like a savvy investor.

Expand, balance, and diversify your online marketing portfolio. Focus on multiple ways to build traffic, trust, and sales. If you do, you will multiply your chances of online success.

“See I believe in money, power, and respect. First you get the money. Then you get the power. After you get the power, people will respect you.” (Little Kim - Money, Power and Respect)

I think this is true in gangster films and some aspects of real life but if you relate this to the world of social media, I think it works in reverse. First you get the respect, then you get the power and once you have the power then you will get the money.

Respect

Content is king. In order to have a successful blog you need to make sure your content is exceptional and that people are interested in your work. The key to any blog site is return visits. If people are returning frequently it means they have some level of respect for your work. The more frequently they return, a higher level of respect will be gained and they may even start evangelising your work for you. Gary Vay-ner-chuk is well respected in the social media world, just like Talib Kweli is respected in the hip-hop world. Both have core fans who value what they are doing in their field. Having respect is very important and is needed if you want to have influence. When you become influential you have the potential to become very powerful.

Power

If you have power and influence on the net then the world can be your oyster. You have the ability to do good (and bad), and in turn make an impact in whatever you want to do. The power has shifted from companies to individuals, like the famous philosopher Peter Parker said:

‘With great power comes great responsibility.’

There are a lot of people who have a lot of respect in their field and have used that to become very powerful and influential. Lily Allen holds a lot of power in numerous fields, whether it’s getting media coverage to selling albums. Arguably the world’s most famous blogger Perez Hilton is somebody else who has a lot of power. He has the power to start trends, break news, post gossip and has generated interaction from hundreds of people around the world. The important thing to remember here is that they gained respect first. So first you get the respect, then you get the power and once you have the power, the money will come in.

Money

Once you have the following and have become very influential in your field, as long as you play right on the money will come in. It will come in many different ways, shapes and forms and you will have the potential to make a good living out of this. In the world of blogging, Darren Rowse has managed to do this and in music there are countless musicians who have as well.

While many of you will be surprised after reading this, but there are many people who are making money by blog commenting. If you want to learn how to make money by blog commenting, then please read forward. Well the basic logic behind it is: Webmasters and Bloggers pay people for commenting on blogs to get them traffic and/or backlinks. You must be knowing about the dofollow commenting craze. Well getting a few of those dofollow comments to people would actually pay you off.

A better way of making money by blog commenting would be to break it up into smaller tasks and doing the work systematically. Basically we need to do three things:
1) Make up a big list of dofollow blogs (at least 100)
2) Find your market
3) Create smooth functionality and Make Money

Make up a big list of dofollow blogs

First of all you need to gather as many dofollow blogs as possible. You can check the list of dofollow blogs and get almost all of the dofollow blogs out there. To avoid problems in the future you can check out the blogs to see if there are any blogs which are not supporting do-follow anymore so that you don't waste time at a later time and modify it the way you want. Now save them and make sure they are accessible to you whenever you want.

Find you Market

I will usually recommend Digitalpoint or Sitepoint for this purpose, although any webmaster forum would work well. It is advisable to keep your eyes open for customers on at least 10-15 forums because diversifying will increase your target customers. Next, you can also send general emails to webmasters whom you think might be interested in your service, this will usually get you some positive replies for people interested in your services.

Create smooth functionality and Make Money

One thing that will be quite clear is that you will not make a lot of money with individual comments and hence you'll need to make your work very smooth in order to make some real money by commenting. That is, you'll sell comments in multiples of 5 and 10 like 10, 15, 20. You might fix your rates on something like this:

-$6 per 5 dofollow comments.
-Get 5 free do-follow comments if order is more than 50 comments.
-Get 15 free comment if order is more than 100 comments.

That deal is fair enough and you can easily attract quite a lot of webmasters. Usually one comment should not take longer than 3 minutes to write, so let's have a break-down of potential earnings considering we get an order of about 50 comments a day:

-Money earned -> $6x10 = $60.
-Time taken -> 3x50 = 2 hours 30 minutes.
-Pay rate -> $24 per hour.

Not bad eh? Also note that comments can be written in less than 2 minutes and your orders will only increase with time hence making you even more money. The potential is in front of you, and it can be adapted to make some easy money which does not involve too much time. But, you will never make any money is your primary commenting service contains even a small part of spam, be human and your service will become more commendable and you will get more orders! More articles on this topic will be posted in the future, so stick around.