Sunday, September 28, 2008

Make money online with no selling or affiliate marketing

Making money online is not as difficult as you may think. There are plenty of ways of making money online without investing much time or money. Selling products is a great way of making money, but it has never worked for me. I rely on another method to make money online.

I have tried just about everything to make money online including ebay, craigslist, affiliate marketing, making a website, clickbank, and selling ebooks. None of those things really worked for me. I made a few dollars here and there but that is about it. I needed a mroe serious, long term way of making some decent money online. That is when I found out about IFW's.

IFW stands for incentivized freebie website. Basically, it is a site that will give you money or an item for free in exchange for filling out free offers and trials. It does take a while to get used to doing and I would greatly recommend using a guide to get started because there are a lot of ways to mess up even if you think you are doing everything right.

I have had great success with IFW's, so far I have made around $1,000 per month and that number is increasing every month too. The reason that I am sharing this information with you is: the more money that I make, the more money that you make...and vise versa.

If you would like started, I would recommend reading a guide or instructions so that you will have a running start.

The basics of making money with Forex

Forex stands for foreign exchange and is usually associated with trading currencies. It is the biggest international trading market. Trading in the forex market has the same basic principles as trading a stock market. In order to succeed, you must buy low and sell high. With this basic concept, every day, millions of people make and lose money. Banks, commercial companies and individuals can all buy and sell in the forex market

It has become an increasingly popular market due to the ease of getting started and the potiential for overnight wealth. Many websites exist that sell you information on how to buy and sell properly in the forex market, but I do not recommend paying for what you can get for free.

Forex uses three letter codes to identify each currency. For example, US currency is USD. The Japanese currency is JPY. To better understand the relationship between the two currencies, I will use another example. If the USD to the JPY rate was 1:100 then that means that 1 USD will get you 100 JPY. This means that if the JPY goes up to 101, then you earn a 1% increase.

The great thing about forex is that the market is always open during the work week. It is running from 7am (New Zealand time) on Monday until 5pm on Friday(NY time).

Currencies tend to follow predictable trends. These trends are usually repeated, allowing you to make money by making the same investments daily. Many brokers also do not charge you commission to trade or open up a mini account. (account trading small amounts, usually around $100 to $500)

This article was created to provide a basic intro to forex. I would recommend opening up a free practice forex account to get used to trading before you invest any real money.

The Basics of PPC

Pay Per Click advertising can be a great thing and it can be a bad thing too. It can be very bad if you don't understand how to use it properly because the charges can add up very quickly. Some big companies may spend $5,000 per day on PPC advertising, driving thousands of people to their site and making tens of thousands of dollars as a result.

If you are not careful, you might spend $100 in one day and get ZERO sale, or spend the same amount and get 50 sales, with a profit of $350. If you got that amount of money every day, you would make over $100,000 per year. Sounds good right?

The KEY to using PPC are keywords, keywords are key to getting the right kind of traffic and the right amount of good traffic. Never use generalized keywords such as "money, make money, make money online, etc" Use long-tail keywords such as "learn how to make money online easily" or "make money online without selling" or "make money online using ebay", ...those keywords are much better and will produce a higher amount of traffic. Long tail keywords make it harder for "surfers" to click on your ad unless they are interested. These types of keywords are much better due to the fact that they are less likely to be searched for by anyone who is not dedicated to the subject. I have had great success using Long tailed keywords and have increased my sales ten fold. I would recommend using them rather than regular general keywords.

Make money with Ebay and Craigslist

Craigslist and Ebay are both very powerful sales websites and when used together, one can make a good amount of money online in a short amount of time. We will get started using Craigslist.

When I first started "trying" to make money online, my first choice was Ebay. The reason that I chose Ebay was that I have had some friends who have done really well with it. This served as inspiration for me. I tried dropshipping, wholesaling, and much more but none of that worked for me. What worked for me was using Craigslist and Ebay together.

I have always been good at computers and repairing them, so when I get on Craigslist, I look for cheap or broken laptops. I pick laptops rather than desktops because of the fact that they are very easy to ship via USPS. For example, a few days ago, I found a Toshiba 3.2ghz P4 laptop for $350 on craigslist. I called the seller up and asked him if he wanted to meet me the same day to sell it, he agreed and I bought it. I brought it home and immediately listed it on Ebay. I even used the pictures of it that he had on craigslist. After a 3 day listing, it ended up selling at auction for $504. So I made a profit of around $150 in under a week with only about an hour or less of work.

Another thing that I do is buy broken laptops off of Ebay or Craigslist and repair them and resell them. I can make anywhere from $50 to $400 in pure profit when I sell them on Ebay. If I buy a broken one off of ebay, then I can use the same box that I got it in to ship it to my buyer in.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

How to sell things on Ebay for a profit

Many people use Ebay as their sole source of income. It is highly unlikely that you will be able to do this for a long time, unless you commit to it fully. On Ebay there are plenty of different items sold every day, from baby shoes and cars to domain names. It is to your advantage that there are a lot of different categories of items being sold, because it allows you to sell virtually anything.

The first thing that you should do if you are starting out is to sell things around your house that you don't use or need anymore. One man's trash is another man's treasure. Go through boxes in your garage or your attic and sell all of the things that you no longer need. You will be surprised about how much some of the stuff will sell fore. Maybe you have a rare, one of a kind Kermit the Frog doll that is worth $500, you never know.

Yard and Garage sales are another great place to buy items to sell on Ebay. You can find just about anything at yard sales. Try to pick up jewelry, trinkets, vintage toys, etc. I heard of a man who bought a 1942 news paper for $0.25 at a yard sale and sold it for a few thousand dollars on Ebay. So there really is no limit to the amount that you can make.

Thrift stores are wonderful for finding random things to sell on Ebay. I bought a decorated Chinese style porcelain egg for $1 at a thrift store and sold it on Ebay for nearly $50.

I would advise to stay away from wholesaling and dropshipping until you are extremely comfortable with Ebay. You can make OR lose A LOT of money in wholesaling and dropshipping.

The Pros and Cons of an Ebay business

When deciding whether you should commit your time and hard earned money into a business venture, it is normal to learn everything you can about the business before you dive in. Ebay is no different. Running an Ebay business can be a sound, worth while financial investment, or it can be a nightmare.

Before you decide to open up that ebay store, consider the following pros and cons.

Pros -

  • Fast Payments
  • Ease of access to payments received
  • Minimal physical labor
  • Unlimited income potiential

Cons -

  • Can be very costly, i.e. finding products to sell, gas costs to get to the post office,
  • May not be successful at all
  • Requires attention at all times due to questions from buyers
  • Shipping all of the products can be a hassle

In my opinion, the worst thing about an Ebay business is the competition. Competition on Ebay is fierce and will remain so for yeas to come. Chances are that if you have a product to sell on Ebay, then it already is on Ebay for a lower price than you can offer it at. The people who sell laptops and video game systems for 25% off have most likely been in the business for a long time. In order to attain the same abilities and status of most power sellers, you must commit yourself to running your Ebay business. You must look at it like a business and not just a way to make a few extra dollars.

Whenever you list an item on Ebay, it costs you money. If your item does not sell then you have just wasted money that you can't get back. I think that this is one of the worst things about Ebay. Even if your product doesn't sell, you are still required to pay the listing fee. Final value fees are a whole other post. Take advantage of Ebay specials offering all listings for $0.99 or half off. Any thing is better than full price, Ebay or not.

I have made a fair amount of money on Ebay and am positive that millions of others have too, but regardless of what the masses do, you must decide for yourself whether an Ebay business is right for you. I enjoy blogging and running websites more than I like running an Ebay business, so that is what I do.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Highest paying niches for adsense

Let me start off by saying that it is against Google's TOS to make websites that are made just to display adsense ads. This doesn't mean that you can't use Adsense, it just means that your site has to have some relevant content for it not to violate Google's TOS.

That being said, the highest paying niches are:
  • Health related
  • Legal related
  • Insurance related
  • Money related
These four niches are also the four most popular niches and will have much more competition than any other niche. This means that you will have to work 100 times harder to make any sizable income in these niches. So, rather than having a site in one of these niches, you should create a site in a field that is popular, but lacking valuable websites. Better yet, you should create a site or blog about what you know about. If you are a technology buff and can build a computer blindfolded, then I am sure that your expertise will be greatly appreciated. If you know a lot about training horese, then write about it. The only other thing that you should try to do is to write about something that you enjoy. If you hate what you write about, then your articles will be less effective and less entertaining.

Would you rather type 500 articles on insurance or would you rather type 100 articles on 5 subjects that you can't get enough of? I think that the answer is obvious. People don't make money from sites or from blogging by writing what they think people will like, they make their money by doing what they love: informing people and entertaining them in subjects that they enjoy.

Pay per click vs article marketing

PPC advertising is a very effective way of driving targeted traffic to your affiliate marketing website, but it is not the only way. Article marketing, sometimes referred to as bum marketing, is a completely free way of driving targeted traffic to your website.

Pay Per Click advertising is a very good way to get a lot of targeted traffic, but does cost quite a bit of money. You can expect to pay around $0.20 to $2.00 per click. Sadly enough, only 1 out of every 20 to 50 people who visit the site through those clicks will buy a product. However nearly all of them will sign up for more information if you are getting paid on a pay per lead basis.

Article marketing involves writing an ensemble of relevant articles that will push people to visit your site and view the products that you are promoting, whether it be pay per sale or pay per lead. The types of articles that you want to write will be SEO friendly and will be on very precise subjects rather than general ones. I still get traffic to a few of my sites via articles that I wrote a few months ago. That is the wonderful thing about article marketing...when you write an article and publish it on ezine articles or a similar service, your article will remain active for months or years to come, meaning that you will continue to get traffic from these sources. It is more of a time investment than anything else. In order to keep getting a good bit of traffic from these articles, you should shoot for writing 3 to 4 articles each day for at least a month. If you run out of things to write about, then do more research on the topic and relay that research in a way that the general population will easily understand.

If you follow these guidelines and write content rich, meaningful articles that have a link to your site at the bottom, then you should see an increase in traffic to your site. Pay Per Click is better for the short term while article marketing is better for the long term. If you want a short burst of sales, then PPC may be for you, but if you want to do the work once and get results for a long time, then article marketing may be right for you. I would suggest that you use Google Analytics to track how many people are coming to your site from the articles.

HYIP Investments

HYIP stands for High Yield Investment Program. A high yield investment program is usually but not always an internet based program. An HYIP operates by getting users to deposit an amount of money into their program. The user will collect interest based on the amount of the deposit.

Most HYIP's tend to convince users to join by offering high interest rates and by listing the various things that the HYIP's invest the money into to get that kind of return. Unfortunately, these types of programs are not FDIC insured, so any money that you lose is gone forever. Most of the time, these programs will appear and disappear within a month or so. However, there are a few sites that have been around for a few years and have proven to be reputable, but there is not telling how much longer it will last. Most HYIPs will pay you daily, weekly, or monthly.

Some, but not all HYIP's are pyramid schemes, which means that only the first people who join will profit from. However, others are legitimate, but it is very difficult to tell which programs are worth your time. Unfortunately, most HYIP review sites are affiliated with the very HYIPs that they review, which means that they will be biased due to commissions that they get for referring people to those HYIP programs. Do the research on your own, on forums such as moneymakergroup.com

Chances are that if you are being offered 100% or a similar amount in interest each day, then it won't last long or is an outright scam. A good technique to pursue is to invest your money into multiple HYIPs and therefore diversifying your investment. Never put all of your eggs in to one basket. If you are really set on trying out an HYIP, then I would suggest that you do some research to find one that has been around for at least a year and invest the minimum amount. Be advised that you should NOT invest any money if you are not willing to lose it.

Pros and Cons of an adsense based income

Google Adsense provides an income method that can be implemented into almost every website. As with any source of income, there are always pros and cons.

Pros:
  • Adsense is easy to use and to implement into websites
  • Offers a limitless stream of income
  • Is completely free to use
  • Has lots of tutorials and tips
  • Large user base
Cons:
  • Checks can take a long time to arrive
  • Accounts are banned for reasons beyond the owners control somtimes
  • Income relies solely on the number of visitors to your site
  • Beginners may not grasp how the system works
As you can see, the pros out-weigh the cons by far, but the cons should still be taken into consideration. Adsense has proven to be one of the most successful and most popular ways of making money online. Adsense gains more and more users each day due to its ease of use and income potential.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Different types of affiliate marketing

There are three main types of affiliate marketing. These three types are Pay Per Click (PPC), Pay Per Sale, and Pay Per Lead.

1. Pay per click affiliate marketing is perhaps the easiest type of affiliate marketing to get started in. Google Adsense is a prime example of affiliate marketing and is a very good way to make money online. Basically, you get paid every time someone clicks on an advertisement on your website. The earning potential is limitless, but depends on how much web traffic that you receive. A site with more traffic and well placed ads can make hundreds or thousands of dollars everyday. In order to make that kind of money, you would need to have a very large and popular website.

2. Pay Per Sale affiliate marketing is usually structured on a commission style pay. You earn a percentage of each sale that you generate for a company. The easiest programs to utilize this type of affiliate marketing with are Amazon Affiliates and Clickbank. You can review or recommend products from these sites and then post your affiliate link. If someone clicks the link and buys the product, then you are paid a percentage of that sale. You may decide to pay for advertising if you want to focus solely on this type of affiliate marketing. You can utilize Google Adwords to attract targeted traffic to these reviews or recommendations to get some sales. I have successfully started a number of websites that have just affiliate links with reviews of the products and have made money from it too. Adwords will be discussed in more detail in another article.

3. Pay Per Lead affiliate marketing involves getting people to sign up for a free trial of a service or just simply signing up on a website. You may get $0.01 to $10 or more for each lead that you may generate for a company. These types of programs are more on a company by company basis rather than having a program like clickbank. However, there is one program that comes to mind that covers both Pay Per Sale and Pay Per Lead. This program is Commission Junction. Commission Junction or CJ is a great resource for website owners and bloggers who want to promote real, tangible items rather than the informational and digital items on clickbank. CJ allows you to get paid a percentage of each sale that you generate for a company and for generating leads for different companies or services. CJ is definitely something to look into.

This should provide you with a brief but informative idea of what Affiliate Marketing is all about. There is A LOT of money to be made in affiliate marketing. If you haven't done so already, make your own free blogger blog or Google pages site and get started making money.

The basics of Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the biggest earners for site owners and bloggers. You are an affiliate if you promote a product, link to a program/item or even have Google adsense ads on your site.

There are a few main affiliate marketing programs that you can join to make money through your website or blog.

1. Clickbank. Clickbank is a very easy way to make a commission on referred products. Clickbank focuses solely on informational items and digital items such as software. If you have an established site or blog, you could simply put in an affiliate link at the end of a relevant post and get a few sales from doing just that. You can create individual links for every item. The earning potential is endless.

2. Google adsense. Adsense is probably the easiest affiliate marketing program to become a part of. Whenever someone clicks on an Adsense ad on your website, you get paid. If you have 500 unique visitors every day and get 25 people to click on the ads, you could get anywhere between 25 cents and $50, depending on your subjet area and content.

3. Amazon Affiliates. You can earn money by referring people to amazon.com to buy certain products. Most people will trust amazon.com and are more likely to buy from them than anywhere else. You earn a commission on each item that is sold through your links, much like clickbank.

Optimizing Google Adsense to make more money

Google has enabled virtually anyone to make money with adsense. However, just because something is available to you doesn't mean that you will succeed at it. In order to make more money from Adsense, you must optimize your website and your ad placement.

1. You must blend your ads into your website or blog. By blending, I mean making the ads appear as regular links rather than advertisements. People hate being advertised to, so use the same colors of your website in the ads to make the appear as subtle background links.

2. You mustn't overwhelm the page with advertisements. This doesn't mean that you have too many ads, it means that the ads are very visually loud or are too big. Google only permits you to have 3 advertisements per page and they have a system that ensures that only 3 are shown at any given time. Try to blend the ad colors in with the rest of the site and do not have any protruding ads. Always keep the ads small and clean to get the most clicks.

3. The final thing that you must do to make more money is to have TONS of RICH content. Content is the key to getting traffic to your site and is also the key to getting people be interested in the advertisements. Have a goal of writing 1 to 2 large posts per day. Place the advertisements in or below each post in order to get the clicks. Also try to use the MED rectangle, as you may get more clicks with it compared to another format.

3. Place your advertisements in areas that will are the target of your reader's eye. Don't put ads away from the content. The person is visiting the site to read the content, so place the advertisements near the content. Link sidebars are also a great place to put the ads.